Ronan rested his head against the seat and practiced the Eightfold Way until his heartbeat slowed to a normal rhythm. His senses cast off the dullness of fear. One by one he brought his physical functions under control until he was as devoid of emotion as the ship around him.
His hands were steady as he activated the subroutine he had programmed after his escape. The shaauri might catch him, but they would not take satisfaction in their victory. If he was lucky, he would take the striker with him.
The countdown began, ticking out the last minutes of his life. So little time to be free. Twenty-three human years he had lived among aliens; twenty-three years he had been a captive, despised, outcast, struggling to make a place for himself among those who would never accept him. Ankine’karo, they’d taunted him, “body-without-fur,” and ne’lin, “wraith,” because he had no hope of finding his Path.
They were wrong. This was the Walkabout so long denied him. In these final moments, he was one of them at last.
The darter’s sensors keened in warning. Ronan opened his eyes, expecting to see the striker, but the image on the monitor was that of a foreign ship dead ahead.
Ronan’s comfortable detachment abandoned him. He leaned forward and trained all the darter’s instruments on the bizarre construct.
The vessel had simply appeared as if it had emerged from a wormhole, but none existed at those coordinates. Nor would any shaauri shipwright design such a monstrosity. Ronan recalled the ancient myth of the kio’n’uri, a creature cobbled together of leftover parts and pieces rejected by the true beasts at the End of Void.
It was big enough for a modest freighter, with few visible gunports. But there was not the slightest elegance in its lines. Its midsection bristled with projections and flanges and blisters of no apparent function. Bow and stern were cleaner, built to strictly utilitarian standards. One gone mad might have conceived it in a relka-blind stupor.
It could only be a human vessel.
That was impossible. The blockade had held firm for over two decades, as humans reckoned the years, and any ship that slipped past shaauri defense survived by chance and extraordinary prudence. This one might as well have sung challenge to any and all shaauri patrols within a hundred million kilometers.
Ronan weighed his chances. If he had detected the human ship, it certainly knew about him. His shaauri pursuers would not hesitate to destroy it without mercy, yet the ugly contraption held its position with blithe unconcern.
Pathless as children. But they were human, as he was, and so he would perform one last act of defiance. He set the corn-link for tightbeam communication and assembled the words he’d thought he might never speak again.
“Human ship,” he said, contorting his mouth around the harsh sounds of his native tongue. “This is Ronan, called VelKalevi. I am a human fugitive from a shaauri warship. My ship is set for self-destruct in approximately five of your minutes. A striker warship is in close pursuit. Depart immediately if you wish to survive.”
He waited while the darter hurtled toward the intruder, prepared to alter course if its captain were foolish enough to disregard his warning. But a voice filled the darter’s tiny cockpit. Human… and female.
“Unidentified shaauri vessel,” the voice said. “Repeat. Do you claim to be human?”
Ronan’s ears twitched as if they might lie flat like any shaauri’s. “I am human, but my pursuers are not,” he said. “You are intruding in shaauri territory. This is your last chance to escape destruction.”
There was a long moment of silence, broken by the crackle of static. “Shaauri vessel, we offer assistance,” the female voice said. “Abort self-destruct and reduce velocity. We will take you in tow.”
Ronan hissed in laughter. “You can be of no assistance if you are dead.”
“The Pegasus can outrun any shaauri vessel. Will you comply?”
The woman’s claim was so outrageous, so confidently stated, that Ronan almost accepted her word as truth before he remembered that humans frequently deceived even their closest kin. Yet why should this female lie, when her own survival was at stake?