Shadowkill

##

The storm wind beating at their backs, they rode the heavily-laden miniskips across the water, flying so low the spume whipped from the wavetops slapped into their legs. Clouds boiled low overhead and phosphorescence ran in crooked green lines through the troubled swell.

Shadith felt the storm as a distant discomfort; the greater part of her consciousness was in the calm deeps, split between three megaforms, great black creatures half a kilometer long from blunt nose to the tips of the massive tentacles, whose slow steady beats drove them through the water. They were solitary beasts, uneasy so close together. Again and again, she had to herd them back as they struggled to turn aside, to put a more comfortable space between them. She was troubled by what she was doing, riding them to their deaths, but Rohant was her friend and he needed her help. Her eyes were squeezed shut and tears leaked from under her lids, yet each time the beasts tried to peel off, she tightened her grip and drove them on.

The beasts hit the net as the miniskips passed from water to land and began the steep winding climb through the jagged cliffs on the stormside of the mountains.

Shadith shivered and groaned as a massive jolt of electricity fried one of the beasts before she could free herself from his brain; she heard the hooming roars of pain and fury as the other two exploded with killing rage and flung themselves against the lethal net.

The winds snatched and shoved at the emskips, tried to drive them into the walls of the ravine they were sweeping along. The tether joining her emskip to Tsipor’s whipped her about, threatened to wheel both of them into a down-spiral that would turn them into bloody meat.

Shadith struggled back into herself, fought with the clip connecting the tether to the emskip shaft, finally managed to trip it.

The minute she was loose, the emskip swerved wildly, her left leg scraped along the stone; part of her trousers tore away, a flap of skin ripped loose, then off; the skipfender squealed and threw up a fan of sparks, the noise hammered at her, the winds hammered at her, the skip bucked under her.

Grimly she fought for control.

After what seemed an eternity of confusion and noise, the drive bit, the emskip straightened out; she pushed the speedlever down and hurried after Tsipor and Ginny who were both nearly out of sight.

The place Ginny had chosen for their base was a moraine flat with a tumble of huge boulders and a litter of stones from the size of eggs to sofa pillows; the flat was halfway up the tallest mountain west of the Mimishay compound.

They labored to clear a space for the domes, a figure eight with one lobe twice the size of the other. Though the wind had abated once they reached the eastern slopes of the mountains, the rain lashed at them, coming down hard and cold as they bent and lifted the stones, carried them to the ragged wall they were building about the site. Bent and lifted and carried. Jammed fingers in the dark against stones they couldn’t see and scraped off skin and worked their backs until even their bones ached.

In the bay below, the tumult was, calming as the last two black beasts died and their bodies heaved against the net, lifting and dropping with the storm swell, nearly invisible in the dark water. After one look, Shadith bent to the stones and labored with a desperate intensity, using pain and fatigue to shut out the things she didn’t want to see or think about.

Ginny inflated the shelters into mottled gray domes that shed light even more efficiently than they shed the rain, then he exploded anchors deep into the mountain to hold them steady despite the snatching of the wind.