Kutath fs-3

by C. J. Cherryh

  "We got us a ship," Shibo muttered. "And what, sir?”

  "Hang to it," Galey said. He heaved himself out of the cushion and slung hand over hand aft, toward the hatch. "I'm going in to see if the E-system's active. If I can move her, we'll see.”

  "What are we supposed to do?”

  "Aim her; keep her straight at them.”

  Shibo's voice and Kadarin's exclaimed protest; he did not stop, did not argue orders; it was not a thing that bore thinking, what there was left for them to do.

  Shirug was due over that horizon sooner or later, downworld from them.

  He was acrophobic, always had been, mildly. He seized a handjet from the locker, vented himself out the lock, looking steadily at Santiago's surface and not the stars, nor Kutath. There was no need to use the lock for entry; the gaping hull afforded access. The big ships were never meant to land, fragile compared to the tough downworld probes and the shuttle-workhorses; she had blown badly. The blackness inside was absolute, and his light showed barren ruin ... no bodies, no gee, no power, no atmosphere, dead metal. He used the handjet in total dark, walls and bulkheads and hazards careening insanely past in the momentary contact of his suit lamp… fended a jagged edge of metal with his boot, bounced a wall in his haste, hurled himself through a hatchway and against another hatch. He used manual, and it opened, without the blast of atmosphere he had braced for. There was void, gaping ruin here too; the bridge had blown. Comp was down; the cold had got it One light still showed, a red eye in the dark, on a panel at the right.

  "Got some life," he sent back into the static. "E-light's lit Think I can get her moving. You ungrapple when I do. Get yourselves downworld.”

  There was faint acknowledgment. He eased over to the panel His stomach kept trying to heave and he swallowed repeatedly, sweating in the suit and cold at the same time. He found the whole progress of it like a bad dream; kept thinking traitor thoughts of taking them all and diving downworld to live; they did not know, in fact, whether Flower herself survived, whether the whole exercise had any use at all for anyone, any use.

  Only he was Santiago's sometime pilot; she was his ship, and there was no one else.

  Think job by job, he urged himself, held the handgrip. With a punch at the glowing button, other lights flickered in, an emergency-powered trickle of life in the vital systems.

  Waiting; that was the hardest. He held still, staring at the panel and trying not to think at all.

  "You need help?" a thin voice came, lifeline to reality. "Sir?”

  "Stay put, you copy? You see if you can't line us up real carefully when they show; I don't know what I have for directionals; you're my guidance. And don't you miss. Or hang on too long. 111 do what I can for myself.”

  There was prolonged silence.

  "Shibo, you copy?”

  "I copy clear, sir. We'll do it”

  And a moment later; "We got a ship in scan, sir. Think it's Shirug.”

  A small anomaly fixed to the flat surface of a dead ship, a hulk which had been gently rolling; he hoped the regul were paying more attention, for a few moments, to Kutath. He imagined the angles for himself, the curvature of the world, the likely course of the regul over the major sites. Hoped… hoped, that it was not for nothing.

  That was the hardest thing; that he would never know.

  He looked out, holding the handgrip, letting his body drift until he could see the stars beyond the rent… the vast deep. He suffered the old inside-out wrench, the down-up-sideways of the senses trying to remember which way was which. It was a trick of the mind, human stubbornness. He knew with a curiously certain sense which way Kutath lay; goblin whispers urged at him, stirring at his neck.

  Down… as far as a man could fall.

  There was a shifting of the stars which attended movement, a fine adjustment.

  "Now," Kadarin's voice hissed. "God help us.”

  He pushed the main thrust in, and Santiago started to move in earnest, with the emergency systems full. It was meant for pulling a crippled ship out of proximity to some mass; it was good for one long run.

  "Closing," Kadarin's voice said. "Straight as she bears, sir.”

  "Cast off!" he shouted into com, sick at heart "Cast off!”

  Fire flung the bridge into blinding white. He reckoned he had done what he could, scrambled hand over hand for the gaping hole forward, one desperate chance.

  A black wall blotted out the stars before him. It was Shirug.

  Fire hit again, flung him back, drifting, with cold spreading through his legs.

  "Evade!" Suth screamed into the unit, felt the wrench as Shirug made an abrupt maneuver.

