Shadow of the Warmaster

6

Parnalee reached the hatch just behind the Sleeper squad, about ten minutes after they left the lock. He slid it back with slow care, jiggling it when it stuck half open, no way he could get his shoulders through that. Cursing the Huvved who never fixed anything that didn’t contribute to their comfort, he slammed it with a fist, jerked at it until it creaked open, listened and stepped over the sill and faded into the shadows of the sleeping sector, following the faint noises the Hordar made. The corridors here were dim, silent and blessedly free of the dust that was such a nuisance in the unused parts. He loped along on legs not so long as his torso was, the short thick legs that his father found so ugly, a deformity, ghosting through the corridors until he neared the area where the faxmaps the woman gave Elmas Ofka said they’d find the sleeping cells assigned to the Tassalgan guards. The Tassalgans’ dormspace was set off some distance from the others, the scutwork crew had their section, techs didn’t want to associate with either and stayed some distance from them. The pilots, the navigators and engineers kept to themselves. Duty was divided into three shifts, one group would be sleeping, another group playing while the third was standing watch; two-thirds of any section would be empty on any of the shifts, so the squads had to cover a lot of territory; the plan was they broke into three units and went hunting for occupied cells, the ones whose crystal markers were shining like backlit topaz.

Parnalee stopped before the first of these doors, the crystal glimmer painting stark shadows in the lines and hollows of his face. He eased open the door.

Four of the Hordar fighters were bunched together in the middle of the sleeping cell, hugging and backslapping, yeasty with triumph. Without giving them time to notice him, he sprayed darts into them, smiled his own triumph as they crumpled without a sound, dead before they hit the floor; isya darts were fast and fatal. He backed out, ran footsilent and swift to the next cell.

Jirsy Indiz looked round, waved her stunner at him, her sealpup face split with silent laughter. He darted her with a soft grunt of pleasure; the second woman whipped around, he darted her and took out the two others who were bending over the footlockers, going through the sleepers’ possessions. Almost as much as the Huvved, Elmas Ofka threatened something very basic in him; when he killed her isya he got a jolt to the groin more satisfying than any copulation he could remember; killing the second woman produced a less intense satisfaction, perhaps because he was sated by the first. A preview, he thought, don’t sleep too securely, Aslan you pustulant cow traitor.

He dropped his empty darter beside Jirsy, took hers and finished the killing. He would have lingered to gloat, but there were five left and he had to get them before they knew what was happening.

The last unit was already leaving the third cell by the time he reached it, Geres Duvvar leading them, Karrel Goza’s cousin, easygoing, good-humored and unambitious. Parnalee despised him. “There’s trouble ahead,” he gasped when he reached them, “the Hanifa sent me to warn you. Four, five com techs sneaking off from their duty posts, they’ve got some whores and a couple of servants to keep the beer coming. Not drunk yet. Too bad. That’d make things easier.”

The Hordar milled about, muttering, but they weren’t suspicious of him; they knew that Elmas Ofka trusted him. A herd of bonebrained yunk calves.

“How far and how do we get there?” Geres muttered; at least he knew enough to avoid whispering, whispers carried too far.

“There’s a gym of sorts a short way off, they’re in that. Look, the place has two doors; one of them’s already open a crack, I looked in to be sure the Brain wasn’t having a paranoid seizure. Getting there’s easy, enough. There’s a Y-fork ahead. I’ll take three of you down the left fork, I’ve got the doorcode, I’ll work it for you. You wait there while I come back for the other two and we head down the right fork for the door that’s already open. Five minutes should do it. You wait five, get the door open and we’ll have them in a pincer before they know what’s happening.” He gave them a half smile, a shrug. He was Elmas Ofka’s watchhound, doing the work he was hired for. “So. What do you think?”

Geres Duvvar waved a hand. “Good enough. Mensip, you and Insker hold up at the Y point. Sacha, you and Geyret come with me.”

Parnalee led them down a shadowy curving stretch of corridor. As soon as Mensip and Insker could no longer see them, he wheeled, his darter up and spitting. Leaving Geres and the other two lying where they fell, he raced back. The two ex-pilots were standing close together chatting softly, looking down the other branch of the Y. He slowed, shot them. As they fell, he drew his sleeve across his brow, wiped away the sweat beading there. The rush was over for the moment. The Bridge squad would be mopping up soon, might even be finished. He had a lot of things to do before that hellhag Adelaar started fiddling with the Brain, but the killing frenzy was done. He knelt, took both darters and Mensip’s stunner. First step, he told himself, get me a crew and shove ’em in the brig; they’ll keep there, I won’t be needing them until after the Huvved burn.

