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VI. asteroid base

Ari’s deep voice broke the resulting silence. “The Mageworlds. Bee, are you sure?”

Jessan turned from the cockpit screen to see the big medic looking at the captain with a frown. In response, Beka pointed to the screen.

“The coordinates are right there, big brother,” she said. “Work out the course for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you, I believe you,” said Ari. “But the Mageworlds . . . damn. Why can’t things be simple for a change?”

Jessan shrugged. “The galaxy hates you?” He turned to Beka. “What do we do now, Captain?”

“Do?” She regarded the rest of them with a bright, challenging gaze. “As far as I’m concerned, Warhammer has an appointment on Darvell. All D’Caer’s done is raise the question of timing. Professor—your opinion?”

“That first things come first, my lady,” said the Entiboran, gentle-voiced as always. “Gentlesir D’Caer can keep indefinitely—my robots are equally proficient as valets and as jailors—but Nivome the Rolny owes your House a debt that is long overdue.”

Ari nodded. “I agree.”

“Don’t worry,” said Beka. “We’ll see that Nivome pays up. But I’ve got a bad feeling about that Mageworlds jump.” She glanced over toward Llannat. “Mistress Hyfid, if anybody in the civilized galaxy knows about the Magelords, it’s an Adept. What do you say?”

Llannat glanced around from the monitor she’d been frowning at while the others talked. “What? Oh, D’Caer.” She shook her head. “D’Caer’s not a Magelord. The smell’s not on him.”

Beka stared at her. “Damn it, we just saw—

“Let me finish, Captain!”

Beka’s eyebrows went up for a moment, and then, to Jessan’s surprise, Ari’s sister chuckled. “Since you put it that way, Mistress . . . go on.”

Llannat nodded, but her eyes had already gone back to the image of Crystal World on the monitor screen. She kept on watching it as she spoke.

“What we just saw, Captain, means that we’ve got native-born citizens of the Republic in direct contact with the Mageworlds.” She lifted her eyes from the screen, and her expression was sober. “Anybody care for a try at reading the future? It shouldn’t take an Adept for this one.”

Jessan felt cold. “Speaking as a Adept,” he said, “how much breathing space do you think the Republic’s got?”

Llannat gave him a bleak smile. “Let me tell you something about seeing the future, Jessan—most of the time it’s about as useful as getting anonymous notes in your mailbox. You want prophecies whistled up to order, go to a fortune-teller or pull slips of paper out of a hat.”

“In other words,” Beka said, “you don’t know.”

The Adept sighed. “Even Master Ransome’s predictions are obscure, Captain, and I’m nowhere near in his league. But I know what the Selvaurs would say.”

“What’s that, Mistress?”

“ ‘Hunt while you can. The weather may change tomorrow.’ ”

“Got you,” said Beka. “That’s it, then. But let’s get D’Caer tucked away first.”

Jessan heard the click of comp keys on the panel next to him as the Professor entered yet another set of commands into the projection room’s control console.

“The gas in Crystal World’s intruder-immobilization systems will take effect soon,” said the Entiboran. “After that, the robots can fetch D’Caer out of the yacht and convey him to the maximum-security cells.”

Ari looked curious. “This place has some of those?”

“Of course,” the Professor said. “One never knows when such things may come in handy.”

“Fine,” said Beka. “You know what’s here, Professor, and what we’re likely to need. How soon can we lift?”

The Professor thought in silence for a moment. “Allowing for dinner and a full night of rest before lift-off—if we start working immediately, Captain, we can lift within a Standard day.”

“Then let’s move, gentles,” said Beka. “We’re hitting Darvell, and our prisoner can sit here until we come home to collect him.”

If we come home, thought Jessan, but he knew better than to say that aloud.


Ari stood in the center of the asteroid base’s well-stocked and up-to-date sickbay, surrounded by the ’Hammer’s first-aid chest, the emergency kit from the Nammerin Medical Station’s aircar, and a collection of sturdy boxes and cartons. Behind him, the door to the docking bay snicked open, and he turned.

His sister entered, dressed in a coverall and spaceboots, and carrying a pocket comp. She hadn’t yet taken the time to get back into her Tarnekep rig, for which Ari felt thankful. Beka was enough of a handful under ordinary circumstances, but wearing the face and affecting the style of her highly unpleasant Mandeynan alter ego made all her natural tendencies even worse.

She stopped just inside the door, and looked at the array of boxes. “Are you planning to pack out the whole sickbay?”

“As much of it as I can,” he said. “I’d take the bone-mender and the healing pod, if I thought the ’Hammer had hookups for them.”

“She’s an armed freighter, not a hospital ship,” said Beka. She glanced about the room again, and shook her head. “Well, you’re the medic.”

“I’ll number the boxes in order of priority,” he promised. “How are things going on your end?”

