and let me pass. Temporary barricades had been set up to provide cover, but every hold on the level had
been crammed full with stockpiles of League weaponry and armaments. If anyone got into serious
shooting down here, it would all be over real fast.
There were worse ways to go. Word had it that the Hsktskt liked their food still warm and verbal.
Most of the crew had bunched up behind the barricades, but I wanted a better vantage point. When I’d
pulled watch for the underground, I’d climbed trees—and remembering that made me look up. The
level’s ceiling wasn’t all solid deck; there were some maintenance-access hatches at regularly spaced
intervals.
At the farthest end of the level, I climbed an access ladder and pushed open a hatch. That led to a
maintenance passage, but it was too short for anyone but a Rilken to walk upright through it. I backed up
into the crawl space, propping myself over the open hatch. Not much room to move, but better
concealment than the barricades below.
As I waited, I felt the ship take more displacer hits. The optic emitters flickered as the hull absorbed the
impacts. Someone up-level must have cut back power to the envirocontrols, because the temperature
began to drop.
No, they’re doing it deliberately. The lizards don’t like the cold.
Another enormous blast shook the lower deck, and someone cursed. ” U’flargot scum, got the main cell.
They’ll be boarding through launch bay, level six. Disable the lifts!”
Security shot out the lift controls and locked down the doors manually. Everyone stopped moving around
and got very quiet after that. Occasionally I heard a murmur, like someone praying.
Not a bad idea.
“Mother of All Houses,” I said, watching my breath appear in little white puffs in the freezing air, “You
never listened to my Mom, did You? Now would be a great time to make up for that and save my ass.”
More displacer shots exploded, but these felt closer—inside the ship. The guards abandoned their posts
in the open corridor and took up positions behind the barricades. I activated my rifle and aimed for the
lift doors.
“Uhsstaaa,” something hissed behind me. A hard, scaly hand seized my ankle and started dragging me
back into the crawl space.
Hsktskt.
I dropped the rifle, which fell to the deck below, then grabbed the edge of the hatch with both hands. I
couldn’t let go to get my knife. If I yelled, everyone below would shoot up at me. The alloy threads on
the hatch opening bit into my fingers as I fought to hold on and keep silent, but someone was already
climbing up the access ladder.
The blade dancer.
The Shadow looked up at me as he drew out a sword and a smaller blade, then made a gesture for me
to put my head down.
If he decapitates me trying to stick this Hsktskt, I thought, let me stay alive long enough to stab
him in the heart.
I pressed myself against the bottom of the crawl space. A moment later the dancer popped up through
the access hatch, swinging the sword down and throwing the dagger.
“Nsseerok!”
I felt the whoosh of air against my leg, then heard the hissing voice turn to a sloshy gurgle as something
hot and wet splashed across the back of my trousers. Whatever had me by the ankle went limp.
I craned my head around to see the Hsktskt raider, his clawed hand clutching the dagger stuck between
his eyes. One of his limbs lay severed beside me.
I let go of the edge and slumped against the cold metal under me. My heart was pounding so hard it
should have dented the alloy. “Jesus Christ.”
“More soon.” He straddled me, but only to reach back and retrieve his weapons. I heard a disgusting
sucking sound and felt the Hsktskt’s body twitch as the blade slid out of his skull. “Down now.”
I followed him back down the ladder, expecting him to shove me behind a barricade. Instead he pointed
to a large open section. “In there.”
“There’s no cover,” I said as I retrieved my rifle and watched the hatch.
“No, thanks.” I handed it back. “I’ve got my own.”
“Then use it.”
An explosion blew out the entire lift section, and the dancer hauled me into the open hold. Shouts
erupted, along with pulse and displacer fire. He took position on one side of the door panel and pointed
at the other.
“Ready?”
No, I wasn’t ready. I should have left him there and found a nice, strong barricade to hide behind and fire
from. But I owed him my life, and for some reason I suspected staying close to him improved my
chances for hanging on to it, too.
“Yeah.” I dropped the rifle and pulled out my knife.
“Omorr?” he murmured, and I nodded. “Good blade.”
For a moment I wondered if he was crazy—we were facing the Hsktskt, my stomach had wedged itself
in the back of my throat, and we were almost certainly going to die. And he was admiring my knife.
“Thanks.”
Heavy footsteps pounded down the corridor, coming closer with every second. We heard the barricades
fall as they took them out, one by one. The sounds of agonized screaming, ripping flesh, and breaking
bones made me close my eyes for a moment.
