The subliminal throb of the vessel continued, almost unnoticed, like her own heartbeat. The ship was crippled but far from dead. She wondered how much the rogue brethren had hoped to restore it. There had to be limits to what they could comprehend.
How broad those limits, though? They had had more than two decades to study it.
She wandered for more than two hours, growing ever more awed by the ship’s size. In that time she was unable to see everything that had been restored, and that part of the vessel represented but a fraction of the whole. She could duck through her loophole, capture a ghost, and sail through vast sections still unreclaimed, seeing ten thousand wonders that were absolute mysteries.
Wouldn’t Bagnel love it?
A worthy next project for him and his loyal brethren? There must be studies enough here to occupy generations.
Something touched her. She had a vague, general sense of something having gone wrong. She opened to the All.
A darkship had arrived.
She probed more closely. It was High Night Rider, at last come from the baseworld with the second wave…. No. When she scanned the surrounding void she found the Redoriad voidship alone, and limping discernibly.
II
Feeble touch brushed the starship. Marika thought she recognized its flavor. Balbrach. Are you there? Is that you? What is wrong? Where are the other darkships?
The weak touch focused. I am here, Marika. Balbrach’s touch did not become much stronger. We jumped into an ambush. The Serke were attacking your base when we arrived. They had destroyed everyone caught on the ground and were dueling two darkships. We tried to help and nearly were destroyed ourselves. We lost bath. We managed to shake them returning here. But they could appear at any time. Our very direction of flight would unnerve them.
Do they know we have found them?
I do not know. It is likely they will learn, if they do not guess from the way we fled. We did learn that they were trying to destroy you with their attack. They were disappointed because you were not on your baseworld. My impression was that they planned to remain there till you returned. But if they guess that you have come here they will bring all their strength back. Come help us, Marika. We may not have the strength to make orbit.
I will be there as soon as I can. How many darkships did they have?
Five still functional when we fled.
Hold on. I am going to collect my bath now.
Marika withdrew into herself and hurried to rejoin her crew. But soon she learned that she was lost in the corridors. She had to go down through her loophole and catch a ghost and ride it through the starship, scouting a pathway.
She touched her senior bath. We have to go out. High Night Rider has arrived after skirmishing with the missing Serke darkships. They lost bath and are in trouble. We are the only ones able to get there. Get your sisters up and ready.
The senior bath grumbled to herself, but prepared.
Marika debated having her let Grauel and Barlog lie where they were, but decided against it. They needed the rest, but they might waken, find themselves alone, and think that they had been abandoned.
Marika joined them as the senior bath passed the silver bowl and led the way through the airlock to the darkship. While she waited for the bath to untie and push away, Marika reached down and touched a Mistress on the planet to relay Balbrach’s news.
We could have unfriendly visitors at any time. All darkships must lift off immediately, lest they be caught on the surface. Assemble near the starship.
The response below was not one of great joy, but the silth down there sorted themselves out and got seven darkships off the ground. Marika was not pleased. Only seven surviving. She touched the silth who remained, telling them to keep a firm paw on their captives.
Her senior bath touched her. We are clear, Mistress. You may drive when you will.
Marika marked the location of High Night Rider and surged away from the alien. She gathered more ghosts and did the unthinkable: skipped through the Up-and-Over. She matched courses with the voidship, took her darkship inside, and loaned one of her bath to the senior Redoriad bath. Then she put her head together with Balbrach’s.
The Serke darkships materialized only hours after High Night Rider made orbit in the starship’s shadow. Marika and the others were waiting. They rushed in. The struggle was fierce, bitter, and without mercy asked or given. Though they were tired, the Serke showed well. They destroyed another three darkships. Marika had to summon the great black to end it.
The survivors limped back to the alien starship. Marika found Balbrach wandering the cold metal passageways of the ship. Balbrach greeted her by gesturing, saying, “This reminds me of the ice in a brethren factor’s heart. There is nothing here but function. Is this species a race without a soul?”
“I do not know, mistress. I have not had time to learn. Come with me. I can show you what they look like.”
“You have one of them?”
“No. An image.”
As they walked, Balbrach asked, “And what will you do now?”
“We have broken the Serke threat at last,” Marika replied, scarcely able to believe that the long hunt had come to an end. “Now we go on to…”
“You have fulfilled the role for which you were shaped by Gradwohl. Where will you go from there?”
Marika temporized. “I think nowhere. I will return to the homeworld, briefly, to gather meth to study the starship. Maybe I will come back here and stay here, awaiting the advent of the creatures who built this ship—if ever they come seeking their brethren.”
“Brethren?”
“Most seem to have been males, though their crew was mixed. Actually more like bonds at work than silth or brethren. Or I may hunt some rogues. There is one in particular with whom I have a grievance.”
