To Guard Against the Dark

by Julie E. Czerneda

  The Oduyae chefs seemed quiet and polite, following him with pleased-sounding murmurs in their own language. Wouldn’t last, Tayno knew, and with more of them, the ongoing riot would be that much louder.

  At least the “families” weren’t the problem he’d feared. Yes, he’d bumped almost at once into a sled, tipping it, then tried to catch its box and missed, but an Oduya had made an impressive diving grab, so no harm done.

  After that, they’d each picked up their box, hugged it to their chests, and insisted they needed no further assistance, thank you, to convey their families to their waiting accommodation. The last one in closed the door before Tayno could get more than a glimpse of what appeared to be sets of paired buckets enclosed within floor-to-ceiling nets.

  Which didn’t look restful or comfortable, but he wasn’t an Oduya.

  After a short wait, they reappeared. “We are ready to modify the kitchen,” the largest told him.

  To Tayno’s alarm, all the Oduyae carried tools. The sort the workers had used to remove the wreckage after the explosion. “A list of your requests—”

  “Is unnecessary.” The Zibanejad Cluster, excepting the family members safely in nets, poured past him in a determined rush.

  Tayno hurried to keep up. “Wait! Stop!” The kitchen was finished, counters gleaming, expensive cooktops ready to flame—hideously expensive, flame on a space station being one of those “control-or-die” fine prints in the lease, and Huido having been cited five times for his obsession with oil lamps—and they mustn’t start breaking things before trying to cook a meal—

  The chef stampede came to a halt in the kitchen door, reversed, and came at him, tools flung into the air. A curved bar hit Tayno on his headplate and he crouched, Oduyae climbing over him in their haste to return to their suite. Stunned, he aimed an eyestalk to follow.

  The door closed behind them.

  The Carasian took a moment to process, aliens a challenge at the best of times. Maybe the chefs, upon seeing the new kitchen, realized it was perfect as it was.

  The budget was safe!

  Unless they’d seen something in the kitchen. Say a gooey, scary Rugheran.

  Not safe at all. Huido could well be unreasonable and expect to have been told about the first visit before a second.

  Tayno sighed, rattling, casting three eyes in the direction of Tarerea Vyna’s room. He was ever so much braver when she was with him, but Lones insisted she needed rest. She’d trembled, he recalled, after meeting Huido.

  He stepped carefully around the discarded tools and went into the kitchen.

  Nothing was wrong. Mystified, Tayno moved up one aisle, then down the next. He contorted to look under counters. Opened cupboards and drawers.

  No Rugherans.

  No surprises at all. Had he actually been right? Was the kitchen safe from its new chefs?

  The door to the service corridor was open.

  It wasn’t, Tayno thought worriedly, supposed to be open. Well, yes, if there was waste from the kitchen to be removed or a delivery—the point was, with the restaurant closed and an Assembler on the loose, any access was to be locked. Or open and guarded. Better still, locked and guarded.

  Against his better judgment, very slowly, Tayno went to the open door. The side, to be safe, keeping himself out of sight.

  Two eyestalks curled around the doorframe.

  Three more.

  The rest of Tayno eased from hiding. There was nothing in sight, beyond a group of burping waste canisters. Methane collectors hovered above—

  Red eyes appeared in the shadows beneath. “Off with you,” Tayno said fiercely, rattling his shell. The eyes disappeared.

  Were the awful things the problem? He closed the door. If the vermin had made it into the kitchen, if the new chefs had seen them, well, they could break their contract. The Claws & Jaws had already lost one chef—another tidbit of news Tayno didn’t plan to share with his uncle—but that one hadn’t demanded compensation.

  There simply wasn’t enough in the budget to send the Oduyae and their families home again, let alone pay penalties.

  Filled with gloom, Tayno reached for the doorlock.

  Only to have it snick into place before he touched it.

  He stared. That was—odd.

  He tried unlocking it, but the panel didn’t respond. Hitting it wouldn’t make any difference, he’d learned the hard way, however satisfying. He gave it another, firmer tap, just in case.

