Shadowkill

##

She was back a few moments later. “A-ship-ess,” she said, worked her hands and did the other things she did better than words, creating corner-of-the-eye images of small ships darting restlessly about. “Attacking that.” One hand shot out, undulated toward the Compound.

“Miralys,” Shadith said.

Ginny twisted round, stared at her. “You looked?”

“No. A guess. But I’d bet my skin on it. Which is all I have at the moment. Kikun and Miralys, come for Rohant, maybe me. Rohant for sure. Who else is going to attack Omphalos?”

“Mimishay.”

“Whatever.”

Ginny danced his fingers over the pad, changing the direction and focus of the Rohant EYE, turning it upward so he could see and evaluate the attackers.

Shadith watched the conflict develop, saw one of the landers get hit and go down, taking out part of the Compound as it crashed, saw others teasing the cutter beams into a deadly sword-dance, saw sparkles sliding down beam edges, then the beams withering, winking out…

Ginny twisted his mouth in his small tight smile. “The way those landers are being handled, I suspect you are correct in your assumption, Singer. I am much reminded of the skirmishes at Koulsnakko’s Hole.” He tapped his thumb on the pad, the Rohant EYE shifted focus once more.

Rohant flung himself to one side, went rolling into brush, came onto his feet and fled deeper into the scattered clumps of trees, breaking line again and again until the beam hunting him winked out and left him with singed fur and a laboring wheeze.

“Hmm.” Ginny tapped a code into the pad, slid off the cushion and got to his feet. “We had better go collect him before he is killed by his kin or by accident. Singer, you will ride back with me, since our combined weights will be less than his. The skip would be dangerously sluggish trying to haul the two of you.”

Shadith/Rohant

“Ro!” Shadith shouted. “Old lionface, look up.” She brought the emskip swooping around him, leaned over, tugged at his hair, swept away again, landed the skip a short distance up the mountain, wriggled free of it, and ran for him.

“Shadow girl!” He scooped her up, hugged her so exuberantly she couldn’t speak or breath. Still laughing, he swung her round and round, then set her on her feet and held her away from him so he could look at her. “I thought you were dead.”

“Not quite. I’m hard to kill, Old Lion.”

“That yours up there?”

“More yours. Miralys and Voallts.”

“But you brought them.”

“No. I suspect it was Kikun. You’d never in your wildest dreams guess who…”

Ginny/Tsipor

Ginny slid the stunner back in its loops, tapped the caller. “Tsipor, come.”

The Raska rode her skip around a bulge in the mountain, landed beside him; she dismounted, walked across to the bodies. “Dead?”

“No. Merely stunned. Help me load them on the spare skip.”

“Why?” Tsipor lifted Rohant with an ease that startled Ginny, laid him along the bar of the miniskip, went back for Shadith, then began fastening them down, pulling the narrow woven straps tight and slapping the velcro patches together. “Why not dead?”

“I said I would not kill her for one year, Tsipor.” Ginny freed a clump of Shadith’s hair from a patch, pressed the closure tight. “Besides,” he straightened, “she could very likely still be an important force against Omphalos. You have not seen destruction swirling in a vortex about her, leaving her untouched. I have. You have the tether?”

Her eyes so dark a crimson they were almost black, the Raska tossed him the plastic cable. “Canna take cross t’ water ssso.”

“I have no intention of trying. We will leave them down by the Compound.” He looked at the clumsy bundle on the shaft, his mouth tightening into a shallow curve. “If she dies from friendly fire, that is the Lady’s Throw, not mine. I would like that. I do not expect it. Come.”