“For a long time there have been close ties between Marika and the Redoriad first chair,” Balbrach observed. Her body language suggested that she was imparting an important secret. In a softer voice, she continued, “I suggest that you not spend much time at home, Marika. That you be very careful and abnormally alert if you do visit.”
“Why?”
“There are many sisters who feel that we should not have to endure the continuous threat represented by one silth who is able to impose her will upon anyone. Bestrei was tolerated because she did not interfere. She enforced the Serke will in the void, but according to a rigid and ancient noble code. They will see the silth who defeated Bestrei as more flexible, less predictable, and more likely to interfere in areas considered none of her business.”
“I see. You fear someone might try to eliminate that unpredictable silth.”
“Certainly the rogues would make that effort. The warlock will have been planning your fate from the moment he heard a rumor that his stellar allies had been found. And if he failed, then those sisters would take up the blade.”
“And?”
“And another thought strikes me now. This ship has proven to be a treasure that inspires madness. And you have made statements already sure to arouse the enmity of the greedy.”
“I see what you mean. I also sense that you speak not on the impulse of the moment, and that you do so without guessing. That you know whereof you speak.”
“Perhaps. I am sure there were Mistresses who came out here with orders to close the legend of Marika the savage if that was possible. The Serke ended their tales instead in this great slaughter. That in itself is going to cause considerable dismay. A useful villain has vanished. A third of all voidships in existence have been lost, and with them the most seniors of many dark-faring sisterhoods. There will be chaos when the news reaches home.”
Marika reflected. “Yes. Not only within the Communities bereft, too. If he has prepared as you suggest, and recognizes it, that would be a great moment for the warlock to strike.”
“So I have thought.”
“Then I shall race the news homeward. I shall arrive before he hears and complete my business
there before the Communities can recover sufficiently to turn upon me.”
Looking within herself, Marika found her ties to her homeworld attenuated. But for wanting to see Bagnel again, and hoping to encounter Kublin, she had little desire to return. She hardly missed the enfolding subconscious touch of the planet. In fact, if she could convince Bagnel to come out to help unlock the secrets of the alien ship, she would be content to spend the rest of her life there, perhaps using it as a base from which to continue her explorations and to fare beyond the dust cloud in search of the creatures who had built the starship.
If she could fulfill her responsibilities toward Grauel and Barlog… She was stricken by an old guilt. “Whatever else I may do, Balbrach, there is one task I am compelled to undertake upon the homeworld. In one sense, now that the Serke have been overcome, I no longer have any excuse for delaying.”
The Redoriad most senior awarded her a baffled look, confused by her body language. Marika had ceased to be silth. She had lapsed into the upper Ponath savage she had been as a pup. Balbrach said, “I sense that some old haunt has recalled itself to you.”
“You know my background. You know I never completely rejected it. Nor have my two voctors, my packmates, who have been with me since we escaped the nomads the Serke sent down upon our homeland. It has taken us all our lives to avenge our packmates. But with that done, we still owe them one obligation. And we cannot complete that without returning to the place where they died.” She tried to explain a Mourning to Balbrach. The Redoriad could not encompass the savage practice. It was unlike anything in the silth experience. But she managed better than most because of her own rural background. Most silth would have mocked the notion of rites for a band of savages.
“I wish you could engineer it so you did not have to do this thing, Marika. I wish you could stay here and never again venture homeward. But I cannot presume to tell you what to do. I can only warn you of the dangers to your person.”
Marika nodded. “Here we are. This is the place from which the vessel was controlled. Where their equivalent of the Mistress of the Ship was posted.”
The chamber was large. It had three separate levels, with seating for forty beings. Most of the chairs faced screens similar to those meth used for communications. Balbrach said, “It looks like an oversize comm center.”
“Look here.” Marika touched a switch. One of the screens assumed life. A creature peered out at them. Balbrach made a startled sound when it began talking. The sounds it made were more liquid and round than any that could be formed by the meth mouth and tongue.
“That is one ugly beast,” Balbrach said in an attempt at humor. “Such a flat face. Like someone smashed it in with a frying pan. And no fur, except on top. It looks like a badly deformed pup. Look at those ears. They are ears, are they not?”
“I suspect so. They are taller than we are, in the main, judging from the size of their chairs and doorways. That one seems to be male. The one in the background behind him, though, may be female.”
“Do you have any idea what he is saying?”
“No. At a guess, this is a recorded report to whoever finds the ship. This is the reason the Serke were certain someone would come. As it progresses you will see what appears to be a report about what crippled the ship, followed by regular reports on the fates of individual crew members as they perished.”
“You could tell all that?”
“Some things do not need words. A picture says more.”
“True.” Balbrach turned from the screen. “So. What are your plans?”
“As I said. I will go home briefly. I will assemble a team to study the ship. I will close out my life there. I think it will be my last visit, unless I go home to die. I will leave soon, to arrive before anyone who slips off with the news. Can High Night Rider carry darkships and Mistresses who have had to loan their bath?”
