Acorna's World Part 6

'But a bad idea if they lost out to the Khieevi, and it's the monsters who are looking for us," Maati said.

"Yes," he admitted. "I know what we can do," Maati said. "Oh, you do? Who put you in charge of the mission?" "The same power that put you in charge," she replied, We're in this together. If I get saved, you get saved. If I get caught, you'll-"

If I get caught I'll try to make sure they don't know you're alive,' Thariinye told her with unexpected gravity.

Right. Well, all I need to do is climb up one of the taller "ees, if it's climbable, and look around. I can maybe see where the wreckage of our ship is and if anybody is checking it out. That is the first place anyone will look for us, and it isn't like we can't tell our friends from our enemies in this situation. One look, and we'll know what to expect."

"Why, that's a very good idea. You learn quickly, youngling."

Climbing these trees was easier said than done, however unless you were one of the small blue-furred scampering things constantly running up and down trunks and through the underbrush. The trunks were smooth and thick-it was the broken off end of the trunk that Maati had crawled along when she first left the pod. But the frond branches were not very strong and snapped under the pressure of even Maati's small feet.

She made it halfway up one of the trees, and that was as far as she got. She felt around for handholds or footholds but found none.

Thariinye called up to her from below, "Keep going."

"Can't," she said.

"Well, what do you see from there?"

"More trees. But I think the ones over that way," she pointed to the west, "are on a hill, maybe. And there is some kind of clearing at the top. If we could go climb that hill, we could see more." When she'd pointed, she'd let go of the tree with one hand, and transferred all her weight to her other hand. That put more pressure on her grasping hand and the frond she was holding broke. While she was searching for another, her feet bore too heavily on the fronds she stood on, and those broke as well. She slid precipitously down the trunk, catching her shipsuit several times on protruding fronds on the way down. It was a st.u.r.dy synblend and didn't tear, but Maati wasn't so sure the skin beneath the suit was as undamaged.

"It'll take us farther from the pod," Thariinye said with a sigh. "But that might be a good thing."

"I don't think we ought to talk so loudly anymore either," Maati said. "In case the monsters hear us."

(We wouldn't need to talk at all if you weren't such a baby,) Thariinye grumbled.

She punched him lightly in the side with her balled-up fist. (I heard that.) Then after a beat, (Hey, do you think we could contact Kh.o.r.n.ya and my brother mentally from here? Or maybe even my parents? I can do that, can't I, now that I'm able to send and receive?) The last was thought quite proudly, and Thariinye received an image of a grownup Maati.

(Not if they're still too far out in s.p.a.ce or too busy to listen-engaged in battle with the Khieevi, maybe,) Thariinye sent a withering thought. Maati realized that this was a frequent behavior with him. The idea had not been his and therefore he was trying to make it sound "worthless.

(It doesn't hurt to try, though,) Maati pointed out.

(Unless, of course, the Khieevi can read our thoughts and find us from them,) Thariinye said. (In case they folio-wed us down here.) (Oh,) Maati said. (Yeah. Okay. I'll shut up. Back to the hill, then.) They were nearly there when they heard the -whistling, roaring sounds. They scrambled quickly to the top of the hill and found the clearing in time to see the wreckage of the Khieevi ship falling from the sky, splashing into a sea some distance from them. They could make out the -wreck of their own ship on the sh.o.r.e.

"At least if we lost our ship, they did, too," Maati said.

"I suppose that's some consolation," Thariinye agreed. "The Khieevi ship was -wrecked-maybe Liriili can blame the Khieevi ror the whole mess, instead of me, if we live long enough to have to confess it." And then he pointed. For once, even he was speechless. Maati could see why.

Also tumbling down from the sky, but in much better shape than the larger ship had been, was a small Khieevi shuttle. As it fell, two figures could be seen emerging from it, trailing some sort of membrane behind them that caught the air and sailed them gently to the ground.

Maati, seeing the bug-like creatures alive for the first time, even at a distance, was filled with horror and loathing. Tears began trickling down her cheeks as she looked up at Thariinye.

"They landed somewhere over there," he said, pointing toward the beach. "So I think we should run in the opposite direction as far and as fast as "we can."

