Finally she held up her hand for a stop. As the Razer stepped back into the shadows, Althor’s chest heaved in ragged breaths. Viquara leaned over him, to tell him it was done, but before she could do so he spoke in a barely audible voice.
She bent her head more. “Again?”
“Gods grant me forgiveness,” he whispered.
“Why?” she asked.
And then he told her.
Jaibriol II was alive.
19
Soz sat against a tree, watching twelve-year-old Lisi and fourteen-year-old Jai bring up water from the well a few paces away. Antiqued sunshine from the solitary Red streamed over the landscape, enough dimmer than the combined radiance of the two suns that the day looked dull to her. She shifted the dozing del-Kelric in her arms, trying to find a comfortable way to hold the toddler. She was so big now. This pregnancy tired her, prodding her to wonder if she was too old for making babies. Her sleep had been ragged lately, her dreams filled with vague horrors of interrogation and Traders.
Del-Kelric wriggled in her arms, then let out a wail. Jai glanced over, scowling at the boy. Then Lisi took the bucket from him, and he swung back around to her.
“Stop it!” he snapped.
She stiffened. “You don’t have be a jolt-ass!”
“Quit shouting, you two,” Soz growled. What ailed them today, that they flared so easily—
A scream cut through air.
Soz was up and moving toward the children before her mind even registered that her hydraulics had kicked in. She thrust del-Kelric at Jai, then ran toward the scream as fast as her bulk would allow. She recognized that terrified sound, knew that voice all too well. Vitar.
The six-year-old raced out of the forest, his short legs pumping faster than Soz had ever seen them go. She blocked his way and hauled the terrified boy up into her arms.
“Mama!” He kept screaming, flailing his fists at an unseen monster, blind to who held him. “Hoshpa!”
“Vitar! It’s me. Hoshma!” Soz tried to break his panic. I’m here! You’re all right!
He gave a ragged sob and threw his arms around her neck, burying his face in her hair.
“Careful, careful,” Soz murmured. “What is it? What scared you? Where is your father, honey? Where is Hoshpa?”
“Dead,” the boy sobbed. “All dead and gone.”
“Vitar, no.” Soz struggled to rein in her fear. “He can’t be dead. We would feel it.” She was aware of Jai and Lisi behind her, their minds hyperextended now, as was hers, reaching, reaching for Jaibriol.
Finding nothing.
Somehow she kept her voice calm. “Vitar, what happened?”
“Big silver bird came.” He was almost incoherent. “Bad people in it.” He lifted his head to look at her. “Shot Hoshpa, Shot at me. I ran away. They put Hoshpa into the bird and went into the sky.”
Soz whirled to Jai and Lisi. “Get in the shelter now.”
Lisi hesitated. “But Father—”
“NOW!” Soz shoved them toward their house, which was on the other side of the well. She took off running, Vitar in her arms, with Lisi and Jai running at her side, Jai still carrying del-Kelric. They raced into the house, making a thunder of noise as they ran across the main room.
Soz yanked up the trapdoor in a corner. “Get down there. Fast.”
Lisi went first, followed by Jai, with del-Kelric. As they clambered down the wooden ladder, Soz knocked over a nearby shelf and swept everything she could reach into the hole. Trinkets and toys clattered in the darkness, pelting her children. She helped Vitar down after them, then lowered herself into the hole and pulled the trapdoor shut above them.
A deep rumble sounded in the distance.
“Get down!” she shouted. From Vitar’s mind she picked up that he had reached the bottom and moved aside. She let go of the ladder and dropped the last two meters, landing with a jolt that made her fall to one knee. Del-Kelric wailed, his fear as tangible as a fog.
Soz lunged through the darkness, reaching out with her hands. As her fingers scraped the console, the rumbling outside grew louder. She stabbed at panels she knew by heart, from the libraries in her node and the drills she had made the family perform.
“Quasis field activated,” the comp said.
The rumbling swept above them.
It was as if a giant picked up the world and shook it in a huge fist. It slammed Soz against the rigid quasis shield. Del-Kelric screamed and Lisi cried out, then called his name.