You should be afraid; everyone around you wants you dead. Rijor’s ghost chuckled. Make it work
for you.
“Forget fear. Forget everything.”
I looked across the open doorway. “What are you, telepathic too?”
“Keep close to them. Cut big tendon on back lower limb, above joint. They face you, slash eyes. They
go down, cut throat. Keep moving.”
He was telling me how to mutilate Hsktskt. “You’ve killed a lizard before?”
“Many.”
I tensed as the first two raiders lumbered in through the door panel. Now I live or die.
Live, Jory, my mother’s ghost whispered. Live for both of us.
I didn’t want to die, so I went for the tendon on the one closest to me. The dancer did the same. Impact
sent a shock wave up my arm, but the Omorr blade sliced easily through the lizard’s tough scales and
ropy muscle. I blocked out the roars and stepped out of the way as he fell to the deck. The dancer
kicked their weapons across the hold, and we cut their throats in tandem.
It was disgusting, seeing their flesh open, watching the blood spurt. Knowing I was responsible. I wanted
to vomit.
Forget everything.
More Hsktskt charged in, and suddenly I became too busy hacking at scaly faces and legs to notice what
my mentor did.
Keep close to them.
Displacer fire echoed wildly all around me, and the big reptiles kept body-slamming me, but I fought for
balance and chanted the dancer’s instructions in my head: Cut the tendons. Slash the eyes. Cut their
throats. Keep moving. And as survivors from the corridor burst into the hold, I added one of my own:
Don’t kill anyone that looks like crew.
One of the raiders hit me with his tail, sending me sprawling, but I’d taken too many tackles on the field to
stay down. I used the momentum to hurtle back up into a crouching position, then cut the lizard’s feet out
from under him as he came at me.
“The tendons,” the dancer said as he thrust his sword in the Hsktskt’s throat. “Not the feet.”
I blinded another
Hsktskt, then sidestepped as he went down, roaring and clutching at his face. “Critic.”
The skirmish ended several minutes later, when no more Hsktskt charged the hold. The few surviving
crew members backed up against the wall panels, panting and holding whatever parts of their bodies
were bleeding.
“God.” I felt battered and exhausted, and my arm wanted to wither and fall off my body. “Is that it?”
“That it.”
I swiveled to see the dancer walking from lizard to lizard, pinning the live ones with a foot before slitting
their throats. Although it made me want to vomit again, I made myself watch the way he did it.
When he was finished, he came to me. “You never killed Hsktskt before.”
I’d never killed before, period. “No.”
“You use blade before.”
That I had. Since I owed him, I offered him my gore-covered knife. “Here. For keeping me alive.”
“Blade keeps you alive,” he said, then turned and walked out of the hold.
I looked around me, then ran to the nearest disposal unit, and gratefully emptied my stomach in it.
As it turned out, ambient temperature defeated the Hsktskt raid to take over the Chraeser as much as
our battle on level nine. A timely SOS also summoned a large squadron of League strafers, who showed
up to polish off the lizards’ attack vessel, then flew escort for us for the rest of the jaunt.
While the crew joked about new ways to turn the ship into an instant blast freezer, the captain summoned
me to command.
“It was self-defense,” I told him as I came in. “I have witnesses.”
“I heard. Your passenger fee is refunded to you, and we will transport you anywhere you like.” He pulled
up a star chart of the surrounding systems. “Pick a world.”
I didn’t think my minor contribution to the battle on level nine rated that kind of reward. “Why the sudden
burst of generosity?”
He seemed surprised, then smirked a little. “Ask the dancer.”
I tucked my hands in my trouser pockets. “I’m asking you.”
“This ship belongs to him, Terran. He orders; I obey.” He shut down the holoimage. “He’s interested in
you.”
“Is he.” I rubbed one of the strained muscles in my arm. A blade dancer didn’t get interested in people.
He killed them. “I’ll need to talk to him first.”
“I’ll pass the word along. He’ll find you.”
Finding me wasn’t difficult. I went to the galley and sat until he appeared beside my table. He gestured for
me to follow him, and we walked together down the corridor. Crew members nodded to us, their
expressions ranging from fearful to near-worship.
I guess everyone knows he owns the ship now, I thought as I watched them. Or they heard how well
he can kill.
He stopped at a heavily secured door panel and pressed his gloved hand over an access port.
