Shadowkill

1

A faint sting. Then PAIN!

Autumn Rose came swimming out of fog into a prickly awareness that she was in deep shit and there wasn’t much she could do about it.

A hand dropped on her mouth.

Her eyes cleared and she saw Kikun’s face, shining orange eyes ringed with white. He was in a panic, but controlling it.

He brought his head down near hers, whispered, “Can you walk?” Despite his caution the whisper hit the walls and the vaulted ceiling and came back to her as muted clicks and hollow oos, melding uncomfortably with the scrape of his boots, the clatter of something against metal.

Her face went hot and tight. She’d stunned her own foot trying to get a guard, it was such a stupid thing… She didn’t bother answering him, just concentrated on seeing if she could move her toes; her boots knocked against the hard floor covering, her pants leg brushed heavily over the thick black cloth of the robe she wore, the sounds multiplied by that goertafl’cht echo chamber, startling her, giving her an adrenal jolt that helped clear some of the fug from her head.

Right foot, fine. Left leg below the knee might as well be a block of wood. She bent her left knee, sighed with relief. As long as she had the knee, the rest didn’t matter. She pushed his hand off her mouth. “Can’t run races,” she muttered at him, “but I can get it going. What…”

“Not now.” He straightened, stepped back, stumbled over the body of a dead guard, caught himself, shivering at the noises his feet made.

She rolled onto her knees, thrust her hand at him. “Help me.”

He eased his shoulder under her arm and pushed up. Small-boned and shorter than Rose, with the racy leanness of a garden lizard, he didn’t look as if he could lift an undersize cat, but she came off that floor so much faster than she expected, she nearly went over on her face.

He got her limping along as fast as she could manage and guided her through the guards’ bodies, across the anteroom, and into the shiny tarted-up corridor beyond.

She helped as much as she could; what she’d seen before she went down was coming back to her, giving her cramps in her stomach and a powerful urge to get the hell out of there.

Stun rifle held with deceptive casualness under his right arm (where he could get it up and working in half a breath) the merc strolled toward them. “Now, friends, you know better. The room’s not ready yet, just turn yourself around and come back tomorrow.”

Shadith yelled and shot him.

The Dyslaerors shot before her yell died out and the other mercs went down.

An alarm started yelping.

The instant Shadow yelled, Azram got his arms around one of the metal benches and charged the opening, getting there before the metal doors could slide shut: he dropped the bench on the slide tracks and went plunging through as the doors kept trying to shut, whining and slamming repeatedly at the bench. Shadow jumped the dead and went running after him. Lissorn went screaming past her, tearing off his cowl, clawing out of the robe. He’d forgotten everything but Ginny.

Autumn Rose swore and ran after him, went down as she tripped over a dead guard, stayed down as the rest of the Dyslaerors stepped over her.

Rohant roared his own rage as he got stuck in the gradually narrowing space between the doors as they beat at and crushed the bench between them. He freed himself and plunged inside.

Rose rolled onto her knees.

A hand grabbed her ankle.

She twisted around, shot along her leg, swore again as she hit her foot as well as the guard.

She pushed up, went limping to the door. She crawled over the bench, swung herself inside, her leg dead from the knee down.

Lissorn was racing toward Ginny, stunner forgotten, claws out. He was only a few steps away, but the man wasn’t moving; he stood watching unperturbed near the front rank of the pulochairs. It seemed to Autumn Rose he was more interested in the degree of his attacker’s rage than in any danger to himself. Directing his own death? Ginny Seyirshi’s last and best?

No.

He raised a hand.

Four cutters flashed from overlooks, hit Lissorn in mid-stride.

For an instant the Dyslaeror was a black core in the furnace where the beams met, then they winked out and there was nothing left, not even dust.

Rohant roared, his great voice filling that room. He lifted the stun pistol.

The other Dyslaerors spread in a broad arc, converging on Ginny.

Shadow stood at the edge of the bidfloor, staring at Ginny. He turned, nodded at her, started to lift a hand… Autumn Rose shivered, touched her head…

A hand closed on her arm, small, warm…

Pulled at her… no… she couldn’t move…

Oppression… her head, her head…

Things moving slow… ly… slooow… ly… slooow… lyyy.

