Knight Read online

  “No, you did fine,” Nicole said sourly over her shoulder, squeezing the inhaler tightly. It wasn’t his fault that she was a stubborn idiot. Anyway, Jeff had told her that a Sibyl would live for months with normal inhaler usage, and she certainly wasn’t using the powder regularly. Not anymore. It would just be this once, just until she could figure out how to get the Wisps on this side to listen to her.

  Or until she could just go back to Q4 and never come to Q3 again. Either way, it would be just this once.

  The arena door was right where she’d expected, and was every bit as big and forbidding as the one in Q4. She planted herself in front of the keypad, squared her shoulders, and took a whiff from the inhaler.

  The electrical junction in lefnizo-one-four-three has a short circuit in the two-two-two-six dipple modulator, the clear and ethereal voice murmured in her head.

  “Not that,” Nicole said aloud. “I don’t want a list of what needs fixing. I want the code to get me into the arena.”

  The voice had already stopped. Biting back a curse, she tried the inhaler again.

  The electrical junction in lefnizo-one-four-three has a short circuit in the two-two-two-six dipple modulator.

  “No, damn it,” Nicole snapped. “I’m not here to fix the damn dipple modulators. I want the damn access code.” She lifted the inhaler.

  And paused. This wasn’t the way to do this. If hanging around Trake and Bungie had taught her anything, it was that if a plan failed the first time it probably wouldn’t work the second time, either.

  But what else could she do? The Wisps weren’t coming. The Caretaker wasn’t answering. Should she try punching in the last code she’d used with the Q4 arena? Unlikely, given that that code had been changed at least once before.

  She tried it anyway. Sure enough, it didn’t work.

  She scowled at the door. She could always give up and try the long way around. That would at least get Wesowee home.

  But she was tired, hungry, footsore, and not in any mood to give up.

  “Can’t you hear the ship?” Wesowee asked hesitantly.

  “I can hear it just fine,” Nicole growled. “It just isn’t listening to me.”

  She frowned as a sudden thought struck her. She was hearing, but the ship wasn’t listening. Could it maybe also work the other way around? Like if Ushkai could hear her, but couldn’t answer?

  It was worth a try. “Caretaker, I need the Fyrantha to give me the Q3 testing arena access code,” she called. “I’m going to take this stuff one more time, and I expect to hear the code. Got it? Okay, here goes.”

  She took another whiff from the inhaler, wondering distantly how many days or years she’d sliced off the end of her life in the past two minutes. There was probably nothing really interesting in there anyway—

  Enter the arena with the code two one five two two nine three.

  Nicole snorted. Finally. Stuffing the inhaler into an empty pocket of her vest, she keyed in the combination.

  With a click, the lock popped open. She grabbed the handle and pulled, and the massive door began to slowly swing open. “Give me a hand?” she invited.

  “Of course,” Wesowee said. He stepped behind her and got a grip on the handle above her hands, adding his weight to hers. A few more seconds, and the doorway was wide enough for them to get through.

  “Okay; straight in and straight through, and we make sure the door’s sealed first,” Nicole said. She’d seen some of the aliens the Shipmasters had brought aboard, and while she could sympathize with their situation she also had no intention of letting them run loose on her ship. She stepped through, waited until Wesowee had followed, and together they pulled the door shut again.

  She listened for the click of the lock and gave the door a final shove just to be sure. Only then did she turn around and really focus on the landscape stretched out in front of them.

  Earlier, she’d groused that the arena probably didn’t have anything worth looking at. Now, she saw that she’d pretty much been right.

  The Q4 arena on the other side of the ship was beautifully landscaped, with wooded areas, plains, and a ridge of hills that started near one end and rose steadily to almost mountain height at the other. It had a wide variety of grasses, bushes, and trees, with streams and rocks and everything. The first time she’d seen it she’d been convinced that she’d found a door leading out of the ship and into some exotic location on Earth.

  Compared to that, the Q3 arena was ridiculously boring. It was mostly flat, though there were a few small hills in the distance. There were a few trees, but only a few, and they were scattered and pretty short.

