Star Hunters (14 page)

Agoteh shouted and leveled his rifle. As the shot echoed in the long narrow room, the Director peered out his slit and saw a watuk dropping on his face. Then others came shrieking and howling around the corner. He caught up his rifle and began firing into the mob.

By tens they fell as they ran at the stables. But seven men were not enough. Other tens reached the stable, used their axes on the door, ax handles on the window bars.

The Director heard them pouring in, felt the slam of their hate and rage. He waited for them to swarm up the ladder, laughing again, his old eyes dancing.
A damn good life, mine
, he thought.
Better than any of those bastards can boast
. He shot the first man up the ladder and the second.

He died hard. Like the roots of a water tree, the roots of his life went deep in the wiry old body. He lasted longer than the other teachers. When they were dead, he was still fighting, roaring out his old songs, nearly buried by dead men. But in the end he died. Torn apart by the mob. They worried at him like wild dogs worry their prey. Then they burned the building down around his fragmented body. And wandered back into the street, the blindrage appeased by blood and destruction. With tired satisfaction the attackers left the burning buildings behind them and ambled back to their families for food and sleep.

Grey sat up, conscious at first only of the pain in his body. He grunted as he probed the sorest spots, then grimaced in reluctant appreciation. A delicate job of battering. Every inch of skin bruised and not a bone broken.

Faiseh lay huddled beside him, still out. Grey ran fingers over his head wondering if the watuk had a concussion. There was a knot over his left ear but he was breathing easily. Grey touched the large artery in his neck. A good strong pulse.

Groaning, stretching, working his hands and his body to warm out the stiffness, he walked around their odd prison. They were in a cage six meters on a side with a solid metal sheet underfoot and overhead, joined by heavy square bars about a hand's width apart. He looked through at the room beyond.

They were in a great natural cavern tailored for human usage by slabs of metacrete. At his left a metacrete sheet blocked off part of the cavern. It was pierced by several arches. Through one he could see a gray-floored corridor. Through another, the obligatory white tiles and complex instrumentation of a lab, with white-coated acolytes bustling about or hovering anxiously over banks of dials. Grey scowled and rubbed at his ribs. These attendants seemed absurdly out of place in the rugged stone of the cavern.

Closer at hand, almost within reach of the cage, a watuk sat crosslegged on a cushion, facing a glass wall with a great maze of glass cubes behind it. Each cube held a limp hare, bulging head shaved, tubes weaving through and around its lumpy body like a glassy cocoon, shimmering lines of force flowing around and over each obscene pink head. Grey counted the cubes. Twenty up, forty across. And behind the front tier, stretching away like fading images in a hazy mirror, more hares, more cubes. He licked his lips, feeling nauseated. Hastily he looked back at the silent, seated watuk.

The watuk's head was shaved and a web of light like those shimmering over the harebrains hovered over it, linked to a polished steel scull cap. Beside him a metal egg a meter and a half tall rested enigmatically on a squat metal cylinder. Man and egg sat on a platform about a meter high, a narrow oval with the long diameter parallel to the harewall. Grey considered the egg thoughtfully.
That has to be the controller
, he thought.
And it can be operated by anyone wearing the cap, looks like
. Aleytys was still loose, coming toward him. Not for long probably. He grinned at the egg, a mirthless stretching of his lips that matched the predator's gleam in his eyes.
Bringing her here, my friend
.… He looked around the empty room again, wondering where the thin man was.
Could be the mistake that breaks you
. He thought back to Maeve and the climax of that Hunt, saw Aleytys spinning sunlight into thread and weaving it into a blanket that seared the struggling parasite to ash.
I hope
.

He tapped at his waist where the weapon belt had been and smiled. The belt was a convenience and held some useful things, but its strongest weapon was intangible, existing only in the minds of those who removed it thinking they were disarming him. The belt was a magician's right hand making fancy passes while the plebian left performed the trick. Within his body he had his major weapons, the biologic implants. Small in power but tremendously flexible when supported by his training, experience and that gift of Wolff, his fierce drive for survival.

