Queen

by Timothy Zahn

  Nicole rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said.

  And immediately felt disgusted with herself. The Wisps had brought all of them aboard the Fyrantha, and probably none of them had pleasant thoughts about that experience. Sarcasm on her part wasn’t really called for. “I didn’t mean to be snippy. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  “We understand,” Moile said. “As the Fyrantha’s Protector, all that we do ultimately rests upon your arms. Leadership can be a terrible burden.”

  “Thanks,” Nicole said dryly. Exactly the kind of pep talk she needed right now. “So what’s your story? Where were you when the Wisps showed up?”

  “I had gone to see Vjoran regarding a business transaction,” Moile said. “Do you remember Vjoran?”

  Nicole nodded. “He was the one who was so hot to fight the Thii over the food dispenser. I got the feeling he was disappointed when that whole thing ended without a battle.”

  “Very much so,” Moile confirmed. “Teika was the one who opened the door that day and led me to his presence.”

  “So you were a servant?” Nicole asked, looking at Teika.

  “I was a slave,” Teika corrected.

  “Oh,” Nicole said, floundering. A slave?

  But really, why was she surprised? Both Ponngs had quickly offered to be her slaves in return for Nicole fixing their food supply. That should have told her right there that slavery was something they were familiar with. “So then the Wisps swooped down in the middle of your meeting and took all three of you? What were you, Moile, some kind of businessman?”

  “Not at all,” the Ponng said, his burning-fire voice oddly wistful. “I had come to Vjoran to negotiate for my own slavery.”

  Nicole blinked. “What?”

  “My family’s debts were great,” Moile said. “My conversion was the only way to solve the problem.”

  “Oh,” Nicole said, for lack of anything better to say. If she’d known from the start that the Ponngs were a slave culture, maybe she wouldn’t have been so quick to help them.

  A moment later that reflexive thought caught up with her with a second wave of secret shame. What in the world was she thinking? Abandoning the Ponngs would have been like leaving her whole neighborhood to starve just because Trake’s gang was a bunch of vicious jerks.

  Which, of course, had totally been how she’d seen things back then. As long as she had food and alcohol and a safe place to sleep it off, she really hadn’t cared what happened to anyone else. “So when you offered to be my slave, that was just part of your deal?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” Teika said. “Our slavery was shameful and unpleasant. We’d hoped that our arrival here was a new chance at a better life.”

  “I’ll bet that thought disappeared pretty quick.”

  “Indeed it did,” Moile said ruefully. “Our next hope was that serving Vjoran as soldiers would raise our societal value to a point where he would be forced to free us, or at least to renegotiate for our service. When the starvation began, we realized that being soldiers was a double-edged sword.” He lifted his sword a few inches. “So to speak.”

  “Yeah,” Nicole said. “I used to think this place was better than my old life, too. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way.”

  “I agree,” Moile said. “But here, at least, we have a chance to build something better.”

  Nicole was still trying to think up something that wouldn’t sound completely cynical when she was saved by the appearance of the three Wisps she’d called.

  “Relax,” she told the two Ponngs as both lifted their swords. “It’s under control.”

  “Are you sure?” Moile countered darkly. “Kahkitah told us about the Wisps in Q1 that tried to kill you.”

  “We intend to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” Teika added.

  Nicole scowled at the approaching Wisps. A wonderful sentiment, and one she totally agreed with.

  The problem was that once they were locked in the Wisps’ arms they were helpless to act. Or to move, or to blink, or to do anything else. If the Shipmasters had extended their control into Q4, all three of them would be tumbling down the heat-transfer duct before they could do anything about it.

  Unless …

  “Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” she said. “You two hang back while I let the first Wisp take me. I’ll tell it we want to be taken across to Q3, then tell it to let me go. If it does, that’ll prove they’re obeying me. If it doesn’t—” She felt her lip twitch, thinking about their non-edged swords. “Then you two do whatever you can to get me free.”

  “Understood,” Moile said, his tone grim. “And we will free you.”

