They were the same words that came out of my mouth earlier in the day. This time, though, I was just reciting from memory — it wasn’t like before, when I felt like something had possessed me. Still, if the speech worked once, it might work again… and with luck, the warrior would catch a faint whiff of queen’s venom on my hand.
Slowly, the Mandasar stopped struggling. I couldn’t tell if he was just tired, or if maybe my words and smell had cut through the battle rage. Whatever it was, he finally eased to a standstill. I kept my arm around his throat but let go of his nose so he could breathe. For a few seconds, both of us did nothing but suck in air.
Close by my side, a soft voice whispered, "Damn, it’s good to see that black uniform. Thank God there’s always an Explorer when you need one."
I turned my head… and nearly screamed. There in the shadows was the admiral woman who’d died kissing me — face splotch and all.
14
TAKING ON THE LARRY
The dead woman had come back, wrapped in thick midnight blackness — as if the only thing I could see was that smudge on her cheek. Terror jolted through me, and I hurled myself off the warrior onto the ground… anything to get away from some withered-up corpse who wanted to kiss me.
"What’s wrong?" the woman whispered.
I couldn’t answer — my whole body had clenched tight with fear. I might have just lain there, gibbering and quivering, if the warrior hadn’t given his pincers an angry clack. He heaved himself up to full height, giving the woman a sneer before turning toward me. I was the one who’d hurt him. The look in his eye said he wanted to hurt me back.
"Hold on," the woman told the warrior. "Stop fighting and let’s talk."
The warrior ignored her. "Bleed you, recruiter," he growled at me in English. "Suffer you, as our people have suffered."
One second I was sprawled on the ground, still trembling at the thought of ghosts; the next, I was on my feet, with my hands wrapped around the warrior’s nose-spike. The move wasn’t my doing — something had taken charge of my body again, making my legs leap forward without orders from my brain. My arms had gone all strong too, strong enough to drag the warrior’s nose toward me the way I’d dragged Zeeleepull… except that I pulled him toward my chest instead of my face. That was crazy. I’d never got venom on my chest. There was just my shirt, wet from my swim across the canal and sweaty from the hours of fever.
"You know who I am," my mouth said in Mandasar. "You know what I am. You know."
The warrior’s eyes narrowed, as if he was about to ram his snout forward — stab his nose-spike through my ribs. Then his whole face changed, opening wide with wonderment. "Teelu" he whispered.
Your Majesty.
If I’d had control over my body, I would have blurted out, "No, no, no." You never use the word Teelu for anyone but a Mandasar queen — Teelu is way too worshipful to waste on a mere consort. But the poor kid was so ignorant about his own culture, he didn’t know better.
The moment I let go of him, he dropped his body to the ground, pressing his nose into the dirt. "Teelu… Teelu… Teelu…"
Which was a whole lot better than trying to kill me. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to correct his vocabulary.
"I’m impressed," the admiral woman said.
Fright chilled me again, and I retreated a step — I was back in command of my body, and feeling a strong urge to bolt into the dark. But I swallowed hard and made myself say something half-intelligible. "Who are you?"
"Lieutenant Admiral Festina Ramos," she said. The same name she’d used before we crossed the line. "What’s your name?"
"Edward." Talking to an admiral, I should have been way more military: Explorer Second Class Edward York, reporting for duty! But my mouth was too dry with fear. "I saw you die," I said. "On the Willow."
The admiral shook her head. "I’ve never been on the Willow. And I’ve never died — I’d remember something like that." She stared at me a moment. "Was that your ship then? The Willow?"
I nodded.
"Why did you have to evacuate?"
"Someone was stealing it," I said. "I hated just to run, but Explorer Tobit told me—"
"Tobit?" the admiral interrupted "Phylar Tobit?"
"Yes."
"Which means Jacaranda is in this system?"
"It was for a while," I answered. "It might have gone chasing the black ship."
"Bloody hell," the admiral muttered, "I hate it when Prope’s in the neighborhood. She takes her orders from Admiral Vincence; and Vincence is the slipperiest schemer on the whole High Council."
Even in the dark, I could see the admiral make a face like she’d bitten into an apple and found a worm. Or maybe just the back half of a worm.
"You’ll have to tell me everything," she said, "like why Prope is chasing a black ship, and why you thought I was dead. But for now, let’s just get out of here. Give me a second to grab my Bumbler…"
She started across the clearing toward a shadowy blob lying in the grass. Bumblers were small machines with all kinds of data sensors — standard equipment for Explorers, though no one ever gave me one. Halfway to the Bumbler, the admiral stopped. "I’d better turn off my emergency signal," she muttered. "It just tells Prope where to find me." She lifted her wrist and told the implant, "Terminate Mayday." Lowering her wrist, she added, "For all I know, it might have told recruiters where to find me too."
"You know about the recruiters?" I asked.
"That’s why I’m on Celestia," she replied. "Trying to shut down the bastards. I was watching their main offices on the other side of the planet when I picked up your escape pod’s homing signal. Considering how tedious stakeouts are, I decided it would be more interesting to make sure you were okay."
"Well," I said, feeling all awkward, "thanks for coming. I’m sorry to drag an admiral so far from her…"
"Don’t apologize." She smiled, her teeth white in the dark. "And don’t think of me as an admiral. I may wear the gray, but I’m an Explorer, first, last, and always. So you have to call me Festina, all right? I don’t want to hear any more…"
She never finished her sentence. In the darkness, something started to laugh.
The sound was like a pack of hyenas, but breathier: piercing and whistly, echoing off the hillside. The noise seemed intentionally designed to carry long distances… and to scare the heebie-jeebies out of anyone who heard it. The crazy cackle never stopped for air, on and on, digging its fingernails into my nerves; and it was coming toward us.
"Holy shit," the admiral, Festina, whispered. "It’s a Laughing Larry."
She looked across at me, seeing if I knew what she meant. I nodded. In my years as a bodyguard, I worked real hard to read up on every weapon in human space… not to use the weapons myself, but to know how to defend against them if Sam or Verity ever came under attack.
The best way to defend against a Laughing Larry was to surround yourself with steel-plast walls. Not very likely in the middle of a forest.
I was trying to think of other defenses when something spun into the far side of the clearing. It was a golden metal ball, a meter wide: hovering a little way off the ground and rotating fast like a kid’s top. All around its outside, the thing had little slit openings that caught the air, making that whistle-ish laughing sound. Inside, I knew it had electric amplifiers to make the whistles louder — the person who invented this thing thought the cackly hyena laugh would be great for intimidation.