On the fourth wall outside there was a mosaic screen showing assorted scenes from Kiwanji. He saw the storming of the Tembeat, the fights in the streets, images of the hares silently staring in at the trapped people, images of the generators straining under the load. Grey watched dourly, his professional pride taking a beating.
I'm supposed to be stopping that
, he thought. He shook his head, wondering how the Holders could justify their prohibition of energy weapons. Hundreds of people needlessly dead.
Stupid. Dead because of a damned crazy idea. A twist in the heads of the men in power. Better dead than contaminated by forbidden things. Stupid
. He growled, then burst out laughing.
Getting as bad as Aleytys
, he thought.
None of my business
.

Ignoring the dull ache of his body, he began examining the cage. He ran exploring fingers over the bars, wet the metal with saliva and touched it. Good grade steel. Nothing more. The minitorch in his weaponbelt would cut through them like butter. If he had his weaponbelt. With a degree of privacy and enough time, and one of his implants, he could start a resonance in the metal that would turn it brittle enough to push aside with a flick of his hand. But that would be noisy and lengthy and he was too visible. He touched the heavy welds and paced the circumference of the square. The cage was a quick, neat job, adequate for its purpose, but obviously constructed for the Ranger and for him. He glanced down at Faiseh, frowned. Still out. Then he shrugged. Nothing he could do.

He rubbed his nose.
Which brings up a point. Why am I still alive?

The cage door was a meter square and located in the far corner of the cage. He knelt beside the door and probed the smooth metal of the lock for the pattern.
A nice job
, he thought. He was still teasing out the pattern when Faiseh groaned and sat up. “Well.” He raised his eyebrows. “Took your time.”

Faiseh probed at his skull with short blunt fingers. “Feels like I was kicked in the head. And the bastard's still kicking.” He squinted at the cage, slowly taking in the sections of the great cavern. “What the hell?”

“Haribu's little home. I think that's what's making the hares attack.” He flicked a hand at the egg then swung it at the harewall. “Kiwanji's not wearing too well.” He showed Faiseh the mosaic screen.

Faiseh winced as he watched the Tembeat burning. “Meme Kalamah,” he whispered. “Everything going … ah.…” He edged around and pressed his face against the bars, staring fascinated and horrified at the scenes of disintegration in Kiwanji.

Grey watched a moment then went back to work on the lock. He was unwilling to use his implants when outsiders were watching unless he had to. Sorry about Faiseh's distress, he was satisfied to see him distracted.

Several minutes later Grey grinned and moved away from the lock. Two minutes and he'd be out. His head was still throbbing, made it difficult to work. He wasted a minute cursing the thin man, then triggered his depth probe and began to work out the interior arrangement of Haribu's base. It was like a blind man feeling his way through an unfamiliar house, slowly building up a tactile image. When he had the geography in place, he switched to a heat probe, looking for people. But the hares were a problem. Too close and too many of them. They confused his readings. After a minute he gave up, lounging against the bars.

Faiseh had his face pressed against the bars staring at the scenes from Kiwanji. He hadn't moved. Grey sighed. “Ranger.” There was no answer. “Faiseh!”

“Huh?” Reluctantly the watuk swung around. “What?”

“Why whip yourself? Nothing you can do about that. Right time comes, we'll stop it here.”

“Here!” The watuk jumped to his feet and started prowling about the cage. “Us!” He banged a fist against the bars. “How?”

“Relax. Sit down!” Grey snapped out the order and Faiseh sat, surprising himself with his instant obedience. “Listen. We wait until Haribu brings Aleytys in. And Manoreh, of course. She's the one to knock that out.” He pointed at the egg. “We're backup. When the right time comes, I'll get us out of here. Two minutes. If we jump too soon, we'll get kicked in the head and lose the game.”

Faiseh muttered, “Hard to wait.”

The hours passed. Faiseh brooded, eventually slept, snoring a little. Grey began counting watuk. Not too many around. About fifteen made a point of walking past the cage and staring at him. All armed. Guards. He counted five different white-coated lab workers.

A wizened little man—a tarnished green-silver hard as a dried pea—trotted from the lab, a taller dull-faced watuk behind him. The little man's white coat was starchy, pristine, not a wrinkle marring it even when he moved. Grey leaned forward, watching intently. The strange pair stopped beside the platform.

