Rebel Ice

by S. L. Viehl

  “Marel.” Reever gently loosened his daughter’s grip and lifted her up, holding her carefully as her small arms encircled his neck. The child buried her face against his chest. She smelled of the Jorenian herbal cleanser that bore close resemblance to Terran vanilla.

  Xonea gave him one final, wordless look before he left them alone.

  “Please, Daddy.” Marel’s voice trembled even more than her diminutive form. “Please don’t go away. Please.”

  Some Terrans still believed in hell. Reever could see why.

  “I am not going away.” He carried his daughter to the chair where once he told her bedtime stories, and sat down with her. How long had it been since he had held her like this? He could not remember. He had been so busy looking for Cherijo. “I am going to get your mother.”

  “I don’t want you to.” Marel lifted her small face and stared at him with eyes that changed color from blue to silvery gray, just as his own did. The shape of her eyes, however, was identical to her mother’s.

  “I am the only one who can find her, Marel.” Reever had to make her understand. He was the only one who could go. The only one who could move fast enough. Who could safeguard her. Who would kill for her.

  His daughter’s brow furrowed. “Daddy, everyone says Mama is gone to the stars.”

  He had heard the same, many times. He had simply not realized the Torin were saying it when his child could overhear them. Or perhaps he had not reinforced his own, contrasting view. Truthfully, he could not recall the last time he had held Marel like this, or had spoken to her about her mother. “No, she has not. She lives.”

  “If she’s not with the stars, then why did she leave us alone for so long?” The child’s hands became small, hard fists. “You said Mama loved us.”

  “She does.” Cherijo had been gone too long for Marel to retain any substantial memories of her. To his four-year-old daughter, “Mama” had become the face smiling out of a two-dimensional photoscan, the central character in one of many tales, lovingly told.

  Marel was not aware of what her mother had done to save and protect her. Cherijo had been utterly ruthless about concealing their daughter, pretending to lose her during a miscarriage, while in reality having Marel successfully transferred to an embryonic chamber. She had even kept that from Reever for more than a year. Cherijo had since erased all of Marel’s medical records and had enlisted the Jorenians in concealing Marel’s existence. He knew that his wife would go to her death rather than let anyone harm their daughter.

  Reever had not told Marel any of this because he had always felt that it was not his story to tell. That may have been an error on his part. “Your mother loves us very much, my delight.”

  “Then why doesn’t she come back?” Marel demanded.

  For his daughter’s sake, he wished again he could be anyone other than who he was. Not a battle-hardened warrior and telepathic linguist. Not someone who could kill with his bare hands, fly combat missions, and translate words and concepts into several hundred thousand languages. The man he was could not give his child the reassurance she needed.

  You could start, Duncan, Cherijo would say, by telling her the truth.

  “Marel.” He waited until she met his gaze. “If you were lost, and could not find your way back to me and the HouseClan, would you wish me to come and find you?” She gave a reluctant nod. “That is what I believe has happened to your mother. She is down there, on that planet. Her ship crashed there, and the winds above the surface are so strong that she cannot leave. That is why I must go and find her, and bring her back to us.”

  The child thought this over. “What if your ship crashes?”

  He had refused to think about what his death would do to his daughter. As much as he loved her, even the prospect of making her an orphan could not stop him from going to Akkabarr to find his wife. Nothing could.

  Go. Find her. Hurry.

  It was for the best. Soon there would not be enough left of him to make even an adequate pretense of being a father to Marel.

  The Torin will protect her and care for her. “I am a better pilot than your mother,” he said, quite truthfully. “Mine will not crash.”

  Marel pressed her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. “Take me with you. I’ll help you look for Mama. I’m good at helping.”

  “You are.” Reever stroked a hand over her soft curls. “But someone must stay here and look after Jenner.”

  As if hearing his name as a summons, a large, silver gray cat with blue eyes walked into the room. He was followed by his mate, Juliet, a completely black female with large golden green eyes. The two felines looked at Reever, then at Marel, and came over to sit at Reever’s feet.

  Marel sat up and gazed down at them, her bottom lip pushed out and trembling. “Jen has Jules to love him. If you don’t come back, I won’t have anyone.” Before Reever could respond to that, she flung herself against him once more. “I love you, Daddy. Please find her this time.”

  Reever, who had never learned how to weep, felt his eyes burn and saw his visual field blur. “I will, Marel. I will.”

  Two decks below Reever’s quarters on the Sunlace, Senior Healer Squilyp stared at the patient charts waiting for his review. The modest stack contained routine cases being supervised by the Omorr’s medical and surgical residents, all of whom were extremely capable and hardly in need of his direct supervision. He always reviewed the charts anyway; being the primary physician and chief surgeon on board the Sunlace was a responsibility he took very seriously.

  Cherijo Gray Veil had been the Senior Healer before him. One did not follow in the footsteps of the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the galaxy without feeling a certain sense of inadequacy.

  What had he said to her when she had selected him to succeed her? I will get even with you for this.

  Dark blue, slanted eyes had rolled in an insolent fashion. Dream on, Squid Lips.

