Three figures glided through an empty night street. Moonlight twinkled off the medals and tunic buttons of the tallest. There was a gentle tinkle as she moved. The smaller two made no sound at all. They were silth sisters, sorceresses, trained to the ways of the dark. The tall female, Kerath Hadon, knew that they trailed her only because she had asked them to do so.
A remote flash brightened the quiet street. Kerath glanced up. For a moment she saw only three moons. The smallest had an orbital motion perceptible to the eye.
Razor slashes of coherent light ripped the velvet sky, come and gone so fast she actually saw only afterimages. “Another strike at Frostflyer and Dreamkeeper,” Kerath said.
Her companions said nothing. One may have nodded. These silth wasted no words. Kerath shivered. They spooked her. “Come. Let’s get this done while we still have a few ships left.”
A series of flashes illuminated the city, revealing crumbling old walls recently whitewashed in defiance of the doom overhanging the Meth homework!, filling gothic aches with shadows, silhouetting distant onion domes. Kerath snarled, “Suslov is serious tonight. Here.” She tapped a sagging door. It opened. A gray-whiskered male poked his muzzle into the rippling light, his eyes flashing golden.
“You?”
“Yes, it’s me, Shadar. Wouldn’t you know it? Is the High Lord here?”
“Waiting impatiently, Marshall. Off the street before you’re seen.”
Kerath pushed inside. Her shadows followed, two dark ghosts. Shadar led them through two rooms, to the foot of a stair. “Up there. Kerath? Marshall? Good luck.”
“No luck involved, Shadar. Strictly fiat. But thank you.” She touched his hand gently.
A moment later she stood in the doorway of a brightly lighted room. A half-dozen males with gray whiskers and ragged fur stared at her with tight eyes and tighter lips. Kerath flashed teeth. Folgar suspected. She stepped inside. “I thought this would be private, High Lord.”
The eldest male flexed muscles still powerful despite gnawing age. “The circumstances suggested some unpleasant possibilities. You’ll understand my urge to include reliable witnesses, Mar-” shall.“ His teeth showed mockingly.
Kerath’s ears tilted forward and down, the Meth equivalent of a sneer. The presence of his henchmen would do Folgar no good.
“You and your packmates have destroyed the Meth, High Lord. The people are sick of alien ways, and even more sick of endless defeat.” Kerath gestured toward the doorway. “The Meth might welcome the return of old ways.”
A low rumble started deep in a half-dozen throats, an unconscious warning sound from males who saw their territories threatened. “Why are those silth witches here?” one demanded.
“Marshall?” Folgar asked. He concealed his emotions well, for a male.
Kerath drew herself to her straightest. She knew she made an imposing figure, a hero of the Meth, well marked with medals and scars. She even wore the white cuff badge of Snow-No-More, a defeat that fewer than a hundred Meth had survived. “For three generations your all-male party has held the power, High Lord. What have you done with it? You have harried the silth. Slain their greatest. And you have made the Meth into bumbling imitations of the humans you admire.” She had rehearsed the message often, but her delivery was not going well. She did not feel it.
Folgar nodded. “To the point, Marshall. The Command had something in mind when they sent you.”
Kerath would not be hurried. “You set aside the old ways, the old truths, the old knowledge. You made mock of millennia of tradition. You made the Meth a reflection of Man. Then you tried to usurp the humans. What has it profited you? What has it gained the Meth?”
Folgar stared stonily. His companions watched the silth warily, frightened, as if faced by something returned from the grave.
“Our worlds are lost. Our greatest warships are debris scattered among the stars. Our best fighters lie in iron coffins far in the bitter cold of the deep. We retain only that speck of space inside Biter’s orbit. Frostflyer and Dreamkeeper are our last heavy ships. We have become prisoners upon our homeworld, awaiting the fall of a monstrous hammer. We are helpless to turn away the asteroid Suslov sends to shatter our world.”
“He won’t bring it all the way in,” Folgar countered.
“He will if he must. I know Pyotr Suslov, High Lord. He doesn’t bluff. But, of course, your contention is correct insofar as you know. You have been arranging a secret surrender.”
Folgar’s ears flicked in surprise.
“The Command knows.” Kerath did not conceal her contempt. “Male treachery. It’s always with us. You started this war, and now you mean to sell the Meth simply so you can retain power when the fighting stops.”
“Now, Marshall…”
“The Meth would drink your blood if they saw the Command’s tapes of your communications with Suslov.”
“Are you threatening me, Marshall?”
“This is the message from the Command. There will be no surrender. The Meth will die as they have always lived: without dishonor. If the asteroid cannot be turned, so be it. May the All forfend.”
“Marshall—” Folgar’s ears were back now, in fighting position.
“The Command will take appropriate steps if you have any further contact with Suslov.”
“This is rebellion.”
Kerath admitted it. “The Armed Force is the source of all power, Folgar. It no longer supports you. It is assuming direction of the war effort.”
“Why are they with you?” Loathing and hatred edged Folgar’s voice as he indicated the silth.
“We fought your way, the way that imitates humans. We failed. Now we turn to the ways of our foremothers.”
The old males growled. A chair overturned. Someone dropped a bottle. The stink of male fear filled the room.
“Darkwar?” Folgar asked.
“Darkwar.”
“But the old darkships were scrapped. Nor are there trained silth crews anymore.”
