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v. warhammer: hyperspace transit to cracanth; nammerin: namport

THE PASSENGER showed up at first light the next morning. He was tall for a Raametan, and neatly dressed in clothes no more than three or four years out of fashion on the other side of the Net. He’d brought along a leather carrybag and a battered metal footlocker, but no other luggage.

Jessan met him at the foot of Warhammer’s ramp. “I take it you’re the gentlesir who’s riding with us to Cracanth?”

“That’s right,” the man said. “Vorgent Elimax. Who’re you?”

The passenger’s Galcenian wasn’t up to educated standards—far less the equal of the captain’s elegant native-born speech—but Jessan felt certain Elimax had learned it somewhere within the boundaries of the Republic. The thought did not rouse in him any disposition to be trusting.

“People call me Doc,” he said. “Come along and I’ll show you to your cabin.”

Jessan waited until Elimax had picked up the carrybag and the footlocker, then turned and started up the ramp without waiting to see if the man followed. He led the way to the ’Hammer’s passenger quarters—actually one of the unused compartments in crew berthing—and opened the door with a touch on the lockplate.

“Here you are,” he said. “The bunk doubles as an acceleration couch. Stow your gear in the compartment over there, then strap yourself in and stay strapped until we make the jump to hyperspace. After that you can unstrap and make yourself at home.”

Elimax looked at the bare grey walls of the compartment. “How long will it take to get to Cracanth?”

“Long enough for you to get tired of the trip,” Jessan told him. “You have a taper in the bulkhead over there, and a holoset with a bunch of canned entertainment vids. The head’s behind that door. Don’t use it unless the gravity’s on.”

“What about meals?”

“I’ll bring you a tray from the galley when it’s time.”

Elimax frowned. “Don’t I get to look around the ship?”

“No,” Jessan said. “This is a working freighter, and we’re not set up to carry passengers. If we let you run around loose, you might do something stupid like falling into the hyperspace engines by mistake. Then you’d be dead, and the captain would be angry because he’d have to suit up and scrub out the mess.”


Klea woke, sweating, in a lightless room.

This is all wrong. It shouldn’t be so dark.

She sat up in bed. The aqua vitae weighed her down, swaddling her like a heavy blanket. She still couldn’t see anything.

My eyes are open. I think.

She brought a hand up to her face, moving slowly under the pull of the aqua vitae, and touched her eyelids.

Open. I’m blind.

A kind of sluggish panic rose up in her at the thought. She reached out for the aqua vitae on her bedside table.

The bottle wasn’t there. Neither was the table, nor—her groping fingers told her—the bed itself. She didn’t know what she was sitting on, except that it was hard and level; or where she was, except that it was dark.

Maybe I’ve already gone crazy. Maybe this is what crazy looks like once you get there.

Off in the distance, or at least in what felt like the distance, a light flicked on and began to burn with a steady glow. Relief flooded through her, and she sat for a while just watching. Gradually she became aware of sound in the darkness, a murmur of voices somewhere out there with the light.

She stood up and walked toward the sound. The light grew closer and became a cool whiteness, suffusing an area where dark, hooded figures gathered in a circle. The voices came from them, hushed words passing back and forth in a language she didn’t understand.

At first she thought that the dark ones had no features—only a black opening under their hoods. Then she saw that what she had believed empty was in fact a mask, a featureless visage molded from hard black plastic. In the circle of watchers, no one would ever need to recognize a neighbor’s face.

Watchers . . . why do I think they’re watching something when they can’t even see me?

As if in response to her thought, the black-robed circle seemed to expand and take her in so that she stood with them, seeing what they saw themselves: in the open space at the center of the circle two of the masked ones fought one another, gripping short black staves in their gloved hands. The air shone around them like an aurora, in flares and surges of many-colored light that somehow combined to make the clear white glow she had seen from far away.

Klea knew, somehow, that the two who fought had been doing so for a long time. No anger came from them, only mingled feelings of exhaustion and pain. Yet she knew that this fight would continue until one of them was dead.