“What’s this?”
“My quarters.”
The door slid open, and while I debated my sanity in doing so, I followed him in. There wasn’t much to
look at inside—sparse furnishings, a single table and chair, a prep unit, and an equally well secured
storage unit.
“Tell me, is this some kind of weird assassin type of courtship thing?” I said as I went to his viewport.
“Because if it is—”
“It is not.”
“Great. Then what is it?” I turned around. He was standing in the center of the room, completely still—he
would have made an exceptional statue. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
I seriously doubted that. “You just refunded my passage because you felt like it?”
“My gratitude.”
“Bullshit.” I waited, but he didn’t respond. Maybe my wristcom hadn’t translated it. “What if I want to go
to Joren?”
“Joren not for you. Go to Reytalon.”
So he was some kind of killer recruiter. “To train to be like you?” I walked a circle around him. “Why
would I want to do that?”
“Revenge takes practice.” He drew out a dagger. “Like killing.”
Even though it made no sense, I didn’t feel afraid of him anymore. “You’d know.” A thought occurred to
me. “That’s why you wanted to fight me. It wasn’t practice. It was an audition.”
“Yes.”
This was going beyond spooking me now, but I kept up the illusion of indifference. “I don’t want to kill
for a living. It makes me sick.” But the idea made me think. “If I went to Reytalon, could I learn to handle
blades the way you do?”
“You must go Tåna.”
I frowned. “Is that like, what, assassin school?”
“It can be.”
It was almost funny to think there was a school where you could learn to be the most lethal assassin in the
galaxy. Then everything seemed to fall into place at once. “How do I get in?”
I expected some kind of secret rendezvous point or complicated verbal instructions. Instead the dancer
went to the room console, pulled up a star chart, and highlighted a planet. “This Reytalon.”
I went over and studied it. If the dot he was pointing to was Reytalon, it was in an uncharted system far
beyond Joren. I memorized the coordinates. “They take females?”
“They take anyone.” He erased the chart. “They teach you shahada, dance with tån.”
“Then what happens?”
“You kill.” He watched me as I started pacing. “You want kill.”
Was he trying to convince me, or talk me out of it? “What if I only want to kill one man?”
“Who?”
I couldn’t see explaining the whole mess, or arguing the point. “His name is Kieran. He’s a mercenary and
a raider for hire.” Among other things.
“Kieran blade dancer. Dangerous man.”
I stopped pacing. My father was a blade dancer? “You know him?”
“Who does not?” The dancer tapped the screen. “Speak to Tåna Blade Master. He know Kieran.”
Plans began forming in my head. “I can’t go to Reytalon yet. I have to go to Joren first.”
“Captain take you Joren.”
I went to the door panel. “I owe you for this, dancer.”
“You kill Hsktskt, Terran,” he reminded me.
I had taken down a lot of lizards. Without his help, it might take months to reach my mother’s
homeworld. I glanced back at him, “All right. This makes us even.”
The meet with the dancer had given me a lot to think about. Why would anyone want to recruit me to be
an assassin? I was an athlete, not a killer. Until the Hsktskt had attacked us, anyway. Then I found myself
wondering just how hard it would be to get through the training, and what the Tåna would expect in
return. If this Blade Master knew Kieran, he might give me a lead on how to find him. And then—
“I hear you’re going all the way to Joren,” one of the League soldiers said as he caught up with me in the
corridor.
“Maybe.” I recognized him as the one-eyed corporal who’d spoken to me on the training deck a few
times. “You?”
“I’m for Vgfria Station, near the Varallan border.” He gestured for me to go ahead of him into the training
room. “You want me to spot you on the free weights?”
I usually resorted to a drone spotter, but having some real company would keep me from dwelling on my
mysterious benefactor.
“I can’t get over that extension unit buckling the way it did,” he mentioned as I stretc
hed out on my back
and he took position by the bar supports. “You ever think about how close that was?”
“I’m not going to forget nearly being crushed to death.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Someone wanted you dead in a big way.”
“That’s another thing.” My brows drew together as I gripped the bar and found the proper balance spots.
“Why would someone try to kill me?”
“Don’t know. Maybe someone just wanted to see how fast you are.” He watched as I lifted, lowered,
then lifted the weights. “One-fifty, not bad. How many reps do you pull?”
“Twenty.” I dropped the bar back on the supports and sat up. “Excuse me.”