  "Fire does not stop them," the youngling voice of command wailed, breaking in panic. "They do not react “

  There was impact. It grated, rang through the whole of the vast teardrop; the sled-console went chaotic.

  "Eldest!" Nagn cried; and Tiag and Morkhug tried to break through on their channels, drowned in static.

  "Leave orbit!" Suth ordered. "Witless, leave orbit!”

  There was no response. There was a lightness, a feeling that the least movement would unbalance things, his own great bulk, the sled itself, for all it was locked down.

  "Command!" he ordered. Across the room the young Ragh, ghastly in its pallor, attempted to reach him, holding to furnishings which were fixed in place.

  "Command!”

  Nothing responded.

  "See to it," he bade Nagn. Fearfully she detached from safety, trundled across the carpet, disappeared from his vision. Ragh reached him, held to the sled, moaning.

  Gravity was not what it had been. Suth sat very still, his hearts persistently out of phase; there was sudden silence, the air circulation cut off.

  Eventually the lights dimmed. He punched buttons frantically and received only chaos.

  "Youngling!" he cried, but Ragh had sunk down by him, huddled down in a ball, out of his reach. "Youngling!" he kept shouting, and punched buttons until he knew that no one would answer.

  Then he began in his terror to go to sleep, to slow his pulse deliberately, shutting down, for there was a strange sensation of descent, whether truth or madness he had no experience to know. He wished not to know.

  For a considerable time they would descend, as the orbit decayed.

  All but a last handful of lights went out on the boards. Niun watched, crouched, his arms about his knees, in this dimmed hall which they held at the cost of lives. Duncan was by him, the dusei, and the others of his comrades of the several tribes. The doors were guarded, that to this room and that of the one beyond, all that they did hold securely, for the elee found courage to fight when their treasures were threatened, and no few of them had distance-weapons.

  Melein turned from the machines, in the dimming of tibe world's cities, of Ele'et itself; signaled wearily. Young kel'ein hastened to bring her a chair and she settled into it, bowed her head, her injured arm tucked against her, a silence in which none dared intrude.

  The woman Boaz was there, sitting in the corner where elee dead had lain… and mri, until kel'ein had carried out all the dead which profaned the she'pan's presence. An elee robe sheltered the human, for she was beyond youth by some few years, and very tired, and the air was, for a human, cold. Niun had ordered that himself, the plundering of a dead elee, of which they had numerous.

  Outside was dark, night fallen… dark in the hallways of broken glass and shattered monuments, where elee scurried about gathering possessions, furtive scavengers, armed with distance-weapons, in which they had no great skill, but then, the weapons needed little. Some of them had come into mri hands. Honor does not forbid, Niun had told his Kel plainly. If tsfmri fire them at you, fire back, and do it better.

  They learned aim very quickly; and practiced on injudicious intruders.

  More such fire came from outside. The sen'e'en Boaz lowered her head into her hands, looked up when it was done. "Is there no talking with them out there? Could I try?”

  "Ts
i'mri," Niun muttered.

  "Tsi'mri," Boaz echoed him. "Is there no talking ever with you?”

  "Boz," Duncan said, "be still. Don't argue.”

  "I'm asking them something. I want an answer. I want to know why they don't want to reason… why a hundred twenty-three worlds are dead out there, and this one has to be added to the list I want to know why. You face regul, and you take on the elee and us too. Why?”

  Niun frowned, anger hot in him; he took a moment, to gather self-control.

  "I answer you," Melein said, startling him. "You ask me, sen Boaz. Of the dead worlds?”

  "Why?" Boaz asked, undaunted when she should have been. "Why? What could make a reasonable species do such a thing?”

  Niun would have spoken, but Melein lifted her hand, preventing. "You were at Kesrith, sen'e'en?”

  "Yes. I was there.”

  "What happened there... to the mri?”

  "Regul. . . turned on you; we had nothing to do with “

  "Why did regul do this thing, when regul do not fight?”

  "For fear.”

  "That we would go away?"

  Boaz grew quiet, thought proceeding in her dark and human eyes. "That they couldn't control you any longer; that you… might go to us. That you were too dangerous to leave loose at the end of the war, not obeying them.”