“Charar!” The little man's voice was sharp and scratchy.

The sitter stirred, slowly straightened his legs. After a minute he eased the cap off his head and set it carefully on a black box beside his cushion. Muscles trembling with fatigue, he rose clumsily and stumbled off the dais, nearly falling on his face. He shambled off saying nothing to the others and disappeared into the gray-floored corridor on the far end of the metacrete wall.

The wizened man glanced at the screen, then urged his companion onto the dais. “Keep them at it,” he shrilled. His black-beetle eyes darted from the screen to the sitter and back. “More pressure. We need more pressure. It's taking too long.” He watched impatiently as the watuk settled the cap on his shaved head. “Careful. Careful. Get it seated, fool, you mess up and I'll see you hurt for it.” His beetle eyes took in the egg. “If I knew more about that or could get a look inside!” He reached out and almost touched the silver-gray surface but stopped his fingers a hair away from it. “Fa curse that Vryhh.” He stopped abruptly and looked anxiously around, then turned back to the silent watuk sitting on the cushion. He nodded, then walked briskly away.

Vryhh,” Grey whispered. He glanced from the egg to the hares lying in the glass cubes.
The redhead. A Vryhh. Interesting. No wonder he handled me like a baby. Aleytys can't know. This changes things. She's half-Vryhh. Can she handle him? Should be a damn good fight. That answers Head's question. Don't have to wonder how he got to her
.

He pushed his still sore body erect and moved back to where he could see the depressing scenes of Kiwanji as it disintegrated under the pressure of the hares, then faced the harewall.
Crude now
, he thought. He began to think about his own presence here, began to see possibilities that spread and branched until he was near the limits of his imagination. He thought of the hareweapon, refined and increased a thousandfold in power, focused on Wolff. In winter. People pouring out of houses onto the ice.
God! And if … no, when they turned that monster on me, everything about Wolff and the Hunters. Too many people, worlds, Companies with reasons for hitting Wolff
.

He felt the Vryhh before he saw him. He looked up. The man stood outside the cage watching him, green-stone eyes amused and contemptuous. Grey stared back, silently defiant. Legends, these Vrya. Near omniscience. Omnipotence. He glared into the handsome, masklike face, then at the withered hands and their metal inlays. After a minute he smiled. Not a legend. Diseased. Dying. His smile broadened and he lifted his gaze back to the Vryhh's face. The green eyes narrowed and the mask slipped a little as he gave way to irritation. He turned abruptly and stalked off, vanishing into a small lift beside the harewall.

Grey settled back against the bars and stared at the egg. Seeing the Vryhh reminded him of Aleytys. He remembered the first time he'd seen her. He'd been lying in the third-floor corridor of a cheap hotel on Maeve bleeding his life out on the worn carpet, a knife hole big as his fist in his stomach. He could use that healing now. He rubbed at his sore diaphragm. He looked across at the snoring Ranger then settled down and drifted to sleep.

They rode all night, stopped briefly for a cold meal, then went on, following the course of the Chumquivir up into the mountains. Hare traces were abundantly present. Droppings, mangled vegetation. During the night the link pulled them closer and closer until each lived partly in two bodies, sensing what the other sensed. They rode silently, saying nothing, both growing more resentful of this enforced intimacy.

A faras stumbled. Aleytys reacted immediately, shifting her weight to lift the faras, then gasped as pain stabbed through her groin. Her hands opened, the reins fell, her mount reared then started to run. She was falling, no she was sitting clutching the saddle horn jolting helplessly as the faras ran. She set herself to controlling the animal. When she rode back, Manoreh was standing beside a dead faras. One of his legs was braced, the other bent with only the toe touching the ground. She fought against the pain that pierced her own leg and side. “What happened?”

“Leg broke. Cut its throat,” he grunted. Aleytys winced again as the pain in his side was a pain in hers.

“Stupid.” She pressed her hand against her forehead. “You should have waited.”

He ignored her and removed the gear from the dead animal.

Aleytys slid from the saddle. “Let that go a minute. Sit down.”