One sixth of a cycle later...
Chiana sighed and gazed out the large port windows of the center chamber. Sitting on the bay seats where Crichton so often sat to think, she looked out over Moya's massive back but the stars still held no answers for her. It had been sixty-two solar days since her, Sikozu, and John witnessed the attack in the refreshment house. The theory that the Shrike was a twin or a clone no longer satisfied her, she was sure the man had been Berret. The only explanation she could come up with herself was that Berret had been recaptured instead of being killed. Now re-collared, he was enforcing for the Black Syndicate once again.
The others had grilled her mercilessly about her first meeting with Berret. She gave them as little information as possible and she absolutely refused to talk about anything else that had happened to her in her time away from the Leviathan. Aeryn and Rygel reacted badly to the news that Berret had been an Enforcer and D'argo hissed angrily, Luxans having an intense hatred of assassins. Sikozu lectured the group about her knowledge of Shrikes, while to her annoyance; Noranti kept interrupting to insert little known facts about the ancient Shrike warriors whose name the Syndicate stole for their assassins. The group fell into such heated debates among themselves that they didn't notice when Chiana got up and left the room... preferring to be by herself with her thoughts for awhile. John found her later and told her it was for the best that the assassin hadn't noticed her, as he might have been reprogrammed to kill her on sight. Anyway, the point was moot as they were heading away from that commerce planet and the more distance they put between them and this Berret, the better for all concerned.
Chiana found over the next few days she couldn't settle for that. Her thoughts kept turning back to Berret.
After almost a sixth of a cycle, he was all she could think about. She would rather have seen him dead then a slave to the Syndicate again. His time for freedom had been so short lived she anguished.
After a time her thoughts would come full circle and she'd be back to wondering if it really was him at all that she saw. It was getting to the point where she had to find out for sure or drive herself insane.
Idly, to give herself something to do, she began to plan her trip to find Berret. Knowing the others would never willing let her go, she prepared in secret. Choosing a seldom-used Transport Pod, she slowly stocked it with food and water. Every once in a while, she brought the occasional item of spare clothing aboard and stowed it away out of sight. Aeryn routinely kept all the Pods equipped with spare weapons so there was no worry there. She'd originally meant the activity just to keep her mind busy; she had no idea how she could get away without the others eventually catching up to her. There was no way a Transport Pod could out run Aeryn's Prowler or D'argo's ship.
Oddly enough, things took one more step to working out in her direction. Moya was now traveling back through the same system. They would be in Transport Pod range of the planet for another two solar days still. That left her only with her one big problem... how to keep the others from coming after her and dragging her back? She needed a distraction, but she couldn't think of a single thing that would work long enough.
She set her head back down on her arms and went back to gazing out the window and put her mind to the problem some more.
The Goddess smiled on her the next day... well, sort of. She got her distraction in a big way.
"Peacekeepers!" Pilot's alarmed voice rang from every holo-comm on every tier.
"Where?" Aeryn's voice shot back.
Pilot's arms flailed at his controls in the hologram a microt before he answered.
"Astern... 500 microts out," he reported. "Three Marauders. Closing fast."
Without thinking further, Chiana bolted from her quarters and sprinted toward the hanger bay.
"Pilot! Get ready for immediate Starburst," Crichton ordered.
"Moya is charging calorics now... Starburst in 200 microts."
"Shake it up, Pilot," John added nervously.
The time crawled by as the crew watched the Marauders grow closer to Moya on the holo-display tank. Finally Moya began to pulse with building energy.
"I hate these cold start-ups," grumbled the Luxan, "They always seem to take forever."
"Hold on to your shorts, Darg... we're about ready to get outta here," John quipped.
Pilot flickered back into life on the holo-comm.
"Twenty-five microts to Starburst," he announced. "... Twenty microts to Starburst."
"I hate Starburst," Rygel grumbled as he grabbed onto a control panel for support.
Pilot cut short his countdown suddenly, "Commander? Somebody has just launched a Transport Pod from landing bay one."
"What?" the group as a whole exclaimed.
"A Pod has been launched and is now drifting just outside of Moya without power," Pilot replied.
"Frell!" swore Aeryn. "Can we snag it and drag it along behind us through Starburst?"
"No, it is outside Moya's Starburst field at the moment."
"Who the hell can it be?" asked Crichton, "Can Moya reposition herself to bring it into the field?"
Pilot shook his massive head. "No, Starburst in seven microts. It's too late to abort... Moya must go or cause herself irreparable damage."
"Damn it!" John swore while banging a fist on a control pedestal.
"I wager it's that Sikozu bitch," griped the Hynerian. "She jumped ship to betray us to the Peacekeepers. I never trusted her for a microt!"
Before anyone could reply, the lights and control panels dimmed, the front view screen flared into the brilliance of Starburst... and Moya and her crew where somewhere else.
From the drifting Pod, Chiana watched the Leviathan become a living creature of light and then fold herself into the fabric of space-time. The light nearly blinded her naked eyes but it was wondrous thing to behold. As she was faced with the sudden emptiness of space, her heart froze for an instant as what she had done fully hit her. She'd just willing ran away from the only safe home she'd ever known... again. She began to panic slightly as the thought hit her and she wrapped the solar blanket tighter around herself as she sat in the shuttle's cabin. The temperature slowly dropping as the ship cooled toward absolute zero.
She reminded herself that she made her choice and now she would have to deal with the consequences.
She sat quietly in the dark watching the place where Moya had been, slowly counting off the remaining 300 microts. Just as she reached zero, she saw them coming. The three Peacekeeper Marauders thundered by her, keeping course with Moya's Starburst vector, hoping to pick the Leviathan transport up on scanners sectors away when she came out of Starburst. Chiana let out a pent up breath, as the PK ships didn't detect her powered down Pod as they passed. She gave them a couple hundred more microts to get out of immediate sensor range and then slowly began to power up the craft. She was glad to finally have the heat back on and when the Pod reached full power she laid in a course for the commence planet where she saw Berret and set the autopilot.
She realized that Berret or the assassin that looked like Berret might not even be still on the planet. Even so she thought she might be able to learn enough to follow him to his next destination. Failing that, she knew where she'd originally found him... though she didn't relish the though of returning to that world to look for him in the least. She leaned back in the pilot's chair and let her thoughts roam.
She wondered again at what the urgency was to find him. Yes, she owed him her life and she did feel a little responsible for him, but this was so unlike her. She wouldn't normally put herself on the line for anyone... especially someone she barely knew. The image of Crichton before he left for the Gammak base came to her. When she had tried to thank John the only way she knew how, he'd stopped her and told her when she found someone else in need to "pass it on." She told herself that's what she was doing... passing it on. Normally lying wasn't a difficult thing for her; she could usually do it with a straight face and be believed most of the time. It was hard to do it to yourself though.
Frowning, she had to admit there were also the dreams she'd been having. She had never seen the Shrike without his armor, but she dreamed of his body pressed up against her. Of his lips sucking greedily at hers as they drove each other wild with pleasure. Those rough dangerous hands gently holding her body.
On waking the dreams seemed somewhat silly, as the one time she kissed him on impulse during their escape from the Syndicate, it left the man stunned and mystified. She could hardly believe the man knew nothing about something so simple as kissing... but she also found it oddly intriguing. She thought educating the man could be highly interesting. Still, she'd had the dreams many times over the last few weekens and they left her aching... not only in her body, but also in her heart a bit. She supposed that it could be just her missing D'argo, but Jool seemed to have most of his attention now. Anyway, she realized and accepted that there could be no going back for her and the Luxan warrior.
She pushed the thought of the erotic dreams from her mind, at least for the moment. Right now she needed to start thinking about a plan of action before she arrived on the commerce planet. If Berret was alive and back with the Syndicate, she had to think of a way to rescue him again... without getting killed in the process. Or worse yet, getting killed by him in the process. If he were hiring himself out as an assassin, she'd have to find him and talk him out of it. Especially seeing she was sure that if the Syndicate got wind of what he was up too, they would come looking for him with a vengeance. So many possible angles, she felt it was going to be impossible to plan for most of them, let alone all of them. She got herself out a writing pad and started to jot down scenarios and her possible solutions so she could easily keep track of them. You never knew what could be helpful later. One grim scenario raised its ugly head and perplexed, Chiana tapped her writing stylus against one cheek as she struggled to think of a possible solution.