  Beyond the stack of charts, the upper hemisphere of Akkabarr filled the bottom half of the exterior viewer panel. Many who knew nothing about Akkabarran slavers considered the remote ice world intriguing and beautiful. To Squilyp’s eyes, the planet was as attractive as a pus-filled boil.

  You care deeply for her, do you not? Duncan Reever had once asked him, seemingly on impulse. There was something in his eyes, however, that told the Omorr that Reever had given much thought to the question.

  Squilyp had tried to answer honestly. She is my best friend. Of course I do.

  He had not been entirely truthful. He had cared for Cherijo, looked after her, and respected her. He had even grown strangely fond of her temper, annoying as it was. Yet he had also envied her, and had been regularly exasperated by her. No person he had ever known had possessed her talents, or had cared so little for them. Her capacity for compassion routinely shamed him, and then she would do something so blindingly stupid he would be propelled into shock.

  Squilyp had acknowledged long ago that Cherijo had been one of the most important and influential people in his life. He counted himself fortunate for that.

  He also wished that he had never met her.

  She is down there. She had to be; all the evidence Reever had uncovered indicated that she was. If she was still alive, Reever would find her.

  If she is …

  Squilyp reached with one of his three arms to take the first chart from the top of the stack, and watched with mild surprise as the entire stack instead went flying off his desk and landed with a noisy clatter on the deck. At nearly the exact same moment, his door panel opened, and a tall female Omorr hopped in.

  Garphawayn, the Lady Maftuda, stopped a few feet from his desk and surveyed the clutter of charts. The meter-long, prehensile gildrells that covered her mouth flared like a nest of agitated white snakes. She was tall and elegant, a female Omorr in her prime, with healthy pink hide and strong, shapely limbs. A slight bulge beneath her sternum bones disrupted the elegant line of her torso, but the evidence of her unborn child’s growth made her seem
only lovelier to Squilyp.

  He stared at her, the woman he loved. Garphawayn and their child were the main reason that he prayed Cherijo was dead. He loved them more than his life; surely he could be pardoned for wishing to keep them alive.

  Cherijo, who had tried to kill herself more than once to save Reever and Marel, would forgive him.

  Her dark, round eyes shifted to study his face. “Perhaps this is not the ideal time for us to discuss why you are still working, or the desiccated condition of the evening meal that I prepared for you several hours ago.”

  “Close the panel,” Squilyp told his mate.

  Garphawayn closed and secured the door. “Is this show of temper and reluctance to complete your shift a response to some offense I have unknowingly committed?”

  Squilyp used the membranes on the end of one arm to rub his tired eyes. “Reever leaves within the hour for the surface.”

  “I see.” His mate glanced at the viewer panel. “You are not accompanying him.” That part was delivered as both a statement and a warning; Garphawayn had no qualms with asserting her rights as his mate and debating his decisions.

  Squilyp could not go with Reever. He was the Senior Healer; he could not be spared to risk his life on a foolhardy quest that would likely end in disaster before it began.

  That was the official reason, anyway. “I am not.”

  Garphawayn’s expression softened. “I am glad to know it. You are needed here, husband.” She turned her back on the viewer. “Do not misinterpret that remark as a show of indifference to the feelings of others.”

  “Your sentiments are known to me.” A year of marriage had enabled Squilyp to learn precisely what lay beneath her proud, remote manner. Her capacity for understanding and affection often staggered him.

  Just as Cherijo’s had.

  “I feel much sympathy for Reever, and indeed for Cherijo, too, if she still lives,” his wife said carefully, as if she knew she was treading on sacred ground. “Yet someone must think of the child. Of both children.”

  Squilyp rose and hopped around the desk. “The children are always my concern. Marel is like my own daughter. As is Xan …” He couldn’t think of the boy or look at the planet anymore. “It does not matter now. I do apologize for being inconsiderate and ruining dinner.”

  “It is only food. One can always prepare more.” Garphawayn touched him in the way of Omorr mates: a light and discreet brush of two of her gildrells against his. “You must stop blaming yourself for what happened. You did everything you could when she disappeared. We all did.”

  “It is not that.” Squilyp had blamed himself for months after the Jado Massacre, but when Cherijo did not reemerge and the standoff between Joren and the League stabilized, those feelings had grown into a shameful relief. “I pray that Reever is correct, and that she is down there on that planet. She was—is—my best friend.” He would keep reminding himself of that.

  “That is very kind, but that is not all you feel.”

  Guilt made his voice grow tight. “I cannot deny that it would be better for Marel—for everyone—if Reever fails.”

  “Squilyp.” Garphawayn took a step back. “You cannot mean that. Reever would never recover from the loss, and neither would the child. As for Cherijo, what has she done to deserve such a fate?”

  He shook his head. “You do not understand what it will mean if she is found.”

  “Of course I do,” his mate snapped. “What her parent made her to be is not her doing. Cherijo deserves to live freely. Reever needs his mate; Marel, her mother.”

  “This is not about what Cherijo is, or what she means to those who love her,” Squilyp said. “The Jado were slaughtered. The League has unequivocally stated that the CloudWalk attacked their ships and they were only defending themselves when they destroyed it. They provided a recording of the Jado ClanLeader giving his ship orders to fire on them.”

