“Notify another ship. What ship might that be, Barry? And when do you plan on notifying it?” There was only one type of ship Alistair knew who would collect people without being paid to do it. A cattle ship. Santiago planned to leave them here on Zell with nothing and then call a cattle ship to pick them up.
“Strictly business, you understand. It’s not personal.”
Business. They were talking lives here. Fifty people working hard for two years just to be handed off to a slave ship or left to die once past their use-by.
How many times had Santiago done this before? Barry, at least, had the grace to look uncomfortable. Melda just looked angry.
“I don’t know how either of you look at yourselves in the mirror each day,” Melda said.
Neither did Alistair.
“Unfortunately for you,” Angel said, “there has been a change of plan. This latest plot of yours has saved you from that fate.”
Unfortunately. So whatever fate Angel planned for them had to be worse than being collected by a cattle ship. That left only one option. Alistair wasn’t sure it was worse.
“You’re going to kill us. Why?”
“I believe you call them Ort.”
Alistair looked at Melda and Cam. At Yakusha and Mayeso. His friends as well as his workmates.
Angel spread her hands in a let’s-be-reasonable gesture. “But before tempers get too heated, tell us what you’ve done with the transurides.”
She had to be kidding.
“You’re a bastard, Angel. You know that,” Melda said.
Mayeso tugged at Alistair’s arm. “The Ort. They took it.”
“You can’t blame these Ort for everything,” Angel said. “Return those transurides. Now. Let me show you how serious we are, what we do with thieves.” She turned to Barry, pointed at Mayeso. “Kill the thief.”
Alistair snatched for the fire-breather strapped onto his back as he stepped in front of Mayeso. “Don’t even think it.”
Barry grabbed Melda, held his blaster to her head. “Lower your hands, Laughton. Or this one dies first.”
“Let’s instead talk about what is happening here. Did you really come all this way just to shoot us?”
Barry shrugged. “It happens.”
The matter-of-fact way he said the words made it real. How much time did they have? “You’re outnumbered.”
“But we’re prepared to kill. You’re not.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Right now he would happily kill them all.
Melda pulled free from Barry.
Angel lifted her own—hitherto concealed—weapon.
Alistair tripped Melda as Angel fired. She went down. So slowly it seemed he could see the spurt of heat from Angel’s blaster. Could see the way Melda fell, saw the heat pass by her. Saw her hair catch fire.
Angel raised her weapon again, aimed it at Alistair.
“Don’t try it. Lower your weapon or you are dead.” He hefted the fire-breather meaningfully. She changed her aim, toward Cam.
There was a spurt of blue-white sheet lightning.
Angel dropped.
Sheet lightning. Alistair looked at the weapon in his hand. He hadn’t fired.
Mayeso backed against the wall, eyes wide, staring at the door. Even Barry backed away.
Cam dropped to the floor beside Melda and pulled off his jacket. “You realize this is my last good jacket. After this I’ll have to wear one of Yakusha’s horrible pink-and-brown things.”
Alistair turned to the doorway. Eight Ort stood there, fire-breathers raised. A corner of his mind registered the way they held the weapons. He would have to change his grip. He wasn’t sure if the timing of their arrival was good or bad.
A wave of white noise swamped him. A strong feeling of safety and security, and out of the white noise came, “No harm. Miracle.”
“The smartest thing you can do right now, Barry, is surrender.” Alistair lowered his own weapon.
Barry dropped his blaster. “You lied. You do have an understanding with these creatures.”
If only it were true, but Alistair was prepared to pretend it was if it saved their lives.
“They’re trying to talk to us.” He turned to the Ort, pushed the words across as a thought as he spoke. “We mean you no harm either.”
“No harm.” One of the creatures pointed to Cam.
“Me? What have I done?”
Outside, voices raised. Someone started yelling.
Alistair snatched up Angel’s blaster, and Barry’s. He tossed Barry’s blaster to Yakusha, Angel’s to Cam.
The yelling was punctuated with blaster fire.
The timing sucked.
He ignored Angel. He was pretty sure she was dead. He didn’t care. He turned to Barry. “Does this put you in charge?” It didn’t matter. The people out there were Barry’s. “You come with me. You, too, Cam,” for he didn’t want to leave Cam without protection. “Mayeso, Yakusha, take care of Melda.”
There was more yelling from outside. He couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like Cadel’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair said to the Ort. “I have a situation I need to deal with. Please wait.” He hoped they understood. He picked up his own fire-breather, gestured to Barry. “Come.”
“Your problem, you deal.” Barry kept his hands up, his eyes on the Ort. He looked as terrified as Mayeso.
Cam waved his newly acquired blaster. “Go with him, Barry. I’ll follow. And be warned. I will happily shoot you, even if you think Alistair won’t.”
Alistair hid a smile as he bowed hastily to the Ort. “Later.”
He ran for the door and raised his fire-breather as he did so. If any of his people were dead, then the Santiagans would die likewise.
In the main room the settlers had taken cover. Talli was ordering her troops to circle behind.
