Star Hunters Read online

  Manoreh chuckled. “No, Umeme. I’m really still chasing Gamesh across the grass lands. Little man, you’ve grown half a meter since I saw you last. How goes the training?”

  The boy grimaced. “A lot of sweat and not much play. Wish I could go out like you.”

  “Time will come. Director in?”

  “No, couz. He’s over there.” Umeme nodded at the Chwereva compound. “Something’s up.” He grinned. “Not that they tell us students anything.”

  Manoreh slipped the pouch from his shoulder. “Catch.” He threw it up to Umeme’s waiting hands. “See the Director gets that. I’ve got something I’ve got to do.” He threaded the faras’s nose rein through a tie-ring. “Catch someone passing and have him stable the faras.”

  “Sure. Anything el.… would you look at that!”

  A ball of shimmering light arced down across the darkening blue-green-black of the twilight, cutting past the misty ring of moonlets just becoming visible. As he watched the bubble drift down, a thistleweed corolla with a dark seed at the center, he was certain that the dream woman was on board. He ran into the street.

  A small groundcar hummed around the corner of Chwereva compound. Manoreh lifted a hand, smiling as he recognized the driver. “Faiseh, couz, hold up.”

  Faiseh brought the battered little car to a rocking stop, a wide grin lifting his mustache. “Hey, Manoreh, you’re back.”

  “You’re the second one to tell me that. I begin to believe it.”

  “Damn hares marching.”

  “So I saw.”

  Faiseh thrust his arm out the open window and the two Rangers clasped wrists. “Good to see you, couz. Long time.”

  Manoreh nodded. “Long time.” He glanced toward the landing field. The glow was gone. The ship was down. “Listen, let me take car.”

  Faiseh’s fuzzy eyebrows arched. “Why not. Later, though. Got to go to the field first. On duty, couz. You saw the ship.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “Climb in. But get a move on or the Director’ll have my skin. Important visitor. Very important.”

  Manoreh slapped Faiseh’s shoulder in thanks and went around to the far side. As he slid in, he said, “Who?”

  “Chwereva has hired Hunters Inc. Finally dug up some official who could count to ten without taking off his shoes, I suppose.” He wove the car through the streets then out the gap in the low screen wall. He snorted with disgust as several hares came out of the scrubby juapepo and hopped along the roadside. “Already here. You ever see so many of them?”

  “No.” Manoreh stared down at his hands. The hares reminded him of the ghost. His hands felt stiffer already. Instead of anger he felt a deep chill.

  Faiseh glanced at him. “What’s eating you?”

  Manoreh looked up. “Haribu got pushy. Had to split off a ghost.”

  Faiseh drove for several minutes in worried silence then said, “You going back to swallow it?” He scowled at the hares hopping raggedly through the brush. “You better hurry if you want to get out of here.”

  “Right. Soon’s I see the Director.”

  “Well, Hunters will beat hell out of Haribu for us.”

  “If they live up to their reputation. Elders won’t let them bring in energy weapons.”

  “Stupid.” Faiseh waved a hand at the increasing number of hares threading through the juapepo and beginning to move onto the road. “A few weapons like that and we’d wipe out those bastards.”

  “I know, but what can we do? Mention energy weapons to the Council and they’ll shut down the Tembeat before you get all the words out.”

  “Well, we could always go join the crazies on the coast.”

  The hares were spreading across the road. Faiseh cursed as the car began to wobble over the bodies that disrupted the smooth ride. He relaxed as the car steadied over the meta-crete of the landing field. The mild current fed into the outer strip was enough to keep the hares off, but they circled it in a solid ring, twenty deep in spots. Faiseh stopped the car a few meters from the dark oval resting on its belly in the center of the field. He shifted uneasily behind the steering rod. “Hope they get a move on. Feel that?”

  Haribu was smothering the field. The air hung still and heavy. Hard to breathe. Manoreh closed his eyes. She’s there, he thought. A Hunter?

  “The lock’s opening.”