  Her gildrells became stiff spokes of outrage. “The League commander is a liar, and that recording was falsified.”

  “We cannot prove it. There has never been any proof that the League ships did anything but defend themselves, and every League officer has provided sworn testimony of the same. The recording has been examined by both sides and declared to be authentic. Reever and the children never saw or heard what happened.” His shoulders slumped. “Cherijo is the only witness left who may confirm or deny the official version of the events.”

  Garphawayn made a disgusted sound. “You know as well as I that the League fired first.”

  ‘I know that the Jado had no reason to attack. They were there to negotiate peace.” Squilyp remembered the strong, stoic expression of the Jado negotiator. “Unless they knew that the League had captured Cherijo before the firing began. She was—is—a member of the Jorenian planetary Ruling Council. If the Jado knew she was in danger, they would have immediately abandoned the negotiations in order to get her back..”

  “To get her back by attacking the ship on which she was held?” His mate sounded incredulous. “By destroying it? I think not.”

  “An enraged Jorenian does not often think clearly,” he assured her.

  “That may be so, but I still do not understand how it can be better that she is never found,” Garphawayn said, her tone flat now. “She was there; she knows the truth. That truth must be told.”

  This was what everyone thought, what everyone felt. Cherijo, the ultimate truth seeker, had become a symbol of it. Everyone admired her and loved her; few thought of the practical matters, like the actual consequences of such a revelation.

  “Until her body is discovered, Cherijo remains a member of the Ruling Council. If she is found, she will confirm whether or not the League fired first. If they did, they massacred an entire HouseClan.” Squilyp swallowed a surge of bile. “You do not want to know what the Jorenian response to that will be.”

  “If the League fired first, they deserve whatever the Jorenians do to them,” his mate stated flatly.

  “It is not only the Jorenians.” Squilyp touched the wall panel and switched the viewer panel from clear to opaque. “There are worlds outside the League and the Faction who want this war to end. They view the Jorenians as admirable for remaining neutral through it. If it is known that the League massacred the Jado, that will be the final outrage. Those worlds technologically advanced enough will use it as impetus to take up Joren’s cause as their own.”

  His mate’s eyes flared wide. “How many worlds would do so?”

  Squilyp enabled the viewer panel, changing the magnification to show the dark, glittering expanse of the surrounding quadrant.

  He left his mate staring out at ten thousand stars.

  THREE

  Hurgot did his best to hide his anger as he stripped the rotted rags from the body of the unconscious ensleg female. It was a waste of his time, this examination, but the rasakt had ordered it done. There was no question of refusal.

  Still, what was Navn thinking, showing such attention to a half-dead ensleg, and a female one at that?

  He felt no pity as he studied her pathetic condition. Malnourishment or starvation had feasted on her flesh, leaving her with limbs like well-worried bones and a slightly swollen belly. She had not the intelligence or sense to cover properly before venturing out on the ice. Offworlders seldom did, which was why so many ended as stiff white blobs covered in snow. In the old days that stupidity alone would have earned her a slit throat, had she been Iisleg, to eliminate all possibility of her reproducing equally brainless offspring.

  Before Hurgot touched her, he covered his hands with thin hide mitts. Navn be sliced, he thought. I will not contaminate myself with whatever offworlder vermin she carries.

  Her skin responded to his prodding with more resilience than he expected. That she had suffered from waterlack rather than coldsleep was evident. Her lips and eyelids were swollen and chapped, but her belly felt warm. She had probably tried to eat snow for water, unaware that she could not afford to lose the body heat required
to melt ice crystals in her mouth. Yet from wherever she had come, she had not traveled far; the snowbite on her fingers and toes showed a sickly gray that would heal, not the black that promised flesh rot.

  “The gods smile upon you, ensleg.” It was only another reason to resent her. She had shaleev, that rare and blind luck the deities for their own amusement sometimes afforded fools and incompetents. But divine intervention was scarce enough, and desperately needed by all men; to waste such on a woman was akin to the gods showing affection for a pack beast.

  As Navn had. Did the headman not remember that a healer’s talent was supposed to be devoted exclusively to caring for the men of the tribe?

  Hurgot parted the ensleg’s long dark hair to check for parasitic infestation—if she was permitted to stay, one of the tribe’s women would have to shear her properly—and frowned at a mass of scar tissue beneath a swath of shorter, silvery white hair that measured as long and wide as his hand. Such a wound should have killed her.

  A soft groan emerged from the ensleg’s mouth, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were tilted like an Iisleg’s, and she was obviously human, but that only made her seem all the more unnatural. It was appalling to think that his people shared a common ancestry with such an ensleg being.

  He waited for her to focus on his features before he gave her some water from a skin to moisten her mouth. “Tell me your name.”

  A line formed between her dark brows, and her lips pressed together, opened, and then closed again. The way she regarded him seemed to indicate that she did not understand his speech.

  “Do you not speak Iisleg?” What a foolish question. She was an offworlder; of course she did not. It only made the situation that much more frustrating. The only manner in which he might communicate with her would be through a language translation device, such as those the windlords used, but the Iisleg were not permitted such things.