Inherit the Stars (32 page)

“Redryll? Hold me. Not like Kivita. Redryll, Redryll,” Bredine murmured as her bony frame managed to aid him from the corridor and into the airlock bay.

Inside it, a dozen pirates were boarding a ship Sar had seen too much of late:
Fanged Pauper
.

Luccan's Wish
trembled as gravity decreased. The pirates tugged down several floating prisoners while ushering them toward the airlock. One prisoner had lovely red-blond hair. Straight, with a Dirr braid on the right temple.

“Kivita!” Sar shouted. All his wounds lost their pain, and he ran forward. Their past together now seemed a dream, and their future a spacer's tale without an ending.

Bredine pulled him back around the corner as two beams sliced through the metal. The heat from it warmed his face, but Sar wriggled free and aimed both pistols. Pirates kept their beam rifles trained on him while Cheseia, Rhii, Basheev, and Navon were shoved toward the airlock. Kivita kicked and struggled, her hands bound.

“Sar! Sar, I have—” Her screams sounded tinny through her helmet's exterior speaker, until a pirate crushed it with a rifle butt. Kivita mouthed words to him, but he couldn't make them out.

More beam shots kept Sar at bay as the pirates shoved Kivita, Navon, and Cheseia into
Fanged Pauper
. Shekelor pushed Rhii and Basheev aside as Sar rolled from behind the corner and fired twice. A pirate just inside the airlock clutched her chest and staggered back into the airlock bay. Another collapsed on his knees, his features red pulp.

The airlock slid shut, and
Fanged Pauper
disengaged itself from
Luccan's Wish
.

Sar cried out in rage and despair. He loved her; he needed her. These people needed her—

The sounds of more Inheritor soldiers nearing the airlock bay echoed in the corridor.

As
Fanged Pauper
drifted from the airlock, Kivita cursed and shouted. She struggled with the pirate holding her, but his grip was like steel bands around her arms. Sar had been in there. He'd come for her again—beyond all hope, he'd come . . .

Shekelor chuckled and gestured out the viewport. Kivita's heart jumped and her body went limp.

Through the viewport,
Aldaar
listed to starboard. Gaping holes covered its hull. Just within eyesight, a huge Inheritor battleship fired a kinetic barrage at the Aldaakian cruiser. Kivita's heart sank into her stomach.

A fine data stream snapped into Kivita's thoughts, all of it in Aldaakian code.
Aldaar
's crew complement, its mission around Vstrunn, Seul's genetic matrix, the Pediatric Ward . . . and a name linked to that matrix: Taeu Jaah. All of it transmitted by Commander Baan Vuul.

“Her daughter,” Kivita breathed.

The salvo slammed into
Aldaar
, gutting the cruiser. Kivita choked as the data stream ended. All of
Aldaar
's viewports flashed once; then the vessel split apart. The force of decompression flung albino bodies, cryopods, and countless other items into space. Several Aldaakian
shuttles darted away, but debris smacked into one, crushing it. Another exploded, struck by a sabot round.

Kivita wanted to slap the smile off Shekelor's face. Seul's friends and comrades, her ship . . . all claimed by the cold darkness.

“Bastard.” She glowered at Shekelor.

Navon nudged Kivita and nodded out to port. She finally recognized the battleship:
Arcuri's Glory
, flagship of Rector Thev. It veered away from the destroyed cruiser. Several rents had been cut into its 2,500-foot-long hull. Red-uniformed bodies drifted from it toward the gas giant.

Whistles, screams, and gibberish invaded her thoughts. Kivita gasped and focused her will, trying to close her mind. It was the same signal she'd received minutes ago while on
Luccan's Wish
.

“Sense something?” Shekelor smirked, then entered the cockpit and spoke with his pilot.

She shared a look with Navon as something massive filled the viewport.

A Sarrhdtuu battleship.

The vessel hovered in the void, a gray-green sentinel of death. It measured at least ten thousand feet in length, superseded in size by only Vim derelicts. Kivita swallowed as
Fanged Pauper
flew toward it. She'd been on a Sarrhdtuu ship once, after her and Sar's mission to Xeh's Crown. Then they'd visited an airlock bay and nothing else. This time she shivered at what she might see.

Port side,
Luccan's Wish
neared the gas giant's upper atmosphere, while
Frevyx
hovered near Airlock Eight. A jolt shot through her heart: someone had piloted the trawler away prior to Sar calling her name in the airlock bay. Hot, maddened hope rose in her.

Cheseia squeezed Kivita's hand for a brief moment.

“I see it, too,” Navon whispered. A pirate smacked him with a rifle butt, and he fell silent.

Shekelor exited the cockpit and approached Kivita. In contrast to the empty seats she'd seen on Umiracan,
Fanged Pauper
now held dozens of pirates in dark green carapace armor. All of them had green-rigged skin, and few possessed coils or purple-slotted eyes. As one unit, they parted before Shekelor like wheat before a tread harvester. He measured her with his brown-and-purple stare.

