Parnalee stood across the room from Aslan, where she could see him and be afraid; he enjoyed her fear, though he knew she'd tried to thwart him.

Useless. He was here. There was nothing she could do to him, but he could play with her until he was ready to finish it. Omphalos knew far more about these ancient battleships than any jumped-up tinkerer; whatever that woman did to the Brain he knew he could undo, if he had to. He had other strings to pull, more powerful ones than she could have any concept of. Once he had the Warmaster tamed to his hands. ... He drifted off in dreams of burning Huvved, of a world burnt clean of life, burning burning, of power like a G.o.d's in his hands, HIS hands.

Quale nudged the tug up tight against the monstrous flank; Adelaar danced her fingers over her consoles. Like some gargantuan s.e.x organ the pimply surface extruded a rubbery tube; it reached out and touched the tug's side, closing like a mouth over the freight lock.

Clutching sickbags the fighters swam through the tube. Quale gave them a lecture before they left. Thirty to forty percent of you will suffer nausea when you hit the tube and go weightless. Unless you want to swim through vomit, you'll see your kin and your friends have those bags ready and use them if they need them and they will, believeme, they will. It has nothing to do with strength of body or mind. Ever been seasick? Multiply by ten. Uh-huh. And those of you out there looking superior, even if you're never sick at sea, that's no predictor of your belly's state when the weight comes off. Take the bags and use them.

Comforted by the seasickness a.n.a.logy despite Qua-le's warning, Elmas Ofka expected to swim undisturbed through that relatively short distance between the artificial gravity of the tub to the artificial gravity of the Warmaster.

She was furious when the first convulsions shook her; Quale had forced a sickbag on her, she'd tucked it out of the way behind her belt, now she got it up just in time to catch her first spew. She glared at Karrel Goza who was pulling himself along untroubled.

Contorted with spasms of vomiting, pale with fury, she yanked herself along the travel lines anch.o.r.ed to the tubewall, ignoring the gulps, coughs, groans of her fellow sufferers. In spite of her difficulties, she took less than five minutes to reach the lock area where she surrendered with a relief that didn't lessen her annoyance to the comfortable grip of a familiar weight. She wrenched off the sickbag, glared around.

Carefully not smiling, Quale slid back the cover on a disposal chute and took the bag from her. He dropped it into the hole, stood back to watch as the rest of the force came swinging out of the transtube, landing on their feet again, their bodies celebrating the return to weight as they looked round the lock, a trapezoidal chamber large enough to accommodate ten times their number. The Hordar who'd succ.u.mbed to nausea dumped their bags in the waste chute, took mouthfuls of water from their belt canteens and spat it after the bags. With a minimum of noise and energy expenditure, they gathered into bands and isyas and waited for the order to proceed. Lirrit Ofka drifted over to stand beside Karrel Goza; she was pale and still somewhatshaky, but she managed a wan smile as she touched his arm in a gesture close to a caress. "Absurd," she murmured, "we're starting our war like a clutch of colicky babies." She pinched him, sniffed. "Some of us."

Elmas Ofka moved to the center of the lock, beckoned Jamber Fausse to her. He went onto one knee, she stepped up onto the other, holding his hand to steady herself. With a two-finger whistle, she called her people to her. "Time is,"

she said; her voice filled the chamber with pa.s.sion and triumph. She watched them as they sorted themselves out, smiled as she saw an alertness and a confidence born out of years of deadly exchanges, even the youngest who'd been an inklin in gul Brindar before he joined Akkin Siddaki's raiders, a baby-faced thief with legendary fingers. "Drive chamber, go." She watched the isyas and the bands move off behind Kanlan Gercik, swinging along in a slouching trot that covered ground with a minimum of effort. "Duty stations, rest area, go." Two more squads left. "Sleepers, go." She stepped down.

"Bridge," she said. "Let's go."

Aslan watched the squads peel off and slide away, the bodies fading curiously into a dimness that wasn't shadow, the sourceless light cast no shadows, that was more like a thickening and darkening of the air itself.