  Mostly what she could see was grass. Tall grass, mostly waist high but higher than her head in places, colored a glossy tan, with tops that flared out like brown spiderwebs. The stuff started a few feet from where she and Wesowee were standing, filling the arena as far as she could see in all directions, looking for all the world like the Midwestern wheat fields she’d seen sometimes in movies.

  Beside her, Wesowee gave an excited-sounding whistle. “This is the place! I can see where I am!”

  “Great,” Nicole muttered. Still, boring or not, they at least could cut through the arena now instead of having to go way the hell around it.

  And all it had cost was three doses from the inhaler, and however much of her life she’d sacrificed to get in here. For a damn wheat field.

  She took another look around. There were no signs that anyone else was here. Certainly there weren’t any of the running battles going on that she’d had to contend with in Q4. Wesowee had said the Shipmasters were having him do work in here, so probably it wasn’t ready to bring in players for their cold-blooded death games. “So where’s this channel you mentioned?” she asked.

  “That way,” the Ghorf said, pointing straight across the arena. “Though, actually, since it goes across the entire arena, it would be anywhere you went in that direction.”

  Mentally, Nicole shook her head. Like dealing with a five-year-old, except that he didn’t always ask why about everything. “Right,” she said, frowning as a sudden thought struck her. “You can get up and down the sides, right? Otherwise we’re not getting across it.”

  “No, no, it’s easy to cross,” Wesowee assured her. “Come—I’ll show you.”

  He plunged into the grass, parting it in front of him like a ship going through a tan ocean. Nicole followed, noting that there was none of the crackling or rustling noise she had expected. Probably because the grass, for all its wheaty look, was really quite soft, more like upright strands of silk than any grass she’d ever seen. She peered upward as they walked, noting that the sky—the ceiling, rather, painted or whatever to look like sky—was also different from the sky in the Q4 arena. Here, it was long gray clouds, with only a faintly glowing spot marking where the “sun” was. In the other arena, the sun actually moved across the sky. She wondered if this one did that, too, or whether it just sat permanently in place behind the clouds—

  She slammed straight into Wesowee’s broad back as the Ghorf came to an abrupt stop. “Hey!” she snapped as she flailed her arms, fighting to keep her balance, and managing not to fall backward into the grass. Rubbing her chest where she’d bounced off Wesowee’s bumpy skin, she started to go around him.

  And stopped short as the tip of a sword abruptly jabbed into view, pointed straight at her stomach.

  She froze, her eyes lingering for a heartbeat on the shiny point before lifting her eyes to the being holding the weapon.

  The creature was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was almost painfully thin, the kind of thin she’d seen in starving-children commercials, with equally thin arms and legs. Unlike the children in those ads, though, this creature was well muscled, with wiry bands rippling beneath its dark-gold skin. Its head was also thin, but it stretched backward over its short neck like one of the pterodactyl heads from the museum’s dinosaur exhibit.

  It was only as she looked back at the sword, noting th
at the hand gripping the weapon had six fingers, that she also noticed that the creature had four arms.

  The thing made a noise like a DJ doing turntable scratching. “You will stand and not flee,” the translation came into Nicole’s mind.

  Nicole’s first impulse was to make a run for it. To bat away the sword and hope she could lose him in the tall grass and then get back to the door before he could find her. Her second impulse was to go into the helpless-female role that had gotten her out of a lot of messes back home.

  Her third impulse was to decide she wasn’t going to put up with this.

  “Get that thing away from me,” she snapped at the alien. “Do you know who we are?”

  The sword wavered, just a little. More scratching—“You are the Shipmasters’ workers,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Nicole said, feeling inexplicably irritated at the suggestion that she worked for the Shipmasters. As far as she was concerned, she worked for the Fyrantha itself, not for the manipulative bastards who were running the place at the moment. “And what were you told about threatening the ship’s workers?”

