CHAPTER ONE
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.
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’s natural form was that of a runner and leaper. This splay-legged clinging thing was foreign to him, and he struggled to master the required effort. As he moved, he kept an eye on the Arik. They trained as fighters from the time they could walk upright, and once mature, most became hired mercenaries. Long framed and leanly muscled, Arik possessed keen senses, including large, cup-shaped ears that captured any noise. Raki must not only be invisible, but silent as he advanced.
He didn’t approach directly. Instead, he used the sticky discs on his fingers and toes to attain the upper level catwalk and move along it until he was almost even with the shuttle. Then he climbed onto the railing and stared down at his target.
He may have practiced being a Bukka in his cubby, but now he must move like one, and Raki had no idea if his new form could make that leap. He took a moment to alter the muscles in his legs from the Bukka norm, coiling the tendons like a spring and adding calf and thigh muscles for power. Then he launched himself.
Straight as an arrow, he flew across the docking bay and almost overshot the shuttle. At the last second he dropped a leg and snagged the metal skin with his sticky toes. The rest of his body slingshot past before being brought up short to snap him back. His skin had already taken on the black paint and square panels of the hull, complete with shadow lines between the panels.
Panting in reaction, he clung to the shuttle, extending his senses. Had the Arik heard his less than graceful landing?
Murmurs of voices, but they were unconcerned. The two Arik guards clicked and hissed to each other in their native language. Their long, thin snouts offered flashes of the sharp teeth beneath. Raki crept along the hull to peer down at them.
The Arik were now arguing, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with him. They were a feisty lot, arguing was the norm. Their long limbs, armed with a ridge of pointed thorns, gesticulated as they squared off at the bottom of the ramp.
Raki took advantage of their distraction to climb along the hull and proceed upside down through the doorway. Once inside, he jumped to the walls and then into the ceiling infrastructure. His skin changed to mimic the painted surface of the hallway. He flattened himself against the ceiling while his hearts threatened to leap straight out of his chest. But the song lured him onward, and he scurried along, heading deeper into the ship.
The Tanti’s amphibious heritage was evident in the air’s humidity, it formed moisture on Raki’s skin, and his sticky discs left little damp circles in their wake.
The song led him rearward to the cargo bay door. A sophisticated door panel defied access. Raki crouched amidst the spars and struts and studied the conduits passing through the walls and into the cargo bay.
The largest, an air duct, had promise. Although Raki had never tried it, he’d researched enough on the species to know of the Bukka’s elastic skeleton. If he could fit his skull through an opening, the rest of his body would also flex to pass.
In theory, anyway. The conduit was close enough in size, if he could wrench it loose. Raki absorbed the sticky discs on two fingers and allowed his natural, razor-sharp claws to emerge. They penetrated the material with ease but sawing through it was more work. He ended up creating a series of punctures around the conduit. Then he allowed the muscles of his shoulders and arms to reassert themselves. He heaved, and the material fractured with a loud crack.
Raki flattened himself among the spars, but nothing happened. He pulled at the conduit, and then pushed the other side away, creating a hole in the wall.
The moment he did so, the song soared, as though aware of his presence. Raki crammed his skull through the hole so fast he scraped the skin. The rest of his body followed without conscious thought. In seconds, he clung to the ceiling of the shuttle’s small cargo bay.
Anchored in the center was a plasteel cage, about twice his height and the same width. The floor was lit, and a creature crouched on it. As he entered, it straightened to its full height.
It—no, she—stood tall on her clawed toes. Naked, except for the soft silver fur that covered her from her pointed ears to the long, tufted tail. Muscles hugged her lithe frame. Her ear antennae radiated outward, the ovals at the tips reaching toward him.
Raki clung to the ceiling as her song flooded his soul. Her face with its strong jaw and high cheekbones was as familiar to him as his own.
Another Carabisk.
The Carabisk moved toward the walls of her prison but didn’t touch them. Raki had seen containment like this before—they would shock her senseless if she tried. When she moved, the manacles at her ankles and wrists gleamed. A quick glance confirmed his suspicions—pressure plates and sensors hardwired all around the cage.
The Tanti were serious about keeping this prisoner.
His hearts sank. There was no way to get her out of there. Even if he could, what then? There was no safety for her on the carrier.