Kerath revealed the points of her teeth. “Wrong on both counts. The silth have ships you never found. The legendary Ceremony darkships. And sisters who escaped your hunters. End of message from the Command.” ‘ Folgar growled, but there was a touch of fear in his defiance.
Kerath turned away. “Come,” she told the silth.
Shadar awaited her at the foot of the stair. “You did well.”
Kerath nodded. “I thought so.”
“Good luck again, Marshall.” Shadar touched her arm.
Kerath paused to hug the Meth who had sired her, before pushing into the street.
The sky was quiet. The orbital skirmish had ended. Frostflyer and Dreamkeeper still radiated the glow of active energy screens. They had survived again.
II
Kerath was uneasy in the company of the silth, though she concealed it well. Her adult life had run in tracks prescribed by Folgar’s ilk. These sorceresses were anachronisms, shadows of ideas long outdated. Facing down Folgar’s scruffy pack was one thing; believing that the Command was doing right was quite another.
She pushed off a bulkhead, floated across the lighter’s cabin, checked the harnesses of her companions. “Rendezvous with Dreamkeeper in fifteen minutes.” They looked at her with fathomless eyes, saying nothing.
They were so young to be so spooky. They never spoke. That was unnerving. But they had to be good. Littermates, they had been chosen Mistresses of the Ships over any others of the surviving silth. It was said they were as filled with the dark strength as the great silth of old, when darkwar decided the destiny of the Meth.
Did the Command want those grim days to return from shadow? Folgar was a fool, yes, but he was right when he claimed the Meth were better off for having shed the yoke of the silth.
Docking alarm sounded. Overhead speakers relayed crisp instructions. The crew was trying to impress the oncoming Marshall. .
Kerath needed no impressing. Dreamkeeper sprang from the same core of honor as she. The ship was a survivor.
She released her charges. “Follow me.”
An honor guard waited aboard the warship. Kerath accepted their accolade but told the ship’s commander, “Don’t waste any more energy on protocol. My companions are cargo, and I don’t need it.”
“As you will, Marshall. Let me show you to your quarters.”
“Have the other personnel arrived?”
The commander glanced back. The silth stalked them like wicked shadows. The boots of Kerath and the commander rang on the gray-painted steel decks. The two in black seemed to glide a whisker above the plating. “They’re here. Have you noticed the quiet?”
“I noted a distinct lack of curiosity.”
“The crew is staying out of the way. The first group distressed them. Now you bring Mistresses of the Ships. ”They’re frightened.“
Kerath showed a glimpse of teeth. “They have cause, Commander. I wouldn’t be here had I not been directed.”
“When you were a whelp, did they tell you tales about the grauken?”
“Did they? My older brothers tried to convince our litter that he lived under our bed.” The grauken was a shape-changing night monster fond of delicate young flesh, an archetype born during primitive winters, when desperate packs resorted to cannibalism to survive, luring or capturing the young of other packs.
“Seeing the silth aboard my ship gives me the feeling I’d have if I did find the grauken under my bed.”
“I know,” Kerath said. “How well I know.”
“These are our guests’ quarters,” the commander said, halting before a door. He tapped. The door slid open a crack. “Sisters?” He indicated the two figures in black.
Kerath caught a glimpse of the cabin as the two entered. The darkness was barely broken by red light. Shapes in black sat motionless. A terrible bittersweet odor rolled out, offending Kerath’s nostrils.
The door clumped shut.
“The grauken’s den,” the commander observed. “They’re calling it that already. I hope the Command knows what it’s doing.”
“So do I, Commander. So do I. I don’t think I could go on if I thought my efforts would facilitate a silth rebirth.”
“Nor I. I suppose we must have faith that the Command can neutralize them once they have served their purpose.”
“Are we ready to space?”
“Programmed for jump. Frostflyer should be moving up to cover our drive ports. Whenever you give the order, Marshall.”
“Then show me my quarters. I’ll shift uniforms and join you on the bridge.”
III
“Ready on Frostflyer, Marshall.”
“Ready here, Marshall,” the ship’s commander said.
Kerath stared into the situation display tank. The humans were shifting their dispositions. Suslov had noted Frostflyer‘s change of station. “They anticipate a strike at the asteroid.”
“As they would say, it’s in the cards,” the commander replied. “They would see that as our only remaining option.”
“A weak one, though. If we reshape the collision orbit, they’ll just warp another hunk of rock into the same groove.”
“In that light, what we’re doing here doesn’t make much sense either.”
“No. I suspect the Command just wants to scare them into backing off.” Kerath studied the proposed track of the warships. It feinted toward the incoming asteroid, then curved out of the system. “It should work. They should be rushing one way when we jump the other.”
“And then what?”
“It’s hoped they’ll assume we’ve been sent out as commerce raiders. If we shake loose, they’ll concentrate on guarding their shipping lanes.”
“That’s the book?”
Kerath revealed a little tooth. “That’s the book. Let’s hope Pyotr Suslov buys it. Go when ready, Commander.”
It looked book for a while. But when Frostflyer and Dreamkeeper turned, human warships responded immediately. Kerath studied the tank. “Two main battles and a heavy chaser. Suslov hedged his bets.” She turned suddenly, sensing a difference, a change of energy in the air.
Two silth had come onto the narrow balcony overlooking the fighting bridge: the two she had brought aboard. They remained out of the way, observing, but their chill filled the compartment.
“Coming up to first jump,” the commander said. “And two. And one. And jump.” The tank blanked. The fringes of the universe folded in. Bulkheads melted and crawled. Meth wavered like dancing flames. Kerath glanced at the silth. They remained rocks of blackness.