"What would Aeryn do?" she muttered out loud. Sometimes that helped.
Berret paused inside the lobby of the central government affairs offices and sighed inwardly. Eilaan people on their own urgent errands moved automatically around the tall Shrike without noticing him. He stepped off to one side to a drinking fountain and bent to use it. This had been the sixth eradication of an Eilaan official in the last two months. The man he had just killed in his tiny cubbyhole-like office in the basement levels of the building had been in charge of public housing for the Zem'Fury mine workers. Why the bookish little man had to die was somewhat of a mystery to the Shrike. He seemed relatively unimportant as far as government officials go; still the Zem'Fury cell leader had insisted that the fellow be taken out.
Try as he might, Berret could see no tactical logic to the operations that he was asked to carry out for the rebellion, then again he also knew little about running a resistance cell. He assumed there had to be a reason for what he was asked to do. The eight police officers he killed he understood if they were guilty of illegally executing Zem'Fury workers for simply being in a restricted area of the city after curfew. The evil should be punished for their crimes... the Scarren Syndicate had made him a firm believer in that philosophy. The rest of the eradications made no discernable sense to the assassin. He saw no clue as to how they should fit together and helped further the cause to free the Zem'Fury from their persecution. The Zem'Fury never told him much at all about what results their work produced or whether they were making headway or loosing ground in their fight. He would report to the cell leader and then return to his single room quarters in the hide-away after killing one Eilaan or another, no one would speak to him for a few solar days and then one day the insectiod leader would appear with a new name and another lethal request. The only thing he was sure about was that they seemed to be doing a very good job of throwing the ruling assembly into chaos, security was getting tighter and it was becoming more difficult to get to certain targets the cell leader picked. He was actually surprised at the ease of this last assignment. Then again, the victim was practically a nobody in the government hierarchy. The only thing remotely impressive about him or his job was where his office was located. Still, even with the stricter security measures, it was easy for the Shrike to slip in and out with the busy flow of humanoid traffic. He sighed more deeply and rubbed at his eyes, trying to ignore the gnawing pain from the microbes demanding to be fed again. He casually exited the building, wearing civilian clothing he blended in with most of the Eilaan population as long as none of them looked too closely at him. His skin wasn't quite the right tone and most Eilaan had purple eyes, not blue like his. Still it was a universal constant that busy people involved in their own affairs paid little attention to what was going on around them.
He allowed himself to relax slightly once he was away from the scene of the assassination. He headed a few streets over toward a vast market place with the intension of picking up some foodstuffs. The supplies the Zem'Fury stocked at the hide away where poorly suited to his metabolism and the microbes' demands had started to become worse as time wore on. The Zem'Fury leader insisted that he remain hidden as much as possible to avoid detection, and not leave their headquarters whenever he was not out on an operation. The precaution seemed a wise one to Berret, but it left him with little or no opportunity to stock up on the proper food items for humanoids... and it also gave him little contact or news from the outside world. Without a translator, he was unable to communicate with a majority of the Zem'Fury rebels except for the cell leader and occasionally his second in command. An insectiod he labeled Swirl because of the slight whirl of discoloration on his exoskeleton. The Zem'Fury didn't use normal names among outsiders as their true names consisted of mandible clicks, limb positions, and scents. They never offered him any names so the leader was simply "the leader" and Swirl was "Swirl" to Berret. There was little point in assigning names to any of the others as he had little to do with them. They didn't seem to be interested in learning his name either. Or rather, the name he called himself, as Berret still knew nothing about his past other then his time with the Syndicate. The collar seemed to have wiped out who he was before becoming an Enforcer.
The Zem'Fury referred to him as "The Shrike" or "Shrike" through the translator, though the leader would sometime call him "friend" while speaking directly to him. He did learn the name in Zem'Fury speech they called him was produced by lifting one arm while clenching the fingers, or what passed for fingers on a Zem'Fury, into a fist accompanied with two mandible clicks followed by a small slashing motion with the arm. Not much of a name, but he guessed that the Zem'Fury didn't have a set word pattern for Syndicate Enforcer in their language. It also eluded Berret to as what sex an individual Zem'Fury was, or even if their species was separated by any sexual classifications.
Several marked patrol vehicles sped by a few microts later heading for the building Berret had just left, the drone of the sirens breaking him out of his roaming thoughts. It seemed the body had been found already. He continued his unhurried stroll through the market place and suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He was positive he was being followed.
He stopped to nonchalantly look in several shop windows, using the reflection to scan the crowds behind him. He was use to the clumsy methods the Zem'Fury rebels used when they tailed him on assignments but this was something different. Whoever this was, it left him with the hint of something professional... though he could see no signs of whoever it might be. He frowned to himself; the Eilaan or Roentgen would simply grab him and not play spy games if they suspected him of wrongdoing. Peacekeepers then? The police force could have called for help from the PKs. But that led back to the same reasoning then, why not just capture him if that were the case. "The Syndicate?" he thought next. That would be more likely, they might have tracked him down and sent another Shrike to bring him back... or eradicate him, which was the more probable rationalization to the feeling of being watched.
Either way, it was a new game. He dared not lead whoever it was back to the rebel hideout. He moved on through the market place heading for the shop he normally bought his supplies at, not wanting to arouse his shadow's suspicions should this not be the first time they followed him. Given enough time, his tail would make a mistake and reveal himself to the ex-Enforcer. If it were another Shrike, he would have to move fast and attack without warning if he wanted to defeat him. He was at a serious disadvantage without armor or suitable weapons for dealing with a Syndicate assassin at the time. Surprise would be his only edge and he would have to use it effectively. If it was an Enforcer and the Syndicate had found him, and he survived the confrontation, he would have to leave the commerce world quickly despite his promise to help the Zem'Fury. His subconscious began to plan his escape from the planet as he entered the shop.
Somewhere behind him, he could feel the eyes on his back.
Chiana congratulated herself. She'd only been planet side a mere two solar days and she'd already located Berret. She'd originally expected the search to at least take her the better part of a weeken before she turned a lead up. She pushed aside the thought that it had been sheer luck that she ran across him while searching the market square for a suitable place to eat. She looked up from reading a refreshment house's daily menu and there he was crossing the street opposite her. Her eyes seemed to have been naturally drawn to him like a magnet. She pulled her dark scarf tighter over her head to conceal her white hair as she walked, keeping parallel to the tall assassin across the busy street. She was sure it was Berret and she sighed in relief as she discovered that he wore no control collar again, his neck being visible because of his Eilaan clothing. Berret strolled casually along as if he hadn't a care in the world. At one point he stopped in front of a huge glass window. Other people wouldn't have noticed but Chiana instantly detected the slight stiffening and tension in his back. The telltale give away that he was aware he was being followed. She knew he was using the glass to scan the crowd behind him and she fought the urge to dash across the street and reveal herself. For a moment she had the brief image of her hurling herself into his welcoming arms. But she realistically knew that there was little likelihood of that happening. He would probably be shocked to see her but she doubted that his greeting would be anywhere near an emotional one. The Shrike probably had not given her a second thought since escaping the Scarren kingpin's stronghold. She decided the best way to proceed would be to observe Berret for awhile just to be sure he wasn't being controlled somehow and then approach him cautiously. It occurred to her not for the first time that he might not be happy to see her again or want a reunion with her.
She rolled her eyes at herself as she realized she was hyper-analyzing everything again. For all appearances, Berret seemed to be a normal person out shopping... not at all like anyone under someone else's control or an assassin looking for a target. She began to feel better about the thought of approaching him. Who's to say that Berret wouldn't be interested in seeing her again? Anyway, after what they went through together, you'd think she'd have the right to see how he getting along since the escape.