Her pain wove around him like a living thing. Whoever she was, she’d been free before she’d become merchandise. She looked up at him, her confusion obvious. She could sense him through their link, but not see him. Raki surveyed the area, but the monitors seemed oriented on the cage.
He let his golden fur chase over the Bukka skin, and for just a moment, allowed his real face to appear.
Her eyes, a pale, crystallized blue, widened. The music swelled within him, and the pain changed to something much more potent. Then, as though a switch had been thrown, it vanished.
Freed from its power, he blinked at her, before pushing the transformation back to Bukka. The song faded, but the desire to save her remained.
Save her? How the grut was he going to do that?
He turned and squeezed back through the hole, propping the conduit into place to disguise what he’d done. Plan. He needed a plan. His mind raced. The captive Carabisk was on a shuttle. The only option to save her was to get the shuttle away from the carrier. He wasn’t much of a pilot, but he should be able to fly this thing. If he could get to the bridge.
That meant deceiving the two Arik guarding the ramp and getting past the crew.
It took him precious time to determine there were three crew still aboard. The Baraghee mechanic’s small, square, feathered body hunched over something in the engine room. A richly clothed Tanti hung out in the shuttle’s tiny kitchen, and the Arik pilot sat on the bridge.
The bridge was the key. From there, he could shut the other two in their areas, and then lock the Arik guards outside. They’d be helpless to do anything about it.
Raki clung to the bridge’s ceiling, staring down at the oblivious Arik pilot. What now? He’d spent a lifetime hiding, not fighting. All Arik were trained to kill, so Raki didn’t stand a chance against the vicious creature.
But he thought of the Carabisk, forced into a life of slavery by these aliens, and it reformed his resolve. He needed to do this. He also had to take down the pilot fast and quietly, or it might alert the Arik standing outside.
Yeah, right. Who was he kidding? The Arik wasn’t just a fighter; he was armed. Raki needed a better plan than coming at a killer with teeth and claws.
So he worked on his tail.
Or rather, the very end of it. This wasn’t a Bukka feature, it belonged to another organism: a traveler’s pet. He formed a pocket and connected it to a piercing stinger at the tip. The hard part was filling the gland. As Raki’s body followed his visualization of the toxin, it created the genetic blueprint for venom production. But Raki lacked access to the plants the creature consumed for a component of it, so his would not be as powerful. He tried to make up for it in volume, pushing the tissues to secrete enough to fill the entire sac.
He glanced down at the Arik, just as its black eyes opened and it raised its head to sniff. Raki’s heart turned to ice. He’d shapeshifted himself into invisibility. But the hardest thing to extinguish was scent.
The Arik’s head tilted up, and it frowned right at the spot where Raki crouched. And suddenly, he didn’t have any choice.
He released the Bukka form as he leaped, starting with his claws. But the Arik moved like lightning, vaulting out of the pilot’s chair and into the aisle behind, spinning and aiming a laser pistol as he did so.
Still half Bukka, Raki lunged for the wall, bouncing off it to come at the Arik. The laser tracked him as it fired, burning a path through the golden fur of his torso. The pain galvanized him. He snarled as he hit the pilot, sinking claws into the wiry chest as his momentum carried them both into the aisle.
The Arik twisted beneath him. The sharp arm thorns tore into Raki’s flesh, and the sharp teeth below the long snout snapped at his face. But the proportional combination of muscle, sinew, and bone that was Carabisk made Raki inherently strong. He clung with his claws and grim determination, holding the creature too close for it to use the laser. So it went for the knife at its belt instead. Raki spread his long legs wide to brace, grabbed the arm wielding the knife when it was inches from his chest, and used the one weapon he’d held onto through the struggle. His long tail curved up and over his body to drive the stinger into the Arik’s exposed neck.
The Arik made a strangled noise and stiffened as the venom flowed. Then the black eyes rolled upward, and the lithe body went limp.
He’d killed him.
Raki backed away from the body, into the bridge. He hit the door controls, and it rotated shut and locked.
Raki collapsed into the pilot’s seat. He shook from the tips of his pointed ears to the stinger now regressing at the end of his tail, but he started punching buttons. The shuttle had a standard bridge panel, so he recognized most of the controls. First, he hit an emergency switch, which shut down every compartment on the ship and snapped the exterior hatch closed before raising the ramp. The Arik guards might be puzzled that the pilot shut them out, but not necessarily alarmed.