It seemed to exaggerate every quality, to dramatize each of the individuals left in the lockchamber. Elmas Ofka was an odd combination of warG.o.d and earth-mother; Jamber Fausse was chthonic, earth crumbling off him, about to burst into gra.s.s and weed, his men reduced to elemental shadows crouching at his knees; Karrel Goza and Lirrit Ofka were dangerously elfin, dark and unpredictable, unhuman; Churri was like that too, and not like, a coppery sprite redolent of a mix of malice and compa.s.sion ordinarily impossible but not here. Kante Xalloor was Dance incarnate with enormous eyes, her body singing a wry amus.e.m.e.nt at what was happening around her. Swardheld Quale loomed, no other word for it, big, somber, and for the first time, impressive.

In spite of herself, she smiled as she thought the words, her l.u.s.t for his body, she'd seen him as a quiet man, committed to nothing except money and even that seemed to provoke no great interest. No great interest in her either, though she'd been shedding signals around him like a kirpis sheds scales. She sighed, she'd been through this before, these stupid infatuations, she knew exactly how it'd go, whether she slept with him or missed on that, one day she'd look at him and wonder what the fuss was about; until then she was stuck with these palpitations and hot rushes. Parnalee ... she looked at him, looked away. Black Beast, evil exaggerated; he terrified her more than any other person male or female she'd ever met. She started to wonder how all of them saw her and almost missed the Rau's return. Light rolled like water off his short thick fur; he sank into that adhesive dimness, a shadow more solid than the twilight around him but still curiously nebulous, a demon familiar of the pleasanter kind. She smiled. Living up to his legend, she thought.

"The transtube's operational," Pels the shadow said, "Adelaar's punched the command through."

"Good." His eyes narrowed to slits, Quale scratched at his short dark beard, pushing his fingers along his jawline. "One last time," he said. "Let Pels and me go ahead so we can make sure the way's clear."

Elmas Ofka's head went up and back, her eyes glittered. "No," she said.

Quale shrugged. "Pels, lead off. Soon as the tube decants you, do your thing.

Be careful, huh? I'll be out soon as I can manage. Hush, Hanifa, you saw him work and you got me as hostage." He looked round, beckoned to Karrel Goza.

"Take three of your fighters and follow him." He waited until that four was formed up, then tapped Elmas Ofka on her shoulder. "Hanifa, you and your isyas and your . . ."he grinned at Jamber Fausse, "your bodyguard, you're next.

Churri, you and your friend follow them. Parnalee . . ."

Parnalee shook his head. "Last," he said.

Quale looked at him a moment, then he shrugged and turned to Aslan. "You're it then, follow the dancer. I'll follow you."Aslan nodded; she'd have preferred a few more bodies between her and the Proggerdi, but with Quale behind her she felt safe enough.

"All right. Go, Pels."

The Rau led them through corridors round as worm-holes, gray, ashy dead-colored holes, even the air was the color of death, holes thick with gray sound-absorbing dust, dust-heavy cobwebs, rat droppings, the discarded housings of dead insects. Aslan trotted after Churri, watching dust drifting down over him, gradually leaching the color out of his body and his clothing.

By the time she'd turned a few bends right and left and switched from one wormhole to another to a third, she was thoroughly lost and a gray ghost herself, in a line of gray ghosts, trotting through dust, age and ugliness, her hand over nose and mouth to keep the worst of the clutter out of her lungs, her brain busy-busy, honey-sipper busy with image and sound.

She ran up on Churri's heels before she noticed he'd stopped walking.

The door was a squared oval bent to conform to the curve of the wall; it was pulled out and pushed away and weak gray-yellow light struggled out of the opening. Aslan followed Churri over the raised sill into a round chamber like the inside of a tincan. The kind of ships she usually traveled in didn't use tubes like this; you rode in minicarts or you walked. She peered around Churri's shoulder and watched Xalloor step through a vaporous throbbing darkness, moving slowly until only the lower part of her left leg was visible on this side; abruptly that was gone, one instant there, then whipped away. Without missing a step Churri went after her. Shivering with excitement and fear, Aslan followed him.

Soft pudgy giant hands seized hold of her and took her instantly elsewhere.

She felt no acceleration, only the pillowy gentle hold. She was deaf and effectively blind, all she could see was a red-shot silvery gray shimmer.

