The security guards were demanding he stay, but ordering the natives, the hrinn, out. Before Heyoka could think, the dark other within him surfaced and gave voice to a deep-throated roar that reverberated until the small room rang like the interior of a bronze bell. Macabre visions raced through his mind, throats torn out, blood splattered across the walls like paint, fragile human flesh rent from ivory bone until there remained only him and the blessed silence.
Both guards backed into the wall, faces gone white as newly cast plas, fingers convulsively clutching their weapons. Heyoka saw his fearsome image reflected in their staring eyes and fought for control. Rage pumped through his veins, both at himself and these shortsighted idiots. Whatever their personal feelings, they had to think beyond them now. With flek dug in on the other side of the mountains, they were all on the same side.
The taller of the two stepped forward, the stubble of his beard clearly visible beneath translucent skin. He cleared his throat. "Be r-reasonable. We can't have savages roaming this facility. Security is already badly compromised as it is."
Heyoka leaned down and read the name off the man's badge. "Listen to me, S. Cuppertino. If you don't get your sorry butt down to Communications and do everything within your obviously limited ability to make repairs so we can get a message out, you people will have a flek hive located in this facility."
Cuppertino swallowed. "The staff is afraid to come out of their quarters as long as these two are here. They have to leave so we can make repairs."
"Hey, no problem." Heyoka snatched up the backpack he'd thrown down in disgust and jammed in a packet of concentrated rations. "They think you stink. They can't wait to get out of this place, and frankly neither can I."
"But you can't go!" Cuppertino fingered the long black barrel of the laser rifle nervously. "You're the only one in-station with combat experience."
A snarl rattled in Heyoka's throat and he realized he'd flexed his handclaws. Glancing down at the wicked three-inch points, he was suddenly amused. All his life he had fought to control his temper and seem as much one of these fragile, soft-spoken creatures as possible, but it was pointless. He was not human, and never could be. Bit by bit, his carefully cultivated veneer of humanity was being pared away, revealing someone else beneath, a stranger he had yet to comprehend.
He turned his back on them. "I'm not going to sit around here, holding your hands, while you try to piece that com-link back together." Shouldering the pack, he limped toward them. The two guards fell back well out of reach as he lowered his head to squeeze through the human-sized door. Kei and Nisk pushed through close behind, bristling, ears pinned back, eyes grim and wary.
This place did reek, he thought. He felt like he would never get the smell out of his fur. Would he ever be able to bring himself to live like this again?
Just before he reached the outside lock, Sanyha Alvarez hurried around the corner. "Sergeant Blackeagle, wait! I brought a power pack—for the brace. I noticed yours was exhausted."
He stared at the tiny bright metal disk in her hand. With it, he could short circuit most of the pain for a few more days, but then it would be depleted and he would be as bad off as ever. Even as he stood there, considering, the pain simmered like liquid fire along the nerves of his leg, a constant reminder that he was not whole.
Nisk pushed ahead of him and peered out the door. "That strange light is in the sky again."
Heyoka thrust his muzzle outside into the cooling evening air. High overhead, a spark raced in a linear path across the darkened sky, one shimmering point of light among stationary stars. Exposing themselves like this indicated the enemy's high level of confidence. Time was most likely even shorter than he'd thought. It was so infuriating! He'd spent years fighting the flek wherever they showed their disgusting bone-white faces, feeling at least marginally in control of his fate, but now here he was, stuck on an undeveloped planet far off the shipping lanes where they could entrench themselves until it was too late for the forces responsible for this quadrant to respond. And all he had to fight them off with was a sonic blade, a half-charged laser pistol, and his bare hands.
He flexed his claws again, seeing how the deadly black curves caught the artificial light spilling out from the hallway. His bare hands were not as limited as a human's though . . . and a whole planetful of like hands were scattered out there in the darkness, ignorant for the moment of the growing danger. What if they knew?
He studied Kei and Nisk as they followed the ship's trajectory. Perhaps, if he could convince the Lines and the males' houses of the threat at hand, with experienced direction, the hrinn could damage the grid enough to prevent its completion until the Confederation could be alerted. He pushed past Kei into the evening air and looked around for the yirn they had left outside. "We have to go back to the males' house. I think there might be something we could do to protect ourselves."
Nisk's ears slanted back. "I have been lawfully vanquished, and Rakshal will use the opportunity to challenge you again."
