To Guard Against the Dark

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The lights went off. The bits of Mathis Dewley fought and slapped one another, each striving to be first out the airduct.

  Ten surprises to go.

  Snosbor IV

  Our ship has docked, First Chosen. We have the locate, but our allies insist we wait for their contact.

  Then wait. Wys worked her lips in and out, in and out, as she thought. A pinprick of annoyance: Erad, hovering as always at the edge of her consciousness. Futile, her Chosen’s attempts to distract her; he expended so much energy to achieve nothing, she was tempted to ask him why he continued.

  Asking would only encourage him.

  Plexis was—problematic. Thanks to the interference of Sira di Sarc, their faces and idents were on a lamentable number of lists. And worse. Clan as part of the Trade Pact. Clan working with—instead of against—Human telepaths. Working with the Enforcers and their shields.

  No longer. While their enemies lacked Power, the element of surprise must be on their side. On Plexis, others were too numerous, their spying tech everywhere. They’d weapons and perverse drugs.

  But the prize, the prize was worth every risk. Her breath came quicker. This unnamed contact of the Scats had proven its use already. Whoever—whatever—it was. They’d known what was on course to the station.

  Had sent a coded signal, hard on the arrival of the Brexk, concerning one ship in particular and its passengers, due to arrive shortly.

  “Jason Morgan.” Wys savored the name, its promise of the sweetest vengeance. The Human at the center of all trouble, past and present, would be delivered into her hands with what he tried to steal: Rael di Sarc.

  She’d strip Morgan’s mind of secrets, including where to find her son, as painfully, as slowly, as possible.

  Then make what little was left of Sira’s beloved Heresy a slave to her every whim.

  Delicious as that prospect was, they’d more to sweep in their net. Go with the contact, but be wary of the stranger. We don’t know her capabilities. Beyond sufficient Power to warrant caution. They’d drugs themselves, to use if she proved—resistant.

  Another pinprick.

  Old fool, Wys replied cheerfully. This is what victory looks like. You should beg to be part of it.

  His despair was delicious, too.

  Chapter 26

  TO A SPACER, silence was trouble. Morgan shrugged off the notion, and kept working. They either woke the Wayfarer’s heart and exited subspace at Plexis—

  —or stayed where they were as the great station kept moving away, that being the problem non-spacers didn’t grasp. You didn’t travel to Plexis, you planned an intercept course with something able to nip in and out of subspace according to a schedule of its own. Hence the importance of a posted course: Plexis would inform you, not particularly politely, if it wouldn’t be where you thought it would, when you needed it to be.

  Miss their moment? A healthy, whole ship could be sent on through subspace to the next window of opportunity, or to another destination. If there was one in range. This ship?

  “You’ll get wrinkles.” Sira squatted beside him, the tool he’d need next waiting in her hands. “Frowning so much.”

  “Should have—known—better,” he grunted with effort, shoulders working as he fought the recalcitrant bolt.

  “Be fair. It’s not as if you briefed Terk on this little—” she glanced around the cluttered engine room and settled for, “—project.”

  “Humph.” The Human strained and finally, the bolt came free. He took the tool from Sira, pausing to squint suspiciously at her. “You’re enjoying all this.”

  “Maybe.” Her lips twitched. “A little.”

  “Wait till we’re stuck in subspace and turn cannibal,” he warned.

  She leaned forward to press her lips lightly to his cheek. “You’ll save the day.”

  Morgan closed his eyes. “Don’t,” he pleaded.

  “What?” she replied lightly. “Be encouraging?”

  Don’t be as you were, he wanted to say. Don’t make this like all our other times together, working to save the ship. Don’t—

  “Don’t mix up the parts,” he said aloud. “I need the transducer next.” He pointed.

  Captain Erin knew they were back on their posted, legal course. According to Sira, she’d blinked sleepily and then gone to bed, and Morgan hoped that was trust, but he feared it was inexperience. Plexis—it fooled you. Noska, on the other hand, hadn’t stopped crooning over the renewed prospect of shopping.

