by Steve Perry
She was reading some kind of porn hard copy, he could see that much. Damn, but she was fine! He imagined that small mouth all over him, on his dick and she wanted it, too, he could tell.
They did the small talk thing for a minute or two and she told him she was into being dominant `call me ma'am'-and the little vixen played chase, backing up, her cheeks flushed with desire.
And he reached out to touch her, to put her hand on his ready-and-willing equipment-and then he wasn't sure what happened.
He must have tripped
Noguchi grabbed his arm above the elbow with her free hand and hooked one foot behind his. She twisted, pushing up and over at the same time, and the pilot went down. She jumped back and struck a ready pose, left foot forward, fists made. It had happened so fast, she was barely aware that she had done it.
The drunk groaned loudly; he didn't get up. Noguchi relaxed slightly, but kept her distance.
Another man stepped into the room, dark-haired, wearing glasses.
"Scott?" He looked down and moved immediately to the fallen man. "Jesus, what happened?" He stared. up at Noguchi, at her fighting stance; realization dawned on his face.
"You next?" Adrenaline still pumped through her system.
The drunk's friend stood, hands in the air. "No, no, I was just coming to tell you that the ship is loaded and that we'll be making our first shuttle run as soon as the inspectors give the rhynth a clean bill of health-" He spoke all at once, in a rush, but seemed to catch himself.
Noguchi nodded. "You'd better have them check out this pilot, too." She looked down at Conover and frowned. "Especially his judgment."
"I'm Tom Strandberg, ma'am. I'm sorry about this, he's the designated drinker on this run." As the man spoke, he bent down and tried to help Conover to his feet. He grinned sheepishly. "Tomorrow it'll be my turn."
With a grunt of effort, Strandberg stood up, Conover half over one shoulder.
"Your turn to drink or your turn to get some of what I gave him?" Noguchi spoke sharply; she knew that none of this was Strandberg's fault, but damn him for excusing his friend so lightly; attempted rape wasn't particularly funny.
Strandberg edged toward the door with his heavy load. "Look, I'll make sure he doesn't bother you again, okay?"
It seemed to be the perfect cue. Conover raised his head slightly. "Damn bitch," he mumbled, and nodded back out.
Strandberg carried the other pilot out without another word.
Noguchi sax back in her chair and felt her heart slow down little by little. If she didn't receive a formal apology the next morning, she would file a complaint with the company.
Maybe I'll do that anyway. Conover certainly didn't deserve anything less, of I-got-your-ramrod-right-here.
She surprised herself by laughing out loud. How classically dumb male. Did they teach lines like that in Neanderthal 101?
Noguchi picked up the papers she had been reading, a smile still on her face. Well, it had broken the tension she'd been feeling.
After she'd read the same paragraph three times, she sighed and put the report down. This was important stuff, but she couldn't seem to regain her concentration after the rush of adrenaline that idiot's advances had created. Besides, it was late. Revna must have gone to the party or just gone home.
She stood, stretched, and yawned. Maybe she wasn't so very out of martial arts' practice after all. She had tossed him without thinking about it. It came back quick enough when she'd needed it.
She made sure that the recorders were all on and pulled her jacket off the back of the chair. She would talk to Revna tomorrow about these "specimens"; from the sound of it, there might be some crucial things going on out at Iwa Gorge-and it was her job to know about it.
It was dark and hot. The smell of burned materials worked its way into that darkness, and with the scent came pain.
Dachande opened his mouth to scream at the young males to fall in line, but nothing happened. He sensed no movement, no sound of the students came to him. He tried to lift one arm to clear his vision, but nothing happened. Only heat and blackness and faraway pain.
And then only dark.
Scott hurt. He rolled his head and opened his eyes, but closed them again immediately. The whole fuckin' planet was spinning. And there was an earthquake or something.
What planet?
"Wha' the fuck?" he mumbled. He opened his eyes again.
"Back to the land of the living?" Tom's face swam into view next to him. They were riding a small cart outside, back to the ship-the earthquake was the rumbling motor. On Ryushi. The Lector. Cowboys.
Japanese babe
Scott focused on Tom's face. "Nogooshi," he said. It was coming back.