Once again, Heyoka found himself amused. He brushed absentmindedly at the long strands of mane blowing around his face in the night wind. "I have much more important game than my worthless hide to lay before Rakshal's claws."
No matter how many times Seska pressed the button, the gleaming metal box remained stubbornly silent. She did not like the smell of this, not one bit. Now that their long-sought goal was so close she could almost pin it under her claws, it boded badly for the Outsider to fall silent.
Thrusting the small box back under her cushions, she curled up and ran an idle clawtip over the engraved silver armlet circling her upper arm. It was a Jhii working of the old story of Dsuffa First-Hunter and very fine, yet surely they would all have an abundance of such things once the Council of Lines met tomorrow and approved the opening of full relations with the Outsiders. There would be fine cloth and machines to labor in the fields and medicines to cure every ill. No one would ever have to grovel to those miserable Restorers again. She would be free to tear out that traitorous Vexk's throat herself. Her eager handclaws sprang free at the thought.
Her head turned at a perfunctory scratch at the door, but Fitila's buff-colored nose was already halfway across her quarters before she could even grant permission. "Since when do you approach the Line Mother before you are bid?" Her voice was edged with anger.
Fitila hastily prostrated her lean, scarred body on the carpet. "I was concerned for your safety. I have not been able to find that wretched outcast, Khea, anywhere."
Seska sat up on her cushions, snarling a little with the pain in her stiff hip joints. "That cubling was always a pathetic, weak thing. No doubt, she crawled off into the rocks to die of her wounds."
"If that were so, then I would have found her dead body." Fitila sat up, her gaze trained on the floor. "I have been able to track her only as far as the northeastern edge of the plateau."
Seska flicked an ear. So the whelp had crawled off toward the Restorers.
"Tomorrow the Council will meet, and I am still uneasy. What if the wretch tries to speak before the Council about what she saw?"
"Do not be stupid." Easing back against the red cushions again, Seska looked at the thick carpet, remembering how the Outsider had lain right here in this chamber in a tangled bloodied heap at her feet. "The young idiot saw little and understood even less. Thinking back, I cannot understand why the cub-trainer did not cull her long ago. She certainly would not have passed the next gleaning. Even if she did survive, no one will pay the slightest attention to her."
She preened at the dark-gray fur along her arm. "I am more concerned that the Outsider does not answer us now."
"Have Beshha or Fik spoken with it recently?" Fitila moved closer and picked up the bowl of oil which was always warming close by, then poured a bit on Seska's fingers and began to massage them.
"That is an interesting thought." Closing her eyes, Seska gave herself up to the easing of the ache in her joints that always plagued her in the cooling evening air. "Call them on the little box and find out."
Then, as Fitila fumbled beneath the cushions for the device, Seska's lip curled back with another thought. "And send a jit to the Restorers. Command Vexk to attend me tonight."
"She will not come. We refused their price."
Seska considered for a moment. "Tell her that we wish to discuss this trifling matter of payment. That should bring her. She has no way of knowing the cubling is dead."
Her eyes drifted closed, her claws tingling at the thought of tearing that pale-gray throat. It would be prudent, as well as pleasant, to remove Vexk from the world. Even though Restorers had no vote in Council, Vexk often attended to speak her mind. It would be much safer to eliminate her now so no loose tongues would be left when she took control of the Council tomorrow.
Nisk halted his yirn at the bottom of the path that threaded down from the plateau.
Heyoka roused and squinted into the velvet darkness, disoriented. For hours it seemed, he had followed the older male, trusting Nisk's sense of direction. Weariness had soaked through him, settling on the back of his throat like a bitter draught. A faint scent of sulfur hung in the cooling night air. "Why are we stopping here?" He rubbed his aching eyes with one hand.
"To use the pool in this cave." Nisk slid down. "We should draw power before confronting Rakshal."
Kei sampled the air before dismounting. "Someone has passed by here quite recently—a female."
"Restorers sometimes use this pool, but no one should be here this late." Nisk hobbled his mount.
Heyoka swung his leg over the yirn's hump, then eased down to the ground. The moment his right foot took weight, pain knifed through his leg and it threatened to buckle. He dug his fingers into the yirn's shaggy wool and held on until the initial wave of agony receded, then limped after Nisk, trying not to give into it more than he had to. No doubt, he should have taken the power pack offered by the doctor, but he had been too proud and angry at that point to accept help, and it was too late now.