"Yes," she said, "But-but-Thariinye?"

"What?"

"If their ship is crashed and in pieces and only two of those creatures are getting out, does that mean the ConSor won?"

"We can't take that chance, youngling, though by the Ancestors I hope it is so. We are no match for even two of those creatures. Quickly now."

He didn't have to tell her twice.

The Linyaari ship lay broken in two like a giant egg that had hatched its chick. It was nestled deep in a beach of aqua blue sand, beyond which cerulean blue waters stretched to the horizon. Wreckage from the Khieevi ship was scattered like bits of large and particularly ugly seaweed on the surface of the water and along the beach, carried in by the waves. Behind the beach was a range of blue dunes and, beyond them, the fronds of a forest of graceful fern-like trees beckoned the Condor to land.

Once the ship had done so, Acorna released her restraint and RK's.

"Conditions are hospitable, Captain," the Buck Rogers voice of the ship's computer told him. "That blue stuff that looks like sand, is. The other blue stuff that looks like the water is. Salt water, though, so take your desalination and purification unit.

The temperature is sixty degrees Fahrenheit with moderate winds at three point two knots. The air is breathable, even fragrant, by human standards."

"Are there-life forms?" Aari asked.

"Other than here? How should I know? I'm a ship's computer, for heaven's sake, not an anthropologist. My heat and motion sensors are picking up something, but it could just be all that wreckage out in the water."

The scanners showed what Buck was referring to more precisely. Becker salivated at the sight of all that salvage.

Aari was more sober. "Does it show if there are any live beings there?"

Becker shook his head. "Don't know. My scanners are for salvage, mostly."

"I hope Thariinye and Maati were able to make it to the escape pod," Acorna said with a little shiver that made her skin twitch. "I don't think anything else would have survived that crash."

Becker said, "Look at the ship. I don't see any obvious signs of them or the pod in the wreckage. They're here somewhere. And if that's the case, Princess, we'll find them. What I'm hoping is that none of those stupid bug things made it to a pod."

"Their ships don't have pods, Joh," Aari said. "Their carapace protects them against many things that would kill others."

"What about that large shuttle-shaped piece of debris over there, captain?" Mac asked.

Rrrrrowwsst!" RK responded. Cat says it's Khieevi," Becker told them.

"We heard him, Joh," Aari said soberly. 'Well, from here I'd say it's not as badly wrecked as the Khieevi ship." He indicated the fragments of the ship floating ^ the water. "We can at least hope that any occupants are in ^e same fragmentary state as their transportation," Becker said.

RK bolted for his personal exit and they heard his claws scrabbling as he slid down the cat chute to the ramp that led to the robolift.

"We better get moving," Becker said. "Cat seems to have to go real bad. Must be that pretty blue sandbox out there just itching to have a Makahomian cat scratch in it. Aari, you get that Khieevi earthmoving weapon you brought along as your dowry. I've got the locator and laser rifle," he said, hefting a sleek and deadly looking weapon the length of his forearm.

"And I have my own array of attachments, Captain," Mac said, opening his forearm to display the corkscrew, can opener, knife blades, scissors, magnifying gla.s.s and other small equipment that were standard with his particular model.

Acorna made a side trip of her own. Taking a slight detour to an otherwise empty storeroom, she gathered up a lightweight t.i.tanium cargo net she had spotted earlier in the journey.

"Good idea, Princess," Becker said when he saw it. "We'll be able to net us some salvage from that Khieevi ship for sure."

Thus armed, they boarded the robolift and headed down. Acorna felt something sticky on her shoes. She took a closer look at her shoes, then at the source of the problem. "Mac, when we get back here, I want you to scrub the lift down. It's a mess from the plant sap on that planet where we picked up the piiyl."

MacKenZ looked surprised-probably because she was talking about minor housekeeping matters now, when so many more important things were at stake-but didn't say anything. Clearly the robot had never learned the trick of keeping fear at bay by concentrating on the trivia of life. Maybe robots didn't ever feel that kind of fear.

Once the robolift set down, however, Becker regarded the outside of his ship with disgust, too. "Those d.a.m.n plants slimed my hull! Look at that! What a mess."

