Rebel Ice

by S. L. Viehl

  Navn restrained a sigh. The rebels were obviously using some manner of surface transport vessels, which were regarded as magical creatures by the outland tribes. Only a few headmen like Navn were educated enough to know that the flying ships did not actually devour men and belch flame.

  This is not for them to know, Navn’s father, the former headman of the iiskar, had instructed him. Most ignorance is unnecessary, but some serves as a means of control and rule.

  Using surface-to-space transport on Akkabarr had never been possible. The only ships that came to the surface were flown by the Toskald pilots, the only ones who knew the secret to successfully navigating through the mile-wide, vicious kvinka currents of the upper atmosphere. Once, a tribe had captured a ship, intending to force the pilot to take them to the skim city, but the ship had mysteriously exploded before it ever left the ice, killing everyone on board. The remainder of the tribe was denied supplies and slowly starved to death.

  Navn did not know how the Toskald had convinced so many worlds within the Tryg Quadrant to use Akkabarr as a storage depot and central armory, but that trust had never been betrayed. Shipwrecks of those who tried to raid the planet provided the Iisleg with the bulk of their tithe wealth. Since offworlders constantly tried to get at the billions of weapons stored in subsurface armory trenches, crashes were frequent.

  Not that the crashes would do them any good now with this rebellion brewing.

  Among the eastern tribes, Iiskar Navn held a superior position. It was the largest and oldest of the tribes. Some thought that Deves would imitate his father’s warlike ways, but the younger Navn learned that no one could eliminate every enemy, and to die covered in glory still meant one was dead.

  When Navn had taken over as headman, he had demanded moderation and reason instead of battles and glory. His warriors became competent hunters, and his salvagers kept the tribe’s tithes modest but regular. Some of the older Iisleg had been scathing and even whispered Navn the Younger was a coward, but time was on Deves’s side. His tribe grew, as did his stores. In time Kangal Orjakis had selected his men to serve as caravanners to transport and present the worgald and tribute from this region to Skjonn.

  Navn did not want rebellion, not after all those years of careful work. Yet unless he chose sides, he and his tribe would end as victims of both.

  Shouts surrounded the headman’s tent, and the scout automatically drew his bow and went to the flap. “An intruder, come into camp,” he said, but he lowered his bow. “A woman.”

  Navn had no time for females, visiting or his own. It was the odd look on his scout’s face that drew him to the flap to glance outside.

  His men had formed a protective barrier before his tent, but beyond their shoulders he saw a small, sticklike figure with tattered, rotting furs hanging from her body.

  The female appeared as human as the Iisleg, but she was not a native. Her hair had been grown as long as a man’s. He had never seen a woman so thin, either, not even during the Famine of Disobedience. She did not speak, but tottered about, reaching skeletal hands toward his men, who moved out of reach.

  If she had been a man, they would have helped her, but women held little value for the Iisleg. They earned a small bride-price for their fathers when they were of age to be purchased for marriage, but that was their only real worth. The gods had created women without souls so that they would be content to provide care and warmth for men. Wives could be trusted with simple, menial tasks, like cooking, weaving, and purifying water. Until she married, a female shared her mother’s work, or sorted in the gjenvin tents. A few who were unsuitable for marriage for various reasons were permitted to serve as ahayag and provide physical relief to the unmarried men of the tribe.

  Navn did not care about the woman, or her pitiful state. It was the twisted symbol, still visible on the breast of her ragged undergarment, that struck him to the core.

  That, he had seen before. It was the same as the mark on the garment of an ensleg female the gjenvin had brought back from a crash site. A woman with a terrible head wound, who had been covered in blood and dying.

  But it could not be her. That female was dead. Had been dead for two years now.

  “It is a walking shade,” his scout whispered, raising his bow to dispatch it.

  “No.” Navn covered the bow sight with his hand and stared hard at the manacle around one of the female’s bony wrists. That, too, was familiar to his eyes. “I will see her.”