Berret entered a store and Chiana took the opportunity to cross the street. She milled about in front of the place appearing to inspect the produce in the outside bins while she watched Berret through the shop's big windows. The man walked up and down the isles picking out various items. When he was finished he brought them over to the counter and paid for them. Chiana noticed he used the commerce world's own type of paper currency rather that universal Peacekeeper credit chips. Berret was maintaining a low profile by not paying with credit chips that might give someone a cause to notice and remember him. However, the paper currency would be of no use to him if he suddenly had to jump planet and run. She hoped he was smart enough to keep a ready stash of credit chips handy on his person in case of just such an emergency. The clerk expertly packaged his goods after he paid for them and handed them back to the assassin.
Berret then headed for a side door on the opposite side of the building from where Chiana was standing and headed down the side street.
She scurried around the produce bins and then struggled through the crowds moving along the street in front of the shop. She made the corner in time to see Berret's back a block and a half away, the Shrike was moving at a fairly fast pace. He made a right turn and disappeared from her sight again.
Chiana flat out ran down the street, her scarf sliding backwards nearly off her head before she caught it and pulled it back in place. The long dark gray coat she wore slapped at her lower legs as she ran. Her palm pulse pistol threaten to jump out of the loop holster on her hip so she had to finish the run with one hand keeping the weapon in place.
She slowed down just before she got to the point she judge Berret had made his turn at. Instead of another street it turned out to be a garbage littered alleyway. The Nebari peered down the narrow dimly lit lane but could not see the end of it due to all the debris and abandoned ground vehicles, furniture, and appliances there.
"Alleys... I hate following people into alleys," she muttered to herself. "Unless its one I picked out for a reason before hand," she mentally added.
Having no other choice but to follow, she cautiously entered the passage. She cat-footed around the larger objects while trying to avoid stepping on any of the other trash that would make noise and give her away. She quickly lost sight of the street she came off of and she could no longer hear the bustle of the market. She eased her way around a large trash bin and was suddenly startled to find Berret's package of groceries sitting in plain view in the middle of the alley.
Bewildered, she looked about the constricted lane but saw no clue as to where Berret had gone.
Almost too late she felt the slight change in air pressure, something big was falling on her from above.
Chiana automatically hit the ground, tucked and rolled. She groaned inwardly as she felt the pistol slide free from its loose loop holster and clatter off somewhere into the trash-strewn alley with her roll. Behind her, Berret hit the ground where she had been a split microt before. The vicious flying blade-kick meant for her head slamming into the trash bin instead. Metal groaned and dented from the impact of the ex-Enforcer's foot. The Shrike growled a low curse and spun to meet Chiana as she rolled to her feet. The girl didn't even have time to catch her breath or speak before Berret seemed to move toward her like a runaway Transport Pod - the man was incredibly fast!
Her instincts took over and saved her again. Without her thinking about it, her leg muscles coiled and launched her over the top of the oncoming Shrike in a high somersault. Berret's fist went on to smash into a wooden crate and demolished it.
Chiana came down from her aerial maneuver and landed slightly off. An empty can caught her heel and rolled, causing her to stumble as she tried to regain her balance. The mishap cost her dearly, allowing the assassin enough time to turn and seize his prey. Steel-hard fingers dug painfully into her shoulder and she suddenly felt herself being hurled into the brick wall of the building behind her. She struck hard and for an instant saw stars. When her vision cleared, she looked up and saw the silently snarling face of Berret mere henta from her own, his eyes glinting eerie silver in the dim alley light from the microbe augmentation.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his right hand cock back, his hand and fingers held stiff and board straight as he prepared to slam the hard edge of his palm against her temple... killing her instantly.
"BERRET! STOP!" she managed to cry out before the blow fell. The Shrike held her so that her body pinned her right hand behind her against the wall, with her free left hand she franticly clawed at her scarf, pulling it off her head so he could clearly see her face. She didn't know that her voice alone was enough to give him pause. "Its me! Chiana!" she finished.
Even in a half-scream that voice was enough to make him hesitate. The voice that had sung to him in Arckatius' makeshift dungeon... the voice that had called to him in desperation from her cell, the voice that gave him the will to break free of the collar.
"Chiana?" he rasped, his throat suddenly gone dry. Still there was a hint of disbelieve in the rusty tone.
"Yeah, it me," she replied uneasily, Berret was still poised to kill.
The Shrike tilted his head to one side. His silver tinted eyes making him look more alien... more animal-like then she remembered. In the full light of Arckatius' headquarters they had been pale blue... like ancient ice. She remembered him telling her that the microbes were capable of altering his vision in low or bright light... or sometimes when in combat, enabling him to focus sharper and faster on a target. She did her best to relax in his iron hold and waited to see what he'd do next. Absentmindedly, she thought this was as far from the open-armed welcome she imagined as she could possibly get.
Berret leaned in close to her and inhaled deeply. She knew that he was using his heightened senses to positively identify her. Another thing that made him seem more animal-like. Up this close she could also see how haggard he looked compared to when she last saw him. He had been neglecting himself somehow.
Berret withdrew slightly and loosened his hold on the girl. His microbe-augmented sense of smell wasn't as acute as a Luxan's but he recalled the Nebari woman's scent very well. The only time he'd seen her, her face had been badly bruised from her beating at the hands of the bounty hunters, but this was truly her. He clearly remembered the way she smelled from when they embraced just before he shoved her into the escape capsule. Despite the look of unease and slight fear on her healed face, she was more beautiful then he had ever imagined.
"You're alive," he said, still not willing to believe that she was actually there.
"Yeah... surprise, so are you!" she replied nervously as she slowly moved away from the building wall she had been pinned against.
"Didn't you make it back to your friends?" Berret next asked. Chiana nodded her head in the affirmative. "Then what are you doing here?"
Chiana started to feel more relaxed as the silver slowly faded from Berret's eyes, making him look more normal.
"I came to find you?" she told him.
Berret actually took a step backwards in befuddlement. "Why?" he asked confused and bewildered.
Chiana told him about being in the refreshment house that day with Crichton and Sikozu.
Berret vividly recalled that instant with Chiana's crewmate. The fear in her bright green eyes, the weigh of the pistol in his hand, the feel of the trigger against his fingertip, the ugly voice in the back of his mind urging him to squeeze just a little harder on it... because what was one more sin to him?
In slow motion he saw the girl's thin lips move, then he heard her voice naming him for what he was. The hated label silencing the itching voice in his head, he was able to ease off the trigger and lower the pistol before he succumbed to the urge.
Berret suddenly wasn't sure how he felt about Chiana witnessing him like that.
The Nebari girl went on then to relate the months of heavy thinking she did and her decision to search for him despite the possible danger.
She wasn't sure what to expect but she thought Berret would at least be touched by her attempt to find him. Instead he surprised her by abruptly saying,
"You have to go back. You must leave here now."
"What?" Chiana sputtered, "I came all this way..."
"You can't stay!" Berret cut her off.
Chiana's dark eyebrows knitted together, somewhere between confusion and anger. Her black lips grew tight together like a flower bud as she prepared to debate him. "Who did he think he was?" she thought.
"There is a... 'civil war' coming here," Berret tried to explain. He was so hesitate that Chiana was sure that he didn't quite understand what was going on himself. "It won't be safe for you here," he added.
"Whatever's going on here... If you're part of it, I can help," she offered.
Berret shook his head looking even uneasier then before.
"You don't have the 'talent' for what needs to be done."
With that statement, Chiana was now sure that Berret had been responsible for all the other deaths she'd been hearing about since she landed. The whole port was in an uproar and they had searched her and her Transport Pod more thoroughly this time than the first time she was there with Crichton. Whatever Berret was mixed up in, she had the feeling that something wasn't right about it. The trouble was that Berret didn't have the life experience to see that as clearly as she did.
"You have to return to your friends," Berret said, bringing her out of her deliberation.
"That's going to be a problem," she answered.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you see..." said Chiana. For the first time she felt sure enough of their relationship to actually reach out and touch him. She lightly stroked his face. "I can't go back... I don't know where they are," she told him.