  It was a gamble, but a pretty safe one. She knew the Shipmasters had warned the fighters in the Q4 arena not to bother anyone in a worker jumpsuit, and it only made sense that they would have given the same instructions here. Still, she found herself holding her breath as the alien gave off more of its scratching.

  Fortunately, she’d called it right. “We aren’t going to harm you,” the translation came.

  “Right,” Nicole said. “So get that thing out of my face.”

  The sword wavered; and then, to Nicole’s surprise, steadied again, still pointed at her stomach. More scratching—“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I have orders. Any newcomers to the battlefield must be brought before the Maven.”

  “What’s a Maven?”

  “She is the leader,” the alien said. “She directs and guides our paths. She must make any decisions concerning you.”

  Once again, Nicole was tempted to make a run for it. Once again, she resisted the urge. This Maven probably just wanted to see what the Fyrantha’s workers looked like. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “I am Iyulik,” the alien said.

  “What species are you?”

  “Pardon? What is a species?”

  “I mean what do you call yourselves?” Nicole tapped her chest. “I’m a human. Wesowee is a Ghorf.”

  “We are the Thii,” Iyulik said. His thin cheeks puffed out, then collapsed. “I don’t know where we came from. Our arrival at this place was … confusing.”

  “Yeah,” Nicole said. “Join the club.”

  “Pardon? What is a club?”

  “I mean everyone’s arrival was confusing,” Nicole said, stifling a sigh. If she was going to have to stop and explain every other sentence, this was going to be a long day. “Can we get this over with?”

  “Yes,” Iyulik said, sounding a little uncertain. “Follow me—no; wait.”

  “What?” Nicole asked, frowning.

  “If you follow me, you may flee,” Iyulik said, his cheeks doing the puffing thing again. “But if I follow you … Do you know where the Maven is?”

  “Of course not,” Nicole said. “Just take us to her, will you? We’re not going to run.”

  “Yes.” Iyulik gestured with his sword. “This way.”

  He disappeared into the grass, leaving the thin stalks rippling in his wake. “Come on, Wesowee,” Nicole growled, and followed.

  Given the mostly flat terrain, Nicole had expected Iyulik to lead them straight toward wherever the Thii had set up shop. Instead, he took a winding path, weaving back and forth through the tall grass, mostly sticking to the waist-high parts but occasionally punching his way through one of the taller sections. Nicole could see no reason for the little detours, unless there were hidden rocks or pits the alien was avoiding. She thought about asking, but decided she didn’t care enough to bother.

  They were nearly halfway across the arena, as best as Nicole could estimate, when they reached the Thii camp.

  It was a real camp, too, just like the kind Nicole had seen sometimes in movies. The aliens had flattened a circular section of waist-high grass beside one of the taller sections and rigged up shelters out of poles and pieces of heavy-looking cloth. In the center of the camp were piles of water bottles like the ones Nicole and the other workers could get from the ship’s supply closets.

  And there were weapons, too, laid out on top of empty water bottles where they would be up out of the grass. There were five swords like the one Iyulik was holding, plus a couple of small bows, and arrows.

  A lot of arrows. There were three quivers full of them beside the bows, and Nicole could see another full quiver lying beside a sleeping pad inside one of the shelters.

  Three more Thii were in the camp, sitting cross-legged on the ground beside the weapons stash. Two of them unfolded their legs and stood as Iyulik entered the circle, both of them picking up swords as they caught sight of Nicole and Wesowee. The third remained seated, and Nicole spotted a pair of thin blue bands on the upper-arm wrists.

  It wasn’t exactly gold chains or tooth caps. But it was decoration, and Nicole knew that the fanciest decoration always belonged to the boss.

  “Greetings, Maven,” she said as Iyulik led the way toward the others. “I am the Sibyl. This is Wesowee, one of the workers, and we have work to do. May I ask why we’ve been brought here?”

  Bungie had always tried to get in the first word in confrontations like this. It never seemed to work for him personally, but Nicole had seen some of his friends and enemies use it to good effect, and it seemed worth a try.