  “Nephew! Stop fooling around,” Huido bellowed from the door to the dining room. “Come quickly. Plexis locks her doors.”

  He couldn’t slink with Huido watching; self-preservation, not courage, it being a guaranteed way to die, slinking before a larger male. In Tayno’s opinion, station emergencies encompassed all the other ways to die, unless . . . he ventured hopefully, “Is it a drill?”

  “They aren’t saying. We aren’t guessing. We must get your guest. Come!” Huido disappeared.

  Tarerea Vyna? Wasn’t she safer locked in her room? Technically, the Vyna couldn’t be locked in her room, Tayno realized as he hurried to follow. She’d the locate for several places now, though he didn’t think she’d go back to the Infant Emporium or the security office.

  The hall was deserted, doors closed. “Why aren’t there alarms?” he asked, catching up to Huido. The drills he’d endured thus far had included a cacophony of species-specific warnings, instructions, and skewed lighting, though the other Carasian was noisy enough, weapons and bags clipped to his carapace. Should he remind Huido he was supposed to don that padded vest? Maybe not. But why was the other’s pitted and scarred shell polished so that his whirling eyes reflected at him?

  “If it’s an emergency, Uncle,” he tried again, “shouldn’t there be alarms?” Did Huido know something he didn’t? Tayno brightened. Were the wives on their way home?

  Huido didn’t answer, busy keying in an override code, hunched so Tayno couldn’t see, though it wasn’t, he thought wistfully, as if it would help now, the rightful owner of the pool right in front of him.

  “Bah.” Huido backed a step, reared to his full height, then drove the business end of his metal hammer through the door control.

  “You’ll scare her,” Tayno objected, pushing into the room first. “It’s all right, Tarerea, it’s me. Tayno.”

  “I know it’s you.” The Vyna looked more alert than frightened, though the blow must have sounded like an explosion. Had she never heard an explosion before?

  He wished he never had. “Come with us.”

  She didn’t move. “I won’t go to him.” Her head aimed up.

  Tayno’s eyes bent anxiously to study the ceiling. “Who?”

  “Please, Tayno. Don’t make me go. I won’t Call this unChosen. I must not. He cannot be my Candidate.” She stepped closer, gazed pleadingly up. The blue veins beneath her skin made it look like the finest porcelain—the sort liable to shatter. “He is not Vyna. Not Om’ray. He is kin to those who ended my world—”

  “Tayno!” Huido had stayed in the hall. “We’ve no time for chatter. Come with us, Fem,” he ordered, low and firm. “You don’t belong here.”

  And there was something dark in how he said those words, and final, making Tayno feel as he never had before. Bigger. Meaner. So for both their sakes, he hoped Huido meant the room.

  Because if he meant harm to Tarerea Vyna? To take her to this male she did not want? To send her away?

  They would do battle.

  And one would die.

  When they came out in the hall, Huido reared as though taken by surprise, eyes converging on him. “Finally. I wondered when you’d start to grow up.”

  Tayno stood in front of Tarerea Vyna, posing just a little. “I’ll permit no harm to my friend.” Why, his voice was deeper—impressive.

  Huido chuckled. “Good.” His claw smacked Tayn
o without warning, sending him against the wall. “Just remember, Nephew, I’m not the threat. At the moment.”

  Plexis

  The underbelly of Plexis was a maze of narrowed corridors squeezed through spaces originally designed to chew stone and excrete wealth. Bulkheads crossed at intervals, making it necessary to step, hop, or whatever worked to get over them, and the air here smelled over-shared. That these surroundings helped make those forced to enter the station at this point feel unworthy was a bonus, in the varied oculars of security, reserving glamour and clean air to the upper levels for paying customers.

  The lockdown on those levels didn’t apply here. The doors that mattered belonged to the starships nosed into the station, and Plexis had, without warning or consent, attached explosive clamps to every hull—

  Having learned from a Scat what an unauthorized departure could do.