Real space clicked into place.
The tank began to assemble a portrait from data retrieved by the ship’s exterior sensors. “Frostflyer is with us, right on station.”
Kerath stared into the tank, watching starpoints wink into being, willing it not to show anything red.
“One counter. Two counter. Three counter. They stayed with us, Marshall.”
“I see them, Commander. Next jump.”
The stars changed thrice more. Three times the human trackers came through behind them. “They’re good,” Kerath observed. “Really good.”
“Suggestions, Marshall?”
“They were ragged that go. The chaser was a half-minute late. Perhaps it’s a cumulative error.”
“We have only four jumps to shake them, Marshall.”
“Continue, Commander.” . Next jump the humans translated even more raggedly, arriving I over a span of a full minute. Kerath sighed. Time to act. “Commander, Mission Officer to Frostflyer. Turn and attack after next drop. Lead them away. Head for home the long way.”
The commander stared at her for several seconds before relaying the order.
The ships jumped, and dropped. Frostflyer charged toward! where the humans were expected to appear. Kerath glared at the tank.
The first human ship appeared directly in Frostflyer’s path. The tank showed a great deal of weaponry action.
A second ship dropped. And then the first vanished.
“Ha!” a tech cried. “Got one!”
“Or it jumped out,” Kerath whispered to herself, watching! Frostflyer curve toward the newcomer.
The chaser arrived as the commander ordered the next jump. When translation was complete, Kerath suggested, “Hold the next! jump. Let’s see if they come through after us. Better to fight them here than around the target.”
The commander observed, “It won’t much matter now, will it?J They’ve followed long enough to know we’re not headed toward any commerce lane. If they bring in a fleet on our line of flight…”
“But it’ll take days, or even weeks, to find us. That should time enough.”
Nothing appeared on Dreamkeeper’s backtrail. After waiting an hour, Kerath ordered the journey resumed.
Much, much later, as the ship cruised that section of spac approximating its destination, she directed, “Secure to quarters! Commander. Standard watches. We’ll begin searching after we’ve rested.”
“Very well, Marshall.”
The silth were at the hatchway when Kerath departed. She thought their eyes looked feverish in the subdued lighting, nodded greeting and started to slip past.
A hand touched her elbow. She stopped as if she had encountered an iron bar. A whisper said, “The steel ship, Frostflyer, is no more. Two alien ships lighted its path into darkness. The third is injured. It limps back to its base. We tell you, that those with kin aboard Frostflyer might begin mourning in timely fashion.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Kerath shook off the staying hand and rushed to her quarters. For half an hour she sat rubbing fingers over her personal sidearm. The action had a calming effect.
She had ordered Frostflyer, half the fleet-in-being, half the surviving might of the Meth, to its death.
Her sleep was filled with terrible dreams, haunted by dry, withered old bitches flying on black wings. Last hope of the Meth. The Command had given its trust into the wrong hands.
IV
“Coming up now, Commander.”
Kerath and the ship’s commander leaned over a vidtech’s shoulders, peering into her screen. “Searchlights,” the commander ordered.
Immediately something flashed out in the darkness. “There,” Kerath gasped. “More light.”
Several lights concentrated on the target. Gradually, parts became visible.
“Darkship,” the commander breathed. “They really still exist. The Ceremony legend is true.”
Kerath nodded, unable to avert her gaze from that ghost out of the far past, when disputes between silth sisterhoods were settled by combats between Mistresses of the Ships far in the black heart of space. The darkship didn’t look like a ship at all, just a giant titanium girderwork dagger marked with mysterious symbols.
The darkship sprang from an era when sisterhoods formed associations human translators still confused with nations, corporations, and even families. The competition for control of the wealth of the stars had been savage, till silth-run merchanters had encountered humans, with their contagious alien ways and unshakable disbelief. The ensuing confusion among the silth had allowed their overthrow, and hatred of their long tyranny had led to merciless slaughter, witchhunts that persisted yet, and over-reactive tilts toward the new human ideas.
“It needs a lot of repair,” the commander observed.
“Supposed to be twelve of them,” Kerath replied. “The legend is, they chose to meet and die a ritual death here rather than go home and submit to the will of the new order. We’ll choose the best preserved.”
The silth had other ideas. They wanted to locate specific ships.
“The spells of our foremothers guard them still,” said the one who did the talking. “Only those two will be accessible to us.”
Kerath frowned. That might mean troublesome delays. “You’re the experts,” she said, grudging them every extra minute.
Two days went into locating the right ships. They had drifted apart over the centuries. One of the two had sustained considerable damage.
Kerath worried. Suslov would be on the hunt. She did not want to waste time making repairs. The silth ignored her protests. They led their shadowy sisters out and went to work. There was nothing Kerath could do to hurry or help them, or to alter their perception of the way things should be done.
Kerath was sleeping when an orderly came with the commander’s request that she join her on the bridge.
“Thought you’d want to see this, Marshall.” The commander indicated a screen. “They’ve got one moving. There’s not a hint of drive, but it’s moving.”
Kerath surveyed the detection boards. The commander was right. The darkship appeared only on visual and radar. She stared at the titanium dagger. It was receding toward distant stars. A vague glow surrounded it. “She’s getting the feel of it. The old. stories say they glowed too brightly to look at.”
The commander nodded. Then she gasped, “Where did it go? Radar. Where is that target?”