Berret stared back at her puzzled both at the contact and the comment.
"There was really nothing there for me anymore so I left. I left them to go find you... it was all I could think about for so long after I saw you and knew you were alive."
Berret mouth worked but nothing came out, he was totally speechless. This had the hint of a confession, something he should know about with all his time as a Syndicate Enforcer. He'd certainly wrung enough of them out of countless beings for the Scarren crime lord.
"Moya, Crichton, and the others, are gone," she continued as her hand gently caressed his cheek. Something no one had ever done before. The feeling was becoming disorienting to the assassin, but strangely he didn't want her to stop.
"I came to be with you," Chiana finally told him.
If there had been a chair behind him, Berret would have let himself fall into it. Now he truly didn't know what he should do.
Reluctantly he moved away from her so her warm hand wouldn't distract him from his train of thought.
"You came all the way back here," he repeated, " To be with me?"
Chiana nodded. "It seemed like something I hadda do," she told him.
Berret shook his head. "There are dangerous times coming here. The conflict here is escalating."
"Dangerous times?" Chiana asked with a questioning tilt of her head. "What the frell are you taking about? I've been here two days and I haven't seen any signs of a conflict."
"One of the three classes of beings who reside on this world is being oppressed by the other two," the Shrike attempted to explain. "They are little more then slaves... just as I was."
"Who? Which class of people?" Chiana inquired. "I haven't seen any signs of it."
Berret faltered. He knew the Zem'Fury rebels would not be pleased to learn of Chiana's arrival and search for him. They would be even less so if he gave out information to the Nebari girl.
"I can't tell you," Berret replied, "Its better if you just forget about me and leave."
The girl wasn't having anything to do with that suggestion. She took hold of Berret's upper arm to stop him from saying anything more. Stepping around in front of him, the tilt of her head increased and her eyes and tone of voice grew more serious.
"Hey! Its me," she exclaimed with Nebari stubbornness, "You can trust me."
The woman barely came up to his chest, but the determination in those dark eyes told Berret that it would be easier to move a mountain then dissuade the Nebari girl. Somewhere in the back of his mind he found it mildly amusing that a thief was telling an assassin he could trust her.
Knowing there would be no budging Chiana until he told her, Berret uneasily gave in.
"It's the Zem'Fury."
Chiana's head bobbed slightly in surprise and her eyes widened a touch.
"The Bug people?" she said, a small ironic smile lit her face.
Berret quickly outlined the Zem'Fury grievances and the wrongs that had been done to them. He touched as lightly as he could on his activities for the rebellion. As he talked the smile slowly fell from the gray girl's face. Even with just the bare basic information, the story didn't click with what she herself had observed.
Her finely honed instincts were telling her something wasn't right and the sudden chill she got up her spring-like Nebari spine told her it wasn't right in a big way. She'd always had a certain talent for detecting scams or cons and right then she had the feeling she might have walked into one that was over her head.
When Berret was finished. She reached for his closest hand, hoping that physical contact would help her reason with the man. She knew he wasn't going to like what she had to say.
" 'Ret, listen to me," she started. "Something isn't right here. There's no civil war coming to this commerce world. I think these Zem'Fury are using you..."
"You don't understand," he cut her off.
"Trust me, I do understand... more then you know."
"They are slaves!" he snapped. "You have no idea what that's like."
"I do..." she began once again.
Berret tore his hand out of hers. "No! You don't," he said in a hard voice. "You have been a prisoner, not a slave. You don't know what's its like to have someone else decide your fate, to be owned by someone else and have no control over your own life. You haven't see the things I have seen... or done the things I was made to do..." The Shrike suddenly stopped speaking as if realizing he made a mistake.
"Are you talking about them... or are you talking about you?" Chiana mildly asked.
Berret turned away unwilling to met her eyes.
"I do understand whether you believe me or not," she continued, "Living on Nebari Prime taught me all I need to know about what its like to be a slave with no freedom or will of your own."
Berret realized that he knew next to nothing about Chiana's prior life before meeting him. It had been uncalled for him to accuse her of not understanding.
He turned back to face her, still not quite meeting her eyes, he nodded, "My apologizes. I had no right to speak that way to you."
"Its all right," she told him. "I've had people say worse things to me."
He finally looked up to meet her gaze. "You still have to go," he repeated.
"I'll go, if you come with me," she countered.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I made a promise."
"Break it," she told him.
Berret looked at her and shook his head. "I can't do that either," he said, "Not unless my life or freedom depended on it... maybe not even then," he added after he had a chance to think more about it. "If I broke my word... I'd be no better then the Syndicate.
"Is it worth your freedom... or your life?" she exclaimed.
Berret shook his head in refusal; he wasn't about to change his mind that easily.
"Why?" Chiana asked, looking as if the weight of the entire planet had suddenly settled on her slim shoulders. Her pretty face grew darkly serious again. "Listen, 'Ret. These people wouldn't keep a promise to you if they had to," she explained. "Let's just forget about them and go... just the two of us. I can take you away from here and show you things you never knew existed. Some of the places I've been are so beautiful ... and the people so exciting. We can go on an adventure and live off our wits... or find a nice quiet place to lay low for a while until we don't want to anymore, and then go off and raise holy hezmana. There's a whole big universe out there and it can be ours for the taking. You just have to want to."
Berret suddenly found himself having some doubts about his decision. Chiana spoke with such zest and enthusiasm about what she described. He wasn't sure if it was her words or the thought of going off with her he found so alluring. Still, he'd given his word and chose a side in the Zem'Fury conflict. People had died at his hand. How could he justify walking away now?
She could tell by the look on his face that he was finally faltering in his stance. The doubts were showing.
"Chiana, I..." he began.
She cut him off before he could start gathering his thoughts and debate her further. She reached up and touched his cheek again, a dirty trick she knew because the Shrike still wasn't use to intimate contact, but at this point all was fair as far as she was concerned. Berret's eyelids fluttered for just a microt and she thought he might have made a small involuntary sigh but couldn't be sure, either way she knew her touch had the desired effect on the man - he stopped trying to think for a micron.
She gently ran her had down the side of his face to his collar-scarred neck. When she got to his shoulder, she gripped it firmly and shook him once to get his attention again. Sometimes you had to do that with males, distract them one microt and grab them by the mivonks the next.
"Listen," she said, "Let's get out of this alley and go somewhere quiet to talk. Give me just a few arns and I'll prove to you something's not right here. You can give me that much, can't cha?"
Berret pondered what to do. Chiana was insistent in her views and her desire to convince him. He was also keenly aware of the passing time. The Zem'Fury would soon begin to wonder where he was, and should they decide to come looking and find him with the Nebari girl, he was sure there would be trouble.
"All right, Chiana. We will go somewhere and talk as you wish," he said. At least that way he could get the girl out of sight if she refused to leave his company. "I don't want to rent a room here in the town as the Zem'Fury might have an informant on the rooming house staff. It would be ill if they found out you were here searching for me."
"No problem, I have the perfect place for a quiet talk," the girl responded. "The room service is frelled but the privacy can't be beat."
"Very well. Let's go then."
She stopped the Shrike from walking away by placing a hand against his chest.
"One more thing," she said firmly, "We deal."
Berret lifted one eyebrow to indicate he hadn't the slightest idea of what she was getting at.
"The deal is... I prove to you you've been lied too," she told him, "... you leave here with me. No more questions, no more debates. You trust me to take you away from here."
Berret thought the proposal over and it sounded reasonable. He agreed, but countered,
"If you don't prove what you claim to me, then you agree to leave and find your friends."
Chiana's full lips drew into a tight straight line as she considered the counter offer.
"Sounds fair enough... for now," she finally said, "Deal."
Before Berret could say anything more, she turned and after retrieving her weapon, led the way out of the alley.
The Shrike found that he didn't like the way Chiana had added the "for now" onto her accord to the pact.
He turned on a heel and followed her from the alley, letting her guide him to this quiet place they could talk. While they walked to their destination, Berret told her about how he managed to escape from Arckatius' headquarters. Half an arn later, they arrived back at her Transport Pod.