  “Just don’t jump the gun,” Nicole warned. “The last thing we want is the Q4 Wisps keeping away from us because you drew blood.”

  Bracing herself, she strode toward the Wisps. She waited until she was three steps away, then stopped and turned around, presenting her back to them. She felt the ripple of air as the first Wisp came up behind her; saw the silver-veined arms as it reached around and pulled her to its chest.

  Welcome, Protector. How may I serve?

  Again, it was physically impossible to heave a sigh of relief. Again, Nicole really wished she could. Release me for a moment.

  Yes, Protector.

  The arms opened, and Nicole was again free to move. “It’s okay,” she told the Ponngs. “They’re obeying me. Come on.”

  “We obey,” Moile said. He still looked unhappy, but he backed obediently into the second Wisp’s arms. Teika, looking even less thrilled than his fellow slave, did the same with the third.

  Nicole waited until they were settled, then backed up again into the first Wisp’s arms. Take us across to Q3, she ordered.

  Yes, Protector.

  She felt the heat as the door opened; and then they were on the move, the Wisps carrying them to the edge of the duct and unfurling their wings into the updraft. A minute of blasting hot air from beneath her as they floated across, and then the door on the opposite side opened and she and the Ponngs were set down onto the deck. The Wisps turned back to the duct—

  “Wait,” Nicole said.

  The creatures paused. Nicole touched one of them on the arm—Come with us, she thought the command to it.

  Come where? the bemused-sounding answer came.

  Through Q3, Nicole said. Through the corridors and rooms in this part of the Fyrantha.

  I see no corridors and rooms.

  Let me lead you. Shifting her touch to a solid grip on its arm, she led the way across the corridor.

  The Wisp moved docilely at her side, looking straight ahead, not speaking into Nicole’s mind. They walked across the long corridor that paralleled the heat-transfer duct and started into the cross-corridor.

  Three steps in, the Wisp abruptly stopped. “No, keep moving,” Nicole urged, tugging at its arm.

  The creature didn’t move. There is nothing there, it said.

  “Sure there is,” Nicole said. “There’s a whole quarter of the Fyrantha. Here, watch me.”

  She let go and moved a few steps down the corridor. “See?” she said, turning back to look.

  The Wisp hadn’t moved. It was still facing her, but its head was slowly moving back and forth. “Can you hear me?” Nicole persisted. “I’m right here. Can you see me?”

  The Wisp’s head continued moving back and forth, as if trying to locate an elusive sound. But it clearly couldn’t see her.

  It was clearly also unwilling to keep going. With a sigh, Nicole retraced her steps and again touched the Wisp’s arm. Couldn’t you see me? she asked.

  I cannot see what is not there, the Wisp replied, sounding confused.

  I was there, Nicole insisted.

  You were not, the Wisp said. I could hear you. I could not see you.

  Nicole scowled. That couldn’t possibly be the way the Fyrantha had been set up, with the Wisps permanently confined to their own quadrants. Clearly, there were parts of the ship that still needed to be fixed.
<
br />   But until they figured out where that problem was—or, rather, until the Fyrantha got around to telling some Sibyl where the problem was—this was how it was going to be. Fine, she said. You and the others wait here for us, all right?

  We will, the Wisp promised.

  And you will obey orders these two give you, she added. She’d already given Jeff and Kahkitah control of the Q4 Wisps. She might as well add the Ponngs to that list. If they come back here without me and ask you to take them across to Q4, you’ll do so. Please?

  We understand.

  Nicole let go of its arm and turned to the Ponngs. So the Wisps still couldn’t see past the inner corridor, but at least they could hear her when she was out of their sight. That was something, anyway. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s find the stairs and head down.”

  * * *

  Just find another Ghorf, Kahkitah had said. Any of them will know how to get a message to me. It had sounded so nice and simple.

  It wasn’t.

  The Fyrantha had a total of ninety-six levels. The entire ship was around two miles long and half a mile wide, which meant Quadrant 3 was a full mile long and a quarter mile across. That made for a lot of territory to cover.

