SCROLL TO PART TWO TO CONTINUE:
Raki stood on the docking bay catwalk and watched as the shuttle moved into place. When the sensors set into the metal plate on the deck lit purple, he activated the locking mechanism.
Slipstream cargo carriers usually transported a full complement of mixed shuttles and smaller craft for every voyage, but the owners of this shuttle had insisted on booking the entire ship for just themselves and their three escorts—sleek Vipe fighters with laser mounts bristling from the elongated double prongs on both front and rear. Surely an expensive venture. What would require that kind of security?
Raki wasn’t paid for his curiosity, although he suffered from it regularly. He leaned on the railing to peruse the shuttle. Paranoia made him scan his hands as he did so—Kusk hands, three fingers and a thumb, thick and covered with gray, leathery skin. He noticed a small tuft of gold fur and concentrated until it dropped away to the metal floor far beneath.
He’d been disguised for so many years that the constant scrutinizing for slips was as much a part of him as the golden fur he hid beneath his body armor. To the rest of the universe he appeared as just another homely Kusk. The hardest part to maintain wasn’t the leathery skin in place of fur; it was his legs. When he rose from every sleep cycle, he wrestled his long leg bones into submission, contracting the cells until they were almost half their normal length, relaxing the tendons to permit him to walk flat-footed instead of up on his toes. By the end of his shifts, his legs ached despite his inherent healing ability.
But it was a small price to pay for safety.
As far as Raki knew he was the last survivor of his species, victims of a cosmic genocide when he was only a child. Two foreign researchers had smuggled him off the planet amid the chaos, and raised him as they conducted their studies, hopping between planets. But in all his long life—and Carabisk were very long lived—he’d never been able to relax while in his own skin.
The slipstream carrier featured a leisure deck for visitors. He waited for the shuttle’s occupants to emerge. The vessel looked new, sleek, and fast. It belonged to Tanti merchants, and Raki wanted a glimpse of their tentacle-like fingers, bulbous heads, and slimy bodies. But when the ramp dropped, only one emerged from the shuttle, although six Arik unfolded their lithe frames from the Vipes. After a somewhat heated discussion—based on the gesticulation of the long limbs—two of the Arik took their place at the foot of the shuttle’s ramp. The four others headed for the lift. The Tanti held itself aloof from the Arik as it waited for the lift. Raki stared in fascination at the quivering flesh of its huge braincase until the doors closed.
The big ship’s engines rumbled beneath his feet as it got moving. Life on a slipstream cargo carrier tended to be boring as grut. Raki double-checked the locking mechanisms and his hands in the same scan. Kusk vision was dull compared to his own; he longed for the rich colors and clarity of his real vision. And as he took a deep breath, he fought back the usual frustration inherent in living in another’s body.
Then he heard the singing.
Well, it wasn’t exactly singing. And he wasn’t sure he was hearing it with his stunted Kusk auditory disks. It vibrated through him—a pulse of sound that made all the fur within his armor stand up on end. Was it real? If it was, where was it coming from?
Raki glanced around but nothing had changed. Across the bay, the mechanic—a particularly chunky Kusk—emerged briefly from his cubby to fetch the toolbelt hanging over the rail. Nothing in his demeanor suggested he’d heard anything. Raki watched to see that the Kusk had returned to his engines before pulling away from his console and stepping into the shadows cast from the overhead crane.
He knew the docking bay monitors didn’t penetrate this corner. Reverting to his natural form was a simple matter of letting go, the hard part was stopping the process partway. He allowed his ears to morph, becoming large, elongated triangles with distinctive, delicate antennae protruding from the pointed tips. Halting the transformation was painful. He fought the fur spreading rapidly across the gray skin. Fought, and won.
The moment his ears changed, the tone of the music deepened. He gasped as it filled him. It sang of loss and an anguish so deep it threatened to tear his own hearts in two. In response, his ear antennae spread and lengthened as though physically seeking the source, the small ovals at the tips vibrating.
Raki had never experienced such pain. Beyond the physical, this was something of the soul. He longed to find it, to fold himself around it, and make it all stop.
He caught himself just in time—he’d taken a step out of the shadows. Toward the shuttle.
Raki shoved his ears back into submission, wincing in discomfort. The sound diminished as he did so, becoming the initial vibration he’d experienced. He didn’t think that ordinary Kusk could hear it. Raki wasn’t sure it was a true sound—something about it reached beyond hearing to reverberate within him.