  "Ah," said Melein. "And when the People have served, sen Boaz, always we ask a place to stand where only our feet and theirs walk; when the agreement is gone, we go. The dead worlds, sen Boaz,… were ours. You have seen Kesrith. In Kesrith we defended while we could; at Nisren we might have left regul service, and did not, to our great sadness I suspect, because we had no means to rescue a thing… very precious to us. We used regul; we took a new homeworld. Nisren is a dead world; Kesrith is almost so. Who made them dead? We? You are the killers of the worlds. Among the hundred twenty-three… are many Nisrens, many Kesriths. And you have come to make another.”

  There was profound silence. Of those who could have understood, there were three, but dus-sense translated something of it, that sat in the anguished eyes of Boaz, of Duncan.

  "We have lost the shields," Melein said in the hal'ari. "We might survive another pass here; the living rock is over us here, and more stubborn than stones that hands have set. But I think of the camp, of Kath and Sen. We cannot send a messenger to them from here, through the elee; and any who tries to reach us will be murdered in their treachery. I weary of this place. The rocks outside can shelter us. And reaching them… cannot be too difficult, with the walls broken out. We will go there. We will learn whether our Kath and Sen survives. And you other tribes, go, if you will, but I ask otherwise.”

  "Let us," said kel Rhian, "send messengers each to our own tribes, to know how they fare. But the hao'nath stay.”

  "So do the ka'anomin," said old Kalis. Other kel'anthein nodded, Elan and Tian and Kedras.

  "What for our dead?" asked the path'andim second. They mourned their kel'anth Mada, and no few of their number, for in their rage at the elee, they had been forward in the defense. "They will be butchered by elee hands.”

  "Can the ja'anom dictate to any?" Niun asked. "We go with weapons in our hands and as quickly as we can, to protect the she'pan. We do not quit serving when we are dead; for me, if I fall, I am glad if the elee waste their strength on me, and if my brothers save what I would save if I lived.”

  "Ai," muttered the path'andim. "We hear.”

  "Ai," the murmur ran the room. Niun stood up, and Duncan, and all the others, sen Boaz last, and uncertainly.

  "We are leaving the city," Duncan translated for her.

  "Our ships will come," Boaz insisted, looking from him to Melein. "We should wait here. They will come and help, she'pan.”

  "Then we should be alive when they come," said Melein, honoring her with a touch of her hand. "Come with us, sen Boaz. Walk with our Sen.”

  She opened her mouth as if she would dispute; and closed it, bowed her head. When they prepared to go out, she wrapped her elee cloak about her and adjusted her mask, and set herself where other sen'ein put themselves, inward of the Kel, with Melein.

  Swords came out, a whisper of steel. For his part, Niun drew both gun and kel-sword; so did Duncan; and those who possessed elee weapons held them ready. They walked quietly into the next room, where path'andim and the patha of Kedras held the door.

  "They are massed out there," the patha second said softly, "all in hiding. Behind the pillars, behind the rocks both small and large. Some of the dead are not dead, to our reckoning, but wounded who fear to move.”

  "Ai," Niun said, taking that danger into account. "Then we make sure of them.”

  "We are at your back," said Rhian. "We follow ja'anom lead.”

  "Aye," said Kalis. "I'm senior and I say so." There was a whispered agreement of other voices.

  "Then follow," Niun said. He moved, first kel'anth, first to go, with the others at his back. He laid down fire and fire came back; someone by him fell, and his dus screamed rage and scrambled forward into that dark hall with a pace he could scarcely match on the polished floors. He fired where he saw fire; by his side was another with a gun, and another dus; Duncan was by him, a kel'en well-accustomed to this matter of fight.

  The dusei hit glass, breached the walls into the moisture of the gardens, admitting the Kel; elee fired from cover there and then fled. More fire came from the door beyond, and of a sudden one of the dusei roared with pain and lunged forward, gone berserk, a madness the others caught, and the youth Taz with them. Taz plunged ahead, riddled with elee fire, and took several elee in the sweep of his blade before more shots brought him down.

