The Crimson Claw Read online

  From the company that brought you Star Wars and the Indiana Jones series comes a bold new story . . .

  LUCASFILM’S

  ALIEN

  CHRONICLES

  Set in a completely new fictional universe, Alien Chronicles is a saga that spans several generations of a master reptilian race and the slave race it rules. It is a tale of a crumbling civilization and a heroic struggle for freedom, with an all-alien cast of characters and a heartfelt, deeply personal point of view . . .

  THE CRIMSON CLAW

  Ampris has begun her exile, aided by her companion Elrabin, the Kelth. She has learned the archival history of the Viis empire, its languages, its weaknesses. Now she will learn to harness the innate savagery of her race in the gladiatorial arena. Fighting for sport. Fighting for life. Fighting for the chance to lead a desperate battle for the future of the slave races . . .

  Meanwhile, Israi, the Viis princess, is coming of age as well. The childhood friend of Ampris is about to become queen of the Viis empire . . . and Ampris’s mortal enemy.

  THE ALIENS OF

  LUCASFILM’S

  ALIEN

  CHRONICLES

  THE VIIS . . . a race of seven-foot tall, beautifully reptilian creatures. Their physical attractiveness has convinced the Viis that they are the most important, godlike creatures in the universe. This has led to an underground race of the “uglies”—Viis that were cast off as unacceptable, worthless spawn . . .

  THE AAROUN . . . The race of Ampris are powerful, golden-furred creatures with sharp teeth. They have long been kept by the Viis as slaves, or as in the case of Ampris, pets.

  THE KELTH . . . a submissive, doglike race with stiff, bristly coats and simian hands. Because they are so easily intimidated, Kelth are considered unreliable to handle important tasks. They are not to be trusted . . .

  THE MYAL . . . Renowned for their insight and memories. Myal stand barely three feet tall and are usually poets, musicians, and historians. They control the archives of the Viis empire.

  THE ZRHELI . . . They are filthy, noisy, foul-smelling, and socially repulsive creatures. Yet they are unequaled at maintaining and repairing quantum hardware (the only reason to tolerate them).

  THE SKEK . . . Less than two feet high, furry, multilimbed, and quick, the Skek live like rats in the ducts and garbage of the Viis. It’s a common slave belief that if you dropped one Skek in a barrel, the barrel would explode with Skek offspring within a day.

  THE TOTHS . . . Big, stupid, and brutal, Toths roam the ghetto streets as thugs, but they are also used by their Viis masters as hired enforcers and brownshirts. Nearly as tall as the Viis, they have massive heads covered with thick mats of dirty, curly brown hair. Flies usually buzz around their long, floppy ears. Their faces are broad and flat, with wide nostrils, and their eyes are small and cruel.

  THE GORLICANS . . . Merchants, shopkeepers, traders, the Gorlicans are a steady, hardworking, nonviolent race allied to the Viis. A heavy shell encases their torsos, rendering their balance sometimes percarious, and their arms and legs are covered with thick gray scales instead of skin. Their faces are ugly, with a prominent horned beak for an upper lip, and they have orange or yellow eyes. They must wear masks in public to avoid offending the Viis.

  THE PHIVEANS . . . They are cephalopods and have thick, elongated bodies supported on four stout legs. Their tails are flat and spade-shaped. Smooth-skinned and entirely hairless, male Phiveans are olive-green in color. Females are a yellowish pink. They have numerous tentacles lining their bodies on either side. The two front tentacles are longer than the others and have pod-shaped tips of considerable dexterity. Their heads are bulbous, with two knobby, prominent eyes. Their mouth is a round opening lined with waving cilia. Phiveans are never completely still. Either their tentacles, eyes, or mouth cilia are constantly moving.

  THE SAMPARESE . . . These creatures are tall with long, graceful bodies. Their heads are wedge-shaped with cold, cruel eyes, blunt muzzles with whiskers, and razor-sharp fangs. They have muscular, sinuous necks. Extremely graceful in motion, they are lithe, fluid fighters. Their fur is short and sleek, in the tawny range of colors. Their temperament is quite fierce. They are loners by nature. Intelligent but undomesticated, they are used only as gladiators by their Viis owners.