The controls for the cargo bay were on a separate panel with its own console. He studied the screen for a few seconds. It required an electronic key to deactivate. Did the pilot have the key?
He rose, opened the door, and came face to face with the startled, richly dressed Tanti from the kitchen. So much for locking everyone up. Instinct he didn’t know he possessed took over. A millisecond later he had the Tanti slammed up against the bulkhead with his clawed fingers digging into its slimy skin. The four eyes bulged at him, and he almost closed those fingers, but then he remembered.
“I want the cargo bay security deactivated,” Raki said in Kusk. It was a common language, and he was sure the Tanti understood it.
The creature writhed beneath his claws, its mouth opening to reveal the chewing jaws within the external orifice. But it said nothing.
He thought of the Carabisk’s pain and his anger flared. He lifted the Tanti and slammed it hard once more into the bulkhead. “Tell me how to deactivate the security. Or die.”
The creature’s breath burbled beneath his fingers, but the tentacles of one hand released his arm to pull something from its belt. A long, narrow key card.
Raki snatched the card before dragging the protesting Tanti down the aisle. The only thing not secured was the emergency airlock. He shoved the creature into it and activated the sequence. It would spit the Tanti out onto the deck.
His long legs took him back to the bridge in great, leaping bounds. He had to get them out of here. Raki slid into the pilot’s seat and inserted the key card into the cargo bay panel. All the lights went from purple to red. Then he turned his attention to the shuttle controls.
Like all slipstream vessels, the carrier had doors on each end of the docking bay deck. Ships entered through one and exited through the other. The doors weren’t metal but rather invisible screens which separated atmosphere from space. Ships usually passed through the shields unharmed, as long as the security features weren’t activated.
The moment the shuttle started to move, things would change in a hurry. But he had one advantage: the docking crew knew the codes. It would take the bridge crew precious minutes to reprogram new ones.
Still, he would have to be fast. From start up to mobile in milliseconds. And moving within the confines of the bay would be interesting. Two Arik fighters stood between him and the exit. He could fly over them, but there wouldn’t be much room to spare. The Arik guards now paced restlessly near one fighter, alert and confused, but not yet alarmed.
He muttered an invocation to the gods of fortune and fired up the engines.
Immediately the Arik’s attitudes changed. There was much waving of arms, and one spoke into a device on his chest.
Raki pulled back on the controls, and the shuttle rose. He caught a glimpse of shocked expressions, and then he passed right over them. Proximity alarms blared, and the shuttle shuddered as it hit the infrastructure of the carrier’s ceiling. Another, louder alarm blasted as security came online. A booming voice demanded he stop in several consecutive languages, and the screen across the door fluoresced red.
Raki ignored it as he typed his security code into the shuttle’s transmission module. The door reverted to blue, and he punched the controls. The engines revved and the ship shot through, trailing pieces of infrastructure in its wake.
The slipstream queueing center, full of ships waiting their turn, welcomed him. Raki swerved away toward the blackness of open space and pushed the engines to full, knowing the Arik fighters would be on their tail. And they were. Red dots appeared on his console screen, showing three had followed him out.
He tapped at the console and perused the map it showed him. Where to go? With the fighters so close, he’d be running rather than hiding. And he was a deckhand, not a master pilot. He was in big trouble.
A buzz startled him so badly that his fur fluffed out. Then the song brushed against him. His antennae vibrated and his hearts accelerated as he unlocked the door. A millisecond later, the bridge became a lot more crowded.
“Get out of my way.” Her voice snarled through long fangs.
“What?”
“Are you a pilot?”
“Uh . . . no.” The shuttle shuddered as the first laser hit the shields.
“Then get out of my way.”
Raki had zero experience with females of his species, but as he hastily vacated the pilot’s chair he experienced his first real doubt since the entire thing had begun. He slid into the copilot’s seat and stared at her. What had he expected? A shy, courteous thank you? A reward? Her eternal gratitude?