“The Sarrhdtuu will turn this Cradle over to me once you perform your task,” Shekelor said. “Yet I admire you for resisting them, Kivita. A woman of strength. Sar must not have realized what he had.” One of his coils rubbed her faceplate. “Unfortunately for you, I do.”

“Yeah? Then you'll just be their slave afterward.”

“Ah, but I am not a threat to their designs. You are.” Shekelor smiled.

Navon shook his head. “There is nothing dangerous about knowledge, only those who keep it from others. Once you are of no use to them, they will destroy you, Shekelor.”

“You both disappoint me. I know you two possess great knowledge, maybe even a dash of wisdom. Sages in your own right, as it were. You assume the Sarrhdtuu will remain in the Cetturo Arm after this? How wrong you are.” Shekelor smiled wider. “Yet you are correct about the Sarrhdtuu's penchant for treachery. That is why I have prepared my own defenses.”

Shekelor nodded to two pirates, who turned and opened a storage locker. A tall female Ascali bustled out from it, into their arms. Attired in a translucent
gown and veil, the Ascali resembled Cheseia in every detail: dark, silky mane, red-brown eyes. The same beautiful face and sinuous, athletic build.

“Zhara,” Kivita breathed.

The sisters gaped at each other. Cheseia rushed forward, and four burly pirates had to restrain her. Zhara hung her head, muscles flexing in vain.

Cheseia glared at Shekelor. “What do you maliciously plan to do with us?” Raw, unrestrained violence lurked in her stance, her voice. Zhara looked up, eyes full of love and regret for her twin. Kivita's heart went out to them both.

“The Sarrhdtuu have a, shall we say, aversion to certain Ascali characteristics,” Shekelor replied. “Once we are aboard Zhhl's ship and I mention the word ‘Sygma,' you are both to sing in a higher register. Refuse, and one of you shall die. Cooperate, and you might live. I have nothing to gain from the death of any of you.” Shekelor glanced out the viewport with a faraway gaze.

An odd look passed between the Ascali twins. Great. What did they know that Kivita didn't?

And yet Kivita knew Shekelor suffered inside. But why? What would bring him to such cruelties, drive him across the cosmos to capture her?

The teenager's portrait in Shekelor's fortress on Umiracan. That had to be it.

“What happened to your son?” she asked in a neutral tone.

Shekelor shot her a look of unabashed hatred. His muscular body flexed so much, his joints popped audibly. “Whatever Redryll may have told you, he is wrong.”

“Then you tell me,” Kivita said.

“My son fought alongside me years ago, against the
Inheritors on Bellerion. Byelor ambushed an Inheritor platoon on his own; he would not wait for me. When I found him . . .” He sucked in a breath. “I refused to bury him. I placed his body in cryostasis.”

“He is on that Sarrhdtuu ship, isn't he?” Navon said. “Augmented by their technology as payment to you.”

“Yeah, and what is this ship called?” Kivita said.

The smirk returned to Shekelor's olive features as he pointed to the bulge in Kivita's envirosuit where the Juxj Star rested in her pouch.

“Zhhl's ship is called
Juxj
.” Shekelor strutted back to the cockpit.

It finally dawned on Kivita. The Juxj Star: a datacore planted by the Sarrhdtuu in preparation for this event. As her mother had sent Kivita into hiding, so the Sarrhdtuu had readied themselves for a reply to the ancient Vim signal.

A deep anger stirred in Kivita as she continued assembling the data in her brain. Her transmission would reach hundreds of ships, spaceports, and outposts. One way or another, she'd achieve the ultimate goal of the Thede organization: spreading knowledge for the freedom of all. There was no way they could stop her. Even if they killed her, her last thought would still be sent out.

Kivita shivered. If they killed her? She'd never thought about dying before, not really. There'd be no flying away in
Terredyn Narbas
. No Sar Redryll saving her.

Through the viewport,
Juxj
's hangar bay yawned open. Unlike on human ships, no running lights or landing indicators aided
Fanged Pauper
inside.

A minor gravity flux made Kivita's stomach jump, and the pilot dimmed the overhead lamps. Diffuse gray light filtered through the viewport from the Sarrhdtuu
hangar. The hatch sealed behind them, and
Fanged Pauper
touched down on a triangular landing platform. The pylons sank into the hangar floor a few inches.

“Unbind the humans,” Shekelor said. “Gag the two Ascali, but not too tightly.”

Pirates removed Kivita and Navon's flexi bonds, while two others placed medical tape over Cheseia and Zhara's mouths. The airlock slid open, and Shekelor herded them all out.

Kivita, at a look from Navon, turned off her air supply and opened her helmet vents. The hangar's mildewed air had a harsh lubricant taste. Gravity remained normal, and a human-friendly atmosphere allowed them to breathe, but the humid temperature made her sweat inside her suit.

Knobby protrusions and fleshlike stalk growths covered the walls. The floor was flat and unadorned. The ceiling rose fifty feet above them, with dim lamps spaced twenty feet apart. Shadows obscured the rest of the hangar, save for a twelve-foot-tall protrusion. It opened, as all Sarrhdtuu doorways, like a flower spreading its petals.