  Lucasfilm’s Alien Chronicles™

  by Deborah Chester

  THE GOLDEN ONE

  THE CRIMSON CLAW

  THE CRYSTAL EYE

  LUCASFILM’S ALIEN CHRONICLES™: THE CRIMSON CLAW

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Lucasfilm Ltd.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace edition / October 1998

  All rights reserved.

  Trademark and Copyright © 1998 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York. New York 10014.

  Cover artist Bob Eggleton

  Alien artist Teryl Whitlatch

  ISBN: 0-441-00565-9

  ACE®

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CHAPTER•ONE

  The smell of blood, sweat, and aggression filled the arena—a hot, primitive smell that made the fur bristle around Ampris’s neck beneath her battle collar. Feeling anticipation coil tighter in her belly, she growled low in her throat. Soon, she promised herself as she watched the two Kelth opponents circling each other with sly hesitation on the kicked-up sand. A male and female, they were well-matched in size. Both gray-furred with slim, long muzzles and tall upright ears, they yipped insults at each other. The female darted at the male, stabbing with her glaudoon, the short sword of the gladiator games. The male yelped and stumbled back. Blood splattered on the sand, and the trainees in the stands roared with excitement.

  Ampris panted. Soon she would be out there, fighting. She growled again, leaning forward inside her starting gate, her gaze intent on the combat.

  In the other cramped gate next to hers, her opponent-to-be shifted restlessly, muttering and growling. Something thudded against the scarred wooden door that closed the back of her gate, and Ampris whirled around with a roar.

  Rapid thumping and a yelp told her that more graduates were being loaded into the chute that fed into her gate. Ampris ignored the commotion and turned her attention back to the fighting in the arena. Boos came now from the crowd. The Kelths were still circling, neither willing to commit to close fighting unless victory was sure. A referrent strode up to them and cracked his whip across the male’s back.

  Yelping, the Kelth male dropped to his knees. The referrent, encased in body shielding and closed helmet, mercilessly whipped the female, hitting her hard enough to make her stagger. “Fight, damn you!” he shouted.

  The Kelths attacked each other with new vigor that set the crowd cheering again.

  Backing her ears, Ampris snarled to herself with renewed determination. She would need no whipping to make her fight.

  A hand snaked through the slats of her gate and claws raked at her arm. Ampris whipped her head around with a snap of her teeth, but quick as thought, the hand vanished back into the adjoining gate. Laughter rumbled from behind the slats, then a pair of hostile yellow eyes appeared.

  Ampris recognized Sheir, her bunk-mate but no friend. They had been paired together since their first day of training. Never, in all the intervening months of rigorous drill and pr
actice, had Ampris been able to relax her guard completely, knowing Sheir was just waiting for the chance to pounce. They were both Aaroun females, and of similar age and size—yet they had nothing in common, nothing except the desire to survive this hellhole that was Bizsi Mo’ad.

  Beige-furred with an even sprinkling of tiny brown spots and a brown streak that ran up her nose and over the top of her skull, Sheir was no beauty. She had nicks and old scars that marred her hide, and she was missing one toe. But her stamina never gave out. She was heavy-boned, with plenty of powerful muscle. Sheir’s teeth were sharp; her claws were sharper. Quick and cunning, she never lost an opportunity to trip Ampris, to jostle her, to throw dust in her food, to mess up her bunk just before inspection.

  In hand-to-hand fighting drills, she always volunteered to oppose Ampris. She was a dirty fighter, snapping at tender ears and trying to gouge eyes with her fingers. She never obeyed the halt command; the instructors always had to pull them apart. A ruthless cheat at everything, Sheir would probably enjoy a long, successful career as a gladiator.

