by P. K. Lentz
Bowyn shouted, in vain, “Arixa, don’t!”
The ironglove’s lash darted into the prisoners’ midst and slew each one so swiftly and cleanly that just one or two had time to release death-shrieks, rendered hollow by their helmet filters, before dying. When the metal melted back into the coating on the fingers of Arixa’s right hand, only Yimri remained standing among the heaped sacrificial corpses.
Pushing past Bowyn, Arixa rounded the pit’s edge to approach the landed spacecraft. At her gesture, Baako fell in beside her. S’kill and a glum Bowyn also elected to follow, while the last two remained behind guarding the lone prisoner.
“Have you decided?” Arixa asked the Senek while they walked.
“I’m pleased to accept your invitation, Captain.”
“Pleased to have you. As your first order, go back to the Barony and meet my people when they arrive. Will we have any trouble claiming them?”
“Those who knew of your people’s existence also knew the Baron’s intentions. All will be well.” The Senek raced away, missing the opportunity to meet their savior.
Ahead, a ramp lowered from the underside of the horned disc which comprised the bulk of the landed spacecraft which had saved them. The ship was two or three times the Branch’s size.
A figure emerged. Its form was Gorosian. Although it was suited, its face was visible, and the face was not that of a stranger.
Arixa laughed and named the human aloud.
“Vax!”
Eighteen
“I told you we had not seen the last of each other,” Vaxsuvarda said.
Arixa strode up to the craft’s hatch, put hand to heart in a deep Scythian bow and gave Nexus-G’s formulaic greeting. “I treasure the sight of you. Thank you.”
“Come aboard,” Vax said as she stood.
“Not yet, and not without knowing the destination. We’re here to—”
“I know,” Vax said. “I will assist you in retrieving them.”
“Treasure the sight,” Bowyn said swiftly to Vax. “Why can’t I contact my ship?”
“I did your party the favor of disrupting communications,” Vax answered. “That’s why the destroyer on the dark side of Br’niss-7 doesn’t know yet what happened here.”
“Destroyer?” Arixa asked. “Is it called the Monument?”
“I neglected to ask its name.”
“It must be!”
“Don’t think it, Arixa,” Bowyn said. “I’m not losing the Branch III, along with my life, to a Pentarchy destroyer. Vax, is it? May I please contact my ship?”
Vaxsuvarda spoke a few words to someone inside his ship and then nodded to Bowyn, who turned aside and commenced an inaudible conversation by comm. Vax walked down the ramp of his ship.
“Ivar is on that destroyer,” Arixa said to him. “I need him back.”
“That’s implausible.”
“I have a prisoner who might be of value to them.”
“I’ve learned not to underestimate you, Arixa. Yet I can’t put my ship in danger for such a venture. I bring an invitation. The Administrators”—he smiled knowingly as he said it—“have interest in you.”
“I have none in them. If you won’t help me go after Ivar, then I thank you again for your intervention—and bid you safe passage.”
She spun to walk back to the sacrificial pit. Baako followed.
“It doesn’t sound as if your friend intends to lend his vessel,” Vax said to their backs. “Come aboard. I’ll take you and your people wherever you wish to go, short of inviting battle with the Pentarchy.”
Arixa paused long enough to answer. “I don’t trust Bowyn. But I know him better than I do you, Vax.”
“Very well. But if it pleases you, I will remain in your... orbit... for a while in the hope of changing your mind about my invitation.”
Arixa stopped and turned back for one reason: having two ships potentially at her disposal was better than having one.
“Not much pleases me, but I don’t object. I won’t come aboard your ship, but I could send one or two of my people.”
“That would please me,” Vax said with a smile.
“Shadow-man!” Arixa said to the Dawner whose suit visor was a head higher than hers. “Would you go with him?”
“My honor, Captain.” He strode forward.
“Vax, you remember Baako?”
“Quite well. I helped him to practice his Nexus imprint.”
“We have business to finish here. Will you wait with us?”
“Of course, though I do hope the delay is not extensive.”
