by S. L. Viehl
sold them—before I ever said a word to him.
He stopped, white-within-white eyes hot now. One broad hand lifted and extended until his claws were
only an inch from my face. The smell of rain and pine was so strong it filled my head.
I focused on those five gleaming, dark blue points. One time Mom caught me trying to saw off the sixth
finger on my right hand, so I could look like the other Terran kids. Kol, who had lived on the planet I
should have been born on, had also gotten the ten fingers I should have been born with.
“I didn’t arrange this. I didn’t plan to bring any of you with me. If Uzlac signaled Garnot from Joren,
maybe he did it right before we took off. Or he had someone watching us. I don’t know.”
“Indeed.” My ClanBrother’s deep voice dropped to something that sounded like it came from a black pit.
“I said if you betrayed us, I would make you my first kill.”
He could try. I kept my head back, stared him directly in the eyes, and didn’t twitch a muscle. “I haven’t
betrayed you. I know how bad it looks, but I’m telling the truth.”
The claws didn’t retract. “Swear it to me,” he said, so low it was barely a whisper. “Swear it to me as my
ClanSister.”
I knew how much danger I was in; I could see the tremors of violence twisting in his muscles, just
beneath his skin. Sweat trickled down the side of my face as my own inner beast reared its head. “I
swear to you, ClanBrother, by the ties of blood and House, I have not betrayed you or my kin.”
His hand dropped, but Kol was still enraged. I was equally furious. There was also this very peculiar
sensation that made me resent the scant space between us. I didn’t know why, or what it was, but
something had to give. When it did, I’d bet neither of us would come out of it undamaged.
“Unless you want to end up as my next kill,” I said, equally low and soft, “walk away now.”
And to my surprise—or disappointment—that’s exactly what he did.
CHAPTER NINE
“Blessed is the traveler whose path chooses him.”
—Tarek Varena, ClanJoren
Kol went back to the helm. I decided to head down to the launch bay so I could check out the shaft
tubes and scan the inventory. And, in the process, stay as far away from Mr. Faith and Trust as possible.
There were two things that got me so aroused that my claws emerged. One was rage, and that I had
plenty of. The other was sex.
I remembered Rijor, laughing. If you tear another hole in my tunic, I am making you sew it up.
I hadn’t taken a lover since Rij died. I’d never gone in for casual sex, anyway—it would have been
suicidal, trying to play ball on a mostly male team with that kind of rep—but I missed it sometimes.
Apparently I’m missing it more than I thought. And Kol’s not helping.
An hour later I was still angry at Kol, still not sure what to do about the other feelings I was having, and
still calling Uzlac every filthy name I could think of.
A third of the protorps were so old their warheads registered total flat-line—which meant they were
inert, useless hunks of corroded alloy. Half of what was usable had been slowly leaking radiation over
time, which in turn contaminated most of the storage compartment. I was forced to put on a reinforced
envirosuit before I could finish my inspection.
“Who keeps junk until it acquires a half-life of ten thousand years?” I shouted at no one in particular
before I went to the nearest panel and signaled the helm. “I’m going to need some help down here before
we have a nuclear incident.”
“I will send Danea and Osrea to you,” Kol replied, sounding just as annoyed.
“Send them soon.”
The only good thing was that the units were the same old Terran models we’d used a couple of times to
tunnel out new passages when the PRC had collapsed the underground’s old subway network, and I was
comfortable using them. I figured out the rest by studying the ship’s specs off the database and using
common sense.
Osrea and Danea finally appeared, neither of them looking like my best friend, but no claws showing. I
guessed Kol hadn’t told them about the Ramothorran’s presale yet.
Either he believed me, or one of us was going to end up decorating the wall panels with the other’s
entrails. I didn’t want to dwell on why I suddenly cared so much about what Kol thought. It wasn’t like
either of us could jump ship to get away from the other.
“About time you showed up.” I wiped my dirty face on my sleeve and eyed the last of the shafts I’d
checked. Uzlac had left a protorp in the tube, but it was just another dud. “Anyone want to buy a large,
useless object?”
Danea’s purple nose crinkled. “You would sell yourself, Terran?”
In spite of Kol, in spite of Uzlac, I had to laugh. “Good one, Sparky.”
“Kol sent us to assist you.” Osrea jumped down on the loading platform and peered into the shaft. “Are
we placing the missiles in there?”
I shook my head and pointed to the grav-hoist. “The hauler will take care of that. We’ve just got to move
them out of storage and over to the platform.” I had found a semifunctional lift-rig, but I’d never used one
before. “I need Nalek down here.”
