Knight Read online

  Or if not a pet, maybe a native guide.

  Because however long the Ponngs had been here, there was probably a good chance they’d thoroughly explored their half of the prison. “You—Teika,” she said, beckoning him forward. “I’m looking for a control box of some sort. It’ll probably be behind a plain door or panel. And it’ll probably be camouflaged,” she added, the whole approach suddenly starting to sound like a waste of time. Of course it would be camouflaged, and of course the Ponngs wouldn’t have a hope in hell of spotting it. “Never mind,” she said. “I just thought—”

  She was interrupted by a burst of log-fire crackling. “Are you referring to the water-flow controls?”

  Nicole felt her mouth drop open. Not only had they found the controls, but they’d even figured out what they did? “Yeah, that’s them.”

  “Follow me.” Eagerly, the alien brushed past and hurried toward the wall. Nicole, her mouth still hanging open a little, followed.

  The control panel was positioned a few feet back from the edge of the channel, and it was indeed camouflaged to look like part of the wall. “How did you find it?” Nicole asked as she peered closely at it. There was no handle or obvious latch.

  “We were seeking a way to escape,” Teika said. “It opens here.” He reached down to where the wall met the ground and dug his fingers into the dirt.

  And with a metallic click the panel popped open. “We were trying the controls to see if they would open a door when water began flowing from a hidden pipe into the channel.”

  “I’ll bet the Masters were just thrilled about that,” Nicole commented, pulling open the panel. Inside, set back into the wall, were five switches protected by transparent flip-up covers. Beneath each switch was a slider control and a couple of lines of alien script.

  “They were not,” Teika said ruefully. “They came at once and ordered us never to touch the controls again.” He seemed to brighten. “But they’ve not so ordered you, have they?”

  “I’d like to see them try,” Nicole said. Actually, given the weapons and equipment the Shipmasters had, she probably wouldn’t. “Tell me about the controls.”

  “The two on the left bring water from two large pipes into the channel,” Teika said. “We weren’t able to try the others before the Masters came and ordered us to stop.”

  “What about the slider switches?”

  “We didn’t get to them, either,” the Ponng said. “Some of our people suggested they might adjust temperature, aeration, or mineral content. We were unfortunately unable to translate that script, as we’ve never seen it before.”

  “I have,” Nicole said, swinging the panel partly closed again. “It’s also used to mark rooms and other places on the ship. I don’t know what any of these words are, though. How in the world did you spot the panel, anyway?”

  “The light reflection from the edge is different than that of its surroundings,” Teika explained. “A small difference, but noticeable if one is looking closely.”

  “Maybe to your eyes,” Nicole said. So the channel had indeed originally been a river, and the water flow was still functional.

  Which also explained the chamber at the other end, the big open area that Wesowee told her he’d fallen into. It was probably the collector for the water, either just to hold it or else a reservoir where the dirt or other stuff was sifted out before it got pumped back upstream for another run.

  Of course, right now she had no idea what exactly she could do with such knowledge. But she was slowly learning that information was always a good thing to have. “Okay, so now I know,” she said, pushing the panel all the way closed. “Show me where that release is and how to work it.”

  “It’s here.” Teika dropped onto his knees and pointed. “A small plate, which must be pushed down.”

  Nicole crouched down beside him and gave it a try. She felt the plate give, and the panel popped open. “Got it,” she said, straightening up. “I guess we should get back and wait for Wesowee.”

  “As you wish.” Teika hesitated, and when he spoke again the fire sound seemed hesitant and serious. “His offer was genuine. You do realize that, do you not?”

  “What are you talking about?” Nicole asked as she set off back toward the center of the arena.

  “Moile’s offer of servitude,” Teika said as he fell into step behind her. “Any of us will willingly serve you, should you wish it. Or all of us, should you wish it.”

  The proposal had turned Nicole’s stomach the first time she’d heard it. It didn’t sound any better this time around. “We don’t take slaves, Teika,” she said.