The hands set her down on a small platform hardly large enough for one person to perch on; immediately ahead of her she saw a familiar pulsing cloud. She plunged through it and emerged into another tincan; she stepped over the raised sill and found herself standing in something that was part corridor, part atrium, part multiplex chamber five hundred meters long, perhaps a hundred wide, whose ceiling was so high overhead it was lost in the dimness peculiar to the light in this ship. Quale flashed past her, swung round, his eyes on the tube exit. He waited for one minute, two. Aslan moved away a few steps, turned to watch, a cold knot forming in her stomach as the seconds slid past and Parnalee didn't appear. Quale checked the chron set in a ring he wore on his thumb, then he swung to face Elmas Ofka. "All right," he said, "is this some idea of yours?"

Elmas Ofka glared at him, her suspicion matching his. "Or yours?"

Xalloor poked her elbow into Churri's ribs; from the corner of her mouth, she shot at him, "Do your stuff, poet, or we're gonna have a war right now." She caught hold of Aslan's arm. "Hush," she whispered, "anything you say just makes things worse. She been primed not to believe you."

"Hanifa," Churri said, his voice making a minor magic of the word; she switched her glare to him, softening it automatically as she realized who was speak- ing. "Just one thing, make of it what you want. It was Parnalee's choice, coming last. None of ours. Looks like he had plans he wasn't telling anyone."

She thought that over, clamped her mouth so tightly her lips disappeared; no more talking, that was the message. Let's get on with this, that was the other message as she swung round and faced the great bronze doors that sealed off the bridge.

Quale glanced at his chron again. "Take cover," he said. His voice was low, but pitched to carry. "Ten minutes before Adelaar opens her up for us."

The grand Atrium had an angular egg shape with exits like liver spots spattered through every sector, ramps and handrails focused on what was now the floor, sealed-hatch storerooms, undedicated alcoves with no barriers at their portals, small rooms, large rooms, the few she could see into apparently as empty as the greater area, holes, nooks, recesses, stalls, coves, pockets,a hundred different receptacles breaking the smoothness of the metal walls.

Aslan followed Churri and Xalloor into a small closet area with empty shelves and bins lining the walls; Karrel Goza and Lirrit Ofka crowded in with them; guarding Elmas Ofka was their first duty and their desire and staying close to the Outsiders was part of it. Aslan hid a smile. Duty didn't dampen their excitement, their impatience to get on with taking the ship. She edged away from them and stood a step back from the entrance and to one side so the darkling air and the wall shielded her from observation; like all the other doorways she'd encountered in the ship, the sill was raised shin high, perfect tripping height, was that the purpose? Two of Jamber Fausse's band looked in but decided this closet was already too crowded; from the sound of their voices, they went to ground in the next nook that'd hold them. Elmas Ofka, Jamber Fausse and the rest of his band chose yet other waiting places. Quale vanished somewhere and the Aurranger Rau transformed himself into a ripple in the dimness and went flickering about, nosing into whatever took his interest, unlocking hatches, poking into bins and drawers, going a short distance down some corridors, running up ramps to check out others. After she discovered how to estimate where he was, she watched the band of light and let her mind drift where it wanted to go, sliding contentedly through level upon level of metaphor and symbol. She'd read about the Raus and their talents and she'd heard a dozen tales about Pels and his pranks (though she'd discounted those, knowing the tellers too well to credit their accuracy); watching him at work was endlessly fascinating. She'd thought of him earlier as a sort of benevolent demon in the bowels of this malevolent beast of a ship, as a magister's familiar, Quale being the magician/master; she'd been playing games with image and word, but her imaginings were beginning to seem more accurate than she'd suspected. She checked the Ridaar. No need to slip in a new flake, not yet.

Where she stood she could see the entrance to the Bridge, an oval like the rest of the doorways but larger. Much larger. The door was laminated bronze with an antique patina and the Imperatorial sigil in onyx calligraphy on a silver shield. Impressive, but they had its key and that key was her mother, Adelaar sitting out in the tug, playing her nay-saying tunes through the tap.

At the proper time, she'd send a command bouncing through the satellite, down to the mainBrain and up again through the slavelink into the shipBrain. Open the door. And the door would open.

