Ceremony (28 page)

She battled her hatred for her world, her past, and all that had been denied her because she was what she was. She thought often of pups never born, and wondered what they might have become.

She watched Bagnel’s body drift till she could no longer find it with the touch, then climbed into the Up-and-Over and fled toward her far stronghold, her alien starship fortress that orbited a foreign world and star.

“Let them deal with Kublin,” she said. “I have no home and no race. I will go back there only one more time.”

She would keep Grauel there, preserved in the void. And when the time came for Barlog to become one with the All she would go back, and the two old huntresses would go down to the Ponath, to the Degnan packstead. They would receive a proper Mourning, with all the Degnan unMourned, and their ashes would be scattered as was fitting for the most respected of the Wise. That she would do, though it cost her everything. They had kept their faith. She would keep hers.

On the resting worlds Marika questioned the bath Silba, and learned that the rogue had subjected her, and Grauel, and Bagnel, to every torment and indignity in an effort to learn about the aliens and about her. Bagnel and Grauel had died by Kublin’s paw, as he had used his wehrlen’s talent to force a crude truthsaying. Silba had been immune, being silth-trained. She believed that Kublin had learned everything known by the other two, and much from her as well, for he had been a crafty interrogator.

Marika worried, for she did not know how much Grauel and Bagnel had known, nor could she predict what Kublin might make of it. She should have gone ahead and destroyed him.

Already her most ferocious oaths were sliding from her mind. She was thinking that, one day, she would venture back with some of those weapons the rogues had dropped upon TelleRai. A few of those would dig Kublin out of his last fastness. If the silth themselves did not complete what she had started, to free themselves of one half the family so they could devote their attention to the other.

III

A nasty surprise awaited Marika.

She might have made a heat of the moment vow to retreat from the universe. The universe had made no such promise to her.

The starship was not alone in orbit.

It took her a minute to comprehend what she was seeing.

Starstalker. The long-missing Serke voidship. Here! But that could not be. It had to be hidden in-system back... Maybe. And maybe it had been waiting for her to show, and had pulled out while she was preoccupied.

She sent ghosts skipping across the void, felt them rebound. Starstalker was bound by suppressor fields as powerful as those shielding Kublin’s headquarters. The voidship bristled with technological armaments.

She did not waste a second. She summoned the system’s great black and hurled it. Starstalker’s suppressor fields bowed, but held. A trickle of silth distress leaked into the otherworld.

Marika overcame the great black’s reluctance and slammed it in again, harder. Starstalker’s fields creaked. Panic radiated from the voidship, from the orbiting alien derelict. Marika pressed harder still, and kept the entire Serke compliment preoccupied with resisting the great black while she pushed her darkship to one of the alien’s locks. She touched Barlog. Go inside and kill Serke. They will be too preoccupied to defend themselves.

Barlog went. She stalked passages, firing short bursts at Serke sisters, and exchanged shots with a pawful of unskilled rogues not directly involved in resisting Marika’s assault.

Each silth slain weakened Serke resistance to the great black. It was now clear that the suppressors would hold only while the Serke supported them by pushing at the black themselves.

The Mistress aboard Starstalker panicked. She broke away, abandoning her sisters aboard the alien. Marika touched Barlog. Take care. Starstalker is running. I must pursue. But once Starstalker pulled away it no longer lent suppressor protection to those aboard the alien. Marika flung a pawful of lesser ghosts into the starship’s passageways.

But then Starstalker, under lessened pressure from the great black, opened fire with its brethren-type weapons and forced Marika to dodge while it ducked into the Up-and-Over on a line she could not calculate. In parting, the voidship dispatched a covey of rockets toward the alien.

Marika could not stop them all.

She threw her darkship toward the alien, flinging a touch ahead. Barlog! Are you there?

Barlog could not respond. She was not silth.

Marika snatched a ghost and sent it inside. She found Barlog trapped in a damaged sector, still alive, but unlikely to remain so for long if not helped. She sped an enraged promise of damnation after Starstalker, a promise to end its tale.