Tom grinned. "Scott, you're plowed. Apparently you tried to have sex with the head of the company here, a very capable woman who knocked the shit out of you before you got around to figuring out she wasn't interested." He paused for a second and then added, "And if you ask me, you're lucky she didn't rip your dick off and feed it to you."
"Great," said Scott. He closed his eyes, exhausted. "Nice to have you on my side, ol buddy ol pal."
Scott was almost asleep when the cart stopped. He growled and pulled himself upright. They were back at The Lector.
"Need help?"
"No. Fucking Judas." He got out of the cart okay, but discovered that his legs weren't particularly interested in staying straight. Tom grabbed one of his arms and pulled it over his own shoulder. Scott leaned on him heavily.
"Yeah, okay." He shuffled along next to Tom as they walked onto the second loading ramp. "She can't treat me like that, you know."
"Maybe you want to go back and tell her that," Tom said. "What's with the lights? Prindle's team is getting sloppy, maintenance is going to hell-"
Scott sighed. "Fuck the lights. But you know what I mean, right? I mean, I'm a goddamned star-pilot, you know?" On top of the humiliation of it all, he was getting a huge headache.
Tom leaned him up against a wall. "Hang on a sec, let me get a light."
Scott went on. "Who the fuck does she think she is, you know?" He stared at the floor. Goddamn rhynth all over the place, looked like one of them had thrown up on the floor. He toed the puddle of wet, mucusy goo with one foot and then looked away quickly; that was enough to make his stomach pretty damn unhappy.
"She's corporate," said Tom. "She pulled rank on you." He re-appeared holding a flashlight and reached out to steady Scott with his free arm.
"That's not all she pulled," said Scott glumly. "I think my back is broken or something."
"Who in the hell left this hatch open?" Tom stepped forward and shined the light into the dark rhynth pen.
"You're not listening to me." Scott leaned back on the wall. Fuck the hatch
"Hey, Ackland warned you, right?" Tom's voice had taken on an echo-like quality. He had walked into the pen.
With the last of his coordination, Scott followed him, narrowly missing a renegade doorway. Rhynth puke everywhere.
Tom continued. "But you Wouldn't listen, no. You just had to go mess with the queen-"
Tom stopped short. The flashlight hit the floor and a low hiss filled the room, coming from all around.
Scott shook his head and followed Tom's gaze. There were four. Or seven. Or twenty. A flurry of horrible images: long, dark skulls and dripping razor teeth. Gigantic, black, all arms and legs and spiny tails, hissing. Moving forward.
Reaching toward them-
* * *
Chapter 11
There was darkness. Not with the cold that she had once associated with the black hours, not with a sense of night or time. It was a stifling darkness that echoed with soft, wet sounds of rhythmic movement-the insistent pulse of body against body, but far from any act of love. It was the black of a huge machine, steadily devouring light, continually working, thrumming. Eating. Building toward the inevitable scream. The darkness was the dragon, calling her name, calling its prey, and there was no escape...
&nbs
p; "Machiko?"
Light blared, loud and unwanted. Noguchi started, sat up. She rubbed her eyes. "What-?"
Hiroki stood in her doorway, his hand on the control panel.
The .darkness machine, insatiable...
She shook her head. "I had a dream . . . Hiroki. What time is it?"
"Almost noon." Hiroki smiled apologetically. "I know you were up late last night, sorry to disturb you-"
"What is it?" Noguchi felt the last of the dream slip away as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. She was suddenly aware that she wore only an undershirt, and a tight one at that.
"Doc Revna still hasn't returned, and Mrs. Doc is starting to worry. I've sent out a crew in the copter to search for him, but I thought it would be best if the staff saw that you were in on this, too."
Noguchi nodded. "Thank you, Hiroki. You're right. Give me two minutes to get dressed."
Hiroki averted his eyes politely as she walked to the 'fresher to splash water on her face. Revna wasn't back? He'd been gone-fifteen or sixteen hours, at least. Too long.