“Gone, Commander. I’m not getting anything… Wait. Here it is. Nadir, thirty-five degrees, range fifteen.”
Kerath exchanged glances with the commander. “Through the Up-and-Over,” she murmured. “She’s found her demons.”
“So that’s true too.” The commander looked frightened. “Witches. You know, I didn’t really believe this before.”
Kerath stared at the empty screen. “I didn’t either, Commander. Not down deep in my heart.” She began to grow a little frightened too.
V
Fifth day on station. The second darkship had completed repairs. Both crews were outside learning to handle their ships. Kerath thought practice seemed unnecessary. “They appear to have been born to it,” she said.
The commander growled, “They are, aren’t they?”
Kerath’s ears tilted slightly, expressing mild amusement. The silth claimed to possess the memories of all their foremothers. Watching these sisters ride their darkships, she was inclined to discard former doubts.
“Do they have names?” the commander asked.
“The silth? I don’t know. I see. You can’t keep them straight. Neither can I.”
“One is faster than the other. I’d like some way to differentiate before we go into rehearsal.”
Kerath’s hackles rose slightly. She checked the time. In half an hour she would be out there herself, riding a darkship during the first mock attack. Dreamkeeper would play alien, its technicians searching for weaknesses Suslov could exploit.
Kerath was not sure why she was going out. An observer run was not essential to her mission. But she had been invited by the Mistresses of the Ships. Acceptance seemed politic.
Fear stalked her like a shadow that disappeared when she turned, like the grauken sliding out from under the far side of the bed as she bent down to look for it. The silth had reasons for being here that had nothing to do with saving the Meth home-world. That would be incidental to their accomplishment of their true ambitions.
Seconds and minutes rolled past. Kerath watched the tank and screens and hoped they would forget her. Out there she would be the powerless minority, unable to call for help. She turned. “Commander, there’s a hole in this thing. Darkships were meant to fight alone, against other darkships. They could smell each other in vacuum. But how will they find a human ship? How will they handle unexpected changes? This is going to be an attack by rote.”
The commander nodded. “I was going to suggest we throw some kinks into the later maneuvers, to test their flexibility. Lack of flexibility broke them back when. They couldn’t cope with the flood of novel ideas that came after meeting the humans. They couldn’t shed roles programmed by their foremothers.”
“I’ll mention that to the silth.”
“In a way, I feel sorry for them. Time has passed them by.”
“Perhaps.” Kerath glanced at the screen. A darkship was docking. “They didn’t forget me. Wish me luck.”
The Mistress of the Ship met her in docking bay. She had brought her darkship inside. It floated free, ignoring Dream-keeper’s artificial gravity. Fresh, updated symbols had been painted on the titanium beams. A variety of new mystical hardware had been installed. Overall, the darkship looked new.
Kerath opened a locker to secure an eva suit.
“No, Marshall. No artifacts. You alone, naked.”
Kerath bared her teeth. “No.”
“We wish you to partake of the silth experience. We wish you to meet those-who-dwell.”
“That’s your problem. If you really want me to make the fly, do it on my terms.”
“No.”
“Compromise?” Kerath thought the female’s eyes flared for an instant. Silth did not compromise. “I want my clothing and my communicator,”
“Clothing is neither dignity nor worth, Marshall.”
“Then shed yours, silth.”
The female’s eyes flared. “Very well. Set your communicator to receive only. We wish you to concentrate on the experience, not what to report.” .
“Agreed.”
The Mistress glided away. Kerath followed. The silth was angry. She stepped heavily enough to be heard.
The Mistress led her to the axis of the titanium dagger. “Stand here. This is the traditional Place of the Mother in combats to determine the fates of sisterhoods in blood feud. Fear not. A dome of power will shield you from the breath of the AH.” The silth left her and took her own station at the tip of the longest arm of the cross. Riding the point of the dagger, Kerath thought.
“Marshall?” Another silth held out a silver bowl filled with an amber liquid. Kerath had seen the sisters sip from similar bowls before each of their trips outside. Shakily, she took the bowl and drank.
“More,” the sister said.
Kerath drank.
“More… Enough. Yes. I think that’s enough.”
Kerath felt lightheaded. Her eyeballs felt prickly.
The silth took the bowl to each of the stations, then assumed her own place at the tip of one of the dagger’s arms.
Kerath became aware of microscopic points of light around her. She caught hints of similar phenomena surrounding the other females. The phenomena grew more pronounced as Dreamkeeper evacuated the atmosphere from the bay.
The bay door opened. Naked stars stared in. Kerath felt only a slight moment of chill; then the golden points redoubled in intensity.
The darkship turned, pointed toward the stars—then stabbed toward them at screaming speed. Kerath felt ho inertial drag.
She turned and saw the rectangular lighted bay shrink with incredible rapidity. This was impossible. Even more impossible, her fur rippled as if in a strong wind.
Dreamkeeper shrank to a point and vanished.
She was alone among the stars, standing in space. She could not see the darkship. Her companions were golden columns that looked more like distant star clusters than nearby phenomena. She was alone, and frightened as she had never been frightened before. Something burned in her veins. Her head spun. Her eyes would not track. The amber drink? Strange, colored things crawled round the edge of her vision.
Had they poisoned her? No. They had drunk from the same bowl. Suddenly it became clear, a whole different view of the darkful deep between the stars, a view of a chill filled with color and life. Life? Life was impossible out here…
A swarm of a million bright little deltoid darts drifted toward her, slowly shifting color from yellow through red and back again, in perfect unison. They sensed the darkship suddenly. As one they turned white, flipped around, and streaked away. They moved almost faster than the eye could track.