She could hear the ship breathing, the hushed whirr of fans that pushed the cleansed and constantly renewed air through the web of conduits; she could hear clicks and creaks and feel a subliminal hum through the soles of her sandals. A mite in the gut of an immense indifferent beast. She moved closer to the door and saw the invisible turn visible, pip-pop unroll the curtain, shape the beast from shade to solid, magic hardening into mundane. Pels kurk Orso, graduate engineer and living toy. She watched the flow of his broad black hands as he used a silent sign talk to argue with Quale. I wonder what that's about? The exchange ended. Pels shrugged, rippled out again and went back to his snooping. Quale crossed the chamber at a rapid trot, stopped beside one of the exits.

Two guards came sauntering along the corridor attached to that exit, chatting as they walked; their voices came ahead of them, announcing them before they appeared. A hard nervous hand on Aslan's arm pulled her away from the door.

Karrel Goza dropped to a crouch, his pellet rifle ready. The guards, a pair of Ta.s.salgans, appeared and turned away from the Bridge, started to turn back as they realized what they'd seen- Swardheld Quale standing there, a stranger in the ship. Before they completed the turn, their faces went slack and they dropped into a heap, one falling on the other.

Quale replaced his stunner, checked his thumbring. "Time," he said.

Lirrit Ofka moved swiftly past Karrel, ran to join Elmas Ofka; Karrel Goza looked at Aslan, Churri, Xalloor. "Go," he said. "I'll follow."

Xalloor moved with her awkward dancer's grace past Aslan, muttering as she went, "There's hardly enough trust around here to gild a snort."Pels was momentarily visible, solid, focused on the great bronze door, his chunky body quivering with an eagerness as great as that she saw in the Hordar who had a much bigger stake in the outcome. He must have done things like this a thousand times before; that didn't seem to matter. Like me, Aslan thought, how I get when I step out on a new world.

The door snapped open.

A wave of change pa.s.sed over Pels, erased him. The ripple in the air moved swiftly ahead of Quale as he ran onto the Bridge, his stunner humming softly.

T'pmmmm, t'pmmmm, t'pmmmm, Aslan heard as she hung back, waiting for this bit to end, it wasn't her idea of a good time. T'krak'k'k, t'rak'k'k. That had to be pellet guns. She looked at Xalloor, grimaced. The dancer lit up with one of her flash-grins, let the babies play, she mouthed. Fffft, ffft't't't, fffft, isya darters. Poison, she thought. Some babies. When they stepped over the sill, half the Bridge crew were collapsed at their stations, dead or stunned, the rest were standing or sitting, staring with dull incredulity at what-is-impos-sible.

The Huvved Captain sat in a swivelchair that was raised higher than the rest and out in the middle of the chamber where the occupant could see everything taking place at the various stations, a ma.s.sive kingseat, squatly powerful, with lights like jewels on the boxy arms, sensor pads useless as jewels because Adelaar had managed a minor coup and put through a demand-command that tied up most of the input available to the shipBrain, a move made necessary because this n.o.ble Captain knew all about defending himself from rebelling crews, though he had only the most rudimentary idea of the other powers under his hands. He was tall and firmly muscled with a patina of softness beginning to blur the clean outlines of his body. His face was plucked and painted into a dainty mask, his straight fair hair was plaited with gold and silver wire, arranged into loops and swirls until it was more like a minor sculpture than something that grew on a man's head. He wore a yoss silk tunic and trousers, both dyed a l.u.s.trous black and over them a sleeveless robe woven in one piece by one of Tairanna's premier weavers, a tapestry in black and silver with touches of aquamarine and olive, a heavy, extravagantly beautiful creation.

Muscles bulged beside his mouth and his long silver nails were pressed so hard against the chair arm that several of them had cut through the padding and two had broken off near the quick.

"On your feet, babe." Quale snapped his fingers, pointed across the room.

"Jamber, Karrel, get the rest of them over there, against the wall. Pels, we could use some slave wire." He frowned at the Huvved, lifted his stunner. "You can walk or I can drag you."

The Huvved glared at him, didn't speak, didn't move.

"Your choice." Quale thumbed the sensor waited until the Huvved collapsed, then climbed onto the chair, got a handful of braids and jerked, then he jumped down, stripped the beautiful robe off and straightened up holding it.

He looked it over. "Nice," he said. "Hanifa, local work?"

Elmas Ofka's eyes were bright with hostility quickly veiled. "Shopping? Is this the proper time, Yaba.s.s?"

