by Sara King
Once it had dragged the third Takki out of sight, the Grekkon backed around until it was facing Daviin once more.
“You asked why I’m still here. Two reasons. The prince isn’t dead and we have four members still alive in the deep den.”
Daviin stiffened. “They surrendered?”
“No. Incapacitated. The Human and the Ooreiki are unconscious. The Baga is mangled, but Jer’ait believes he might still be alive, based on what the Prime demonstrated in the barracks.”
“And the Huouyt?”
“Grooming the prince.”
Daviin’s lip peeled back from his teeth in disgust. “Grooming him?”
“It’s the only way he can maintain visual contact with the others without becoming conspicuous.”
Daviin resisted the urge to comment on the cowardice of the Huouyt and instead said, “So the Human is alive? You’re sure?” His instincts as a Sentinel were telling him to rush to the deep den as quickly as possible to do battle, but he had absolutely no idea where he was.
“I told you. The Human and the Ooreiki are unconscious.”
“How many guard our companions?”
“Three, not including the prince’s females.”
“Dhasha females are bloated, craven, and slow. They will not fight us.”
“That’s what the Huouyt said. Still, I think they should be accounted for.”
“Do you have a plan?” Daviin demanded. “I can’t kill three Dhasha by myself.”
“We’re not going to kill them. I’m going to create a tunnel that exits in the center of the deep den’s ceiling. It’s a two-rod drop. You’ll secure your lower end in the ceiling and drop into the den, grab our companions, and pull yourself back up before the Dhasha realize what’s going on. Jer’ait will use the confusion to administer a poison to the Dhasha prince and then will meet us back at the entrance to our original shaft.”
It sounded plausible. The fact that he might be able to get his ward out alive was making Daviin’s blood rise. “What about the heirs? Jer’ait said they needed to be killed, too.”
“At this point, the Huouyt believes headquarters will be happy if we get out alive. The prince will be a bonus.”
Daviin grunted. “Good. Let’s do this fast—” He motioned at his ruptured liquids channel. “I’m running out of time.”
If the Grekkon noticed or cared, he said nothing. Instead, Scarab simply slipped into the wall and disappeared.
They had been closer to the deep den than Daviin had thought. In only a couple of tics, the Grekkon had opened a hole in the ceiling and they were staring down at their companions. As the Grekkon had said, three of their companions were piled in an unconscious heap near one side of the room. On the other side of the room, a cluster of small, violet-scaled Takki dug large chunks of rotted flesh from under the prince’s huge, uncannily iridescent oblong scales. Daviin peered hard, but he could not distinguish the Huouyt from the others, neither by looks nor mannerisms. The prince grunted in his sleep, kicking one of his stubby, ebony-taloned feet. The Takki near his feet quickly found somewhere else to be.
“Which is Jer’ait?” Daviin whispered, pulling back into the tunnel.
“Does it matter?” the Grekkon said. “As long as he holds up his end, we don’t need to know.”
It was true. Daviin took another look at the scene below, fixing it in his mind, then wrapped the last rod and a half of his body around the pillar of dirt the Grekkon had created for him by making a circular tunnel. Once he was secure, he once more raised his energy level and slowly began lowering himself into the deep den, head-first.
As soon as Daviin’s snout touched ground, he oriented himself by listening to the prince’s breathing. Heading in the opposite direction, he threaded his way across the floor until he reached the Human’s leg. He grabbed it with one hand, careful not to move it as he did so. He closed a fist around the Ooreiki’s meaty black arm, then moved forward and took the Baga gently in his mouth.
Behind him, the prince snorted and lunged to his feet with a roar. A Dhasha moved near the entrance it guarded, padding toward the center of the room. It bumped Daviin’s body where it was strung out above the floor. The heir gave a startled grunt.
Daviin lunged up and back, throwing every ounce of muscle into ripping his companions off the floor and pulling them toward the ceiling before the Dhasha realized what it had touched.
