“We’re outta here!” Bobby announced and ran for the door. Kasha was right behind him. They jumped out of the cell . . .
And into a riot. The same escape that the gars pulled off in Bobby’s cell was being duplicated throughout the animal pens. Bobby and Kasha saw cell doors being thrown open all around the courtyard. Gars streamed out, screaming like banshees to intimidate their klee captors. It wasn’t hard. The gars outnumbered the klees ten to one. Some brave klees tried to fight, but they were overwhelmed by the charging gars as they ran for the corral doors that would lead them to the zenzen pens and out of this prison.
“We should find Ranjin,” Bobby said. “Maybe this will convince him to become the viceroy again and—”
“No,” Kasha interrupted. “We’re past that. We’ve got to get to the forager operation center.”
“Why?” Bobby asked.
Before Kasha could answer, a squad of klees came charging into the courtyard with a huge net, trying to recapture some gars. Several gars were caught in the net, but they weren’t giving up without a fight. These were no longer docile animals. They had been waiting a long time for their chance at freedom and weren’t about to give it back easily. They tore at the netting, trying to get at the klees, who did their best to contain them. The klees desperately pulled on the net, but the gars refused to be controlled. They tore the netting away from the klees and turned it back on the cats, tying up the frightened cats and trapping them in their own net. With a cheer of victory, the gars ran for the corral doors.
“Follow me,” Kasha ordered and ran for the same doors. She kept to the walls to avoid the mayhem. Bobby was right behind her. When they ran through the doors into the zenzen corral, they were confronted with another form of chaos. Gars were stealing zenzens. They had thrown open the paddock and released all of the horselike animals into the corral. Frightened and confused animals barreled around wildly. Gars leaped for them. The lucky ones landed on a zenzen’s back and took control. The unlucky ones missed and got trampled by the terrified animals.
Again the klees were outnumbered. They came at the gars with their wooden clubs and with whips, but ended up getting jumped by several gars and beaten with their own weapons. The gars were on a rampage. Bobby wasn’t sure if they were motivated by the chance to escape, or by the desperate need for revenge. Probably both. It was a frightening madhouse. He and Kasha tried as best as they could to steer clear of the mayhem and get across the pen and out to Leeandra. But they were like salmon swimming upstream. Hundreds of gars were flooding in the opposite direction.
Bobby and Kasha faced different dangers. Bobby needed to avoid the klees who were trying to recapture gars, and Kasha had to keep away from the gars who wanted to hurt any klee they ran into. Kasha crept past an open zenzen stall. Bobby was following close, and just as he was about to pass the same pen, a frightened zenzen charged out, nearly hitting him. He had to dive back or get trampled. He wasn’t hurt, but when he looked up, Kasha was gone. She had kept going, not realizing Bobby wasn’t following.
“Swell,” Bobby grumbled under his breath. He ran for the gate to Leeandra, but got only a few feet when he was tackled from behind. He was slammed down to the ground, sending up a cloud of dust. He scrambled around to look up at his attacker and saw that staring down on him, pinning his shoulders with his massive paws, was Durgen.
“Here’s one gar I’ll make sure won’t get away,” he snarled while lifting his paw into the air. His claws were out and ready for business. Durgen wound up, ready to slash, when a streaking blur appeared and knocked the klee off Bobby. Bobby scrambled away and jumped to his feet. He was sure he had been saved again by Kasha. But when he looked back, he saw that his savior wasn’t the klee Traveler. It was a gar. Two more gars jumped Durgen and tied him up with his own lasso. The first gar backed away from the trussed cat and looked at Bobby.
“Thank you,” the gar said.
Bobby didn’t know how to react. Why was this gar thanking him? He had saved Bobby’s life, not the other way around. The gar stood opposite Bobby, breathing hard. This seemed strangely familiar to Bobby. A second later he remembered why. This was the gar Bobby had been forced to fight for the amusement of the handlers. Bobby let him live. Now the gar had returned the favor.