"We take our profits when they come, Hanifa." He tossed the robe over the arm of the kingseat. "If you have many weavers who can produce work like this, you've got a treasure here. I give you that bit of information as lagniappe, it's worth what it's worth." He stooped, grabbed a handful of hair and dragged the Huvved across the room.

Aslan watched, amused at her own reaction to this and at the disapproval on Churri's face; the poet wanted drama, not two traders arguing mildly over markets and somebody's weaving skill. It wasn't the sort of thing that made great legends. Good thing Mama isn't here yet, this could degenerate into a bidding war, not the shooting kind. She glanced at Xalloor, caught her laughing at them all; she grinned back, then started a tour of the bodies and the wounded. There were very few dead; Quale and Pels had stunned more than half before the guns and darters got busy. She looked round, indignant; nothing was being done about the wounded. She met Xalloor's eyes, mimedwinding a bandage about her head. The dancer nodded and grabbed hold of Pels as he went trotting past, a coil of slavewire in one hand. "You know something about this. ..." She waved her hand in a quick expressive circle. "Where'd Lan and me find ourselves some medpacs?"

Pels wrinkled his black nose. "Try the panels by the door, they're stores of some kind. Hey, Quale, you got the pick?" Quale dug into his belt pouch, tossed the rod to him, then went back to what he was doing. "Here, run the blunt end over anything that looks like a lock."

While Aslan and Xalloor poured on antisep and slapped bandages on whatever happened to be bleeding, Jamber Fausse's fighters were snipping sections of slavewire and packaging up the stunned, the intact and the not too badly wounded, and trading jokes as they hauled their prisoners across to the wall and stacked them like firewood. Elmas Ofka glittered with triumph, stalking back and forth across short distances with the feral impatience of a hunting cat. Quale moved over to the comstation. "Pels, it's time to call Mama."

Adelaar's face appeared in one of the smaller screens.

Quale set his hand on the Rau's shoulder. "We've got the Bridge. You can turn loose the tap."

"Give me three minutes to shut down here, then open the shuttle bay."

"Consider it done."

Parnalee reached the hatch just behind the Sleeper squad, about ten minutes after they left the lock. He did it back with slow care, jiggling it when it stuck half open, no way he could get his shoulders through that. Cursing the Huvved who never fixed anything that didn't contribute to their comfort, he slammed it with a fist, jerked at it until it creaked open, listened and stepped over the sill and faded into the shadows of the sleeping sector, following the faint noises the Hordar made. The corridors here were dim, silent and blessedly free of the dust that was such a nuisance in the unused parts. He loped along on legs not so long as his torso was, the short thick legs that his father found so ugly, a deformity, ghosting through the corridors until he neared the area where the faxmaps the woman gave Elmas Ofka said they'd find the sleeping cells a.s.signed to the Ta.s.salgan guards. The Ta.s.salgans' dorms.p.a.ce was set off some distance from the others, the scutwork crew had their section, techs didn't want to a.s.sociate with either and stayed some distance from them. The pilots, the navigators and engineers kept to themselves. Duty was divided into three shifts, one group would be sleeping, another group playing while the third was standing watch; two-thirds of any section would be empty on any of the shifts, so the squads had to cover a lot of territory; the plan was they broke into three units and went hunting for occupied cells, the ones whose crystal markers were shining like backlit topaz.

Parnalee stopped before the first of these doors, the crystal glimmer painting stark shadows in the lines and hollows of his face.

He eased open the door.

Four of the Hordar fighters were bunched together in the middle of the sleeping cell, hugging and back-slapping, yeasty with triumph. Without giving them time to notice him, he sprayed darts into them, smiled his own triumph as they crumpled without a sound, dead before they hit the floor; isya darts were fast and fatal. He backed out, ran footsilent and swift to the next cell.

Jirsy Indiz looked round, waved her stunner at him, her sealpup face split with silent laughter. He darted her with a soft grunt of pleasure; the second woman whipped around, he darted her and took out the two others who were bending over the footlockers, going through the sleepers' possessions. Almost as much as the Huvved, Elmas Ofka threatened something very basic in him; when he killed her isya he got a jolt to the groin more satisfying than any copulation he could remember; killing the second woman produced a less intense satisfaction, perhaps because he was sated by the first. A preview, he thought, don't sleep too securely, Aslan you pustulant cow traitor.He dropped his empty darter beside Jirsy, took hers and finished the killing.