  “Here you go.” Sira returned, resumed her squat. “Did you hear what happened on the bridge? Noska mixed up our enforcers and called Finelle for the shift change. They found themselves together in the lift.”

  He raised a brow. “And?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “When Noska stopped screaming, it admitted even its superb senses hadn’t detected anything Lemmickish. Finelle’s now after Noska to record a statement for her uncle. That’s going as well as you might expect.”

  “Small steps,” Morgan replied. “Like this engine.” To his eyes, what remained on the floor and bench had a sequence, a rightness. Erin had done a tremendous job. “So long as it all goes back together.”

  “That’s what hammers are for.” At his look, Sira laughed. “I learned it from you.” Her face changed. “I won’t forget, Jason. Don’t ask me to.”

  “Understood.” The darkness ahead was no further from her thoughts than his, Morgan thought. Sira was, quite simply, braver. As always. “We’ll keep the hammer on hold for now, chit. This is going—I was about to say well, but let’s see how the transducer fits first.”

  “Will you need me for that?” She checked the chrono on the wall. “Yihtor will wake soon—I should be there.”

  “I begrudge every breath we take apart,” he said truthfully, then found a smile for her, “but no, I can manage. Erin will be down shortly.”

  Fingers brushed his. As do I, Beloved.

  Aloud, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  When Sira left, the silence of the engine room wrapped Morgan like a vise.

  He shrugged it off. “‘Save the day’?” he echoed, then grinned.

  For her, anything.

  Interlude

  IF ANYTHING TROUBLED YIHTOR DI CARAAT, it didn’t show in his face. Having dared reach, I knew better. His physical weakness horrified him; feeling trapped in the medbay made it worse. Which was why I’d wanted to be here.

  “Breakfast is in the galley,” I insisted. “No one’s going to wait on you.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll give me the locate.” His full lips thinned. “I know what you’re trying to do, Sira, but it’s hopeless. I can’t. You saw what they did to me.”

  I steeled myself. “What I see is a set of fully functional servo casts going to waste. You can stand, Yihtor, and walk.” The Conciliator’s medtechs were trauma experts. I assumed getting the wounded literally back on their feet, quickly, was among their skills. If I was wrong, I’d apologize, but we were going to Plexis, to face those who were most likely his kin. We needed Yihtor whole and confident. Mobile, too, if possible; not all in the Trade Pact—or Plexis—would be glad to see us back from safely dead. I sneered, “You haven’t made the effort.”

  Anger.

  UnChosen, so proud. Feeling it, I smiled. “And once you’re up, into the fresher. You smell worse than—old socks,” I improvised, a Lemmick now in my inner circle.

  I let Yihtor make the first tentative moves, stepping in to help him sit, then ease his legs to the side of the cot. His fear came through that contact, but so did a respectable amount of determination. I prepared to take some of his weight only to be waved off. “They work,” he asserted grimly, “or don’t.”

  “They” being smooth metal tubes encasing his legs from thigh to calf, looking less like knees than spare parts from the engine room. I made myself keep b
reathing as Yihtor swung his legs over the side.

  We both stared as they bent with a fluid natural motion, as if the metal were flesh.

  “We’ll take it slow,” I promised.

  A breathless, almost laugh. “No, we won’t. I want the fresher, then food.” His feet, bare, touched the resilient floor, then he rose, tipping a little before finding his balance.

  Yihtor had seemed to tower over me, but not my sister. As we stood eye-to-eye, my flinch was habit, nothing more, and I gestured apology.

  “Never do so,” Yihtor said quietly. “What I was here disgusts me. It cannot be forgiven.”

  “It can be forgotten,” I reminded him. “When you Sing again, leave it behind.”

  His dark eyes swam with regret. “I must not, Sira. The Song must hold all truths, light and dark, not just the ones we want.”

  I wondered, watching Yihtor take cautious, then increasingly more comfortable steps, if he meant mine as well.

