Shadowkill sq-3 Read online

  Shadowkill

  ( Shadith's quest - 3 )

  Jo Clayton

  Jo Clayton

  Shadowkill

  Prolog

  1

  Shadith woke in the hold of a ship.

  She was lying on a pallet, canvas, something like that. Naked. Half frozen.

  Sometime before… while she was out… she’d been beaten… raped… brutally… she was torn, septic, she could feel the heat of the infections, the blood oozing from the wounds.

  She lay in filth and stench, she hadn’t been catheterized, just left where they threw her.

  She’d been fed, watered, there were tubes taped to her face, running into her nose.

  They wanted her alive, but broken.

  They. Who?

  Ginny?

  She shifted position slightly, felt feces squishing under her.

  When she had her stomach in order, she looked around. Stasis pods, dozens of them, hundreds, all around her. She reached.

  The lifesparks in those pods were dim; most of them she couldn’t recognize, but Rohant was there, nearest her. Azram. Tolmant. Nezrakam. Kinefray. Tejnar. Ginny.

  Ginny?

  She looked more closely at the strangers, picked up a faintly familiar “smell,” connected it to one of those clients she’d watched glide past her when she was in that corridor.

  Ginny and his clients. Prisoners?

  What’s happening here?

  Prisoners or passengers?

  Ginny wouldn’t tolerate stasistime. I know him. This isn’t his ship. He wouldn’t go anywhere on someone else’s ship. I know him.

  Prisoner. It has to be prisoner.

  Who?

  Never mind. Time for that later.

  Her hands were fettered, but she had a little play in the filament that joined the cuffs.

  Her feet were free.

  She rolled off the pallet, used her feet to push it aside, then drew herself up so her hands were close to her nose. She pulled the tubes free.

  It was painful, sickening, but she got them out. She used the water tube to wash herself.

  It took a long time, but she managed to get her body reasonably clean.

  She was cold, half frozen, the chill from the metal she lay on struck up through her flesh into her bones, but she was clean.

  Using her feet, she got the pallet turned over, the bottom side was filthy and stained, but hospital hygienic compared to the mess she’d been lying in.

  She clamped her teeth on the water tube, used her feet and knees to find the food drip and maneuver it into her mouth, then she slid the pallet over and stretched out on it. It was warmer and softer than the floor, not much but enough. She sucked on the food tube and began to feel almost human.

  Kikun, she thought suddenly. I didn’t touch him. Or Rose. Dead? Or what?

  She went painstakingly around the hold once more, touching each of the lifesparks. They were all there, except Lissorn who was dead. Ginny was there. His clients. And this time she located Ajeri the Pilot. All there but Kikun. And Autumn Rose.

  He slipped them.

  Clever little lizard. Took Rose with him. I hope. Unless she’s as dead as Lissorn.

  He’ll come after us, I know it. Yes.

  All right.

  They mean to break me any way they can.

  Let them try.

  2

  She lay and listened, using the ears and eyes of spiders and other small vermin.

  She lay and thought.

  Slowly, carefully she began building THE PLACE THAT COULD NOT BE TOUCHED.

  Slowly, carefully she withdrew HERSELF within THE PLACE, pulling memory and everything else vital to who she was inside the armor she’d built to protect herself from the interrogators that waited for her.

  Mindwipe waited for her, where her memories would be evoked then unreeled and dissolved. A competent tech could strip a mind clean in a few hours, yet leave the organic machine intact, the basic intelligence unmarred-or mostly so-ready for reprogramming and resale.

  COME COME, SEE THE FINE BARGAIN. ONE FLESH MACHINE, FEMALE, FRESH FROM THE USED BODY SHOP.

  She hid from the Probe and dreamed another life for herself, leaving it for THEM to find.

  Yes, you creeps, you’ve got the body, but that’s all you’ll get. Break me, will you? You can try, then you watch your asses, they’re mine.

  She set the wake-trigger, (KIKUN: See Kikun and Know Again) then she closed the last gap in the wall of THE PLACE and slept.