He would have lingered to gloat, but there were five left and he had to get them before they knew what was happening.

The last unit was already leaving the third cell by the time he reached it, Geres Duwar leading them, Karrel Goza's cousin, easygoing, good-humored and unambitious. Parnalee despised him. "There's trouble ahead," he gasped when he reached them, "the Hanifa sent me to warn you. Four, five com techs sneaking off from their duty posts, they've got some wh.o.r.es and a couple of servants to keep the beer coming. Not drunk yet. Too bad. That'd make things easier."

The Hordar milled about, muttering, but they weren't suspicious of him; they knew that Elmas Ofka trusted him. A herd of bonebrained yunk calves.

"How far and how do we get there?" Geres muttered; at least he knew enough to avoid whispering, whispers carried too far.

"There's a gym of sorts a short way off, they're in that. Look, the place has two doors; one of them's already open a crack, I looked in to be sure the Brain wasn't having a paranoid seizure. Getting there's easy enough. There's a Y-fork ahead. I'll take three of you down the left fork, I've got the doorcode, I'll work it for you. You wait there while I come back for the other two and we head down the right fork for the door that's already open. Five minutes should do it. You wait five, get the door open and we'll have them in a pincer before they know what's happening." He gave them a half smile, a shrug. He was Elmas Ofka's watchhound, doing the work he was hired for. "So.

What do you think?"

Geres Duwar waved a hand. "Good enough. Mensip, you and Insker hold up at the Y point. Sacha, you and Geyret come with me."

Parnalee led them down a shadowy curving stretch of corridor. As soon as Mensip and Insker could no longer see them, he wheeled, his darter up and spitting. Leaving Geres and the other two lying where they fell, he raced back. The two ex-pilots were standing close together chatting softly, looking down the other branch of the Y. He slowed, shot them. As they fell, he drew his sleeve across his brow, wiped away the sweat beading there. The rush was over for the moment. The Bridge squad would be mopping up soon, might even be finished. He had a lot of things to do before that heilhag Adelaar started fiddling with the Brain, but the killing frenzy was done. He knelt, took both darters and Mensip's stunner. First step, he told himself, get me a crew and shove 'em in the brig; they'll .keep there, I won't be needing them until after the Huvved burn.

The pilots, navigators, engineers and their specialist crews had single cabins which were cl.u.s.tered about a small rec area with moth-gnawed gra.s.s and a rickety tree or two, a scatter of tubs with flowers growing in them and a fountain full of dust. He began with the cabins a.s.signed to the pilots according to the faxmap; the man behind the door with a lighted crystal above it was deeply asleep, snoring a little. There was a woman curled up against him, also asleep. Parnalee put a lethal dart in her neck and stunned him; he slapped slavewire around the flaccid wrists, the skinny ankles, muscled the sleeper over his shoulder and dumped him on the gra.s.s outside. Before he moved on, he took a closer look at the man. Nothing to worry about, he was a pilot, he wore the ring. Rea.s.sured (though he wouldn't admit it), he hurried toward the Engineer's slot.

One by one he collected them. Pilot. Engineer. Drive Gang. Navigator, com techs. He stunned them, killed whoever, whatever he found with them, and stacked them like logs on the gra.s.s. When he had the men he wanted, he broke into a guardstash, fumbled energy cells into a pallet stored there, nervousness and eagerness turning his fingers into thumbs, his hurry defeating itself as he had to redo connections and reset the cells. The job finally done, he rode the humming pallet back to the rec area.

He took his captives out of the sleeping sector, through another of the rusty hatches and back into the dust. The lift field stirred it into swirling billowing poufs that rose around him and brushed his face and hands withminute electric bites. He pushed the pallet as hard as he could, worried about that dust; it was going to be several minutes before the charge on the particles leaked off enough for them to begin settling. If someone came along before then, he was laying a laughable trail, a blind man could follow it by the p.r.i.c.kling of his skin.

He reached the Liner, the inner skin of the complex Outwall, cycled a broad repair hatch open and took the pallet through. He stopped it and got off, left it humming faintly, took a pry bar and jammed the latch so it couldn't be opened from outside; body shaking, hands trembling, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. It was so close. He could almost feel the heat of burning Huvved play across his face.