  Nicole did her best. She had them stop at every level on their way down toward the arena, walk inward a few hallways from the inner corridor and forward and back another few, all the time listening for the sound of a work crew.

  Nothing.

  “Are you sure they’re here?” Teika asked at their eighth stop. “This section of the ship appears to be deserted.”

  “Oh, they’re here,” Nicole said, wincing at the pain jolting through her legs with each step. After all the walking she’d done on the Fyrantha, her muscles ought to be used to it by now. “They’re here somewhere. I don’t know why I was thinking it would be easy to find them.”

  “We could split up,” Moile offered. “That would let us cover more territory.”

  “Great,” Nicole said. “How does whoever finds a Ghorf first tell the others?”

  “Oh,” Moile said. “Yes, that could be a problem.”

  “Besides, we need to guard the Protector from Wisps,” Teika reminded him.

  “The ones here should be safe, shouldn’t they?” Moile said. “The Shipmasters can’t send theirs from Q1.”

  “The Protector can’t send them across lines,” Teika countered. “We don’t know for sure that the Shipmasters can’t. I don’t mean to imply insult to you, Protector,” he added hastily.

  “That’s okay,” Nicole assured him, scowling. That was a good point, actually. Fievj may not have sent any Wisps into Q4, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t bleed a few over from Q1 into Q3.

  But she couldn’t spend all day in here hunting for Wesowee, either. The Shipmasters and Koffren were probably already planning their next move, and she and Jeff had to get moving if they were going to get ahead of them.

  Which left Nicole really only one option.

  Jeff hadn’t liked this idea. Nicole hadn’t liked it, either. But with all the other lines of communication either getting blocked or taken over, this was the one thing she hadn’t yet tried.

  “Keep an eye out,” she told the Ponngs as she pulled her inhaler from its vest pocket. Squeezing it tightly between her fingers, wondering fleetingly how much of her life this experiment was going to cost her, she put it between her lips and gave herself a jolt of the powder.

  The two-one-seven circuit in bahri-seven-six-nine is broken, the ship’s voice came in her mind. The electrical locus in bahri-three-three-one-two has short circuits in the two-two junction and the nine-one-nine-one rectifier simplex …

  She waited while the voice finished its recitation of the Fyrantha’s current ailments, an odd sense of loss tugging briefly at her. Life had been so much simpler when all she had to do was relay all of this to Carp and Levi and then sit back while they did the repairs.

  But that life hadn’t been real, any more than the supposed friendships and family in Trake’s gang had been real. It was all just a paper illusion, something people decided to believe because it made them feel better.

  This—what she was facing right now—this was reality. Like it or not.

  The voice finished its recitation. This is the Protector, Nicole thought, focusing her mind, trying to make the words as clear as she could. It would have been easier if she could also speak the words aloud, but she didn’t dare. The Caretaker part of the ship could be listening in, and she couldn’t risk the Shipmasters eavesdropping. I want you to send a message to the Sibyl with Wesowee and Kointos’s gray team. Tell them I want them to meet me—

  She hesitated. The arena’s number two door would be closest to where she and the Ponngs were right now, as well as the closest to the centerline heat-transfer duct if she needed to beat a hasty retreat back to Q4.

  But it was also the farthest from the center of Q3 and the likely areas where the gray group would be working. The farther they had to travel to meet her, the more likely that Kointos would decide that a vague request for a meeting wasn’t worth his trouble.

  And as Moile had said, she ought to be reasonably safe in here. A quick escape hopefully wouldn’t be necessary.

  —at the number one door into the Q3 arena, she continued. That’s the door closest to the front and left-hand side of the ship—make sure they know that.

  She repeated the message once more, just to make sure. “Did you speak to it?” Moile asked.

  Nicole nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did it hear you?”

  “I don’t know,” Nicole said, looking at the inhaler in her hand. If she took another whiff, the ship might give her an answer, either to confirm it had gotten the message or to tell her it hadn’t.

  But then, it might not say anything at all. And either way, it would cost her.