She took the voidship in hard, quickly, and sought a lock through which she could enter. The first few she examined were damaged beyond use.

Inside. She raced along metal corridors, climbed ladders that rang beneath her boots, skipped past dead meth, flung ghosts this way and that, searching out safe pathways...

She arrived too late.

Barlog lay sandwiched between buckled plates of steel. She screamed when Marika tried to shift the weight. Marika screamed with her, cursing the All. There was nothing she could do. She did not have a healer sister’s skills. She had not taken time to learn them. None of her bath had the talent.

She settled down and gripped Barlog’s paw. Over and over she apologized. “I’m sorry, Barlog, that I brought you to this end.”

Barlog replied, “Do not blame yourself, Marika. I chose. Grauel and I both chose. You gave us a chance to return home. We chose not to go. It has been a long life filled with wonders no Degnan ever dreamed of. By rights none of us should have survived the invasion of the Ponath. So we cannot complain. We had many borrowed years. Our deaths have been honorable, and we will be recalled as long as Marika is recalled, for were we not her right and left paws, her shadows in the lights of Biter and Chaser?”

Barlog gathered her strength. Marika gripped her paw more tightly. She said, “I do not want you to die, Barlog. I do not want you to leave me here alone.”

Finally Barlog replied, “You were always alone, Marika. We but followed you down the pathway of your destiny. We leave one request. Take us back to the Ponath. Not now, but someday.”

“That will be. You know it will be. If it is the only thing I accomplish in what life is left me.”

“Thank you, Marika.”

Neither said anything more. Marika did not want to speak for fear grief would betray her, and she lose the concentration she lent to watching for a return of Starstalker.

In time Barlog shuddered, whimpered, clutched her paw tightly, and went to join the All.

Marika could maintain control no longer.

Chapter Forty-Three

I

Marika presided over an abbreviated Mourning down upon the colony world. She had the ashes of Grauel and Barlog stored in flasks that she placed aboard her darkship. Then she took the darkship up and out, to the stars, and till her bath rebelled she hunted Serke. She became more cold, more deadly than ever before, and saw little purpose to life other than the final destruction of the last six or seven of the old enemy.

When the bath refused to be driven farther she returned to the battered starship and lurked there sullenly, solitarily, becoming social only when preparing to launch another search foray. She often talked to herself when alone, debating taking her huntresses home. The part of her that insisted on waiting till they were avenged always won.

If she would not go of her own choosing, the homeworld would summon her.

There was a flight into the dust cloud, sniffing cold spoor, and another team of bath who tired of fruitless, driven pursuit. She turned back to the starship, and as she approached it she received a touch.

A darkship with a crew symbolically selected from four dark-faring orders awaited her. It bore a desperate petition from the new most seniors of the various Communities, the silth she had expected to come hunting, but who never had.

What was this? Some cunningly laid trap?

She approached the meeting with extreme caution.

The Mistress of the courier ship was a Redoriad survivor of the battles with the Serke, one Marika knew and had little cause to suspect--though she had participated in Balbrach’s attempt to steal the derelict. Her skills in the void were second only to Marika’s own. She said, “You see before you the only Mistress of five sent who survived the effort to escape the homeworld. We all carried the same plea. Your talent is needed at home, Marika.”

“For what? What has happened now?”

“The brethren. Of course. You were right about them. Somewhere, somehow, while silthdom diverted itself with other matters, they built a starship modeled on the alien. It appeared a month ago. It carried many brethren whom we could not harm and weapons of the alien sort. Many silth have perished. They seized the mirrors and orbital stations. Now they are down on the planet, attacking us everywhere. They have powerful suppressors that take our talents away and force us to battle them in their own fashion. Though you hurt them badly before, they have gained strength because they have won the sympathy of the bonded population.”