Arixa wasn’t sure how long was too long to wait for S’kill before she went into the Barony after him. But she knew the time had not quite arrived yet.
In the meantime, she asked Vax, “Is there any news of Earth?”
The Nexus-G word for her homeworld was Goros-3, but she substituted the Scythian term, knowing from her first meeting with him that Vax had a passable imprint of her language.
“I departed Earth in something of a hurry,” he said, “first for our base in the asteroid belt and from there out-system. If the Administrators know of the Pentarchy’s plans for Earth, which they well may, the information hasn’t come to me. I’m not part of any inner circles.”
“Did they send you?”
“Knowledge of the incident in the Br’niss system is no secret,” Vax said. “I volunteered to investigate. Frankly, I would have come even without the Administrators’ blessing, but they gave it.”
“You’ve been waiting here for us?”
“I have.”
“And knew the Jir had laid a trap?”
“Yes.”
“You might have warned us.”
“I am one man in one ship with a small crew. I regret I could not be everywhere at once while also avoiding detection and destruction. I did my best. I hadn’t planned for it to go this way...” He looked at the wreckage of the Jir lander. “I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve never taken part in a battle before.”
“With respect, you still haven’t,” Arixa said. “You sent rays down from safety far above. Still, I’m grateful for it.”
Vax laughed. “And you are welcome in spite of the weight on my conscience.”
Having finished his comm exchange, Bowyn reported, “The Branch is on its way. Arixa, if this individual has a ship and wants you on it, maybe—”
Without waiting for him to finish, Arixa sped off in the direction of a crawler cresting a rise in the rough terrain. As she ran, she smiled. The Dawn’s rising sun emblem had been crudely painted on the vehicle’s front.
It ground to a halt, and Arixa stopped paces from it. The top hatch opened and S’kill appeared—or rather a helmeted Senek whose words served to identify him.
“Your people are within, Captain,” S’kill said. “But lacking environment suits, they will face unpleasantness if the hatch is opened.”
“Is it them, Captain?” Memnon called over from the pit.
“It is!”
Neither the Hellene nor Vaspa moved from their positions by the pit guarding Yimri, but Arixa knew they were torn between love and duty. For them, for now, duty must prevail. It was Arixa’s privilege to follow the longing in her heart. Driven by this, she climbed up one of the crawler’s legs to its upper hull, where S’kill poked from a cupola.
“Let me in,” she told him. Needlessly, for the alien was already making way. When she had passed down, S’kill closed the top hatch above them and opened a second below. Tearing off her suit helmet, Arixa dropped down into a cramped chamber and opened a final door that put her in the crawler’s main cabin.
Twelve familiar faces met her—but Arixa, in that first instant, saw only one.
Leimya raced forward. Arixa embraced her half-sister tightly for a time, then clutched Leimya’s head between both palms to shower her hair and face with kisses. So that she might feel her sister’s warmth, Arixa caused the ironglove to recede, baring her fingers.
“I told you I would com
e back for you!” she whispered. “I told you. I told you.”
She repeated it over and over until her voice grew choked with tears. Then, pushing back the tears with a breath, she shared an embrace and kisses with Tomiris.
“My darlings,” Arixa addressed the Scythians, who looked fresh and well cared for. They even wore their own Scythian garments and bore their tools of war. “No words can describe my joy. Nor is there time for them. Welcome home, my Dawn. Shortly we will board a ship to take you away from here.”
As she spoke, her eyes fell on her young cousin Plin, son of Matas. Her look failed to conceal from him the dire news that his father had gone to the otherworld. Walking to him, she hugged Plin close and whispered, “Your father died bravely, in battle against a superior foe.”
Plin breathed deeply, managing to stave off tears. Leimya, as much his cousin as Arixa was, went to his side and clasped his hand.
After a quick round of affectionate greetings, Arixa replaced her helmet and climbed back out through the top hatch, patting S’kill in gratitude as she passed him.
“Captain,” S’kill said to her from the cupola. “Most or all of the residents of the Barony wish to leave. They rightly fear that the Jir will return to finish what they started. This facility has a few ships, but not enough. Might we transport some Senekeen to Nemoora?”
