I turned to peer down at Lawrenk Jen, taking her raised eyebrows for an invitation to confidence. “You miss your former captain, Lawrenk-Human? This Ket has been told you lost her just before I came on your ship.”
“Aye,” she agreed, chewing on a bottom lip, her hazel eyes almost green in the hall lights. Her strong features were resigned. “Kearn’s a capable officer, don’t get me wrong, Madame Ket, but Captain Simpson, well, I served under her in a few scrapes. Until you’ve been this close to vacuum,” she pinched together her thumb and forefinger, “sucking smoke while crewmates bleed to death at your feet—well, that’s when you know what decisions a captain is capable of making—and sticking to.”
“And this crew doesn’t yet know these things about Acting Captain Kearn.”
The engineer lifted one shoulder. “Know? Maybe not.” Her eyes hardened. “Regs say we should have picked up a qualified captain before lifting from Rigel II, but this crazy chase of Kearn’s after that Lanivarian grabbed support from way up. So he’s in the captain’s chair. I just hope we don’t end up paying for his obsession.”
“This Ket agrees, Lawrenk-Human,” I said softly.
Completely.
34:
Shuttle Morning; Cruiser Morning
“WHY? Give me one good reason!”
I wrapped a pilfered sock around the half-empty jar of sauce remaining from my shopping trip on D’Dsell. I didn’t have any spare clothing to keep the fragile container safe within my bag among my accumulation of creams and ointments, many farewell gifts from the crew. “My thanks, Paul-Human. For all you’ve done—”
Ragem gripped my arm below the elbow, pulling me around to face him with quite unnecessary force. The jar tumbled from the sock before I could catch it, but bounced safely to rest on the floor near our feet.
So much for being fragile.
Ragem didn’t let go. “I don’t want your thanks,” he said with what seemed real anger. “I want to know why you’re suddenly leaving the
Rigus
. I thought you wanted to track down this killer; I thought I was to help you reach Ansky as well.”
His fingers dug in, a further sign of emotion, I concluded, rather than any intention to cause me pain. Still, I winced and Ragem released his grip, the skin of his face going from pale to a warm flush. His expression remained furious. “Skalet arranged for me to come on her ship—” I began, only to be interrupted.
“That’s another thing. Who knows what story she concocted to get on Kearn’s good side? You don’t. But it must have been something. None of us can believe the
Trium Set
’s captain isn’t at least going to be questioned for misuse of an emergency distress call.” He took a deep breath and said in a more reasonable tone, “I don’t like this, Esen. I don’t trust it.”
To be truthful, I was quite curious myself how Skalet had managed to turn Kearn’s outrage at her deception into what amounted to slavish cooperation. The result, however, was all that mattered. She wanted me with her.
And I had to go.
“This Ket,” I stressed the word, “has been invited to serve an old and favored client, Paul-Human. That is all you or I need to know. There is nothing mysterious in my wanting to leave your ship to seek a more profitable opportunity. It is our way.”
“Be Ket with Kearn, not me, Esen,” Ragem gritted out between clenched teeth. “You’ve warned me your enemy has the ability to take information from the memories of your kind as it kills them. What if it learned enough to impersonate Skalet’s Kraal personality, S’kal-ru? The Kraal Confederacy is in chaos. Who would question anyone of her rank?”
“Portula Colony wasn’t torn apart by a subtle being, Paul-Human,” I reminded him. “Why should it try such an elaborate process now to lure me into a trap? From what we’ve seen, this being could rip its way through the ship faster than you could sound your breach alarms.”
We glared at each other.
“Let me come with you,” Ragem said after a long pause.
I reached out to cup his face with both hands, fingertips overlapping the top of his head, and shook him gently. “Paul-Human. Friend. It’s impossible.”
He stepped out of my hold, eyes brimming with the recklessness I remembered all too well from Kraos. “It’s not. Ask S’kal-ru to request my presence as a—as a Commonwealth observer to the current crisis. There’re hundreds throughout the system. The Confederacy is always kicking them out on some pretext or other; they assign new ones all the time.”
Of the myriad objections immediately coming to mind, I picked the most obvious. “How could she justify picking you from those on the
Rigus
?”