  By protocol, there’d been armed guards assigned to the junctions leading to the sole Scat ship presently parked at Plexis, but as such assignments were viewed more as a means to an unreported bonus than vital, those guards had taken it upon themselves to diligently search an adjacent area for suspicious activity. One never knew where smugglers might be.

  Or when the bought would return for more, so the Scats waiting with their passengers were eager to finish their business and be away, hissing to one another, clawed toes clicking as they shifted their feet. The section of corridor was poorly lit, several of its portlights newly nonoperational. As a further improvement, the few vids in evidence had been spat upon: corrosive saliva yet another endearing characteristic of the species.

  Most Clan had come late to a recognition of surveillance; not so the five waiting with the Scats. Kero di Licor and her Chosen, Taze. Denly and Nos sud Annk. Merin di Lorimar, her Chosen, Tren, on Snosbor IV to be a living link through the M’hir. Once underway, their Joining would draw her to him, as well as any others in her ’port, for that was her Talent, to be the one to ferry their prizes home.

  Powerful, these five. Experienced. The Scats burdened themselves with weapons while any here could kill them with a thought, and none trusted Scats or the situation. Necessity kept them together, and both species were impatient for that to end.

  They were Destarians. Their future was here, claimed their leader—worth any risk, and they were desperate to believe. Wys di Caraat had done as she’d promised, saved them from the Assemblers and found them a world of their own, but they’d felt the deaths of those left behind on Acranam. Reached into the empty M’hir. Knew they were the last of their kind. If Wys and her creature succeeded, a new generation would rise from the scraps of this one. If it was less than hope?

  It was all they had left.

  “Not long now,” hissed a Scat.

  “True.” Merin looked up, her inner sense aware, searching. They’re here.

  Then let’s ’port to them and get this over with.

  Merin’s Chosen followed her tendril of seeking thought. A Chooser! The report was incomplete.

  Excitement sizzled, erasing any doubts.

  Weapons lifted and whined in readiness, the use of Power alarming the Scats, not that they’d more than awareness. Merin held out her hands, palms out. “Peace.” The tiresome aliens—their starship—would be required for the return journey.

  The start, anyway. They’d ’ported to the Scat ship, already on its way to Plexis, in order to arrive like any other beings. Once safely away from the station, well, the aliens would no longer be necessary.

  Taze di Licor, who tolerated Scats better than most, spoke up. “We apologize for the disturbance, Captain. We’re eager—” unwise to reveal success, “—to find those we seek.”

  “You won’t have to wait much longer,” that individual informed them. For some reason, their jaws began chittering in their drooling laugh.

  We can’t trust them, Nos sent, an opinion he and his Chosen expressed with tedious frequency, having lost their only child to the species.

  “We should wait in the ship,” Denly suggested. “It stinks. There are vermin everywhere.”

  “Was-sste dissspos-ssal. We ss-stay—”

  “Quiet!” Another Scat took a slow careful step from the others, tilting his head. “I hear ss-ssomething—” Unlikely, over the whines and beats of Plexis herself—

  Then the Clan heard it, too. A little hum.

  As one, the Scats, the most dreaded species within the boundaries of the Trade Pact, dropped their weapons and fled, clawed feet skidding on the floor.

  “What—?” Merin frowned. Be ready, she sent quickly.

  It’s our contact, Taze replied as two figures came out of the shadows, walking toward them. Both were non-Human and, recognizing the species, he shared relief and confidence. Foolish Scats.

  One of the figures was small and reassuringly familiar, the other a towering bulk, but physical threat didn’t intimidate Clan—

  Wait—someth—Merin’s mindvoice simply stopped.

  And the Clan learned—between the breaths just taken and the next trapped in their lungs, as they were held—what the Scats had known to fear and they had not.

  For it was the small one, the discounted, the familiar, whose eyes were wide and ringed with darkness—

  The small one who hummed—

  “Look at that,” the big one boomed cheerfully. “A mere Omacron—controlling the mighty Clan. Sept’s about to do much worse than that to you, I’m afraid. Beg, if you like. Offer to use your Powers for us. To return our treasure—oh, wait.” It raised its hands in feigned surprise. “You don’t have any treasure. Just like you don’t have any future.”