“Go home,” Bobby said.
The gar clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Black Water.” He ran deeper into the zenzen corral. Bobby never saw him again.
Bobby left Durgen and ran toward the gate into Leeandra. The wooden doors had been torn down by the rampaging gars. Bobby ran into the city to see that the orderly world of the klees had been turned on its ear. Several huts in the trees were on fire. Gars were flooding down by the hundreds, screaming with joy. A few klees tried to contain them, but most had given up and kept to the trees and out of the way. There was no stopping this flight to freedom. Some gars pushed toward the zenzen corral, but most joined the flood toward the giant gates of Leeandra. There were so many gars, it looked to Bobby like the start of the New York City Marathon.
“What happened?” Bobby heard, and spun to see Kasha standing there. “I thought you were behind me.”
“I thought you ditched me,” Bobby shot back.
“C’mon,” Kasha ordered, and took off running, deeper into the city. Bobby followed, running hard to keep up. At first it was tough because of all the fleeing gars. But soon the crowd thinned and they were able to move quickly. Kasha led him to a tree where they jumped into an elevator and shot up.
“Where are we going?” Bobby asked.
“The forager operation center,” Kasha answered.
“Okay, why?”
“You want to stop Saint Dane?” Kasha asked.
“Well, yeah.”
“This is where we’ll do it.”
Bobby didn’t question her again. He figured the answers would come soon enough. The elevator brought them up to a high point in the tree and dropped them off at another circular balcony.
“You’re the one who figured it out, Pendragon,” Kasha said.
“I did?”
“You remembered that Saint Dane promised the council that two klees could deliver the poison to Black Water and be back within the afternoon. As far as I know, there’s only one way that’s possible.”
Kasha led him along the balcony until they came upon a tall, arched door.
“Right! You said it was a gig,” Bobby said. “What does that mean?”
Kasha said, “A gig is a tool the foragers use when we go to a remote part of the jungle. With a gig we have access to places it would be too dangerous to go on foot, or even to bring gars. It’s the only way I know of to get out and back quickly to a place as far away as Black Water.”
“Okay,” Bobby said. “What’s a gig?”
Kasha pushed open the large door and stepped back for Bobby to enter. Bobby peered into the huge, hollow tree to see a room that was five times as large as the Circle of Klee.
“Oh man,” Bobby breathed in awe. “You’re right. This is exactly how he’s going to do it.”
Facing Bobby in neatly spaced rows was a squadron of small, two-seater vehicles.
Helicopters.
EELONG
(CONTINUED)
“No way!” Bobby exclaimed as he stepped into the cavernous room that was the helicopter hangar. “You guys can fly?”
“Gigs have been around forever,” Kasha explained. “They’re simple, really.”
Bobby examined the first gig he came to. The body looked like a bumper car from an amusement park, only narrower. There were two seats in an open cockpit, side by side. The body itself looked to have been molded out of a natural resin material that was hard, like plastic. The craft was a deep yellow color. Half of the gigs were the same yellow and the rest were a deep, forest green. Rising up from behind the cockpit like a triple umbrella were three rotors. The blades of each were only a few feet across, rather than a single, large rotor like Second Earth helicopters. There were two more small rotors
on either side of the body, below the cockpit. Each of these rotors was encircled by a ring of the same hard, resin material that the body was made out of.
“No wheels?” Bobby asked.
“Rollers,” Kasha said, and gave the gig a push. The light little craft moved forward a few feet. “It’s powered by the same type of crystals that light the city.” She pointed out two clear, crystal panels that were built into the body in front of the cockpit, and behind. She reached into the cockpit and squeezed a handle in front of the right seat. “Look to the front,” she said.
Bobby looked to see a set of pincer claws attached below the rounded nose—they looked big enough to grab a good-size pumpkin. As Kasha squeezed the handle, the pincers opened and closed like a lobster claw.
“We can pluck fruit from the highest treetops and drop it in a container hanging underneath.”
“Isn’t it kind of . . . dangerous?” Bobby asked.
