“Then what was your intention, Captain?” I asked coolly. “And to what ship are you clamped?”
“The ss-ship is-s the Nokraud, Fem,” hissed a new voice familiar enough to send an answering shiver down my spine. As I whirled to look at the intruder entering the Makmora’s bridge from the second lift, accompanied by a trio of Human-looking guards, I felt as though time had reversed itself—and not in my favor. “And the intentions-ss of your hossts-ss mussst have been to hide you from us-ss.”
I knew that body plan, similar to mine in size and shape but built with a predator’s abrupt agility. A pair of thin, tall crests rose from its snout to forehead, curling like a frame behind each forward-pointing eye. The crests were a mottled purple and yellow, the colors more like stains than natural pigmentation. The scaled snout, tilted down to better examine me as I remained seated, bore irregular knuckle-sized knobs along its length. Each of those eyes holding me pinned were bigger than my fist, with jet-black pupils slicing their gleaming yellow in half. The last individual of this species I’d encountered, Roraqk, murdered with less compunction than a cat, viewed primates as less-than-palatable entrées, and kidnapped me for a renegade Clansman. This being could have been Roraqk’s twin, save for the smooth curl of a stump marking the loss of most of its left arm. In an attempt to kill Morgan, Roraqk had used his ship as a weapon, casually ripping open a space station and killing dozens of innocents as well as most of his own crew in the process.
I saw no reason to assume any differing tendencies in the individual before me.
Or, I observed with a sinking feeling, in the second one stalking out of the other lift, frills pulsing with color.
INTERLUDE
Let me come with you. Barac witnessed the intensity of his mindsend in the darkening of Rael’s eyes as she turned to look at him. She easily held his urgency at bay.
“It is not necessary,” his cousin answered coolly, choosing to speak. Perhaps, Barac thought bitterly to himself, she preferred to avoid mental touch with a sud, especially one unChosen and an exile. “Stay here. Tend your bar.”
Barac spoke aloud as well, glad of Rael’s attention at least, though smarting over her casual flick of fingers at their surroundings, the currently deserted gaming area of the Spacer’s Haven. “This place?” he protested. “It’s Sira’s joke at my expense, nothing more. You can’t think I planned to stay here.”
Her gesture turned into the more gracious finger patterning of mollification and apology. “Forgive me, Cousin. I assumed this was what you sought when you left Camos.”
“What I sought,” Barac said slowly, holding her gaze with his, daring to send an underlying emphasis of power into the M’hir, “what I still seek, is justice.”
“Ah, yes,” Rael said, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Your hunt for those behind Kurr’s murder. Were your answers here?”
“Sira knows. She didn’t tell me.” Barac paused for a moment, then added honestly: “She might have—if things had gone better.”
Rael hesitated as well, raising his hopes. He’d caught up with her just as she’d been leaving for the shipcity, a choice of travel suited to secrecy from their own kind, despite the inconvenience. Her transport waited outside the Haven and her hood was already pulled up over her head: as much to confuse any observers, he supposed, as for protection from the evening’s rain. Rael wasn’t fond of uncontrolled weather. Actually, neither was he.
“If I come with you,” Barac coaxed, “we might be able to catch up to Sira.”
Rael smiled without warmth. “A chase we’ve run before, Cousin, without much success, if I remember. I’m going home, not hunting.” Before he could speak, she added in a low voice, “If it helps your search for justice, Barac, I can tell you that Kurr’s murderer, Yihtor di Caraat, has been dropped into the M’hir. He died three weeks ago, according to my source. They—the Council—tried to keep his body alive, to preserve his power in some way,” her generous lips twisted as if around an unpleasant taste. “Fortunately, Faitlen’s pet toad was unable to accomplish this feat, and Fem di Caraat dispatched her son’s remains personally.”
Barac put his hand on the back of the nearest chair, shutting down his awareness of the M’hir, slamming tight every barrier he possessed. Against Rael it might be enough. “Baltir again,” he said, drawing on his Scout’s training for that carefully neutral voice.
The Clanswoman’s eyes narrowed. “Why have you closed to me?”
