If she could fulfill her responsibilities toward Grauel and Barlog ... She was stricken by an old guilt. "Whatever else I may do, Balbrach, there is one task I am compelled to undertake upon the homeworld. In one sense, now that the Serke have been overcome, I no longer have any excuse for delaying."
The Redoriad most senior awarded her a baffled look, confused by her body language. Marika had ceased to be silth. She had lapsed into the upper Ponath savage she had been as a pup. Balbrach said, "I sense that some old haunt has recalled itself to you."
"You know my background. You know I never completely rejected it. Nor have my two voctors, my packmates, who have been with me since we escaped the nomads the Serke sent down upon our homeland. It has taken us all our lives to avenge our packmates. But with that done, we still owe them one obligation. And we cannot complete that without returning to the place where they died." She tried to explain a Mourning to Balbrach. The Redoriad could not encompass the savage practice. It was unlike anything in the silth experience. But she managed better than most because of her own rural background. Most silth would have mocked the notion of rites for a band of savages.
"I wish you could engineer it so you did not have to do this thing, Marika. I wish you could stay here and never again venture homeward. But I cannot presume to tell you what to do. I can only warn you of the dangers to your person."
Marika nodded. "Here we are. This is the place from which the vessel was controlled. Where their equivalent of the Mistress of the Ship was posted."
The chamber was large. It had three separate levels, with seating for forty beings. Most of the chairs faced screens similar to those meth used for communications. Balbrach said, "It looks like an oversize comm center."
"Look here." Marika touched a switch. One of the screens assumed life. A creature peered out at them. Balbrach made a startled sound when it began talking. The sounds it made were more liquid and round than any that could be formed by the meth mouth and tongue.
"That is one ugly beast," Balbrach said in an attempt at humor. "Such a flat face. Like someone smashed it in with a frying pan. And no fur, except on top. It looks like a badly deformed pup. Look at those ears. They are ears, are they not?"
"I suspect so. They are taller than we are, in the main, judging from the size of their chairs and doorways. That one seems to be male. The one in the background behind him, though, may be female."
"Do you have any idea what he is saying?"
"No. At a guess, this is a recorded report to whoever finds the ship. This is the reason the Serke were certain someone would come. As it progresses you will see what appears to be a report about what crippled the ship, followed by regular reports on the fates of individual crew members as they perished."
"You could tell all that?"
"Some things do not need words. A picture says more."
"True." Balbrach turned from the screen. "So. What are your plans?"
"As I said. I will go home briefly. I will assemble a team to study the ship. I will close out my life there. I think it will be my last visit, unless I go home to die. I will leave soon, to arrive before anyone who slips off with the news. Can High Night Rider carry darkships and Mistresses who have had to loan their bath?"
"If necessary. That leaves me with only one question, Marika. Perhaps the most important question of all."
"Yes?"
"What about Starstalker?"
It was a question Marika had been avoiding, even within her mind. Starstalker had not been among the Serke voidships destroyed. "What about Starstalker? I do not know. I think that will have to answer itself. Possibly at a time and place of their choosing."
III The first rest stop on the path home came at the former baseworld. Marika drifted in through space scattered with broken voidships and dead silth. One third of all voidfaring silth lost. One third of the best and brightest of all silth. And the warlock had not had to lift a paw.
What would the disaster mean to the mirror project?
She took the wooden darkship down to her old camp. And there she found more of the same, twisted darkships and decomposing corpses. The Serke had been thorough. She walked with her memories of her years there, rested as best she could with haunted dreams, then climbed to the stars again, running out hours ahead of High Night Rider and the survivors of the struggle.
Her thoughts kept turning to Starstalker. What had become of High Night Rider's littermate and the one or two ordinary Serke darkships that remained unaccounted for? Nothing could be found of them at the baseworld, and they had not participated in the counterattack upon the system of their exile.
Were they on the run again, that last dozen or so? Had they another hiding place still? Would Starstalker's survival leave a hope where she wanted all hope slain?
Marika felt very old when her home sun materialized and she saw her birthworld again. Very old and very useless. Yet she was convinced that she was far from playing out the role that had been decreed for her by the All. Beyond the few remaining tasks imposed upon her by circumstance lay her own life. She might yet have something for herself, if she was not still a tool of fate.
She directed her darkship toward the Hammer.
Bagnel met her in the airlock. He directed brethren to care for her companions. The moment they were alone, he said, "The news is spreading already. You have destroyed the rogues."
Baffled, she asked, "How can that be? I must be the first ship back."
"You came back. That was evidence enough. It was on every radio network within minutes of your coming out of the Up-and-Over. At least that speculation. So. Did you do it?"
"We destroyed most of them. But it was very expensive. There will be little joy of it. I am exhausted, trying to beat the news home. And I'm depressed, old friend. Yet I am elated too. For once and all I have refuted the Jiana accusation. I have led the race out of its darkest hour."
"Have you?"
"What?"
"I don't like the look of you, Marika. There is a new darkness behind your eyes. It is the darkness I saw there when you were young."
Marika was not pleased. "It must be the darkness that comes of battle, Bagnel. It will be a long time before I can shake my memories of my meeting with Bestrei. There was darkness incarnate, for all her nobility."
"There is an old saying among the meth with whom I spent my puphood. It goes, 'We become that which we would destroy.' "
"I've heard it before. It's not always true. I will not become a new Bestrei."
"You're much more. You're a thing that cannot be understood. There has been much discussion of you in your absence. Undertaken in complete confidence that you would succeed in doing what you have done. That discussion has been underlaid by fear of Marika, the wild silth, the dark-walking sister with no allegiance and no limit to her power. I know you will do what you will do and nothing I can say will shift your course an inch. So I will only beg of you, be careful. The frightened do desperate things."
"So I have been warned already. Yet I have been given no specifics."
"There are no specifics to be had. At least by those of us who might be tempted to relate them to their target. Only rumors."
"What of Kublin and the rogues?"
"They have been quiet. Surprisingly so. Again, though, there have been rumors. That they have been preparing for your return, come you in triumph or defeat. It is said that they are convinced that by killing you they can start a scramble for control of the alien ship that will so embroil the attentions of the dark-faring silth that they will be left with a free paw here at home. I have a feeling their estimate is close to the truth. The rumor mill also has much to say about undercover planning in various Communities for an effort to seize and exploit the alien."