Snake Boy got indignant. “I can do whatever you require of Nalek.”
“Sure, pal.” I dragged him over to the rig, which was, like everything else on Uzlac’s ship, falling apart,
rusty, and sprouting wires at every coupling. “Climb in.”
Danea had trailed after us, and inspected the rig. “He will be harmed if he uses this equipment.”
That was enough for Osrea. The next thing I knew he was clambering up into the body cab and working
his limbs through the harnesses. He was too wide and not tall enough to be comfortable, but eventually he
got himself wedged in sideways, strapped up, and activated the control unit.
I told him where to move the hauler, then glanced over at Danea, who was doing her bad-hair-day thing
again. “The guy is just a masochist, isn’t he?”
She studied her fingernails, which matched her skin. “If he is injured, I will see you suffer for it.”
Nice thing about Sparky, you always knew where you stood with her. “Fine. If you want to keep the
snaky hair, put on an envirosuit.”
Machinery whined as Osrea initiated the rig’s forward grapplers and worked them up and down for a
minute. Gaskets popped. Wiring arced. Metal groaned. The noise was only slightly worse than the smell.
I figured the rig would hold together while we loaded the shafts, but no longer. If there was a God.
Os started moving in the wrong direction.
“You’re in reverse!” I had to shout to be heard over the grinding gear shaft. I waved toward the storage
compartment. “That way!”
With some difficulty Osrea maneuvered the ungainly unit from the place it had been rusting into the deck
over toward the compartment. I hurried ahead, but Danea got there before me, and opened the panel. I’d
pointed to where I’d marked the inert units, then indicated the ones we needed Os to retrieve.
“He can’t squeeze the entire rig in here, so we’ll have to help him guide the grapplers,” I said, using the
suit comlink. “Stand by the panel, and use hand signals to relay what I say to him.”
It took a few tries before we were able to steer Osrea’s grappier arms to the proper position. I adjusted
the end clamps myself, then made a circling gesture. “That’s it; tell him to retract them.”
Osrea pulled the protorp completely out of the compartment and up into the buttress, after which we
edged out of storage and took up positions on either side of the rig.
“Watch those clamps,” I said to Danea. “One of these things falls, we’ll all glow in the dark for a few
centuries.”
We flanked Osrea as he went into reverse, turned, and drove toward the launching tubes. The additional
weight didn’t make the trip any faster, and the rig made even more noise. Once we reached the loading
platform, I initiated the grav-hoist program, then climbed down beside the tubes. Danea and I used the
same hand-signal relays to guide Osrea, and hoisted the protorp down onto the tube conveyer.
“The rig will not hold up much longer!” Osrea shouted from the cab once we were through. “We must
haul two at a time!”
It was tedious, sweaty work, back and forth and up and down, over and over and over, but we kept at
it. Transporting two units at the same time severely taxed the buttress stabilizers, and did nothing to make
the grav-hoist any steadier. At last we had the final pair of protorps out of storage and in position over
the platform.
“Nice and easy,” I told Danea after we’d hoisted one down. One of the buttress struts started to loosen
from its base. “Tell him to take his—”
The ship suddenly shuddered, then pitched violently to starboard. I ended up sprawled across one of the
units, while above me Danea was thrown to the deck. From my position I could see the bottom of the
rig, and held my breath as it tilted ominously up in the air. A second passed, then two, before it finally
righted itself and hit the deck with a huge thud.
The last protorp—luckily—didn’t immediately drop out of the grapplers and on top of me.
Danea got to her hands and knees, looked over the edge of the platform, and shouted, “Get out of the
way!”
The feedback her yelling created on my suitcom nearly punctured my eardrums. I tried to push myself off
the unit, but the ever-present filth on everything had made the surface of my suit slippery, and I lost my
grip. Above me, one of the stabilizers blew, which made the buttress collapse. Instantly the right grappler
dropped out of control. The protorp falling on top of me weighed about four hundred kilos, so I didn’t
even bother to pray. I simply wrenched my body sideways and tried to roll off.
A blast smashed into my face and propelled me off the protorp, and over the side, and slammed me into
the conveyer slot. From the way my eyes bulged and my limbs jerked, it felt like a triple-penalty charge.
That couldn’t be right, I thought, just as something really big and heavy landed a few inches away. The
resounding crash made my ears ring and blood well up in my mouth. I’d never gotten any third penalties.
Well, not counting that lousy call down in Florida…
“Jory!”
One of my teammates pulled me up on my knees. I gazed at her through her faceplate (when had the
junta agreed to going full plas?), sure she knew why I’d been clobbered so unfairly.
