Alien Chronicles 2 - The Crimson Claw (29 page)

“Sanvath, halt!”

The big Aaroun growled again, but he obeyed. He stood glaring at the official, whose rill was standing at full extension behind his head.

Halehl hurried forward to argue with the official, who was pointing at the team and shaking his head.

Ampris sighed and rolled her eyes. “Another delay. If we’re detained in customs, we’ll never get to the arena.”

“Don’t much care,” Teinth grumbled hoarsely. “At best, we’ll have to go straight there. No time for anything else . . . now.”

Meaning no time for a quick bath. No time for a massage. No time for a decent meal.

“We have to warm up,” Ampris said in annoyance. “We need some time to prepare.”

“Dreaming for the good old days,” he said and scratched his ear.

Halehl apparently won his argument with the official, who stepped aside with visible reluctance. Halehl rounded them up and glared at all of them.

“I have persuaded them to let us go straight to the arena through the central axis of the station,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “We have just enough time to make the opening displays. Our entry contract calls for it, and I don’t intend to lose any possible prize money because we miss easy work.”

Ampris looked at him in rising suspicion, but Halehl was hustling them forward.

“I have given assurances that there will be no trouble,” Halehl said to them all while he waved the Toth bodyguards ahead. “See that there is none.”

Giving them no time to answer, he hustled them forward. The station was indeed larger than any Ampris had seen before. The central axis was an engineering marvel spinning slowly within the vast boundary hull. Ampris got a rushed impression of vaulted ceiling, brushed metal walls, crisscrossing passenger conveyors linking the multiple levels of shops. Craning her neck, she hurried along while Viis tourists not already within the arena stands backed out of the team’s way and stared, pointing and murmuring to each other. Shops featuring wares of all kinds crammed every available meter of space, the merchants haggling busily.

When they reached the far end of the axis, they found a huge bank of observation ports overlooking the magnificent panorama of space itself.

Despite their hurry, everyone slowed down and stared. Here was the famous shrine to Ruu-113, now a fable even for the few Viis who still believed in it. Brightly colored pledges of Viis hope were fastened to the observation ports. A Kelth wearing black station coveralls came along, dragging a floating trash receptacle behind him. He set to work plucking the pledges down and throwing them away. Then he started scrubbing away the scrawled inscriptions. While he worked, a Viis female robed in expensive traveling clothes came up with her attendants and fastened a trinket of dyed feathers and beads to the shrine. She stared at the view no more than a second before hastening away.

The Kelth janitor took her pledge and tossed it in the trash, then went on scrubbing.

Halehl summoned the nearby lift, which was slow in coming. That gave Ampris the opportunity to stare longer through the ports. The view was so beautiful, she wanted to drink it in forever. For a moment she felt renewed in spirit, almost young again.

The station arms reached out on either side of the boundary hull, pincherlike, to form the jump gate, which was larger than any Ampris had seen in all her travels. She could imagine what an engineering marvel it had once been. Now the accelerator rings hung black and unused, just one more testament to the darkening future of the Viis empire.

Clutching her Eye of Clarity, Ampris whispered a prayer of her own, “Your despair is our hope.”

Then she hurried on to catch up with the others.

The arena was an elliptical structure at the bottom of the station, reached only via lifts that plunged down deep shafts at dizzying speeds. By the time the lift doors slid open, Ampris could hear the frenzied shouting of the crowd, punctuated by roars of excitement.

Her blood began to pound in anticipation. Tired as she was, she still responded instinctively to the sounds and smells of battle.

“Quick,” Halehl ordered, shoving the fighters into a corridor lined with metal bulkhead ribs. “Elrabin, get out their glaudoons and take them to the chute.”

Not giving Elrabin time to respond, Halehl turned away to flash his trainer’s pass at an official and produce the entry documents.

“You’re late,” the official said.

Ampris heard nothing else, for she was being hustled along by the Toth bodyguards. As she jogged along into the chute, she shrugged off travel garb in exchange for her fighting harness and sword belt.

“Hey!” shouted an arena guard, noticing what they were doing. “You can’t arm those fighters here. Who’s in charge?”