  Unfortunately, she was apparently as bad at it as Bungie. For a long moment the Maven just sat there, staring at Nicole’s face with unblinking eyes. She spoke—“You are not to be harmed,” the translation came.

  Nicole let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding. Good—at least they were on the same page on that one. “Right,” she confirmed. “So I’ll ask it again—”

  She stopped as the Maven went on. “The Ponngs also know this?”

  Nicole looked at Wesowee, got a puzzled shrug in response. “I have no idea who or what the Ponngs are,” she told the Maven. “But if they’re aboard the ship, I presume they’ve been given the same instructions and warnings that you have.”

  “Just so.” The Maven raised her two upper arms. The two Thii beside her took them and lifted her to her feet. “Let us test that thought.”

  “Hold it,” Nicole said, warning bells going off in the back of her mind. “Whatever you’re thinking, you can forget it. We’re not going to fight for you.”

  “We ask not for strength of arms,” the Maven said. “We ask only for strength of body.”

  Nicole frowned. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “It will.” The Maven gestured with her lower arms. “Come and see.”

  three

  The arena channel was just as Wesowee had described it: a wide ditch cut through the center of the open space, about fifty feet across at the top but tapering to less than ten at the bottom. The banks of the channel sloped downward on both sides, pretty steep but with hard dirt surfaces that looked like they wouldn’t be too difficult to climb. The bottom itself was probably ten or twelve feet down, Nicole estimated. From the way the channel meandered through the arena, she guessed it had been designed to be a river in this particular ecosystem. There was no water in it, though, and from the cracks in the dirt down there it looked like there hadn’t been any for quite a while.

  What was at the bottom was a box: a cube three feet on a side, with a lever on one of the sides that faced away from the banks. On the near side was what looked like a dispenser tube that emptied into a removable bag, and according to the Maven there was a corresponding dispenser on the Ponng side.

  And scattered all around the box were arrows like the ones Nicole had seen in the Thii camp. A lot of arrows.

  “Th
ere,” the Maven said, pointing through the line of grass stalks she and Nicole were crouched behind. “That’s the source of our food.”

  “That, plus the one in your hive?” Nicole asked. It was the same pattern she’d seen in the Q4 arena: the Shipmasters gave each of the two sides a food dispenser in their respective living quarters, adjusting the output to be insufficient to support the group, then put an extra wild card dispenser somewhere else in the arena for them to fight over to make up the difference.

  “By hive you mean the rooms at the edge of the grasses?” the Maven asked. “Those places are cold and metal. We don’t live there.”

  “Ah,” Nicole said. Not that she could blame them. The rooms in the human workers’ hives were reasonably nice, with TVs and other comforts. The arena hive rooms, though, were mostly bare and pretty grim. “But there is food there, right?”

  “No,” the Maven said. “There is no dispenser elsewhere.” She pointed again. “This is the one. The only one.”

  “You’re kidding,” Nicole said, frowning. So the Shipmasters weren’t following the same pattern as they had in Q4.

  But to feed two sides from just a single dispenser? Easing her fingers through the grass, she pried the stalks apart to try to get a better look.

  And a second later threw herself flat onto her back as an arrow whistled past her head. “What the hell?” she snarled.

  “Caution,” the Maven reproved.

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Nicole bit out. “What the hell are they shooting at me for?”

  “The Ponngs shoot at all movement,” the Maven said. “The Masters provide all the arrows we wish, so there’s no need for them to wait for a clear shot.”

  “Yeah, I got that,” Nicole growled. The arrow that had nearly impaled her was wedged between a couple of stalks a couple of feet from her head.

  She frowned. It had only gotten that far? At the speed it had been going, it should have punched its way through the grass halfway to the Thii camp. Keeping herself pressed against the ground, she stretched out and picked it up.

  And frowned a little harder. No wonder the arrow hadn’t gotten very far: it was lightweight, almost like the rubber-tipped arrows she and Kamali had used to shoot at targets in her basement. The arrows the Micawnwi and Cluufes had shot at each other back in the Q4 arena had been way heavier.