  Chase: Autumn Rose And Kikun Break Free And Start The Long Trek After The Fiends Who’ve Taken Their Friends

  1

  A faint sting. Then PAIN!

  Autumn Rose came swimming out of fog into a prickly awareness that she was in deep shit and there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  A hand dropped on her mouth.

  Her eyes cleared and she saw Kikun’s face, shining orange eyes ringed with white. He was in a panic, but controlling it.

  He brought his head down near hers, whispered, “Can you walk?” Despite his caution the whisper hit the walls and the vaulted ceiling and came back to her as muted clicks and hollow oos, melding uncomfortably with the scrape of his boots, the clatter of something against metal.

  Her face went hot and tight. She’d stunned her own foot trying to get a guard, it was such a stupid thing… She didn’t bother answering him, just concentrated on seeing if she could move her toes; her boots knocked against the hard floor covering, her pants leg brushed heavily over the thick black cloth of the robe she wore, the sounds multiplied by that goertafl’cht echo chamber, startling her, giving her an adrenal jolt that helped clear some of the fug from her head.

  Right foot, fine. Left leg below the knee might as well be a block of wood. She bent her left knee, sighed with relief. As long as she had the knee, the rest didn’t matter. She pushed his hand off her mouth. “Can’t run races,” she muttered at him, “but I can get it going. What…”

  “Not now.” He straightened, stepped back, stumbled over the body of a dead guard, caught himself, shivering at the noises his feet made.

  She rolled onto her knees, thrust her hand at him. “Help me.”

  He eased his shoulder under her arm and pushed up. Small-boned and shorter than Rose, with the racy leanness of a garden lizard, he didn’t look as if he could lift an undersize cat, but she came off that floor so much faster than she expected, she nearly went over on her face.

  He got her limping along as fast as she could manage and guided her through the guards’ bodies, across the anteroom, and into the shiny tarted-up corridor beyond.

  She helped as much as she could; what she’d seen before she went down was coming back to her, giving her cramps in her stomach and a powerful urge to get the hell out of there.

  Stun rifle held with deceptive casualness under his right arm (where he could get it up and working in half a breath) the merc strolled toward them. “Now, friends, you know better. The room’s not ready yet, just turn yourself around and come back tomorrow.”

  Shadith yelled and shot him.

  The Dyslaerors shot before her yell died out and the other mercs went down.

  An alarm started yelping.

  The instant Shadow yelled, Azram got his arms around one of the metal benches and charged the opening, getting there before the metal doors could slide shut: he dropped the bench on the slide tracks and went plunging through as the doors kept trying to shut, whining and slamming repeatedly at the bench. Shadow jumped the dead and went running after him. Lissorn went screaming past her, tearing off his cowl, clawing out of the robe. He’d forgotten everything but Ginny.

  Autumn Rose swore and ran after him, went down as she tripped over a dead guard, stayed down as the rest of the Dys
laerors stepped over her.

  Rohant roared his own rage as he got stuck in the gradually narrowing space between the doors as they beat at and crushed the bench between them. He freed himself and plunged inside.

  Rose rolled onto her knees.

  A hand grabbed her ankle.

  She twisted around, shot along her leg, swore again as she hit her foot as well as the guard.

  She pushed up, went limping to the door. She crawled over the bench, swung herself inside, her leg dead from the knee down.

  Lissorn was racing toward Ginny, stunner forgotten, claws out. He was only a few steps away, but the man wasn’t moving; he stood watching unperturbed near the front rank of the pulochairs. It seemed to Autumn Rose he was more interested in the degree of his attacker’s rage than in any danger to himself. Directing his own death? Ginny Seyirshi’s last and best?

  No.

  He raised a hand.

  Four cutters flashed from overlooks, hit Lissorn in mid-stride.

  For an instant the Dyslaeror was a black core in the furnace where the beams met, then they winked out and there was nothing left, not even dust.