He sure as grut hadn’t foreseen a seriously pissed off female Carabisk who no sooner got her hands on the controls than put the shuttle into a twisting, diving spiral. Raki grabbed at the seat with both hands and tail and scrambled to get the restraint harness activated. A task made all the more difficult when she shoved her feet against the pedals while pulling back on the control column, which fired the reverse thrusters and flipped the ship on its back.
Through the view screen he caught a glimpse of the Arik fighters shooting past, but his crazed pilot had already punched the accelerator. She pointed the shuttle at the group of ships waiting for the slipstream portal. Raki finally managed to snap his restraint harness into place.
“Who are youWhat’s your name?” He gasped as she drove the ship straight at a Bundala cruiser.
“Aranka,” she snapped, flying so low over the massive ship’s hull she clipped an antennae. “Now shut up while I drive.”
Raki almost bit his tongue as she aimed the shuttle for a gap between the cruiser and another slipstream transport. A gap far too small in Raki’s inexpert opinion. But Aranka didn’t slow—she accelerated. And then, at the last second, yanked hard on the control column, shooting them up and over the transport.
The much smaller fighters streaked past like angry hornets on a mission. Aranka spun the shuttle, slipped through the gap, and fell in behind them.
“What are you—”
“Watch and see, my pretty”
Pretty? Before Raki could protest, Aranka flipped up the tracking screen and opened fire with the shuttle’s single laser. One fighter exploded and the second jigged wildly, but the laser tracked across the vacuum of space with unerring accuracy to clip the fighter’s wing. It narrowly missed a waiting ship as it disintegrated.
Apparently, the slipstream authority was unimpressed. Blips on their screen showed a group of ships closing in. The remaining fighter peeled off from the pursuit, and Aranka pointed the shuttle for open space. Then punched it, leaving the older, slower security ships receding behind them.
Raki regarded her with wide eyes. “Who,” he said, “are you?”
Her lifted lip showed pointed teeth, and he caught a hint of the song in her soul, and the pain she held inside. “I am nobody’s slave,” she said. “Who are you?”
Raki swallowed. No one had ever asked him that. Now, looking into her crystal blue eyes, he found something he didn’t know he’d lost. His twin hearts swelled as the answer rose in him.
“I am Carabisk,” he said, and bared his long fangs.
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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.
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’s natural form was that of a runner and leaper. This splay-legged clinging thing was foreign to him, and he struggled to master the required effort. As he moved, he kept an eye on the Arik. They trained as fighters from the time they could walk upright, and once mature, most became hired mercenaries. Long framed and leanly muscled, Arik possessed keen senses, including large, cup-shaped ears that captured any noise. Raki must not only be invisible, but silent as he advanced.
He didn’t approach directly. Instead, he used the sticky discs on his fingers and toes to attain the upper level catwalk and move along it until he was almost even with the shuttle. Then he climbed onto the railing and stared down at his target.
He may have practiced being a Bukka in his cubby, but now he must move like one, and Raki had no idea if his new form could make that leap. He took a moment to alter the muscles in his legs from the Bukka norm, coiling the tendons like a spring and adding calf and thigh muscles for power. Then he launched himself.
Straight as an arrow, he flew across the docking bay and almost overshot the shuttle. At the last second he dropped a leg and snagged the metal skin with his sticky toes. The rest of his body slingshot past before being brought up short to snap him back. His skin had already taken on the black paint and square panels of the hull, complete with shadow lines between the panels.
Panting in reaction, he clung to the shuttle, extending his senses. Had the Arik heard his less than graceful landing?
Murmurs of voices, but they were unconcerned. The two Arik guards clicked and hissed to each other in their native language. Their long, thin snouts offered flashes of the sharp teeth beneath. Raki crept along the hull to peer down at them.
The Arik were now arguing, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with him. They were a feisty lot, arguing was the norm. Their long limbs, armed with a ridge of pointed thorns, gesticulated as they squared off at the bottom of the ramp.
Raki took advantage of their distraction to climb along the hull and proceed upside down through the doorway. Once inside, he jumped to the walls and then into the ceiling infrastructure. His skin changed to mimic the painted surface of the hallway. He flattened himself against the ceiling while his hearts threatened to leap straight out of his chest. But the song lured him onward, and he scurried along, heading deeper into the ship.
The Tanti’s amphibious heritage was evident in the air’s humidity, it formed moisture on Raki’s skin, and his sticky discs left little damp circles in their wake.