  “But you did, did you not, once upon a time?” he pressed. “Or was the Master incorrect?”

  Nicole stopped short, spinning around and nearly causing Teika to collide with her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded. “What were they saying about us?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend,” Teika said hastily, cringing back from her. “The Master came to us shortly before you arrived today and told us you had once been slave-keepers. He suggested that we offer ourselves to you in exchange for your help.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Nicole bit out, glaring up at the ceiling. Somewhere up there, she knew, were hidden cameras that the Shipmasters used to monitor the action in their little war games. This had to be another of their stunts.

  Only she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what they were going for with this one. Were they trying to sour the Ponngs on any help Nicole might offer them by claiming she liked slavery? Were they trying to see how far the Ponngs would go to get enough food? Was it a test of Nicole, an experiment to see if she would be tempted by the chance to buy some free alien labor?

  Or was it bigger than that? Was it a test of humanity itself?

  In fact, that might be exactly what it was. Nicole had no idea how long the Shipmasters had been bringing humans aboard to repair their damaged ship, but it could easily have been a couple of decades. But despite having had people underfoot that whole time, it was more and more clear that the aliens didn’t really know what kind of creatures their slaves were.

  Up to now, they apparently hadn’t cared. But thanks to Nicole’s bullheaded stupidity in the Q4 arena, they now knew that humans could fight, or at least that they could help other people fight. Maybe this slave game was part of their effort to find out just exactly how warlike the people of Earth really were.

  Nicole had to make damn sure they didn’t get the right answers.

  “I’m sure he meant no harm,” Teika said hesitantly. “I apologize if our words were insulting or hateful.”

  “Forget it,” Nicole said darkly. “It’s not your fault.”

  Wesowee was waiting when she and Teika reached the main Ponng area.

  And he’d brought company.

  “What the hell is going on here?” the newcomer snarled as Nicole and Teika came into view through the grass. He was a tall, thin man with receding black hair and a thick, bushy mustache.

  “I’m a Sibyl,” Nicole said. “I needed—”

  “Yeah, I know what you are,” the man cut her off. “Wesowee won’t shut up about the wonderful Sibyl who saved his life. Are you the one who’s making a mess out of our work schedule?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Nicole countered, her anger at the Shipmasters starting to transfer over to this bag of noisy wind. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m Kointos,” the man growled. “I’m supposed to be in charge of gray team.” He waved a hand around him. “Except when all the Sibyls in the section suddenly pop off with new instructions and haul all eight teams to a single corridor in lefnizo-thirty. I’ll ask again: Are you the one who did that?”

  “What, you think suddenly all the Sibyls are listening to me instead of the ship?” Nicole demanded. “Since when has that ever happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Kointos shot back. “All I know is that you show up, and suddenly everyone’s working in the same area. We never all work in
the same area.”

  “So what, you got claustrophobia?” Nicole scoffed. “Fine—you can work in here instead.”

  “Claustrophobia’s not the word you’re looking for,” Kointos said scornfully. “And if you think I’m working for you, you’re crazy. You’re not my Sibyl. I don’t take orders from you.”

  Nicole glared at him. They really didn’t have time for this. “Fine—Wesowee and I will do it ourselves. Give me your tool vest.”

  “Look, Sibyl—”

  He broke off at a harsh-sounding bird call from Wesowee. “Give her your vest!” the translation came.

  Most people aboard the Fyrantha, Nicole had learned, herself included, didn’t simply ignore an insistent, shouting Ghorf. Apparently, Kointos wasn’t most people. “No,” the man said flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “Not until I know what’s going on.”

  With an effort, Nicole forced back the urge to tell Wesowee to strip the vest off the man, along with his jumpsuit and, if necessary, pieces of his skin. “There’s a machine in the middle of the channel over there,” she said. “It gives food to the Ponngs on this side and the Thii on the other side. It doesn’t give enough for either group, so both sides are starving. I want to try to fix that. And they probably can’t eat our food,” she added as Kointos opened his mouth, “so don’t bother suggesting we get them some of that.”

