“Sirs, I have come to report a serious breach of the Federation’s directives concerning this planet,” Mac said, with a good imitation of Linyaari righteous indignation. He had observed Liriili closely and drew upon this memory for the proper tone, facial expression, and body language. “The most shocking element of this breach is that it has been committed by your own commanding officer and the present ruler of your host city.”
“What’s he talking about?” the guard who had not spoken asked his comrade.
“Damned if I know. Halt! I said halt, and I meant it. Don’t come any closer or I’ll shoot.”
A third person appeared in the doorway. This was a young female officer Mac had encountered on the inspection team and also when loading Captain Mac-Donald’s wagons.
“Mac!” she said pleasantly. “What are you doing here? We assumed you were with Captain Becker on that flitter. In fact we searched your ship and didn’t find you.”
“Hello, Petty Chief Officer Lea. I trust you are well and having a productive day? I was doing a bit of—uh—gardening before you arrived and shut myself down to recharge.”
“Uh-huh,” she said in a tone which, though skeptical, remained amiable. To the two men she said, “Down, boys. Mac here is an android. I saw him lift a box of dirt weighing a ton and a half single-handed and carry it down a gantry and load it into a wagon eight times in a row. Not only will your guns fail to harm him, they just might irritate some circuits that will cause him to go berserk and profoundly assimilate us into the soil of our duty station.”
The more aggressive of the men blanched slightly but took a step backwards. “Just so he understands our position.”
“Come on in, Mac. I presume you were planning on it anyway. Can I offer you anything? A cup of oil, a jolt of electricity, perhaps? A chip or a cookie?”
“No, Chief Petty Officer Lea, I require no sustenance or repair items at this time. However, I do need to report an irregularity, as I was telling these gentlemen when you arrived. Oh, and a kidnapping. That is a crime, is it not? Having once been a henchman of Kisla Manjari’s, my moral parameters are a bit hazy and this subject confuses me. But I saw Commander Macostut and Nadhari’s cousin the Mulzar stun and bind her and carry her away in a flitter. Hence the irregularity I wished to report.”
One of the men snorted. “We never interfere in the Mulzar’s love life. That’s as off limits as technology beyond the gate.”
Chief Petty Officer Lea glared at him. “Stunning, binding, and kidnapping a visiting dignitary is no part of anybody’s love life, Singh. And the same rules apply to the CO as to the rest of us about what goes beyond the gate and what doesn’t. That goes in spades for flying flitters while accompanied by local dignitaries. Come on in, Mac. Sit down, pull up a com unit and tell me all about it.”
“Thank you, Chief Petty Officer Lea. Before we carry on further discussion, I would like to send a message to my captain and warn him that another flitter is abroad and that Nadhari Kando is captive aboard it.”
“We’ll see about that, Mac. We have to try to disable the dampening field because we need to contact our CO too and ask him whatever was he thinking to break such an awful lot of the very rules he’s supposed to be enforcing. It’s not going to be easy to disable the field, though. It’s hardwired into the system. But I’m sure Singh can figure it out if he applies himself.”
“Yes, but Commander Kando is at risk,” Mac reminded her. “I’m sure I can easily disable your dampening device. I have, as you may guess, an affinity for such things. That is how I was able to get through once to Captain Becker. I’m sure if you will be so kind as to discontinue jamming our signal, I could do it again.”
“I’ll just bet you could! We had to rig something special to jam you. Laser signals are not Federation approved and are not affected by the dampening field. But I just bet you knew that. However, once we realized you were able to communicate with your flitter, we located the signal and jammed it manually. We were going to pay you a visit later, when we had reinforcements. I figured it had to be you still aboard the ship, since the others were accounted for, being on the Most Wanted list and all.”
“I would appreciate it if you would remove the special jam, then, so that I may alert Captain Becker.”
Before she could answer, the com screen flooded with the image of another Federation officer. “Makahomia Outpost, this is Juan Verde, with the Federation Station X2niner5foxtrot4. We have a relay for you from a ship traveling in non-Federation space. The message is being transmitted through House Harakamian channels on Manganos Moonbase. They wish to know where to locate the wormhole someone named Khornya spoke of.”
