Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) (20 page)

Chirom picked up his maser weapon by the barrel, lowered its setting to minimum, then handed it to B’Nur.

“Take this weapon,” he said. “Its operation is simple. Point it at your target, and pull that trigger. There is no recoil, but in a small room there will be reflections of its beam that may singe you. Better that you fire from a doorway, and try to hit flesh rather than metal.”

She took it as if it were a poisonous reptile. “I am no warrior! I have never used a weapon device like this.”

“B’Nur,” he said, backing up, “Just for today, we are all warriors, even females. You must borrow weapons from the wounded warriors here. I should have ordered it done at the start, but I was thinking in the old ways. Today is a day for new thoughts. Now go, and keep Klis safe. She is the future of the Ryss.”

Chirom supervised giving over all of the injured warrior’s carbines to the females, making sure to set them all on minimum power before he did. This had the additional benefit of making sure none of the wounded tried to reach Klis.

Once he was sure the females had some idea of what they were doing with the weapons, he left them alone, moving to the other side of the large warm-room. The entrancing scent of fertile female already distracted him.

Dragging himself over to a water dispenser, Chirom wondered if he had done the right thing. As horrible as a gang rape would be for Klis, males would not cause her death. That much was programmed into a warrior’s genes – to kill a fertile or gravid female was utter anathema.

A litter would result from the rape, assuming the Ryss even survived through this crisis to see them born, and even if Klis was…damaged, the crones would care for the kits and…

No. There is a limit to pragmatism. A fight with Vusk, a fight I cannot join because of my own mating-madness, might kill Klis, B’Nur, and any number of others. Better that than to act like moor-cats, rutting thoughtlessly without ritual, blessing or affection. If that is all we are, then perhaps we deserve to be expunged from the universe.

With difficulty he lay down, resting and chewing on a tasteless meat-fruit, waiting for the horror he expected would come.

Minutes passed, then more, until a commotion at the door to the rooms where he surmised Klis must be hidden drew his attention.

Pushing himself to his feet, he walked stiffly over to wait at the edge of a crowd of twenty or so females who blocked his way, some facing him in warning with weapons, some turned the other way in readiness to fight, their claws naked and out. The distinctive whine of masers firing reached him, then another, then several shots.

Cursing himself, Chirom realized what he should have done all along. The females would defend Klis, even if it took them to their bloody deaths, and he had no more weapons than they. But there were other possibilities…

Damning himself, he realized that all the carbines were in the hands of the females, and none of them were likely to want to give them up, given their current state of mind. But there was an alternative.

Trissk’s workshop was painful to reach, especially the climb down the ladder, and the cold of its rungs stung his uncovered palms. Grabbing a pair of gloves from the youngling’s workbench, Chirom put them on and then picked up what he had come for.

Even more struggle got him up the ladder and back into the corridors, and he spat vulgar words under his breath, most of them directed at his own stupidity. Sternward he limped, dragging the heavy apparatus he had claimed, to the left at the intersection, then down the way to the large central tunnel.

Glancing to his left, he sighed with relief as he saw nothing but a small maintenance bot scurrying down the other side. It scuttled along the wall as far from him as possible, as if it had learned that the Ryss were not to be trusted anymore.

Perhaps it was right.

Looking around, Chirom found a discarded part of a storage crate, three flat planes that made a corner piece that he could drag near the vent and yet hide behind. He placed it a bit farther along and next to the wall, to make it as difficult as possible for any emerging Ryss to see him.

Then he waited, clutching the tool he had recovered.

Eye to a flaw in the metal, he soon saw the grill swing outward on its hinges and a leg stretch out reaching, and then a tail and the other leg. Chirom stood up, dragging the welding torch along the deck as the Ryss hung from his paws and then dropped.

Squeezing the igniter, Chirom turned the valve that caused the flame to blaze long as his arm, and held it crossways in front of him.

The other Ryss turned, maser in his hand.

Chirom could already see that it was Vusk by his markings.

The yearsmane’s face was puffy and his eyes swelled almost shut from maser burns, probably fired into the living chamber’s open vent. Vusk was lucky to have gotten away with his eyesight.