  Fighting outside the practice arena was forbidden, yet twice Ampris had gone to the whipping post for losing her temper and retaliating against Sheir’s constant provocations. After a long day of relentless drills, punishments, screaming instructors, and harsh discipline, Ampris would stretch out on her bunk to rest her aching muscles. But always there was Sheir lying in the bunk above her, humming softly in her throat while she dangled one foot over the side. It was a constant temptation to lunge for it, to bite through her heel tendon and cripple her.

  The punishment for such an attack was death, but sometimes as Ampris lay there, burning with dislike, she told herself it would almost be worth it. Every night they played the same contest of seeing who would be the first to drop into sleep. If Ampris could not battle her fatigue enough to outlast Sheir, she paid for it with a sharp nip to her ear or shoulder, a swift rake of claws that Ampris had to fend off before Sheir bounded back into her bunk. If Ampris was not the first to awaken at the dawning before the whistle sounded, the same thing happened.

  No one in authority intervened, as long as Ampris and Sheir stayed within the rules. After all, the trainees weren’t supposed to make friendships. Once graduation day came and their training ended at the Bizsi Mo’ad, they would be sold as professionals expected to kill each other in the arenas.

  Now graduation day was finally here, and blood smell filled the air. Ampris inhaled it with a quiver of her nostrils. A month ago she had asked permission to be trained to stay here as an instructor. She did not want to spend the rest of her life killing others for the sport of her masters. She’d heard the grim tales of life in the arena circuit, how tough it was, how cruel.

  High in the spectator seats today, buying agents were watching the graduation combats, making their own evaluations separate from those of the school’s judge. Cams, marked with the crest or colors of their owners, floated above the arena, taping the competition for absentee bidders who would participate in the auction via linkup.

  The only way around this fate was to be withdrawn from the auction for further training as a school instructor. As a life, it would not be much . . . years spent in this dreary compound, where there was no art, no music, no kindness. The Bizsi Mo’ad, once a training camp for officers at the apex of the Viis empire’s conquest years, now trained warriors of entertainment owned by the gambling-mad Viis aristocracy. This facility knew nothing beautiful, or tender, or true. To live here meant years spent in the clang of practice weapons, in the shouting, in the harsh, unyielding discipline. Not much of a life at all, yet it would be a life.

  Not the death sentence handed to each graduate that went into the auction, and thereafter into the ring.

  Ampris loved to fight. Yes, she found it to be an addiction, that sweet yielding to the rage and savagery inside her. But as much as she loved to fight, she wanted to live more.

  Nothing had come of her request. And now she stood in the starting gate, waiting to be decanted into the arena. She and Sheir would fight to the death unless the referrents pulled them apart in time.

  They weren’t supposed to kill each other in the arena final, of course. Above all else, the Bizsi Mo’ad centered itself around profit. The more trained, healthy graduates it could put into its empire-famous auctions, the more money it made. Therefore, the combat referrents prowled around the perimeter of the ring with nets and stun-sticks in hand, ready to intervene if today’s combat turned deadly. But Ampris knew she could not hold back, or Sheir would tear her apart.

  Now, locked in her gate, Ampris glared into Sheir’s yellow eyes and growled in warning.

  Sheir curled her lips back from her teeth and laughed low in her throat. “Soon,” she called. “My score will be the highest in the school. I will bring much money at auction, going to the Blues or the Greens. You will lie dead on the sand, and they will throw your bones to the carrion eaters.”

  “Boasts do not draw blood,” Ampris replied softly, determination heavy in every word. “You won’t beat me.”

  Sheir didn’t listen. “I will sink my teeth into your soft throat before any referrent can stop me. I taste your blood already.”

  She was using the conditioning words, although she was unskilled and lacked the modulator device used by their trainers. Still, Ampris felt the savage element inside her stir in response. She flattened her ears to her skull and turned her gaze away, trying not to listen.

  “Coward!” Sheir called. She stuck her hand through the slats and extended her strong claws. “I will feast on your heart—”

  “You will bite air,” Ampris retorted. “You cannot match my quickness.”