Elrabin cast Ampris a wicked look and stepped in front of the guard with an obsequious bow. “Please, good sir. Our trainer be coming right away, see? We’re the Blues, from Galard Stables.”

“Don’t care if you’re purple, from the gutter,” the guard retorted. “You can’t arm those fighters out here.”

While the argument continued, Ampris and her teammates continued to pull out weapons cases and wrist guards.

“Fine way to arrive,” Sanvath muttered. He and Teinth exchanged dour glances. “Fine way to look, and us champions.”

“Keep on fighting in these dives,” Omtat said, tugging on his wrist guards with his teeth, “and we won’t be champions long. Should have gone to Mynchepop.”

“Clear the way!” bellowed a voice.

Ampris looked around and scrambled to one side as arena guards came bustling past. They were escorting a pair of Gorlicans who carried a Zrhel trussed in a net. He wore a black smock that identified him as a station employee. Dropping feathers and snapping viciously with his beak, he struggled and screamed curses.

The gate ahead swung open, letting in the cheers of the crowd and the death cry of a victim in the arena. Ampris’s blood ran cold. She froze with her sheathed glaudoon in her hand.

“Zrheli-baiting?” she asked. She swung around ferociously, her ears back and her eyes flashing. “Is that what we are doing today? Slaughtering helpless victims?”

Halehl came striding up, his rill flared out, his tongue flicking in and out. “Ampris, be silent,” he ordered. “The rest of you, get ready. We’re up next.”

Ampris stepped in his path, forgetting all about obedience and humility. “We’re champions, not executioners. We’re fighters, not—”

“No speeches, Ampris,” Halehl said impatiently, gesturing for them to line up. “Shut up and take your place.”

Something in her snapped. She backed her ears. “I won’t. What have these Zrheli done, to be killed like this? If they’ve broken laws, why aren’t they executed by the authorities? Why force us to do the work?”

Her questions were designed to needle Halehl. She already knew the answers from her network. The Zrheli on this station were quantum engineers assigned to repair the jump gate. As a race, Zrheli were rude, stubborn, independent, and unlikable. Their spindly, lightweight frames and hollow skeletons made them unfit for manual labor. But their minds were brilliant. They made superb engineers, ship pilots, and navigators. They kept to themselves, associating only with their own kind, and generally refused to even call themselves abiru with the other assorted slave races. Never had she been able to get any Zrheli involved with her rebellion network. The Zrheli had their own methods of causing their Viis owners trouble. They failed to report maintenance problems, rewired circuitry and sabotaged machinery to malfunction, and worked with deliberate infinitesimal slowness on the repairs to the Ruu-113 jump gate.

Periodically they were caught at sabotage, and a whole staff of engineers would be condemned and thrown into the arena for slaughter. The deaths of their comrades were supposed to spur the survivors to genuine effort, but to Ampris’s knowledge it never worked. Zrheli defiance never waned; they seemed to consider death a small price to pay for giving continual problems to the Viis.

Ampris thought of all she’d worked for these past seven years. She thought of the risks she’d taken, of the rebellions she’d tried to foster. To enter the arena today and slaughter some helpless engineer would be to betray all she’d worked so hard and so long for. Every abiru on this station would know her for a hypocrite.

“It is wrong,” she said, her voice thick with emotions. “It is immoral. I won’t do this, no matter what prize money we have been offered. And neither will my teammates.”

A jolt hit her throat from her restraint collar, jarring her teeth together and knocking her off her feet.

Ampris landed hard and lay there gasping for air. It took her a moment to realize what had happened.

She hadn’t been disciplined by her restraint collar since her first season. Now, rolling her eye back to see Halehl looming over her, she felt her fury burn hotter. Growling, she pulled herself to her feet.

Elrabin darted up to her and gripped her harness. “No,” he whispered, trying to warn her. “Don’t do it—”

She pushed him aside and turned on Halehl. The Viis trainer stood his ground, his eyes stony. She took one step toward him, and he tapped the transmitter with his finger.

Again the jolt hit her in the throat. Again she was knocked off her feet. This time she lost consciousness for a moment. She came to because Halehl kicked her in the side.

“Get up and take your place in line,” he said in contempt. “If you speak again, I’ll have you whipped. Get up!”

