by neetha Napew
“Where’s Mitford?” was the cry and several of the hunters took off to locate him. Kris went for Zainal.
She met him head on, bouncing off his hard body and cracking her head against the rock on the rebound. His hand grabbed her upper arm to steady her.
“Another big ship, Zainal, she said, pointing outside.
Still holding her arm, the Catteni drew her along with him and the others who had been roused by the general furore.
Once again, this time in the dark, everyone who could clambered to the nearest height and peered in the direction of the oncoming airborne vessel.
“Think they’ve come on reprisals?” someone asked.
“With us messing up their mechanicals?”
“Zainal?” Mitford called.
“Here.”
“Any ideas?” Kris could see that Zainal had cocked his head, listening intently to the sound.
“That is Catteni engine sound,” he said. Then pointed, as a bulk, outlined by running lights, materialized out of the dawn gloom. Even Kris could see the basic difference in design between the first ginormous vessel and this one which was not as large, if the lights indicated its perimeter. Zainal watched a moment more and then pointed in the direction of the abattoir.
“That way.
“Jaysus what’re they doing?”
“Any chance they’re landing more prisoners, Zainal?” Mitford asked.
“Yes. Good chance.” And he began to climb down.
“Who comes with me?”
“I didn’t say you should go, buddy,- Mitford said in a tense voice.
“Only fast runners,” Zainal said, ignoring Mitford.
“They must unload.”
“Yeah, but you’d get there fast enough to take off with them, wouldn’t you?” Mitford said in a hard tone, coming out of the darkness to grab Zainal by the arm.
Kris caught her breath. Maybe, after all, Mitford wouldn’t object to a summary execution of the Catteni and Kris did not, definitely did not, want to see Zainal killed. She liked him too much!
“Don’t do anything foolish, Sarge,” she said. “I’ll go with him.”
“Of course you will,” Mitford said cryptically. They had to pause now because the noise of the overflying craft drowned out any conversation.
Zainal kept his eyes on the vessel, then nodded.
“Transport. More people. We must tiy. It is night still,” Zainal said and, pulling Kris by the hand, hauled her with him down from the height.
“Try what?” Mitford called out in the same breath that Kris echoed his question but Zainal was already sprinting down the ravine in the direction the long ship above them was headed, dragging Kris along with him.
She was aware of some conflicting and confused orders behind them as Zainal ran onwards. In the first few strides she wondered why he was so keen on having her along but then she had to concentrate on her footing to keep up with him. The fact that she could was a plus. She was sure fitter on this crazy planet than she’d ever been. She could hear others following, cursing at the dark and the bad footing but she concentrated on watching Zainal’s movements and the track in front of them.
They were well ahead of those pursuing when Zainal allowed her to pause for a few moments. They were on the downside of the ridge, the lights of the vessel obscured by the lay of the land. She quickly recovered her breath enough to speak.
“Will they stop the same place they dropped us off?” she asked.
“That would be good,” he said. “Nothing there.” She took that to mean that the field would be empty and thus a good spot to dump more unconscious bodies.
She wondered how long it would take, or did the Catteni have some way of just rolling bodies out of the ship’s hold that didn’t require individual handling? Then she remembered, all too vividly, what happened to living creatures lying on fields on this fecking world. No wonder Zainal was in such a hurry. Dawn was still far away. Would they get there soon enough to prevent slaughter?
He started off again and she followed, all too aware that it had taken them two days to reach the caverns from that site. Even at the pace Zainal had set, would they make it to the field before the ship took off again?
Well, they had to try. Or maybe he was hoping to attract attention from one of the hill points overlooking the field?
They clambered up a slope now, and Zainal stopped so abruptly that she ran into him.
“Hey, warn me, will - . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized that the running lights were higher than they should be for a ship that might be landing. They hadn’t seen its gradual ascent. Zainal cursed, whirled and looked back the way they had come, running his hand and arm along the line the ship had travelled as if trying to impress the direction in his mind. He started back up the slope they had just slid down, digging his toes in and slipping in the urgency of his passage.
Shaking her head, Kris followed him, pausing only briefly when the roar of engines told her that the ship was boosting out of planetary gravity. The flame of its propellant was as vivid as the launches she remembered from Cape Kennedy. She would have liked to watch but had to keep up with Zainal.
They met up with the others in moments, considering the pace that Zainal was setting.
“The ship’s already dumped its load,” she told them, clinging to someone as support as she gasped out an explanation. “Back that way.
We gotta get there before the scavengers murder “em all.”
“Was that why the Cat was in such a flaming hurry?”
“Hell, he wanted to catch up with them and get off this bleeding planet,” another man managed to gasp out.
“Think what you will, but are you going to help?” Kris cried, shouting the last of her challenge over her shoulder as she took off after Zainal.
They did gather more help as they went back through the ravine again. Dawn was brightening the sky, so it was easier to see where to put your feet. Where the track split, right down into the ravine, or left to continue on the upper ridge, Zainal signalled for Kris to report to Mitford who was standing in his office, fists on his belt as he saw them emerge on the height.
“Need Slav badly,” Zainal added and then charged off again.
