“Not stronger than I am, I am sure. He will pay. The brethren will pay. Though I be declared an outlaw, though I stand alone, this is the first day of bloodfeud between myself and them. Stay here. I’ll be back.”
“And if you’re not?”
“You do what you have to do. Sooner or later someone will come.”
“And maybe not, Marika. Before we lost the signals section, we heard that they were attacking several other cloisters as well.”
“That figures.” Where did they gather their strength? She had been killing and imprisoning them for years.
“Braydic did have some advance warning, Marika. She tried to tell us. But you flew off to TelleRai too fast.”
Marika recalled Barlog rushing into her quarters as she went out the window.
This was her fault, then. If she had waited a moment… Too late for regrets. It was time to give pain for pain received.
“Good-bye, Grauel.” She stalked out of the gatehouse, and shut everything behind her out of mind, out of her life. Bloodfeud. There was nothing but the bloodfeud. From this moment till death. A short time, perhaps.
An entire squadron of dirigibles. How did one go about destroying them? Especially when they had some device capable of rendering a silth’s talent impotent?
Worry about that in its time. First she had to find them again. She strapped herself on to her saddleship and rose into the night, raced to the southwest, cutting a course that would cross that last seen being made by the dirigibles.
II
Marika did not spare herself. In less than an hour she found the squadron, still doggedly flying westward, chasing the vanished sun. The ships were down low, hugging a barren landscape. They did not want to be seen.
She hung above them a few minutes, way up in the rare air. She was tempted to strike then, but desisted. She even refrained from probing, certain the wehrlen would detect her. Then she found her appropriate idea.
They had attacked silth using a device that stole the silth talent. She would requite them in similar coin.
Maps slipped through her mind. Yes. A major, remote brethren enclave lay nearly two hundred miles ahead. Their destination? Probably. There were no neighbors to witness what villainy was being launched from the enclave. She headed there as swiftly as she could, dropping to treetop level as she approached, flying slower because of the denser air and reduced visibility.
She hedgehopped because she was not sure her saddleship would be invisible to tradermale radar. What she had learned from Bagnel suggested she would not be seen, but now was no time to make such bets. Now she wanted to play the longer odds her own way.
She supposed she was an hour ahead of the dirigibles when she reached the edge of the enclave. There were hundreds of lights burning there, lots of activity. Yes. The base expected the raiders. Doubtless it had been the staging ground for all the attacks. The sheer number of males suggested something of vast proportion being managed from there. There were thousands of males. And the enclave bristled with weaponry. Whole squadrons of fighting aircraft sat upon the runway. Half a dozen dirigibles rested in the enclave’s cradles, and there were cradles enough to take another score.
She gave herself ten minutes to rest, then she ducked through her loophole. Her anger was such that she wanted to go ravening among these brethren, killing all she could, but she did not yield to the red rage. She scouted instead, and was astounded by the magnitude of what she had found.
She did not let numbers intimidate her.
Once she was certain she knew where everything lay, she came back, checked the time, went out, and collected the most awesome monster of a ghost she could reach. She took it to the tradermale communications center.
It took her ten seconds to wreck the center and slay the technicians there. Then she drove the ghost to a workshop stocking instruments she suspected of being the devices the tradermales used to neutralize the silth. They resembled the box she had destroyed during the first confrontation on the airstrip at the Maksche enclave.
She wrecked them all, then scooted around the base, ruining anything that resembled them.
Only when that was done did she allow herself to go mad, to begin the killing.
There were so many of them that it took her half an hour. But when she finished there was not one live male inside the enclave. Hundreds had escaped, after panicking in typical male fashion. By now they were well on their ways to wherever they were trying to run. She did not expect them back.
She came back to her flesh, checked the time again. The dirigibles should arrive soon. Maybe fifteen minutes. By now they should be alert because they could make no radio contact.
She wanted to rest, to bring herself down from the nerve-wrecking high of the bloodletting, but she had no time. She trotted forward, catching a ghost once more and using it to slice a hole through the metal fence surrounding the enclave. She slipped through and raced toward the combat aircraft.
Every one was fully fueled and armed. The Stings even carried rockets. The males had been ready. Ready for anything but her. She examined several aircraft quickly, as Bagnel had taught her, and selected the one that looked soundest. Into it she climbed.
It was a well-maintained ship. Its starter turned over, and its engine caught immediately. She warmed it as Bagnel had taught her, a part of her blackly amused that one of the brethren had taught her to use the one weapon that would be effective for what she planned.
Eight minutes, roughly. They should be in sight soon. She jumped out of the aircraft, kicked the chocks away, piled back inside, harnessed herself, closed the canopy, and shoved forward on the throttle. Down the runway she rolled, and whipped upward into the night, without moonlight to help or hinder. Night was the time of the silth.
This would be a surprise for them. They seldom flew by night. Too dangerous. But they did not have the silth senses she did. Except for one.
Up. Up. Eight thousand feet. Where were they? They were showing no running lights. She caught a ghost, took it hunting.