“Got it? Got ‘em?” My head hurt; why the hell did my head hurt; where was my helmet? And why was
she fooling with me? “Fourth and goal, forget about me, shake your ass!”
Behind the helmet, yellow hair was snaking all over her eyes and mouth. Stupid bitch, why’d she wear it
loose? Must be a greenie. Rijor was going to eat her for breakfast.
Rijor’s dead, idiot. You watched him die at the Ditka Dome, remember?
The brainless rookie wouldn’t let go. She dragged me up and out of the hole, threw me flat on my back,
and straddled me. Then she was looking up and shouting.
She’d blown the whole play, plus no scanner in the world was going to miss her little stunt. I’d just have
the pleasure of watching the compref shock the shit out of her for unsportsmanlike conduct on the field.
Only we weren’t on any field.
My head cleared, and I remembered. Danea. Osrea. Uzlac’s ship. I wasn’t in New Angeles, getting
myself half killed for the pleasure of screaming shockball fans. We were on the way to Reytalon and we
had to take care of…
The protorps.
I pushed Danea away, sat up, and pulled my helmet off. Oh, my aching head. One look confirmed the
units were still down in the conveyer and didn’t appear to be ready to explode. Then I turned my head
and nearly shrieked.
Osrea, bleeding from several bad gashes in various places, held out three of his hands. “Are you well,
ClanSister?”
“Just great.” I let him haul me up. When Danea reached to steady me, I jerked out of reach. “Thanks,
Sparky, but a blast from you I don’t need right now.”
Danea muttered something vile and stalked off.
“Damn.” I rubbed my head. “What hit me down there?” I glanced at the rig. “Os, how did you do it? That
stabilizer is fried.”
“I did nothing.” Osrea jutted his chin toward the glowing, retreating form. “Danea projected her… field?”
He shrugged. “It knocked you off the missile before the other dropped on it.”
Terrific. Now I owed the bad-tempered witch for saving my life. “Let’s get this junker moved; then I
want to chat with the idiot who’s flying this crate.”
Osrea and I hoisted the fallen protorp into place, then stowed what was left of the rig. After I cleaned
him up with a first-aid kit, I left Snake Boy to man the bay.
“Don’t—I repeat, do not—press any console buttons,” I said as I went to the lift. “I’ll signal you when I
find out what’s going on.”
“Remember to thank Danea for maintaining your path,” Osrea said, stretching all four upper limbs with a
grunt.
Was he smirking at me? “Yeah. I’ll be sure and do that.”
Back up at the helm, Nalek, Renor, and Kol were stationed in front of various consoles, and something
bright was filling up half the central viewer.
I didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Now is not the time to be joyriding, boys. I nearly got flattened by a
protorp down in launch bay.”
“We are not riding joyfully.” Nalek turned his head for a moment. “We’re under attack.”
I shut my mouth and sat down beside him. While I was strapping into my harness, I noticed he was
transferring power from the stardrive to the forward emitters. “What’s that big shiny thing out there?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “It appeared shortly after the other ship fired on us.”
I ran a scan, but all that registered was an anonymous power source of unknown origin. In the meantime,
I located the other vessel—one twice our size—a thousand klicks from the shiny thing. The scanners
confirmed it was fast, powerful, and absolutely Garnotan.
The slavers had come to recover their shipment.
I put a signal through to launch bay. “Osrea, it’s time to start pressing buttons. Get on the sequencer and
wait for my signal.” By that time Nalek had transferred operational command to my console. “Nal, I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to take over.”
“By the Mother, please do.” His teeth flashed. “I am happier performing other tasks, ClanSister, I assure
you.”
“Good man.” I love a natural team player. “Head down to launch bay and give Os a hand.”
Once Nal left, Kol transferred
his console over and sat down beside me. “The slavers have altered their
heading, possibly to drive us into the energy anomaly.”
Was it some kind of trap? Only one way to find out. “Os, prep both tubes for launch.” The forward
emitters were only half-charged, but I didn’t want to drain any more power from the stardrive. I glanced
sideways. “Jolt them or blast them, Captain?”
That seemed to startle him. “I am not the captain of this vessel.”
“I don’t think anyone else wants the job. Jolt or blast?” When his expression didn’t change, I sighed. “Jolt
them with the emitters, or blast them with a protorp?”
His mouth curled. “Blast them.”
“Osrea, you prepped?” I waited for his affirmative, then transferred the targeting data. “Lock on these
coordinates, and fire tube one.”
Something made the ship shudder again. I checked the screen, but the slavers hadn’t fired. Then the first
volley flew from our launch bay and headed directly for the Garnotans. “Os, are you okay down there?”