“It’s safer harvesting with a gig than fighting off tangs. Except we can’t carry as much as a wagon, so it’s not always practical.”
“Can you fly this thing?” Bobby asked.
“All the foragers can. There’s only one problem with the gigs. The crystals can’t store enough solar energy to spin the blades. So we can only fly during the day.”
Bobby looked to the far side of the hangar where there was a huge opening that looked out onto the forest. A large platform was built out from the tree, where Bobby figured the gigs were launched. But what he focused on was the sky. It was turning from black to deep blue. Daytime was coming.
“I think this is how they’ll do it,” Kasha said somberly. “Two klees can fly over Black Water with the Cloral poison attached to the front. It would be simple to fly down low over the village and dump it. We do it all the time with fertilizer over farms. Black Water would be destroyed before they made the turn to come back.”
“And Saint Dane and the klees could stay here all safe and comfortable while an entire race was wiped out.”
“With the rest of Eelong soon to follow.”
Bobby took a few steps toward the giant hangar door and looked out at the early-morning sky. “They can’t fly until it gets light?”
“Exactly, which means we don’t have much time,” Kasha said.
“To do what?”
She gestured to the neat rows of helicopters and said, “Sabotage.”
• • •
Gunny looked ahead to see the faint outline of the mountains that held Black Water. That was the good news. They were getting close. The bad news was that he could see them at all. It meant daytime was coming and with it, the chance of a tang attack. They had been riding through the night, constantly coaxing the zenzens to gallop, trying to beat the gars who were making their way to Black Water. The animals were at the point of exhaustion and so were the riders. It was a grueling journey.
“Ho!” Gunny shouted, and pulled his zenzen to a stop. Soon the others galloped up and stopped. They were at the point where the jungle began to grow sparse and give way to dry, rocky terrain.
“It’s going to be light soon,” Gunny announced. “This is our last chance to take a break.”
“Gladly!” Courtney shouted and hopped off her panting zenzen. “I’ve been bouncing so much I think I’m two inches shorter.”
Everybody dismounted and stretched. “How much farther, Gunny?” Mark asked as he did a deep knee bend to get the circulation back.
“At this pace I’d say we’ll hit the trail into the mountains in about an hour. Then maybe another hour from there until we’re inside Black Water.”
“We’re going to make it!” Spader exclaimed. “Saint Dane won’t attack until the gars get there and we’re way ahead of them.”
“Maybe,” Gunny said. “We don’t know what he’s planning.”
Boon added, “And we’re not there yet.”
“Hobey!” Spader exclaimed. “Let’s be positive.”
“Okay” Boon said. “I’m positive we’re not there yet.”
Spader laughed and said to Boon, “I like you, mate. When this is over I want to show you Cloral.”
“You sure about that?” Courtney asked. “Can klees swim?”
“No, we can’t,” Boon answered. “Would I have to swim if I went to Cloral?”
Courtney, Mark, and Spader exchanged glances, and burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Boon asked, confused.
Spader answered, “Maybe a trip to Cloral’s not such a good idea after all—”
The attack came without warning. A tang leaped from some low bushes just off the trail. It had crept as close as possible before making its move. Its target . . . was Mark.
“Ahhh!” Mark screamed as the beast jumped on his back, throwing him to the ground. The lizard opened its mouth and lunged. But instead of soft flesh, the tang got a mouthful of broken teeth when it clamped on the steel tank.
Boon leaped and tackled the lizard like a linebacker. With one quick move, he lashed at the surprised tang’s throat with his sharp claws. The tang didn’t stand a chance.
Spader swooped in and pulled Mark to his feet. “You all right, mate?”
Mark’s eyes were wide with fear. He was breathing fast, but able to nod and say, “Y-Yeah.”
“Back on the zenzens!” Gunny ordered.
Gunny and Courtney mounted up while Spader helped Mark climb onto Boon’s animal. They all looked back toward Boon. What they saw made them turn away just as quickly. Boon was backing away from the dying tang, his paw glistening with blood. Tang blood.