  Manoreh opened his eyes. A tall man in a gray shipsuit swung down from the lock and stood waiting. The woman came into the circle of light. Slender and tall, taller than he’d expected. The red hair was braided and coiled tightly around her head. She swung down beside the man and the lock closed behind her.

  Manoreh watched her, fascinated, locked to her by the link that had formed as she came here, ghosting in the interface that let ships move faster than light. She came past the man and stopped beside his window. Her face was a pale blur in the deepening twilight but he didn’t need light to know her features.

  “You,” she said. “We’ve met.” Her voice was a surprise also, a warm contralto. He found her confusing. She seemed to him both man and woman. Cool and independent and at the same time.…

  “I know. Why?”

  She swung around, facing away from the car. “Later,” she said absently. He thrust his head out and twisted around to see what she was looking at.

  The hares were on their hind legs staring at her. Force slammed out of them, almost visible in its intensity. She shivered. Manoreh dropped back on the seat, gasping, drowning. His hands closed tightly on the edge of the door. In the corner of his eye he saw movement and turned.

  The male Hunter had moved quickly behind the woman and put his hands on her shoulders. She leaned against him. Manoreh heard a ripple of dear pure notes, then stared as a crown of light circled her head and a shimmering golden glow sheathed the two of them, then struck outward at the hares.

  Abruptly the pressure from the hares was gone. The crown faded. She slumped back against her partner in obvious distress. He lifted her and carried her the two steps to the car. Hastily Manoreh reached over the seat and shoved the back door open.

  The Hunter slid the woman inside and then was in beside her, cat-quick and neat in his movements. “Go!” he snapped.

  Chapter IV

  In the guest quarters at Chwereva Compound the two Rangers stood quietly waiting as the Hunters settled themselves in. Aleytys followed Grey into the bedroom.

  He turned to face her. “What happened back there?”

  She stepped around him and sat down on the end of the bed. “First touch of the enemy. Chwereva was right, this isn’t a matter of animal instinct. There’s an intelligent brain directing those attacks.”

  “Bad? That damn thing doesn’t show in public unless you’re hurting.”

  Aleytys lifted her hands and examined them, an excuse for not looking at him. The diadem had been the focus of too many bitter quarrels. “Bad,” she said dully. “I’m still shaking.”

  He leaned over and touched her face. “Find out anything more?”

  “Not really. Just that he’s horribly dangerous, our enemy. And, of course, that he’s got a pipeline into Chwereva. He was waiting for me.”

  “Not thinking, Lee. Why wouldn’t he be waiting, having arranged for you to be here. Can you handle him?”

  “Head to head?”

  “Yes.” He walked to the door, then stood there looking back at her. “Can you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t know enough about him, whoever or whatever he is.” She eased down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “That Ranger out there, the long one. He’s my contact. There’s a kind of link joining us that both of us are finding very uncomfortable. Could be a complication.”

  He tapped the wall behind him. “We’ve got to report in. Let me handle that. You get straightened out with your Ranger. Get what you can out of him, he’ll probably know more about the local situation than the Reps.”

  “Grey.”

  “Um?”

&nb
sp; “It’s …” She sat up. “It’s been good seeing you again. Thanks.”

  “What for?” His left eyebrow arched as he watched her, skepticism cutting deeper lines in his face.

  Aleytys rubbed at the nape of her neck. “For being a thorough professional, I suppose.”

  With a slight shake of his head he went out.

  Aleytys sat on the bed wondering if he’d ever trust her again, wondering if she wanted him to. Then she brushed the tiny tendrils of new hair back from her face and stood. Time to get to work.

  She stopped in the doorway. The Ranger was sitting on the couch. A tall man. Worn, silver-green skin. Scale marked. Eyes so dark a blue they were almost black. Slit pupils like a cat’s. Firm, wide mouth. A beaked nose. He wore a thong-laced leather jerkin, torn in two places at the shoulder and marked with a spot of blood by a half-healed cut on his arm muscle. His leather shorts were cut off just above the knees. His boots were scuffed and battered, a tough, hard-used, wary man. He definitely didn’t like her but there was that link that bound them together, that almost joining of the two nervous systems. He was uneasy, beads of sweat clinging to his fore-head. He swallowed. She could feel the muscles of her own throat tensing. Nerving herself, she walked across to him and touched his shoulder.