“My mother’s homeworld—Botharis. It’s in the Confederacy. Most of the time,” he hedged.
“Which makes you unlikely to be neutral.”
“Which makes me the only person on this ship fluent in the Kraal diplomatic language and up-to-date on Confederacy customs.”
I felt my body temperature rising. “No.”
“Why?”
Back to that.
“I don’t want you to come.”
“I’m not going to desert you!”
Enough was enough.
I held form with an effort, fondly thinking of cycling into something more convincing than the passive Ket, something with muscle to lift his slender form into the air and gently thump it into a wall once or twice. It was a reaction the Human persisted in inspiring. “You are not deserting me, Ragem,” I explained instead. “I am leaving you. If you want to help me, divert Kearn’s attention. You won’t be able to stop his pursuit of me altogether, but perhaps you can misdirect his efforts.”
He raised one hand, a look of abrupt and unhappy enlightenment crossing his face. “You don’t want me to meet Skalet. Or anyone else of your kind. Why?”
“I—”
“Is it because of how they’d react to me?” He paused. “Or to your friendship with a Human?”
Or how you would react to them?
I thought with a shudder, thinking of sharing flesh, of Ersh’s past, of all the other aspects of Web biology, any one of which was more than likely to restore that look of horror on his face. I’d never felt the difference between us so utterly as now.
“Paul-Human,” I took a long step to reach the room’s one table and waved him into the chair across from where I chose to crouch. I spread my hands over the table’s smooth surface, trying for a similar serenity. “Tomorrow morning, a shuttle from the
Trium Set
is going to clamp on the hull of the
Rigus
. This Ket must leave on that shuttle. Skalet could not refuse to respond to my message. I cannot refuse to go to her.
“My kin and I are as one. All of us. The loss of Mixs and Lesy has diminished the whole of what we are. This is also how,” I put out one hand to take his, “I view our friendship. You are part of what I am. But not part of what connects me with the others. They could not understand.”
An understatement if ever there was one.
“Then don’t tell Skalet about me,” Ragem argued reasonably, determination in every line of his face as well as in the firm pressure of his smaller hands over mine. “Esen, I don’t like any of this. Call it Human intuition, but it stinks to me like Grangel’s Commons House: all honey and smiles on the surface, and who knows what lurking below. Just let me come with you.”
I’d said no. I’d meant no. So it was with no surprise at all that I took my seat in the
Trium Set
’s shuttle the next morning, breakfast and good-byes heavy on my stomach, and nodded a mute greeting to Ragem as he and his baggage dropped on the facing bench a moment later.
Typical of the Confederacy, the interior of the shuttle gleamed with polished wood trim and gilt. Probably the captain’s personal craft, I decided, sneaking a quick drift of my fingers along silky paneling. There were three crew: tall, slender Humans, with ornate tattoos marking family affiliations and business alliances running over each cheek. I could read them, if I took the time or saw the need. The pilot concentrated on her task after a courteous greeting. The other two, supposedly in charge of our comfort, spent most of the short trip to the
Trium Set
staring at Ragem as if different politics made the Human more alien than I.
To me, Ragem appeared entirely too smug. I’d adamantly refused to contact Skalet and arrange for his invitation. After storming out of my cabin, a decidedly unpleasant way to say good-bye, the Human must have taken matters successfully into his own hands, with the result that he leaned back against the bench’s cushioned back as if without a care in the universe. He even wore casual clothes instead of his uniform, his favorite jacket open over what looked to be a woven shirt and pants.
He couldn’t have
. . . I narrowed my eyes at him, suddenly suspicious. Ragem smiled back. If he’d left the
Rigus
without Kearn’s permission, I hoped he’d covered his tracks with some plausible story, though I couldn’t imagine what that could be. Otherwise, either Kearn would immediately contact the
Trium Set
and demand Ragem’s return, an event sure to perturb the security-conscious Kraal, or worse, Kearn might just start putting the clues together and figure out why Ragem was so devoted to a Ket encountered by chance on Hixtar Station. What Kearn lacked in cleverness he more than compensated for in sheer paranoia.