“What do you want, oldling?” Vusk rasped, eyeing the flame between them.

“Drop your weapon, Vusk. You too up there,” Chirom said, flicking his eyes toward the vent.

That was enough to make Vusk believe he had a chance to win this contest, but Chirom was ready. In fact, the glance had been a test, to see how far Vusk was willing to press his criminal behavior.

As Vusk swung his maser’s muzzle toward the elder, Chirom turned the hungry flame toward the would-be rapist, washing it across his muzzle and eyes, and then keeping it there.

Screaming and clutching at his ruined face and smoldering fur, Vusk dropped his weapon and curled up on the deck in agony. Shoving the torch away, Chirom leaped for the fallen maser and rolled to his feet, feeling something inside him tear open afresh around his wound.

A burst of microwaves whined off the floor near him, throwing sparks among the shavings and debris of many years of neglect. In response, Chirom lined his maser up on the vent and fired, then fired again and again, hammering the enclosed metal space with enough energy to cook a Blosk sow.

Screaming became pleading. Eventually it stopped entirely.

Turning to the blinded criminal before him, Chirom said, “Your toughs are dead or dying. Your crime is heinous.”

“I did nothing! I sought only to find a way to attack Desolator.”

“Yet somehow you found yourself trying to break into the room of a female in her season, with intent to force her.”

“Yes, we became entranced with her scent and could not stop ourselves…”

Chirom bared his teeth in a snarl. “Turning your carbine on me proved your perfidy. You always were a bully and a layabout, Vusk. When did you become a liar?”

Vusk said nothing then, only pushed himself to a sitting position against the wall. “What will you do with me, Elder?”

“Ah. Now you are suddenly deferential. Like all bullies, you lick the anus of those over you and piss on those beneath.” Chirom took a deep and painful breath, noticing that blood was running down his own flank from under the bandages.

“Easy for you to say, with a weapon in your hand. I am blind, and burned. If you are so virtuous, you will test me in honorable combat.” Vusk’s nostrils flared.

He smells that I am wounded, and is afraid I will burn him down right now. As an elder I have the right of summary judgment…but he is correct, in a way. There will be questions, possibly doubts, and the Ryss must remain united in the face of all this chaos.

“Honorable combat is for those with honor, but I accept anyway. I will test you claw to claw, as you request – in the presence of all. Get up.”

The fallen bully rolled to his knees, placing one hand against the wall, then rose to his feet. “Yes, oldling.” His voice seemed to hold resignation. “I will dance for your entertainment.” Vusk sagged against the wall.

Almost, Chirom moved toward him with sympathetic instinct.

At that moment Vusk struck.

Extending a leg, the yearsmane shoved off from the wall with both front paws and reached as far as he could with a hind leg, large claws unsheathed in a powerful kick.

Had Chirom taken that step of kindness the slashing talons would have gutted him. Instead he stepped back, and only three fine claw-marks opened the surface skin across his belly.

He leveled his maser and fired.

One shot was enough to boil Vusk’s flesh and reduce him to a pitiful mewling thing. There was more of mercy than vengeance in it when Chirom extended his claws and slashed Vusk’s throat, letting the miscreant’s blood out to pool upon the deck.

As Chirom knelt, panting from his wound and the killing reaction, a sound caught his attention.

The little maintenance drone he had seen before quivered back and forth, turning its optical scanner toward him, then away. Desolator’s voice, tinny but familiar, issued from its speaker. “You have killed a Ryss. Killing of Ryss is only allowed under sanction of certain specified cultural rituals. This action has been noted and will be investigated and punished in accordance with ship’s regulations.”

Chirom eased himself sideways to rest on the deck, next to the carcass of his rival. He began to laugh, or perhaps cry, and then found he could not stop, despite the pain in his chest.

After dropping Jill off on the shore to return from her “camping trip,” Spooky asked Ezekiel to turn Roger around and head for a new destination, less than a day away. The next evening they arrived off the beach of an island boasting a town of perhaps twenty thousand, with light industry and suburbs.