  In yet another set of used coveralls, the Clansman resembled a hero from a vid. Erin might be impressed, though it was the nature of our kind to feel sexual attraction at specific moments in life, to specific others. Looks weren’t part of that attraction. We’d been bred to be beautiful, I thought with a rare flash of bitterness, not to have it matter.

  “I’ve forgotten.” Yihtor examined his plate dubiously. “Too long on tubes. Too long—” his hand collected air.

  “Your body remembers,” I assured him. “Put a small amount in your mouth.”

  I’d intended to chastise him for showing Morgan what I was, in AllThereIs; looking back, my anger was petty and undeserved. Yihtor had done it for me. He, like all the Singers, the ones who’d known me in NothingReal and the ones who’d shared their Song as well as mine, wanted me to be as complete as they were.

  It troubled them I wasn’t.

  While sorry to cause them grief, I wasn’t sorry about my choice. Explaining it, however, seemed impossible. My Human would say they lacked a frame of reference. They didn’t understand love between physical beings. It had been bred out of us, out of the Hoveny, as an inconvenience to breeding for Power. Love itself, Singers comprehended and gloried in—I’d heard it, in their Song.

  It was mine, for Morgan, his for me, they couldn’t reach across the void to grasp.

  Yihtor chewed and swallowed a few bites, though it didn’t seem a pleasant process, before he paused and sat back. “How do we know my people will be on Plexis?”

  “They chose Scats for allies,” I reminded him, then told him what he didn’t know. “Your mother’s followers killed the Worruad’s captain before leaving Auord. The Scats want revenge.”

  “That’s their nature. Everyone knows it.” Yihtor frowned. “Why would any Clan continue to trust them?”

  “I doubt it’s trust. If Scats are all she has left, Wys has to believe hers will stay bought. Unless she’d give up her plans.” I raised a brow to make it a question for the son of the cruel and ambitious Clanswoman.

  “She won’t. Can’t.”

  I nodded, unsurprised. “Bringing us to Plexis. The Scats have Clan on their ship—Clan they earnestly want dead, but are too smart to attempt to kill outright. They’ll betray the Clan to anyone who’ll do it for them.” It wasn’t safe to be a Scat who allowed an enemy to escape. As for enemies?

  There’d been rare satisfaction in the report Terk had passed along to us. “The smuggler called the Facilitator is on Plexis. He was behind the Assembler attack on us. The enforcers believe he intends to finish what he started—that he’s using this ship, us, as bait for a trap.”

  The source of Bowman’s intel was irrelevant to its meaning: our kind had no friends in the Trade Pact; deserved none, with only Acranam’s exiles left. It didn’t make thinking of the plots against us any easier.

  “I know the name. A client, of sorts. Efficient. Ruthless if crossed.” From Yihtor, a chilling assessment. He took another bite, chewed as though deep in thought, then, “Why not leave these Clan to him, and go after the rest?”

  He wasn’t flesh—or hadn’t been for much longer than I—so the carnage of an ambush gone wrong in a place as packed with beings and inherently delicate as a space station wouldn’t occur to him. Or matter.

  “They’re ours to deal with, all of them,” I said tersely. Perhaps Yihtor would assume my fleshself hungered for its own vengeance.

  The truth? I believed I’d a way to send our kind home without blood on Morgan’s hands, or anyone else’s. My Human had shown me, however unwittingly. The flow of thought between us, be it mindvoice or shared memory, hadn’t affected the M’hir. Taisal or any other Watcher would have howled if it had. I’d been halfway prepared, ready to protect Morgan, then so relieved to be left in peace with my love, the implications hadn’t struck me until later.

  The trick was touch, with its minimal need for Power. I’d experimented, finding I could send to Morgan without a reaction, but then, he was more than willing to hear me.

  Acranam’s exiles would not be. Physical contact would be necessary, that perilous intimacy Clan learned to avoid early in life, especially with the more Powerful.

  I offered Yihtor di Caraat my right hand. “Let me show you.”

  And even he hesitated to take it.