“That would be for me,” Mac said.
Acorna gave Becker Nadhari’s message. He nodded grimly. She quickly recalibrated the scanner aboard the Linyaari flitter to track the other flitter’s progress, but the Federation vessel showed no signs of pursuing them. Instead it just sat there, back at the place where they’d stopped to pick up Tagoth. Becker said it was as though Macostut’s flitter was a hound dog, scenting the wind to try to pick up their scent, but failing. Hoping they could continue to elude the Federation ship, Becker laid in an evasive, map-of-the-land course to the secret Aridimi stronghold. Soon the Federation flitter was so far behind them that they could not even see it on their scanners.
As they rode farther into the desert, the suns were setting in a blaze of color, leaving claw marks of gory red clouds ripped across the evening sky. Though the day had been fine and clear up to that point, unmarred by any haze or even smoke from household fires such as they were accustomed to in Hissim, suddenly a high wind arose. The first indication they had that they were facing real trouble came when the whirlwinds that continually played across the desert floor began joining together, as in a dance, into one large tidal wave of wind. This lifted vast sheets of sand with it, forming a dark, churning cloud that grew in volume until it obliterated the entire horizon, silhouetted starkly against the sunset. The gale pounded the little Linyaari craft unmercifully, howling like an angry Makahomian Temple cat. It scoured the flitter with a deafening hail of sand and pebbles, scoring the viewport and upper hatch, shrieking to get in.
“That’s great,” Becker growled. “We just lost our shielding.”
“I believe we can count ourselves fortunate if that’s all we lose, Captain,” Acorna told him, her words punctuated with gasps as the craft bounced around as if it were the wind’s personal juggling ball. The little ship skewed wildly back and forth and up and down, and four times spun end over end with the force of the storm. Becker increased their flying speed and altitude in the hope of rising above the tempest.
The cats did their part to try to shut out the noise of the wind. They yowled and screamed and made the most bloodcurdling noises Acorna had ever heard. Tagoth and Miw-Sher cuddled the kittens, and each also held two of the Temple cats, but their skins were being shredded as the anxiety of the felines increased with every shudder and dive the flitter took in the storm.
RK was the calmest of the cats. As Becker’s long-time ship’s cat, he’d seen worse. Still, he crouched low on the flitter’s deck at Acorna’s feet, casting a baleful eye at the hatch, now opaque from the sand. His contribution to the decibel level alternated between a menacing growl and a gradually increasing scream.
None of this had a salubrious effect on Acorna’s nerves.
“Shut up!” Becker screamed at last, outshouting cats, sand, wind, and all. “Everybody just shut up and stay calm and I’ll drive us through this.”
Becker’s hands were tight on the controls, his muscles trembling with the effort to keep the flitter in the air. Acorna could see Becker’s sweating face highlighted in the soft lighting that had automatically activated inside the flitter’s cabin once the suns had set. The captain’s jaw was tense, and his back rigid as he bent low to survey the instrument panel.
Miw-Sher looked startled, and Tagoth grinned. All of the adult cats except for RK looked a bit sh
ocked and highly offended. They seemed to feel that it was their right to protest such an unseemly display on the part of the environment, or perhaps they felt it was their duty to join in the noise. But after Becker’s shout, they left the screeching to the storm.
Acorna wasn’t sure it would be useful, but she began broadcasting calm and soothing thoughts to one and all. She also edged over and laid her head on Becker’s shoulder so that her horn touched the base of his neck. He seemed surprised by the touch at first, but it had the desired effect. His shoulders relaxed, and his hands eased a bit on the controls, while the little craft continued plowing through the sandstorm.
“I keep feeling like I have to drive this thing, and actually, it does a real good job by itself,” he told her, with a sheepish grin.
