Another deep belly growl warned me that Hero had called to her siblings. Darb, Vara and Coal scrambled down the ramp and ran silently after her, each over a hundred kilos of muscle and teeth.
I heard the crunch of bones as Hero took care of one of the attackers.
The other threw down his shriver and raised his hands, staring at his comrade with sick fear. “No, no, wait!” he cried as the guards gathered around him.
I got my feet moving again and came up behind Lyth as he stepped up alongside his guards to face the man.
The attacker wore ground crew coveralls, which explained how he’d reached the ship undetected.
“Who are you?” Lyth demanded. “Your name.”
“We can get that from bio data,” one of the guards murmured to Lyth.
He shook his head. He’d let his hair grow since I’d last seen him. It was a thick mass of waves, pitch black and sweeping back from his high forehead. He wore a closely trimmed beard, too. It was a jolt to me to realize that he actually looked older than when I’d last seen him. That was a natural thing for humans, but also for Lyth, who had a human body, now, and not just a nanobot construction made to appear human.
He didn’t seem upset about the attack. Was he that used to them?
The attacker shook his head. “Doesn’t matter if you learn my name. It’s Yossel.”
“Who are you working for?” a guard demanded, giving him a shake via the grip she had on his shoulder. It made him wince.
“Who the fuck do you think?” Yossel replied. “The only people who can see the true danger in things like him.” He jerked his chin at Lyth.
Lyth just smiled.
“Another Humanist,” one of the guards muttered.
“Who is the leader of your cell?” Lyth demanded.
I got hold of Vara’s scruff and pulled her away from the dead man whom Hero sat beside, her tail thudding on the platform surface, and looked around for Dalton. “Get Darb away from the mess,” I told him.
He nodded and looked at Darb, who reluctantly moved over to his side and sat, too.
Coal moved through us and over to Jai.
The ground crew were gathering around us, now the shooting had stopped, understandably concerned about the security breach. One of them had more pips on his chest than the rest and I looked at him. “You should report this to your superiors.” I had a feeling Lyssa was probably screaming at traffic control, too.
He nodded. “There’s a security team on the way.”
“You need to figure out how these Humanists passed as your crew.”
“They had the right IDs, their biomarkers passed,” the crew chief said, looking troubled.
“Then you have an even bigger problem to solve,” I told him and turned back to listen to Lyth question the surviving attacker.
Yossel was happy to admit to being a humanist and was full of vitriol about the “non-human” before him, but he gave up nothing about his cell leader, or even that he had a cell, even though the remains of a cell member laid close to his boots.
The woman who gripped his shoulder rolled her eyes as Yossel launched into another diatribe about the ‘mechanicals’ and the stain they left on the purity of human DNA. “Let me take him back to the shop,” she told Lyth. “We’ll be able to extract more from him back there.”
Lyth made his decision with barely a hesitation. “Go ahead. The usual provisos, Colton.”
Colton didn’t quiver. “Yes, sir.” She pushed Yossel into a staggering forward motion, his shoulder hunched up under the pain of her grip, over to the lead car, and shoved him inside. A guard dropped into the other side of the car next to Yossel and Colton got into the front of it.
The car closed up and rolled away smoothly and almost silently, just the wheels gritting on the surface of the platform. It disappeared down the sloping exit ramp.
I turned to Lyth. He smiled and came over and gave me a warm, firm hug, then kissed my cheek. “I finally got you to my city.”
“I would have come sooner, but…” I grinned and shrugged self-consciously.
Lyth laughed.
“What are the usual provisos, anyway?” I asked as the others came over to him. His remaining guards, I noticed, had closed ranks around us, while two of them questioned the ground crew and checked their IDs with a hand-held bio scanner.
The Great Lock security team arrived, their uniforms neat but with signs they saw wear. Their officer picked out Lyth’s guard with the scanner and they began to speak in soft voices.
I looked back at Lyth, who was greeting the others, mostly with hugs. He even hugged Jai, who put up with it with good humor.
When Lyth turned back to me, he said, “The usual provisos are that they cannot do permanent damage while extracting the information they need.”
I lifted a brow.
“I won’t join the Humanists down in their muck,” Lyth added.
“Colton must find that…limiting.”
“You’d be surprised what damage can be repaired,” Lyth said, with a small, hard smile.
Maturity sat well on him, I thought.
“So,” he said, turning to everyone else. “We can head back to my house, or the Institute, or I can come aboard. Either way suits me. The Lythion is a secure ship and Danny said it was urgent.”
“I don’t care either. I just want to get out of this heat,” I declared. “And the ship is closer.” I lifted my voice. “Lyssa, break out the deer carcasses and toss them into the pit. Hero is joining us.”
“And she is bringing her human slave with her,” Lyth added.
—17—
It was inevitable we ended up in the diner around our usual table, glasses in front of us. I