  Rohant roared, his great voice filling that room. He lifted the stun pistol.

  The other Dyslaerors spread in a broad arc, converging on Ginny.

  Shadow stood at the edge of the bidfloor, staring at Ginny. He turned, nodded at her, started to lift a hand… Autumn Rose shivered, touched her head…

  A hand closed on her arm, small, warm…

  Pulled at her… no… she couldn’t move…

  Oppression… her head, her head…

  Things moving slow… ly… slooow… ly… slooow… lyyy.

  Blackness…

  Nothing…

  She remembered and understood. Null vibrator-they must have triggered it when they went charging in. Or Ginny had…

  Null-field. She bit her lip, her head wasn’t working right, field must be operating still, on low power to keep the lid clamped down.

  Kikun. The Null hadn’t affected him. Odd. What’s happening? Who’s doing this? Ginny? He went down, I saw him go down. That means diddly. He killed Lissorn. Why’d he kill Lissorn if…

  The corridor was empty. She was surprised at first, then annoyed at herself. Kikun wouldn’t be taking her along here crippled up like she was in her head and leg if the way wasn’t clear. Clear for now, but not for long… There was a powerful urgency in him, he was almost carrying her. Shayss damn, my head’s not working. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, mind skittering about hibbity dibbity.

  He hauled her out onto the gallery, dragged her a few feet along it and pushed through ragged draperies into a room thick with rat droppings and cobwebs and the kind of smell you get down an alley on any skidder road.

  “Egya cill’haiya, Rose. Missuk shai gavan cillahai’.”

  She stared at him, the syllables sliding off as if her brain were waxed to a high gloss and impermeable. Slid off and fell dead-echoes were paralyzed in here, like everything else in this catafalque of a room.

  He hissed and shook her. “Dyslaer,” he breathed. “You know it.”

  “Oh.” She forced herself to concentrate. “Say again.” She stumbled over the Dyslaer words, repeated them. “Say again.”

  “We have to have a ship, Rose. We have to get out of here.”

  She rubbed at her head. The stench was hideous, every breath gave her stomach spasms, and her knee was hurting more by the minute. She shifted her stunned, leg; moving eased it a little. Think, Rose, think. “Shadow…”

  “She was too far in.” His eyes glazed over. “I had to leave her. If we’re taken, there’s no one to follow…”

  “Follow who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She brushed at a bit of dusty cobweb clinging to her hand, shuddered as she saw the desiccated corpses of half a dozen spiders. She loathed spiders. “There’re the Capture Ships out beyond the Limit. We could call one in.”

  “No.”

  She heard the anguish in his voice and didn’t press. “I’m fogged, Kuna, I don’t know… what’s happening?”

  “Don’t you understand? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” His slitted nostrils fluttered, the muscles of his face worked under the soft loose skin. “I’m following voices… no… it’s not… I’m not… listen to me. We have to get out of here.” The panic was beginning to break through his control.

  “Klar, ’s klar, Kuna. Calm down. Let me see…” She looked at her robe. It was filthy with dust and thick soft webs, but those would shake off well enough. The privacy fields in their cowls were gone-from the burns on her neck which were starting to hurt like bites from the devil, the Null must have shorted hers out when she went down.

  They could pull the cowls forward and avoid lighted areas, it might be enough.

  “You have your tools?” She shook her head. “Of course you have or you couldn’t ’ve popped me awake. Any idea where the nearest shuttleport is? Vision or whatever, we’ll run with it.”

  He dropped to a squat, closed his eyes, pressed his hands hard against them.

  She went to the door, stood beside it listening. Heavy silence. Not even the scratch and scrabble of vermin. She could hear her own heart beating, could hear Kikun’s too-rapid breathing. Then a sound like a door closing, a clang of metal against metal. Footsteps. Someone talking, word fragments, scattered, nothing she could make out.

  A hand closed round her arm.

  She started, swallowed a yelp.