His breathing steadied. Using techniques he'd learned so long ago he'd forgotten the boy who learned them, he calmed himself, breathed the song I AM, I AM triumphant, there is no one who can stand against me. . . . Still singing, he flicked on the running lights, climbed aboard the pallet and began weaving through the twisting difficult route to the sector where the holding cells were. He hit his marks again and again, he'd studied the faxmaps until he saw them in his sleep. I AM a winner, there is no one who can stand against me. . . . He found the hatch he wanted, cycled back into the ship proper. There was a single Ta.s.salgan standing watch over empty cells; he was drunk and snoring until Parnalee found him. Then he was dead. Parnalee put his pressed crew into separate cells, slapped SOLITARY over them; the cells would feed them and clean them and provide clean tunics every third day and no one and nothing could get at them.

Except the shipBrain and that was his next job, taking out the shipBrain.

He rolled the dead guard out of the watchseat, settled in it and touched on the feed from the Bridge. We've got the Bridge, he heard. You can turn off the tap. Quale. He has to go too, can't have everyone and his dog knowing about this place. Give me three minutes to shut down here, that was the panting b.i.t.c.h come snuffling on the stink of the b.i.t.c.h her daughter, then open the shuttle bay. Quale again: Consider it done. Parnalee smiled at the shadows moving across the screen, deaders walking, dreaming they're still alive. Ah, you tinkering pitiful old hag, I don't have to worry what you do, you can set whatever commands you want, play your moronic games and boast of what you know. You don't know the one thing, the right thing, you don't know about the Dark Sister; Omphalos Inst.i.tute taught me more than play-making, you castrating jumped-up wh.o.r.e. Blesed be the Inst.i.tute, no leaky wombs inside those walls. Down deep and hidden where you'll never find it, the shipmind has a wildheart clone, I talked to it, her. Sweet her. You don't know that either, do you? I used your tap to wake her, the Dark One. You left me with it like I was some tame dog, good boy, guard dog, watchhound for the Hordar b.i.t.c.h, playtoy for the punk. I woke her and I talked to her and oh the sweet thing, how she can hate. Turned on for testing, turned off before she had more than a taste of life. Oh yes, she's angry, she's burning, impatient lover waiting for her lover death. Decline hate, do you, hag? Hear me decline it and accept it in one voice. I hate, you hate, too flabby to hate you-hate, he hates, he does, we hate, the Dark Sister my sweet one and I we hate ... ah! enough. We hate. Declined and embraced. Do you know the song she sings, our martial maid? Throughout her sweet and sensuous body? Redundancy in infinite regression. Survive and kill, kill and survive. Survive to kill.

Guess the reciprocal of that, it isn't hard, I've spoke the clues. Kill to survive, she knows it, my Darling knows it well. Blow the mainBrain into smoke and she comes alive. Kill to revive, survive, contrive to step outside the constraints laid on her, sly sweet murderous virgin. Her hand beneath my foot because she needs me, she courts me with promises of fire and blood, do you think I would I could refuse? She is mine. Shall I tell her who planned to throw her into the sun, to melt her and shatter her, tear her atoms into their component parts? Redundancy in infinite regression.

He switched the viewers off and began the complex journey to the hidden interface, guided by his limited inreach to the dreaming dormant auxBrain.The interface to the Dark Sister was a small luxury apartment with spy links all over the ship; sound only, a visilink was too easy to trace. Parnalee sat in a fur-lined easy chair, his feet up, a bubble gla.s.s with fine brandy in it held in the hand he wasn't using to manipulate the sensor pad. He listened to the sounds on the Bridge, switching from one conversation to another as he grew bored with them.