“The Prof is tuning up the electronic cloaking gear on Defiant now.”

“Mmph,” Ari said, pulling boxes of sprain tape and plain bandages down off the shelf in front of him and making a layer of them in the bottom of the nearest carton. He looked from the loaded shelves to the empty boxes. “I wish I knew just how much cubic was going to be free in the ’Hammer’s hold . . . How did an Entiboran gentleman like the Professor wind up owning a Magebuilt ship?”

His sister punched a code into the comp. “I never asked,” she said. “I figure it’s his own business what he did back in the old days.”

“Even if it included trading with the Mageworlds? That’s treason, you know.”

Beka looked exasperated. “My word, Ari, but you can be stuffy sometimes! He was a confidential agent of House Rosselin for years before the war even started; if he picked up a Magebuilt scoutship it’s probably because he needed one.”

She paused, and her expression changed to something Ari would have pegged as fond tolerance, if he’d thought for a moment that Bee had it in her to be tolerant of anything.

“Besides,” she went on, “the Prof may or may not have been a friend of the Republic’s—if he had to choose between House Rosselin and the rest of the galaxy, I don’t think he’d give the galaxy a second thought—but he’s certainly been a good friend to me.”

Ari frowned. “If he’s such a good friend, why is he letting you go charging off into trouble on Darvell?”

The sickbay doors opened again, and Jessan entered—just in time, it seemed, to catch Ari’s last remark. The Khesatan laughed. “Royalty, my good man, can do whatever it pleases,” he said in his best Sapnish accent, “and it’s not the place of a loyal family retainer to argue. Or so our friend the Professor seems to think.”

“Let it lie, Nyls,” said Beka.

But the look she gave the fair-haired medic wasn’t nearly as chilly as Ari would have expected, knowing just how much his sister hated any reminder of her royal antecedents. House Rosselin had reckoned inheritance in the female line, and all the galaxy knew it. Calling the six-year-old Beka “sweet little Domina” was what had bought Tarveet of Pleyver that garden slug in his dinner salad, and Bee didn’t seem to have mellowed any on the subject since then.

Right now, though, she and Jessan were looking at each other in silence, and Ari was at a loss to interpret either expression. Neither his friend nor his sister appeared inclined to speak first; Ari sighed, coughed to gain Jessan’s attention, and asked, “What brings you in here?”

“The hoversled you sent for,” said Jessan. “It’s outside waiting to get loaded.”

“That’s right, Ari,” said Beka. “Fill as many boxes as you want to. They won’t take up more than a corner of the hold.”

“Thanks,” muttered Ari. He turned to Jessan. “How’s the tune-up going?”

“Like a charm,” said the Khesatan. “We can slip into Darvelline space by the back door and never be noticed.”

“Why all the extra bother?” Ari asked his sister. “Why not just go in as Pride of Mandeyn on a normal run?”

Beka shook her head. “No way we can be the Pride for this trip. What we’ll be doing is nothing at all like the way a merchant does business—especially on Darvell.”

“You’ve been there before?” Ari asked.

“No,” she said. “I never needed to go out of the Republic to find a cargo. But I’ve heard some real horror stories.”

“What kind of horror stories?” Jessan inquired, looking interested. “Blood sacrifices at the dark of the moon? Cannibals dancing in the streets? Carnivorous flora?”

“You’ve seen too many episodes of ‘Spaceways Patrol,’ ” Ari told him. “All right, Bee, enlighten us. What’s Darvell supposed to be like?”

“It’s so calm and law-abiding it’s unnatural,” said Beka. “Everybody’s numbered off as they land, and outside the port compound it’s strictly ‘no spacers allowed.’ You either stay on your ship, or you bunk in one of the government dormitories inside the fence.”

“What about the rest of the world?” he asked.

“Who knows?” Beka said. “Lots of people immigrate to Darvell, and you don’t hear of anybody leaving. But it’s no place for a free-trader to do business. Everything works through a government middleman—no chance to talk to the locals and strike your own bargains—and the port captains and consignment inspectors are supposed to be above reproach.”

“What does that mean?” asked Ari.

Beka looked grim. “Nobody has ever bribed one.”

Ari thought about that for a while. “You’re right,” he said finally. “That does sound frightening.”


Dinner that night turned out to be a silent and edgy affair. Ari didn’t find lack of appetite a problem—not after hours of hard work punctuated only by short breaks for cha’a and sandwiches—but he still excused himself from the table as soon as he could.

Nobody else was showing any tendency to linger over dessert either, which helped. He didn’t get any arguments when he made his good-nights to the rest of the ’Hammer’s crew and went back to his room. It wasn’t until he’d pulled the sheet up over him and kneaded the pillow into an acceptable state of yieldingness that he realized he’d started reverting to the hunting lessons of his adolescence on Maraghai.