Almost more startling than the sudden storm was the sight that met them when they burst through it. The night beyond the sandstorm was still clear and bright with the striped light of the planet’s two moons. They had risen during the flitter’s flight through the storm, and now hung heavy in the night sky, full and round save for a stripe of shadow in the center of each.
“Ho-oh-leee cats,” Becker said. “If we hadn’t just come from that sky just a couple of days ago, Acorna, I’d swear there was a big old pussycat out there looking down on us like we were inside a mouse hole.”
Tagoth and Miw-Sher began talking to each other so rapidly, while pointing through the sand-scoured hatch at the sky, that even Acorna couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Tagoth finally stopped and explained. “When our moons align themselves thusly, it is a sign of a great crisis in our world.”
“So that’s a bad thing?” Becker asked.
“Not necessarily,” Miw-Sher answered the question Acorna relayed. “While the Star Cat’s eyes watch the crisis unfold, his vigilant benevolence may also serve to spare us from it, if he so wills.”
“Gee, that’s nice,” Becker said when Acorna told him this. “We’ll hope the big guy is in a good mood, then.”
Tagoth tapped him on the shoulder and said, for Acorna to translate, “Steer toward the star that appears in the center below the eyes of the Star Cat.”
Becker did so.
A range of low mountains, white as bones under the catty glare of the moons, rose before them. As the flitter flew over the ridge, its occupants could see that the white knuckle hills were not set in a line, but circled a great deep crater.
“Descend into the crater,” Tagoth instructed. “But do not land. I will show you where to fly.”
Becker obeyed. Suddenly Tagoth said, “Now turn back toward the desert…sharply, yes…and fly into that shadow between the inner wall of the ridge and the crater.”
This, too, Becker did. They found themselves flying right into a fissure in the side of the crater.
It looked as though hundreds of fireflies floated in the dark in front of them, their lights tiny pinpricks that were hardly enough to illuminate the darkness of the passage.
Then Tagoth said, “Descend and land.”
Becker, who had no idea what lay beneath them, began doing so. The pinpricks of light grew larger, and flickered and drew nearer, until they were clearly visible as the flames of torches carried by a parade of people converging on the flitter. Behind them, rising almost to the ceiling of the ridge, were torches set into the face of the rock.
Tagoth said, “Behold the Aridimi stronghold.”
The people under the torches were armed with a glittering assortment of knives, spears, and swords. Light glinted off the coin-bright eyes of still more guardian cats. None of these cats hopped onto the hatch in curious greeting as they had back in the forest Temple. The Hissimi guardians, tired and shaken from their journey through the sandstorm, waited warily to see what would happen next.
“Have you friends here?” Acorna asked Tagoth.
“A few know me. But my journey here was long ago, and probably those young enough to defend the Temple will not remember me. Besides, there is something you should know. The highest-ranking priests speak a special secret language and I was never privileged to learn it. I was not especially trusted in my time here.”
“In that case, I’ll go first,” Acorna said. Becker started to protest, but she smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. “There should be some advantage to being the one whose coming is prophesied, after all.”
The hatch opened and immediately the torches, guardian cats, and men drew close until she could count the whiskers on the cats’ faces and the hairs on the arms of the men. She stood, holding her horned head erect on a neck nearly as long as and far more slender than one of her Ancestors’.
“Hello,” she said pleasantly in the Makahomian dialect she had learned from Nadhari. “My name is Acorna. I am the Linyaari ambassador. I believe you have met one of my race before—the one you call the Star Cat’s Companion. I’m told my arrival is expected.” Becker and RK stepped outside the flitter as well and stood at attention on either side of her, ready to take on anyone who raised a hand to hurt their friend.
“Greetings, Khornya, and welcome.” The speaker—a small, shriveled figure—emerged in front of the torchbearers. “Your arrival is indeed a cause for celebration. We are so pleased that you bring with you Joh and Riidkiiyi.” His utterances were in somewhat broken and laboriously pronounced but nonetheless unmistakable Linyaari.
Nadhari Kando was no coward, and many of the entries in her extensive resume proved her fearlessness and offered evidence of her superb fighting prowess.
