Shadowkill

2

Savant 4 (speaking to notepad):

Subject 7R (native name: Rohant) has emerged from the fugue state, but continues in a curious passivity. Tech 1 insists this has nothing to do with passivity but is rather the typical huntmode of a predator, the time of waiting before the strike.

NOTE: Tech 1 is showing further signs of deviation, I recommend removal from Mimishay and rehabilitation at the Institute; if his attitude does not improve subsequent to such actions, I must advance a suggestion of termination with prejudice; his skills as a tech are without question; however, his growing insubordination is a corrupting force among his juniors.

FURTHER NOTE: Negotiations with Voallts Korlach are proceeding slowly, but there is no real problem. Another rat is being prepared to increase pressure on the Toerfeles so she will expedite the bargaining and reach the point of decision. Despite the losses, this has been a markedly successful ploy. Congratulations to the planners. May their fertility increase.

Worms In The Walls, Wasps In The Rafters: Wherein Mimishay Learns The Folly Of Messing With Dyslaera And Distorting The Creations Of Dedicated Artists Like Ginbiryol Seyirshi

Shadith / Ginbiryol Seyirsi / Tsipor

Shadith followed the android onto the bridge.

She stopped in the doorway, shuddered. It was the ugliest place she’d seen since Stavver stole the diadem from the RMoahl towers: what wasn’t starkly utilitarian was, heavily, disastrously ornamented. The cabin Ginny gave her was stripped to the bones, nothing there but toeup furniture and gray walls. As she looked around, she decided he had redeeming qualities she hadn’t noticed before since he hadn’t put her in a suite with this sort of decor.

Ginny was seated off to one side, working at the comspec’s station, a habit she remembered from the first time he’d hauled her off somewhere.

He braced his prosthetic hand against the sensor board and pushed the chair around. “You slept a long time.”

“I was tired.”

“Apparently. Tell me something, Singer; was Ajeri Kilavez among the prisoners in the hold? You do remember her?”

“She was there, in the pod beside yours.”

“Ah. I thought so. The Omphalite told me she died at the Hole.” He brooded for a moment, staring down at the unflesh hand, watching the fingers and thumb twitch; then he looked up. “I had to replace my crew. The pilot is one Mertoyl. There are two mercs in crew quarters, they will handle beams and missiles, and I have acquired a Sikkul Paem in bud to tend the drives. I prefer Sikkul Paems as engine crew; they do not interfere in what is not their business. It is an attitude I recommend you adopt.”

“Tui-tui, where’s all this cooperation you flourished when you roped us in?”

He contemplated her a moment, produced a small tight smile. “Cooperation? I do not think I mentioned the word. My recollection is that we have agreed not to kill each other for the moment.”

“Right.” She settled herself in the co-seat, crossed her legs, and rested her hands on her knees. “So. What now?”

“We will talk in a moment. I must finish what I am doing here.” He pulled himself around, bent over the slantboard and went back to tapping the sensor plates, watching the hexa cells in front of him as the half-dozen he was working with flickered through image after image.

Shadith rubbed at her eyes, let her head fall back as she considered the new pilot.

Mertoyl was a thin, fair woman with wispy ash blonde hair and gray eyes so pale they were nearly colorless. Her trousers were gray leather, its shadow diamond texture identifying the leather as murraskin which meant it was contraband and almost as expensive as her tunic. That tunic had the deep subtle sheen of avrishum, probably cost more than many people earned in a year. A single earring dangled from her left ear, a teardrop of silver with a gray shimmerpearl in the cut-out center. She was a ghostimage of a woman, but a ghost with very expensive tastes.

Where does he get them, these etiolate blondes? These peculiar pilots with their penchant for absolute loyalty? Because she has it, too, bad as Ajeri. Has it already, though she can’t have been with him more than a few months. Is it catching? Gods, I hope not.

Tsipor was squatting by the back wall, her arms crossed on her knees, her dark red eyes empty of expression. Though she was hard to read, her rhythms so alien they only rarely approached Cousin norms, she seemed powered-down, almost dormant.

Shadith glanced at her, shivered, looked away. During the nights and days of the ride across the Brushland she’d felt close to the Raska; their shared needs and the solitude they were locked into had overcome instinctive dislike. Mutual dislike-Tsipor found the monkey Cousins as repellent as they found her and had no difficulty making that revulsion apparent. That closeness… pseudo-closeness… whatever… it was gone now. Probably because Tsipor had transferred her loyalty, such as it was, to Ginny as the one most likely to see Omphalos rolled in the dust.

A hexa cell pulsed, widened until it touched top and bottom of the forescreen. A world image swam in the center of the cell. “Arumda’m,” Ginny said. “That is where we are going.”

Shadith blinked.

Coincidence? That’s the world where Tinoopa’s son is. Hope he’s not in this, if he gets killed, what am I going to tell her?

Ginny tapped in a code, took the POV in a rapid slant downward until it hovered above an island shaped like a tadpole trying to bite its own tail, a curving ridge of mountains the bony protrusions of the tadpole’s spine. “Haed Nunn,” he said. “The Mimishay Foundation is there.” He tapped a sensor and a small red light began flashing at the back of the circle of water the tadpole’s head on one side and tail on the other. “There is some manual capacity, but its defenses are mostly controlled by the kephalos. I intend to infiltrate EYEs into that kephalos; once I have control of it, I can turn their defenses against them and slag the place.”

“Sounds simple enough. What about Rohant and the Dyslaera? They’re in there, aren’t they. How do we get them out?”

“Even before I left, half of them were dead and the others in such misery they would welcome death. Why complicate things?”

“Complicate! One tooth and a fingernail left, they’re coming out…”