  For a couple of heartbeats Kointos just stared at her. Then, he gave a brief hunch of his shoulders. “All right, I’ll play along,” he said. “Show me.”

  four

  There was some rustling in the grass on the Thii side of the channel as Nicole led the way down the slope. She tensed in anticipation, but this time no one shot an arrow at them. “That’s it,” she said, pointing at the food dispenser.

  “Who the hell puts a lunch wagon in the middle of a pit?” Kointos muttered as he walked over to it.

  “It’s complicated,” Nicole said. The deadline for the next feeding was rapidly approaching, and she had no wish to be in the middle of a long explanation when the arrows started flying. “Can you get it open?”

  “Sure.” Kointos felt at the bolts, then pulled a pair of tri-wrenches from his vest and handed one to Nicole. “Here—make yourself useful.”

  Three minutes later, with the bolts removed, Kointos and Wesowee carefully lifted off the cover while Nicole maneuvered the dispenser tubes through the openings in the shell so that they wouldn’t jam.

  “Okay,” Kointos said as he and Wesowee set the cover aside. “I gather you’re familiar with these things. So what’s next?”

  Nicole scowled. She’d seen the insides of two of the Fyrantha’s food machines back in the Q4 arena.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t like either of those. Instead of the multiple tubes and colored-light mixing controls she was familiar with, the only thing inside the box were a pair of three-inch-wide conduits that came up from beneath the ground and disappeared into a complicated-looking mechanical box that then fed into the dispenser tubes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was expecting a lot of input tubes and mixers and a control panel that could be changed. This one just seems to be a dispenser, with the mixing going on somewhere else.” She tapped the mechanical box. “You have any idea what this is?”

  “Looks like a limiter,” Kointos said, turning his head to peer at the underside where the mechanism attached to the outside lever. “There’s a counter under here that marks off how many liters or whatever come out.”

  “Can the counter be disabled?” Wesowee asked. “Perhaps both sides would be able to get more food that way.”

  “Anything can be disabled,” Kointos said, running his fingers around the box. “The trick is disabling it to do what you want. You start messing with something you’ve never seen before—like this thing—and there’s an even chance you’ll wreck it completely.”

  “Meaning nothing would come out?”

  “That’s one possibility.” Kointos cocked an eyebrow at her. “Though if we did that, I suppose you could use your magic Sibyl dust and find out how to fix it.”

  “If that’s what the ship told me to fix,” Nicole said. “It might not. Or if it did, it might just tell me how to put it back the way it is now.”

  “Well, in that case we’re out of luck,” Kointos said. “Looks like everything else comes up from under the deck.”

  “Or from inside the dirt,” Nicole said slowly, frowning at the tubes coming up through the box’s floor and trying to think.

  Okay. The channel had been designed as a river—that much was pretty clear. The inflow, according to Teika, was at one end, and the outflow, according to Wesowee, was at the other.

  So why would the Lillilli who’d turned the Fyrantha into a zoo have installed these extra tubes here in the middle?

  Answer: they wouldn’t have. At least not for any reason Nicole could imagine.

  Unless they were to feed the fish. But that seemed pretty unlikely. One of Nicole’s teachers had kept a fish tank in the classroom, and they’d always just dropped the food on top.

  Had dropped the food on top …

  Nicole looked at the banks above them. Pet cats and dogs had food bowls, and she’d seen pictures of cows in the country going to feed troughs or bales of hay that had been put out for them. But out in the wild, if she was remembering right, animals usually had to go hunting for their food.

  She reached into the box and carefully squeezed the tube coming up from below. It felt hard as a rock. “Have you seen this material before?” she asked Kointos. “I’m wondering if it’s usually this stiff.”