She dressed quickly and rinsed her mouth with water. In spite of the cool liquid, she felt hot, her eyes sticky and full of sand. Not enough sleep. Noguchi combed through her hair with her fingers and stepped out to meet Hiroki. She glanced longingly at her bed; a nap later, perhaps.
Doc had probably just had some engine trouble; he would know to stay put and wait for help. Hell, the copter was most likely on its way back with Revna already; nothing to worry about.
Except for the darkness.
She shuddered as they reached the door to the building; her dream
"You okay?"
Noguchi smiled and gave up on the half-remembered image. "Fine. I just -I dreamed it was hot."
Hiroki laughed. "Pure fantasy."
Noguchi smiled again, but felt the shudder deep inside. She hoped the dark feelings were just that, fantasy. She donned her sunglasses and followed Hiroki into the blazing day.
David Spanner had one fuck of a nasty headache. The pressers on the goddamn copter were incredibly noisy-no, more than that, they were deadly, that was it. He had been sent out because of all of his sins to die by slow torture. Loud torture.
"How about after this we go to the cafe and get some sushi, Spanner? Nice and fresh, maybe the abalone, all squishy and raw, or the octopus-"
"Fuck you very much, Ikeda." Great. Only big party of the year, everyone in town is sleeping it off, and he gets sent to pick up the doc. With the only person in town who wasn't suffering a severe hangover.
His copilot grinned, her smile relaxed and easy. "Or we could have a few cold ones. What do you say? Couple of big frosty quarts of beer, to wash down the snake-roll?"
Spanner scowled. "I could just throw up on you now, save you the trouble of making me."
"No time," she said. "We're almost there."
Ikeda pulled up on the stick as they rounded a cliff and flew into the gorge. Spanner's stomach protested at the sudden dip. He wrapped his arms around his chest and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths.
"You did that on purpose, Ikeda."
"Maybe. Help me look, lush."
Spanner shook his head, eyes still closed. "Uh-uh. You look. I'm just here for the fresh air."
They flew without talking for a few minutes, but it was far from silent. The pressers. It was the goddamn age of science, and no one had invented a decent muffler; what were the techs thinking? Spanner considered jumping. At least it would be quiet . . .
"What the fuck?"
Spanner sat up quickly. They had just come over a low cliff, and on the floor of the gorge
There had been an explosion, a big one.
Huge metallic arches like the rib cage of a giant stretched up from still-smoldering wreckage. The charred ground around the arches were strewn with large chunks of blackened debris-of what, Spanner couldn't tell.
His hangover was forgotten.
As Ikeda started to set down at the edge of the site, he wished he had thought to bring a weapon more powerful than a rhynth-stick.
"It's a ship, isn't it?" Spanner scanned the gorge side to side. Lots of places to hide . . .
"Yeah, I think so." Ikeda's eye were wide. "Was a ship. But not any human design I recognize."
She shut off the pressers. The sudden silence wasn't so welcome anymore. Spanner gripped his rhynth-stick tightly.
They got out of the copter carefully and walked toward the burnt-out shell. It was very quiet. Spanner's fear dissolved into awe as they neared the towering arcs. It was
"Incredible," Ikeda said softly.
Spanner nodded. And from the smell of it, the fire had been recent. Like yesterday, maybe.
"This thing you ever heard of anything like this?"
Spanner looked at her. Ikeda kicked at a chunk of the odd substance.
"Never." She turned and started to poke through the rubble.
"Think of what this means, Ikeda! We're talking intelligent life here, not just some new strain of amoeba! This could be the first real proof, you know?" His brain kicked in to overdrive. Fucking wow!
"Think of the new information! If we could figure out who made this ship, could figure out some way to test this material-" He trailed off, mind alive with the possibilities.
"Why don't you just ask him?"
Spanner twisted around to see Ikeda crouched down by a fallen figure. He stepped closer. "Doc-?" And stopped short.
It wasn't human. Some sort of armored animal, but humanoid form-except this thing was big. Spanner himself stood a little under two meters, and he was probably the tallest man in Prosperity Wells. This guy had half a meter on him, easy. Jesus fucking Buddha.
"Careful, Ikeda."
"I think it's dead," she said, and then watched the figure for a second.
Spanner joined her.