There were little things, big things, even bigger things. Some crowded the darkship, curious. Some remained indifferent. Some fled. A few cruised with the ship, seeming to pull it along. Those were the demons of legend, Kerath decided. The demons the silth summoned and commanded to carry their darkships through the Up-and-Over.
In her wonder she forgot her fear. “Oh!” Fear returned a dozenfold. But why? It was nothing. Just a dust cloud obscuring a few stars. Wasn’t it?
The stars rotated around her. Vaguely, she sensed the approach of the second darkship. The creatures of color shuddered and made way, slithering over and around one another like a nest of serpents. Four columns of witchfire took station to Kerath’s right. The entire second ship began to glow. Ahead of Kerath, her Mistress of the Ship caught fire. The stars began to rock. Moving again, Kerath thought. The things of color—those-who-dwell, in silth parlance—scattered. So fast!
The universe turned inside out. Horrible things clawed and howled at her. “Up-and-Over!” she screamed. The silth had conjured them into the Up-and-Over, where the darkship ‘dagger hurtled faster than light. She screamed again as Dreamkeeper’s lights appeared for a second, so close she could almost touch them.
And she screamed once more as the darkship returned to the Up-and-Over.
Drifting. Shaking. Dreamkeeper a few light-seconds away. A voice in her ear. It was several seconds before she could concentrate on the message. “Impressive, Marshall, but abort the drill. I say again, abort the drill. We have unfriendly company. Get aboard fast.”
Get aboard? How was the Mistress of the Ship to know? No! She couldn’t. But she found her feet moving of their own volition, carrying her forward. The commander kept chattering in her ear, telling her how close the enemy was. In half a minute she was at the tip of the dagger. Her shielding melded with that of the silth. “Enemy ship, Mistress,” she gasped. “Only a light-minute away, right on a line with our sun. We have to get back aboard Dreamkeeper.”
The Mistress bobbed her head, asked a few questions. Then she said, “Back to your position.”
The return trek seemed far longer. She finished it with a bad feeling gnawing her gut.
VI
The darkship began to glow. Round it those-who-dwell scattered. They seemed suddenly two-dimensional, bright paper cutouts imbued with panic, flickering toward silent stars. Only the silth’s driver creatures remained, stretching and rolling, straining as they dragged the darkship.
Kerath glanced upward. A chill seized her. That dark dust-cloud thing hovered overhead, obscuring different constellations.
The darkships became a pair of fiery daggers hurtling toward nowhere. The universe twisted and folded and opened its evil belly and gave birth to a horde of silently screaming horrors. They had gone into the Up-and-Over. Kerath screamed back. They weren’t supposed to do this.
Normal space exploded around her. She caught a half-second glimpse of a human warship, long and lean and deadly, its riders already running free. Dreamkeeper had been spotted!
Cold blackness enveloped her. She could not see her sisters on the darkship. She felt their fear, felt the Mistress waver. The stench of death stung her nostrils. Something that felt like the damp at the bottom of a grave crawled over her protective shielding. In her mind she heard the first of a thousand death cries…
Twist. Fold. The Up-and-Over. A distinct feeling of hard deceleration, a twinge of fear. Something was wrong with the Mistress. The darkship was out of control. Dreamkeeper was swelling ahead, docking bay ablaze with light. “Too fast!” Kerath cried. “Slow down!” Her ears folded forward. She sank to all fours, sure she was about to die.
What a waste, to end it all here. Dreamkeeper would be crippled, and the Meth could no longer manage major repairs. She had failed, and would not live to see the final consequences.
She was right and she was wrong. The darkship continued its deceleration, lowering its daggertip slowly. In a flicker the warship swelled, rose… they were going to make it! They were going to slide beneath it.
The shock of an earthquake hit her. The titanium girderwork ripped, tore, screamed in the silence of the big chill. Kerath clung to the metal. The stars twirled. And then they went out.
She awakened in her quarters. The ship’s commander appeared almost immediately, her face grave. “I told you one of them was slow.”
“How bad was it?”
“The darkship was a total loss. An arm torn off. One of the silth is dead. Dreamkeeper lost a main vent stack. It’s not serious as long as we don’t have to face heavy particle beam fire.”
“One darkship left to complete the mission. Maybe we should abort.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Commander?”
“You’d have to see the human ship to understand.” The commander paced, made several false starts before saying, “The old darkwar legends understate. I say send the fast one in and hope the humans get her before she gets all of them. She might have impact enough to encourage a negotiated peace.”
“I don’t understand, Commander.”
“You haven’t seen that ship. There may be futures worse than surrender. Would the silth be forgiving if they returned to power?”
“No.”
“When you visit the human ship, remember that you’re looking at enemies of the silth. The ancient mothers confined darkwar to their high duels in deep space, but it could be used against a world. The Command made a grave mistake. The silth offered a straw to grasp, and they grabbed it without looking for the trap. These are new, young Mistresses of the Ships, probably bred and trained for a mission like this. The silth claim to see the future. If they really do, then they would have foreseen desperate times and would have prepared Mistresses like these. If just one survived, with her ship, the silth would win their gamble. They would return.”
“You’re uncommonly emotional today, Commander.”
“I saw the enemy ship. See it yourself. All else will follow.
