With a flourish, she dropped the shadows and put her hands on her hips. “What do you think?”
Urad’s eyes gleamed. “Very form fitting. Will you wear your robes on top of it?”
She reached out and picked up the robes. “I suppose. I do love the colour, though. Thank you, Minny. What do I owe you?”
“You have helped my sister tremendously in the last two days. I am delighted to help you in any way I can.” Minny winked. “If you leave your original suit with me, I can make a copy. Your robes, those I can make a few improvements to.”
Noma was a little wary of the gleam in Minny’s eyes, but she was going to have to trust her. “I put my wardrobe in your hands.”
Minny grinned. “This is going to be very entertaining. I might make myself a suit like yours. It seems something that would keep itself out of the way while one was weaving.”
Noma chuckled. “I have never tried weaving, but the suit itself would definitely win above blousy sleeves.”
She ran her hands over her body lightly and smiled at the comfortable feel.
Minny pointed out the closures on the suit and smiled. “I am done for the night. If you would care to return tomorrow night, I can do another for you.”
Noma smiled her thanks and turned to Urad. He rose from the chair he had been seated in and offered her his hand.
“I will show you what you have asked to see.”
Out in the street, she asked, “Why do you want to hold my hand?”
“I want to do a great deal more, but this is all I can allow myself. I can feel your power under your skin.”
She could feel the hot pulse of his through his hand as well. That was part of the distraction.
Noma cleared her throat as he walked her into the wide doorway of the central tower. “That is where my power resides most of the time.”
He sent a ball of light into the air ahead of them, illuminating their path. Instead of heading for the upper levels, they unsurprisingly went down.
They walked in silence, and Noma felt the tension in him when they reached the lower level.
“Most of us don’t come down here. We do not have good memories of watching friends and family thrown into the pit. Why did you want to see it?”
Noma made a face as the light showed the wide lid on the floor. “I don’t just want to see it; I need to go into it.”
His hand tightened on her fingers. “No one goes in and comes out again.”
She gave him a smile in the shadows. “They did it here once, and I am about to do it again.”
He reluctantly let go of her hand, and she sent shadows out to pull up the lid on the pit. Seals popped as the huge weight lifted.
The stale air carried a mechanical tang. There was something down there beyond the terrors of local powers.
Noma turned to Urad, “Will you come down with me?”
“In there?” He flinched.
“Please.”
With slightly slumped shoulders, he nodded.
“Do you mind if I carry you?”
“It will injure my sense of masculinity, but sure.” He grinned.
“I am sure you will recover.”
She wrapped him in tendrils of darkness and lifted them both up and into the air before having her shadows pull them down into the pit.
The images from the night before swam up and wrapped around her thoughts. She could see in the dark and this place was very dark indeed.
Urad sent light down the hall and he chuckled. “You are squeezing me tight.”
With a blush, she removed her grip on him and let him stand on his feet. “Sorry. I may need to see this place, but I don’t have to like it.”
“I am glad I am not the only one who is nervous.”
She nodded. “This way, I think. Those are robot parts.”
“What?”
“Mechanical servants used for menial tasks, maintenance and repair. I see no reason why they couldn’t be used for restraint.” Noma started down the hall and realised that those dropped would have nowhere to go but this path.
“You really do come from another planet.”
She gave him an amused look. “I really do.”
“I thought you were just exceptionally beautiful.” He stopped her in the hallway and kissed her.
She stood still for a moment before leaning up on her toes to increase the intensity of the kiss. For an instant, she let her heart soar and her body hum happily before she slowly pulled away.
“Not what we are here for.”
He grinned. “No, but I had to start something while we had privacy. Our community is a close one and privacy isn’t an unlimited commodity. I live in the bachelor’s quarters and you are under watch in the tower.”
“And now, we are both in the pit. Let’s see if my guesses are correct.” She moved toward the only exit to the tunnel and into the shadows cast by Urad’s light.
She heard a mechanical whirring as something tried to move, but the sound was half-hearted, as if something was stuck.
“Can you put some light over there, to the left?”
Urad flicked illumination balls into the air and the sound was explained, as was the purpose of the pit.
Thirty-nine chambers were lying open, but three had a difference. Thirty-six were merely opened, one was closed and looked as if it had never been occupied, but two were smashed to hell. Those two were her focus.
“What is that sound?”
“One of the keepers. They are here to take the powers that are sent, sedate them before they can attack and place them in the tubes, in storage until there is a full complement.”
“Why? Why are they kept here?”
“If this ship had been filled with that last power, it would have risen and followed a protocol to take it home.”
She looked at the computer systems on the side of the first broken capsule.
“How are you so familiar with these systems?”
“I used to be a keeper, and they are not very different from the units I was forced to use on my own people.” She reached into the pocket of her robe where she kept Skiria’s orb. “Can you download and display the information? I know it is not your forte, but you are as close to an interface as I can get, Skiria.”
“What is that?”
“It is an energy copy of the mind of another one of my people. Her mind was amazing and she transported the link from my world to thirty others without losing her sanity.”
The orb whirled in the air, quite happy at the tales of her exploits.
“How did you come to have a copy of her mind?”
Noma laughed out loud. “I am guessing that Trala threw her at me.”
“No. I mean, where is the rest of her?” Urad was looking worried.
“Oh. She is living with her mate on Salass. They might be taking part in the Resicor situation, but I don’t know. When she finished her tour to link my world to the others, she had to surrender those links, so Resicor removed the layer of connections and took a copy of Skiria at the same time.”
The orb darted into the mechanism of the tube while they were talking, and when she finished, the orb hovered and expanded into a display of a sleeping man, twitching violently before he punched his way through the top of the container.