"No, it's breathing," said Spanner. "What the fuck?"
Ikeda shaded her eyes and looked up at him. "You tell me," she said quietly. Her words sounded flat in the hot, dry air.
The initial anxiety he had felt surged back. They were an open target down here. And maybe this guy's friends were nearby . . .
He looked at the steep walls of rock on either side of them and suddenly felt claustrophobic. "Let's get outta here, what say?"
Ikeda nodded and dropped her gaze back to the creature. "Yeah. But help me get him into the copter, first. We'll have to come back to look for Revna later."
They loaded the thing into the copter as quickly as possible considering he weighed about a ton. They did their best to strap him to the stretcher with the human-sized bonds. It was a tight fit. When they finally lifted, Spanner felt relieved. No way was he coming back later unless everybody in town came with him.
On the trip home he kept his eyes open and aimed at their passenger; his headache had crept back, and it pulsed sharply at his temples as the suns beat down hard in piercing shafts of brightness.
Dr. Miriam Revna was an attractive woman even when she was worried. Which she was-in spite of her calm composure, the lines on her brow and the concern in her smile gave her away. Noguchi felt an instant sympathy for the woman; her attempt to maintain cool and continue functioning in spite of her emotions was a state Noguchi was quite familiar with.
"Is there anything you can think of that might help us locate your spouse?" Hiroki said.
Revna walked over to an examination table and motioned for them to join her. "He went to Iwa Gorge to find more of these," she said, and lifted a plastic sheet to expose some kind of spider. Hiroki frowned and stepped closer.
"They're unclassifiable," the doctor continued.
"Their structure bears characteristics of both carbon-based and silicon-based life forms."
Noguchi nodded. "Yes, I read the report. But what made him decide to look all the way up in Iwa Gorge?"
Revna smiled weakly. "That's where she said she'd found them."
" `She'?" Noguchi and Hiroki almost spoke in unison.
The doctor n
odded. "Jame Roth. The young woman who works for Ackland."
"Thank you for your time," Noguchi said. "We will contact you as soon as we know anything, Dr. Revna." She smiled warmly and touched the older woman's hand. "I'm sure everything will be fine."
They walked into the searing heat together and started toward the garage.
"What would Roth be doing at Iwa Gorge?" Hiroki said. "Ackland doesn't have any herds within twenty klicks of there."
"Those things weren't found in Iwa Gorge, Hiroki." Of course! It was obvious once she thought about it.
"What?" Hiroki stopped to look at her.
"Think about it. If you were Ackland and you found some new life form the night before the roundup, would you risk having three years' profit tied up in quarantine? No. You'd say the creature was discovered far from where your herd was pastured."
"But why would he report it at all? The things we saw might not be any threat to rhynth. I mean, if they were like ticks or something, they'd be easy to spot."
Noguchi felt a spark of anger deep in her gut. "To cover his ass. Say his rhynth do come down with some disease. Maybe the crab things are carriers, they bite an animal and infect it. He's done his duty, right? He reported it, even though they were found a long way from his animals."
Hiroki nodded thoughtfully. "So do we talk to Ackland first, or Roth?"
"Roth. She'd be more likely to admit to something like this than Ackland. Besides, if we go to Ackland first, he might bribe her to stay quiet before we can get to her."
Hiroki smiled appreciatively. "Good thinking, Machiko.
Noguchi barely heard him. "If anything has happened to Kesar Revna, Ackland will be sorry," she said softly. "He sent the doc to chase dust up there. He could have had an accident, hurt himself, and that's a long way from help."
After the ooman craft left, Tichinde and the others moved back to the smashed and burned wreckage to see what they had done.
M'icli-de had wanted to kill them, but Tichinde had held them back; he had a better idea.
Dachande was gone. He'd been dead already, of course, but the oomans were h'ulij-bpe, crazy. In a way, it was fitting. The oomans had taken the old Leader, had left him to be the new one: He was a warrior now, Aseigan had been his first kill. And so he would Lead them to their first Hunt. Later, he would Blood himself, design his own mark, and etch it in place with Hard Meat thwei; and he would also mark the other students as his own.