Kei flicked an ear as he passed, then stalked after them as they entered the cave. Heyoka leaned against the rough wall inside and fumbled in his pack for a coldlight. Nisk sniffed the cool cavern air, then wordlessly led the way, navigating each turning, following the faint, twinned scent of sulfur and water. The sharp shadows cast by the coldlight dodged before them over the twisted formations of rock.
Each step was worse than the one before. The pain ate at his nerves, grinding his reserves down until he was overheated and panting, unable to think any further ahead than getting through the next step, and then the next. Finally, they ducked under several low-hanging stalactites and stood before a heavy gold-worked tapestry hung across the passage. The air was noticeably warmer here, and moist. Droplets trickled down the glistening walls and pooled at their feet.
Nisk picked up the corner of the tapestry. On the other side, under the golden light of a flickering torch, a wet-furred female knelt beside a vast steaming pool, a set of yellow robes clasped in her hands. Despite the lateness of the hour, she did not seem startled to see them.
"Patterns within patterns," she murmured and her dark eyes glittered with the mellow gold of reflected torchlight.
Nisk lowered his ears. "Vexk, we did not mean to disturb you."
She must be one of the fabled Restorers, Heyoka realized. Her fur was a pale, luminescent gray, and her dripping mane fanned across her shoulders. She rose to her feet and drew on her outer robe, radiating a vast quiet that seemed to swallow all questions, smooth away concerns. Heyoka had a sudden vague sense he had walked in this cavern before, had seen her and stood here speechless in exactly the same fashion. Each breath he took, each blink, seemed a repetition of what he done before, as though he were caught up in a loop that he could not break.
She studied him, then her dark eyes widened and she looked to Nisk. "He is Black/on/black?"
"Yes," Nisk said simply. "He has come at last."
Heyoka bristled. That nonsense again! Didn't these people have anything better to think about? The spell broken, he limped back toward the chamber's entrance.
Vexk's ears pricked at his halting gait. "You are injured?"
"A long time ago." Heyoka reached for the embroidered fabric.
She blocked his way and peered down at his bad leg, concealed beneath the loose trousers. "How were you hurt?"
"It doesn't matter." His tone was gruff. "It will never be any better than it is right now."
"A Restorer told you that?" The set of her ears clearly indicated her disbelief.
"Outsider restorers," he said. "They were quite learned."
"I do not know how their craft compares with ours," she said. "But perhaps I can still help." She indicated a stone ledge beside the pool.
Heyoka scowled. "We do not have time—"
"You must make time for this, Black/on/black." Nisk turned on him. "It was not chance that Vexk is here tonight. This meeting is part of the great unnamed something/in/motion which is making itself felt more and more each day. You cannot stand against it."
Vexk met his gaze. "You feel it too," she said softly. "A huge pattern, different from any other, gathering us in until we are one with its intertwined curves and arcs, making something entirely new."
Nisk stared over her head as though he could see something in the air. "I did not want to say this before, but among us, those with injuries or weakness, as well as any sort of ugliness or imperfection, are culled—not permitted to hold high rank or breed." His gaze dropped to Heyoka's damaged leg. "Few will be willing to listen to you—as you are now."
Heyoka felt the final crack in the wall of his already badly eroded self-confidence. The Hrinn—his people—would not listen to him unless he were physically perfect, the one thing that, no matter how hard he tried, he could never remedy. He ran a dry tongue over his lips. "The damage is permanent."
Vexk bent her pale-gray head over his leg and eased the cloth up over his knee in order to lay her supple fingers on the scars. "Sit here . . . think of nothing."
Feeling somewhat awkward, he complied and stared up at the ceiling where strangely convoluted whirls and circles had been carved into the red-orange rock of the cave. They seemed to dance and spin, combine with each other in unsuspected ways. The Restorer's strong hands slid along his throbbing leg . . . curiously warm. The heat felt good, seeping into the ache that had become so much a part of him in the last few days, he hardly knew where it ended and he began.
The warmth increased, simmering along the twisted flesh, almost equal in intensity with the pain that gnawed at him night and day. His mind drifted, following the heat as it drove away the pain, feeling it reestablish normal pathways for sensation to come and go from his leg. Slowly, micron by micron, the heat advanced, forcing the pain to retreat before it.
