Omega Games (23 page)

I continued the exam. Her scale coloration was unlike any I had seen on Vtaga, extremely plain, with

“No.” I saw no signs of scarring, burns, or skin grafts. Her hide was, in fact, in pristine condition for a femaleof her age. “Was one of your parents an albino?”

“No.” I took a step back from the berth. “Why is your hide so white?” Air snorted through her nostrils. “Because if it were black, I would be a Ghint-polyt.” I checked the scanner’s display, and found her vitals to be textbook Hsktskt norm. Given her weight loss

and dehydration, that seemed unlikely. She was certainly not a Ghint-polyt reptilian, or she would be

mostly black and inarticulate. “Drefan told me that Davidov sold you to him just before he quarantined Trellus,” I said. “Did you know of Alek’s plans to blockade the planet?”

“Alek,”
she said, snapping her teeth over the name. “The scum that walks and talks like a male.” She sat up. “Why do you think he would confide in slave meat like me?”

“I thought perhaps you overheard something while you were on the
Renko
,” I said. “Nothing you would wish to hear.” She studied me. “I have seen you before, with that Terran who moves like an arena slave. He is the one I am to fight.”

“Fight, yes, but not kill.”

She made a contemptuous sound. “If he steps onto the grid, I will make him wish he were dead. He is not like me. He has a choice. He is a fool for accepting the match.” The self-loathing in her words startled me. “You do not want to fight him? Why?” “Ask the cripple; this is his doing. My desires no longer matter, warm-blood.” Tya rolled over onto her

side, presenting her back to me. I wondered if Drefan was using the match between Tya and Reever for some other purpose. “Tya, if Drefan transmits the match between you and my husband to the rest of the colony, will Davidov be able

to monitor the signal?” She didn’t answer. “He’s already monitoring every transmission from the colony. He would have to, in order to jam them.” The Hsktskt said nothing, so I passed my scanner over the back side of her body. The display brought

up the image of a foreign body lodged inside the back of her throat, just below her brain stem. “You have

an implant in your neck. Is it a locator beacon?” Tya rolled over to swat at my scanner, her claws missing it only by a fraction of an inch. “Leave me alone.”

I glanced down at the image. “It’s just under the surface of your hide. I can give you a local anesthetic and remove it now.”

“I do not need a code to extract it.” She gave me an impatient look. “If you or anyone tries to remove it without deactivating it first from Davidov’s remote, it will release a cache of poison. I will be dead before my body hits the floor.”

I didn’t have time to respond to this shocking revelation, for a moment later a familiar voice called to me

from outside the detention cell. “Doc, what the hell are you doing in here? I had to practically blast my way into this place to see you.” Mercy walked into the cell. “I know you’re busy finishing up, but Kohbi finally cocooned. Cat and I were worried that . . .” She stopped speaking and moving, and stared past me.

Keel came in and took hold of the female Terran’s arm. “It’s not what you think, Mercy.”

Wide, disbelieving eyes shifted toward the Chakacat. “Are you telling me that I’m imagining that Hsktskt over there?” “No, but you don’t understand, she’s—” “Mine.” Mercy shook off Keel as if it were an annoying insect and started toward the berth. I stepped between her and Tya. “No, Mercy.” “There is a Hsktskt lying on that berth behind you,” she said in a pleasant tone, “and I’m going to kill it.

Give me a knife and get out of my way.” “Let her come,” Tya said, sounding listless. “See?” Mercy gestured. “She wants me over there. Step aside, Doc.” “You can’t do this.” I put a hand against her shoulder. “She’s ill.” “All the more reason to let me put her out of her misery.” She tried to push past me, glanced down at my

hand, and laughed. “Cherijo, you are not seriouslythinking of keeping me from slitting her throat. Tell me you’re not that dense.”

“I would see you try, Terran,” Tya said. “You,” I said to the Hsktskt, “shut up.” To Mercy I said, “She’s not a raider. She had nothing to do with the attack on Trellus. She’s too young.” When that didn’t get through, I added, “She’s nothing but a slave.”

Tya made a disgusted sound. “In five seconds, she’s not going to be anything but a pile of young, dead slave.” Mercy again tried to

shove me aside. “Look, I get the whole oath thing. If you don’t want to watch, that’s fine. Step outside. I’ll tell Drefan you weren’t even here.” “I would not go far,” Tya said to me as she sat up. “Your friend will shortly need your services.” Mercy’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “Yeah, I hate mopping up lizard blood by myself.”

“I’ll reimburse him for his loss.” Mercy’s hands knotted. “I really don’t want to belt you, Doc, so I’m telling you, for the last time. Get out of my way.”

“This is boring.” Tya dropped back on the berth and pulled the thermal sheet over herself. “Wake me when someone wishes to fight.”

I took the syrinpress out of my tunic pocket and surreptitiously dialed up a dose of sedative. “Come out into the hall and talk with me for a moment, and then I’ll let you do as you wish.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll lock me out of here, and call Drefan, and have my ass hauled back to my dome.” Rage made her body and voice shake. “You’ll save her, just like you saved all the rest of them. Only this time no one is going to start a war, so really, what’s the . . .” She looked down as I infused her, and back up at me. Her eyes filled with astonishment. “You conniving bitch.”

“I’m sorry.” I caught her as she crumpled. “Keel, help me.”

Thirteen

Once I had summoned drones to take Mercy back to her dome, I left Keel to reprogram Tya’s prep unit and went to central control, where Drefan was monitoring several games in progress.

I did not bother with pleasantries. “Mercy knows about Tya. She came here to see me, and found me in the detention cell with her.”

Drefan rotated his glidechair to face me. “Mercy did not react well, I take it.”