Where am I? she thought. What is this?

As soon as her mind framed the words, she realized that the question was a mistake. The ones in the circle hadn’t noticed her before; all their attention had been given to the two who struggled so wearily. But they had marked her now; the low murmur of voices rose to a strident, angry babble, and the masked and hooded figures began closing in around her.

“No!” she cried out in the darkness. “No—stop! I have to get out!”

The hooded figures pressed closer. Then, abruptly, they were gone, all but one who stood with her in silence, washed by a lingering pale remnant of the circle of light.

She knew him, she knew she knew him. She reached out a hand and pulled the mask from his face.

Hazel eyes looked back at her. It was the young man from the grocery store on the corner. Her fingers loosened on the mask, and it fell from her hand without a sound.

She wet her lips. “Where are you . . . ?”

He shook his head violently. “There’s no time. Run. Save yourself. I’ll try to keep them from getting you.”

Without warning the colored lights were back again, and the man from the grocery was gone. Only the faceless ones remained, watching her from eyes hidden beneath dark masks. In silence they moved closer, tightening the circle around her.

I told you once already: go!

The voiceless shout came out of nowhere, but it had the snap of command to it. She turned and ran.

The masked ones followed. She lengthened her stride, but it was like running in a nightmare—she couldn’t get away, and the blackrobes were gaining on her. The nearest one grabbed her arm, and she awoke.


In the dark interior of the captain’s cabin Beka lay half-asleep, listening to the ship around her. Warhammer had jumped into hyper shortly after leaving Gefalon Spaceport at local dawn, and the deep roaring of the realspace engines had been replaced by the steady, almost-inaudible hum of the hyperdrive. The ventilation system sighed gently, and the myriad electronic devices that kept the ’Hammer functioning underlaid everything with their own subliminal background music.

Even more than the soft, regular breathing of Nyls Jessan, lying deep asleep beside her, the sound of Warhammer in undisturbed hyperspace transit gave Beka a feeling of security. Dirtside troubles couldn’t touch you in hyperspace; even other starships had to catch you before you jumped or wait until you came out again. “In hyper, the only problems you’ve got are the ones you bring along with you”—her father had told her that years ago, when she was still a gawky adolescent barely big enough to reach all the controls on the ’Hammer’s main panel.

I didn’t know what he meant back then. But I do now.

It was one of those problems that kept her from relaxing completely, even in sleep. The passenger from Raamet had looked like a good deal when he showed up in the off-port diner: a lot less mass than a regular cargo, in return for a lot more cash. He probably was a good deal, too. Even Mageworlders—if Elimax really was a Mageworlder, which Jessan claimed to doubt—could have legitimate reasons for traveling between planets.

Just the same, she thought as she drifted off, there’s a stranger on my ship. And this isn’t the time to be careless.

The beeping of an alarm brought her back awake in an instant. She sat up and saw a telltale flashing orange on the far bulkhead.

“Damn,” she muttered. She flung the sheet aside and strode across the cabin to press the security plate next to the telltale. A section of the bulkhead slid aside to reveal an array of monitor readouts, a duplicate of the “ship’s status” display in the ’Hammer’s cockpit.

Most of the readouts showed a steady, normal green. One section, however, was bright orange—“Damn,” she said again.

“What’s up?” said Jessan from the bunk behind her.

“Better get dressed,” she told him. “There’s non-atmospheric gas in the air over in crew berthing. And somebody down there is fiddling with the lock on the door.”

“The passenger,” Jessan said. “Shall we go tell him this isn’t going to work?”

“Why disillusion him? Did you bring the Prof’s pocket holoprojector along on this trip?”

“It’s right here in the toys-and-entertainment drawer.”

“Get it out. When our passenger shows up, we’ll be ready.”


Klea lay shaking in bed for a moment, amid a tangle of sweaty sheets. Her left arm was twisted and caught in a fold of the cloth. Outside the window of her apartment, the late-afternoon sky was darkening on toward night. Soon it would be time for her to go to work.

