The room was quiet, filled with a lazy sort of trepidation, a silent light. Everything was still and the medicine made it seem heavy. Helen was coming, coming with the healer. Thaessu who wanted into his mind, wanted through his skull ( Read more... )

He was alone. They'd bound him, lashed and carted him to a quiet room with no windows and all walls. The door shut hard, locked and barred, and his straps parted.

He was at the door in strides, pounded and demanded their word be kept. Ayel was gone from him, gone and wounded and with the Thaessu. His fist was raw after a dozen strikes, but the ( Read more... )

Night time in this place was night again. Slat windows to the outside, opened in the evening, kept it cool. A metal box with sliding metal windows just wide enough to fit his hand through. Night shouldn't have been night, should have been laced in black and forgotten ( Read more... )

Aikhosh'tohr 'le draomn.

It barely made sense in Rihannsu, philosophical drivel, words without meaning, translated without it over long millennia apart from Thaessu. It was a joke on ch'Rihan, a phrase caught in less than an hour of time, forgetfulness. The Havrann never had it, imagination. He'd been to Vulcan, stood on it and felt time pass. ( Read more... )

Night on this planet wrapped like cool fingers, dropped everything to a chill and calmed the stars, drew them throught the harsh sky. Nero hadn't seen night, not so familiar, in longer than he could remember. The stars were wrong, distant and close in uneven measure ( Read more... )

The bite of the field, the curling snap of it, faded away with the red hot twist of nails on glass. It clawed through air and slid across his skull as it parted, flashed off and fell into distal silence ( Read more... )

The day was almost Rihann. If it weren't for the wet breeze that kicked off the soil, the smell of trees and grass, he might have been fooled. No one clipped a hand, a finger with the drills. The bits were hot and the shaft was tight, two men in, two men out ( Read more... )

Waking clean was strange, but waking relaxed was stranger. It was slow, a tug and shift. There were tired limbs without soreness, light wounds that didn't exactly throb from grit, but itched. The ground was down and the bed didn't smell quite right, but the cold was gone ( Read more... )

Five hours, eight hands, and a thousand nha'h of the soft muck this planet called soil. Despite the lloanna, it wasn't bad work.

The sun was down. Not enough power in the lamps for now and later. They'd worked hard enough, the recyclers had enough material to make a mountain of whatever they wanted. This time, not from their shikaen.

"Ayel, ( Read more... )

The angle of landfall was strange, unlike it had been before. The klivam superstructure put the bridge forward, tilted the floors toward the bow. Leaving was an uphill climb. When was the last time they landed? Before the weapon, before-no, just after Spock. More than twenty five years and a century ago. It was worth the climb ( Read more... )