Alarms snarled. Decks and bulkheads shivered. The air whispered and murmured and became cooler as inertial sectors locking-in distressed peacetime flow patterns. Already dim lighting faded as power shunted to battle screen generators. Sound levels rose as normally silent Watchers ran verbal checks with their neighbors.
Then came a bone-vibrating grumble as starspace drives went on line and Web tractor wells lit off.
Third WatchMaster sighed, ran a hand through brown hair, adjusted his khaki OpsCrew uniform. He had reached the limit of his authority.
The wall began running information from the Cholot Traveler's report of conditions on the Web. The data proclaimed a routine passage.
WarAvocat Hanaver Strate, Dictat, immaculate in WarCrew black and silver, entered Hall of the Watchers.
— 2 —
Lady Midnight drifted through the perpetual twilight of Merod Schene DownTown, tall, brittle as leaf gold beaten translucent. Her lavender eyes darted from one nest of gloom to the next. Her slim, pale, fragile face was dewed with sweat. Her thin white hands fluttered like panicky hummingbirds. She started at a rustle from a shadow's heart, clutched her hands to her breast, wrapped her shivering wings more tightly around her. The last hints of their usual silken glimmer faded to shades of lead.
It was hot and damp and musty down there, decayed and slimy, dark and deadly, with sudden patches of fetid air, like an old jungle battleground. Small things scuttled away.
Midnight was afraid.
Fear was a new feeling. Fear was not part of her design. She had been made for the salons and bedrooms of high society. Fear had had to be learned.
Lady Midnight savored new things. But this fear she did not like. It stole the color from her wings. It gnawed her innards like cancer. It took away sleep and robbed her of appetite. It was an assassin that butchered the rhythm of her dance-in-flight. It knotted her muscles till they ached.