The man in the store had been right, she concluded wearily. The aqua vitae hadn’t helped, and she might as well not have slept at all. She got up, turned on the heat under a saucepan of water on the stove, and went to take her shower.

In the tiny bath cubicle, she soaped and lathered herself well, making her body clean before the evening’s work. The hot water washed the dried sweat of her nightmare away along with the soapsuds. When she was done, she turned off the water and stretched out an arm for her towel.

The movement brought a twinge of pain; her left arm was sore where she’d dreamed that one of the black-robes had grabbed her. I must have twisted it in the sheet, she thought.

She looked at her forearm, small-boned and narrow-wristed, with the pale scars of long-ago cuts across the flesh where the bangle bracelets usually lay. Yes, she had a bruise coming, all right. The purple blotches were already showing up on her skin like so many fingerprints, and she was going to have to wear a long-sleeved blouse tonight. No sense in giving Freling’s customers the idea she liked getting beaten up—enough of them thought of that all on their own.

When she came out of the shower, the water in the saucepan was hot. She made a cup of ghil, then dumped a handful of water-grain into the steaming cup to soak while she finished dressing. Ghil-and-porridge was farmer food, but it was nourishing and cheap, and she’d grown up on it.

After she was dressed, she ate breakfast, then washed out the cup and saucepan in the sink. She was putting the dishes in the rack to drain when she staggered suddenly under the weight of a dreadful apprehension—a formless, heavy darkness that came pouring down on her like water out of a bucket.

 . . . help . . . lost . . . pain . . . 

She gripped the edge of the sink and willed the alien feelings to go away. She didn’t know who she was eavesdropping on—in this part of Namport, almost anybody could be that miserable without even trying—but the voices and feelings were starting earlier than usual. That meant tonight was going to get bad.

Damn, she thought. I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.

She looked back at her bedside table. There was still some aqua vitae left in the bottle.

I’ve never had a drink before going to work before.

She laughed under her breath, a harsh sound without humor. You’ve never gone crazy before, either. Do you feel like trying?

“Not tonight,” she muttered. She pulled out the stopper and put the bottle to her mouth, taking a long swallow, and then another. “Not if I can help it.”

By the time the aqua vitae was gone, the darkness had subsided. She put aside the empty bottle and walked out of the apartment, heading down the stairs and off toward Freling’s Bar. The last rays of sunlight were shining outside, and high above Namport the bright star of a ship in low orbit glittered. A ship in orbit meant that portside would be jumping.

The road to the spaceport lay just ahead. Fast money, Klea thought wistfully. Easy. Nobody just off a ship is going to care whether you’re seeing things or not.

“No.”

She turned her back on the port and walked as fast as she could in the other direction, without caring where her footsteps took her. She knew the route to Freling’s Bar so well by now that she could walk it in her sleep, anyway—she almost had, more than once.

This time, in her haste to leave the port district behind her, she must have taken a wrong turning. By the time she noticed her surroundings again, she had come to a part of town that she didn’t recognize. The streets here were narrow and shadowy, mere alleyways crowded between tall buildings that could have been warehouses or manufactories or even offices for all Klea could tell; the grime-smeared names and logos painted on their looming walls gave her no clue. All of them were dark-windowed and deserted.

Klea begun to feel afraid, and this time she was sure it was her own emotion, not someone else’s. She could get her throat cut in one of these alleys, and nobody would know until tomorrow morning when people started showing up for work. She cast a nervous glance down the nearest side street, half-expecting to see the smiler with the knife already waiting.

Instead, and worse, she saw the body of a man, lying on his back in the mud.

Let him lie there, she told herself. He’s probably just another drunk.

But she hadn’t seen any bars in this district, or even a store where a down-and-outer might get enough cheap booze to put himself out for the night. She turned and headed down the alley toward where the man was lying.