After brief thought, Arixa answered, “A friend may be willing.”
She returned to the area in front of Vax’s ship, where Bowyn was first to speak to her.
“I was just telling Vax here how you put a bunch of prisoners in a pit and sacrificed them to your god.”
Arixa ignored him and voiced S’kill’s request to Vax.
“Assuredly,” Vax replied. “The Noruz can ferry up to sixty to Nemoora.”
Arixa ordered Baako, who stood ready to board Vax’s ship, which was evidently called the Noruz, to go relieve Vaspa at the pit’s edge. While Baako was en route, she commed Vaspa.
“Go to the crawler and have your reunion. But first inform S’kill we can transport up to sixty.”
“Thank you, Captain!”
The suited figure of Vaspa dashed away from the pit’s edge to be replaced by the far-striding Shadow-man. Memnon meanwhile stayed in place to wait, patiently or impatiently, it didn’t matter which, to see rescued Andromache.
Far above them all, the arriving Red Branch III descended through the moon’s noxious curtain of clouds.
“That settles it,” Arixa said to Bowyn. “Vax ferries the Senekeen, and the Dawn stays with you. Just as you agreed.”
“So long as that’s all it is,” Bowyn said. “We transport these passengers back to—”
“No!” Arixa snapped. “Don’t say it. No offense, Vax, but that’s privileged information.”
“None taken.”
“Hmm,” Bowyn said. “Sounds like leverage I could use if, say, you lied about giving up on Ivar.” He looked to Vax. “I don’t believe her when she says she’s giving up on something. Should I?”
“It would be uncharacteristic.”
“At least Vax joined the fight instead of hiding out of sight,” Arixa said.
Bowyn countered, “You know very well, Airgetlam, that when my skills are needed, I volunteer them. I’m capable of trading insults, too, but I’d prefer not to.”
He looked over his shoulder at the Red Branch III settling onto the lunar surface close to the crawler.
“Shall we board?”
Arixa wished nothing more. With the Branch III’s entrance standing wide open, the rescued Dawners hastened out of the crawler and passed swiftly through the caustic atmosphere to reach the waiting ship.
“Andromache!” Memnon called from the pit, his voice rendered machine-like by his suit.
His sister slowed on the rocky expanse between crawler and ship, looked over and stretched an arm out in greeting before wisely opting to continue the crossing to sanctuary.
At the same time, Senek civilians began exiting the Barony via the same crack in the rocks that Arixa’s party had earlier used. S’kill ushered them toward Vax’s waiting ship, the Noruz.
That left only the matter of their hostage. At the pit’s edge, Arixa relieved Memnon, who raced off to the Branch III to reunite with his sister, leaving only her and Baako.
Before Arixa could do anything more, Bowyn commed.
“She’s not coming aboard my ship, Arixa. Don’t even ask.”
“I only—”
“Ask your other friend. She’s not permitted on the Branch.”
The comm terminated. Had Bowyn allowed her to present her request, he would have heard that she only wished to transport Yimri a short distance.
She had hoped to postpone her contingency plan, which had nothing to do with asking anyone anything. But now was the time, it seemed. She opened a comm to Vaspa, who before boarding the Branch III with Tomiris and the rest had had ample opportunity to address the Dawners in private inside the crawler.
Not that conspirators particularly needed privacy when they had a secret language not understood by the one against whom they conspired. They could have laid their plans right in front of Bowyn’s face.
Arixa’s comm to Vaspa consisted of a single, common Scythian word. Its conversational meaning was irrelevant, but to Vaspa it was a signal. And because he had warned the other armed Dawners on the crawler what to expect, they knew, too.
On hearing this word, the Dawn was to seize control of the Red Branch III. Better if it could have waited until Arixa was present, but she had faith in her war band.
Immediately after signaling Vaspa, Arixa commed someone else whose cooperation she desired, but didn’t trust nearly enough to have let her in on the plan beforehand.