The shaking kept on, relentless, the world convulsing in an enraged frenzy. It threw them into each other, smashed them against the quasis shield again and again, and churned up dirt until it uncovered the curve of the bubble beneath them.
Soz managed to get her arms around del-Kelric. Mercifully, he was still screaming, which meant he was alive and conscious. More frightening, Lisi and Jai had gone silent. Soz curled her body around del-Kelric, trying to protect him and her unborn child while the tumult threw her around like a ball within a ball.
Her node timed the wild shaking for twelve minutes, but to Soz it seemed forever. Finally the world tremored to a standstill. She lay on her side, gasping for breath, her arms still around the sobbing del-Kelric.
“Lisi?” she whispered. “Jai?”
No answer.
Soz dragged herself forward. When her elbow hit a shoulder, she reached out and touched strands of long hair. Her fingers brushed a face she knew well. Jai. The whisper of his breath on her hand made tears well in her eyes.
Lisi was crumpled against Jai, both children folded around Vitar, protecting the boy. Lisi groaned when Soz touched her and Vitar cried softly. Tears ran down Soz’s face. Alive. All four of them were alive.
“Hoshma?” Vitar whispered.
“I’m here, honey.” Sitting up, Soz drew him into her lap, with the whimpering del-Kelric. “Jai?” she asked. “Lisi?”
“I’m all right,” Lisi said.
“Does anything hurt?” Soz asked.
“All over,” Lisi said. “But not bad. Like falling out of a tree.”
“Jai?” Soz asked.
Silence.
“Jai?” She touched his shoulder.
“Ahhh.” He stirred. “My arm…”
“It’s all right,” Soz said. “Don’t move.” She patted the ground, searching for the medkit—and a contraction caught her.
Soz cried out and fell back, releasing the children. Del-Kelric started to wail again and Vitar gave a startled cry.
“Hoshma?” Panic touched Lisi’s voice. “I don’t feel the baby’s mind anymore.”
Soz lay still until the contraction finished. Somehow she managed to speak without her voice cracking. “Don’t worry about that now. I need you all to help me.”
“How?” Lisi’s fear permeated the darkness.
“Lisi, find the medkit,” Soz said. “Vitar, see what else is in here. A lamp would be good.”
Vitar sniffled. “I’ll try.”
As Lisi and Vitar searched, Soz spoke in a low voice to Jai. “How bad is your arm?”
“It’s all right.” The strain in his voice belied his words.
“I found the medkit,” Lisi said. “The laser carbine and the neutrino transmitter too.”
Soz reached for the kit, then groaned as another contraction hit her.
“Hoshma?” Vitar’s voice shook, “Why are you crying?”
“She’s not crying,” Lisi said. “The baby is coming.”
“Baby can’t come,” Vitar said. “Baby gone.”
“Vitar, don’t!” Lisi sounded ready to cry herself.
“Children, don’t fight,” Soz said. “The baby has to come. Even if—” She shook her head, unable to say it.
“Bad people killed Hoshpa,” Vitar said. “Killed baby.”
“Father isn’t dead!” Lisi shouted.
“Shhh,” Soz whispered. “Please.” She closed her eyes as the contraction finished. “Gods, not now.”
Jai laid his hand on he
r arm. “It will be all right.”
She swallowed. “Yes. It will.”
Lisi pressed the medkit in her hands. “What should I do?”
Soz fumbled in the kit until she found the diagnostic strip. Feeling along it, she scraped the edge, activating its textural display. Holos had little use in the dark.
“I found the heat-sensor lamp,” Vitar said. “It’s all broken. There’s an oil lamp too. Do you want me to light it?”
“Not the oil lamp,” Soz said. “It would use up our oxygen.” She pressed the diagnostic strip into Lisi’s hands. “Do you remember how to read the textures?”
“I think so,” Lisi said. With something definite to do, the tremor left her voice.
“Jai, help her hold the strip on your arm,” Soz said. “Lisi, you have to read what … how bad the break … ah—” She moaned with another contraction.