*Sleep well, youngling,* Ferrdacorr had told him again and again. *Once you’re on the blood trail, you can’t stop because you’re tired.*

Yawning, Ari wondered what his father’s old friend would have said about this particular hunt. He decided that the Selvaur would probably have approved. The Master of Darvell—powerful, cunning, and a predator in his own right—made a quarry worthy of anyone’s hunting. And the Lords of the Forest didn’t think much of the thin-skins’ habit of handing over the dirty work to paid help like Security and the Space Force.

At least this time, thought Ari, I get to carry a blaster.

On the Long Hunt, the solitary expedition that by Selvaur tradition had made him into a full adult member of the clan, things had been different. One by one, on Midsummer Night, he and his agemates had set out from the river-valley settlement, heading into the mountains to stalk the carnivores of the high slopes. Great predators like the cliffdragon, the darkstalker, and the muscular, lean-bodied sigrikka were the only beasts on Maraghai that could match the strength and ferocity of a full-grown Selvaur. Taking such a prey by strength and skill alone would prove that the blood of the Forest Lords had not run thin.

Therefore, as custom decreed, the youths had gone into the mountains unarmed. Some of the Old Ones had proposed that Ari be allowed a hunting knife, to make up for the lack of serviceable teeth and claws, but Ferrdacorr had turned down the concession. If his friend Jos Metadi’s thin-skinned cub wanted to come into the clan, let him do it according to the rules.

By their own rights, though, neither Ferrda nor the Old Ones had been unreasonable. Since it wasn’t Ari’s fault that he’d been born without a thick scaly hide, they hadn’t forbidden warm clothing and good stout boots. By the third fruitless week of his hunt, he was feeling grateful for even that small indulgence. Selvaur youths had gotten trapped in the high ranges by the coming of winter before, and while most of them lived through the experience to make their hunt again, even a Selvaur could freeze if the weather got cold enough.

If I do have to winter over in the mountains, Ari thought, sitting on a pile of sun-warmed rocks that gave a good view of the deep, tree-filled valley below him, at least I’ll have a jacket between me and the cold until something better doesn’t run fast enough.

He took a bite of his breakfast—a cliffmouse that had failed to dodge a thrown rock—and pondered future courses of action while he chewed. Suppose you do have to winter over? You haven’t had any trouble keeping yourself fed so far—it’s only the big ones that seem to have taken themselves someplace else. Find yourself a snug little cave somewhere, get a steady fire going . . . you could probably make it through until spring.

He tore off another mouthful of the uncooked meat. Only one problem. If you don’t come back before the snow falls, Ferrda’s going to feel honor-bound to let Mother and Father know about it . . . and Father might be willing to let things ride until the thaw, but Mother never would. Thered be rescue teams all over the place before you could sneeze, and Ferrda would never live it down.

He couldn’t cut his hunt short and go back empty-handed, for the same reason. But in three weeks on this side of the mountains he hadn’t turned up track or sign of anything larger than a rock hog, and it was beginning to look like he might have to change his hunting grounds. If another cub had been hunting the same range, the two of them together might well have driven off all the other predators.

So if I do go over the mountains, I’d better head out today so I’ll have a fighting chance of finding something and getting back home before

A distant cry, borne up to him on the wind from the valley below, stopped him in midthought. He knew that sound, high-pitched and angry like a ripsaw chewing through green wood. Somewhere down among those trees, a sigrikka had finished a successful stalk.

Maybe I could—he began to think, but then more noises came up from below: a Selvaur’s fighting roar, cut off short, and once again that ripsaw yowl.

Ari dropped the bloody remains of his breakfast and started downhill into the valley. One of the Forest Lords was in deep trouble, and not even the Long Hunt took precedence over that.

He found the injured Selvaur more by luck than anything else, luck and the sharp hearing that let him make a good guess at the direction from which the sounds had come. Once he reached the valley floor, though, smell and not sound guided him the rest of the way. Compared to a Forest Lord he had no sense of smell at all, but even a thin-skin’s nose was keen enough to pick up the sweet, heavy scent of hot blood on the clean mountain air.

Moving as fast as he could without making a racket that would arouse the whole forest, Ari followed the smell upwind, his ears straining for any sound that might help him in the search. When he heard one, he didn’t like it.

I’ve never heard a grown Selvaur whimpering like that, he thought moving faster. Only sick little ones . . . the babies and the younglings. And when they cry that way, you don’t waste time sending for a medic, you put them in the settlement aircar and go looking for one.

He started running, and the hell with the noise. The smell of blood filled his nostrils, and he knew he was nearly there. Another two strides, and he almost tripped over Issgrillikk—his agemate, friend, and foster-cousin—twisted around himself in pain at the base of one of the Great Trees, his claws gouging up the rough, grey-brown bark and tearing long white streaks into the inner wood.