“We are docking, Madame Ket,” the pilot announced, swiveling in her seat to face me. “S’kal-ru wishes to see you at once.”
If anything, Ragem’s smile widened.
“S’kal-ru awaits you, Madame Ket,” the guard said tonelessly, looking completely past me; his bearing implied, falsely, that this member of Skalet’s military force hadn’t thoroughly analyzed the likely threat level I poised—none—and the chance of his getting access to a fabled Ket massage—none.
My Ketself approved of the
Trium Set
. If the shuttle had been luxurious, her immense base ship was opulent. In this section, officers’ quarters, the doors were works of art, carved in bas-relief down to ornate handles my hands ached to explore. Skalet-memory reminded me of other doors, space-sturdy and plain, ready to instantly replace these ornamental ones should the ship be at risk. Expensive, but then the Kraal Confederacy had never fought its civil wars over mere wealth.
I pulled open the door, trailing one long wistful finger over its intricate surface, and stepped into what had to be one of the better cabins on the
Trium Set
. Skalet had carelessly shoved its tapestried couches and chairs into a confused mess along one wall, leaving the center of the room free for three tables overflowing with maps. An image projector squatted on the floor nearby. I avoided the gashes in the hand-woven carpeting left by her rough redecorating.
“Ket?!” The word came from the dark, all lights in the room being trained on the tables and their tactical displays. “Couldn’t you have picked something more—useful?” Skalet’s rich tenor voice always struck me as incongruous in this form and manner, a combination reminiscent of the juicy lure held out for unsuspecting fish by the Denebian spiny shark.
I fluttered my fingers, now thankfully free of pain, willing to trust that Skalet would have ensured her own quarters were safe from eavesdroppers. “It has its advantages. Subterfuge for one.”
A figure moved into the wash of light surrounding the image projector. In Human form, Skalet, known in this place and body as S’kal-ru, was as tall as my Ketself, her slender body whipcord rather than elegant. The tattoos on her cheeks proclaimed her as one entitled to the unquestioning support of the three oldest and most powerful family Clans of Kraal Prime. She’d chosen to shave her head, a style preferred by soldiers who fought in null-gee battle suits, and one that purged any vestige of softness from her strong features. I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life.
“So—?” She lifted one pale eyebrow at me.
“My use-name is Nimal-Ket.”
“So, Nimal-Ket,” she said. “Come and sit. Tell me what you left out of your message. And I will tell you what I have planned in advance of your arrival.”
Instead of taking the chair she pushed forward with one foot before dropping into its neighbor, I slid my fingers under the hoobit and lifted it tenderly over my head. I put it on the top of a map of Kraal V, marked with red as if Skalet had spent the day totaling casualties. The skirt followed.
I lost her protest—“Esen, wait!”—as I released form and settled into web-flesh, gaining an awareness of her molecular structure as I lost the ability to hear. I extruded the memories she should have, holding back my secrets, ruthlessly aware I gave her no choice in that sharing.
Ersh had given me none.
“Space . . .” Skalet’s marvelous voice embodied the word with all the wonder I’d experienced, and she now shared.
“Mixs and Lesy,” I said, my Ket voice harsh in contrast.
“Yes,” she agreed, switching on the image projector. A star field shimmered between us in the dark room, hiding the tables and maps that marked the simplicity of Human war. She worked with controls for a moment, adding a series of flashing nodes to the display whose meaning I understood only too well: the known locations of the Enemy’s attacks, including those against our kin.
Skalet’s plan lay within my memory, assimilated from the flesh she’d returned to me in exchange. I also contained her outrage at my tactics, an outrage mixed with a hint of approval. She’d always thought there could be sharing between two, something Ersh had forbidden until breaking that Rule herself.
“You weren’t surprised by the nature of our Enemy,” I commented.
“I always thought it preposterous we’d be the only Web in the universe,” Skalet replied absently, still adjusting her machine. “Where did Ersh come from, if that was the case?”
Since Ersh’s origin was among those items I hadn’t chosen to share with Skalet, I could hardly answer. But I did have questions of my own. “This plan of yours. Setting a trap for it using the Kraal ships. Do you really think the Humans can harm it?”
And what does that mean for the rest of us?
I added to myself.