The song led him rearward to the cargo bay door. A sophisticated door panel defied access. Raki crouched amidst the spars and struts and studied the conduits passing through the walls and into the cargo bay.
The largest, an air duct, had promise. Although Raki had never tried it, he’d researched enough on the species to know of the Bukka’s elastic skeleton. If he could fit his skull through an opening, the rest of his body would also flex to pass.
In theory, anyway. The conduit was close enough in size, if he could wrench it loose. Raki absorbed the sticky discs on two fingers and allowed his natural, razor-sharp claws to emerge. They penetrated the material with ease but sawing through it was more work. He ended up creating a series of punctures around the conduit. Then he allowed the muscles of his shoulders and arms to reassert themselves. He heaved, and the material fractured with a loud crack.
Raki flattened himself among the spars, but nothing happened. He pulled at the conduit, and then pushed the other side away, creating a hole in the wall.
The moment he did so, the song soared, as though aware of his presence. Raki crammed his skull through the hole so fast he scraped the skin. The rest of his body followed without conscious thought. In seconds, he clung to the ceiling of the shuttle’s small cargo bay.
Anchored in the center was a plasteel cage, about twice his height and the same width. The floor was lit, and a creature crouched on it. As he entered, it straightened to its full height.
It—no, she—stood tall on her clawed toes. Naked, except for the soft silver fur that covered her from her pointed ears to the long, tufted tail. Muscles hugged her lithe frame. Her ear antennae radiated outward, the ovals at the tips reaching toward him.
Raki clung to the ceiling as her song flooded his soul. Her face with its strong jaw and high cheekbones was as familiar to him as his own.
Another Carabisk.
The Carabisk moved toward the walls of her prison but didn’t touch them. Raki had seen containment like this before—they would shock her senseless if she tried. When she moved, the manacles at her ankles and wrists gleamed. A quick glance confirmed his suspicions—pressure plates and sensors hardwired all around the cage.
The Tanti were serious about keeping this prisoner.
His hearts sank. There was no way to get her out of there. Even if he could, what then? There was no safety for her on the carrier.
Her pain wove around him like a living thing. Whoever she was, she’d been free before she’d become merchandise. She looked up at him, her confusion obvious. She could sense him through their link, but not see him. Raki surveyed the area, but the monitors seemed oriented on the cage.
He let his golden fur chase over the Bukka skin, and for just a moment, allowed his real face to appear.
Her eyes, a pale, crystallized blue, widened. The music swelled within him, and the pain changed to something much more potent. Then, as though a switch had been thrown, it vanished.
Freed from its power, he blinked at her, before pushing the transformation back to Bukka. The song faded, but the desire to save her remained.
Save her? How the grut was he going to do that?
He turned and squeezed back through the hole, propping the conduit into place to disguise what he’d done. Plan. He needed a plan. His mind raced. The captive Carabisk was on a shuttle. The only option to save her was to get the shuttle away from the carrier. He wasn’t much of a pilot, but he should be able to fly this thing. If he could get to the bridge.
That meant deceiving the two Arik guarding the ramp and getting past the crew.
It took him precious time to determine there were three crew still aboard. The Baraghee mechanic’s small, square, feathered body hunched over something in the engine room. A richly clothed Tanti hung out in the shuttle’s tiny kitchen, and the Arik pilot sat on the bridge.
The bridge was the key. From there, he could shut the other two in their areas, and then lock the Arik guards outside. They’d be helpless to do anything about it.
Raki clung to the bridge’s ceiling, staring down at the oblivious Arik pilot. What now? He’d spent a lifetime hiding, not fighting. All Arik were trained to kill, so Raki didn’t stand a chance against the vicious creature.
But he thought of the Carabisk, forced into a life of slavery by these aliens, and it reformed his resolve. He needed to do this. He also had to take down the pilot fast and quietly, or it might alert the Arik standing outside.
Yeah, right. Who was he kidding? The Arik wasn’t just a fighter; he was armed. Raki needed a better plan than coming at a killer with teeth and claws.
So he worked on his tail.
