Alien Chronicles 2 - The Crimson Claw (39 page)

The Aaroun shoved him again, nearly pushing him off his feet. Elrabin staggered back and barely kept himself from falling across another patron’s table. Nimbly, he dodged to one side, darted around the Aaroun, and reached the Gorlican’s table just as the bodyguard grabbed him by the back of his coat.

Elrabin gripped the edges of the table. “I need my restraint collar taken off in the next twenty-seven minutes,” he said as fast as he could before the Aaroun dragged him back. He struggled in the bodyguard’s grip. “I can pay!”

“Chofa,” the Gorlican said, his orange eyes glowing with greed through the slits of his face mask, “drop him.”

The Aaroun released Elrabin so fast, he nearly fell to the floor. Righting himself breathlessly, Elrabin shook out his coat and gave the Gorlican his most ingratiating smile. “Thank you,” he said, pouring on the charm. “Now what kind and how fast of a deal can we make here?”

“What grade restraint?” the Gorlican asked, cutting to the bottom line.

Elrabin sucked in a breath, knowing he was going to have to pay dearly for this. “Grade eleven.”

The Kelth females looked at each other and giggled. The Gorlican grunted. “Tough.”

“Yeah, but not impossible for the one who knows how. You set this up, get it done, and I’ll pay—”

“Price set by me,” the Gorlican announced curtly.

Elrabin shut up, knowing he didn’t have time to bargain. “Fine,” he said desperately. “So how fast can we get this done?”

“You work for me,” the Gorlican said. “Deliver dust—”

“No way,” Elrabin said automatically, flattening his ears. “I been down that road before. It ain’t—”

“Ten months you work.”

“Two.”

“Seven.”

“Four,” Elrabin countered, feeling his fur itch as time kept on ticking.

“Seven months.”

They stared at each other, but Elrabin’s gaze dropped first. Seven months, trapped on this scrap heap with its stale air, dealing dust and probably doing every other kind of dirty job the Gorlican could think up.

“Done,” Elrabin said.

The Gorlican gestured, and the Aaroun bodyguard stepped up behind Elrabin, tucked his fingers inside the narrow wire restraint collar around his throat, and clipped it in half with a palm-sized cutter.

Expecting his head to explode, Elrabin yelped in panic. “Hey! Be careful—” He broke off as he saw the thin collar dangling from Chofa’s powerful hand and realized he was safe. Elrabin’s shoulders sagged with relief and dawning astonishment. Maybe the collar hadn’t been rigged after all. And here he’d just traded away seven months of his life.

Laughing, Chofa looked at Elrabin as though he could read his mind. He ambled over to a disposal door next to a wall bulkhead and tossed the collar inside. Then he pressed something on his cutter, and a muffled boom sounded within the disposal chute. The door dented, and Elrabin found his throat suddenly too dry to swallow. Seven months seemed a bargain.

“Your name?” the Gorlican asked.

“Elrabin.”

“Now you called Frade. Now you work for me. Over there.” He pointed, and Chofa clamped a hand on Elrabin’s shoulder to hustle him to his first task.

Now, trudging across the Dry Sea of Viisymel with dust thick on his tongue, down inside his ears, and even gritty in his eyes, Elrabin told himself to lose that memory along with plenty of others. He’d done what he had to do, and at the end of his seven months of service he’d struck another deal with his boss, spending half his secret hoard of credits to secure semilegal passage down to the planet.

It had taken plenty of dodging and all his skill to keep from being picked up by patrollers around the docks, but he’d managed. Then he’d caught a transport headed out, and was on his way.

Now he was close to Lazmairehl, close to Vess Vaas. He just hoped that Ampris was still alive after all this time.

CHAPTER
•SEVENTEEN

Exhausted, but supremely content, Ampris lay curled in the maternal bed with her three newborn cubs. They nuzzled weakly against her, making their soft mewing cries, while she caressed them and crooned to them with love.

Never mind the shock of their first appearance, when she realized that they were not entirely Aaroun. Never mind how they looked, so bizarre with their flat faces and hairless heads with only vestigial nubs for ears. Their tiny hands looked strange, too slender and long-fingered for Aaroun hands, yet their bodies were Aaroun-shaped. They were covered with a golden downy fuzz instead of dense fur. In that initial moment of realization, she had felt a flash of sheer horror, then she had inhaled the birth smell and each of their scents. Her maternal instincts had kicked in, so powerful they consumed her.