When she reached him, a tremor of shock ran through her. This was no derelict, or even an unknown victim of the violence she had feared for herself. It was the young man who had spoken to her in the corner grocery—and once again in the midst of her nightmare—now sprawled unmoving at her feet, his tawny hair matted and slick with blood.

Klea squatted beside him, balancing awkwardly on the spindly heels of her working shoes to keep the mud from soaking the hem of her dress. From this close up, she could see his chest rising and falling under the beige coverall. He was still alive, but he looked like he needed serious help.

She glanced over her shoulder and frowned. She couldn’t even see the mouth of the alley. Wait a minute . . . how did I spot him from where I was standing? That big garbage bin is in the way.

You’re seeing things these days, remember? So this time you saw something that turned out to be real.

“Hang on,” she whispered. “Just hang on. I’ll call Security and they’ll take care of you.”

The man’s eyes snapped open. Fever-bright, they glittered in the reflected light from the city around them and the last rays of sunlight before full dark. “No! No Security.”

He’d raised his head a bit in his agitation; now he let it fall back and closed his eyes. “No Security,” he said again, his voice barely audible. “Just take me home and I’ll be all right. Please.”

“If you say so. Where exactly do you live?”

There was no answer.

Damn, thought Klea. Now what do I do?

It wasn’t any of her business. She should just call Security and walk on.

But he was in my nightmare, trying to help me . . . He said in the store that he could help me . . . 

It was too confusing. The aqua vitae she’d drunk earlier was fuzzing up her brain, making it hard to decide things. And Freling would be wondering where she was by now.

“Hell with Freling,” she muttered, put an arm under the man’s shoulders, and hauled him to his feet.

He was light, and the years on the farm had left her stronger than she looked. Bracing him on her shoulder and hip, she guided him to the street, then started walking him back to her apartment. She didn’t need to work tonight. The rent was paid to the end of the week.


In the captain’s cabin aboard Warhammer, everything was quiet. A metallic clink came from outside the vacuum-tight door. The “sealed” light above the lintel cycled from red to green, and the door slid open.

Another moment, and Vorgent Elimax slipped through the open door in a quick sidestep. The low lights of the chronometers and readouts reflected from the respirator he wore over his nose and mouth. Elimax looked for a moment at the two people asleep on the bed: Doc on his back, breathing softly, and Tarnekep Portree lying stretched out beside him, the left side of the captain’s face resting on the tall Khesatan’s shoulder, and one arm flung across his copilot’s chest.

Elimax raised his blaster. The ugly snarl of the weapon filled the cramped space as he sent two high-power beams on tight focus into the heads of the sleepers.

In the silence that followed, another sound erupted—the buzz of a single-shot needler, fired at close range. Elimax crumpled forward; his blaster fell to the deck.

Beka stepped out of the shadowed corner where she’d stood watching, and switched off the miniature holoprojector clipped to the bulkhead. The sleeping images on the bunk—unchanged in spite of the blaster bolts that had charred the pillows beneath them—winked out and left only rumpled sheets behind. She slipped the holoprojector back into the cabin’s tiny entertainment locker, and brought the lights up to full.

“A useful device, that projector,” commented Jessan from the other side of the cabin. As he spoke, he pocketed the single-shot needler that had brought down Vorgent Elimax. “And better than anything I’ve seen on the regular market. I’m surprised the Professor never tried to sell it anywhere.”

“He didn’t need the money,” said Beka. She bent over Elimax’s body, checking the unconscious passenger for concealed weapons and stripping off his respirator. “He put together that sort of thing just for fun. Elimax, on the other hand—I wonder what he was after. Was he an independent piece of lowlife trying to get a ship of his own any way that he could, or was he working for someone else?”

“We could always ask him when he wakes up.”

“I like that idea,” Beka said. She started to smile. “I like that idea a lot.”

Jessan looked down at Elimax and his mouth tightened. “Better move him out of the cabin, then. Things could get messy before we’re done.”

By the time they had the passenger bound hand and foot to a chair in the ’Hammer’s common room, he was already starting to twitch. Jessan pulled the last strap tight and stepped back.