She had nightmares every time she slept. The human ship had been that grim. The dead had looked as though they had been torn apart from within, or as though they had tortured themselves to death slowly. Just what the silth would wish on their enemies. A lot of Meth would go the same way if the silth had their day.
Kerath studied the rehearsal runs of the surviving darkship. The Mistress, of the Ship was superb. She never gave Dream-keeper’s weapons people time to track, train, and fire. And unlike her failed sister, she had no trouble handling the Up-and-Over in rapid sequence. She was a creature without soul, a reflection of the popular view of what silth were.
Kerath studied the silth while they were aboard. They were cold creatures, but her taste of the amber drink, of flying with the darkship, had sensitized her to subtle nuances. Even the failed Mistress was frightened of the other.
Days rolled away. Kerath was tugged this way and that. It would be so simple to abort the mission, equally easy to loose the darkwar and blind herself to the harvest that must follow. Or equally difficult. Either way, she would live in infamy in the legends of the Meth, as she who was afraid to save the race, or as she who had destroyed everything gained in generations free of the silth. She saw no middle road—unless Suslov’s gunners got lucky.
Dreamkeeper, last of the great warships of the Meth, was creeping toward home system. Whose dream would it preserve?
VII
Kerath turned her back on screens and tank. “Scan on the asteroid?”
“In the groove, Marshal. Three days until it’s too late to divert.” She turned to see if the silth had sent an observer. They had: the talker. From a place of power and honor she had fallen to go-between. Kerath almost pitied her. She had suffered that decline herself after Snow-No-More, until the Command had needed her for another suicidal operation.
“Tight beam to the Command. Full report. Request update and instructions.” She went to the silth. “Could your people divert the asteroid past the point where it’s no longer possible for technology to do so?”
The silth looked at her with empty eyes. “No,”
“Thank you.” So. There was very little time to decide. The darkship strike had to be launched soon if there was to be time left for reshaping the asteroid’s orbit. But for now she could only await the Command’s reaction to what had happened in the deep.
She fell asleep and dreamed worse nightmares than ever before. The commander awakened her.
“Reply from the Command. Proceed with mission.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s it.”
“No shock? Commander, would the silth have collaborators there?”
The commander eyed the screens. “I’ve wondered about that since I visited the human ship. I think so. I can’t picture the Command jumping into anything blind.”
“My own impression. That means I’m more a pawn than I thought. Perhaps I was supposed to be converted.”
“Have you decided? I’ll follow your orders even if they contradict the Command’s apparent intent.”
“Thank you. I won’t be long.” Kerath moved away. She wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room. She chewed a claw and searched for a middle road.
She had little choice about the strike itself. It had to go on. The question was how to ensure that the silth did not survive. She checked the observer from the corner of her eye. The silth was watching intently. This would be delicate. Timing would be critical. “Commander, are we in enemy detection?”
“I don’t believe so, Marshall. They would have reacted.”
Of course. Suslov would want to finish Dreamkeeper, definitely as a symbolic move, possibly to retaliate for ships recently lost.
She turned slightly and examined enemy positions estimated from data squirted in with Command’s message. “Prepare to launch the strike.”
The silth turned and glided out.
“Commander, tight beam to Suslov’s flagship. I want the Admiral himself. Quickly.”
“This will reveal our position, Marshall.”
“So be it. Quickly, now. Quickly.” Kerath grabbed a young male. “Go stand by the hatch. Watch for the silth.” She turned. “I want the docking bay on screen. What’s holding that link, Commander?”
“Have to find a target first, Marshall.”
“Don’t waste time.” Kerath faced the screens. Someone had keyed into an eye cell overlooking the entrance to silth quarters. Kerath watched the observer enter.
She could not remain still. Somehow, movement was soothing.
Ping!
“We have a beam lock on a human ship, Marshall.”
“It had better be the right one,” Kerath murmured. The silth were leaving their quarters. All seven turned toward the docking bay. Kerath released a long sigh.
“… Corps Marshall Kerath Hadon for Vice Admiral Pyotr Suslov, personal access only urgent,” the commander said loudly, as if volume could make up for her difficulty in speaking the alien language.
Suslov’s rumpled face appeared with gratifying swiftness. “Kerath. I thought I smelled your touch in that breakout.” He exposed his teeth. She reminded herself that humans considered that a pleasantry. “Why haven’t they hung you out yet? Calling to surrender? It’s almost too late.”
“I want to offer you the opportunity you gave me before Snow-No-More. I hope you have more sense than I had.”
“Really? You’re going to hurt me with one ship?”
“One ship like nothing in human experience, Pyotr Suslov. Conscience forces me to advise you to depart.”
The sentry called, “She’s coming back, Marshall.”
“Pyotr Suslov. Key darkwar your Meth history tapes. Out. Secure, Commander.” She faced the screen relaying events in the docking bay. The silth were aboard their darkship. The titanium dagger floated away from the docking grappels. Camera and screen were unable to relay the true intensity of the golden nimbus surrounding the darkship, but Kerath felt its power in some remote recess of being still touched by the amber fluid.
She went to meet the silth. “Darkship ready?”
“Yes.” The female’s voice was hollow. Failure had emptied her.
“The enemy have a saying, sister. They also serve who stand and wait.” The attempt at comfort fell flat. For silth there were no shadow gradients between success and failure. Kerath gestured. “Launch the darkship, Commander.”
The commander hit an alarm. It honked throughout the vast warship. “Commencing darkship strike. All personnel take combat stations.”