  "Yail" Duncan shouted at the dusei, bidding for sanity… Ras took a hurt; they felt it; and Taz's maddened dus plunged into elee like the storm wind. Niun went after it, bolstered the failing gun and hewed with the sword whatever opposed him, foremost of a wedge which broke and reformed around the monuments, the carven stones, the statues, sweeping the hall of life.

  There were exits; they did not take them… rushed, killing, as the dusei killed, after Taz's beast, for its kel'en was dead, and it was mad. Dus'sense filled the halls, and elee fled, screaming, abandoning weapons, casting off the weight of their jeweled robes, whatever hindered them; the Kel ran over broken glass and pools of blood and the jeweled fabric of elee garments.

  "Outr Niun cried, trying to break from the madness, that felt like desertion. The dus was dying; it wanted… wanted, followed the essence of Taz into the Dark, and drew the living Kel after.

  He stopped, buffetted by bodies of his own kel'ein, seized at them, turned them for the open air, for the nearest breach in the walls, and out into the clean wind and across the sands. Dusei joined them. They ceased running outside, walked, with the dusei among them. Niun walked backward a moment, taking count. . . saw the white form of Melein; felt Duncan safe, and all the others dus-linked, all alike filled with horror for the beast which still pursued its crazed way apart from them, ranging the shattered halls of Ele'et, screaming its anguish and killing. Sen Boaz was with them, half-carried by two kel'ein, her elee robes stained with dark gouts of blood, but none of it, seemingly, her own. Melein's white was stained with more blood, as all of them reeked of it They walked, a space apart from the city, up a slope to the carven rocks of the hills, where the hurt and the old might sink down and breathe in safety, ringed about by weapons.

  The dusei crowded together; they who were linked with them did so, and Niun sank down among the others and held to his beast, its blood on him, for it was burned and glass-cut and shuddering in its misery.

  Of a sudden there was a break, a cessation of hurt, like storm lifted.

  "It is dead," Duncan said hoarsely, and Ras and Hlil and Rhian of the hao'nath held close to their dusei, shivering with them.

  "Mfuk," Niun said. "Dus-madness. It almost took us all into the Dark Gods… gods… gods.”

  His mind cleared, still numb, remote. He pushed himself to his feet, the few s
teps to Melein's side, to kneel and take her hand, frightened for her state of mind; but the calm came from her to him, a slight pressure of her fingers, a steadfast look. "What loss?" she asked him.

  "Kel Taz; his dus " He looked about him in the dark, questioning with his look… heard names others murmured, of those left behind.

  EMas was lost, and Desai. He bit his lip, sorrowing for him in particular. A double hand of the ja'anom had perished; four hands plus two of the path'andim including the kel'anth Mada; one hand three of the patha; Kalis of the ka'anomin and two hands of her kelein; a hand three of the ja'ari; two hands one of the man; four hands two of the hao'nath.

  "My blessing on them," Melein said, looking suddenly very tired, and drawing her wounded arm more closely to her side. "Now we must see how the camp fared.”

  "Better than here," said a voice, very young and female. There was a stirring from the hindmost ranks near the rocks, and an unscarred, veilless, worked her way through in haste. She knelt down by Melein and bowed for her touch… looked up as Melein lifted her head with her fingers.

  "You are-"

  "Kel Tuas, Mother. Kel Seras sent us, when the fire stopped; it came near, but never hit the camp; I do not think it hit it since. I ran and hid in the rocks, to see what I could learn; my truebrother… went in. And I do not think by what I saw “

  "He did not reach us," Melein said.

  "I thought that was so," Tuas said very faintly. "I have waited some little time. May I carry word to Seras, Mother, that you are safe?”

  Melein took her face in her hands and kissed her on the brow. "Are you able, kel'e'en?”

  "Aye, Mother.”

  "Then run.”

  The kel'e'en sprang up and returned the kiss, turned in blind haste; but Niun caught her arm, took an Honor from his own robes and pressed it into her cold hand. "Kel'anth," she murmured. She was ja'anom; he recalled her now, an innocent like Taz. The tribe was vital; it lost lives and gained them again in the young.

  "Run," he said. "Life and honors, kel Tuas.”

  "Sir," she breathed, and parted their company, passed the ranks of those gathered about, serpent-quick. She was not the only messenger sped; others ran out, through the hills, shadows, young and swift of foot.