“Hoshma?” Vitar’s voice shook. “Mommy, don’t die.”
“I’m fine, honey.” She schooled her voice to calm. “This always happens when mothers have babies. Don’t be scared.”
“We’ve got the strip working,” Jai said.
“His left arm is broken,” Lisi said. “It says … his ulna has a greenstick fracture.”
Soz recognized the term from her paramedic training. It meant he had an oblique crack on one side of the bone. “Is the bone displaced? Has it punctured the skin?”
“No,” Lisi said. “Neither.”
Relief swept Soz. It could have been a lot worse. “Jai, I’ll have to put on a splint. It doesn’t sound like it will need much repositioning, but it might hurt. Do you want something to knock you out?”
“No.” His voice sounded strained. “Don’t do that.”
She felt the emotions behind his answer. He feared if he went to sleep, he would wake to find his family dead.
Soz grunted as another contraction came. Attend, she thought.
Based on your previous history, these contractions suggest birth within the next hour, her node answered, anticipating her inquiry.
She didn’t ask the other question. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to understand the void where once she and Jaibriol had nurtured a growing mind. As long she didn’t ask, she could cling to the hope that her baby still lived.
Rustles came from nearby. Then Vitar pressed a slat of wood in her hand. “Will this help Jai?”
Soz recognized it as a piece of a construction set Jaibriol had carved for Vitar, good now for a splint. She gave Vitar a hug. “You’re a smart boy. How did you know I needed it?”
He touched his finger to her temple. “In here.”
With Jai guiding her, Soz found the break in his arm. She submerged her consciousness into his and linked to the picoweb in his body. Soz carried top-of-the-line nanomeds in her body, the type that could pass from mother to child. During her pregnancies, they had crossed the placenta and replicated in her children, giving them the same immunities and health she carried. They also made it possible now for her to link her biomech web to her son’s less extensive picoweb, which would help direct her actions as she splinted his bone.
A contraction hit her and she almost lost contact with Jai. When the pain eased, she clenched her teeth, then set the bone and splinted Jai’s arm. He remained silent, crying out only once, when she nudged the bone into place.
“Is Jaibird going to be happy again?” Vitar asked.
“I’m happy now,” Jai said. “And quit calling me Jaibird.”
Soz spoke gently. “Vitar? Can you answer some questions?”
“Don’t know,” Vitar said.
“It’s about what happened to Daddy.”
“Bad people shot him.”
“Was he still breathing after they shot him?”
“Didn’t see,”
“Did you feel him get hurt?”
“No hurt,” Vitar said.
Soz exhaled. Surely Vitar would have known if anything hurt his father. At great distances, it was less certain they would know, but with Vitar right there, she doubted Jaibriol could have died without his Rhon son knowing it.
“What did the people look like who took him?” she asked.
“Bad people,” Vitar said.
“I know, honey. Can you tell me what they, looked like?”
“Black hair. Sparkly. Like Hoshpa. Eyes like Jai.”
“How like Jai?”
“Red.”
Soz felt ice inside her. “And their clothes?”
“Gray. Little pieces of color on the sleeves.”
She closed her eyes. It sounded like an ESComm uniform.
“The silver bird had a picture on it too,” Vitar said.
“Silver bird?” Soz took a breath. “You mean a spaceship?”
“I think so.”
“What was the picture?”
“Big black tomjolt.”
No. She bit back her cry of protest. To Vitar, who had never seen a Eubian puma, the Trader insignia would look like a tomjolt. She groaned as another contraction hit her.
“Hoshma?” Lisi said. “Is the baby coming?”
“I think so.”
The children found blankets and spread them under her. She braced herself against the wall as the labor progressed and tried not to cry out, though the pain was worse than with any of the other births. Maybe knowing what waited at the end made this one harder, turning her anguish into physical pain. The children huddled in the dark, silent while she struggled not to scream.
And when the child finally came, helped by Lisi, Soz’s node answered the question she had never asked. Dead. Her baby was dead.