  “Who knows?” Kointos said, poking at the tube. “I know there are plastics like this aboard that are pretty flexible. But there’s no reason they couldn’t also have a version that’s stiff as a—yowp!” He broke off with a yelp as an arrow whistled over his head.

  Reflexively, Nicole ducked lower. A Ponng had appeared at the top of the channel, she saw, a sword clutched in his hand, a thick clump of grass belted across his chest and other bundles on his forearms. There was a movement at the corner of Nicole’s eye, and she looked across the channel to see that a similarly armed and grass-garbed Thii had appeared, except that he had a sword in each of his four hands. Both aliens began half running, half sliding down their respective slopes toward the food dispenser.

  And as they did so the edges of the channel erupted in a hailstorm of flying arrows.

  “What the hell?” Kointos gasped, pressing himself down into the partial cover of the food dispenser.

  Nicole snarled under her breath. She’d thought they still had a few minutes before the next battle began. Clearly, she’d miscalculated. “Wait,” she pleaded. “Everyone—wait. Please.”

  She might as well have been shouting at bad weather. The two fighters reached the flat section at the bottom of the channel and faced off, poking their swords at each other and swaying or jerking as the other side’s arrows slammed into them.

  Nicole had hoped the Ponngs and Thii could avoid any more battles. So much for that plan. The best thing she, Wesowee, and Kointos could do now was get away from the scene and let the two sides fight it out this one last time. Once the dust cleared, they could focus on finding a more permanent solution. If they could get those food conduits open—

  “Knock it off!”

  Nicole jerked violently. Kointos had risen from the shadow of the dispenser and was standing in front of the lever, towering over the two aliens, his hands outstretched toward them as if his presence alone could ward off the swords and arrows.

  And to her amazement, it was working. Both fighters paused in their sparring, and even as Kointos filled his lungs for another shout the rain of arrows came to a slightly tentative halt. “That’s better,” he said in a more conversational voice. “The Sibyl has something to say.” He lowered his arms and gestured to Nicole. “Go.”

  Nicole stared at him, a surge of stomach acid boiling up into her throat. Go? “Kointos, I can’t—”

  “You
want them to stop fighting?” he countered. “You want them to have food? You got a plan?” He gestured. “Then get on with it.”

  Nicole glared at him. Yes, she wanted those things. But she barely had even an idea, let alone a plan.

  But he was right. If she didn’t do something, the fighting and the starving would keep going until the Shipmasters decided to stop it.

  She squared her shoulders. The Fyrantha had named her its Protector. Time to find out if the stupid ship had made a mistake. “You both want food,” she began.

  And immediately winced. A stupid comment—of course they wanted food. “I’m going to try to get it for you,” she continued hurriedly, hoping they wouldn’t notice.

  “We have food,” the Ponng said darkly. “It awaits us right here.”

  “It awaits the Thii, too,” Nicole reminded him.

  “It awaits strength of arms,” the Thii said. “As it should be.”

  “Really?” Nicole countered. “What’s your name?”

  The Thii hesitated. “I’m called Sofkat.”

  Nicole looked at the Ponng. “And you?”

  “Vjoran,” the Ponng said briefly. “If you have nothing useful to say, then step aside and let us claim that which is ours.”

  “Really,” Nicole said, feeling her nervousness fading into exasperation. It was like dealing with Bungie at his worst: the posturing, the impatience, the shooting off of his mouth. She’d had to put up with him way more than she liked, and she was not going to take the same nonsense from a half-pint alien with a toy sword. “Ten minutes ago your leaders were ready to become my slaves. Now you’re not even willing to hear me out?”

  “I apologize for his words,” a voice came from the Ponng side. Nicole looked up, to see Moile and Teika standing at the edge of the channel. “Speak, Sibyl.”

  “Thank you.” Nicole looked to the other side. “Thii?” she invited. “You ready to listen, too?”

  There was movement in the grass, and the Maven stepped into view. “We will hear you,” she said.