“I had to sedate her to keep her from killing the Hsktskt.” My gaze shifted past him, to a screen showing Keel securing some inhibitor webbing. “But you already know that. Did you watch the entire confrontation?”

“Of course.” He glanced back at the monitors. “There is very little that happens under my dome that escapes my attention.”

“Then why didn’t you stop Mercy before she found us?” I demanded. “You knew how furious she would be.”

“Mercy needs to face her demons,” he said. “As does Tya.”

“This is not a game, Drefan. These females are not simulations. Stop playing with them.” I turned on my heel and walked out.

Reever had been taking his meal intervals elsewhere, so when I arrived at our quarters I prepared a simple dinner for myself and ate while I reviewed the data on Tya that I had not had time to analyze.

“A Hsktskt who would starve rather than eat meat.” I sipped some tea from my glass as I considered my own plate of something Reever called “chicken and rice.” The chicken part was tolerable, but the rice tasted like bits of soggy gauze.

I had little practical knowledge of other species’ food preferences. Jorenians did not eat meat, as they received the protein they needed from the milk of their herd animals, but they were mammalian-based species, not reptilian. Hsktskt needed enormous amounts of protein to help fuel and warm their massive I knew the pains of an empty belly. The Toskald had tried to starve us during the rebellion, and many times I had eaten old meat, needle plants, and other things that otherwise I would never have touched. Even if Tya had some unnatural aversion to her dietary requirements, her hunger should have driven her to eat what was available.

I recalled Drefan’s Nekawa bodyguard, and how she had been conditioned in the mines to eat whenever she saw food. Maybe something similar had been done to Tya, to control her behavior. Then there was the implant I had found in her neck; another method of control, to insure she never attempted to escape her enslavement.

Davidov must have hated her beyond reason to treat her with such cruelty. But why? Did he hold Tya responsible for the Faction’s crimes against other enslaved beings? Were the implant and the food conditioning some creative form of torture?

Or was it, as I suspected, something more ominous?

I stayed up for several hours, using the console to access the colonial database and pull up what little information they had on Hsktskt. Most of it covered ways to disable and kill the reptilians, not how to treat them for malnourishment and poisonous implants.

When I couldn’t find any worthwhile data, I pulled up studies of various forms of depression in reptilian species. Some pompous asses claimed that reptilians did not experience any emotions at all, but after my time on Vtaga I knew better. The Hsktskt might be extremely reserved, and had disciplined themselves not to show emotions, which they considered beneath them. Yet when they let their guard down, they revealed that they experienced the same anger, joy, hate, and love as any warm-blooded species.

Tya, on the other hand, displayed her emotions openly, as if her blood were as warm as my own. She had committed the ultimate betrayal of her species by deserting her post during time of war, yet seemed not to care that she had been branded a coward and made a slave.

I knew the Hsktskt, and their rigid, unforgiving culture had strict codes of honor and service. They condemned and harshly punished anyone who violated them. They would rather die than be dishonored or enslaved themselves.

Tya’s lack of interest in her own well-being and her aversion to meat might be symptoms of a suicidal state. Indeed, when I had checked with Keel, the Chakacat told me that Tya had never once asked for the prep unit to be reprogrammed to her preferences. The only problem with that theory was how she fought in the grid. During the demonstration for me and Reever, Tya had defended herself with intelligence and vigor, and had used considerable skill to defeat her opponents. A depressed, suicidal slave should not be capable of such deeds.

After some hours it became apparent that Reever was not coming back to our quarters at a reasonable hour, so I cleansed and went to bed alone. Although I felt weary, I spent another thirty minutes staring at the ceiling and trying to work out the puzzles involved with the Hsktskt female.

Finally I closed my tired eyes and cleared my thoughts. If I were back on Joren, this would be the time I would go to check on Marel. The familiar ache of missing my child twisted its blade of love and motherhood in my heart. I knew Salo and Darea were taking good care of her, but it was not the same. I was her mother. I should be with her, to protect her. To be the one to whom she gave her smiles and hugs. To kiss her brow as she slept. I had missed too much of her life as it was.

Snow light touched my face, and I reached for it, clawing my way out of the suffocating bed linens. It drew me up, high into itself, where the kvinka, the storm winds, roared and the world became mountains of ice, blue and white and unforgiving.

I stood on a cliff above a methane field, with ice crystals scouring my naked face. I squinted, bracing myself against the freezing gusts, and spotted two figures facing each other on the ice. I walked toward them, stumbling now and then as my thin-soled boots slid on the crusted snow. The rapid approach of gigantic, black-purple clouds from the south alarmed me. Such killer storms had been known to sweep entire hunting parties off the ice.

“Do you have a shelter?” I shouted over the wind to them, pointing toward the impending blizzard.

Neither one seemed to hear me, intent on each other as they were. The storm ripped their loose robes away, revealing the forms beneath.

The female stood twice as tall as me, and her body shimmered as if she wore the dimsilk I had once donned to disguise myself on the battlefield. Her long hair was silver, or white, or perhaps purple; it kept changing color, as did the dimsilk. I could not make out her face, and then I saw why. She had no features, only a smooth oval of gray flesh.

Vral.

I had never seen her before, but I knew her. I knew her as I knew myself, as if everything that had happened to me on Akkabarr had happened to her as well. She had been with me, somehow. But why would the vral come to me now? Why in a dream?

The ghostly-looking female raised her long arm and brandished a sword at her opponent, a drednoc as tall and broad as she.

The icy atmosphere of my homeworld had already left its mark on the battle drone. Frost whitened its armor, and blue icicles dripped from its halo. Yet it did not seem affected as it lifted an extensor arm with a sword attached to the end, also ready to attack.