  “Don’t!” He slid away along the couch, surged onto his feet, and stood looking about like a caged chul cat. Abruptly he swung around and jerked a section of the drapery aside. With controlled violence he shoved open the glass door behind the wall hanging and plunged into the darkness outside. Aleytys looked down at her hand with distaste. She rubbed the hand against her hip. “Professional,” she muttered. “Get the information.”

  She pushed through the drapes and stepped out into a small enclosed garden. Automatically she slid the door shut and searched the shifting shadows among the plants. The darkness was greater than she’d expected. She glanced up and was startled by the emptiness overhead. It was one thing to read statistics about the absence of stars within visual range and another to see the barren sky.

  The Ranger was standing on the far side of the garden, close by a spiky tree. He was breathing heavily, his shoulders hunched over. As she stepped onto the grass, she stopped abruptly. The plants caught up the tension between them and flung it back at her. She blinked, yanked up her shields and moved cautiously toward him. He turned and watched her, his dark eyes stone hard. He wanted nothing to do with her. When she was two steps away from him, he turned abruptly and dropped onto a rustic bench that circled the entwined trunks of the tree. The pointed leaves painted staccato shadows across his face and body. She sat crosslegged on the cool grass. “We’ve got a job to do.”

  He said nothing, but sat with his head tipped back against the papery peeling bark. She felt him trying to shut her out.

  She yawned. “Damn, I’m tired. Look, Ranger.… What’s your name?”

  His first reaction was a stubborn refusal to speak to her, then a flash of humor lightened his mood. “Manoreh.”

  She touched her breast. “Aleytys. Hunter.” She felt his withdrawal and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re a woman.” He beat his fists lightly on his thighs in his frustration. He could sense her reactions as well as she could his and her snort of amusement with its accompanying scorn defeated him. “Why do you do this?”

  “Manoreh, I think we’d better simply accept that we come from different cultures. That’s the kind of thing we could have endless arguments about with neither convincing the other.” She smiled at him. “Think of me as neuter if it helps.” She swept her hand in a small circle. “Do all your plants do that? Catch and reflect emotion?”

  He turned from her with relief. He touched the bush beside him gently, separating out the dark nodes, pushing aside the foliage to show them to her as they sat in the branching of the small crooked limbs. “Small woody plants have these. Like the juapepo brush that covers the valley floor.” He stood and shoved aside the tree’s branches, letting the dim light of the moonring strike through to touch the dark swelling where the twisted circle of trunks met. “Slower growing and more wise,” he said softly. Then he smiled. “There’s a child’s tale that says an old, old tree lives far to the south and is wiser than old men.” He let the branches swing closed and settled back on the bench. “Most animals have some degree of FEELING. Hares the most. That’s the problem! Haribu has harnessed their gift and is driving them against us.”

  “Haribu?” She leaned forward. “The Chwereva Reps said nothing about Haribu.”

  “Haribu Haremaster.” His voice was somber, but there was an emptiness in him, a place where anger should have been and was not.

  She waited but he said nothing more. “Well? Who is he? If you know his name, you must know something about him.”

  “Harbiu.” He stared at the toes of his boots. “A name. A touch. Haribu … the harewalks started three years ago. My family … the first to go … harewalks … they told you about the harewalks?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “They told us.”

  “The hares came at night. They were all asleep. They had no warning.…” He sank into a brooding silence.

  Aleytys lay back on the grass, listening as he went on in that dull voice after a long silence filled with the buzzing, whispering noises of the garden.