The docking bay screen relayed the cry of klaxons warning of decompression under way. The titanium dagger rotated until its blade faced the bay door.
“Decompression complete, Commander.”
“Open the bay door.”
Everything went so slowly. Every detail registered on Kerath, even the tiny groan of scraping metal, conducted through the fabric of the ship, as the bay door moved.
It was just a third of the way open when the darkship surged out into the night. On visual, the darkship dwindled rapidly. Such a tiny thing to be so deadly, not a thousandth the mass of Dreamkeeper. Kerath faced the tank. Detection had the darkship moving away fast. “She’s in a hurry,” Kerath whispered to the commander.
“Maybe she enjoys her work.”
Four red alien blips were moving toward Dreamkeeper. Kerath beckoned the silth observer. “You’ll have a better perspective from down here.”
She had racked her brain trying to figure how the darkship would locate its targets without radio. She now understood. The Mistress of the Ship had mind-to-mind contact with her unshipped sister on Dreamkeeper‘s bridge. That was why the silth had taken her into space. They had meant her to become their contact until the slow sister’s unshipping made her redundant.
Mind to mind. More,silth sorcery. No capability surprised Kerath now, not since she had seen the dead ship.
The observer descended to the operations deck. She did nothing to support or refute Kerath’s suspicion or to acknowledge her aid.
“Up-and-Over,” a tech announced.
VIII
“Four,” the silth whispered.
That was the last of the outbound hunters. Dreamkeeper was safe for the moment.
What state was Suslov in, after losing contact with four heavy warships? How would she respond in similar circumstances?
She would get the hell out. But she was Meth, and she knew about darkwar from old legends. Suslov would examine his Meth historical data and scoff. Being human, he was sure to delay too long.
“Up-and-Over.”
A moment later, the silth murmured, “Five. She is well named.”
“What?” Kerath was startled by the gratuitous remark.
“She Walks in Glory.”
“Ah. Commander, it’ll be a while. I feel the need to roam. I’m on pager three if I’m needed.”
“Very well, Marshall.”
She stopped at her quarters briefly, collected her sidearm, then went on to a weapons observation bubble high on Dreamkeeper’s humped back. She chased the weaponry technicians out and stood there staring at the stars. A part of her yearned for another darkship experience. A part sobbed for the sentients dying down near the sun of the Meth.
Colored cutouts flickered at the edge of her vision, legacy of the amber drink. The silth sisters must see them all the time. She forgot Dreamkeeper and tried to bring those-who-dwell into focus. Success opened her to a trickle of screams 4h>m down near the homeworld.
The cutouts faded. She was not silth. She faced the cold, colorless stars, the stars she loved, the stars that would be lost to the Meth if she made one misstep traversing her middle road.
She took one deep breath for courage and started the long walk back to the fighting bridge.
“Status?” she demanded as she entered.
“Fourteen gone, Marshall,” the commander replied in a tight voice. “The silth says the darkship suffered slight damage by catching the edge of a particle beam. Suslov seems to have developed an attack profile. He’ll get her if she doesn’t control her silth arrogance.”
“Fifteen.” ,
“Tell her not to underestimate the alien, silth,” Kerath said.
“Marshall, here’s an anomaly,” the commander said.
Kerath stepped over to study the tank. “He’s jumping out,” she whispered, excited. “Those look like long jump lines. He’s running, Commander.”
“He’ll come back.”
Kerath controlled her emotions. “Of course. But maybe he’ll be more amenable when he does.”
“The High Lord will be pleased.”
“Sarcasm, Commander? The High Lord lives numbered days.
His clique are walking worm food.“ Including her sire, she thought. Poor Shadar, doomed though he was but a servant.
“There goes the last squadron, Marshall. Can the silth follow them?”
“No. Commander, in the next few minutes I’ll need absolute obedience. Yes?” She turned to the silth’s touch.
“She’s hit, Marshall. The last attack. One of her bath was killed.”
“Bath?”
“The females who help. Bath. She will have difficulty returning.”
Bless the All, Kerath thought. “Medical team and damage control people to docking bay, Commander.”
“Thank you,” the silth said. The words seemed to rip themselves from her hidden self.
“Up-and-Over,” a detection technician called.
Kerath drew her handgun and shot the startled silth through the heart. “Order here!” she shouted, as panic hit the bridge. “Order. Full battle alert, Commander. I want that darkship under fire the instant it reappears. Somebody get rid of this body. Send a security party to arrest the other two silth.”
The commander executed orders in a daze. “What are you doing, Marshall?”
“Ensuring the failure of the silth design. The All favored us by taking one of her crew. She will have less control. Less ability to resist the vacuum. By firing upon her I prevent her from coming aboard, reaching safety, and finding a replacement bath. Maybe I’ll destroy her. Maybe not.”
“She’ll attack us.”
“She can’t send the cloud against us. She can’t destroy Dreamkeeper without destroying herself.”
The commander looked puzzled. “Can’t she Up-and-Over home and let one of the orbital tugs pick her up?”
“She doesn’t know where home is, Commander, not without somebody here to tell her. To reach homeworld she first has to get orbital data from us and translate it into something understandable by those-who-dwell. To survive she has to come here and has to get inside. I don’t intend to let her.”
The commander nodded. After a few seconds she said, “But you would have done this even if she were returning healthy.”
“Yes. I sought a middle road between surrender and a return of the silth. This was the best I could do.”
