Serpent's Reach (17 page)

“Go first,” Raen bade the Istran seri and their azi. They did so in some haste; and Jim pulled the luggage carrier out after the ITAK azi. Raen lifted her right hand and beckoned Warrior to follow her out; the shin’s officers scrambled back into the cockpit and hastily closed their door.

The party began to sort themselves into order in the exit tube, the ITAK folk and their armed azi keeping ahead. Raen walked with Jim and Warrior, whose strides were apparent slow motion beside those of humans.

Customs officials were waiting at the end: incredibly, they only stared stupidly at Warrior still coming and proceeded to hold up the ITAK men, stopping the whole party, with Warrior fretting and humming distress. The Eln-Kests and the others began at once producing cards for the agents, who bore ISPAK badges.

It was bizarre. Raen stared at the uniformed officials for the space of a breath, then thrust her way to them, motioned for the Eln-Kests to move on. There were stunned looks from the officials, even outrage. She made a fist of her right hand and held that in their view.

There was no recognition for an instant: a Kontrin wearing House Colour, and a majat Warrior, and these betas simply stared. Of a sudden they began to yield, melted aside, vying for obscurity, “Move!” Raen said to the others, ordering azi, betas and majat with equal rudeness; her nerves were taut-strung; public places were never to her liking, and the dullness of these folk bewildered her.

They entered the concourse, a place surprisingly trafficked… AIRPORT, a sign advised, pointing elsewhere, which might explain some of the traffic; a, sign advised of a scheduled flight to Newport weekly, and a beard displayed scheduled flights to Upcoast, but few walkers had any luggage. It was the stores, Raen decided, the shopping facilities, which sight be the major ones for the beta City here. Everywhere the ITAK emblem was prominently displayed, the letters encircled; under-corporations advertising goods and, services and setting from small sample-shops all bore the ITAK symbol somewhere on their signs. The faint aroma from restaurants, their busy tables, gave no hint of a world on the brink of rationing and starvation. The goods were on a par with Andra, and nothing indicated scarcity.

Betas, crowds of betas, and nowhere did panic start in that horde. Adults and rare children stared at them and at Warrior…stared long and hard, it might be, but there was no panic at such presence. It was insane, that on this world a majat Warrior could be so ignored; or a Kontrin, evident by Colour.

They were not sure, she thought suddenly. Downworlders. No one of them had
seen
a Kontrin. They perhaps suspected, but they did not expect, and they were not in a position, these short-lived betas, to recognise a Colour banned in inner-worlds for two decades. It was even possible that they did not know the Houses by name; they had no reason to: no beta of Istra had to deal with them.

But a majat needed no recognition. Betas elsewhere had died in panic, trampling each other…until majat in the streets became ordinary. She had heard that this had happened in places she had left.

Her nape-hairs prickled with an uncommon sense of a whole world amiss. She scanned the displays they passed, the garish advertising that denied economic doom, but most of all she regarded the crowds, free-walking and those standing by counters who turned to look at them.

The hands, the hands: that was her continual worry. And she could not see behind her.

“I read blue-hive,” Warrior intoned suddenly. “I must contact.”

“Where?” Raen asked. “Explain. Where are you looking? Is there a heat-sign?”

It stopped, froze. Mandibles suddenly worked with frenzied rapidity, and auditory palps swept back, deafening it, like a human stopping his ears. Raen whirled to the fix of its gaze, heard a solitary human shriek taken up by others.

Warriors.

They poured forward out of an intersecting corridor, a dozen of them, almost on them, and the sound they shrilled entered human range, agony to the cars. Blue Warrior moved, scuttled for a counter, and the attackers pursued with blinding speed, more pouring out from another hall, overturning displays of clothing. Men screamed, dashed to the floor by the rash, trying to escape the shop.

Raen had her gun in hand…did not even recall drawing; and put a shot where it counted, into the neural complex of the leading Warrior, whirled and took another. She stumbled in her retreat, hit a solid wall, stood there braced and firing.