Slowly, feeling dazed, Ampris staggered upright. The world looked unsteady around her, and she was panting for air. She still clutched her sheathed glaudoon in her hand. For a white-hot moment she was tempted to draw it and attack. She could slit him from gullet to tail in a single stroke, but a glance at Elrabin’s horrified face brought her back to sanity.

She looked at her teammates, resenting them for not joining her. But they stood quietly, refusing to take sides, refusing to protest their orders. She hated them for being such cowards.

After all the grumbles, after all the resentment they expressed in private, still they would not stand against this wrong. In that moment, Ampris told herself they deserved to be slaves. Talk was easy, but no one was willing to work for freedom, or fight for it, or sacrifice for it. No one, it seemed, but these pathetic Zrheli engineers.

“Let me deal with her,” Elrabin was saying to Halehl. He cringed and bowed, holding out his hands in supplication. “Please, master. I can calm her back to reason.”

“See that you do it,” Halehl said. “We’ve only a few minutes left.”

Elrabin swung to face Ampris. With both hands, he gripped her by the front of her fighting harness. “Ampris, listen to me,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “You’ve worked too hard to get where you are. Don’t throw everything away now.”

His eyes pleaded with her as he spoke. Ampris was well aware of the double meaning in his words. She shook her head, more to clear it than in argument, but Elrabin misunderstood.

“You want to get yourself sold as a troublemaker?” he asked, his voice shrill and frantic. “You want to go to some low-rate team that gets more beatings than grub? You want to lose your privileges, your status, your chance to travel? You been places, Goldie. You done a lot. You got it so much better than most, but now you want to throw that away? Goldie, use your sense.”

Tears stung her eyes. Tears of helplessness, frustration, and rage. They spilled down her muzzle, and she sniffed. “It’s wrong,” she insisted, her voice hoarse. “They don’t stand a chance against us.”

“And you don’t stand a chance against the master,” Elrabin said, his voice low and furious. He glared deep into her eyes. “Think, you! What right you got to throw yourself away? Can’t do nothing about this, see? Can’t do nothing!”

He was right, and that galled her the most. Slowly, her emotions tangling in her throat, Ampris nodded and hunched her shoulders. She had no choice. Elrabin was absolutely right.

But her disgust ran through her in hot waves. She wanted to roar. She wanted to turn on Halehl and drive her claws deep.

If only her teammates would back her, but they weren’t even looking at her now. In silence, they stood against the wall and stared at nothing. They were cowards, but so was she . . . because she slowly hooked her sheathed glaudoon on her belt and lifted a gaze of surrender to Master Halehl.

“I will obey,” she said sullenly.

He said nothing, did not even bother to acknowledge her obedience or what it had clearly cost her. Gesturing impatiently, he turned away and strode ahead to the gate.

“Make way!” shouted a voice.

More arena guards jogged past, followed by a herd of Skeks being driven along by more Gorlicans. The Skeks jostled and shrieked in panic. No taller than Ampris’s knees, they scuttled along on their multiple legs, holding their arms aloft in terror and letting their hands flop almost bonelessly. They milled around in all directions, forcing their Gorlican herders to close ranks to keep them from doubling back and escaping the way they’d come.

One of the creatures rammed into Ampris’s legs, nearly knocking her off balance. Its fear-crazed eyes met hers, and it jabbered something rapid and incomprehensible, patting her with its soft, repulsive hands before a Gorlican struck it hard across the back with his staff and drove it onward.

The Skeks were driven into the gate with much commotion and struggle, then they were released into the arena, spilling forth in all directions.

Laughter and shouts rose from the crowd. Applause followed.

Beside Ampris, Teinth growled deep in his throat. “You protesting Skek-baiting too?” he asked, his voice low with contempt.

She did not look at him. She did not answer.

“Skeks,” Lamina muttered in disgust. “That’s what we’re down to? Killing Skeks for money?”

Her teammates would not risk punishment and protest Zrheli-baiting. They would not refuse to kill intelligent, sentient, unarmed individuals of value. But they grumbled at the prospect of hunting down brainless, useless, thieving, gutter-life Skeks. Ampris closed her eyes. She didn’t want to harm the stupid creatures either, but the distinction seemed lost to everyone but her.