Chiana sighed and gazed out the large port windows of the center chamber. Sitting on the bay seats where Crichton so often sat to think, she looked out over Moya's massive back but the stars still held no answers for her. It had been sixty-two solar days since her, Sikozu, and John witnessed the attack in the refreshment house. The theory that the Shrike was a twin or a clone no longer satisfied her, she was sure the man had been Berret. The only explanation she could come up with herself was that Berret had been recaptured instead of being killed. Now re-collared, he was enforcing for the Black Syndicate once again.
The others had grilled her mercilessly about her first meeting with Berret. She gave them as little information as possible and she absolutely refused to talk about anything else that had happened to her in her time away from the Leviathan. Aeryn and Rygel reacted badly to the news that Berret had been an Enforcer and D'argo hissed angrily, Luxans having an intense hatred of assassins. Sikozu lectured the group about her knowledge of Shrikes, while to her annoyance; Noranti kept interrupting to insert little known facts about the ancient Shrike warriors whose name the Syndicate stole for their assassins. The group fell into such heated debates among themselves that they didn't notice when Chiana got up and left the room... preferring to be by herself with her thoughts for awhile. John found her later and told her it was for the best that the assassin hadn't noticed her, as he might have been reprogrammed to kill her on sight. Anyway, the point was moot as they were heading away from that commerce planet and the more distance they put between them and this Berret, the better for all concerned.
Chiana found over the next few days she couldn't settle for that. Her thoughts kept turning back to Berret.
After almost a sixth of a cycle, he was all she could think about. She would rather have seen him dead then a slave to the Syndicate again. His time for freedom had been so short lived she anguished.
After a time her thoughts would come full circle and she'd be back to wondering if it really was him at all that she saw. It was getting to the point where she had to find out for sure or drive herself insane.
Idly, to give herself something to do, she began to plan her trip to find Berret. Knowing the others would never willing let her go, she prepared in secret. Choosing a seldom-used Transport Pod, she slowly stocked it with food and water. Every once in a while, she brought the occasional item of spare clothing aboard and stowed it away out of sight. Aeryn routinely kept all the Pods equipped with spare weapons so there was no worry there. She'd originally meant the activity just to keep her mind busy; she had no idea how she could get away without the others eventually catching up to her. There was no way a Transport Pod could out run Aeryn's Prowler or D'argo's ship.
Oddly enough, things took one more step to working out in her direction. Moya was now traveling back through the same system. They would be in Transport Pod range of the planet for another two solar days still. That left her only with her one big problem... how to keep the others from coming after her and dragging her back? She needed a distraction, but she couldn't think of a single thing that would work long enough.
She set her head back down on her arms and went back to gazing out the window and put her mind to the problem some more.
The Goddess smiled on her the next day... well, sort of. She got her distraction in a big way.
"Peacekeepers!" Pilot's alarmed voice rang from every holo-comm on every tier.
"Where?" Aeryn's voice shot back.
Pilot's arms flailed at his controls in the hologram a microt before he answered.
"Astern... 500 microts out," he reported. "Three Marauders. Closing fast."
Without thinking further, Chiana bolted from her quarters and sprinted toward the hanger bay.
"Pilot! Get ready for immediate Starburst," Crichton ordered.
"Moya is charging calorics now... Starburst in 200 microts."
"Shake it up, Pilot," John added nervously.
The time crawled by as the crew watched the Marauders grow closer to Moya on the holo-display tank. Finally Moya began to pulse with building energy.
"I hate these cold start-ups," grumbled the Luxan, "They always seem to take forever."
"Hold on to your shorts, Darg... we're about ready to get outta here," John quipped.
Pilot flickered back into life on the holo-comm.
"Twenty-five microts to Starburst," he announced. "... Twenty microts to Starburst."
"I hate Starburst," Rygel grumbled as he grabbed onto a control panel for support.
Pilot cut short his countdown suddenly, "Commander? Somebody has just launched a Transport Pod from landing bay one."
"What?" the group as a whole exclaimed.
"A Pod has been launched and is now drifting just outside of Moya without power," Pilot replied.
"Frell!" swore Aeryn. "Can we snag it and drag it along behind us through Starburst?"
"No, it is outside Moya's Starburst field at the moment."
"Who the hell can it be?" asked Crichton, "Can Moya reposition herself to bring it into the field?"
Pilot shook his massive head. "No, Starburst in seven microts. It's too late to abort... Moya must go or cause herself irreparable damage."
"Damn it!" John swore while banging a fist on a control pedestal.
"I wager it's that Sikozu bitch," griped the Hynerian. "She jumped ship to betray us to the Peacekeepers. I never trusted her for a microt!"
Before anyone could reply, the lights and control panels dimmed, the front view screen flared into the brilliance of Starburst... and Moya and her crew where somewhere else.
From the drifting Pod, Chiana watched the Leviathan become a living creature of light and then fold herself into the fabric of space-time. The light nearly blinded her naked eyes but it was wondrous thing to behold. As she was faced with the sudden emptiness of space, her heart froze for an instant as what she had done fully hit her. She'd just willing ran away from the only safe home she'd ever known... again. She began to panic slightly as the thought hit her and she wrapped the solar blanket tighter around herself as she sat in the shuttle's cabin. The temperature slowly dropping as the ship cooled toward absolute zero.
She reminded herself that she made her choice and now she would have to deal with the consequences.
She sat quietly in the dark watching the place where Moya had been, slowly counting off the remaining 300 microts. Just as she reached zero, she saw them coming. The three Peacekeeper Marauders thundered by her, keeping course with Moya's Starburst vector, hoping to pick the Leviathan transport up on scanners sectors away when she came out of Starburst. Chiana let out a pent up breath, as the PK ships didn't detect her powered down Pod as they passed. She gave them a couple hundred more microts to get out of immediate sensor range and then slowly began to power up the craft. She was glad to finally have the heat back on and when the Pod reached full power she laid in a course for the commence planet where she saw Berret and set the autopilot.
She realized that Berret or the assassin that looked like Berret might not even be still on the planet. Even so she thought she might be able to learn enough to follow him to his next destination. Failing that, she knew where she'd originally found him... though she didn't relish the though of returning to that world to look for him in the least. She leaned back in the pilot's chair and let her thoughts roam.
She wondered again at what the urgency was to find him. Yes, she owed him her life and she did feel a little responsible for him, but this was so unlike her. She wouldn't normally put herself on the line for anyone... especially someone she barely knew. The image of Crichton before he left for the Gammak base came to her. When she had tried to thank John the only way she knew how, he'd stopped her and told her when she found someone else in need to "pass it on." She told herself that's what she was doing... passing it on. Normally lying wasn't a difficult thing for her; she could usually do it with a straight face and be believed most of the time. It was hard to do it to yourself though.
Frowning, she had to admit there were also the dreams she'd been having. She had never seen the Shrike without his armor, but she dreamed of his body pressed up against her. Of his lips sucking greedily at hers as they drove each other wild with pleasure. Those rough dangerous hands gently holding her body.
On waking the dreams seemed somewhat silly, as the one time she kissed him on impulse during their escape from the Syndicate, it left the man stunned and mystified. She could hardly believe the man knew nothing about something so simple as kissing... but she also found it oddly intriguing. She thought educating the man could be highly interesting. Still, she'd had the dreams many times over the last few weekens and they left her aching... not only in her body, but also in her heart a bit. She supposed that it could be just her missing D'argo, but Jool seemed to have most of his attention now. Anyway, she realized and accepted that there could be no going back for her and the Luxan warrior.
She pushed the thought of the erotic dreams from her mind, at least for the moment. Right now she needed to start thinking about a plan of action before she arrived on the commerce planet. If Berret was alive and back with the Syndicate, she had to think of a way to rescue him again... without getting killed in the process. Or worse yet, getting killed by him in the process. If he were hiring himself out as an assassin, she'd have to find him and talk him out of it. Especially seeing she was sure that if the Syndicate got wind of what he was up too, they would come looking for him with a vengeance. So many possible angles, she felt it was going to be impossible to plan for most of them, let alone all of them. She got herself out a writing pad and started to jot down scenarios and her possible solutions so she could easily keep track of them. You never knew what could be helpful later. One grim scenario raised its ugly head and perplexed, Chiana tapped her writing stylus against one cheek as she struggled to think of a possible solution.