  Chapter 27

  “I WANT YOU to take her through, Morgan.” Without hesitation, Captain Usuki Erin planted herself at the engineering console and keyed the code to expose the jettison control. She glanced at him. “Best get your butt to the bridge.”

  The engines were as ready as could be; the room around them cleared of anything liable to move without warning, thanks to Sira. That this “test” would either pop them out at Plexis or strand them in subspace was a given, in the latter case with the added probability the engines’ failure would be catastrophic, meaning he or Erin would have a decision to make. Push the button to save the rest, or die together. No question which would be a kindness.

  Details. He nodded. “See you on the other side, captain. Rael, with me, please.”

  Sira looked torn. “I could stay.” ’Port her back inside the ship.

  A risk she’d been willing to take for him, Morgan realized.

  “I’ve all the company I need,” Erin said, stroking the console. “Go on. Let’s see if you’re as good a pilot as Thel claims.”

  Morgan grinned. “I’ll try not to scratch the hull.”

  “You’d be patching it.”

  Morgan keyed in the bridge, waiting for the door to close before broaching what wasn’t going to be a welcome topic. “You and Yihtor—”

  Sira stared at the door, shoulders straight. “No.”

  The pair represented—something beyond comprehension—but they were here to help, that much he’d grasped.

  And could be the Trade Pact’s only hope.

  Not the first time the slender figure standing next to him, the wondrous person inside, had stepped forward to be that hope, for her people, for him. The sheer injustice of asking Sira yet again wasn’t lost on Morgan.

  Yet—wasn’t it her nature? With her unique combination of Power and compassion, Sira forged connections. Chooser to Human. Clan to the species of the Trade Pact. M’hiray to Om’ray to Hoveny. His universe to hers.

  “You must protect yourselves,” Morgan said bluntly. “You’re here to save—” to say everything was an impossible weight, “—the day.”

  Her hair had grown; most still stuck out as though inflicted with static, but red-burnished tips brushed along her jaw. Through those, he spotted, of all things, a dimple. “I’m here,” she said primly, “to sit third on coms.” Then, with an underlying wave of warmth and confidence. “The ship’ll be fine. I can tell Erin’s better with engines.”

  “Different,” Morgan mock-protested, as the lift doors opened.

  The Wayfarer’s optimum bridge crew complement would b
e three. She’d double that seating to allow for the incoming shift, as well as ten more in this configuration, her previous owner having invited passengers to observe—prudently distant from any consoles.

  At the moment, her bridge held a motley assortment of four, six with their arrival: Terk sat the second com seat behind Noska, while Finelle and Yihtor sat as observers. The Whirtle’s helmet, stuffed with socks, was secured to its station. Perhaps it worried the Lemmick’s protective suit would fail at some crucial moment. The species was known for its long-term planning.

  “Captain Morgan,” Noska announced. “You have the con.”

  Terk raised a brow. Morgan, heading to his seat, paused to say, firmly, “Captain Erin is overseeing the engine room.”

  “She’s letting Morgan park the ship,” Sira explained cheerfully.

  Chit, he sent, receiving that too-innocent look as she strapped herself in—not, as stated, near Terk and Noska, but in the seat closest to his.

  They’d history, here. He’d been the one in a med cocoon when they’d first set course for Plexis. He’d sent the Silver Fox there after refusing to comply with Bowman’s order to bring Sira to her, knowing it could cost his freedom as well as his ship.

  There’d been something about Sira then, as there was now. Had he fallen in love with her as he watched her efforts to fit in as Hindmost on the Fox? Or when he’d begun to grasp the courage that kept her going, despite her memories and Power being blocked? Had it been that moment on the bridge, when their hearts beat as one and he’d realized, with her, for the first time in his life, he’d no need for secrets and doubt?

  Or when he’d gone into her mind, and seen himself as she did—

  All of the above, Morgan thought, slipping the straps over his shoulders. “Bridge set,” he sent to Erin. “Ready below?”

  “As we’ll ever be,” came the cheerful reply.