“What “n’ell’s going on?” Kris stopped, hands on knees, catching enough breath to speak. “We need Slav. Ship took off. It’s already dropped its load. We gotta get there or the scavengers will.”
“Right on!” And Mitford snapped into action, yelling for Slav, Pess, Tesco, Su, and Dowdall as she took up her chase of Zainal.
She finally caught up with him when he stopped by one of the many streams to rinse out his mouth. The sun wasn’t up yet and the air was cool, but she was hot from her exertions and wondering if she would last the distance.
“Mitford’s organized more help. Is it far?” He shook his head.
“Ship climbing.” He looked up at the lightening sky. “Lucky.” She hoped so, but how long did those creatures scavenge? Would this half-light be sufficient to send them wherever they spent the daylight hours? She had her breath back and now dropped to her belly, burying her hot face in the cool water, intaking a mouthful to moisten her throat and letting only a little trickle down to her stomach. She was on her feet when he was.
And they ran on.
Actually this wasn’t a bad pace, she thought, now she had her second wind. She tried to keep her mind off what scavengers could do to a field full of nice juicy warm live bodies. Now that wasn’t a productive thought! At least it should now be clear to everyone at the camp that Zainal had been motivated to “save’ people, not get himself off this planet. Though she wouldn’t blame him if that had been his goal. Would he have taken her with him? That, too, was not a productive thought but she was beginning to appreciate how much the big man meant to her. She’d never found anyone else who treated her as a competent equal, who had never once tried to come on since the day she had floored him in the flitter. She knew from comments made back in the kitchens at Barevi
that, while the Catteni were equipped, to put it discreetly, much the same way as human males were - only more so, as one woman had said drily - the two species were incompatible as far as procreation was concerned. No Catteni-Human offspring would be forthcoming. But, since the day she had clobbered him in the flyer back on Barevi, Zainal had never visibly lusted after her. And she was quite familiar with that sort of look. Zainal treated her not quite as he treated the male members of their patrols, but with a courtesy she found unusual and, maybe even, special to her - even when he knew that it was her fault he was stuck with this bunch of suspicious, unappreciative and sometimes intolerant mixed bag of humanoids. Oddly enough, though the Catteni were the subjugating race, the Deskis and Rugarians didn’t seem to feel any animosity towards Zainal . . .
certainly not as much as the Terrans did.
This was not terrain she was familiar with and Kris was relieved to see the sun coming up and clearing away the shadows so there was less danger of her stumbling on the rough ground. That was the one thing she did fear - an injury that their meagre first-aid supplies could not remedy. Or unfamiliar infections that were life-threatening.
The Catteni antiseptic lotion was not a specific cure for everything that could happen to the unwary. But the anaesthetic from the darts could be a boon.
Zainal was bounding up the hill in front of them now, then switching to a zig zag on the steeper parts. He waited on the height for her and pointed. Two fields over she could see the cubes of Catteni supply crates and the fringes of space occupied by inert bodies. At this distance, she couldn’t tell if they were being beset by scavengers yet.
Zainal cupped his mouth and hollered a weird cry.
It was answered, she thought, by one of the aliens following. He nodded satisfaction and began the descent.
This hillside was covered with some sort of thorny growth that clung to the fabric of their coveralls with a tenacity which made her glad it wasn’t her flesh that was bared.
Zainal, caught on a thick limb, hauled out his hatchet and hewed the limb. Even separated from the mother bush, it still clung to him.
“Careful,” Zainal said, holding up his free hand to warn her back.
“Chop first,” he added, pointing to the bushes in her way.
“Can I help you?”
“Go down. Hurry,” he said, gesturing emphatically to the field now out of sight behind the next rise.
“Stamp, yell.” She hesitated a brief moment more but the flash of his eyes when he glanced up from disentangling the thicket branch from his coverall was enough to send her on her way. She used her hatchet to slash and bash a way in front of her and succeeded in reaching clear ground, covered by a stubble of harvested crops, with no further delays.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him finally free of the branch. So she ran on, across the field, neatly leaping the low hedge on the far side and down into the next. She thought she heard cries rising from the drop field. That made her run faster, shouting, giving the cowboy yells she had practised as a tomboy. She paused long enough at the separating hedge to pick up handfuls of stones. Then she leapt over that hedge and almost landed on someone’s face. A human. In fact, every body near her was human.
Some had already been attacked by the scavengers.
First she threw her rocks in as wide an arc as she could, shouting as she did so. Then she stomped her way up the long side of the field, sometimes running and jumping down as hard as she could on landing, yelling and yodelling as she stamped until she reached the upper boundary. There were no signs of the scavengers in the centre of the field so she continued her progress around the outer edge, stamping, yelling, pausing only when she had to get her breath and try to moisten the dry tissues of her mouth. She’d completed two sides of the big field when she saw others arriving and yelled and gestured at them to square the field in the other direction.
Then she spotted several people rousing from their drugged sleep and went to assist them. Once again the Catteni had dropped people comfortably near water and she borrowed cups from belts to give people that much comfort in recovering from their ordeal.