A quick swim and silent sneak through the streets brought Spooky to one of the rounded Hippo houses. He double-checked the address notation, and then climbed the fence at the corner to perch atop it. From this vantage he could see into a window, where a lone Hippo made himself a hot beverage analogous to tea.

The alien’s motions seemed oddly precise to Spooky, who had made a study of the people of his adopted world. Perhaps the Hippo had let his guard down; perhaps the Yellows simply did not care about him, or something in between. Now that Jill and her Eden-Plague conscience were out of the way, he was going to find out.

Because Spooky, unbeknownst to most of his fellows, was a Psycho. That’s what they were called back on Earth: that tiny fraction of humanity that seemed to lack a conscience for the Eden Plague to bolster.

Spooky didn’t view himself that way; in his eyes, his conscience was merely more…flexible. This made him uniquely qualified to do things that needed to be done, for humanity’s own good.

Dropping silently down, he eased his way over to the house’s back door and picked the lock without difficulty. He then drew an air-powered pistol and rushed in with cybernetic speed.

As soon as his target came into view he fired, drilling the huge creature in the neck with the heavy dart. The Hippo started to rise, and then slumped as the drug took effect.

“Father?” A small voice asked in Sekoi speech, from a doorway off to the side. Spooky cursed himself for not extending his reconnaissance, and quickly rushed the child. Without doing any permanent harm – he hoped – he knocked the little Hippo unconscious, wrapped it tightly in a blanket he found, and set it on the table in front of its parent. Then he drew the curtains on all the windows and stood across from the adult.

“Can you understand me?” Spooky asked in the alien language.

“Yes,” the drugged Sekoi responded.

“What is your name?”

“I am called Kawar.”

“You are a Pureling, Kawar?”

After what seemed a struggle, the creature responded in the affirmative.

“You remain an agent for the Meme Empire.”

“Yes.”

“I have given you a drug that saps your will, and I have also infected you with a retrovirus that is even now reprogramming your mind-molecules.” Spooky drew off his masked hood, showing his face, checking his watch. “Is this your offspring?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you have an offspring? Would it not endanger your clandestine operations?”

“Not mating as expected would have endangered them more. Then the child was born and I performed my parental duty.”

“Where is your mate?”

“I had to kill her. She began to be suspicious.”

Spooky cocked his head in puzzlement. “Why did you not kill the child?”

The Hippo hesitated, then went on, as if not entirely certain. “It was not necessary,” he said.

He placed his hand on the young Hippo’s head, then felt for a pulse in its neck, which came strongly. “Would it distress you if I killed the child?”

“Yes.”

How interesting, and unexpected. I would have thought a Pureling immune to such sentiment.
Checking his watch again, Spooky saw that enough time had elapsed for the virus to reprogram the Blend’s mind. “Then hear me now. I am your new control supervisor. Your loyalty is to me. Examine my face, and listen to my voice. My name is Tran Pham Nguyen, also known as ‘Spooky’. Everything you were willing to do for the Meme Empire you will now do for me, or anyone that has the codes I will give you. You will not disclose your new status to anyone. You will go on as before, and masquerade as an agent of the Meme.”

“I understand and assent. My loyalty is to you.”

Spooky stroked the unconscious child’s head. “Your progeny is precious to you.”
I dislike using fear to control, but this serum and this virus is a prototype, incompletely tested. I will have to keep a close eye on him for a while.

“My progeny is precious to me,” the Hippo agreed.

 “Do you have a mild tranquilizer for your progeny?”

“I have.”

“Retrieve it and administer a dose appropriate to keep it sedated for at least a tenthday.”

The Hippo did as he was told, with Spooky watching the whole time. While far less adept at reading the natives than humans, he had studied the aliens extensively enough to be confident he could spot signs of resistance. He saw none.

Spooky chuckled to himself. Now that the child was dealt with, he was ready to mine his new source for every nugget of information possible. “Kawar,” he said with a smile, “Begin by telling me about your network, and your contacts. Leave nothing out.”