"Joh," Aari said softly, nodding to redirect the captain's attention to the halves of the Linyaari ship. "What if Maati and Thariinye are in the wreckage?"

"If they're there, they'll be easy to find. We'll know soon enough what the situation is. No sense borrowing trouble. Princess, anything to add here?"

"I was-receiving some impressions toward the last, before we picked up the Khieevi, that the pod might have become stuck in the ship. If so, they could still be alive but trapped in the wreckage in the pod."

"We must reach them before the Khieevi do," Aari said.

"If there are any Khieevi left," Becker said. "Come to think of it, maybe we'd better try to head the bad guys off at the pa.s.s even before we check the wreckage."

"There are Khieevi here," Aari said. "I can feel them."

RK, back up and tail brushed, apparently agreed with him.

They made their way cautiously down the beach, weapons at the ready. Acorna felt a little foolish trailing behind, preoccupied by the feeling that she knew Maati and Thariinye were here somewhere-alive-but she couldn't tell where. She only had a vague sense of them. Why couldn't she at least reach Thariinye? She couldn't shake the feeling that her friends were alive, but in trouble.

They saw wrecked Khieevi shuttlecraft lying in the dunes, broken up but considerably more intact than the Khieevi ship, lying in the dunes further up the beach. Something brown lay crunched around the edges, and a green fluid tinted the blue sand turquoise.

"Any Khieevi who survived were most likely in that shuttle," Becker p.r.o.nounced. "Look at their ship. I doubt they could live through a wreck like that. The ship is toast, but the shuttle-well, that looks like it was s.p.a.ceworthy till the last minute. No convenient vacuum or decompression to kill all the occupants for us."

As they drew nearer they saw movement and heard a sound that made Acorna's skin twitch-the klick-klack she had heard so often on Aari's video. The light wind carried a terrible stench-rot combined with vomit. RK stopped, dug his claws into the ground, and hissed like a tea kettle. Aari's steps slowed. Becker surged ahead like a missile, Mac outpacing him with nonchalance in the face of danger that only an android-particularly one who had once been the face of danger himself- could achieve.

"It appears we've got a live one," Becker growled as he rounded the dune where the shuttle lay. "Though it's half buried under that shuttle. It's not going anywhere fast. I'll just put this c.o.c.kroach out of its misery,"

"Please, wait," Acorna said. "We must question it. Aari knows their language, at least enough to get something useful out of it. Perhaps we can get more from the LAANYE. We have to find out if this ship was alone or if others will be coming, where the main swarm of Khieevi is now, and where they are heading next. If my people are threatened again, they must know at once."

Aari found his voice and his feet, and in six more strides stood beside Becker. Acorna approached cautiously, curiously. The creature snapped its mandibles and reached for Becker with its pincers but the captain sidestepped smartly and beckoned for Acorna to give him the cargo net.

She wondered suddenly why it had occurred to her to bring it. Then she glanced at Aari and saw him smiling at her with both approval and triumph. That was it, of course. Aari had sent her the suggestion. He thought he. couldn't intentionally send any longer, but he was clearly mistaken. He had certainly just done it. Why hadn't he asked her aloud, she wondered? It would have been a reasonable request. How odd.

Aari was carrying the very large and heavy weapon which he'd retrieved when his torturers fled the death throes of Vhiliinyar. He trained it on the monster. Maybe that was it. Acorna had been the logical one to bring the net-but, still, he usually communicated with spoken words. She looked up at him again, frowning this time, but he was concentrating on the Khieevi.

"Okay," Becker said. "Aari, Acorna, and I are going to capture this thing. When we have the net over it and solidly anch.o.r.ed, Mac, you maneuver the shuttle off its leg and thorax, okay?"

"Yes, Captain."

Acorna was the only one who could use two hands, but fortunately the creature was trapped and rather badly injured by the crash. Much of its back end was crushed beneath the shuttle, from what she could see. It still gave her cold chills to be this close to a live Khieevi, no matter how much was wrong with it. When the android lifted the broken piece of the shuttle from the back of the Khieevi and tipped it aside, the Khieevi struggled mightily against their t.i.tanium net, but in vain. Mac then aided his crewmates in finishing netting the monster's hind parts. The monster klicked and klacked and gnashed its mandibles at them as best it could through the impediment of the net, but they paid it no attention. Finally it -was well wrapped enough that they could risk transporting it.