‘They’ll make a villain of you.“
“They would in any case. That’s why they sent a loser of battles who always came home a hero. This time they gave me one they thought I couldn’t win no matter what.”
“Darkship is here, Marshall. Headed for docking bay.”
Kerath nodded.
“Commence firing,” the commander directed.
IX
Swords of fire flailed the dark. The darkship reeled, slid sideways. Something in Kerath’s backbrain buzzed. She saw the dark-ship as a glowing, tumbling cross. One arm flew off, chased by a golden shape grabbing wildly at nothing. The silth bath’s death-wail burned through the core of her mind. ‘
You traitor.
Kerath wobbled under the impact of the mental blow.
You have betrayed your sisters.
The Mistress of the Ship! She couldn’t be alive. Nothing could come through that fury… I am not silth! she cried back.
The darkship straightened up and turned its daggertip toward Dreamkeeper. Bright paper cutouts swirled around it. A black cloud slithered across the stars behind it. Panicky, Kerath shouted, “Commander, destroy that damned ship!”
“I’m trying, Marshall. I’m trying.” Terror haunted the commander’s eyes.
“Then jump, dammit. It’s a short jump to Biter orbit. Leave her out here.”
The commander stabbed a finger at the jump operators. “Program it.”
Kerath stared at the screens, transfixed. The darkship was coming in, accelerating, a screaming, flaming sword. A skeleton rode its tip, jaws opened wide, blood trailing from its fangs. A hungry darkness coiled behind its hollow eyes. The silth was insane. She meant to board by ramming!
Alarms sounded. Collision alarms, never heard except during drills. “Jump, Commander. Dammit, jump anywhere.”
The darkship kept accelerating.
Jump alarms shrilled a five-second warning—-just as the dark-ship reached Dreamkeepers fat guppy belly.
The warship began to twist with the impact. Torn metal shrieked. Breech alarms wailed. Kerath watched the burning blade drive deeper and deeper into the great vessel’s belly. “No,” she breathed. The silth had lost control and come in far too hard.
A tendril of the black cloud touched the ship.
Then Dreamkeeper finally jumped, carrying the darkship with it, still boring into its guts.
Crew people added their screams to those of the alarms, responding to the instant of cloud-touch. On the fighting bridge they clawed their scalps and smashed their foreheads against their consoles. Below, where the darkship’s momentum still drove it deeper into Dreamkeeper’s belly, it was worse. They were clawing at their eyes.
Dreamkeeper rolled out of jump. Kerath glanced at the readouts. Orbit around homeworld. Almost perfect…Only then did she realize that the blackness had barely caressed her. The silth drink had prepared her for that, too.
The comm boards began lighting up, announcing incoming traffic. Kerath ignored them. She listened. No sound came from below. The darkship had come to rest. “Commander!” She swung hard. “Snap out of it.” She exaggerated. “We’re in a decaying orbit.”
The glaze left the commander’s eyes. She scanned the bridge. “Internal pressure is down, but the collision doors have maintained integrity. Help me shake these people out of it. We’ve got to get moving. The ship is in a bad way.” She surveyed the available data again. “We will be lucky to save it.”
“We’ll save it, Commander. We have no choice. We have to shunt that asteroid.”
“That’s the Command channel screaming over there.”
“To hell with Command. We don’t have time for them.”
Getting the bridge crew back to work was not difficult, but there was trouble down in the collision area. Half the crew there was dead. The rest had to be restrained for their own protection. Officers culled every department for extra bodies.
Kerath went down, donned an eva suit, and combed the wreckage for the Mistress of the Ship. She refused to be satisfied until she found a mass of torn, raw meat and fur in tatters of black near the head of the column of scrap that had been a darkship.
An hour passed before Kerath was sure that Dreamkeeper would survive—if nothing else went sour. She returned to the bridge and collapsed into the first seat she found vacant.
The Command was still trying to get through. By now, they would have studied the damage optically from the surface. They could guess that the darkship had rammed. They would be thinking up cruel replies to her middle-road venture.
Detection showed a number of small vessels closing in—coming to look Dreamkeeper over, of course, maybe to put a representative of the Command aboard.
She did not much care now.
“Route that Command call to this board, please,” she said. “I might as well face them now.”
“Sure you want to deal with them?” the commander asked. “I can…”
“There’s no getting out of it.” Kerath stabbed a button.
A weathered old female appeared on screen, growling and snarling. Kerath allowed the storm to run its course. When it slackened, and she could pull the main thread from the skein of complaints, she decided that the Command was more interested in the fate of the silth than in Kerath Hadon or Dreamkeeper.
“Here’s our silth insider,” Kerath whispered to the commander.
“The Supreme Commander. I suppose it had to be.”
Kerath was exhausted, but she had enough anger and outrage left to respond. She depressed the send key and shouted a line spoken by a victorious pup to conclude a popular story told to small Meth. “The grauken is dead.”
The Commander revealed her teeth. She was amused. She keyed into the Command net herself. “Command, this is Dreamkeeper. Confirm that last from mission officer Kerath. The grauken is dead.” Off comm, she added, “They can’t court-martial everybody.”
Kerath leaned back, closed her eyes, and said, “Secure outside comm. Commander, we’ll let them wonder what we meant. The grauken is dead. I wriggled away again.” She had found the middle road.
But middle roads went nowhere. They just bought time. Suslov would return. The silth would persist. But there was time now, precious time, to buttress the bridge she had begun to build. #