the attackers—”
Just then Prosperity turned into a fiery energy ball. Zuchmul recoiled, cried out, and reeled away from the bulkhead back toward an inner compartment.
Kyllikki searched the overhead for a sign that the radiation alarms had been activated, but they were silent. The hull had stopped most of the sleeting rain of particles, just not enough for a luren. If the detectors are working!
She hunkered down before the one cabinet she knew, then came up with a brightly painted case. “I doubt we’ve taken a dangerous exposure, but it’s better to be cautious. Here.” She handed Idom an injection ampoule and selected one for herself. Its code bands indicated it ought to be safe, but in the Metaji, she was never sure. The Metaji physicians writing the coded didn’t normally consider the genetics of the Eight Families. Still, it wasn’t likely to do any real harm. She pressed the ampoule to her skin.
Idom asked, “Is there one for luren?”
“I’m looking.” The pod-medic training hadn’t included luren. Luren were a race of human stock, but a splinter branch more different from the norm than the Dreamers. The luren and the Dreamers were the last two remnants of an era when humanity had experimented with its own genetic material and produced some very dangerous and disruptive variants. Tradition had it that the Eight Families were the descendants of those who had done the experimenting.
“Here,” she said, selecting two ampoules. “I’ll take these to Zuchmul and see what he says.”
Zuchmul was curled into a storage closet behind an insulated stretcher. Knowing how he preferred the dark, even while wearing his protective eye inserts as he always did under normal ship’s lighting, she didn’t turn on the light, but just offered the ampoules and some encouragement. When she convinced him that the sheeting blizzard of particles had abated, he crawled out of the closet and examined the ampoules, selecting one but commenting that it probably wasn’t necessary. “Luren tend to heal fast.”
She chuckled at the understatement, but his skin looked raw and there were pain lines graven about his mouth. His power was still clenched tightly to himself, not a thrum of Influence pervading the space between them. She admired his control, wondering if she’d have done as well under the circumstances. “Maybe you don’t need it, but it could help you feel better even faster. We may yet need your skills.”
Zuchmul had been Prosperity’s number two environmental technician, but he’d worked on many sorts of ships in various capacities. He was a hardware expert, as overqualified for his job as Idom was for his.
For the first time, Kyllikki added it up, and began to understand the meaning of war. The government had wanted to transport dangerous weaponry unknown to Teleod spies. They’d arranged to use one of the few passenger liners that carried life pods. They’d picked a military Captain who was just a bit too old for combat and an astrogator who was one of a handful in the Metaji who really understood astrogational theory well enough to take any ship anywhere and get back again, even if they got lost on the way. They had added to that a Com Third who had a greater range than most Metaji telepaths, and overqualified technicians who could improvise anything. The weapons would arrive safely.
Was it just an accident that we were in the way of those Teleod ships? Or had Zimor’s spies known where the courier and Prosperity would be, so they could cut an incoming orbit to hit three targets with one run?
Three targets. “Come on, Zuchmul.” She headed back for the controls. She realized that for the last several minutes she’d been internally tensed against the onslaught of distant deaths. The voice-com now emitted nothing but white noise.
Checking with Lee, she found that he could now raise Barkyr as well as the Station, and though their instruments couldn’t penetrate the cloud of particles to reveal the battle, he told her the battle was over and the Station was out of communication. //Defense got a couple of the Teleod ships, but a lot of people died. I think the Station’s gone. Be glad you’re moving away so you didn’t feel any of that.//
//You have my sympathy, Lee.//
//The Captain says you should take extra care because if the Station is gone or even badly damaged, it’ll be a very long time before they can send you a pickup. He really expected Defense would win this one.//
//So did I,// she told him and repeated everything aloud for her companions.
“We could be in a lot of trouble, Kyllikki,” said Idom.
“We’ll make it,” she predicted grimly.
Satisfied that the course was set, Idom locked down the automatics. It would take several days to close the gap with the retreating pod. They were all too tense to rest, so they sat at the galley table, nursed their headaches, and read the manuals to each other, sketching plans until they could no longer see straight. After a sleep period, Kyllikki went to take inventory of their rations and discovered to her horror that there was nothing aboard rated for luren.
She should have expected that. There were only a few million luren scattered among the Metaji’s multibillions.
“Don’t worry about it.” Zuchmul shrugged. “I expected as much when I didn’t make it to my assigned pod. I’ll be all right for the six or eight days this will take, and there’ll be stored supplies I can use on Barkyr.”
“Sure you don’t want to try some of this digested protein? It’s supposed to be good for any race of human.”
“No. Really. I’ll be fine.”
She’d heard stories about luren hunger, about luren becoming like animals that would go for anything with blood flowing in veins. But they were just stories. She didn’t really know the facts of luren tolerances and felt it was too personal to ask about—at least at the moment.
There were plenty of supplies for her and Idom, and they passed the time eating, sleeping, and worrying over the manuals and their contingency plans. Gradually, the riddled-full-of-holes feeling in her head subsided. The key image still glowed darkly in the back of her mind, no matter how stringently she applied the banishing for it. Before she’d lost contact with Lee, she had repaired her barriers and felt secure once more in what she had dubbed the “realm” of audio-analogues. The headaches diminished and she could often hear her companions’ spoken words without echoes.
As they drew closer to the disabled pod, she became aware of the passenger’s consciousness. He didn’t know they were coming, and he alternated between fear and despair. She knew when he started to consider suicide. As soon as they came within range for spectral equipment, she began sending a recorded voice message. His receivers might be working even if his transmitters weren’t.
And she knew when he heard it.
Her growing sensitivity to the passenger was eclipsed only by her awareness of Zuchmul’s hunger. After his third refusal, she stopped pressing him to try the rations, and pointed out that the medical stores held various sorts of blood. He evaded until she pinned him down, then, checking that Idom was in the pilot’s seat, he drew her into the rear chamber of the pod, closing the hatch for privacy.
“Kyllikki, I admit that human blood is tempting, but most kinds would make me so ill they’d hardly be worth the bother. Legend has it that there are some kinds that are compatible, but if they exist, I don’t want to know about them.” He squirmed uncomfortably. “You know I have my—disagreements—with parts of the law governing luren. But there’s a good reason for the law forbidding us human blood.”
“But
