##
“Look, getting Rohant and the others out, that comes first. Then you can do what you want with Mimishay.”
If I’m a Primal Force, I might as well make it mean something. Ginny, you worm, I won’t let you fool with me. Sar! you want to see primal force, just keep this up.
“You cannot even know that any of them are alive.”
“If they aren’t, then there’s no problem, is there? If you go on with this the way you’ve planned it, you better call off the truce and shove me out a lock, because I’m going to use everything I’ve got to stop you.”
He stared at her a long moment, as if he considered that option, then, abruptly, he gave in. “Very well. How close must you be to control large beasts?”
“It depends on the beast and the circumstances, but say a circle of radius… um… twenty kilometers.”
“Then you can’t work from a synchronous orbit.”
“No. Certainly not.”
Tsipor stood up, came across the bridge with the short-legged sinuous walk that was like no other. “She lies.”
Ginny opened his eyes wider. “Really?”
“Linked to me her range is extended a hundredfold.”
“Well, Singer?”
Shadith scowled at Tsipor. “All right, she’s right, it’s certainly extended, I don’t know how far. Hundredfold? I doubt it. And in any case I don’t intend to try the limits. I mean to be on the ground when I work.”
“Very well.” He recalled the image of Haed Nunn. “Most of the… aah… pirate swarms are in the south, but there are several that make forays into northern waters. Mimishay has set up a rather primitive defense against attacks from these infested flotillas. It is primitive but effective since the ships are wood hulls and the weapons on them pitiful. Mimishay has strung a cable net across the mouth of the bay. There.” A red line leaped across the open section of the circle of water. “It can be charged with enough current to electrolyze the seawater and char any hull that slams against it. It usually is not. However, Mimishay does keep a certain number of sensors alert for intrusion.”
He shifted the POV down the curve of the world until Haed Nunn vanished and a string of rocky islets occupied the center of the cell. “Haedsa… that’s island chain… Chavada. Barren, not much fresh water, a few fishing families. I will take the ship down, land her there.” Yellow light flashing on one of the midsized rocks. “This is a free-trader world, ships come in all the time, many use the Field at Tos Tous, but others land wherever they take a notion. Mimishay notes but ignores them.
“It is my intention to approach Haed Nunn on miniskips and come through the mountains rather than take the easier approach on the bay side. Mimishay has been undisturbed on that Haed for at least two centuries, so the Brothers and the Powers are careless about security; they depend on those kephalos-driven defenses. Because these neither sleep nor lose their edge, they forget that such things have their limits and if focused in one direction will ignore a small, nonthreatening intrusion coming at their backs, as it were. We will need a distraction. If you are able to locate and mind-ride a number of large sea beasts, drive them against the net at the mouth of the bay, that should be sufficient to cover us. Can you do this? Remember, you will be straddling a miniskip while you work.”
“Can you put my emskip on a lead? I can’t boot whales and navigate at the same time.”
“Yes. We can do that.”
“Then you’ve got your distraction.”
##
The storm wind beating at their backs, they rode the heavily-laden miniskips across the water, flying so low the spume whipped from the wavetops slapped into their legs. Clouds boiled low overhead and phosphorescence ran in crooked green lines through the troubled swell.
Shadith felt the storm as a distant discomfort; the greater part of her consciousness was in the calm deeps, split between three megaforms, great black creatures half a kilometer long from blunt nose to the tips of the massive tentacles, whose slow steady beats drove them through the water. They were solitary beasts, uneasy so close together. Again and again, she had to herd them back as they struggled to turn aside, to put a more comfortable space between them. She was troubled by what she was doing, riding them to their deaths, but Rohant was her friend and he needed her help. Her eyes were squeezed shut and tears leaked from under her lids, yet each time the beasts tried to peel off, she tightened her grip and drove them on.
The beasts hit the net as the miniskips passed from water to land and began the steep winding climb through the jagged cliffs on the stormside of the mountains.
Shadith shivered and groaned as a massive jolt of electricity fried one of the beasts before she could free herself from his brain; she heard the hooming roars of pain and fury as the other two exploded with killing rage and flung themselves against the lethal net.
The winds snatched and shoved at the emskips, tried to drive them into the walls of the ravine they were sweeping along. The tether joining her emskip to Tsipor’s whipped her about, threatened to wheel both of them into a down-spiral that would turn them into bloody meat.
Shadith struggled back into herself, fought with the clip connecting the tether to the emskip shaft, finally managed to trip it.
The minute she was loose, the emskip swerved wildly, her left leg scraped along the stone; part of her trousers tore away, a flap of skin ripped loose, then off; the skipfender squealed and threw up a fan of sparks, the noise hammered at her, the winds hammered at her, the skip bucked under her.
Grimly she fought for control.
After what seemed an eternity of confusion and noise, the drive bit, the emskip straightened out; she pushed the speedlever down and hurried after Tsipor and Ginny who were both nearly out of sight.
The place Ginny had chosen for their base was a moraine flat with a tumble of huge boulders and a litter of stones from the size of eggs to sofa pillows; the flat was halfway up the tallest mountain west of the Mimishay compound.
They labored to clear a space for the domes, a figure eight with one lobe twice the size of the other. Though the wind had abated once they reached the eastern slopes of the mountains, the rain lashed at them, coming down hard and cold as they bent and lifted the stones, carried them to the ragged wall they were building about the site. Bent and lifted and carried. Jammed fingers in the dark against stones they couldn’t see and scraped off skin and worked their backs until even their bones ached.
In the bay below, the tumult was, calming as the last two black beasts died and their bodies heaved against the net, lifting and dropping with the storm swell, nearly invisible in the dark water. After one look, Shadith bent to the stones and labored with a desperate intensity, using pain and fatigue to shut out the things she didn’t want to see or think about.
Ginny inflated the shelters into mottled gray domes that shed light even more efficiently than they shed the rain, then he exploded anchors deep into the mountain to hold them steady despite the snatching of the wind.
##
Shadith crouched in the backcurve of the larger dome using a small handpump to blow up an air mattress. Her head was wrapped in a towel and now and then she stopped her pumping to shiver; the thin silken undersuit she’d put on was dry, but no barrier to the drafts the air machine was blowing through the domes.
Tsipor crouched silently across from her, holding herself as far from the others as she could in the cramped space.
Ginny sat on an air cushion before a low table, working quickly, neatly, clipping components together, sliding accumulators from their cases and snapping them into the receptors of the shield generator, the EYE controls, the viewscreen, and the rest of the equipment that ran the domes.
Half an hour later he grunted and sat on his heels. “That is done.” Over his shoulder, he said, “I must wait for the storm to abate further before I launch the EYEs. Singer, are you able to reach into the Compound?”