The Grekkon’s pillar had not been made to withstand such treatment. With a horrible sinking in his gut, Daviin felt it collapse under the pressure of his coils. The full weight of his upper half and his burden came to bear on his lower half, and Daviin felt himself sliding. He dropped his companions and scrambled for purchase, but it was too late.
He fell.
#
Jer’ait watched his companions get into position and kept the Dhasha prince between himself and the Jreet, away from the direction he knew the Dhasha would lunge when it realized what was happening. Carefully, he selected a poison and extruded it into the claws of his left hand, continuing to scratch with his right. The prince grunted and shifted, but did not complain again. He was close to sleep.
When Jer’ait saw the Human’s leg move slightly, he knew it was time. He pushed his left hand under the second layer of scales and slammed the claws into the Dhasha’s flesh as deeply as they would go.
It was a contact-based chemical, one that killed through the skin, the mouth, the eyes, the nose, and the ears—any surface or orifice that could absorb it. Since the Dhasha’s skin was thicker than most creatures, the poison would be slower to take effect, but the result would be the same. The prince would die.
The prince snorted and twitched, opening its eyes. “Slave, are you incompetent? My skin burns where you—”
The prince was on his feet in a second, bowling the other Takki over. “You’re the Huouyt!” he snarled, raising a paw to destroy him.
Behind him, the ceiling collapsed.
Jer’ait scrabbled out of the way as the Dhasha turned to look, then felt his gut churn at the sight that unfolded.
The Jreet had fallen into the pit.
Like an old spaceship engine winding up for takeoff, the Jreet appeared as a massive red blur, screamed its shee-whomph battlecry, and wrapped itself around the closest Dhasha, heedless of the one behind it. The prince took two steps toward the Jreet and stumbled, the poison beginning to take hold.
Roaring, the prince turned back on Jer’ait, but he found only stone. Jer’ait had moved around behind the prince and was angling toward the Dhasha the Jreet had not yet seen. The second Dhasha was just beginning to get a grasp of the situation when Jer’ait slammed into it from the side, catching its attention for the moment it took to keep it from shredding the Jreet.
Behind him, the prince slumped to the ground.
The Dhasha Jer’ait had attacked saw this, lowered its cold emerald eyes on Jer’ait, and casually batted him aside, its black talons sinking in deep.
Jer’ait spun away, feeling like half his body had been ripped away. When he managed to sit up, he was amazed that he was still conscious. His torso hung in shreds. Dimly, he realized the Jreet now had both Dhasha wrapped in his body, though the effort had stretched him to the limit, giving him no space to free his tek or use his hands for anything but gripping the first Dhasha’s horns and keeping its jaws from finding purchase on his coiled scarlet body.
Jer’ait stumbled to his feet, leaking alarming amounts of blue fluid from his midsection. He tried to perform a localized pattern shift and managed to staunch some of the flow, but the wounds were too grievous. He was quickly losing consciousness. If he didn’t find water to negate his shift, he was going to die.
On the other side of the room, near the females, a pool of water lay in a deep trough, a spring that the Takki had diverted for their master’s use. It was enough to submerge himself…enough to save his life. Jer’ait glanced at it, then looked back at the Jreet.
In a crush of straining muscle and tearing e
arth, the Jreet was losing his grip on the first Dhasha, made all the worse by the fact he had been forced to free the creature of half its coils when the second one lunged at him. Already, one of the escaping Dhasha’s talons had raked the Jreet along his back, opening a huge rent in the scarlet hide that exposed three digs of bluish muscle to air.
If the Jreet didn’t get help soon, he was going to be ripped apart.
Jer’ait staggered toward the Jreet, then fell, his world rapidly losing color. He had enough poison remaining on his Takki-patterned claws to kill another Dhasha, but he couldn’t force his muscles to work. He could only lay there, head cocked sideways on the cold stone, and watch as the Jreet rapidly lost the fight.
A dark brown, insectoid shape skittered across the floor and paused in front of the escaping Dhasha. As Jer’ait watched, motionless, the shape switched directions and pressed its bulbous rear into the Dhasha’s head.