  Resolutely, she tucked the inhaler back into its pocket. She hated waiting, but right now there really wasn’t much else she could do. “I guess we’ll find out,” she said. “Let’s get down to the arena and see what happens.”

  * * *

  They’d made it down to level 32, and Nicole was leading the way toward the arena door she’d specified when she first noticed the odd smell.

  She slowed down, sniffing the air. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever run across before on the Fyrantha, in any of the sections she’d visited. “Moile, Teika, do you smell that?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  “Yes,” Moile said.

  “It’s been there since we left the stairway,” Teika added. “I assumed it was another of the many scents aboard that are new to us.”

  “It’s new to me, too,” Nicole said, running the possibilities quickly through her mind. It didn’t smell like any variation of the ship’s list of lubricating, cooling, or transformer oils. It wasn’t any of the foods she was familiar with, nor could she attach it to any of the beings she’d run into.

  She felt her throat tighten. Foods or beings she’d run into … but the Fyrantha’s arenas were always playing host to newcomers. Could one of those exotic aromas have escaped from the arena they were walking past right now?

  The problem was that all the arena doors she’d used had seemed pretty airtight. It wasn’t until she’d opened them up that she’d ever gotten even a whiff of the plants and creatures inside.

  The arena’s number two door, the one they’d passed on their way from the stairway, had been properly sealed. If the smell was coming from the arena, it must mean that the number one door, the one they were heading toward, had been recently opened.

  Or was open right now.

  “New plan,” she murmured, motioning the Ponngs to stop. “Back to the stairs, up four levels, then across and come back down on the far side.” She turned around—

  And stopped. Gliding silently toward them along the corridor were a pair of Wisps.

  “Back up,” Nicole bit out, waving her hands to both sides.

  To her surprise, the Ponngs ignored her. Instead of b
acking up away from the Wisps, both of them stepped around in front of her, holding out their swords defiantly toward the Wisps.

  “Go now, Protector,” Moile said over his shoulder. “We’ll hold them back while you escape.”

  Nicole hissed between her teeth. So basically they were offering the same tactic she’d used in the Q1 arena, except that in that case Bungie’s men hadn’t volunteered to be grabbed like Moile and Teika were. But other than that it should work: Wisps with their arms wrapped around Ponngs couldn’t then also grab Nicole.

  But in Q1 the Wisps—and the Shipmasters controlling them—had had their own plans for the humans and had no intention of hurting them. Here, the Ponngs had no such guarantee. If Nicole ran, the Shipmasters might order the Wisps to dump them into the duct just to be rid of them.

  Or to teach Nicole a lesson.

  Maybe that was why there were only two Wisps instead of three. Maybe they wanted Nicole to watch the Ponngs get killed to show her the cost of fighting against them.

  Nicole squared her shoulders. Whatever the Shipmasters had in mind, there was no way in hell she was going to lose the Ponngs. Not without a fight. “Wisps, stop!” she snapped. “Stop, and move aside.”

  For a fraction of a second she thought they were going to obey. Both creatures slowed, their smooth movement faltering a little. But then the wavering stopped, and they resumed their forward motion. “Stop and move aside, please,” she tried again.

  Again, a flicker of hesitation. But they kept coming.

  “Okay, we’re getting out of here,” Nicole said. “Moile, how well can you walk backward?”

  “Very well,” Moile said. “I’ll keep watch on them.”

  “Good,” Nicole said. “Teika, stay with him and make sure he doesn’t fall or trip. They get too close, we’ll give it up and go with a flat-out run. I’ll watch ahead for traps.” She turned around—

  And once again jerked to a halt. Four beings had emerged from a cross-corridor a hundred yards ahead, somewhere near the arena door she and the Ponngs had been heading toward. They were tall, taller even than Kahkitah, but thin, and with the mixture of chest and hip bulges and thin waists she remembered seeing on a display of hornets back at school. Each of them had a sort of flat tablet in his hands, bigger than the cell-phone-sized notepads Nicole and the rest of the repair crews carried, with a strange set of grips on the sides. Behind them, just visible as he peeked cautiously around the corridor’s corner, was an armored Shipmaster.