  The humming changed, became a drill, penetrating, searching—

  —finding the door through their deepest shields, a trap set the first time they’d touched an Omacron mind, waiting for the one who would use it.

  Merin tried desperately to speak. To send. To ’port. She felt Tren’s Chosen’s futile struggle, his terror.

  Saw the others grow pale with fear.

  —going through!

  Saw what wasn’t blood oozing from their noses and eyes. Felt it, warm and wet, then chill on her own face. REACHED outward—

  “What’s that?” The big one cupped its ear. “Who am I? Doesn’t matter. I’ve a message for your leader and the rest of your kind. There’s no room in the new First for Clan. Wait. Don’t bother trying to send it. My colleague assures me there’s nothing—not a single thing—you can do. I’ll take it myself. Once we’re finished with Plexis.”

  The small one stepped up to Merin, curling sept’s red-cloaked body to embrace hers, and HUMMED. As the Clanswoman convulsed in agony, sept swayed as if to unheard music, skin glowing with ecstasy. Held tight as the body dropped, then began to rock rhythmically against it, pulsing toward climax as the life left—

  The Brill kicked the Omacron loose. “Just do the job,” the big one boomed with disgust. “Choiola’s expecting us.”

  The Omacron’s head whipped around in fury, to find septself facing a needler. Sept eased back, lids lowering. “I am of the First,” thick with thwarted passion.

  “You’re a perverted lump of useful,” the Brill informed it, threat in every word. Beneath, violence in every thought. The needler waved at the remaining Clan. “Make it quick, or I will.”

  “No! Quick I can be.” The Omacron coiled to view those waiting. “There’s more,” sept whispered.

  And hummed.

  Snosbor IV

  Tren di Lorimar tried desperately to speak, to send, to do anything to warn his kind. Toppling over his desk, he fumbled to reach a stylo. His Omacron servitor came into view, long fingers picking up the implement.

  Only to move it out of reach. Sept bent. Smiled.

  The smile was the last thing Tren saw before his mind was pulled into the M’hir by his Chosen’s, leaving a lifeless husk behind.

&n
bsp; Chapter 29

  NO MATTER HOW LOUD or varied the alarm, saving yourself on Plexis was assumed to be a personal choice, the station itself having two overriding concerns: to remain airtight and to prevent opportunistic theft. Make that one. If you failed to pay your taxes, shoplifters were given your address.

  If the finite “air-we-share” was leaking into space, it was up to the individual to seek safety which was—not coincidentally—inside the nearest store or business, those protected by an emergency forcefield Plexis magnanimously supplied to all.

  A hefty charge arriving once the emergency ended.

  This wasn’t a hull breach, Morgan decided. There’d been no alarm, according to the Skenkran. The great station had cleared its decks for some purpose—how he’d yet to discover, but why? That was the scary question.

  Meanwhile, Plexis waited and they were on the move.

  There’d been no question, the Carasians herding them into the main concourse with their combined mass, as unhurried and implacable as a docking servofreighter. Terk jumped out in front, taking point or to be as far ahead of that mass as possible. Morgan stayed with Sira, with Finelle and Yihtor shoulder-to-shoulder.

  Behind them, the soft clickityclick of carapace to carapace, claw to claw.

  The concourse was empty but not abandoned. The stores—here tastefully scattered throughout faux-forest glades—were encased in forcefield bubbles, distorting but not hiding the figures of those now held inside. On lower levels, there’d be some high-pressure sales underway; the entrepreneurs of Plexis unable to resist trapped customers—especially with the bill to come from the station.

  On levels like this? There’d be soothing, efficient service. Entertainment. Nothing so obvious as selling. Credits would, ultimately change owners here, too, but with understated elegance.

  Those on this level who hadn’t, for their own reasons, sought safety with shopping took one look at Terk and made themselves scarce—prudent, given what followed them, though odds were the Whirtle family cared more about avoiding their Lemmick.