There. The dirigibles were several minutes behind the schedule she had estimated. They were running more slowly than before. Perhaps they were concerned about the enclave’s lack of response.
Down. Full throttle. Bagnel said you should fight at full throttle, though no one he knew ever had been in actual aerial combat. The brethren pilots skirmished with themselves, practicing.
She found the safeties for the guns and rockets. She was not quite sure what she was doing with those. Bagnel had not let her fire weapons.
A dark sausage shape appeared suddenly. She yanked back on the stick as she touched the firing button. Tracers reached, stitched the bag, rose above it. She barely avoided a collision.
Back on the throttle. Lesser speed and turn. At the speed she had been making there was no time to spot and maneuver.
Up and over in a loop. Grab a ghost during the maneuver. Use it to pick a target. Close in. Tracers reaching as she ran in from behind, along the airship’s length, the belly of the Sting nearly touching it.
Still too fast. And doing no special damage.
She sideslipped between two dirigibles and came up from below, firing into a gondola, felt the pain of males hit, saw the flash of weapons as a few small arms fired back. Could they see her at all?
She felt the brush of one of the talent suppressors. For an instant it seemed half her mind had been turned off. But it did not bother her as much as she expected.
In the early days, at Akard, she had somehow learned to get around the worst effects of proximity to electromagnetic energies. This was something of the sort, and something inside her responded, pushing its worst effects away.
She turned away, found a ghost as soon as she could, reached in to study the airships more closely. This was not quite the same as seeing drawings in books.
She slammed the throttle forward and went after the airship out front.
Which ship carried the warlock? Would he respond to her attack?
She came in from the flank and fired a rocket. It drove well into the gasbag before blowing its warhead. Deeply enough to pass through the outer protective helium bag and reach the bigger hydrogen bag inside.
The brethren used hydrogen only when they wanted to move especially heavy cargoes. For this raid they had used hydrogen aboard all the airships, inside, where Reugge small arms could not penetrate.
She rolled under the dirigible as it exploded. The Sting was buffeted by the explosion. She fought for control, regained it, climbed, turned upon the rest of the squadron. She glanced over her shoulder, watched the airship burn and fall, meth with fur aflame leaping from its gondola.
“One gone,” she said aloud, and found herself another ghost. She used it to spot another target.
This time the neutralizing weapon met her squarely. Its effect was like a blow from a fist. Yet she gasped, shook its worst effects, fired a rocket, climbed away. Small arms hammered the night. The very air was filled with panic. She came around and swept through the squadron, firing her guns, felt them firing back without regard for where their bullets might be going.
Back again. And again. And again. Till the Sting’s munitions were exhausted. Five of the airships went toward the ground, four of them in flames, the fifth with gasbags so riddled it could no longer balance the leaks.
Now she was at risk. If she wished to continue attacking, she would have to go take another aircraft. If they came after her…
But they did not. Their vaunted warlock seemed as panicked as the rest. The survivors shifted course.
Marika put the Sting down fast and hard. She threw herself out of the cockpit even before it stopped rolling, hit the concrete running, and picked a second aircraft. In ten minutes she was aloft again, pursuing the remnants of the airship squadron.
One after another she sent them down and continued to attack till each had burned. She went back for the one that had descended for lack of lift, used her last two rockets to fire it.
Where was the warlock? Why did he not fight back? Was he staying low, sacrificing everything, because he knew the certain destruction he faced if he gave himself away? Or had he been killed early?
She returned to the enclave. And this time when she crawled into a cockpit, she went to sleep.
She did not have much left. They could have taken her then, easily.
She wakened before dawn, startled alert. Someone was nearby. She reached for a ghost rather than raise her head and betray herself.
Some of the males from the airships had found their way to the base. They were standing around stunned, unable to believe what had happened.
Marika’s anger remained searing hot. Not enough blood had been spilled to quench the flames. She took them, adding them to the hundreds of corpses already littering the enclave. Then she started the Sting and went aloft, and in the light of dawn examined the wreckage of the dirigibles she had downed. She could not believe she had managed so much destruction.
She strafed survivors wherever she found them, like a pup torturing a crippled animal. She could have slaughtered them with her talent easily, but she was so filled with hatred that she took more pleasure in giving them a slow, taunting death, letting them run and run and run till she tracked them down.
But by midday that had lost its zest. She returned to the enclave and settled into a more systematic, businesslike revenge. After spending a few hours demolishing the base, she went to her saddleship and resumed hunting survivors again.
The brethren and rogues would not soon forget the cost of their treachery.
She wondered if she ought not to try taking a few prisoners. Questions really ought to be asked about the fate of the wehrlen. If he had existed at all, his survival might well keep the rogue movement alive despite her fury.
Toward sundown she suffered a horrible shock.
She was circling above woods where a dirigible had gone down, and… two things happened at once. She detected a small force of dirigibles approaching the enclave from the north, which fired her hatred anew, while below her she detected a moving meth spark that was all too familiar.
Kublin!
III
Kublin. More killer airships. Which way to throw herself?
Those airships would not be able to flee fast enough to escape her. She could catch them later. Kublin might vanish into the forest.
