Free alt.human by Keith Brooke

walked a wide loop, my nerves on edge, the whole city’s nerves on edge. At one point, as my route took me up a slight rise, I looked back and saw a pair of troopships hanging over Satinbower Ipp, noses down, twitchy and heavy, occasional beams stabbing down to the streets below.
    Smoke hung over Satinbower as seventh rang out across the city.
    Curfew.
    There would be no ferries now until morning. I was stranded in a foreign Ipp that was under assault from alien forces.
    That was when it really sunk in. Fleeing the troopers had been a short-term thing, a survive- now thing. But now I had to get through the night, without being rounded up or summarily shot by slaughter-happy grunts.
    I roamed the deserted streets until darkness fell. There was no lighting, apart from that which escaped the shuttered windows of the buildings I passed.
    In the distance I could still hear the troopships, and occasionally I heard the electric whine of street vehicles – more grunts, I presumed, on a sweep for curfew-breakers. There would be many of us tonight, with so many caught up in the raid.
    I clung to the shadows and alleyways, looking for shelter and finding none.
    Coming to the river, I darted across the road and dropped down to the rocky shore. There, I almost trod on a dark shape which turned out to be a man bundled in rags.
    He swore at me, but didn’t move.
    A little farther on was another, a bone-thin woman, almost certainly a wraith, or a recovering one.
    I found a niche in the boulders and tried to settle for what was to be a long, cold night. If the clanless slept here, then either it was a safe spot overlooked by curfew checks or I would at least be part of a crowd when trouble kicked off.
    I huddled up, wrapped my arms around myself and tried not to shiver.
     
     
    “F RANKHAY SAID NO. With a knife.”
    Sol shrugged. “!¡ resignation ¡! So where’d you get to last night, eh?”
    I’d found her at one of our workshops in Cragside that converted one kind of pulp into another. I didn’t know what for, only that there was money in it, and some degree of protection for the clan.
    Now, we walked back towards the clan nest at Villa Virtue. I was sore and tired from an uncomfortable, sleepless night. Right up until dawn and the end of curfew, troopships had swung over that riverside doss, and patrols had passed by on the road, but the search had always passed over the rocks without pause.
    By morning, my body felt like it had frozen itself into position. Shuffling to the ferry, filthy and stubbled, I knew I must look like one of the dossers I’d shared the rocks with, and wondered if the boundary guards would even let me cross. But I had money in my pocket and my pids gave me authority to travel, and so I was allowed to pass.
    Sol was watching me closely as we entered the nest and headed up to the roof terrace. “!¡ weary ¡! There was trouble in Satinbower,” I told her.
    Two of the refugees were there, I saw, and the chlick, Saneth. They sat at a table, with bowls of tea. I hadn’t known that chlicks drank tea.
    We went to join them, pulling up another bench. This was the first time I had been so close to a chlick and not been threatened.
    “!¡ deferential ¡! Saneth-ra was telling us of the incident at Satinbower,” said Sol, dipping her head as she added the deferential -ra to the chlick’s name.
    “!¡ factual reporting ¡! Forty-seven humans were seized by an orphid task-force commanded by watcher Hadeen factionaries.” The chlick’s voice was soft and whispery, like a breeze through dry leaves. Its grey-brown face was grooved deeply with folds and wrinkles, pocked and scarred and calloused by the passing years. I saw now that the chlick had a false eye, some kind of mod; it looked metallic, polished to a dull shine. The false eye moved independently of the real one, disconcertingly so. “!¡ probably reliable hearsay ¡! The human nest-parents thus seized were long-standing favourites of watcher Nullist