Or rather, the very end of it. This wasn’t a Bukka feature, it belonged to another organism: a traveler’s pet. He formed a pocket and connected it to a piercing stinger at the tip. The hard part was filling the gland. As Raki’s body followed his visualization of the toxin, it created the genetic blueprint for venom production. But Raki lacked access to the plants the creature consumed for a component of it, so his would not be as powerful. He tried to make up for it in volume, pushing the tissues to secrete enough to fill the entire sac.
He glanced down at the Arik, just as its black eyes opened and it raised its head to sniff. Raki’s heart turned to ice. He’d shapeshifted himself into invisibility. But the hardest thing to extinguish was scent.
The Arik’s head tilted up, and it frowned right at the spot where Raki crouched. And suddenly, he didn’t have any choice.
He released the Bukka form as he leaped, starting with his claws. But the Arik moved like lightning, vaulting out of the pilot’s chair and into the aisle behind, spinning and aiming a laser pistol as he did so.
Still half Bukka, Raki lunged for the wall, bouncing off it to come at the Arik. The laser tracked him as it fired, burning a path through the golden fur of his torso. The pain galvanized him. He snarled as he hit the pilot, sinking claws into the wiry chest as his momentum carried them both into the aisle.
The Arik twisted beneath him. The sharp arm thorns tore into Raki’s flesh, and the sharp teeth below the long snout snapped at his face. But the proportional combination of muscle, sinew, and bone that was Carabisk made Raki inherently strong. He clung with his claws and grim determination, holding the creature too close for it to use the laser. So it went for the knife at its belt instead. Raki spread his long legs wide to brace, grabbed the arm wielding the knife when it was inches from his chest, and used the one weapon he’d held onto through the struggle. His long tail curved up and over his body to drive the stinger into the Arik’s exposed neck.
The Arik made a strangled noise and stiffened as the venom flowed. Then the black eyes rolled upward, and the lithe body went limp.
He’d killed him.
Raki backed away from the body, into the bridge. He hit the door controls, and it rotated shut and locked.
Raki collapsed into the pilot’s seat. He shook from the tips of his pointed ears to the stinger now regressing at the end of his tail, but he started punching buttons. The shuttle had a standard bridge panel, so he recognized most of the controls. First, he hit an emergency switch, which shut down every compartment on the ship and snapped the exterior hatch closed before raising the ramp. The Arik guards might be puzzled that the pilot shut them out, but not necessarily alarmed.
The controls for the cargo bay were on a separate panel with its own console. He studied the screen for a few seconds. It required an electronic key to deactivate. Did the pilot have the key?
He rose, opened the door, and came face to face with the startled, richly dressed Tanti from the kitchen. So much for locking everyone up. Instinct he didn’t know he possessed took over. A millisecond later he had the Tanti slammed up against the bulkhead with his clawed fingers digging into its slimy skin. The four eyes bulged at him, and he almost closed those fingers, but then he remembered.
“I want the cargo bay security deactivated,” Raki said in Kusk. It was a common language, and he was sure the Tanti understood it.
The creature writhed beneath his claws, its mouth opening to reveal the chewing jaws within the external orifice. But it said nothing.
He thought of the Carabisk’s pain and his anger flared. He lifted the Tanti and slammed it hard once more into the bulkhead. “Tell me how to deactivate the security. Or die.”
The creature’s breath burbled beneath his fingers, but the tentacles of one hand released his arm to pull something from its belt. A long, narrow key card.
Raki snatched the card before dragging the protesting Tanti down the aisle. The only thing not secured was the emergency airlock. He shoved the creature into it and activated the sequence. It would spit the Tanti out onto the deck.
His long legs took him back to the bridge in great, leaping bounds. He had to get them out of here. Raki slid into the pilot’s seat and inserted the key card into the cargo bay panel. All the lights went from purple to red. Then he turned his attention to the shuttle controls.
Like all slipstream vessels, the carrier had doors on each end of the docking bay deck. Ships entered through one and exited through the other. The doors weren’t metal but rather invisible screens which separated atmosphere from space. Ships usually passed through the shields unharmed, as long as the security features weren’t activated.
The moment the shuttle started to move, things would change in a hurry. But he had one advantage: the docking crew knew the codes. It would take the bridge crew precious minutes to reprogram new ones.