Reds. Hate improved her aim. Her mind was utterly cold. Three went down, and others swarmed the counter where betas and Warrior scattered in panic. She fired into the attackers and swung left, following Warrior’s darting form, into several reds. She took out one, another. Warrior leaped on the third and rolled with it in a tangle of limbs, a squalling of resonance chambers. Raen caught movement out of the tail of her eye and whirled and fired, no longer alone: the azi guards had decided to back her. Betas had lifted no hand against majat, dared not, by their psych-set; but humans were dead out on the floor. One body was almost decapitated by insist jaws. Blood slicked the polished flooring in great smears where insist feet had slipped. Other humans were bitten.

Surviving reds tried to Group; her fire prevented it. She saw other insist crowded in the corner down at the turning, Grouped and thinking. Not reds; they would have come into it. The reds which survived were confused. Azi fire crippled them; Raen sighted with better knowledge of anatomy and finished the job. Blue Warrior was up, excited.

Then came the flare of a weapon from the farther group, several of them. Warrior went down, limbs threshing, air droning from resonance chambers.

“Stop them!” Raen shouted at the azi. The insist charged, ran into their concentrated fire: five, six, seven of them downed One scuttled off, slipping on the floor, a limb damaged. Two shielded that retreat with their own bodies. They were the sacrifices. Raen took one. The azi butchered the other with their fire.

They were alone, then. Humans lay tangled with dead majat. She looked about her, at majat still convulsing in death-throes: those would go on for some minutes…there was no intelligence behind it. Merek Eln and Parn Kest were down, along with their companions from ITAK, and one of the guard azi. Bystanders were dead. A siren began to sound. It was already too late for the victims of bite: they had long since stopped breathing.

Blue Warrior still moved. She left the wall and the two living azi guards and went out into the center of the bloody floor, where Warrior lay, in a seeping of clear majat fluids. She held out her hand and it knew her.

Air sucked into the chambers. Auditory palps extended, trembling.

“Taste,” it begged of her.

“Reds didn’t get it,” she said. “We took them all.”

“Yesss.”

Someone cried out, down the corridor. More tall shapes had entered, moving in haste: she flung up her hand, forbidding the azi to fire.

“Blues have come,” she said. Warrior attempted to rise, but had no control of its limbs. She gave it room, and the blues scattered human medical personnel and what security forces had arrived. They crossed the last interval cautiously, stiff and sidling, until Raen showed her right hand, and they recognised her for blue-hive Kontrin.

Then they came in a rush. Some went at once to the fallen reds, taking taste, booming to each other in majat language, and two bent over Warrior.

Taste passed, long and complex, the mandibles of living and dying locked. Then the first Warrior drew back, seeming disoriented. The second took taste, in that strange semblance of a kiss. Other blues came. Somewhere a human wept, audibly. Medical personnel tried quietly to drag victims away from the area. Raen stood still. A third, a fourth Warrior bent over the fallen Kalind blue. The message was being distributed as far as Warrior’s fluids could suffice.

The fifth one breathed something in majat language; Warrior sighed an answer. Then the Istran blue’s jaws closed, and Warrior’s head rolled free.

“Kontrin,” another intoned, facing her.

“I am Raen Meth-maren. Tell your Mother so, Warrior. This-unit was from Kalind. Mother will know. Can you reach your hill safely from here?”

“Yesss. Must go now. Haste.”

It turned away. Separate Warriors gathered up the head and body of Warrior, lest other hives read any portion of its message. Grouped, they turned and scuttled out.

Two remained.

One came forward, Istran blue, auditory palps extended in sign of peaceful approach. It bowed itself and opened its mandibles. It was Istra’s gift, the fifth Warrior, the one who had tasted and killed. In a sense, it
was
Warrior: the thread continued.

Raen touched its scent-patches, accepted and gave taste in the insist kiss. It backed, disturbed as Warrior had been disturbed; but it had Warrior’s knowledge of her, and Grouped, with a delicate touch of the chelae.

“Meth-maren,” it breathed. Its fellow came forward, and likewise desired taste; Raen gave it, and saw distress in the working of mandibles and the flutter of palps. It resolved its conflict after a moment, touched at her.

They were hers. They followed, as she crossed the littered floor. The two guard azi were still standing against the wall; no one had claimed them, and they seemed in a state of shock. They had lost their employers. They had failed. Merek Eln and Parn Kest were dead, both bitten. One of the businessmen was decapitated; the others had been bitten. So had the third guard azi, and a number of bystanders.