"What would Aeryn do?" she muttered out loud. Sometimes that helped.
Berret paused inside the lobby of the central government affairs offices and sighed inwardly. Eilaan people on their own urgent errands moved automatically around the tall Shrike without noticing him. He stepped off to one side to a drinking fountain and bent to use it. This had been the sixth eradication of an Eilaan official in the last two months. The man he had just killed in his tiny cubbyhole-like office in the basement levels of the building had been in charge of public housing for the Zem'Fury mine workers. Why the bookish little man had to die was somewhat of a mystery to the Shrike. He seemed relatively unimportant as far as government officials go; still the Zem'Fury cell leader had insisted that the fellow be taken out.
Try as he might, Berret could see no tactical logic to the operations that he was asked to carry out for the rebellion, then again he also knew little about running a resistance cell. He assumed there had to be a reason for what he was asked to do. The eight police officers he killed he understood if they were guilty of illegally executing Zem'Fury workers for simply being in a restricted area of the city after curfew. The evil should be punished for their crimes... the Scarren Syndicate had made him a firm believer in that philosophy. The rest of the eradications made no discernable sense to the assassin. He saw no clue as to how they should fit together and helped further the cause to free the Zem'Fury from their persecution. The Zem'Fury never told him much at all about what results their work produced or whether they were making headway or loosing ground in their fight. He would report to the cell leader and then return to his single room quarters in the hide-away after killing one Eilaan or another, no one would speak to him for a few solar days and then one day the insectiod leader would appear with a new name and another lethal request. The only thing he was sure about was that they seemed to be doing a very good job of throwing the ruling assembly into chaos, security was getting tighter and it was becoming more difficult to get to certain targets the cell leader picked. He was actually surprised at the ease of this last assignment. Then again, the victim was practically a nobody in the government hierarchy. The only thing remotely impressive about him or his job was where his office was located. Still, even with the stricter security measures, it was easy for the Shrike to slip in and out with the busy flow of humanoid traffic. He sighed more deeply and rubbed at his eyes, trying to ignore the gnawing pain from the microbes demanding to be fed again. He casually exited the building, wearing civilian clothing he blended in with most of the Eilaan population as long as none of them looked too closely at him. His skin wasn't quite the right tone and most Eilaan had purple eyes, not blue like his. Still it was a universal constant that busy people involved in their own affairs paid little attention to what was going on around them.
He allowed himself to relax slightly once he was away from the scene of the assassination. He headed a few streets over toward a vast market place with the intension of picking up some foodstuffs. The supplies the Zem'Fury stocked at the hide away where poorly suited to his metabolism and the microbes' demands had started to become worse as time wore on. The Zem'Fury leader insisted that he remain hidden as much as possible to avoid detection, and not leave their headquarters whenever he was not out on an operation. The precaution seemed a wise one to Berret, but it left him with little or no opportunity to stock up on the proper food items for humanoids... and it also gave him little contact or news from the outside world. Without a translator, he was unable to communicate with a majority of the Zem'Fury rebels except for the cell leader and occasionally his second in command. An insectiod he labeled Swirl because of the slight whirl of discoloration on his exoskeleton. The Zem'Fury didn't use normal names among outsiders as their true names consisted of mandible clicks, limb positions, and scents. They never offered him any names so the leader was simply "the leader" and Swirl was "Swirl" to Berret. There was little point in assigning names to any of the others as he had little to do with them. They didn't seem to be interested in learning his name either. Or rather, the name he called himself, as Berret still knew nothing about his past other then his time with the Syndicate. The collar seemed to have wiped out who he was before becoming an Enforcer.
The Zem'Fury referred to him as "The Shrike" or "Shrike" through the translator, though the leader would sometime call him "friend" while speaking directly to him. He did learn the name in Zem'Fury speech they called him was produced by lifting one arm while clenching the fingers, or what passed for fingers on a Zem'Fury, into a fist accompanied with two mandible clicks followed by a small slashing motion with the arm. Not much of a name, but he guessed that the Zem'Fury didn't have a set word pattern for Syndicate Enforcer in their language. It also eluded Berret to as what sex an individual Zem'Fury was, or even if their species was separated by any sexual classifications.
Several marked patrol vehicles sped by a few microts later heading for the building Berret had just left, the drone of the sirens breaking him out of his roaming thoughts. It seemed the body had been found already. He continued his unhurried stroll through the market place and suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He was positive he was being followed.
He stopped to nonchalantly look in several shop windows, using the reflection to scan the crowds behind him. He was use to the clumsy methods the Zem'Fury rebels used when they tailed him on assignments but this was something different. Whoever this was, it left him with the hint of something professional... though he could see no signs of whoever it might be. He frowned to himself; the Eilaan or Roentgen would simply grab him and not play spy games if they suspected him of wrongdoing. Peacekeepers then? The police force could have called for help from the PKs. But that led back to the same reasoning then, why not just capture him if that were the case. "The Syndicate?" he thought next. That would be more likely, they might have tracked him down and sent another Shrike to bring him back... or eradicate him, which was the more probable rationalization to the feeling of being watched.
Either way, it was a new game. He dared not lead whoever it was back to the rebel hideout. He moved on through the market place heading for the shop he normally bought his supplies at, not wanting to arouse his shadow's suspicions should this not be the first time they followed him. Given enough time, his tail would make a mistake and reveal himself to the ex-Enforcer. If it were another Shrike, he would have to move fast and attack without warning if he wanted to defeat him. He was at a serious disadvantage without armor or suitable weapons for dealing with a Syndicate assassin at the time. Surprise would be his only edge and he would have to use it effectively. If it was an Enforcer and the Syndicate had found him, and he survived the confrontation, he would have to leave the commerce world quickly despite his promise to help the Zem'Fury. His subconscious began to plan his escape from the planet as he entered the shop.
Somewhere behind him, he could feel the eyes on his back.
Chiana congratulated herself. She'd only been planet side a mere two solar days and she'd already located Berret. She'd originally expected the search to at least take her the better part of a weeken before she turned a lead up. She pushed aside the thought that it had been sheer luck that she ran across him while searching the market square for a suitable place to eat. She looked up from reading a refreshment house's daily menu and there he was crossing the street opposite her. Her eyes seemed to have been naturally drawn to him like a magnet. She pulled her dark scarf tighter over her head to conceal her white hair as she walked, keeping parallel to the tall assassin across the busy street. She was sure it was Berret and she sighed in relief as she discovered that he wore no control collar again, his neck being visible because of his Eilaan clothing. Berret strolled casually along as if he hadn't a care in the world. At one point he stopped in front of a huge glass window. Other people wouldn't have noticed but Chiana instantly detected the slight stiffening and tension in his back. The telltale give away that he was aware he was being followed. She knew he was using the glass to scan the crowd behind him and she fought the urge to dash across the street and reveal herself. For a moment she had the brief image of her hurling herself into his welcoming arms. But she realistically knew that there was little likelihood of that happening. He would probably be shocked to see her but she doubted that his greeting would be anywhere near an emotional one. The Shrike probably had not given her a second thought since escaping the Scarren kingpin's stronghold. She decided the best way to proceed would be to observe Berret for awhile just to be sure he wasn't being controlled somehow and then approach him cautiously. It occurred to her not for the first time that he might not be happy to see her again or want a reunion with her.
She rolled her eyes at herself as she realized she was hyper-analyzing everything again. For all appearances, Berret seemed to be a normal person out shopping... not at all like anyone under someone else's control or an assassin looking for a target. She began to feel better about the thought of approaching him. Who's to say that Berret wouldn't be interested in seeing her again? Anyway, after what they went through together, you'd think she'd have the right to see how he getting along since the escape.