Still, he would have to be fast. From start up to mobile in milliseconds. And moving within the confines of the bay would be interesting. Two Arik fighters stood between him and the exit. He could fly over them, but there wouldn’t be much room to spare. The Arik guards now paced restlessly near one fighter, alert and confused, but not yet alarmed.
He muttered an invocation to the gods of fortune and fired up the engines.
Immediately the Arik’s attitudes changed. There was much waving of arms, and one spoke into a device on his chest.
Raki pulled back on the controls, and the shuttle rose. He caught a glimpse of shocked expressions, and then he passed right over them. Proximity alarms blared, and the shuttle shuddered as it hit the infrastructure of the carrier’s ceiling. Another, louder alarm blasted as security came online. A booming voice demanded he stop in several consecutive languages, and the screen across the door fluoresced red.
Raki ignored it as he typed his security code into the shuttle’s transmission module. The door reverted to blue, and he punched the controls. The engines revved and the ship shot through, trailing pieces of infrastructure in its wake.
The slipstream queueing center, full of ships waiting their turn, welcomed him. Raki swerved away toward the blackness of open space and pushed the engines to full, knowing the Arik fighters would be on their tail. And they were. Red dots appeared on his console screen, showing three had followed him out.
He tapped at the console and perused the map it showed him. Where to go? With the fighters so close, he’d be running rather than hiding. And he was a deckhand, not a master pilot. He was in big trouble.
A buzz startled him so badly that his fur fluffed out. Then the song brushed against him. His antennae vibrated and his hearts accelerated as he unlocked the door. A millisecond later, the bridge became a lot more crowded.
“Get out of my way.” Her voice snarled through long fangs.
“What?”
“Are you a pilot?”
“Uh . . . no.” The shuttle shuddered as the first laser hit the shields.
“Then get out of my way.”
Raki had zero experience with females of his species, but as he hastily vacated the pilot’s chair he experienced his first real doubt since the entire thing had begun. He slid into the copilot’s seat and stared at her. What had he expected? A shy, courteous thank you? A reward? Her eternal gratitude?
He sure as grut hadn’t foreseen a seriously pissed off female Carabisk who no sooner got her hands on the controls than put the shuttle into a twisting, diving spiral. Raki grabbed at the seat with both hands and tail and scrambled to get the restraint harness activated. A task made all the more difficult when she shoved her feet against the pedals while pulling back on the control column, which fired the reverse thrusters and flipped the ship on its back.
Through the view screen he caught a glimpse of the Arik fighters shooting past, but his crazed pilot had already punched the accelerator. She pointed the shuttle at the group of ships waiting for the slipstream portal. Raki finally managed to snap his restraint harness into place.
“Who are youWhat’s your name?” He gasped as she drove the ship straight at a Bundala cruiser.
“Aranka,” she snapped, flying so low over the massive ship’s hull she clipped an antennae. “Now shut up while I drive.”
Raki almost bit his tongue as she aimed the shuttle for a gap between the cruiser and another slipstream transport. A gap far too small in Raki’s inexpert opinion. But Aranka didn’t slow—she accelerated. And then, at the last second, yanked hard on the control column, shooting them up and over the transport.
The much smaller fighters streaked past like angry hornets on a mission. Aranka spun the shuttle, slipped through the gap, and fell in behind them.
“What are you—”
“Watch and see, my pretty”
Pretty? Before Raki could protest, Aranka flipped up the tracking screen and opened fire with the shuttle’s single laser. One fighter exploded and the second jigged wildly, but the laser tracked across the vacuum of space with unerring accuracy to clip the fighter’s wing. It narrowly missed a waiting ship as it disintegrated.
Apparently, the slipstream authority was unimpressed. Blips on their screen showed a group of ships closing in. The remaining fighter peeled off from the pursuit, and Aranka pointed the shuttle for open space. Then punched it, leaving the older, slower security ships receding behind them.
Raki regarded her with wide eyes. “Who,” he said, “are you?”
Her lifted lip showed pointed teeth, and he caught a hint of the song in her soul, and the pain she held inside. “I am nobody’s slave,” she said. “Who are you?”
Raki swallowed. No one had ever asked him that. Now, looking into her crystal blue eyes, he found something he didn’t know he’d lost. His twin hearts swelled as the answer rose in him.
“I am Carabisk,” he said, and bared his long fangs.
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