The Dhasha went limp.
The Grekkon skittered away, leaving the Jreet to deal with the last one. Jer’ait felt something hard grab his wrist and drag him across the floor, away from the fight. Then he was in a tunnel with perfect sides, sliding smoothly along a floor that gave no resistance, leaving a trail of blue Takki blood behind him.
Jer’ait realized he’d been shoved into a niche with three other bodies before he lost consciousness.
#
Daviin felt his muscles tearing as he twisted around the Dhasha, constricting its midriff with every ounce of strength he still possessed.
He felt something pop under the pressure. At first, he thought it had been one of his segments severing, but then he realized the Dhasha had gone suddenly stiff, its muscles like rock under his coils.
He eased off some of the pressure and raised his head to look.
The Dhasha’s internal organs were weeping from its mouth, oozing over its teeth and onto the ground. The Dhasha had stopped fighting.
“Come,” a tinny voice said behind him. The Grekkon was half-in, half-out of a hole in the wall, motioning at him with a spearlike appendage. “Can’t you hear them coming for us?”
Daviin opened his senses past the battle-frenzy and heard the distant rumbling as Dhasha charged down the main shaft toward them.
Daviin raised his energy level and unwound from his victim. Across the room, the Grekkon disappeared back into its hole. Daviin hadn’t fully uncoiled by the time the other Dhasha arrived, but his exit nonetheless went unnoticed—the Dhasha congregated around the prince’s corpse in mute horror, his two heirs forgotten.
Somehow, Daviin made it up the shaft and to the point where the Grekkon had stashed his companions.
“This shaft leads to the surface,” the Grekkon said. “Take the Ooreiki and the Huouyt with you.”
Daviin blinked at the bodies, barely able to hold himself upright. “Is the Human alive?”
“Barely. But you take the heavier two first. If you don’t come back for the Human and the Baga, I’ll bring them myself.”
Joe survived. Daviin felt a rush of relief—and regret. Sentinel to a slave. He shook off the thought. “What are you doing?”
“I go to kill the final heir and guard our retreat.”
Daviin did not think he could get himself to the surface, much less make two trips dragging bodies along with him, but he grabbed the two heaviest of his companions nonetheless. Then, closing his eyes, he forced his torn and shredded muscles to move himself onward.
Somehow, he reached the surface, though Daviin had no sense of how long it had taken. It seemed like ages—and only seconds. He dropped the Huouyt and the Ooreiki at the exit to the shaft and went back for the other two. He returned to the surface and dropped the Human and the Baga to the ground.
When Daviin released him, Joe groaned. “Five,” he mumbled. “Only five.”
Hearing the sound, Daviin’s instincts as a Sentinel made him flinch. He remembered his relief, earlier, when he had thought the Human was dead and had therefore spared his family the shame of knowing one of their princes had sworn himself to a slave. Guilt hit Daviin like a punch to the tek. I’m his Sentinel, Daviin thought, appalled. And yet, he was also a Voran heir. Daviin fisted his hands, once more finding his honor at war.
Then he realized he was poised over his ward like a moron, bleeding to death in enemy territory, debating over whether or not his ward was a slave.
I can deal with this later.
Daviin began coiling atop his ward, giving him the protection of his body should enemies find them, since he knew he would soon be useless to stop them.
Before he had finished half his coils, Daviin’s world closed to a narrow black point and he slid to the ground, spent. He had a vague sense of movement nearby and then flinched instinctively as something began tugging Joe’s body from under his coils, but he lost consciousness before he could stop it.
CHAPTER 17: The Jreet-Doctor
“Planetary Ops will experience a bout of panic once the numbers come back. They’ll lobby for the use of an ekhta, but as last time, Koliinaati politicians will clamor to stake a claim on Neskfaat once the Dhasha are removed and will veto the Ground Corps’ initiative on the grounds that Neskfaat is too important a resource to destroy. Their reasoning will be that they only lost two and a half million groundteams. They’ll get a Bajna to crunch the numbers and will suggest Planetary Ops can lose up to three and a half billion before the toll will force them to increase the Draft. They’ll actually look at Neskfaat as an opportunity to whittle down the overdraft, which has been causing shortages in the Outer Line.”