  “I was at the Tembeat, the last year of my training. The Director sent me home before my first short trek. Faiseh my friend … Faiseh went with me. The gate was knocked down, the stock moaning for water. We tracked them. My people. They walked until they fell and died. We buried them. One by one. We saw the hare pellets around the houses. We saw the tracks where hare feet had chewed the earth to dust, we saw the green bitten off to the ground. But how could we know … later more Holdings went … Holdings farther south. We learned this much more, that the hares had some connection with the horror. We lost every Holding south of the Chumquivir. We began to FEEL the touches of the directing mind behind these attacks. We named that mind Haribu. Haribu Haremaster. That’s all we know.”

  Aleytys turned her head and examined his face. “What’s wrong?” she said quietly.

  He hesitated. She sensed a touch of embarrassment then he said, “I split off a ghost.”

  “I don’t understand.” When he didn’t explain, she sighed and sat up. “Enough of that. What do you think of Chwereva Company?”

  “Why?” She felt surprise, curiosity and a touch of contempt stir in him.

  “We—Hunters Inc., I mean—we think there’s a strong possibility that Ghwereva is involved with this Haribu of yours. At least, someone inside Chwereva is conspiring to clear off the watuk population from this world and open it up for new ownership. Haribu was certainly waiting for us at the port. I don’t know yet just how the connection runs, but there are things that make it sure.” She chuckled. “Which you will not ask about, if you please. We all have our privacies.”

  He was puzzled, ignoring her attempt at humor. “The Eight Families wouldn’t allow Chwereva to attack us. Even a hint of that and the Company would be dissolved. The Families protect their own.” His eyes moved restlessly about the shadowy garden. “The Vodufa society contracted with Chwereva for this world. The only immigrants permitted are strict Vodufa. Except Chwereva employees, of course, and they’re only grudgingly allowed. Why should anyone else want this world?” Curiosity drove back the chill and he seemed briefly more human. “The Vodufa got it cheap since there were no large concentrations of minerals. It’s a light-metal world, no good for high-tech groups, perfect for Vodufa because of their hatred of technology and their plans for a pure society, a return to the old ways of the stalwart and noble originators of the race.”

  Aleytys laughed at the scorn in his voice. “That explains why the ones responsible for this attack have used such indirect means to clear the world. A couple of stingships could burn you all out of existence in moments.”

  “Why attack us?” he repeated.

  “Just have to ask Haribu that when w
e find him.”

  The surge of life grayed out of him. When he spoke, his voice was dull and tired. “Not much time to find him. In a day or two the hares will be hundreds deep around Kiwanji. The psi-screen will hold awhile, but the men inside?” He rubbed trembling hands together. “How long will it take them to wear out?”

  Aleytys shivered. She stroked her temples and grimaced when she felt no response. “I’ve read the Chwereva reports. Plotting the direction of the walks told you nothing. And the explorations you Rangers made have turned up no other form of intelligence.” She paused, then grinned. “Except a children’s tale of a wise old tree. No truth in that, I suppose.”

  “We looked and found no tree.”

  His serious answer surprised a laugh out of her. “You’re certainly thorough.” She sobered. “Is there anything else? Anything you can tell me that wasn’t in the reports, or you haven’t had time to report yet? Feelings? Little things apparently insignificant? Wild guesses?”

  She could feel him prodding at his memories, could feel a growing impatience and a growing sense of frustration. “Nothing,” he said slowly. Then he lifted his head. “Except … coming back across the Jinolimas from the mapping swing this time, I saw hares coming down from the mountains.”

  “So?”

  “There were no hares in the mountains before.”

  “Ah!” She felt a glow of excitement. “Any other Rangers come in recently? Have they too seen hares where no hares should be?”

  He was on his feet and for a moment he stood over her, forgetting his dislike of her. “The first walk,” he said. “It was there, by the Chumquivir. And it was by the Chumquivir I saw them four days ago. And I never thought of that. I never thought of that.” He stretched his arms toward the empty sky, toward the jewel band of the moonring. “Ahhh! Meme Kalamah be blessed, it’s a chance. A chance!” He ran to the door, turned there. “I have to go, Hunter. Thanks.” He plunged through the drapes. A moment later she heard the outer door of the apartment slam shut.