Jocelyn was floating beside some complex mechtech. “I’ve just ’bout got it revved up, Cap’n,” she began. Then something abruptly shifted. Killeen could feel ratcheting signals course through his own sensory net.
The Flitter moved under him.
“What—?”
Jocelyn’s eyes widened. “I—I dunno. This ship’s movin’—but I didn’t start it.”
Killeen sprang to the end of the long cylinder. It was transparent and showed the wide loading bay beyond…which was drifting silently away.
“We’re pulling out.”
Jocelyn cried, “But I didn’t—”
“I know. Something else is.”
The loading bay coasted away and he saw that they were backing out the entrance tube. The Flitter buzzed and clicked under them, finding its head.
Killeen switched to general comm. “Unjack all Flitters!”
Faint confirming replies came back.
“What’s doing this?” Jocelyn asked, punching in commands on her wrist module. They had no effect.
“That big ship coming toward us. It’s overriden our work.”
“Maybe we can get out.” Jocelyn tried to open the cargo-bay doors. No response.
“We’re trapped,” Killeen said. His mind raced through possibilities. Did the approaching ship know humans were inside here?
There must be an emergency exit from this craft, something manually activated. The design of the Flitter was strange, seeming to follow no pattern of bilateral symmetry even though the exterior features and hull did. He would have to explore it carefully and see what resources they could marshal.
Whatever was coming would probably unlock the Flitter to see what sort of vermin it had caught inside. He had a quick image of himself and Jocelyn being plucked forth and held up to the light by something immense and terrible.
Jocelyn gazed with a pale, stricken expression out the viewport. They were out of the bay now and the Flitter had made a powered turn. Now it accelerated steadily away from the station, which turned in luminous silvery glory below them.
Jocelyn gritted her teeth but did not give way to excitement. She was a good officer. Killeen knew she thought she should rightfully be Cap’n. Women had usually led the Family, and Jocelyn had been Cap’n Fanny’s best lieutenant.
But her normally brisk voice shook slightly as she turned to him. “Why’s…why’s it want this Flitter?”
“We’ll find out,” Killeen said.
PART TWO
Starswarmer
ONE
Clinking
clacking
jittering,
Quath strode the slashed land.
A final hill loomed between her and the Syphon. Quath articulated widely, legs grating, yawning—and surged over the apex.
A stone outcrop shattered against her underbelly and ground away with a brittle shriek. Quath tuned out the wail of tearing metal, even as she felt the alloy rip. A storage vat popped, the sulfuric mix gurgling out.
She peered ahead. There, blooming skyward in golden plumes, would grow the Syphon.
<Where are you, slit-eye?> came a burst in Nimfur’thon’s sweet-sour tongue.
<Coming askew you, monopod,> Quath spat in reply, though hissing with warm friendship to take the sting from her jibe. To call anyone one-legged was a deep insult within the elaborate status-conventions. But the image of anything hopping about on one pod was also funny enough to be a joke among friends.
<You will stumble, prang yourself, and be late.>
<You told me you would be far from the Syphon. Yet I read you to be ahead of me.>
<Catch me!> Nimfur’thon sent.
<You are too close!>
<For you, maybe. Not for me.>
Quath rumbled on, edging closer to the place where the Syphon would come. Already clouds writhed red and tortured overhead. The golden carving line had already passed once within view. Soon it would reappear, casting stark shadows. It could sear if Quath and Nimfur’thon got too close.
<The Tukar’ramin specifically warned us! Modes of the jet can snarl outward.>