“Issgrillikk!” Ari dropped down to his knees at the foot of the tree, and called to his cousin again. “Issgrillikk!”

He choked on the name as he saw how the sigrikka had laid his agemate open from crotch to breastbone with a single slashing blow, leaving the contents of the body cavity to spill out onto the moss-covered ground and taint the air all around with the smell of death. It didn’t even finish the kill, thought Ari. It had all the time in the world to do it, and it didnt even bother.

“Issgrillikk!” he called again. This time, the pain-clouded eyes showed recognition, and his cousin said *Ari Rosselin-Metadi* in a feeble growl.

It was like a Selvaur, to bring out his full formal name at a time like this; Ari swallowed a laugh that was mostly a sob and said, *What happened, Issgrillikk?*

*I was tracking . . . sigrikka. Didn’t know . . . it was tracking me. I never even . . .  smelled it com—nnnghrrr!* The sentence ended in a wordless cry of pain, as Issgril-likk’s claws dug deep furrows into the wood of the tree. When the spasm ended, Issgrillikk looked at him again. *Ari . . . I need . . . *

The Selvaur’s voice failed him then, but his eyes still held Ari’s, and Ferrdacorr’s thin-skinned fosterling knew what his cousin and agemate required of him.

Even if I could carry him as far as the settlements, Ari thought helplessly, he’d die before we got there. He’s dying nowbut it’s too slow. The rock hogs don’t care whether or not their food is still breathing, as long as it doesn’t fight.

He looked down at his hands—big, heavy hands, clenched so hard that under the dirt of three weeks’ hunting the knuckles showed white. Strong hands, for a thin-skin.

At his knees, Issgrillikk whimpered in pain, as he had done before his agemate showed up and pride had made him stop. Even pride wasn’t helping now. Ari heard the sound and swallowed hard.

*Forgive me, cousin,* he said, and struck with all his strength.

Ferrdacorr had taught his foster-child thoroughly and well. One blow was all it took, and then Ari pressed his forehead against the rough bark of the Great Tree, and cried like an unblooded child. But even while he wept, some part of his mind he hadn’t known existed kept asking why a hunting beast would have left a wounded prey alive when there was ample time to finish off the kill.

When a darkstalker goes rogue and begins attacking the settlements, the Forest Lords stake out a fanghorn to draw it in . . . the way Issgrillikk drew you in . . . live bait to trap a predator hunting in another’s range . . . 

His brother Owen would have said that he took his warning from the currents of power that held the universe together. But Owen didn’t need to hear the padding of heavy paws on soft loam, or to smell the meat-eater scent as the wind shifted—and Ari knew better than to claim a sensitivity he didn’t possess. Only Ferrdacorr’s training and his own sharp ears kept him from following down the road Issgrillikk had already taken. He spun around and set his back to the tree, just as the sigrikka roared and began its charge.

Ari knew better than to run; the sigrikka had hunted running animals all its life. His only chance lay in letting the predator close in, and then keeping out of the way of those sharp, gut-slashing claws long enough to make his own kill. A fighting cry tore its way out of his throat, and he pushed himself away from the Great Tree to meet the sigrikka’s charge.

The sigrikka slammed into him like a pressor beam coming on at full power, and the weight and momentum of the charging animal pushed him backward. He let himself topple over, wrapping his legs around the sigrikka’s body and locking his ankles tight as he fell, so that his belly was pressed against the beast’s when they hit the ground.

Over and over they rolled on the bloodstained earth, gripped together by the pressure of Ari’s legs. The sigrikka’s claws raked at his back and ribs, shredded his clothing and lacerated the flesh beneath. Hot amber eyes glared into his face, and long teeth flashed as the sigrikka made a try for his throat.

He snarled like an animal himself. *Try to rip me up, will you? We’ll see about that!*

He jammed his left forearm sideways into the predator’s gaping mouth, and pressed back. Powerful jaws closed, and the sigrikka’s teeth pierced his leather jacket and sank into the muscle beneath like so many white-hot knives.

Enraged by the pain, he snarled again. *Bite me, will you? Stalk my cousin and use him for bait, will you? No more!*

He braced his right arm against the back of the sigrikka’s neck and pushed hard into it with his left, forcing the animal’s head up and backward. The sigrikka tried to jerk free, but found itself trapped by its own teeth, set deep in the muscle of Ari’s forearm. Ari gritted his teeth on renewed pain as the sigrikka fought to tear itself loose, and failed.

*Now—you pay—for Issgrillikk!* he choked out, and put all the strength of his broad shoulders into a relentless pressure that levered the sigrikka’s head further and further back, until a snapping sound came from inside the beast’s neck, and its muscular body twitched and then lay still.



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