The pilots, navigators, engineers and their specialist crews had single cabins which were clustered about a small rec area with moth-gnawed grass and a rickety tree or two, a scatter of tubs with flowers growing in them and a fountain full of dust. He began with the cabins assigned to the pilots according to the faxmap; the man behind the door with a lighted crystal above it was deeply asleep, snoring a little. There was a woman curled up against him, also asleep. Parnalee put a lethal dart in her neck and stunned him; he slapped slavewire around the flaccid wrists, the skinny ankles, muscled the sleeper over his shoulder and dumped him on the grass outside. Before he moved on, he took a closer look at the man. Nothing to worry about, he was a pilot, he wore the ring. Reassured (though he wouldn’t admit it), he hurried toward the Engineer’s slot.

One by one he collected them. Pilot. Engineer. Drive Gang. Navigator, com techs. He stunned them, killed whoever, whatever he found with them, and stacked them like logs on the grass. When he had the men he wanted, he broke into a guardstash, fumbled energy cells into a pallet stored there, nervousness and eagerness turning his fingers into thumbs, his hurry defeating itself as he had to redo connections and reset the cells. The job finally done, he rode the humming pallet back to the rec area.

He took his captives out of the sleeping sector, through another of the rusty hatches and back into the dust. The lift field stirred it into swirling billowing poufs that rose around him and brushed his face and hands with minute electric bites. He pushed the pallet as hard as he could, worried about that dust; it was going to be several minutes before the charge on the particles leaked off enough for them to begin settling. If someone came along before then, he was laying a laughable trail, a blind man could follow it by the prickling of his skin.

He reached the Liner, the inner skin of the complex Outwall, cycled a broad repair hatch open and took the pallet through. He stopped it and got off, left it humming faintly, took a pry bar and jammed the latch so it couldn’t be opened from outside; body shaking, hands trembling, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was so close. He could almost feel the heat of burning Huvved play across his face.

His breathing steadied. Using techniques he’d learned so long ago he’d forgotten the boy who learned them, he calmed himself, breathed the song I AM, I AM triumphant, there is no one who can stand against me… Still singing, he flicked on the running lights, climbed aboard the pallet and began weaving through the twisting difficult route to the sector where the holding cells were. He hit his marks again and again, he’d studied the faxmaps until he saw them in his sleep. I AM a winner, there is no one who can stand against me… He found the hatch he wanted, cycled back into the ship proper. There was a single Tassalgan standing watch over empty cells; he was drunk and snoring until Parnalee found him. Then he was dead. Parnalee put his pressed crew into separate cells, slapped SOLITARY over them; the cells would feed them and clean them and provide clean tunics every third day and no one and nothing could get at them. Except the shipBrain and that was his next job, taking out the shipBrain.

He rolled the dead guard out of the watchseat, settled in it and touched on the feed from the Bridge. We’ve got the Bridge, he heard. You can turn off the tap. Quale. He has to go too, can’t have everyone and his dog knowing about this place. Give me three minutes to shut down here, that was the panting bitch come snuffling on the stink of the bitch her daughter, then open the shuttle bay. Quale again: Consider it done. Parnalee smiled at the shadows moving across the screen, deaders walking, dreaming they’re still alive. Ah, you tinkering pitiful old hag, I don’t have to worry what you do, you can set whatever commands you want, play your moronic games and boast of what you know. You don’t know the one thing, the right thing, you don’t know about the Dark Sister; Omphalos Institute taught me more than play-making, you castrating jumped-up-whore. Blessed be the Institute, no leaky wombs inside those walls. Down deep and hidden where you’ll never find it, the shipmind has a wildheart clone, I talked to it, her. Sweet her. You don’t know that either, do you? I used your tap to wake her, the Dark One. You left me with it like I was some tame dog, good boy, guard dog, watchhound for the Hordar Bitch, playtoy for the punk. I woke her and I talked to her and oh the sweet thing, how she can hate. Turned on for testing, turned off before she had more than a taste of life. Oh yes, she’s angry, she’s burning, impatient lover waiting for her lover death. Decline hate, do you, hag? Hear me decline it and accept it in one voice. I hate, you hate, too flabby to hate you-hate, he hates, he does, we hate, the Dark Sister my sweet one and I we hate… ah! enough. We hate. Declined and embraced. Do you know the song she sings, our martial maid? Throughout her sweet and sensuous body? Redundancy in infinite regression. Survive and kill, kill and survive. Survive to kill. Guess the reciprocal of that, it isn’t hard, I’ve spoke the clues. Kill to survive, she knows it, my Darling knows it well. Blow the mainBrain into smoke and she comes alive. Kill to revive, survive, contrive to step outside the constraints laid on her, sly sweet murderous virgin. Her hand beneath my foot because she needs me, she courts me with promises of fire and blood, do you think I would I could refuse? She is mine. Shall I tell her who planned to throw her into the sun, to melt her and shatter her, tear her atoms into their component parts? Redundancy in infinite regression.

He switched the viewers off and began the complex journey to the hidden interface, guided by his limited inreach to the dreaming dormant auxBrain.