  The scout appeared astounded by this, but moved to one side. Navn secured his skull wrap before stepping out. As he moved through his men, they parted as new snow before the storm.

  “How does she live?” one of Navn’s hunters asked no one in particular. “She carries no furs, no food, no weapons.”

  “The demons protect her.” Another raised his bow.

  Navn stepped between the bow and the woman. “No.”

  The female, evidently exhausted, stopped and sank to her knees in the snow. Her fingers were ghostly sticks, colored and stiffened to gray claws by snowbite. Navn reached and caught her by a length of her snarled dark hair before she toppled. Her eyes rolled up into her head for a moment before she focused on his face. Her lips moved to shape something, but it was not a word he understood.

  Navn thought of the ensleg female who had come two years ago. Who had worn the same symbol. Who had been dragged into his tent by the chief gjenvin, who had claimed the skela could not kill her. Unlike this one, her face had been caked in frozen blood and gore. He could not tell from the features if this woman was the same one.

  No, that one who came before is dead. Navn, who had lost his faith when he had become headman, made a sign of protection over himself. I myself watched the jlorra drag her out of camp. They must have devoured her. They would not permit a dying thing to live. She was nothing but food to them.

  He seized her arm and brought it up to examine the manacle around her wrist. The alloy cuff was of off-world making and had slots where chains could be attached. The other ensleg female had been wearing two manacles identical to this one, with broken lengths of chain hanging from them.

  This is not the same one. It cannot be. “Who are you?”

  She did not answer him, or rouse at the shake he gave her.

  There were legends about the vral, faceless spirit beings made flesh that could not be killed. The gods sent such things to prove a man worthy. Navn had never believed in such tales. Everything died.

  He stared down at the unconscious female. She was flesh. She possessed a face. But if he tried to kill her now, and she would not die …

  Navn released her and gestured for two of the women hovering at the edge of the group of hunters to come forward. “Carry her to the visitors’ tent,’ he told them. “Have Hurgot examine her.” After a momentary hesitation he added, “If she can be saved, she may live.”

  No one looked directly at him—one did not make eye contact with the rasakt—but his instructions sent a wave of shock through those present. An ensleg could come to Akkabarr only from a crashed ship. The subzero conditions on the planet usually killed any survivors. The Iisleg did not rescue ensleg; alive they had no value to the tribe.

  Navn was never happier in his rank. As rasakt, he was not required to explain himself. He did not have to inform his tribe that the woman wore the mark of an ensleg healer. Nor did he have to share the decision as to whether to send tithe to Skjonn, the skim city of Kangal Orjakis, whose taste for ensleg females was notorious.

  “Rasakt, shall we send the gjenvin to look for her … for a ship?” one of the hunters was brave enough to ask.

  “No.” Things would only grow worse when they did not find one. The rasakt turned his back on the unconscious female. “Take her.”

  TWO

  Encrypted File

  092002573

  She sleeps as I write this.

  Her quarters are far from my own, but I have not planted any recording drones to watch her. Close proximity and remote surveillance have
never been necessary—I have been aware of her from the first, and the connection between us grows stronger each day. She is unaware of it, or deliberately ignores it.

  I cannot. She is always with me now.

  Duncan Reever stared at the words he had recorded during his last year serving as linguist for the multi-species colony on Kevarzangia Two. The year he had met a Terran surgeon, Cherijo Gray Veil, who had saved his life, and had given him many reasons to live again.

  But she was no longer with him. Cherijo was gone, taken from him two years ago—

  Go.

  Find her.

  Hurry.

  Those four words had sustained him through the long, frantic months of searching for his missing wife. They had begun as a silent prayer and grown into a merciless directive. Presently they formed the taut, four-ply thread of will that enabled control in a situation where he had very little left.

  Go. Find her. Hurry.

  These days, those four words were all that kept Reever from going mad.