That is when the display ended.
Noma looked around and found the main console. “Let’s see what the internal scans saw.”
Using the tech skills that she had been taught during keeper training, she brought the system online and viewed the internal monitors.
“Noma, where are we, exactly?”
“Urad, we are in the middle of a spacecraft. It is designed to ship powers like cattle for service to the Vorwings. An alien race who believes in their superiority over others and their extensive lifespans make many worlds worship them as gods.”
“Like ours.”
“Like yours. Don’t get me wrong, they do have frightening and impressive power, but they are like spoiled children. They want what they want and nothing else will do. Their hunger to get their bloodlines expanded is ongoing. It is a good thing that they don’t breed easily.” Noma blinked when she rattled off Resicor’s opinion of the Vorwings.
It seemed that Resicor might not be physically with her, but there was knowledge left behind.
“They are breeding with us?” He looked horrified.
“Well, I doubt they are doing it with the men. The men would be used as guards, trained to be Raiders or manipulated into being part of invading armies. Can you imagine an entire army of powers coming against you?”
He shuddered. “I can see why they would want us. Why not come in and take us in one sweep?”
She smiled. “On my world, the talents are appearing more frequently, but I am guessing that here, it is less than one percent of the population. That is a lot of sifting for them, and as you know, if a talent really doesn’t want to be found, they can be hidden for quite a while. They are functionally immortal; they have all the time in the world.”
The monitors were all movement activated. Noma and Urad watched the display of a sobbing young boy being hauled into the chamber by bots and sedated.
The teen was undressed and wired into the first tube, the stasis chamber being activated and the bots returning to their charging stations.
A blast of fire began the next clip and a reference to sedating gas came up on the bottom of the screen.
“Damn. They gas them.”
“Why don’t we smell it above the pit?”
“The gas is heavier than air. They pump it in and suck it out to store it for another use.”
The woman carried in was an adult, and she was unconscious in the arms of the bots.
They watched a few powers dropped in pairs, many singly and all of them ended up in the tubes.
The final couple were adults and fighting the sedative gas. They were wired and placed in the tubes just as the others had been. The recording ended and then snapped back on as the pair moved restlessly in their tubes and both punched their ways through the clear plexi cover.
Moving as one, they destroyed the bots, ripping them into pieces. They carefully looked into the tubes and selected someone that they must have recognized. They opened the tube and unhooked the man as carefully as they could. He blinked his eyes and smiled, staggering as they helped him stand.
With the man with them, they moved swiftly from tube to tube, opening each one and unhooking the inhabitant while the man pressed his hand to their forehead and chest.
Urad smiled, “They knew which one was a healer.”
“He was the second to the last one in before them.”
When all thirty-eight powers were standing and ready, they left the main chamber and returned to the entry tunnel. The display went dark.
The orb was still hovering near her, so she beckoned it and tucked it back into her robes, wrapped in shadows.
“I have learned what I needed to know from this pit.” She looked around and swallowed.
“I want to destroy all those tubes.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Not a good idea. I was thinking about it, but if all of them are damaged, the ship might take off and wreck the settlement above.”
His jaw flexed and she linked her arm with his, walking him back up the way they had come, pulling them both out of the pit and replacing the cover.
“How can you be so calm about this?” His voice was vibrating with tension.
“I was expecting it. The Vorwings have not changed their tactics in six centuries. They were doing the same thing to my own people, but we were a little more technically advanced when they moved on us. It was greed that did us in, not religion. The result has been the same.”
She released him to let him pace the floor.
“This is what the priests worship? It is an alien race that wishes to enslave us?”
“Not all of you, just the powers. They are using you to stock up their numbers.” She tried to be reasonable, but he was in the midst of a power surge. He was glowing like a small sun.
She did a version of what she had done to Trala. Noma wrapped her arms around him, pulled shadows around them both and she kissed him.
His mood went from furious to focused on her. He enfolded her in his arms and their kiss took on a savage tone.
She tried to calm him, but it wasn’t working. If anything, he was becoming more aroused as they stood toe to toe and chest to breast.
Light and shadow fought around them, tangling and attempting to gain supremacy. She felt his light and heat in her mind.
Noma wanted his hands to seek and find the closure to her suit, but her common sense reared its head. She pushed him away, and when he tightened his grip, she used her shadows to push him back and lift up and her out of his reach.
“No privacy, remember?” Her voice was husky, even to her own ears.
He flared brightly, and to her surprise, his feet lifted off the ground. He could only go twelve feet up. The ceiling stopped him.
“What is going on, Noma?” His light wasn’t the normal glow or ball form. Tendrils of light were snaking around and propelling him upward.
“I think we got a little too close.” She bit her lip. “You need more room. Follow me if you can keep it up.”
He went from confused to grimly amused. “Lead on.”
She used her shadows to climb up the wide staircase that edged the wall. When she reached the main floor, she proceeded outside into the courtyard. It was empty with most of the folk being in bed for an early start to their next day.
She moved to a section of exposed wall, and with Urad right behind her, she began to climb.
His light climbed up next to her shadows. It was a hard climb for a first exertion, but he managed it. When they were side by side on the battlements, she dismissed her shadows and looked out over the land.
“It seems that our contact has caused a little spill over in the form the energy takes.”
“You mean I have copied your power?”
“Not exactly, just how I use it. I will only worry when you use light to pluck your eyebrows.” She smiled at him. “Your talent is still for light, but instead of energy, you have gained the knack of making it seem solid. That knack took me six years to learn.”
He swayed and she caught him. “Ah, but it also takes some practice so you don’t drain your personal reserves. That you will have to manage on your own.”