  “What’s the matter, golden one?” Sheir asked, her voice like oil, yet mocking and bitter at the same time. “Do you fear me? Do you worry that I will slit that pretty hide of yours?”

  Ampris bared her teeth. But she said nothing, knowing that Sheir would keep this pointless argument going on forever. Sheir hoped to appear so aggressive, so dangerous that she would be sold privately for a high price. According to the rumors, the more money a gladiator sold for, the better he or she was treated. Or maybe Sheir was building her battle courage with her boasting. Ampris, with one kill already in her past, knew such courage was false.

  Out in the arena, a howl of agony filled the air.

  Both Ampris and Sheir lunged at the front of their gates, crashing against them with twin roars of excitement. Ampris saw the male Kelth thrashing in agony on the sand while blood spurted from a gash in his side. The referrents closed in with nets and stun-sticks ready, but the victorious female was strutting back and forth, brandishing her blood-stained glaudoon high in the air. Throwing up her slim, pointed muzzle, she yipped shrilly.

  The spectators up in the metal seats ringing the arena jumped to their feet, shouting and banging on the benches until the air rang with noise.

  “Blood,” Sheir said, panting heavily. She groaned from within her gate. “The smell of it . . . oh, the sweet smell.”

  Ampris backed her ears and forced her gaze away, even as she felt the trained savagery inside her awakening, coming more fully alive. She knew she must draw on all her strength, all her courage, and find the blood fury. It was always there, seething hot beneath the control she kept clamped on it.

  Sheir was throwing herself against the gate, howling like something mad.

  Medics came running to clear the mess.

  The Viis mediator stood nearby, towering head and shoulders above the abiru workers. Green-skinned with blue markings on his throat that spread up to bracket his eyes, he puffed out his air sacs while he made his evaluation. He spoke his decision into his hand-link, and the score flashed across the board hanging over one end of the arena.

  Ampris stared at it, watching the names and scores shift and waver until the new ranking had been established. Someone at the end of today would be school champion, and that someone would sell tomorrow to the highest bidder in the annual auction. The r
est of them would then go on the block, with their scores affecting how the floor bids would be set.

  When she first came here, cabled in restraints and panting in terror, she had not believed she would survive. Only her anger had kept her going. The first practice drill had left her collapsed on the sand, her muscles cramping. The first kick to her ribs had brought her staggering upright with her vision blurred by tears, her heart thundering in her chest, her fur bristling around her neck. Terrified, she knew that if she didn’t learn, didn’t excel, didn’t find her inner strength she wouldn’t last the first week. She knew she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t let betrayal by those she had most loved and trusted destroy her.

  And she hadn’t. She was a survivor of the toughest training program in the empire.

  The wounded Kelth was dragged out of the arena, while slaves raked the sand. Medics pushed his floating stretcher past the starting gates, arguing with each other as to how to best conceal the sutures so he could go into the open auction tomorrow afternoon—the sale for the failures, when the Bizsi Mo’ad cut its losses ruthlessly.

  A warning bell rang overhead, and a handler came running along the catwalk above the starting gates. Ampris drew herself erect, flexing her muscles in readiness. She found it suddenly hard to breathe. Her heart was pounding.

  “Ampris!” Sheir shouted. “It is time!”

  Ampris said nothing. She closed her eyes and tried to master her ragged breathing. She tried not to listen to the anger drumming inside her heart. Oh, yes, she was ready to fight Sheir. She wanted to claw and rend and bite. She wanted to take a glaudoon and thrust it through Sheir’s vitals, paying back every taunt, trick, and cruel act. But she knew she must remain in control of herself. She would fight with a bold heart and a cool head, remembering her training, using skill and knowledge. If she didn’t, Sheir would maul her badly.

  Not for the first time Ampris wished she knew the old religion of her people. What were the Aaroun prayers? Who were the Aaroun gods? She knew only the panoply of Viis deities, all unavailable to her.