He strode along the catwalk to the ladder that dropped him to the deck. He had about an hour before the carrier took its place in the queue, and then another half before it entered the channel that would take it far away. Once in slipstream, everyone must be strapped into a restraint harness. Until then, he had freedom to move.
And he was going to check out that shuttle.
PART TWO
Within his armor, the stump of Raki’s tail twitched as he reached the lower deck. He knew he was in full view of the monitors and busied himself with inspecting the anchor points for the ships. All normal duties. But there was nothing normal about what radiated from the shuttle.
It was the source of the sound. There was no doubt.
Raki stood before a console and pretended to be checking the manifest. The ship was reputedly carrying replacement components for a renovation in Bundala sector. Was it a passenger that he sensed?
His twin hearts pounded hard. He’d spent all his life avoiding risk, hiding behind disguises. His foster parents, now long dead, had drilled it into him. Before the Carabisk were exterminated, their shapeshifting and healing abilities were in high demand. At first their services were voluntary, but as the political stability of their solar system declined, many were enslaved as espionage agents and assassins. When the system erupted into full-fledged war, his people were caught in the crossfire.
But the talents that had put them there were as much in demand now as they had been then, perhaps even more so. If anyone discovered what he was, Raki’s days of freedom would be over. He was worth more than the Vipes that were currently anchored to the deck.
All this raced through his brain as he stared at the console. Even muted, the music wove through him like a siren song. He didn’t understand its hold over him. But it was undeniable. And his response, instinctive. It drew him. He had to find the source.
But how?
You’re a shapeshifter, idiot.
Raki’s job enabled him to brush elbows with many forms of life. He’d made a study of them, and it wasn’t just a random hobby, not when his life depended on his competence to take on other forms. Carabisk had the ability to assess life at the genetic level through direct skin contact. Although part of the process was unconscious, Raki had to visually guide himself through the morph, so he’d developed a keen eye for physical detail. He’d spent many hours in the privacy of his tiny, one-cot cubby practicing alternative shapes.
He moved away from the monitors and into the shadows thrown by several large supply crates. Slipping between two of them, he stripped off his armor. Without its protective covering, he trembled with anxiety. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out of it when not in the safety of his cubby. What was he doing? Was this worth the risk?
But the song beckoned, and his ears itched to emerge and drink it in. Unfortunately, his native form wouldn’t work for this venture, he needed to be invisible. Or the next best thing . . .
He closed his eyes and focused. They’d had a Bukka on board, once. Although not shapeshifters, their skin had the ability to camouflage with their surroundings. This Bukka had been a slave, but it accompanied its master to the leisure area. Raki had casually brushed against its skin while they helped themselves to hot, bitter cups of raanck.
Now, Raki visualized the Bukka, and his skin changed. The golden fur on his lean body dropped away as the skin became pale gray and smooth. With relief, he let his legs assume more normal proportions, but the flesh of his hands and feet split to the ankles and wrists, providing him with long, strangely articulated fingers and toes. Each ended in a disc rather than his usual claws. His tail lengthened and thickened, and his jaws shortened, giving him a flat, almost featureless face with enormous round eyes.
Only after he had all the proportions correct, did he begin to shrink. Of all the shapeshifting techniques, two were exponentially more difficult to master: adding limbs and altering size. The Bukka had two arms and legs, but it was a smaller creature. Shrinking mass involved condensing cells. Fortunately, he didn’t need to reduce himself to the size of a Bukka, but a diminished stature would help him when stealth was his goal.
He took himself down to about half his usual bulk and set his skin free.
Or free for a Bukka, anyway. The gray skin immediately altered, not just color, but texture as well. In an instant it had taken on the stippled orange surface of the storage crates. As long as he didn’t move too fast, the skin would adapt to whatever it touched.
Useful creatures, Bukka. He felt a pang for the slave he’d met. In this region of space, useful things tended to end up owned.
It took every ounce of courage Raki possessed to venture out of his hiding place. Although he often practiced changing shape, it had been many years since he’d go out as anything other than a Kusk. If he got caught like this on the ship...
He didn’t finish the thought. It was as though the song had altered something inside him. It made the paranoia and fear fade. In its place was something, or rather someone, he didn’t recognize.