Berret entered a store and Chiana took the opportunity to cross the street. She milled about in front of the place appearing to inspect the produce in the outside bins while she watched Berret through the shop's big windows. The man walked up and down the isles picking out various items. When he was finished he brought them over to the counter and paid for them. Chiana noticed he used the commerce world's own type of paper currency rather that universal Peacekeeper credit chips. Berret was maintaining a low profile by not paying with credit chips that might give someone a cause to notice and remember him. However, the paper currency would be of no use to him if he suddenly had to jump planet and run. She hoped he was smart enough to keep a ready stash of credit chips handy on his person in case of just such an emergency. The clerk expertly packaged his goods after he paid for them and handed them back to the assassin.
Berret then headed for a side door on the opposite side of the building from where Chiana was standing and headed down the side street.
She scurried around the produce bins and then struggled through the crowds moving along the street in front of the shop. She made the corner in time to see Berret's back a block and a half away, the Shrike was moving at a fairly fast pace. He made a right turn and disappeared from her sight again.
Chiana flat out ran down the street, her scarf sliding backwards nearly off her head before she caught it and pulled it back in place. The long dark gray coat she wore slapped at her lower legs as she ran. Her palm pulse pistol threaten to jump out of the loop holster on her hip so she had to finish the run with one hand keeping the weapon in place.
She slowed down just before she got to the point she judge Berret had made his turn at. Instead of another street it turned out to be a garbage littered alleyway. The Nebari peered down the narrow dimly lit lane but could not see the end of it due to all the debris and abandoned ground vehicles, furniture, and appliances there.
"Alleys... I hate following people into alleys," she muttered to herself. "Unless its one I picked out for a reason before hand," she mentally added.
Having no other choice but to follow, she cautiously entered the passage. She cat-footed around the larger objects while trying to avoid stepping on any of the other trash that would make noise and give her away. She quickly lost sight of the street she came off of and she could no longer hear the bustle of the market. She eased her way around a large trash bin and was suddenly startled to find Berret's package of groceries sitting in plain view in the middle of the alley.
Bewildered, she looked about the constricted lane but saw no clue as to where Berret had gone.
Almost too late she felt the slight change in air pressure, something big was falling on her from above.
Chiana automatically hit the ground, tucked and rolled. She groaned inwardly as she felt the pistol slide free from its loose loop holster and clatter off somewhere into the trash-strewn alley with her roll. Behind her, Berret hit the ground where she had been a split microt before. The vicious flying blade-kick meant for her head slamming into the trash bin instead. Metal groaned and dented from the impact of the ex-Enforcer's foot. The Shrike growled a low curse and spun to meet Chiana as she rolled to her feet. The girl didn't even have time to catch her breath or speak before Berret seemed to move toward her like a runaway Transport Pod - the man was incredibly fast!
Her instincts took over and saved her again. Without her thinking about it, her leg muscles coiled and launched her over the top of the oncoming Shrike in a high somersault. Berret's fist went on to smash into a wooden crate and demolished it.
Chiana came down from her aerial maneuver and landed slightly off. An empty can caught her heel and rolled, causing her to stumble as she tried to regain her balance. The mishap cost her dearly, allowing the assassin enough time to turn and seize his prey. Steel-hard fingers dug painfully into her shoulder and she suddenly felt herself being hurled into the brick wall of the building behind her. She struck hard and for an instant saw stars. When her vision cleared, she looked up and saw the silently snarling face of Berret mere henta from her own, his eyes glinting eerie silver in the dim alley light from the microbe augmentation.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his right hand cock back, his hand and fingers held stiff and board straight as he prepared to slam the hard edge of his palm against her temple... killing her instantly.
"BERRET! STOP!" she managed to cry out before the blow fell. The Shrike held her so that her body pinned her right hand behind her against the wall, with her free left hand she franticly clawed at her scarf, pulling it off her head so he could clearly see her face. She didn't know that her voice alone was enough to give him pause. "Its me! Chiana!" she finished.
Even in a half-scream that voice was enough to make him hesitate. The voice that had sung to him in Arckatius' makeshift dungeon... the voice that had called to him in desperation from her cell, the voice that gave him the will to break free of the collar.
"Chiana?" he rasped, his throat suddenly gone dry. Still there was a hint of disbelieve in the rusty tone.
"Yeah, it me," she replied uneasily, Berret was still poised to kill.
The Shrike tilted his head to one side. His silver tinted eyes making him look more alien... more animal-like then she remembered. In the full light of Arckatius' headquarters they had been pale blue... like ancient ice. She remembered him telling her that the microbes were capable of altering his vision in low or bright light... or sometimes when in combat, enabling him to focus sharper and faster on a target. She did her best to relax in his iron hold and waited to see what he'd do next. Absentmindedly, she thought this was as far from the open-armed welcome she imagined as she could possibly get.
Berret leaned in close to her and inhaled deeply. She knew that he was using his heightened senses to positively identify her. Another thing that made him seem more animal-like. Up this close she could also see how haggard he looked compared to when she last saw him. He had been neglecting himself somehow.
Berret withdrew slightly and loosened his hold on the girl. His microbe-augmented sense of smell wasn't as acute as a Luxan's but he recalled the Nebari woman's scent very well. The only time he'd seen her, her face had been badly bruised from her beating at the hands of the bounty hunters, but this was truly her. He clearly remembered the way she smelled from when they embraced just before he shoved her into the escape capsule. Despite the look of unease and slight fear on her healed face, she was more beautiful then he had ever imagined.
"You're alive," he said, still not willing to believe that she was actually there.
"Yeah... surprise, so are you!" she replied nervously as she slowly moved away from the building wall she had been pinned against.
"Didn't you make it back to your friends?" Berret next asked. Chiana nodded her head in the affirmative. "Then what are you doing here?"
Chiana started to feel more relaxed as the silver slowly faded from Berret's eyes, making him look more normal.
"I came to find you?" she told him.
Berret actually took a step backwards in befuddlement. "Why?" he asked confused and bewildered.
Chiana told him about being in the refreshment house that day with Crichton and Sikozu.
Berret vividly recalled that instant with Chiana's crewmate. The fear in her bright green eyes, the weigh of the pistol in his hand, the feel of the trigger against his fingertip, the ugly voice in the back of his mind urging him to squeeze just a little harder on it... because what was one more sin to him?
In slow motion he saw the girl's thin lips move, then he heard her voice naming him for what he was. The hated label silencing the itching voice in his head, he was able to ease off the trigger and lower the pistol before he succumbed to the urge.
Berret suddenly wasn't sure how he felt about Chiana witnessing him like that.
The Nebari girl went on then to relate the months of heavy thinking she did and her decision to search for him despite the possible danger.
She wasn't sure what to expect but she thought Berret would at least be touched by her attempt to find him. Instead he surprised her by abruptly saying,
"You have to go back. You must leave here now."
"What?" Chiana sputtered, "I came all this way..."
"You can't stay!" Berret cut her off.
Chiana's dark eyebrows knitted together, somewhere between confusion and anger. Her black lips grew tight together like a flower bud as she prepared to debate him. "Who did he think he was?" she thought.
"There is a... 'civil war' coming here," Berret tried to explain. He was so hesitate that Chiana was sure that he didn't quite understand what was going on himself. "It won't be safe for you here," he added.
"Whatever's going on here... If you're part of it, I can help," she offered.
Berret shook his head looking even uneasier then before.
"You don't have the 'talent' for what needs to be done."
With that statement, Chiana was now sure that Berret had been responsible for all the other deaths she'd been hearing about since she landed. The whole port was in an uproar and they had searched her and her Transport Pod more thoroughly this time than the first time she was there with Crichton. Whatever Berret was mixed up in, she had the feeling that something wasn't right about it. The trouble was that Berret didn't have the life experience to see that as clearly as she did.
"You have to return to your friends," Berret said, bringing her out of her deliberation.
"That's going to be a problem," she answered.
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you see..." said Chiana. For the first time she felt sure enough of their relationship to actually reach out and touch him. She lightly stroked his face. "I can't go back... I don't know where they are," she told him.
Berret stared back at her puzzled both at the contact and the comment.