The pirates entered three abreast. Kivita forced herself to look calm. Visions of what the Sarrhdtuu had done to other Savants, as shown by the datacores, haunted her thoughts.

Juxj
hummed with latent machinery as mist exhausts from high above sprinkled moisture on them. Ducts and vents pulsed with moist, slimy squishes. Kivita had to block mental whispers and mutterings from her mind, all of them unintelligible. The ship was a self-contained, living system, much like the human body.

Memories of her and Sar aboard a Sarrhdtuu ship
renewed the combined joy and pain of their erstwhile reunion on
Luccan's Wish
. She had so much to show him, so much to say.

The group entered a triangular hall lined with protrusions and glowing green consoles. Pipes writhed in organic semblance along the bulkheads. Oils, jellies, and other mixtures coursed in transparent conduits on the walls and floor. Purple-slotted eyes stared at Kivita from the bulkheads. In the ceiling's apex, an unbroken row of gray light gave everything a desolate, aged sheen. The mildew scent grew stronger.

Piles of coils lay near the walls in the next corridor. Jelly slithered from several conduits as the coils writhed and melded with the jelly. Heads, torsos, and arms formed in the transparent green substance. Through such skin, Kivita made out translucent organs pumping with machinelike precision.

Coils and jelly morphed from the walls behind them and formed into Sarrhdtuu warriors. These possessed a carapace-like armor over their jelly torsos and heads. Each wore a cylinder on its left wrist and wielded a curved blade.

Kivita gulped, remembering what the Juxj Star had shown her of these warriors.

“I am ready to see Zhhl now,” Shekelor told one of the warriors.

“You brought a second Savant and two Ascali,” a Sarrhdtuu said, its words ending with a thick lisp.

“The other Savant is a gift; the Ascali are mine,” Shekelor said. “They are gagged.”

As one, the Sarrhdtuu walked on their coils with intricate steps. Shekelor motioned for the pirates to follow them deeper into the ship.

Kivita blinked and shook her head. The whispers inside her mind rose in pitch.

The corridor led into a slanted chamber ringed with hundreds of oval, transparent tubes. Mist sprayed into the air at regular intervals from wall vents, while a warbling hum resounded throughout. Kivita choked on the damp, rotten stench.

The tubes made her heart skip a beat.

Each held a Kith, human, or a green-rigged figure, all more Sarrhdtuu than human. Some tubes housed cracked white exoskeletons. A few contained tall figures in yellow Rectifier uniforms. Below the tubes, Aldaakian polyarmor, Kith claws, and Ascali hides clung to jelly-covered racks.

“Atrocious,” Navon muttered.

Cheseia and Zhara retched at the smell, but the pirates were unaffected.

Shekelor motioned to his followers. “Eight of you, two per captive. Follow me.” They walked to a circular platform. As soon as all stepped onto it, organic stalks lifted it into the air. Kivita's head tingled and her temples burned.

“I feel it, too,” Navon whispered.

Rising higher, Kivita gasped at the view. The chamber extended throughout most of
Juxj
, curving into alcoves and rounding against bulkheads. Thousands of tubes contained occupants from all over the Cetturo Arm: brawny Sutarans, thin Tahe, tall and reedy Naxans. All had undergone Sarrhdtuu Transmutation, with coils, olive flesh, and purple stares. Sarrhdtuu warriors morphed and slithered along aisles between the tubes.

Coils extended from the walls and pulled out some of the tube occupants. Lathered in green slime, the victims
gurgled or tittered, their eyes glazed over. One man had transparent flesh like a Sarrhdtuu. His heart and lungs pumped and compressed, engorging his arteries with yellow-green liquid.

Kivita fought down vomit and shared a look with Navon. Cheseia and Zhara clung to each other.

The platform stopped its ascent. Green jelly poured over it while large coils wriggled up from the underside. Eyes slid right between Kivita's feet toward a growing shape. Her stomach churned and chill bumps popped along her skin. The Sarrhdtuu's sheer alienness disturbed Kivita in ways she hadn't felt before. Seeing them unearthed fears she'd never imagined, like something buried within the collective human memory.

“I have delivered her to you, Zhhl, as promised.” Shekelor stepped aside. The other pirates scooted back from Kivita and her friends.

The jelly, coils, and organs coalesced into a twenty-foot-tall Sarrhdtuu. A crescent shaped, six-eyed cranium with a puckered mouth, along with a sleek torso and two humanoid arms, sat atop twelve gray-green coils.

“Child of Narbas,” Zhhl said in a sibilant voice. “I have waited long. The Vim's signal must be returned.”

“Why? You're not their friend. You're not mine, either.” Her heart throbbed with furious abandon, contrasting her level tone.

“They abandoned you, Child of Narbas. They abandoned Children of Meh Sat, Children of Khaasis, Children of Revelas, and Children of Frevyx. You owe them nothing.” Zhhl's coils rippled on either side of Kivita.