It wasn’t exactly fear that gripped her now as she sat bound hand and foot in the back of the flitter while Dsu Macostut drove. No, what she felt was more like revulsion for Edu, and even more for herself. Both she and Edu recognized the possibilities of this scenario, one that she thought she had long ago put behind her as she had gained in strength and fighting skill.
When he turned and grinned at her speculatively, possessively, she knew she should dismiss him as an incestuous ass and disregard his stare while she considered how to escape. But to her amazement, there was a very angry and frightened younger Nadhari inside her that wanted to hide, wanted to run away, and was something her older self hadn’t been for some time—ashamed. Not ashamed for some great wrong she had committed, as she had when, under the influence of drugs, she’d been used by General Ikwaskwan and his friend Count Edacki Ganoosh as a torture machine to harm the Linyaari. No, it was the way Edu looked at her that shamed her, the way he assumed some complicity on her part had put her at his mercy this way. Probably several hundred men had made overtures to her in her life by now. More of them than she cared to admit had even been successful, but none of them had made her feel as dirty as Edu could just by looking at her.
Facing Edu on her own two feet, surrounded by her friends, she had thought she was over those feelings of shame and helplessness. But now, bound and at his mercy again, part of her felt that she was no better off than she had been at six, eight, and ten. During those times, whenever he had a chance, he had culminated victories over her in their “fighting exercises” with fondlings, gropings, and eventually much worse indignities, things he’d told her were his right by conquest. The last, worst time for her had been just before he left to join the Federation. The consequences had devastated her in a way that made warfare seem laughable by comparison. When she heard Edu was returning to Makahomia, she’d arranged to ship out herself.
Macostut was flying flat-out across the desert when Edu turned his chair around to face her and reached out his hand to cup her face. She pulled her chin up and back to avoid his touch. He smiled a little at her small rebellion.
“I’m so glad you came back, Nadhari. It’s very good having you like this again,” he said. Edu’s voice took on a cat-like purr. In fact, the only resemblance this supposed cat-priest bore to the Temple guardians was the self-satisfied rasp in his voice at such times. He reached out, gripped her hair in his fist, and dragged her head forward with one hand. With his other hand, he
held her chin so tightly that it would later sport a hand-shaped bruise. Once he had her satisfactorily under his control, he gave her a grotesque parody of a lover’s kiss. He did not, however, try to slip her any tongue. This disappointed Nadhari. Her teeth were very sharp and strong. She would have used them well.
Edu, as if reading her mind, pulled away long enough to begin licking her face, but not in the grooming way the guardians had. It was more like a predator tasting her in preparation for devouring her.
“Hey, what’s this?” Macostut asked. “Something just popped up behind us.”
Looking over Edu’s shoulder, Nadhari recognized the shape of a Linyaari flitter against the horizon and sent a warning message to Acorna. Knowing her friends were near strengthened her resolve to survive, to escape, to put Edu in his place. Even more beneficial, the sight of the flitter distracted Edu from his little dominance game. The Mulzar patted her cheek, mouthed “later,” and turned around to face the screen again.
It was a funny-looking flitter, Edu Kando thought, shaped like a winged beast of some sort, but painted in bright, unnatural colors. For something that moved like a sophisticated craft, it looked like a particularly well-done piece of primitive artwork. It landed, and at that point something else in the landscape popped into view that neither the Mulzar nor Macostut had previously seen—a giant cat. It bounded toward the winged flitter, then, as the hatch opened, suddenly turned into a naked man. A familiar naked man.
Brother Bulaybub, back from the alleged grave! So he was one of the shape shifters? Just went to show you couldn’t trust anyone ever, really. And that explained who clawed up the corpse of Edu’s man in the Aridimi stronghold. Which meant that Bulaybub would have seen the map on the man’s skin, which meant that Bulaybub would know the way to the stronghold.
The flitter blinked out of sight as it rose, and Edu uttered a blasphemous expletive reference to the mating habits of the Temple cats.
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