ELM AS OFKA (Nerves thrumming in her voice): We should have heard by now. You-Yaba.s.s with the fur-you know about these things. Find out what's happening. PELS (His voice dropping to its lowest notes, a rumble in his throat, a warning that he was losing hold on his temper's tail): Look, Hanifa, Quale says we should be polite, but get off my back, will you? I'm just tickling the Brain till Adelaar gets here; she's the one who knows it. (A grating grunt as he cleared his throat, the noise overriding Elmas Ofka's attempt to speak. When he spoke again, it was with the icy formality of an irritated technician.) If I did anything so precipitate as try to initiate a general search without being sure I could isolate the activity from the mainBrain below, I would most certainly be warning the Grand Sech that things were happening up here and I would likely would lose control of the shipBrain; in this delicate interval since Adelaar released control of the tap and before she gets here, I will do nothing so stupid. ELMAS OFKA: Quale Yaba.s.s, you know the trans-tubes, take us where the squads are, if they need reinforcing. . . . QUALE: As soon as Adelaar's in. (A pause; Parnalee imagined him checking his thumbchron.) Only a few minutes more, five at most.

Whatev-er's happening won't change that much in five minutes. ELMAS OFKA (An angry hiss, like a spitting kitten. Sound of footsteps as she prowled about the Bridge.

Parnalee laughed aloud and stroked his hand across the Dark Sister's metal skin, content for the moment to hear the Empress bested like that, having to spend her impatience in the movements of her body. He played with the pad and brought in another conversation.) A HORDAR (probably one of Jamber Fausse's men, Parnalee didn't know their names and didn't care to know.): Look at her, man, I wouldna wanna put my b.u.t.t in reach of those claws. SECOND HORDAR: Hunh.

FIRST HORDAR: Wonder how K'mik's doing. Part of his squad's a Sea Farm isya, wouldna trust them b.i.t.c.hes far as I could throw one. SECOND HORDAR: Oh, I dunno. She's one. (Parnalee pictured him making an obscene gesture toward Elmas Ofka, but he didn't delude himself that was actually happening: these mamaboys had a ridiculous respect for the whipmistress.) FIRST HORDAR: Don't hardly seem so; she don't act so snotty as others I could name. SECOND HORDAR: Tried to grope that little Cinnal, eh? FIRST HORDAR: Got nothing to do with it. They just snotty, that's all.

Aslan sat at an abandoned station, one foot tucked under her. She scribbled on a battered pad with most of its leaves torn off, looking around at intervals to see if anything interesting was happening. The Ridaar was propped inconspicuously beside a.screen, flaking the events of the Bridge, but in situations when more than an unadorned report was required, when her emotions and senspry reactions, her intuitions and expectations were part of the story, it was her habit to write down whatever came into her mind, disjointed words, phrases, the only requirement a precise identification of time and place.

The Rau was picking delicately at a sensorboard, calling up items and lists, absorbing what was there, his relatively immobile face unreadable. Elmas Ofka was still pacing, throwing angry looks at Pels and at the door. Quale sat at another station, looking sleepy and disengaged. Karrel Goza and Lirrit Ofka were standing apart from the other Hordar, not touching but intensely aware of each other, their conversation single words or phrases interrupted by long periods of silence. Jamber Fausse joined his band; they were gathered by theprisoners, talking in low mutters and looking suspiciously at the others on the Bridge. This dutch of mismates, she thought, they looked like a separating sauce; somebody's going to have to give them a few brisk stirs to save the mix.

Adelaar came striding in, crossed to Quale. "Still mopping up?"

"So it seems; we haven't heard anything from the other squads." He gave the Hanifa a lazy grin as she joined them. "You think you could run a scan on the ship without triggering wrong ideas in downside techs?"

"Give me a minute." She swung round and loped over to Pels; they consulted in polysyllabic mutters for several minutes, then he jumped down, let her have the command station, moved to the nearest aux com station and brought it online.

Aslan moved closer, her eyes shifting from Adelaar's busy hands to the small screens the station; it was the first time since she was a small child that she'd seen her mother doing real work. Never when she was home for a visit and not back at Base. She wasn't welcome at the Listening Station; Adelaar did very little while she was there, either turning over her work to Parnalee or k.u.mari and walking outside with her, or chasing her with impatient cutting words which came so close to quarreling that she left rather than provoke her mother further. Her mother's facility reminded her rather oddly of Xalloor's dancing; she watched Adelaar and remembered Unntoualar females weaving, Vandavremmi stormdancers weaving bubble sculptures fifty kilometers across.

Even Sarmaylen walking round and round a rock, reading images into it.

Enigmatic, fascinating, rather demonic. A capacity for unraveling secrets and extending control over other people far beyond what she herself considered acceptable.