Then suddenly the advance was balked by a black knot of pain, so intense nothing could pass. He felt Vexk strain, pouring all her strength into the fight, but the damage was too great. He sensed that she would soon exhaust herself without finishing what she had begun.
She lacked the power, he thought. The special cells of her body could only hold so much extra energy and she had expended nearly all of it now. Much more was needed. The struggle with Kei floated back into his mind, the memory of power channeled. It had been different and yet in some ways it seemed to him this was essentially the same process.
His leg began to cool, allowing the pain to resurge, not as intensely, but still present. He opened the channels in his own body, as he had learned from Kei, then tried to direct his own energy to the internal struggle under Vexk's fingers. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to sense the pathways Vexk had used. Her hands loosened, then she paused. Warmth crept back into his muscles and nerves. Her damp mane brushed his fur as heat flowed against the pain again, inching down his leg with agonizing slowness.
He lost all sense of time, knowing only that he channeled the power stored in his own body to fuel the fight directed by Vexk's touch. Much later, he dimly realized the pain was gone, truly absent for the first time he could remember since Enjas Two. Even under the influence of the most advanced drugs and power brace technology, he'd always had the sense pain was merely lying in wait, ready to leap out and sear his nerves again at the first opportunity. Now it was gone.
Voices murmured over him. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up.
Vexk's firm hands pushed him back against rock now warmed by his body heat. "Sleep, Black/on/black."
"But the males' house—"
"They will be at the Council meeting tomorrow, along with everyone else." She blinked down at him with enormous black eyes set at an angle in her face. "Sleep."
Weariness spun over him. His eyes sagged shut again and he let himself be pulled down into the darkness.
An infestation of flek just over the mountains! Sanyha hesitated in front of the wreckage of the communications center and longed not to believe it. The acrid stink of smoke still clogged the air. She accepted the box of scavengeable parts Scott Cuppertino held out to her and stared numbly down at the assorted unfamiliar shapes. "This is all you could find? What about Stores? Can we get any usable parts from there?"
"Maybe." He ran a hand over his sooty hair and sighed. "This is not my area. Saunderson was the only one with the training to put together a subspace com-link from scratch."
And Saunderson was dead.
Neither one of them wanted to voice that fact, but it lay between them and any possibility of success like a vast chasm. Her fingers tightened around the box. "The flek obviously know we're here. Wouldn't we be safer if we just evacuated and hid out in the hills until the ship comes? I mean, it's crazy to sit here so they can pick us off any time they want."
"I don't know, Doc." Scott's smudged face contorted into a weary grimace. "Seems like they've already put us out of commission. I don't see why they'd think a little place like this will be worth bothering with now. We're all goners anyway as soon as they start fiddling with the atmosphere."
She sighed. "Let's call a meeting of the remaining Section heads and—" A loud boom thundered through the station, staggering her shoulder-first against the wall. "My god!" She glanced up at Scott. Her own panic was mirrored in his smoke-reddened eyes.
He grabbed her arm and yanked her into the hallway. A second explosion, closer this time, threw them both to their knees. Head spinning, she struggled to her feet, then tried to gather up the com parts she had dropped.
Scott hauled roughly at her arm. "Forget that junk! We've got to get out of the building!"
"We'd better take some medical supplies!" She tried to twist out of his grip and go back. "There'll be injuries!"
Another whump shook the building right over their heads and chunks of debris showered them. For a moment, she couldn't think past the ringing in her ears, then she saw Scott stagger to his feet, blood streaming from a dozen cuts and his right arm dangling. The lights flickered and died. "We'll all be dead if we don't get outside!" he said.
She felt his hand pull her out of the wreckage. Stumbling after him over unseen obstacles, she held her other arm out and felt her way through the blackness. She couldn't remember the station ever being totally dark before, not even at midnight. She realized she was disoriented.
"Move it, Doc!" Scott's fingers anchored in the material of her uniform.
Another explosion shook the floor beneath them, but it seemed farther away, probably down at the other end. A load of ceiling tiles crashed on her head as part of the roof caved in. She pitched onto her knees with a lungful of dust, coughing.
"Come on, Doc!" His voice was determined. "Not much farther now."
How could he be sure? she asked herself, trying to wipe the cough tears out of her eyes. Then a crack of dark blue appeared against the blackness overhead.