  Logic provided the only structure and reason that he would accept in his current state. He had to go. If Cherijo had been capable of returning to him, she would have done so by now. He had to find her. Something had prevented her escape, something she could not overcome on her own. When he found her, he would free her. He had to do so quickly. He could not stop, could not rest, not for a moment. Thanks to his wife’s unique genetic qualities, she was the most hunted, coveted fugitive in the galaxy. If Reever did not find her, someone else would.

  Logic provided direction on the path, according to the Jorenians, but no comfort. They referred to it as “the indifferent whip across the soul’s shoulders.”

  The whip made no difference. Reever had made a vow all those years ago, a promise to protect Cherijo and watch over her. To stay with her for as long as he lived. As long as there was even a remote chance that she was alive, he would not stop searching for her.

  To stop would be the same as walking through an open air lock into space.

  That Cherijo was more than a wife to Reever was something no one understood. He had never attempted to express what he felt for her to anyone but her. Even with her, words failed him.

  Why do you love me, Duncan?

  He felt the only adequate answer he had given her had been after another of her endless double shifts in surgery, when she had been too tired to strip out of her bloodstained scrubs. He had been obliged to undress her and help her into the cleansing unit.

  He pulled the bloodstained tunic over her head. You are what I have always wanted.

  I’m an arrogant, bad-tempered—she brushed back some hair from her eyes to look at him—inconsiderate shrew, and that’s on my good days. She placed one slim hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she stepped out of her trousers. You should work on your wish list. You know, just in case something happens to me.

  Aware that the intensity of their connection and his own feelings often frightened her, he hadn’t told her that there would never be anyone else. She had frightened him, too. It was all there in his old journal files.

  The detail is astonishing; when I concentrate, I can feel the adrenaline pumping in her veins and the precise focus of her thoughts as she works. My limbs ache with the ghost weight of her exhaustion after she finishes a double shift in Medical. I can count her breaths, smell her scent, and occasionally—to my dismay—even taste what she eats.

  Through her, I have discovered needs that I never knew existed. They twist inside me, these peculiar, foreign demands—and I am almost certain they are not coming from her. The old priest Arembel, who cared for the injured after bouts in the arena, once told me how it could be, but I did not expect this.

  I did not expect her.

  His gaze drifted toward the end of the entry, where he had written, The good doctor dreams of me. To his knowledge, no one had ever done that—dreamed of him—and at first it had puzzled him.

  Does she still dream of me? Does she miss me? Does she wonder, every waking moment, if I am well? Is she frightened? Have they hurt her?

  If nothing else, Reever at last understood the killing rage the Jorenians felt whenever their kin were threatened or harmed.

  He shut down the console and went to finish his last task. Halfway through his packing, the door chime rang. “Come in.”

  Xonea Torin, a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall Jorenian and captain of the Torin HouseClan’s ship the Sunlace, entered Reever’s quarters and closed the door panel behind him. “Linguist.”

  He had been expecting this visit. “Captain.”

  “You will not find her.”

  “I already have.” Reever stowed another weapon in his gear pack and glanced through the viewport. Below the ship’s orbit, the white-and-blue sphere that was the planet Akkabarr swelled like a bubble of ice. “She is down there.”

  “You cannot know this. There has been no word of her on this world, or any other.” Xonea, who was also Cherijo’s adopted brother, came to stand beside him. “No one from the League will confirm that the slaver transport crashed here.”

  The League had never confirmed anything since the Jado Massacre, which had occurred just after Cherijo had saved two worlds and had subsequently been sold to a pair of Rilken slavers. She had overpowered her diminutive abductors, had taken control of their ship, and had been flying to rejoin Duncan and Marel on the CloudWalk, HouseClan Jado’s ship. While she was en route, the Jado ClanLeader had left to meet with the League, and then had transmitted emergency orders for the CloudWalk to open fire on the League ships.

  That signal was the last thing Reever clearly remembered before waking up in medical bay on the Sunlace and being told that Cherijo’s ship had vanished during the battle. The League placed Cherijo’s name on the official list of those who had gone missing and were presumed killed during the Jado Massacre.