  “I see it,” he whispered at her, the see hissing against her ear. She flinched, she didn’t much like snakes. “Let’s go,” he said, pushed past the torn curtains, and scurried off along the gallery.

  Rose grimaced, limped after him, catching up with him when he stopped at a gate into the pneumotube system. He reached for the caller.

  She caught at his arm. “Wait,” she said. “What about alarms?”

  “If there are, there are.” He pulled loose, tapped the square. “You want to walk a thousand kays?”

  “Nothing closer?”

  He made a small irritated hiss, but didn’t say anything. She tried a grin, small to match his hiss. “Be kind, Li’l Liz, and consider it the Null-effect.”

  2

  Kikun took her on a twisting, roundabout route across the gutted worldship.

  Between pneumotubes, he tugged her along faster and faster, ignoring her protests, tossing her over his shoulder when her left knee threatened to fold on her, lifting her over nulled-out Holers lying where they fell when the vibrators went off, pushing her into murky stench-filled side ways when the sounds of men walking broke the eerie stillness.

  She never saw them.

  She had a feeling of soft secret doings all around her in the dust and decay, but she saw none of it, only the sprawled bodies of the Holers.

  There were no alarms going off. Nothing.

  “Whoever’s doing this thinks he’s bagged the place,” she said aloud.

  Kikun hissed again and she shut up. All right, you’re right, Li’l Liz. Shayss damn, I feel like I’m drunk and I didn’t even have the fun of getting there.

  Kikun propped her against a wall. “Almost there, Rose. You wait here till I check it out,” he whispered and glided rapidly away, vanishing into the murk of the dusty, long unused sideway.

  She slid down until she was sitting on the crumbling mat, Kikun gone from her mind the moment he turned the corner. As the colored lighttubes painted a patchwork of bright transparent shadows on her and the newly oiled floor around her, she shook her head, trying to shake the fog out. It didn’t work, just made her dizzy. She hauled up the robe, then her trouser leg and began massaging the muscles from knee to ankle. Riding in the cars had eased up on her knee some, but her leg wouldn’t be right till she got time in an ottodoc. Her flesh felt like clay, cold and unresilient, as if it belonged to someone else. Z’ Toyff! Got to get out of here.

  “Rose…”

  “Ah!” She scrambled
onto her feet, struck out.

  Kikun caught her arm, stopped her. “Rose!”

  She looked up at him and remembered. “Shayss damn, Kuna, don’t DO that to me.”

  “Sorry, Rose, I forgot.”

  She sputtered, the laugh startled out of her; it echoed back along the narrow curving corridor and made her angry at herself. Slips like that could get them all killed.

  “It’s all right, Rose. There’s no one around to hear.” He pulled her onto her feet, got his shoulder under her arm. “No guards, no nothing. Let’s go, Op. Shuffle-shuffle.”

  ##

  The lock’s inner door gaped open, the cracks around it clogged with ancient crud. Kikun lifted Autumn Rose over the rim, helped her negotiate the crumpled flooring as they moved toward a heavy metal plug with three tube caps lined in a row across it. He hauled her to the one on the left end, cycled it open, and tossed her in.

  As she passed from the argrav field into the.00 something gravity of the tube, she lost traction, caught hold of a tugline, and began hauling herself along the tube. Behind her she heard the soft whine as the cap irised shut, then the line jerked repeatedly as Kikun started after her.

  ##

  She eased into the pilot’s seat with a sigh of relief, picked her leg up and set it in place and with automatic skill locked the crashweb about her. Having forgotten him again, she twitched as Kikun slid into the co-seat. “One of these days you’ll give someone a heart attack, Kuna.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “You seeing any snags ahead?”

  “Nothing focused. Be careful, but move as fast as you can.”

  “Right.”

  ##

  A red light flashed in front of her the instant she cut loose from the tube. “Alarm,” she said. “Somebody noticed.” She was working as she spoke, swinging the shuttle about, sending it toward the gaping outer door of the lock. “Or maybe it’s automatic,” she said. “With a little luck…”