"Now, then," Becker said. "We'll put him in the brig and Mac can stay and guard him while the LAANYE collects language samples. As mad and as noisy as this beast is, we ought to get enough stuff to be useful. As long as he doesn't have any friends to scream for, we should be fine. I'm told they kill their wounded, so the fact that he's alive means he's probably alone. men, Aari, buddy, while that's going on, you and me are going to excavate that egg ship and make sure your little sister and that idiot punk she's with aren't trapped inside."

'I'll start searching through the debris while you're gone, and I'll broadcast that we're here, Captain," Acorna said. "If our friends are nearby, and conscious, Thariinye will hear me and he'll let me know where they are." "Good idea, Princess. We'll be right back with the plasma cutters."

Acorna climbed inside the half of the egg that should have contained the bridge. She could see the lower edge of the crushed viewport sunken deep into the damp sand. The sea was licking at the wreckage now, wide wet fingers teasing loose bits of smashed equipment and carrying them out and back with each wash of the waves. She wondered about tides-was the wreck in danger of being flooded? Perhaps, with so many moons arrayed about the planet, that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe they would all cancel each other out, gravitationally, instead of amplifying the movement of the seas. She could hope so, anyway.

The shadows were growing long now. Becker and Aari would not have much more daylight. She began throwing everything she could over the side of the ship facing away from the water. Becker -would certainly want his salvage. Nothing faintly resembling the bridge was visible yet. Fragments of burnt and ripped pavilion fabric pa.s.sed through her hands, as did a mane comb, and the shards of a mirror. Acorna saw her own slender face reflected back in the device. She hadn't realized she was *weeping until then.

(Thariinye? Thariinye, answer me if you can!) she thought as hard as she could. But everything within the ship was still. The only movement was the settling of the rubbish as it shifted beneath her feet, and the lapping of the waves against the ruined hull of the ship.

She heard the Condor's robolift descend again. Becker and Aari soon arrived carrying the plasma cutters with them. At Becker's signal Acorna climbed back out of the sh.e.l.l. Becker gave her an inquiring -waggle of his eyebrows, but she shook her head sadly. She had been unable to make contact.

The men worked until -well after dark, seeing by the light from their cutters. At one point, Acorna went up on the robolift and turned on an exterior floodlamp Becker had rigged above ,t for nighttime salvage expeditions. The shadows it cast made t look as if the two men were mining the pits of darkness, their grunts and the raucous scorch and sizzle of the saws adding to the general impression of demonic digging. The tide had risen and the wreck was beginning to flood. The men were waistdeep in water, so that they had to dive as well as cut. Meanwhile, Acorna carried salvage to the robolift.

She made mental calls to her friends from time to time, pleading for Thariinye to answer, but she felt nothing, heard nothing. Not then.

When the men were up to their necks in water, Becker finally threw his plasma cutter onto the beach over the broken hull of the sh.e.l.l ship and hoisted himself out. "C'mon, Aari. We're going to have to wait for the tide to go out. If there's anything there to see, it's too far under water now. Maybe the tide will shift some of the junk still there so we can see more."

"My little sister might be in there, Joh. A child."

"Maybe, but I doubt it," he said. "I'm betting that she and Thariinye were smart enough to get out." He looked toward Acorna but all she could see -were the whites of his eyes and his teeth. "You sense anything from in there yet, Princess?"

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "It is possible the pod broke free -while we were discussing how to destroy the Khieevi ship. Thariinye and Maati could have escaped then."

The three of them climbed onto the robolift. RK had stayed aboard the ship during the salvage operation. "Our new guest better hope they escaped, or be prepared to tell us where they are. Aari, I've got a few questions I want you to translate into their kilck-klacL"

"Certainly, Joh. I can ask questions, but I do not think the Khieevi will answer. They have never answered questions. The Linyaari sent amba.s.sadors to them and the only answers we ever received to our questions were vids of the amba.s.sadors being tortured as I was. But those amba.s.sadors never escaped. Our people met their deaths in those vids."