“You keep an eye on him,” he said. “I’ll go get the Professor’s question-and-answer kit.”

“Nyls—wait.” She caught him by the wrist as he turned to go. “If you don’t want to do it, I can always ask the questions myself.”

“The old-fashioned way?” Jessan shook his head. “That’s no good. We need answers we can trust.”

“If you’re certain.”

“It’s your brother Ari who doesn’t like using chemicals,” Jessan said. “Not me.”

“Good.” She let her hand fall back to her side. “Go get whatever you need.”

Jessan left. Beka watched Elimax mumbling and jerking against the restraints as he came up through the final stages of the needler’s effect. By the time his eyes were open and fully aware, she had drawn the double-edged dagger from its sheath up her sleeve and was testing its point against the pad of her index finger. A slight tilt of her wrist, and the light from the overhead glow-panel glanced off the blade directly into Elimax’s face.

He flinched. Beka smiled down at him.

“Hello, Elimax,” she said. “Somebody should have told you that the ventilation systems on this ship aren’t cross-connected any more.”

“But you’re dead—I saw—”

“Don’t believe everything you see,” Jessan said as he came back into the common room. He carried a black metal case in one hand. “An important lesson, but one I fear you’re learning a little bit too late.”

He took a position at the common-room table just out of Elimax’s field of view, and set the case down within easy reach. “Are you ready, Captain?”

“Absolutely,” Beka said.

She set the point of her knife under Elimax’s chin and put enough pressure behind it to dimple the skin and force his head up against the back of the chair.

“My friend,” she said, “it’s like this. You tried to kill me, and I intend to find out why.”

Elimax attempted to shake his head, and stopped the movement when she pressed in harder with the tip of the knife. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t believe you,” Beka told him. “I believe my monitoring systems, and they tell me it was Sonoxate gas you released into the ventilation system. Sonoxate’s a proprietary brand—Nine Worlds Chemical makes it for dirtside Security forces—and not only is it expensive, it’s sold exclusively on the Republic side of the Net.”

She pulled the knife away and pointed at Elimax with it, moving the blade gently back and forth at the eye level of the bound man.

“And then there’s your lockpick,” she went on. “Already set up to work with the standard cipher keys for a Libra-class freighter. It was your good luck that the door mechanisms are about the only things on this ship I haven’t modified. But I’m afraid your luck wasn’t quite good enough, because that lockpick tells me you weren’t waiting for just any ship to turn up in Gefalon Spaceport. You were waiting for mine.”

Free of the knife’s pressure, Elimax shook his head violently. His voice was a hoarse croak. “No!”

“Yes,” said Beka. “Somebody hired you, and I intend to find out who. Now, I’d be perfectly happy to work on you myself until you’re ready to tell me things—but Doc, here, doesn’t care for that idea. He says he’s got some chemicals that’ll do the same thing, only faster and with less blood to clean up afterward. I want to see if he’s right.”

She looked over at Jessan. “Okay, Doc. He’s all yours.”

Jessan opened the black box. The click of the latch was sharp and distinct in the silence. Elimax strained his head sideways, trying in vain to see what Jessan was doing. His eyes were wide and dark with panic, and his breath came in ragged, choking gasps.

Then Elimax screamed. The scream ended in an ugly ripping noise like nothing Beka had ever heard before, and a fountain of red burst out through the front of his chest, soaking his shirt and running down into a puddle at his feet.

Beka swallowed hard. “What the hell did he do?” she demanded hoarsely.

“Blew his own heart out,” said Jessan. “And no, I don’t know how he did it.”

“Damn. I wanted him alive.”

“We’ve still got six minutes of brain function left,” Jessan told her. His hands were already moving as he spoke, pulling more items out of the black box—items she didn’t recognize but didn’t like the look of at all—and fastening them to the dead man’s head and throat. “Whatever questions you have, start asking them now. You won’t have a second chance.”



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