  “The computers salvaged from the transport were sold by the Toskald.” Reever had personally hunted down and interrogated the Bartermen involved in the transaction. “I ran the logs myself.”

  “The logs simply showed that the ship was one of many in the vicinity of Oenrall at the time of the massacre,” Xonea reminded him.

  “That transport received orders to depart Oenrall for Akkabarr on the same day Cherijo was abducted. It arrived. It never departed. She was on it.” And she was down there, waiting for him. It was all very logical.

  “The Mother of All Houses prove you right.” The big Jorenian rubbed a dark blue, six-fingered hand over his brow. “You cannot land on the surface. It is too dangerous. Every pilot who has attempted it is dead.”

  Reever glanced briefly at him before he selected a dagger from his weapons storage unit and tucked it into his sleeve sheath.

  “Very well, what say you somehow succeed where so many have not, and make a successful landing.” Xonea stepped between Reever and the storage unit before he could take out another blade. “The surface dwellers are in revolt against the Toskald. If they find you, they will kill you.”

  “They can try.” Reever knew precisely how dangerous the natives were; he had been studying all known aspects of Iisleg culture, along with their origins, for weeks. They might try to kill him, but many had tried, and all had failed. Besides, he had other plans for the rebels.

  There is only one thing better than defeating an enemy, the old priest Arembel, another Hsktskt captive who like Reever had been forced to fight in the slaver arena, had told him. Make the enemy work for you.

  “You may go to your death for nothing. We have not seen her for—”

  “Two years, forty-six days, nine hours, and eighteen minutes.” Reever reached around him and took out two more knives. These were Omorr-made, and slid into the sheaths strapped to the outsides of his thighs. He preferred fighting with Omorr weapons in subzero conditions; extreme cold did not affect their brilliantly forged steel.

  “Duncan.” Although the Jorenian people were accustomed to making frequent physical gestures of affection, Xonea did not mak
e the mistake of touching him. “You must be prepared for the worst.”

  “That is why I am packing.” On impulse, Reever picked up a handheld voice recorder and tucked it into a pocket.

  Frustrated, the larger man made a careless gesture toward the viewer. “So you survive it all, to do what? Find what is left of her? You would scan every pile of bones down on that ice ball for her DNA?”

  The ghost of Cherijo’s first love, Kao Torin, looked out at Reever from Xonea’s solid white eyes. Before becoming Reever’s wife, Cherijo had bonded herself briefly to Xonea, as well, a time when Reever had thought her lost to him forever. He would not revisit that private torture chamber again. He already existed in a far worse place. “She is not dead.”

  The captain of the Sunlace wasn’t finished. “What say you if she is? What do you then, Duncan? Will you lie down with her remains? Will you embrace the stars while you hold a corpse in a bed of snow?”

  “She is not dead.” He couldn’t explain why he was convinced of it. He knew only that if she had died, he would have felt her go. He was sure of that.

  As sure as he knew that he would do exactly as Xonea predicted if he discovered he was wrong.

  “There is nothing I may say that will persuade you to abandon this quest, is there?” Xonea, not expecting an answer, turned to leave, and then hesitated. Without looking at Reever, he said, “I say these things not to wish her gone, Duncan. I honored her. We all of us honored her.”

  There was no Jorenian word for love. The closest to it was honor, which still did not equate the same word in every other language Reever knew. Jorenian honor meant far more than mere admiration or respect. It encompassed a degree of personal devotion greater than most humanoids were capable of feeling.

  Reever’s wife had lived with that sort of honor. He had lived for her, and now he lived for those four words.

  Go. Find her. Hurry.

  The door panel opened before Xonea reached it and a petite Terran child with bubbly blond hair darted into the room and dodged around Xonea to fling herself at Reever’s legs. Her small arms formed a tight cinch around his knees. “Daddy, don’t go.”