Now she crooned and took care of her babies, adoring them no matter what they looked like. They were hers, these two males and one female. They were healthy and strong. Already the female was trying to lift her bobbing, unsteady head and open her eyes.

Ampris scooped her up and cradled her close. Looking into her daughter’s precious, birth-blue eyes, Ampris recalled her earliest memory of her own mother, who had nuzzled her and sung to her.

“You are
my
golden one,” Ampris told her cub. She licked her daughter’s hairless face, imprinting her scent forever. “My precious, beautiful, golden one. You are mine, you and your brothers. Together, we shall be a family. I will teach you all that I know, and you will grow up strong and fearless and free. Someday.”

She backed her ears, thinking with regret of how their escape plans had gone awry. The delivery of supplies from Lazmairehl continued to come at random times and days. Often now, the Toth guards were ordered to unload the supplies, so that Paket and Matiril had no chance to talk with the Myal workers on the transports. Ampris and the others blamed Niruo for having betrayed their intentions. But they intended to come up with something else.

Ampris turned back to her daughter and smiled. “It won’t be forever,” she said. “That, I promise you, sweetness.”

The cub stared at her and mewed, then reached up a wavering, uncoordinated hand. Ampris took it, marveling at how tiny it was, yet how strongly those little fingers curled around hers.

A bright overhead light snapped on, startling Ampris and making her cubs cry in panic. Snarling, Ampris gathered all three of them close and tried to shield their tender eyes. “Niruo!” she shouted furiously, yet when the door to the tiny birthing chamber opened, it was not the Kelth who stood there, gazing in at her, but Ehssk.

The Viis scientist, clad in a pristine lab smock, his multihued skin shiny with oil, stared at her with eyes that shone with fanatical satisfaction.

“Ampris, Ampris, you sly Aaroun,” he said in mock disapproval. “You had your cubs while I was away attending a conference. Why didn’t you wait for me, so that I could watch the birth?”

A ridge of hair stood up along her spine, and the fur around her neck bristled. Still shielding her cubs protectively, Ampris growled.

Ehssk laughed and came into the chamber. “Now, now, you mustn’t be a bad-tempered Aaroun. Let me see what you have.”

“Get away,” she said, her eyes slitted dangerously. “This is a private time.”

It was as though he didn’t hear her. He paid no attention and came right up to the bed, peering down at the cubs with glee. His tongue flicked out. “Three in your litter. Excellent. No stillborns, according to the report. All healthy, and measuring sixes and sevens on the Tefert Scale.”

Ampris growled again. No one had touched her cubs since that initial examination. It had taken her hours of licking to clean away the stench of Viis hands on her babies. She wanted no more Viis stink on them, ever.

“Get away,” she said.

“Ampris, you will be a good Aaroun and cooperate with me,” he said, his voice more stern now. He met her eyes and his rill rose behind his head. “Let me have your cubs.”

Her ears flattened against her skull. She glared at him through slitted eyes, her lips curled back from her teeth. She was past warning him. If he came closer, she would attack.

“The report says two males and one female,” he went on, his voice calm and unafraid. His eyes remained as implacable as hers. “Pity it isn’t the other way around. It’s the females I need for my study.”

The cubs mewed and shifted beneath her hand. Ampris lightened her grip on them, fear starting to squeeze her heart.

“But although there’s only one female to dissect this time, there will be others the next time you give birth—”

Roaring, Ampris sprang at him, intending to sink her fangs in his throat. But her weakness made her slow, and Ehssk jerked a stun-stick from his pocket and jolted her with it, full charge.

The jangling paralysis gripped her, and Ampris fell across the bed, helpless and raging while Ehssk hummed to himself and took his time lifting and examining each cub in turn. He put down the males after the most cursory look.

“Pity,” he said, then scooped up the female.

She lifted her wobbly, misshapen head and spat at him.

Ehssk tucked her in the crook of his arm and walked out. The door slammed shut, and the bright light dimmed.