And that someone scurried on all fours across the deck.
Raki stood on the docking bay catwalk and watched as the shuttle moved into place. When the sensors set into the metal plate on the deck lit purple, he activated the locking mechanism.
Slipstream cargo carriers usually transported a full complement of mixed shuttles and smaller craft for every voyage, but the owners of this shuttle had insisted on booking the entire ship for just themselves and their three escorts—sleek Vipe fighters with laser mounts bristling from the elongated double prongs on both front and rear. Surely an expensive venture. What would require that kind of security?
Raki wasn’t paid for his curiosity, although he suffered from it regularly. He leaned on the railing to peruse the shuttle. Paranoia made him scan his hands as he did so—Kusk hands, three fingers and a thumb, thick and covered with gray, leathery skin. He noticed a small tuft of gold fur and concentrated until it dropped away to the metal floor far beneath.
He’d been disguised for so many years that the constant scrutinizing for slips was as much a part of him as the golden fur he hid beneath his body armor. To the rest of the universe he appeared as just another homely Kusk. The hardest part to maintain wasn’t the leathery skin in place of fur; it was his legs. When he rose from every sleep cycle, he wrestled his long leg bones into submission, contracting the cells until they were almost half their normal length, relaxing the tendons to permit him to walk flat-footed instead of up on his toes. By the end of his shifts, his legs ached despite his inherent healing ability.
But it was a small price to pay for safety.
As far as Raki knew he was the last survivor of his species, victims of a cosmic genocide when he was only a child. Two foreign researchers had smuggled him off the planet amid the chaos, and raised him as they conducted their studies, hopping between planets. But in all his long life—and Carabisk were very long lived—he’d never been able to relax while in his own skin.
The slipstream carrier featured a leisure deck for visitors. He waited for the shuttle’s occupants to emerge. The vessel looked new, sleek, and fast. It belonged to Tanti merchants, and Raki wanted a glimpse of their tentacle-like fingers, bulbous heads, and slimy bodies. But when the ramp dropped, only one emerged from the shuttle, although six Arik unfolded their lithe frames from the Vipes. After a somewhat heated discussion—based on the gesticulation of the long limbs—two of the Arik took their place at the foot of the shuttle’s ramp. The four others headed for the lift. The Tanti held itself aloof from the Arik as it waited for the lift. Raki stared in fascination at the quivering flesh of its huge braincase until the doors closed.
The big ship’s engines rumbled beneath his feet as it got moving. Life on a slipstream cargo carrier tended to be boring as grut. Raki double-checked the locking mechanisms and his hands in the same scan. Kusk vision was dull compared to his own; he longed for the rich colors and clarity of his real vision. And as he took a deep breath, he fought back the usual frustration inherent in living in another’s body.
Then he heard the singing.
Well, it wasn’t exactly singing. And he wasn’t sure he was hearing it with his stunted Kusk auditory disks. It vibrated through him—a pulse of sound that made all the fur within his armor stand up on end. Was it real? If it was, where was it coming from?
Raki glanced around but nothing had changed. Across the bay, the mechanic—a particularly chunky Kusk—emerged briefly from his cubby to fetch the toolbelt hanging over the rail. Nothing in his demeanor suggested he’d heard anything. Raki watched to see that the Kusk had returned to his engines before pulling away from his console and stepping into the shadows cast from the overhead crane.
He knew the docking bay monitors didn’t penetrate this corner. Reverting to his natural form was a simple matter of letting go, the hard part was stopping the process partway. He allowed his ears to morph, becoming large, elongated triangles with distinctive, delicate antennae protruding from the pointed tips. Halting the transformation was painful. He fought the fur spreading rapidly across the gray skin. Fought, and won.
The moment his ears changed, the tone of the music deepened. He gasped as it filled him. It sang of loss and an anguish so deep it threatened to tear his own hearts in two. In response, his ear antennae spread and lengthened as though physically seeking the source, the small ovals at the tips vibrating.
Raki had never experienced such pain. Beyond the physical, this was something of the soul. He longed to find it, to fold himself around it, and make it all stop.
He caught himself just in time—he’d taken a step out of the shadows. Toward the shuttle.
Raki shoved his ears back into submission, wincing in discomfort. The sound diminished as he did so, becoming the initial vibration he’d experienced. He didn’t think that ordinary Kusk could hear it. Raki wasn’t sure it was a true sound—something about it reached beyond hearing to reverberate within him.