“Boon!” Courtney yelled. “C’mon.”
Boon kept his eyes on the tang to make sure it didn’t jump up and fight to its last breath. A sharp hiss of exhalation told Boon he needn’t bother. The tang was finished. The entire event took no more than twenty seconds.
“I . . . I’ve never killed a tang before,” Boon said with a quivering voice. He was truly shaken.
“You picked the right time to start,” Spader said. “You saved us all.”
“Pull yourself together, Boon,” Gunny said with authority. “It’s getting light and there are more tangs where that came from. No more stops until Black Water. Yah!” He kicked his zenzen and galloped off. Courtney was right behind and Spader behind her.
Boon climbed onto the zenzen in front of Mark and grabbed the reins.
“Th-Thank you,” Mark said. “You saved my life.”
“Thank me later,” Boon replied, still a little shocked. “We’re not done yet.”
Boon kicked the zenzen, and they galloped after the others.
• • •
Smash!
Kasha used a heavy metal tool to crack the crystal power source on the front of a gig. She dug out the broken pieces with the clawlike device, then moved to the back and smashed the rear crystal. Bobby had his own tool and was doing the same to another gig. It was a slow process because the crystal was diamond hard. They had been working for nearly half an hour and had sabotaged only ten gigs.
“It’s getting lighter,” Bobby announced as he looked out the hangar door. The sky was getting bright. Daylight painted the treetops. It was going to be a nice, clear day, unfortunately.
“Keep working,” Kasha ordered. “We don’t know when they plan to—”
They both heard the door opening at the same time. Kasha and Bobby ducked down behind a gig and looked to the hangar door. Two klees entered, looking relaxed and casual.
“You piloted the last two missions,” one klee complained. “It’s my turn in the command chair.”
“Who’s the senior forager here?” the second klee asked patiently.
“Well, you, but—”
“And who’s responsible for the success of this mission?”
“Okay, you are, except—”
“This is history!” the second klee said. “When they write about this day, nobody’s going to remember who was in the command chair. They’re only going to remember that two hero klees saved Ee
long.”
“Really?” the first klee asked with a big smile.
“Yes, really,” the second answered.
“Yeah, well, I still think it’s my turn,” the first klee complained.
“Live with it,” the senior forager snapped back.
The two klees went to the front row and pushed a yellow gig out of line toward the edge of the launch platform. It was one of the helicopters that Bobby and Kasha hadn’t yet sabotaged.
“I know them,” Kasha whispered. “They’re the two best flyers we have.”
“Figures,” Bobby said, deflated.
Three more klees entered the hangar. The first was the new viceroy of Leeandra, Timber . . . Saint Dane. He was followed by two klees who struggled to carry a shiny, golden tank. It was the size of the propane tank Bobby’s dad had used to fuel their barbeque at home. The tank must have been heavy, because it took two klees to carry it. They got to the end of a row of gigs, turned the corner, and one klee caught the back of his leg on a side rotor. It threw him off balance, and he fell.
“Look out!” the klee called as he let go of the tank.
“Help!” the second klee said in a panic.
Timber reacted with incredibly quick reflexes. He spun around and caught the tank just before it hit the floor. The other klees stood frozen, holding their breaths.
“Sorry,” the fallen klee said sheepishly.
“Sorry?” Timber repeated. “You nearly killed every klee in Leeandra and all you can say is . . . ‘sorry’?”
The klee looked down, ashamed.
“Leave,” Timber commanded. The clumsy klee skulked away. Timber carried the tank the rest of the way himself.
“I think we almost died,” Kasha whispered.
“If that’s the Cloral poison, we almost did,” Bobby agreed.
The two crawled cautiously forward to get a better look at what the klees were doing. They watched as the two pilots took charge of the golden tank and attached it to the pincer claws on the front of their yellow gig. They ran black tubing from the tank and attached it to the body beneath.
Black Water Page 28