Blackness…

Nothing…

She remembered and understood. Null vibrator-they must have triggered it when they went charging in. Or Ginny had…

Null-field. She bit her lip, her head wasn’t working right, field must be operating still, on low power to keep the lid clamped down.

Kikun. The Null hadn’t affected him. Odd. What’s happening? Who’s doing this? Ginny? He went down, I saw him go down. That means diddly. He killed Lissorn. Why’d he kill Lissorn if…

The corridor was empty. She was surprised at first, then annoyed at herself. Kikun wouldn’t be taking her along here crippled up like she was in her head and leg if the way wasn’t clear. Clear for now, but not for long… There was a powerful urgency in him, he was almost carrying her. Shayss damn, my head’s not working. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, mind skittering about hibbity dibbity.

He hauled her out onto the gallery, dragged her a few feet along it and pushed through ragged draperies into a room thick with rat droppings and cobwebs and the kind of smell you get down an alley on any skidder road.

“Egya cill’haiya, Rose. Missuk shai gavan cillahai’.”

She stared at him, the syllables sliding off as if her brain were waxed to a high gloss and impermeable. Slid off and fell dead-echoes were paralyzed in here, like everything else in this catafalque of a room.

He hissed and shook her. “Dyslaer,” he breathed. “You know it.”

“Oh.” She forced herself to concentrate. “Say again.” She stumbled over the Dyslaer words, repeated them. “Say again.”

“We have to have a ship, Rose. We have to get out of here.”

She rubbed at her head. The stench was hideous, every breath gave her stomach spasms, and her knee was hurting more by the minute. She shifted her stunned, leg; moving eased it a little. Think, Rose, think. “Shadow…”

“She was too far in.” His eyes glazed over. “I had to leave her. If we’re taken, there’s no one to follow…”

“Follow who?”

“Does it matter?”

She brushed at a bit of dusty cobweb clinging to her hand, shuddered as she saw the desiccated corpses of half a dozen spiders. She loathed spiders. “There’re the Capture Ships out beyond the Limit. We could call one in.”

“No.”

She heard the anguish in his voice and didn’t press. “I’m fogged, Kuna, I don’t know… what’s happening?”

“Don’t you understand? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” His slitted nostrils fluttered, the muscles of his face worked under the soft loose skin. “I’m following voices… no… it’s not… I’m not… listen to me. We have to get out of here.” The panic was beginning to break through his control.

“Klar, ’s klar, Kuna. Calm down. Let me see…” She looked at her robe. It was filthy with dust and thick soft webs, but those would shake off well enough. The privacy fields in their cowls were gone-from the burns on her neck which were starting to hurt like bites from the devil, the Null must have shorted hers out when she went down.

They could pull the cowls forward and avoid lighted areas, it might be enough.

“You have your tools?” She shook her head. “Of course you have or you couldn’t ’ve popped me awake. Any idea where the nearest shuttleport is? Vision or whatever, we’ll run with it.”

He dropped to a squat, closed his eyes, pressed his hands hard against them.

She went to the door, stood beside it listening. Heavy silence. Not even the scratch and scrabble of vermin. She could hear her own heart beating, could hear Kikun’s too-rapid breathing. Then a sound like a door closing, a clang of metal against metal. Footsteps. Someone talking, word fragments, scattered, nothing she could make out.

A hand closed round her arm.

She started, swallowed a yelp.

“I see it,” he whispered at her, the see hissing against her ear. She flinched, she didn’t much like snakes. “Let’s go,” he said, pushed past the torn curtains, and scurried off along the gallery.

Rose grimaced, limped after him, catching up with him when he stopped at a gate into the pneumotube system. He reached for the caller.

She caught at his arm. “Wait,” she said. “What about alarms?”

“If there are, there are.” He pulled loose, tapped the square. “You want to walk a thousand kays?”

“Nothing closer?”

He made a small irritated hiss, but didn’t say anything. She tried a grin, small to match his hiss. “Be kind, Li’l Liz, and consider it the Null-effect.”