He strode along the catwalk to the ladder that dropped him to the deck. He had about an hour before the carrier took its place in the queue, and then another half before it entered the channel that would take it far away. Once in slipstream, everyone must be strapped into a restraint harness. Until then, he had freedom to move.
And he was going to check out that shuttle.
PART TWO
Within his armor, the stump of Raki’s tail twitched as he reached the lower deck. He knew he was in full view of the monitors and busied himself with inspecting the anchor points for the ships. All normal duties. But there was nothing normal about what radiated from the shuttle.
It was the source of the sound. There was no doubt.
Raki stood before a console and pretended to be checking the manifest. The ship was reputedly carrying replacement components for a renovation in Bundala sector. Was it a passenger that he sensed?
His twin hearts pounded hard. He’d spent all his life avoiding risk, hiding behind disguises. His foster parents, now long dead, had drilled it into him. Before the Carabisk were exterminated, their shapeshifting and healing abilities were in high demand. At first their services were voluntary, but as the political stability of their solar system declined, many were enslaved as espionage agents and assassins. When the system erupted into full-fledged war, his people were caught in the crossfire.
But the talents that had put them there were as much in demand now as they had been then, perhaps even more so. If anyone discovered what he was, Raki’s days of freedom would be over. He was worth more than the Vipes that were currently anchored to the deck.
All this raced through his brain as he stared at the console. Even muted, the music wove through him like a siren song. He didn’t understand its hold over him. But it was undeniable. And his response, instinctive. It drew him. He had to find the source.
But how?
You’re a shapeshifter, idiot.
Raki’s job enabled him to brush elbows with many forms of life. He’d made a study of them, and it wasn’t just a random hobby, not when his life depended on his competence to take on other forms. Carabisk had the ability to assess life at the genetic level through direct skin contact. Although part of the process was unconscious, Raki had to visually guide himself through the morph, so he’d developed a keen eye for physical detail. He’d spent many hours in the privacy of his tiny, one-cot cubby practicing alternative shapes.
He moved away from the monitors and into the shadows thrown by several large supply crates. Slipping between two of them, he stripped off his armor. Without its protective covering, he trembled with anxiety. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out of it when not in the safety of his cubby. What was he doing? Was this worth the risk?
But the song beckoned, and his ears itched to emerge and drink it in. Unfortunately, his native form wouldn’t work for this venture, he needed to be invisible. Or the next best thing . . .
He closed his eyes and focused. They’d had a Bukka on board, once. Although not shapeshifters, their skin had the ability to camouflage with their surroundings. This Bukka had been a slave, but it accompanied its master to the leisure area. Raki had casually brushed against its skin while they helped themselves to hot, bitter cups of raanck.
Now, Raki visualized the Bukka, and his skin changed. The golden fur on his lean body dropped away as the skin became pale gray and smooth. With relief, he let his legs assume more normal proportions, but the flesh of his hands and feet split to the ankles and wrists, providing him with long, strangely articulated fingers and toes. Each ended in a disc rather than his usual claws. His tail lengthened and thickened, and his jaws shortened, giving him a flat, almost featureless face with enormous round eyes.
Only after he had all the proportions correct, did he begin to shrink. Of all the shapeshifting techniques, two were exponentially more difficult to master: adding limbs and altering size. The Bukka had two arms and legs, but it was a smaller creature. Shrinking mass involved condensing cells. Fortunately, he didn’t need to reduce himself to the size of a Bukka, but a diminished stature would help him when stealth was his goal.
He took himself down to about half his usual bulk and set his skin free.
Or free for a Bukka, anyway. The gray skin immediately altered, not just color, but texture as well. In an instant it had taken on the stippled orange surface of the storage crates. As long as he didn’t move too fast, the skin would adapt to whatever it touched.
Useful creatures, Bukka. He felt a pang for the slave he’d met. In this region of space, useful things tended to end up owned.
It took every ounce of courage Raki possessed to venture out of his hiding place. Although he often practiced changing shape, it had been many years since he’d go out as anything other than a Kusk. If he got caught like this on the ship...
He didn’t finish the thought. It was as though the song had altered something inside him. It made the paranoia and fear fade. In its place was something, or rather someone, he didn’t recognize.
And that someone scurried on all fours across the deck.