“If necessary. That leaves me with only one question, Marika. Perhaps the most important question of all.”
“Yes?”
“What about Starstalker?”
It was a question Marika had been avoiding, even within her mind. Starstalker had not been among the Serke voidships destroyed. “What about Starstalker? I do not know. I think that will have to answer itself. Possibly at a time and place of their choosing.”
III
The first rest stop on the path home came at the former baseworld. Marika drifted in through space scattered with broken voidships and dead silth. One third of all voidfaring silth lost. One third of the best and brightest of all silth. And the warlock had not had to lift a paw.
What would the disaster mean to the mirror project?
She took the wooden darkship down to her old camp. And there she found more of the same, twisted darkships and decomposing corpses. The Serke had been thorough. She walked with her memories of her years there, rested as best she could with haunted dreams, then climbed to the stars again, running out hours ahead of High Night Rider and the survivors of the struggle.
Her thoughts kept turning to Starstalker. What had become of High Night Rider’s littermate and the one or two ordinary Serke darkships that remained unaccounted for? Nothing could be found of them at the baseworld, and they had not participated in the counterattack upon the system of their exile.
Were they on the run again, that last dozen or so? Had they another hiding place still? Would Starstalker’s survival leave a hope where she wanted all hope slain?
Marika felt very old when her home sun materialized and she saw her birthworld again. Very old and very useless. Yet she was convinced that she was far from playing out the role that had been decreed for her by the All. Beyond the few remaining tasks imposed upon her by circumstance lay her own life. She might yet have something for herself, if she was not still a tool of fate.
She directed her darkship toward the Hammer.
Bagnel met her in the airlock. He directed brethren to care for her companions. The moment they were alone, he said, “The news is spreading already. You have destroyed the rogues.”
Baffled, she asked, “How can that be? I must be the first ship back.”
“You came back. That was evidence enough. It was on every radio network within minutes of your coming out of the Up-and-Over. At least that speculation. So. Did you do it?”
“We destroyed most of them. But it was very expensive. There will be little joy of it. I am exhausted, trying to beat the news home. And I’m depressed, old friend. Yet I am elated too. For once and all I have refuted the Jiana accusation. I have led the race out of its darkest hour.”
“Have you?”
“What?”
“I don’t like the look of you, Marika. There is a new darkness behind your eyes. It is the darkness I saw there when you were young.”
Marika was not pleased. “It must be the darkness that comes of battle, Bagnel. It will be a long time before I can shake my memories of my meeting with Bestrei. There was darkness incarnate, for all her nobility.”
“There is an old saying among the meth with whom I spent my puphood. It goes, ‘We become that which we would destroy.’ “
“I’ve heard it before. It’s not always true. I will not become a new Bestrei.”
“You’re much more. You’re a thing that cannot be understood. There has been much discussion of you in your absence. Undertaken in complete confidence that you would succeed in doing what you have done. That discussion has been underlaid by fear of Marika, the wild silth, the dark-walking sister with no allegiance and no limit to her power. I know you will do what you will do and nothing I can say will shift your course an inch. So I will only beg of you, be careful. The frightened do desperate things.”
“So I have been warned already. Yet I have been given no specifics.”
“There are no specifics to be had. At least by those of us who might be tempted to relate them to their target. Only rumors.”
“What of Kublin and the rogues?”
“They have been quiet. Surprisingly
so. Again, though, there have been rumors. That they have been preparing for your return, come you in triumph or defeat. It is said that they are convinced that by killing you they can start a scramble for control of the alien ship that will so embroil the attentions of the dark-faring silth that they will be left with a free paw here at home. I have a feeling their estimate is close to the truth. The rumor mill also has much to say about undercover planning in various Communities for an effort to seize and exploit the alien.”
Marika folded a lip in sardonic amusement. “So I have no friends at all. Not that I ever had. And my death would serve everyone’s purpose. I think we belong to a sad race, Bagnel.”
“I could have told you that truth the day we first faced one another on Akard’s wall.”
“Does the project continue well?”
“As well as might be expected, considering that we have had to do without the voidships that accompanied you and the fact that so many meth have become distracted by other matters. We brethren persevere.”
“Has it reached a stage where it could survive without you?”
“Everything can survive without me. I am wholly disposable.”
“A matter I would debate strongly, with you or anyone else. Would you like a new challenge? A challenge greater than putting new suns in the sky?”
“You intrigue me, Marika. If anyone but you made a statement like that… What is it?”
“How would you like to unravel the secrets of the alien starship?”
He examined her intently. “What are you saying?”
“One of the reasons I’ve come home is to recruit replacements for the rogue scientists who were studying the starship. I want you to be in charge.”
“You found it? You have it? It wasn’t just speculation?”
“It’s very real. And very strange, in the way things are strange when they are similar.” She began describing the ship.
“Ah.”
She saw the marvel he tried to conceal. The eagerness. The excitement.