Marika recalled the attitudes of her elders when she was a pup. The Communities had not ever had the hearts of common meth. “You would not listen, you silth. You would not learn. I do not want to come. The homeworld has done nothing but cause me grief. Yet I have made promises to my dead. I will come. And I will die, I think, for if none of you can destroy them, what hope for me alone? For if this is a lure into a web to avenge those I punished for their stupidity and cupidity, what chance that I will prevail? The bait would not be set out till the trappers felt certain of their ground.”

The Redoriad ignored her suggestion of potential treachery. “You have the wooden darkship. The rogue cannot see you in the void.”

“Little good may that do.”

“You will come? For certain?”

“I said I would. Let me rest. Let me grieve for myself and all my stupid sisters who would not hear my warnings, so beg me now to kalerhag for their salvation. I should allow them to be eradicated. I should hope a smarter generation would arise after them. But I will come. I have nothing for which to live. Nothing but the destruction of my enemies.”

“This is not true, mistress. It has taken a disaster of grand magnitude to convince the sisterhoods that the solitary voice crying warnjng held more wisdom than all their ruling generation. They believe, Marika. They beg you to take the mantle and show the way, to forge the new unity... “

“I do not want to lead. I never wanted that. Had I wished, I could have taken command long ago. All I ever wanted was to walk the starpaths with my friends, finding new things. I have been allowed little opportunity to chase that dream. The wickednesses of silth have compelled me always to turn elsewhere. And now they have robbed me of all who were dearest to me. Then when they must pay the price of their folly they beg me to save them.”

“You are bitter.”

“Of course I am. But enough of that. Tell me what you know of the orbits occupied by the rogues.” She did not believe treacherous silth would have craft enough to weave a luring tale with sufficient verisimilitude to include properly shaped imaginary rogue orbits. She would go, but the Redoriad’s report would tell her what she faced.

II

Marika paused on a world a short jump from home. She rested her bath well. She carried a doubled and heavily armed crew. The Redoriad she sent ahead to scout. Shortly before she expected the Redoriad to return she took her darkship up and gathered ghosts for the Up-and-Over.

The Redoriad appeared. They are in polar orbit, she reported. Inside the orbits of the smallest moons. They are arming the mirrors and stations, though there are not really enough of them to operate all the systems. Touch I had with the surface was grim. Several small sisterhoods have been entirely destroyed. All the larger are in trouble. The only damage done the rogue ship was by a homecoming Mistress who committed kalerhag when she saw she could not reach the surface. After her rites she plunged her darkship into the rogue’s drives. It cannot maneuver. Unfortunately, it remained in a stable orbit.

Marika thanked the Mistress, then questioned her closely about the rogue ship’s orbit. She wanted to arrive near it, to allow it no time to respond to her appearance.

She skipped to the edge of the system, took control of a great black, then made the long jump, mind tight upon the innermost of the home world’s minor moons, which orbited inside geocentric altitude and well askew from the equator.

She came out within a mile of the moon and hid behind it. It was fewer than a thousand miles from the rogue, and would move closer. She hurled the great black the moment she regained her equilibrium. She drove it with all the strength her hatred could inspire. She ignored the rest of the system. If she did not beat that ship nothing else would matter.

The Redoriad Mistress was right. The ship was brethren from its conception and mimicked the alien in line and armament, though it was smaller. It began firing soon after she started her approach. It had not had much trouble detecting her.

She moved in fast, though, directly toward the ship’s stern, where there was a cone of space in which it was difficult for the ship’s weapons to track her. She evaded or destroyed what little did threaten her, then entered a smaller cone where no weapon could reach her at all.

She probed the ship’s suppressor fields and found a crack where the sister had smashed her darkship. She flung the great black at it, set it to ripping metal and the flesh beyond.

She brought her darkship into physical contact with the rogue’s stern. Rogue weaponry on the moons and stations dared not fire upon her there.

Marika touched her reserve bath, who would have to play the roles so long filled by Grauel and Barlog. Plant a charge. They hurried out the arm touching the starship. Once they returned Marika drifted a short distance away.