They wrapped the tiny body in a blanket. Lisi used soap and gauze from the medkit to clean her mother while Soz lay in a crumpled heap, exhausted, her heart aching, her breasts full of milk her baby would never need. She keened to herself, arms wrapped around her body as if she held an infant.
Somewhere a baby wailed and Soz wept for the ghost sound.
“Here, Hoshma.” Lisi put a fussing bundle in her arms. The baby cried again and Soz held him close. Lifting her shirt, she put him to her breast and he suckled heartily, squirming to get comfortable. She knew a newborn could never be so adept, but it didn’t matter. She hugged him and a bit of the grief in her heart receded.
She must have slept. When she woke, del-Kelric was drowsing in her arms, finished with his nursing. “Sweet Kelli,” she murmured. “Thank you.”
“Mother?” Jai asked. “Are you all right?”
She sat up slowly, aching and tired. “Yes.”
“I’m hungry,” Vitar said.
Soz rubbed her neck. “There’s food down here.”
“We ate it all,” Lisi said.
Uneasy, Soz said, “There should be supplies for many weeks.”
“The quasis field cut through the cache,” Jai told her.
“There’s still water,” Lisi said. “Would you like some?”
“Yes.” Soz wet her lips, suddenly aware of her thirst.
Rustles came from the dark. Then Lisi put a canteen in her hands and Soz drank, the warm liquid running down her throat like a benediction.
“I want to go home,” Vitar said. “Dead baby scares me.”
“It’s all right,” Soz soothed. “The baby went into the sky. She’s happy there.” In her mind, she thought: Node, how long have we been down here?
Fifty-six hours. Her node answered in the same manner she had addressed it, a normal-speed mode, which she perceived as words rather than accelerated abstract sounds and numbers.
So long? Estimate outside temperature, assuming heatbar sterilization fifty-six hours ago.
Normal temperature, it thought. However, I suggest waiting twenty more hours, to ensure meteorological effects have stabilized and hostile forces have left orbit.
Soz grimaced. We have no way to ensure either.
This is true. But based on my data of ESComm operations, the probability the vessels will have left orbit rises to 85 percent in another twenty hours. It
will also be morning by then.
Do we have enough air to last?
Yes. EcoComp is recycling it. I recommend rationing the water.
“Mother?” Jai asked. “Can we leave?”
“Not yet.” She took a breath. “Try to sleep. We have to stay here a lot longer.”
“No!” Vitar’s voice broke. “I don’t want to! We have to put the baby in the ground or ghosts will come.”
“It’s all right,” Soz murmured. “Come keep me company, Vitar. Ghosts are scared of your hoshma.”
A scrabbling sound came from the darkness. Then Vitar was at her side, hugging her as if he feared she would disappear.
None of them slept well. Vitar cried, so softly Soz barely heard. Del-Kelric fussed, only quieting when she nursed him. Both Lisi and Jai were silent. For a while they tried telling stories, but their voices trailed off into the darkness.
When it finally came time to leave, Soz spoke to them all, trying to infuse her voice with a confidence she didn’t feel. “As soon as I collapse the quasis field, the dirt around us will fall, if there is any left. Don’t be scared. It won’t be enough to bury us.” Quietly she added, “When we get out, don’t expect to see the house. Everything will be gone.”
“Gone?” Lisi asked. “Why?”
“Heat,” Soz said. “I think the rumbling we heard was something called heatbar sterilization. A ship in orbit uses a wide-beam laser to burn the region under attack.”
“We didn’t burn,” Lisi said.
“The only way heat could come in here is through the quasis shield,” Soz said. “The molecules within the field can’t change state, so heat can’t flow in.” Flow seemed such a mild word for what she feared had taken place.
“Then why did we feel the shaking?” Jai asked.
Soz grimaced. “The ground can throw around the bubble. It just can’t change the bubble itself.”
“Why did the bad people want to burn our house?” Vitar asked.
Soz shifted him in her arms, relieved to hear him using more normal sentences. “They didn’t know we were here,” she lied.