Dowdall was opening the crates, going first for the first-aid kits and blankets while the others did what they could for those the scavengers had attacked. She was so busy that she didn’t at first realize that Zainal was not among the rescuers.
“Tesco, where’s Zainal?” she asked when she did notice his absence.
“Saw him back there,” and Tesco pointed vaguely over his shoulder before kneeling to give water to a groggy woman.
Reassured, Kris moved to the next group who happened to be Deskis.
A glance around the field gave her the irritating information that none of the rescuers were doing doodly to help the aliens so she concentrated on them. Not that she found herself kindly disposed towards the Turs, who regarded the water with great suspicion until she took a sip herself and deposited the cup on the ground beside them.
They could do as they chose. Three Morphins had been badly chewed and before anyone could stop them, they suicided, evidently by swallowing their own tongues and suffocating. Their facial skin turned from a normal dark green to almost black. Other Morphins came to view the dead, then piled the bodies to one side under the hedges. Morphin “faces’ did not register any expression, so Kris didn’t know if they were upset or not but as quickly as she could, she doled out blankets and knives to them, and indicated the first-aid kits.
More people arrived from the camp, including Mitford.
She was surprised to see him away from his office but was glad of his presence. That’s when she realized she still had not seen Zainal.
“Sarge, you seen Zainal?”
“No, I haven’t,” Mitford said, frowning as he looked about the field where more and more of the latest arrivals were regaining consciousness.
“Did you come down the thorny hill?”
“No, Su was there to warn us away from it. Why?” Kris didn’t answer but, grabbing up a first-aid kit and a handful of blankets from the nearby crates, she started off at a fast trot, dodging around groups and leaping over still sleeping bodies. She flew across the intervening field, now entirely visible in the full morning light, hurdling the low hedge without losing her stride and pelted to the thornbushy hill. They weren’t like Barevi thornbushes but where she was damned sure she had hacked her way through was now as solid a vegetation patch as if she hadn’t cut it back. There was no sign of Zainal.
Scared now for him, because Zainal of all people should have been able to free himself unscathed, she looked anxiously around. Since he wasn’t up at the field, he had to still be around here, somewhere.
And, if the thorns had been toxic enough to slow down a Catteni, he’d have sought water. The thornbushes were not tall enough to have hidden his big frame and anyway his browny-grey coverall would have made him visible even in the dense undergrowth. Water!
There was always water on these damned mechanically cultivated fields. While this field had been harvested, there had to be water near by. She listened hard. Her ears finally caught the unmistakable sound of running water. Downhill there was a small copse of some of the diamond-leaved bushes. Those seemed to grow near the streams.
She heard a low groan, the sort that would reluctantly escape tightly closed lips. With a new awareness that the bushes on Botany could be dangerous, she parted the branches of the diamond-leaf and saw Zainal half-in, half-out of a little brook which welled up from the rocks around which the diamond-leaves clustered. A boot had been cast aside and his right trouser leg was rolled up over his knee, exposing the injury.
“Oh, lord,” she breathed, seeing the massive inflammation on the outside of his wide muscular calf. The thorns of Barevi had been dangerous in a nuisancy way, but this injury looked serious. Bending over him, she checked first for any signs of blood poisoning. Not that grey Catteni flesh might exhibit such a trauma. He had blood, as red as any human’s, and it had clotted almost black where it had
run down his leg. That was when she realized by the size of the wound that he had evidently carved the thorn out of his own flesh.
“Ouch!” she murmured, shuddering convulsively. She sorted through the first-aid supplies for the Catteni antiseptic. That was definitely in order. And it would sting like billy-be-damned when she poured it in that open wound but what other choice had she? She took a deep breath and emptied the entire vial of the solution into the crater he had made in his leg.
“Rorrrrrrgh!” Zainal shot to sitting position in protest at the treatment, his right hand cocked back to strike, his left arm up in guard.
Kris lurched backwards, away from him.
“It’s Kris, Zainal. I’m trying to help!” His eyes focused on her face, wild in reaction to the pain and alarm, but, in that brief instant, he recognized her.
“You came,” he said in a barely audible voice before he seemed to collapse inward and fell back on the ground.
His eyes rolled upwards, the lids fluttering as well as any southern belle flirt could have done under different circumstances, and then he passed out again.
“Did I do the right thing, Zainal?” She shook, or rather tried to shake, the massive shoulder to rouse him. She retrieved the first-aid bag which had fallen off her lap and tried to think what else she could do to help him.
Swollen tissue could respond to cold compresses. With all the antiseptic in the wound, there wouldn’t be much in the water that could exacerbate the wound.
There were sheets of some sort of material in the kit, so she soaked those until they were cold and placed them on the wound. He moaned a little but didn’t writhe in pain so she felt it was safe to continue with that treatment.
She made a pillow of one of the blankets she’d brought, brushing the leaves and pebbles off his surprisingly fine, soft grey hair and covered his big frame with another.
It was Mitford himself who came looking for her. She emerged from the brush in response to his calling. Beyond him she saw the lines of the newest immigrants starting the trek back to the camp. He hadn’t lost any time deciding to take them in, even if another four or five hundred souls to tend must be the lowest option on his agenda.