"There was really nothing there for me anymore so I left. I left them to go find you... it was all I could think about for so long after I saw you and knew you were alive."
Berret mouth worked but nothing came out, he was totally speechless. This had the hint of a confession, something he should know about with all his time as a Syndicate Enforcer. He'd certainly wrung enough of them out of countless beings for the Scarren crime lord.
"Moya, Crichton, and the others, are gone," she continued as her hand gently caressed his cheek. Something no one had ever done before. The feeling was becoming disorienting to the assassin, but strangely he didn't want her to stop.
"I came to be with you," Chiana finally told him.
If there had been a chair behind him, Berret would have let himself fall into it. Now he truly didn't know what he should do.
Reluctantly he moved away from her so her warm hand wouldn't distract him from his train of thought.
"You came all the way back here," he repeated, " To be with me?"
Chiana nodded. "It seemed like something I hadda do," she told him.
Berret shook his head. "There are dangerous times coming here. The conflict here is escalating."
"Dangerous times?" Chiana asked with a questioning tilt of her head. "What the frell are you taking about? I've been here two days and I haven't seen any signs of a conflict."
"One of the three classes of beings who reside on this world is being oppressed by the other two," the Shrike attempted to explain. "They are little more then slaves... just as I was."
"Who? Which class of people?" Chiana inquired. "I haven't seen any signs of it."
Berret faltered. He knew the Zem'Fury rebels would not be pleased to learn of Chiana's arrival and search for him. They would be even less so if he gave out information to the Nebari girl.
"I can't tell you," Berret replied, "Its better if you just forget about me and leave."
The girl wasn't having anything to do with that suggestion. She took hold of Berret's upper arm to stop him from saying anything more. Stepping around in front of him, the tilt of her head increased and her eyes and tone of voice grew more serious.
"Hey! Its me," she exclaimed with Nebari stubbornness, "You can trust me."
The woman barely came up to his chest, but the determination in those dark eyes told Berret that it would be easier to move a mountain then dissuade the Nebari girl. Somewhere in the back of his mind he found it mildly amusing that a thief was telling an assassin he could trust her.
Knowing there would be no budging Chiana until he told her, Berret uneasily gave in.
"It's the Zem'Fury."
Chiana's head bobbed slightly in surprise and her eyes widened a touch.
"The Bug people?" she said, a small ironic smile lit her face.
Berret quickly outlined the Zem'Fury grievances and the wrongs that had been done to them. He touched as lightly as he could on his activities for the rebellion. As he talked the smile slowly fell from the gray girl's face. Even with just the bare basic information, the story didn't click with what she herself had observed.
Her finely honed instincts were telling her something wasn't right and the sudden chill she got up her spring-like Nebari spine told her it wasn't right in a big way. She'd always had a certain talent for detecting scams or cons and right then she had the feeling she might have walked into one that was over her head.
When Berret was finished. She reached for his closest hand, hoping that physical contact would help her reason with the man. She knew he wasn't going to like what she had to say.
" 'Ret, listen to me," she started. "Something isn't right here. There's no civil war coming to this commerce world. I think these Zem'Fury are using you..."
"You don't understand," he cut her off.
"Trust me, I do understand... more then you know."
"They are slaves!" he snapped. "You have no idea what that's like."
"I do..." she began once again.
Berret tore his hand out of hers. "No! You don't," he said in a hard voice. "You have been a prisoner, not a slave. You don't know what's its like to have someone else decide your fate, to be owned by someone else and have no control over your own life. You haven't see the things I have seen... or done the things I was made to do..." The Shrike suddenly stopped speaking as if realizing he made a mistake.
"Are you talking about them... or are you talking about you?" Chiana mildly asked.
Berret turned away unwilling to met her eyes.
"I do understand whether you believe me or not," she continued, "Living on Nebari Prime taught me all I need to know about what its like to be a slave with no freedom or will of your own."
Berret realized that he knew next to nothing about Chiana's prior life before meeting him. It had been uncalled for him to accuse her of not understanding.
He turned back to face her, still not quite meeting her eyes, he nodded, "My apologizes. I had no right to speak that way to you."
"Its all right," she told him. "I've had people say worse things to me."
He finally looked up to meet her gaze. "You still have to go," he repeated.
"I'll go, if you come with me," she countered.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I made a promise."
"Break it," she told him.
Berret looked at her and shook his head. "I can't do that either," he said, "Not unless my life or freedom depended on it... maybe not even then," he added after he had a chance to think more about it. "If I broke my word... I'd be no better then the Syndicate.
"Is it worth your freedom... or your life?" she exclaimed.
Berret shook his head in refusal; he wasn't about to change his mind that easily.
"Why?" Chiana asked, looking as if the weight of the entire planet had suddenly settled on her slim shoulders. Her pretty face grew darkly serious again. "Listen, 'Ret. These people wouldn't keep a promise to you if they had to," she explained. "Let's just forget about them and go... just the two of us. I can take you away from here and show you things you never knew existed. Some of the places I've been are so beautiful ... and the people so exciting. We can go on an adventure and live off our wits... or find a nice quiet place to lay low for a while until we don't want to anymore, and then go off and raise holy hezmana. There's a whole big universe out there and it can be ours for the taking. You just have to want to."
Berret suddenly found himself having some doubts about his decision. Chiana spoke with such zest and enthusiasm about what she described. He wasn't sure if it was her words or the thought of going off with her he found so alluring. Still, he'd given his word and chose a side in the Zem'Fury conflict. People had died at his hand. How could he justify walking away now?
She could tell by the look on his face that he was finally faltering in his stance. The doubts were showing.
"Chiana, I..." he began.
She cut him off before he could start gathering his thoughts and debate her further. She reached up and touched his cheek again, a dirty trick she knew because the Shrike still wasn't use to intimate contact, but at this point all was fair as far as she was concerned. Berret's eyelids fluttered for just a microt and she thought he might have made a small involuntary sigh but couldn't be sure, either way she knew her touch had the desired effect on the man - he stopped trying to think for a micron.
She gently ran her had down the side of his face to his collar-scarred neck. When she got to his shoulder, she gripped it firmly and shook him once to get his attention again. Sometimes you had to do that with males, distract them one microt and grab them by the mivonks the next.
"Listen," she said, "Let's get out of this alley and go somewhere quiet to talk. Give me just a few arns and I'll prove to you something's not right here. You can give me that much, can't cha?"
Berret pondered what to do. Chiana was insistent in her views and her desire to convince him. He was also keenly aware of the passing time. The Zem'Fury would soon begin to wonder where he was, and should they decide to come looking and find him with the Nebari girl, he was sure there would be trouble.
"All right, Chiana. We will go somewhere and talk as you wish," he said. At least that way he could get the girl out of sight if she refused to leave his company. "I don't want to rent a room here in the town as the Zem'Fury might have an informant on the rooming house staff. It would be ill if they found out you were here searching for me."
"No problem, I have the perfect place for a quiet talk," the girl responded. "The room service is frelled but the privacy can't be beat."
"Very well. Let's go then."
She stopped the Shrike from walking away by placing a hand against his chest.
"One more thing," she said firmly, "We deal."
Berret lifted one eyebrow to indicate he hadn't the slightest idea of what she was getting at.
"The deal is... I prove to you you've been lied too," she told him, "... you leave here with me. No more questions, no more debates. You trust me to take you away from here."
Berret thought the proposal over and it sounded reasonable. He agreed, but countered,
"If you don't prove what you claim to me, then you agree to leave and find your friends."
Chiana's full lips drew into a tight straight line as she considered the counter offer.
"Sounds fair enough... for now," she finally said, "Deal."
Before Berret could say anything more, she turned and after retrieving her weapon, led the way out of the alley.
The Shrike found that he didn't like the way Chiana had added the "for now" onto her accord to the pact.
He turned on a heel and followed her from the alley, letting her guide him to this quiet place they could talk. While they walked to their destination, Berret told her about how he managed to escape from Arckatius' headquarters. Half an arn later, they arrived back at her Transport Pod.