Shadowkill

2

Kikun took her on a twisting, roundabout route across the gutted worldship.

Between pneumotubes, he tugged her along faster and faster, ignoring her protests, tossing her over his shoulder when her left knee threatened to fold on her, lifting her over nulled-out Holers lying where they fell when the vibrators went off, pushing her into murky stench-filled side ways when the sounds of men walking broke the eerie stillness.

She never saw them.

She had a feeling of soft secret doings all around her in the dust and decay, but she saw none of it, only the sprawled bodies of the Holers.

There were no alarms going off. Nothing.

“Whoever’s doing this thinks he’s bagged the place,” she said aloud.

Kikun hissed again and she shut up. All right, you’re right, Li’l Liz. Shayss damn, I feel like I’m drunk and I didn’t even have the fun of getting there.

Kikun propped her against a wall. “Almost there, Rose. You wait here till I check it out,” he whispered and glided rapidly away, vanishing into the murk of the dusty, long unused sideway.

She slid down until she was sitting on the crumbling mat, Kikun gone from her mind the moment he turned the corner. As the colored lighttubes painted a patchwork of bright transparent shadows on her and the newly oiled floor around her, she shook her head, trying to shake the fog out. It didn’t work, just made her dizzy. She hauled up the robe, then her trouser leg and began massaging the muscles from knee to ankle. Riding in the cars had eased up on her knee some, but her leg wouldn’t be right till she got time in an ottodoc. Her flesh felt like clay, cold and unresilient, as if it belonged to someone else. Z’ Toyff! Got to get out of here.

“Rose…”

“Ah!” She scrambled onto her feet, struck out.

Kikun caught her arm, stopped her. “Rose!”

She looked up at him and remembered. “Shayss damn, Kuna, don’t DO that to me.”

“Sorry, Rose, I forgot.”

She sputtered, the laugh startled out of her; it echoed back along the narrow curving corridor and made her angry at herself. Slips like that could get them all killed.

“It’s all right, Rose. There’s no one around to hear.” He pulled her onto her feet, got his shoulder under her arm. “No guards, no nothing. Let’s go, Op. Shuffle-shuffle.”