Barac felt her power at the edge of his own; not a pressure, an exploration. “The memory is—painful,” he said. “We told you what happened that night in the Chamber. How the Council tried to force Sira into Choice with me, and when she refused to kill me by the attempt, they brought in that—creature. It promised to be able to impose some kind of physical bonding with Yihtor, something to—” he strangled on the words. From her expression, he didn’t need to elaborate.
“Games,” she spat. “They broke the Prime Laws and played with all our lives.”
“You can see why I don’t care to relive it.”
“All this is true, Barac, but not the truth.” Rael stepped closer, pushing back her hood so her eyes caught the light. Their expression was strange, as though she found something in him to fear, unlikely as that was. “You knew about Yihtor already,” she concluded, surprise in her voice. “Was that why you made your decision to leave Camos? Knowing he was out of your reach?”
Barac shook his head, checking the strength of his mental walls. Dangerous, conversing with the more powerful. They frequently took offense at suds who tried for secrets. His purpose was greater than any accustomed caution. “I decided when I was refused Choice for the last time,” he insisted. “That’s when I knew there was no longer a place for me under the Council’s rule.”
Rael was definitely alarmed now. “You’re trying to lie to me. Why?”
“How could I dare such a thing?” Barac taunted, glorying in being unafraid for the first time in his life of a superior power. How far could he push her for reaction? he wondered to himself.
Her voice hardened. “Hasn’t being scanned once been enough pain for you, sud?”
Barac shrugged, allowing his defiance to leak past his shielding to trouble the M’hir touching them both. “Sira I can understand. What would be your excuse for lawbreaking, Rael di Sarc? Why do you care so much about why I came to Pocular? What secrets are you holding tight?”
The air whooshed past his ears to fill the space where the Clanswoman had stood an instant before, speechless, her delicate features drained of blood. He’d rarely seen so clear an expression of guilt and remorse in his life.
Rael should never gamble.
The trouble was, why? He’d stirred up something unexpected.
Barac realized he was still gripping the chair’s back. He gave it a hard shove, sending it spinning into the nearest table, knocking the smoketrays and other glassware to the floor.
Maybe if he stirred enough pots, the truth he sought would finally rise to the surface.
Chapter 14
GRACKIK and Rek were their names, the former pirate being the one who’d lost an arm and the latter prone to flexing the corresponding taloned hand each time they stood in proximity as if it enjoyed making the comparison. Their voices and mannerisms were otherwise identical. For no particular reason—certainly their anatomy gave no obvious clues—I concluded they were both female.
And, despite the threat of their presence, I also concluded I was not currently on their menu. The Drapsk, it seemed, were good customers. But of what?
“You see, O Mystic One, it is merely business. You should not be alarmed.” This assurance had been repeated rather frequently by my new companion, the comtech Makoori. The Drapsk was basking in the glory of having been part of my “magic” in front of his kin, and had attached himself to me ever since.
I kept my shields up, my expression pleasantly neutral, and refused to budge from the Makmora’s bridge or even my stool, hard as it was becoming. Roraqk’s kind—called the Sakissishee to their snouts (the true name being so long and sibilant few others could manage it) and Scats when safely out of range—was a species even the unusually broad-minded Morgan refused to trade with, since Scats were firmly convinced all others existed as either food or disposable commodities. They would have constituted a serious threat to other species, had more than a handful ever left their cinder of a world. It also helped that they competed fiercely with each other at every opportunity, with cannibalism rumored to be quite acceptable on the winner’s part.
Which made them lousy mercenaries, unreliable partners-in-crime, and excellent pirates. It was a wonder to me the Trade Pact didn’t simply lock them on their world and wait for evolution to produce something more civilized. But that wasn’t the way the quasi-government worked, as I knew full well. Species who signed into the Pact agreed to cooperate in trade, maintaining embassies at major ports, and providing starship facilities on their worlds. Although there was an interesting variation in the quality of those embassies and spaceports, overall the system worked just ponderously enough to keep the peace.
The Trade Pact had its teeth, the Enforcers, but their mandate was simply to protect the treaty. Piracy that affected major shipping routes, interspecies’ slavery, price gouging on publicly-traded commodities were within their jurisdiction. Wars, bad manners, and internal species’ politics were not.