Down she went, among the trees, pushing through branches till her saddleship rode inches off the ground. She stalked him carefully, for he seemed quite aware that he was being hunted. He moved fast and quiet, with the skill of a huntress. Once, when she drew close, he sent a burst of automatic weapons fire so close one bullet nicked the neck of her saddleship.
Kublin. The treasured littermate for whom she had risked everything. Here. With the killers of her cloister.
Even now she did not want to harm him, though she remained possessed of a virulent hatred. She seized a small, feeble ghost and went hunting him, found him, struck quickly, and touched him lightly.
He brushed the ghost aside and threw a stronger back at her, almost knocking her off her saddle.
What?
Wehrlen!
Kublin?
Another blow as ferocious as the last. Yes. It could not be denied.
She dodged his blows and collected a stronger ghost, struck hard enough to knock him down. He struggled to fight off the effects.
He did have the talent, though he was no stronger than a weak sister.
In a way, it made sense. They were of the same litter, the same antecedents. He had shown a feel for the talent as a pup, a strong interest in her own early unfoldings of silth talents.
She grounded the saddleship, rushed him before he could recover, hit him physically several times, then slowly, forcibly, nullified his talent, reaching inside to depress that center of the brain where the talent lived.
Her attack left him too groggy to answer questions.
She sat down and waited, studying the uniform he wore.
She had seen its like several times before. The rogues wore uniforms occasionally. She had examined enough prisoners to have learned their uniform insignia.
Either Kublin had adopted insignia not properly his or he was very important among the rogues. Very important, indeed. If his insignia could be believed, he was a member of their ruling council.
She should have killed him in the Ponath. Before she asked the first question, she had the dark feeling the Maksche raid would not have occurred had she finished him there.
She ached inside. He was still Kublin, her littermate, with whom she had shared so much as a pup. He was the only meth for whom she had ever felt any love.
He recovered slowly, sat up weakly, shook the fuzziness from his mind, felt around for his weapon. Marika had thrown it into the brush. He seemed puzzled because it was not there beside him. Then his glance chanced upon Marika, sitting there with her own rifle trained upon him.
He froze. In mind and body.
“Yes. Me again. I did all that last night. And I have just begun. When I have finished, the brethren and rogues will be as desolate as Maksche. And you are going to help me destroy them.”
Fear obliterated Kublins’s defiance. He never did have much courage.
“How does a coward rise so high among fighters, Kublin? Ah. But of course. You rogues and brethren are all cowards. Stabbers in the back. Friends by day and murderers by night. But the night is the time of the silth.
“No! I do not want to hear your rationale, Kublin. I have heard it all before. I have been feeding on rogues for years. I am the Marika who has taken so many of your accomplices that we no longer have room for laborers in the Reugge mines. You know what I am doing with them now? Selling them to the Treiche. They have a hard time maintaining an adequate work force in their sulfur pits. The fumes. They use up workers quickly. I do not think it will be long before the Treiche have all the methpower they can handle.”
“Stinking witch,” he muttered, without force.
&nbs
p; “Yes. I am. Also an enraged, bloodthirsty witch. So enraged I will destroy you brethren and your proxies, the rogues and this warlock, even if I die in the process. Now it is time for you to sleep. I have more airships to destroy. Later, I will return and ask you about this great warlock, this great cowardly murderer who animates you rogues so.”
He gave her an odd look.
She continued, “This is the base from which the whole filthy thing was launched. It is fitting that the villains die here. I will wait here and slaughter your accomplices as they return.” She snagged a ghost and touched him, left him in a coma.
She slew the crews of two airships. The others drove her off with the talent suppressors. She had made a mistake, destroying everything at the enclave. The Sting remained the best weapon against airships.
Later, she decided. She would find more fighting aircraft somewhere else.
The madness had begun to pass. She could not get her whole heart into the fight. It was time to move on. Time to take Kublin in and drain him of knowledge. Time to find the most senior and join her in assessing the damage to the Reugge Community.
Time to rest, to eat, to recover. She was little stronger than a young pup.
She returned to Kublin.
He had wakened and gnawed at his wrists in an effort to kill himself. Her touch had left him too groggy to succeed. She was astonished that he had had the will and nerve to try. This was her cowardly Kublin? Maybe his courage was selective.
She bandaged him with strips torn from his clothing, then threw him across the neck of her saddleship. She clambered aboard, called up ghosts, rose from the woods. Airships quartered the wind to the west, searching for those who had destroyed the enclave and attacked them. She bared her teeth in bitter amusement. Never would they believe that all that damage had been done by a single outraged silth.
“Have to be more careful next time,” she mused. “The time after that for sure. They will be ready for any kind of trouble then.”
As the saddleship limped eastward, slow and unstable with Kublin aboard, she fantasized about the Tovand, the main brethren enclave in TelleRai. A major strike there would make a dramatic statement. One that could not be misinterpreted. She imagined herself penetrating its halls by night, stalking them like death itself, leaving a trail of corpses for the survivors to find come sunup. Surely that would be something to make the villains think.