“So what can I expect the Ground Force to do?” Rri’jan asked.
“Send in another wave. They have no other choice. The Regency has tied their hands. However, the second wave will come after we have completed our business on Neskfaat. Between now and then, Planetary Ops will use the two thousand surviving teams until there’s nothing left.”
“They won’t use them to train new waves?”
“No. Planetary Ops will study the group combinations and attempt to duplicate them, somewhat correctly believing their successes were due to statistics and not individual talent. They’ll send them back again and again to determine the best statistical combination before they send in their larger second wave of soldiers. Basically, they will be doing exactly what we are doing. They will be analyzing how long it takes them to die in order to create the proper combinations needed to root out the one hundred and twelve princes that survived the first attack.”
“Then we must intervene before they kill our teams off,” Rri’jan cried. Forgotten wasn’t sure which was more amusing—the fact that Rri’jan had grown so attached to the plan, or the fact that he didn’t believe Forgotten had already taken that into account.
“It will require no intervention on our part,” Forgotten assured his visitor. “After the sixth attack, only two teams will survive. Planetary Ops will have their statistics by then, and we will have our team.”
“Just two?” Rri’jan looked startled. “Twelve soldiers out of two million groundteams will survive the first wave?”
“Two and a half million.”
“So these teams that survive the sixth assault…they’re the ones we want?”
“No. They’re only the candidates. We have a bigger test in store for them, once they’ve survived to that stage.”
“What test?”
“We’ll discuss that when we come to it. Be satisfied to know that one of the two groups will fail, leaving us with the one we will send against Mekkval.”
Rri’jan did not seem displeased with the idea. Forgotten found the Huouyt’s lack of vision irritating.
“I want you to know, Rri’jan, that your brother has a very high chance of surviving to our final test. His team is one of my two chosen candidates. If you sabotage his success in any way, you will be sabotaging your seat on the Tribunal.
Rri’jan’s electric eyes gave him a flat, psychotic stare. “I am not stupid, Geuji.”
Oh, but yo
u are. “This particular group has enough chances of disintegrating as it is. Jer’ait will already receive enough complications from the other Huouyt to test his limits and possibly make a misstep that will mean his death. The Jreet will require me to train a surgeon to keep his romps with the Dhasha from being his last, and will be difficult to control when he realizes the reigning Welu heir is with him on Jeelsiht. Sooner or later, the Human is going to reawaken a deep-rooted phobia Congressional physicians failed to bury in his recruit training on Kophat. The Baga will be caught spying on top-secret meetings and will face execution. The Ooreiki will eventually begin to question his tunnel-instinct under the constant stress, and the Grekkon may or may not be able to maintain his excretion rate for six attacks in a row.”
The Huouyt peered at him narrowly. “You have this all planned already, do you?”
“Yes,” Forgotten said. “Further complicating things is that the Trith will become involved sooner or later. Until now, they have been satisfied with approaching my agents, trying to guide my actions through their input. Now, with the plans I am making, the Trith will not be content to watch as their future disintegrates before their eyes. They despise vortexes. They will be insidious, attempting to steer the future back on their chosen track by foiling my plans and foretelling my death.”
Rri’jan gave him a calculating look, one that verged on appreciation. “So you truly can’t be read by the Trith?”
Forgotten felt a pang of regret. Of loneliness. “It is why the Trith betrayed the Geuji at Uvuai,” he replied. “Our futures are incomprehensible to them. Imagine an entire planet of possibilities combined into one mind. If every creature in existence only has one choice to make in their lives that the Trith cannot foresee, I have billions of them, each independent of the next.”
“The Trith betrayed your species to Congress because you unnerve them?”