"Nasty stuff. Well, maybe your people asked the Khieevi right questions, but didn't ask in the right way. You Linyaari have got a few scruples that don't particularly apply to me. Aari, I want you to give Mac a little language lesson. He learned how to ask questions when he worked for Kisia Manjari. I'm betting our guest will be real happy to tell us anything we want to know before Mac is done with him. But we're still going to need you to translate. You folks are pacifists, I know. Is this going to bother you?"

Aari bared his teeth until they -were -whiter than his skin in the light of the two moons. "No, Joh. It will not bother me."

The sole Khieevi still alive and free on this planet cut a swath through the fern-like trees. At first it was a low swath. The creature was a bit stunned from his emergency departure from the shuttle, but it managed to properly decimate the undergrowth in the approved style. The Khieevi scoutship crew had expected that the strange craft that destroyed theirs would come for them on this planet, trying to protect the fragile little onehorns in the decorated s.p.a.ce-borne food container. But the strange ship hadn't been fast enough. The Khieevi had made short work of the one-horn ship, and would have done the same to the strange ship had it not taken them by surprise and used unfair and totally uncalled for tactics to wreck them and cause the deaths of all of the other swarm members but the navigator and the self of the Khieevi who now ate Jits way through the forest floor.

That self-the inquisitor-had heard the klickmgs of the navigator for miles and miles, but the inquisitor -was not about to go back. The navigator had been half squashed -when the shuttle fell on him. The navigator would be recycled into food soon. The inquisitor -would see to it.

10S.

The inquisitor had a communications device. It would be difficult to activate without the ship's power to fuel it, but organic activation could be implemented in an emergency such as the current one. It had only to reach a high point on the planet, arrange indigenous ingredients in a certain proportion, and chew, and the resulting chemical reaction would provide carrying power for the message the Khieevi wished to transmit.

The mission would not fail. The Khieevi swarm would come to this planet and find plenty and prosperity for another short time, and then all of the neighboring worlds and all their viable foodstuffs would also fall to his race's relentless mandibles.

Meanwhile, the other scout ships would search out other areas. But the inquisitor's sole purpose now was to notify its swarm of its own location, the location of the food, and the loss of the ship.

That, at least, was its sole intended purpose until, after eating its way through the undergrowth, it found at its very jaws a one-horn device, small and compact and shaped like a food container. To the inquisitor's regret it was empty, but the one-horns who had occupied it had left a trail of broken plant matter, scent, and vibrations. The inquisitor chomped its way after them up a steep hill and down it.

At the top of the steep hill, it looked at the seash.o.r.e below it and saw the navigator being lugged down the beach by two hornless two-leggeds into the strange ship. The navigator was still alive and klicking. Not for long, the inquisitor was certain. mat information would be noted when the inquisitor broadcast the next report to the swarm. It continued eating, tracking the missing one-horns.

As nighttime fell, the inquisitor was very full, but unsatished. It had a need to smell alien one-horn blood. To see it flow. /vs it ate its way downhill into a little valley, it saw how to lulhll that need, too. Leaning against a tree, apparently sleeping, was a one-horn. The inquisitor closed on its prey.

The healing retreat in the hills of the Ancestors, under their gentle, probing care, was meant to erase all pollution, all contamination, all taint, all pain, all shame left behind from the dreadful ordeal the Linyaari s.p.a.cefarers had faced. The process could go on for days, weeks, months, years, by Standard reckoning; a ghaanye or many, by Linyaari reckoning.

However, the deep healing had barely begun when personal attendants began handing the supplicant pilgrims their wraps and saying, "Go home. You are needed in Kubiihkhan."

Grandam had never known of such a thing to happen in all her life.

Have -we done something wrong?" one of the younger crew members from the liliura asked. "Are we being cast out because our taint is too great?"

'Don't talk nonsense, child," the personal attendant said. Didn't you hear Us? You are needed. And as for being cast ut, how can We possibly be casting you out when We are coming with you?"