“Drop your weapons,” Alistair bellowed. “The next person who fires is dead.”
Talli spun toward him, then her jaw dropped, and her weapon went slack in her hand. One of the other guards fired. Aiming behind them. His aim was off.
Alistair shot his arm.
Barry scrambled to one side. “You idiot. Do you want to hit me?”
“Boss,” the guard stammered. “Behind—”
“I am well aware.”
Alistair detected the tremor in Barry’s voice. He didn’t think anyone else would pick up on it. He guessed from the reaction, the Ort had followed them out.
“Angel is dead.” Alistair hoped she was, anyway. “Barry is in charge and will confirm that the situation has changed. Drop your weapons. I’ll shoot anyone who doesn’t comply.”
Two of them were slower than the rest of the guards. From the corner of his eye, Alistair saw one of the Ort step forward. The guards dropped their blasters.
“Cadel, Sims,” Alistair said. “Collect all weapons.” Cadel had a blaster burn down his left leg, but he limped toward Talli.
“Anyone else hurt?” He didn’t ask if anyone was dead.
“Just me,” said Cadel. “My stupid fault, really. They stole the keys to the machinery shed.”
Preparatory to moving everything out and onto the spaceship. Why bother if they’d been going to kill them all regardless?
“Lock them in an empty store,” Alistair ordered once the weapons were collected. They didn’t have a lockup on Zell. He’d never thought they’d need one. He left Sims and Cadel in charge and turned to the Ort. “Thank you for your assistance.”
A white noise of confusion enveloped him.
He tried again. “Thank you for your help,” and thought it at them as well.
More white noise, but among it he picked out, “Least we can do for our fellow abandoneds.”
At least that was what it sounded like.
“Abandoneds?”
“Your uncle’s uncle’s uncle must grieve for you.”
Cam came over to stand beside him.
The white noise crescendoed as the Ort surrounded him.
“They really like you.”
“It might not be like.”
“It’s excitement. They’re communicating, but it’s not making a lot of sense.”
“It’s not making any sense to me. I hear nothing.”
“So far all I’ve got is that it’s the least they can do to help abandoneds like them, and our uncles are grieving for us.”
Cam scratched his head. “I think you might need to work more on your translations.” He smiled uncertainly at the Ort. “Hi.”
The Ort who seemed to be the lead speaker gave a bob, all four legs down, all four arms up. “Ourselves are honored to be in your company, Savior. Miracle.”
The others bobbed too. “Miracle.”
“Now they’re calling you a miracle.”
Cam scratched his head again. “I wouldn’t go as far as that. But I’ll take it, if it brings them onto our side.”
* * *
• • •
The next hours were an exhaustive blur of struggling to understand each other. All Alistair could go by was the emotions he got through the white noise. If he was interpreting them incorrectly—and he might well be—then this historic meeting of two races was doomed.
It was as exhausting for the Ort as it was for Alistair.
While both sides took a break, Alistair summed it up for Cam, Yakusha, Cadel, and an in-pain Melda. “They’re plague carriers. And scientists. I think. Or doctors.” Only, their doctors seemed a lot more sophisticated than human doctors. “Their race is beset by a plague. It’s spread out along their quadrant of the galaxy—don’t ask me where, they did tell me, but I didn’t understand. They don’t have a cure. It’s decimating them.” Literally, if he understood the figures. “One in ten survives.”
He sniffed at the drink Yakusha handed him. “This smells like coffee.” Took a mouthful. “Tastes like coffee too.”
“It is coffee,” Cam said dreamily.
He’d have to get used to the taste again.
“We raided their shuttles,” Yakusha said. “Took all their supplies, given they’re eating us out. One of them had the cheek to complain about the size of the dinner we gave them.”
Both shuttles were still on-world. They’d have to let their prisoners go soon. They couldn’t feed them forever. Couldn’t even feed themselves. What would Santiago do then? Give the colony up as lost? No. The ship was still out there, and Barry would have reported the Ort. First contact would be a coup for Santiago Company.
“We’ll have to make a deal with Barry.”
“Over my dead body,” Melda said.
It would be her dead body if they didn’t. Alistair didn’t argue, though. She’d realize the predicament she was in when she could think through the pain. He continued with what he knew—or thought he knew.
“They’ve been injecting us with an antidote for their plague. Apparently, we humans can be cured. They say they have wanted to talk with us ever since they first met me.” Alistair didn’t know what he’d done to make them realize he was sapient, but thank God for aliens who recognized sapience when they saw it, because he wasn’t sure humans would have done the same with an individual sample. That was why they’d saved his eyes rather than mercifully killing him.
“It’s also why I can talk to them. The Ort opened up some . . . thing . . . a pathway in my brain.” He’d thought the white noise in his head had been damage to his hearing—or his mind—from the original operation. Instead he’d been receiving sounds via the opened neural pathways.
“Some of us will volunteer to let them do the same for us,” Melda said. “You can’t do everything. I hope their machines can cope with human anatomy.”