“Listen to me, Cinnea. The Dawn is taking control of the Branch. None of the Eraínn will be harmed, and we’ll return the ship when we’re done. Please don’t resist. You’ve come this far in our aid. Take the next step and help me save Ivar, too.”
No answer.
“Cinnea?”
“I heard you.” There was another momentary silence. Then she said, reluctantly: “I’m with you.”
“Thank you, Cinnea.”
Arixa sent a tendril from her ironlove down into the pit, where it easily found Yimri’s neck in spite of the Jir’s efforts to evade it.
“Will you walk or be dragged?”
“You’ll have to kill me, chigit.”
“I may hurt you very, very badly. But I will not let you die.”
With a low growl, Yimri clambered up to the rim. The metal leash on her neck provided gentle encouragement.
At the surface, Arixa commenced walking the wounded, limping prisoner in front of her toward the Red Branch III. “I have her,” she assured Baako, who dutifully reported to his temporary posting on the Noruz.
While she escorted the prisoner, S’kill approached and asked, “Captain, may I see the residents of the Barony safely to Nemoora?”
Arixa granted the Senek her blessing to board the Noruz, which he promptly did.
“It’s ours,” Vaspa commed moments before Arixa set foot on the ramp of the Branch III. With Yimri’s leash shortened to arm’s length, she walked into the ship’s antechamber. The inner door unsealed, and Vaspa stood in the blue-green chamber just beyond. Helmetless, he endured the resulting blast of freezing, acidic air that resulted. Shedding her own helmet, Arixa accompanied him the short way to the common area, where Tomiris, Leimya and the other rescued Dawners awaited.
On his knees, facing Arixa, with Tomiris’s war-pick resting on his shoulder, was Bowyn.
He laughed loudly, then sighed. “I’d like to say I didn’t see this coming, but I did. How could I not? Either I truly have cac for brains, or I have you right where I want you.”
Arixa asked Vaspa, “Dearg and Morgana?”
“Put up no fight,” he answered. “Locked in their berth.”
“Cinnea?”
“Bridge. She’s on our side?”
“Eraín
n go brath,” Bowyn muttered.
Arixa said, “She’s cooperative.”
“Arixa?” The comm came from Vax, oblivious to goings-on aboard the Branch III. “We’re ready to depart. You?”
“Momentarily. You go ahead. Stay in touch.”
Arixa retracted her ironglove’s leash and gave Yimri a shove into the numerous arms of her war band. “Secure this one,” she said in Scythian. “Don’t let her take her own life.”
Though she had all but pledged not to make the same mistake twice by sparing Yimri, now Arixa needed her.
Giving Leimya a kiss as she passed, she went to the small bridge where she found Cinnea at the ship’s controls.
“We’re ready,” Arixa told her. “Our destination is anywhere on the surface of this moon. Someplace remote with deep caves. And... thank you.”
“You mean for being cooperative, even though you murdered Eoghan? It’s not for you.”
“For Ivar, then.”
“For me. You have a hostage you hope they’ll trade for him?”
“A hero, or so she claims. But I don’t want her on this ship any more than Bowyn did. So let’s move.”
Nineteen
Three suited Dawners dragged the bound, naked Jir down into the deep blackness of one of the millions of caves and tunnels that laced the rocky surface of the Moon of Sorrows. One of the three escorts was Arixa. The other two were Tomiris and Thyrsus, who had been among those held by the Baron.
At Arixa’s request, Tomiris had brought her war-pick. Arixa’s own pick was on a faraway world, but for their present errand, one was as good as another. The ironglove would probably work better still, but it would feel less satisfying.
Arixa wished to swing timeless iron.
At an apparent dead end in the cavern, the pinkish walls of which were lit by a device that hovered above their heads, the party stopped and heaved its prisoner headlong onto the jagged rocks. Arixa held out her right hand, baring it of alien metal, to request Tomiris’s war pick, which Tomiris handed over.
The weapon’s rawhide grip was bitingly cold, and so was the air, but Arixa wanted to feel the weapon properly.