Bestrei tried to force it back. But wounded herself, with one bath wounded and another dead, she could not withstand Marika's greater strength.
Silth screams filled the otherworld.
Before long the Serke voidship was a fiery meteor plunging toward the surface of the planet.
The song of Bestrei was sung.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I
Marika neither mourned the Serke champion nor waited for her dying to end. She gripped Bestrei's great black ghost tightly and drove it at the alien starship.
The suppressor suits worn by the brethren were powerful, but they could not withstand the great black. Images of insects in campfire coals crossed Marika's mind as she listened to dying cries haunting the otherworld.
She reached out to her allies-those who had not yet vanished into the Up-and-Over-and summoned them back to the struggle. Bestrei is no more, cowards! Come! Let us put an end to this tale.
Marika directed her darkship to orbit, following Bestrei, watching as the Serke's titanium voidship heated white hot and began to burn. She felt those on the planet below pause, watch the glow streak across their sky, and realize what it meant. She reached, pulled the great black toward her.
Could she force it down there, to the surface itself, to complete the conquest of the brethren? She tried, but the black's resistance was too much for her. She did not have the strength to overcome its will to avoid large masses. But she believed she could force it down if she were fresh.
She released it with a stroke of gratitude. It flashed away across the void to resume its place on the edge of the system.
Marika sent her allies down to complete the subjugation of the planet. She drifted across to the alien starship and forced her way inside. The last minutes before she succeeded were desperate ones, for she had no strength left and was beyond help from the senior bath and her golden fluid-even had the bath had strength enough to leave her station. Had she tried to descend to the planet's surface she would have followed Bestrei as a shooting star.
She led her huntresses and bath into halls filled with breathable air. The moment they were safe she sat down, her back against metal, and sighed. "That was close. As close as ever I want to get."
It was very strange in there. Very spartan and spare, all metal and cold and electronic lighting and the hollow sound of feet shuffling on deckplates. Her curiosity was intense but she hadn't the strength to pursue it. "Grauel. Barlog," she whispered. "I must rest. Stand watch. Please."
The bath, except their senior, had collapsed into sleep already.
Grauel and Barlog shared their remaining ammunition and stood guard, though they themselves were near collapse from exhaustion. Marika had drawn upon them as well as her bath.
Marika wakened ten hours later, feeling little better than when she had closed her eyes. Barlog was snoring. Grauel had the watch. The bath were all still asleep. "Any trouble?" Marika asked.
"None yet," Grauel replied. "Not a sign of life. But this place makes me nervous. It vibrates all the time, and makes sounds you cannot hear unless you listen. It makes me think of putting my ear against someone's stomach and listening to what is going on inside. It makes me feel as if I am inside the belly of some mythological monster."
When Marika listened she could hear and feel what Grauel meant. It was disconcerting. She opened to the All, seeking those who had come to the system with her.
Dead ships were adrift everywhere. A disaster? She counted carefully. There were only ten derelict or missing. Not as bad as she had feared. But only ten? Was that not disaster enough? That was almost half the force she had brought. A massive loss of dark-faring silth. Virtually every void-faring Community would be plunged into Mourning.
And the expense of victory did not stop totally with a count of darkships lost. The survivors down below, upon the planet's surface, resting and inventorying what had been taken, numbered only enough to cobble together crews for seven or eight darkships. The fall of the Serke might mark the end of an era in more ways than one.
"Is there anything to eat?" Marika asked. "Did anyone think to bring anything in? I'm ravenous." The struggle had consumed her body's energy reserves.
"There is cold meat," Grauel replied. "The bath remembered to bring it in, but I have found no way to cook it."
Marika was amused by a vision of nomads cooking over a dung fire in the middle of the floor of an electric kitchen. Neither she nor any of those with her had any idea what anything aboard the alien might do.
"Did we take any captives who know anything about the ship?"
Grauel shrugged. "I'm not silth, Marika. I can't communicate with those below."
"Of course. It was foolish of me to ask. Get some rest now. I'm going exploring."
"Marika ... "
"Give me your ammunition. I'll be fine."
Grauel did not argue, which indicated just how far she and Grauel had extended themselves. Marika moved the ammunition from Grauel's weapon to her own, then settled down to gnaw on cold, half-cooked preserved meat. Her stomach rumbled a greeting as sustenance finally arrived.
Having eaten, she reached out to the planet and tracked down a Mistress who was alert enough to be touched. She sent a series of queries and learned that only a pawful of Serke had been taken captive. Few of the rogue brethren had survived either. There had been a lot of anger in the struggle down there, and each death scream of another allied darkship had heightened the fury of the attackers. The majority of the prisoners were bonds. They would know little or nothing.
Some who had been interviewed were unaware that they were not still upon the meth homeworld.
But we did capture the records of the investigation of the alien ship, apparently intact.
That is wonderful, Marika responded. I will come down to examine them as soon as my bath are rested enough to make the descent. We will want hot food, and lots of it, when we arrive. She broke touch and began to wander through the dead ship.
She found dead brethren everywhere. Those who had not gotten themselves into their suppressor suits had begun to bloat, to stink. The first order of business would be to get rid of them before they polluted the environment permanently. She stepped over and around them, ignoring them, as she examined alien hardware.
The ship was a Jiana, she reflected. Or, if not a doomstalker, certainly accursed. Twice those it sustained had been slaughtered by enemies from without. She sped an admonitory prayer to the All, suggesting that that not be made a tradition.
The starship was a tradermale's dream. It recalled the wonder she had felt the first time she had entered the control cabin of a dirigible, now so long ago the moment seemed excised from another life. The line of descent from that crude array to this was obvious at the control stations.
Much of what she saw was recognizable in terms of function, if not of actual operation. She saw several places where tradermales had made repairs and brought parts of the starship back to life.
The subliminal throb of the vessel continued, almost unnoticed, like her own heartbeat. The ship was crippled but far from dead. She wondered how much the rogue brethren had hoped to restore it. There had to be limits to what they could comprehend.
How broad those limits, though? They had had more than two decades to study it.
She wandered for more than two hours, growing ever more awed by the ship's size. In that time she was unable to see everything that had been restored, and that part of the vessel represented but a fraction of the whole. She could duck through her loophole, capture a ghost, and sail through vast sections still unreclaimed, seeing ten thousand wonders that were absolute mysteries.