Not that I could call on their protection anyway. The Clan were not signatories of the Trade Pact or any other agreement. Call on my own kind? There were less than a thousand of us, the strongest living one to a planet, most of those within the well-established and rich inner systems first settled by Humans in this quadrant. Status and rank within the Clan was determined instantly and without question by comparison of power. Any issues affecting us as a whole were ruled by the Clan Council, a group made up of the most powerful individuals from the eight main family lines. I could have been a member, had I wanted to continue to be Clan: keeping myself isolated, secret, and pure of other species’ influence. Clan xenophobia would not serve them well in the future they faced, I thought with a familiar grimness. Not well at all.
But that wasn’t my problem. My problem was prowling through the decks of the Makmora, likely drooling over what wasn’t locked away, while busy doing whatever the Drapsk had arranged. Not surprisingly, they weren’t telling me much about that, either.
“O Mystic One?”
“I’m here,” I sighed, resting my elbow on my knee so I could support my chin in the palm of a hand. It was hard for me to think ill of the small beings, but I was getting plenty of practice. “And I remain quite sensibly alarmed by the actions of this ship, Makoori. You are aware that these beings you’ve allowed on board are not—how can I put this delicately—trustworthy?”
A thoughtful moment of tentacle sucking ensued, then the Drapsk nodded his blind head, antennae drifting back and forth with the movement. “The Makmora has explosive piercing grapples locked around the Nokraud’s hull,” he said matter-of-factly, as if the knowledge of the Drapsk possessing and using banned tech weaponry would be reassuring.
It was. I grinned and felt at least one knot of worry letting go. “Forgive my lack of confidence in the Makii Tribe, Makoori.”
From the deepening pinks of his antennae, I thought the Drapsk was pleased. “We pride ourselves in knowing our customers’ preferences and habits, O Mystic One,” he said smugly.
If the Drapsk wouldn’t tell me, there was another means to find out for myself what the Nokraud was doing clamped to a Drapsk freighter. First, I had to find a suitable source of information and a moment’s privacy. Scats weren’t among the confirmed, or suspected, telepathic species, but I believed they were at least sensitive to the feel of an invading mind. Roraqk had been fanatically careful to avoid what he’d termed “mindcrawlers,” though his precautions were, in the end, useless. Morgan had used his mental abilities to stop the pirate’s heart, something he’d learned to do on his own. I hadn’t asked where or why, grateful for the rescue if horrified by the method.
No, I wouldn’t risk reading one of the Scats, not that I’d want to put my thoughts anywhere near theirs. But there were Human and other Nokraud crew moving throughout the Makmora’s corridors. I should be able to dip into one of their minds.
However, my newly appointed friend and guide, Makoori, wasn’t making that effort easier. “Where exactly do you wish to go, Mystic One?” he asked, taking two steps for every one of mine. I suspected this was a tactful way of asking if I was lost. We’d been through this section of the ship twice, forced to move aside regularly as a steady stream of Makmora and Nokraud crew hurried by carrying packages or towing laden grav sleds. Which was the reason I kept returning here, although the reason for the hands-on cargo switch still escaped me.
“Exercise is very important to my mystical abilities,” I lied straightfaced. There. A Human-looking pirate had paused in one of the doorless rooms just steps from us, putting down his crate to make some adjustment to a list affixed to the top. Before Makoori could so much as draw breath to try and stop me, I hurried forward and touched the Nokraud crewman on the shoulder.
“Excuse me. Haven’t we met—” My voice stuck in my throat as the being turned to look down at me out of his trio of muddy green eyes. A Goth. I’d have better luck using a drill to read its thoughts than the M’hir. “My mistake.”
The pirate grunted something incomprehensible and went back to its work. Makoori caught up to me. “Was there some difficulty, Mystic One?”
“No, Makoori. No difficulty at all.” I surveyed the bustle in the corridor critically. All I could do was keep trying as long as the Drapsk was willing to follow me, puzzled by my behavior or not.
Success was somewhat more serendipitous than I’d expected. I was paying attention to something Makoori was trying to say; the oncoming pair of pirates were arguing about who had the heaviest load. Our collision was inevitable, convenient, and uncomfortable. I ended up on the bottom of a pile of limbs, cargo, and strange smells.