With all her might, Ampris strained to lift herself and go after him, but she could not move. She lay there for hours until the stun finally wore off, with her remaining cubs nuzzling her and crying for comfort. And Ampris wept for the daughter she would never hold again, for the daughter she would never see grow up tall and strong, for the daughter now lost to her forever.

“Oh, little one, little one,” she sighed, while her tears ran unchecked and she gathered her frightened sons closer.

How could the Viis be so cruel, so heartless? How could they deliberately create and destroy innocent little ones for their own selfish ends? Was Ehssk’s research worth such a sacrifice? Paket had told her that Ehssk was good at making vid appearances and getting government support, but that most of his experiments didn’t really work. He lied and covered up his mistakes. He was a fake, a hypocrite, and a charlatan.

And now he had taken her daughter, as she had been taken from her mother. But Ampris’s little one would never be adopted by a lonely Viis chune, would never have a chance to play or grow up. Ampris’s daughter was born condemned, and she knew that at any time these other two cubs could be taken away to satisfy some Viis whim.

Grieving, Ampris soothed and tried to comfort her sons, while in her heart she hated Ehssk, with a burning, relentless hatred deeper and stronger than any emotion she had ever felt before. He had gone too far. He had taken too much. If ever justice returned, she vowed, let there be a curse on this place and the Viis barbarians in it.

Two days later, Ampris was taken back to her cage, along with her sons. The other abiru folk stayed quiet and left her alone with her grief. Even Niruo did not torment her, but simply brought her food and went on about his duties.

Ampris spoke to no one but her cubs. She kept them close to her side, and each time a Viis tech came near her cage, she was swept with panic that he was going to remove her sons. She would spring at the wire, snarling and snapping her teeth viciously until the tech retreated. It took days for her to calm down, days for her to start believing that her remaining cubs were not wanted for any experimentation. But as the Viis staff continued to leave her alone, Ampris gradually settled and regained her mental balance. She named her sons Foloth and Nashmarl, after the Aaroun words for hope and courage. They lost their newborn scent and began to fill out, their stubby legs growing stronger and more sturdy daily. As they crawled about the cage, exploring at first, then learning to play and tumble each other at her feet, she always kept a vigilant eye on them.

Then there came one evening when her mind grew clear, and once again she gave thought to the future.

“Paket,” she said softly.

He responded at once. “Yes, Ampris?”

“Are the deliveries still random?”

“Yes. We think they have a rotating schedule. Matiril is working out the pattern of it, but he will have to make sure for a few more weeks.”

“Forget that plan,” Ampris said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded harsh. “I have another.”

All the abiru inmates sat up and looked at her.

“A new plan?” Paket said. “What is it?”

She met their eyes without doubt or hesitation. “It’s no longer enough to simply get away. We’re going to destroy this place.”

Someone laughed in despair. Others began to talk among themselves, but Paket’s gaze never wavered from hers. “How?” he asked.

A corner of her heart warmed to him. Good, steady Paket. He was the best of the bunch. She smiled at him. “Remember the zeron gas? Remember the pipe that goes through the Zrheli rookery?”

The others fell silent.

Paket’s eyes widened, but he didn’t flinch. “Yes.”

“Follow that pipe, the next time you’re on cleaning detail. See if you can find out where it originates and where it goes. Does it pass through any other easily accessed areas besides the rookery?”

“I’ll find out,” Matiril volunteered before Paket could answer. He looked uneasy. “It be a dangerous thing, Ampris. You sure—”

“What have we to lose?” she asked harshly.

Paket pointed at Foloth, who was clinging to her leg and trying to pull himself upright. “You got little ones to think of now.”

“I am thinking of them,” she said. “When they are weaned, they will be taken from me and destroyed.”

They stared at her, and her impatience grew. “Don’t you understand? Lua is gone. Shevin’s lits were taken. Now Shevin herself is gone. Ophah the Phivean is gone. No replacements have been bought.”

“That’s because they spent all their funds on you,” Niruo’s voice muttered.

Ampris looked around with a snarl, and there stood the Kelth in his dingy smock, trying to be a Viis for some kind of twisted, pathetic reasons of his own.

She glared at him. “So, Niruo, you’ve come to betray us again. When will you learn where your allegiance should lie?”

“With you, fanciness?” Niruo sneered. “How would Ehssk like it if I told him his special Ampris is plotting to destroy his lab?”