The luggage carrier had been thrust back into a recess beyond the counter. Raen walked that way, and found Jim, jammed within that recess, sitting with his knees tucked up and both hands clutching a gun set upon them. His face was white; his teeth chattered; he had the gun braced and stable.

Guarding the luggage, as she had told him.

For an instant she hesitated, not knowing what he might do; but he did not fire…likely could not fire. She approached him quietly and disengaged the gun from his hands, realised Warrior’s presence at her shoulder and bade it and its companion stay back. She knelt, put her hand on Jim’s rigid arm.

“We need to get out of here. Come on, Jim.”

He nodded. Out of near-catatonia, it was a wonder that he could do that much. She patted his shoulder and waited, and he wiped at his face and began to make small movements toward rising, shaking convulsively.

She thought then of the other two azi, who had been in the shuttle with them, who had heard what was said. She flung herself to her feet and pushed past Warrior, past the counter.

The two azi stared at her; they had not moved. But by now Security police, betas ITAK-badged, had arrived on the scene, and some of them started gingerly forward.

“You,” she said, rounding on-the two azi, “belong to me. Is that clear? I’m transferring your contract. The formalities will be taken care of. You say nothing…
nothing
, hear me? I’m buying you out only because I don’t like terminating azi.”

The two seemed to believe her. She turned then and faced the police, who had hesitated at a safe distance—the majat were still near her—and now started forward again.

“There’s been enough commotion,” she said, turning toward them her hand, that, with her cloak, was identification enough. “This was a hive-matter and that’s enough said. It’s settled.” She walked to Merek Eln’s body, bent and took from his pocket the identity card she had seen at customs. There was, as she had expected, an address. It seemed to be in an ITAK executive district. “I want some manner of transport for myself, three azi, our baggage and two Warriors at once; and an armed officer or two for escort, thank you.”

Possibly they thought that this had to go through channels; they stood still a moment. But then the senior gave orders to one of the officers, who left, running.

“Chances are,” Raen said, “that the matter is confined to the hives; but you’ll kindly call and put this number under immediate surveillance. And you can escort us to that vehicle.”

The officer looked at the ID, made a call on his belt unit…would have retained the card, but that Raen held out her hand and insisted. She turned, pocketing it, and gestured to the two guard azi to take charge of the baggage. Jim was leaning on the counter, seeming to have recovered himself, although he was still shaken. She returned the gun to him and he hastily put it in his pocket, missing the opening several times in his agitation. He walked well enough. Warrior and companion stalked along with them, and the shop personnel and the terminal employees and others who had reason to be in the cordoned area stared at them uneasily as they sought the door.

“The car will be there,” the senior officer said. “There’s an executive from the Hoard coming out to meet you, Kontrin; we’re profoundly embarrassed—”

“My sincere regrets for the next of kin. I want a list of the names and citizen numbers and relatives of those killed. There will be compensation and burial expenses. Relay the information to that address. As for the executive, I’m more interested in settling myself at the moment. There’s another call I want you to make. I understand there’s an Outsider trade mission in the City. I want someone from that mission… I don’t care who…at that address as quickly as possible.”

“Sera—”

“I wouldn’t advise you to consult with ITAK on it. Or to fail to do it.”

Outer doors opened. She heard the officer behind her speaking urgently on the matter through his belt unit; it would be relayed. An ITAK police personnel transport waited outside, armoured officers with rifles ringed about it. Raen kept her hand near her own weapon, trusting no one.

It took time to load baggage in, to have the azi and the two majat settled in the available space in the rear of the transport. “We can find a car,” an officer said; Raen shook her head. She did not trust being separated from her belongings. She still feared majat, a solving shot; their vision could hardly tell one human from another, but they were stirred enough not to care for such niceties.

The majat must go in last. Warrior fretted, nervous at so many humans it must not touch. Raen touched the sensitive palps, held it attentive an instant. “You must not touch the azi in the vehicle, Warrior. Must not frighten them. Trust. Be very still. You-unit tell the other Warrior so.”