How did he put this without making the Ort seem barbaric? “They don’t have machines, Melda. They do it by hand.”
“Oh my God.”
She’d never sounded so much like his old boss, Paola Teke.
Alistair rested his head against the wall, closed his eyes momentarily. All he wanted to do was sleep. But the important information was still to come.
“They’re searching for transurides. In quantity. Their calculations say the Vortex has the perfect conditions for transurides.” Which was why the humans were out here too. “They have some method—hit or miss, apparently—where they take in enormous amounts of transurides.” He’d thought they said they ate it, but that would be wasteful. “Some of it gets into your bloodstream. You only need a trace amount to stop the plague binding.
“Human blood will build antibodies. Theirs won’t, not for this plague. But they test us before they inoculate us, just in case.”
He opened his eyes, looked at Cam. “Then they got to you. The plague didn’t take. You’re naturally immune. They say it’s because you have transurides in your body.”
“I do.” Cam brushed back his hair self-consciously. “Dellarine. It makes my skin glow.”
“Are you sure?” Yakusha asked. “That’s not normal.”
“Of course I’m sure. I paid for it, didn’t I.”
“Where did you get that sort of money?”
Cam came from money; Alistair was sure of that. He cut across the start of an interrogation Cam didn’t want. “How did it get into your body?”
“My modder. She said it would be expensive, but it would look amazing.” He smiled, this time his regular, open smile that made everyone smile back. “She was right. It does.”
* * *
• • •
“Here’s the deal,” Barry had said when Alistair went to see him the next day. “Santiago is sending an armored ship. It will be here in two weeks. If necessary, they will rescue us. You know what will happen to you.”
“If you’re staying on planet with us, you will need to supply your own food.”
They couldn’t feed fifteen unnecessary mouths for two weeks. Alistair had rather hoped Barry and his people would return to their own ship, even if it left their own people vulnerable because they had no way off the planet.
“And the Ort?”
“We’ll make a treaty with them.”
“You don’t know how to talk to them. You don’t know what they want. They see you as the enemy.”
Two groups of outsiders, banding together in isolation. A fragile bond. It was risky to rely on an unknown alien culture, to assume they thought the same way, even if the Ort had helped them, but trusting Santiago led to only one result. Death for all their settlement.
“Understood,” Barry said. “Your people also know the world conditions better than we do. We’ll work with you.”
For the moment. Until they learned to communicate themselves. Then the settlement people would be superfluous. “What about the deal we had with Santiago. Our contract?”
“We’ll pay you out,” Barry said. “Although, you haven’t produced the transurides.”
“We’ve still got a week to deliver.” The Ort still had the transurides. Alistair would leave that deal for Melda to bargain, once she could talk to them. She was undergoing the surgery right now to change parts of her brain so she could receive and interpret their words—if they were actually words.
Surgery. He couldn’t stop his shudder.
Humans had a lot to learn from Ort. Ort might have things to learn from humans too.
“You won’t get the bonus,” Barry said.
He’d expected that, counted on it. “Then give us the machinery. Legally.”
“The machinery’s worth more than you are.”
“You tried to get out of a contract by killing us. How do you think the Justice Department will look at that?”
Barry started to laugh,
then stopped. “That would be funny, coming from anyone but you. The Justice Department is a toothless tiger.”
“There are a couple of canines left, if you know how to use them.”
“And you do, don’t you?”
“I do.” But if those steps came to pass, everyone in the settlement would be dead. Santiago might suffer a minor loss of reputation, and the Ort would come under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, but the forty-nine people under Alistair’s care would be dead.
“We want the machinery,” Alistair said. “And we want to be recognized as joint settlers here on Zell.” For all the good that would do them. Barry would believe they meant to settle. As soon as he could, Alistair was getting them all off-world. Including the Ort, if they wanted to come. Barry didn’t need to know that.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
“Please don’t be facetious. We both know where this will end.” He was trying to delay the inevitable and hoping for a miracle in between. Hope was a funny thing. It kept you alive; it kept you trying.
“Point,” conceded Barry. “All conditions agreed, provided there’s a proviso that all reverts to Santiago if, say, a plague wipes you all out.”
Alistair gave a grim smile. “It’s funny you mention plague. Are you aware the Ort are plague carriers?”
From the recoil, no, Barry hadn’t been.
Alistair’s smile widened. “The Ort inoculated us to protect us from the plague. Your medic cleaned it out of yours and Talli’s system, claiming it was a virus. You might want to take that into consideration for future dealings with us.”
Not that it mattered. Barry and his team had a doctor and a genemod machine. They didn’t have to worry. But even small victories could be savored, no matter how short they lasted.
“One last thing,” Alistair said. “We have promised to do something for the Ort.”
They’d agreed to find Nika Rik Terri and bring her back to explain how she’d worked the transurides. Provided they could convince her to come. Cam thought she would. But what did a client really know about his or her modder, except what the modder told them in order to sell the mod?
“Two of us have to leave this world in order to do that. We’d like to contract with Santiago for the passage.”
Stars Beyond Page 24