by neetha Napew
“I’m in charge of recon groups and I sent all of them out, properly
equipped for the first time. You tell Admiral Scott that we took
nothing else.” He flipped an indolent finger at the neatly stacked
inventory sheets Kris had made. ‘All signed out or accounted for. Not
a damned thing he’d need for an assault force or training. Ah, Zainal,
come to brief me on the overall picture? Well, this in-die-vidjual’s
just leaving. Aren’t you’i son?”I
“As I told you earlier, sergeant,’ the man said in an icy
tone, stressing the rank, ‘I was Admiral Scott’s aide in the resistance . . .” ‘And still no doubt an admirable aide in this one,’ Mitford said, ‘but, lieutenant, we’re all dropees here on Botany, ain’t we, Zainal?” ‘We dropped. We stay.” And Zainal held the door politely open for the lieutenant to leave by.
As soon as he was gone, Mitford dropped his chair on all four legs and whistled softly. ‘Damn fool! Scott, too. Not a fragging thing he’d need, and my teams do.” ‘Good on you, serge,’ Kris said, chuckling as she settled down on a stool. Zainal pulled one up closer to the desk and she let him tell Mitford what had happened so far.
As it occasionally happens with well-laid plans, and just about the time everyone in Camp Narrow started to get real antsy from the waiting, a Deski called into the command post in the dim light of false dawn five days later. Mitford happened to be duty officer on that shift.
“Comes now. Bad noise. Bad smell,’ she said. ‘Wrong noise.”
“What could she mean by that?” Beverly asked. He’d jumped out of his cot in the duty of lice and was hunched over the handunit which Mitford had politely tilted so that he could hear the report which Mitford asked Tul to repeat.
“Let’s ask Zainal.” He rose and shook awake the runners who’d been stationed in the office for this contingency. Each of the youngsters knew who they were to waken and where they were bunked.
Then he turned to the diagram on the wall which showed the position of each Deski. ‘Hmmm. Tul’s here,’ and he pointed. ‘If it was coming in properly, we should have heard from Fek.” He moved his finger, and drew it in a straight line down to the Drop Field. ‘Off course?” Beverly ran a straight line from Tul’s position and wound up Flicks away from the usual area. ‘We’d better get vehicles ready.”
He was gone before Mitford could remind Beverly that they
had plenty of leeway to get to a different position, and still mount the rehearsed assault.
Narrow was not the only camp alerted. The Deskis followed Zainal’s orders to contact Narrow first, and then their Camps.
Worrell called in to ask for instructions. Even Bella Vista Camp, up in the hills, had been included in the contingency plans that the brass-heads had made. Well, it had been something to do to keep busy until Phase Two actually started. It had!
Fek’s report came in a moment before Zainal, Kris and the rest of their team arrived.
“It comes. Noisy,’ Fek said.
“Where is it headed, Fek?” Mitford asked.
“You,’ she answered.
“Thanks, Fek. Keep listening. Tul said the noise is wrong.” ‘Is,’ Fek agreed and Zainal nodded to indicate he had heard and understood.
“Kris, find Beverly and tell him it’s headed here after all,’ Mitford said. ‘He’ll be at the main garage. Why would a transport be making a “wrong noise”, Zainal?” Zainal cocked his head. ‘I told you ships not in good condition.
I must hear noise to make a guess. I go up!” And he pointed to the roof of the office.
A ladder had been affixed in one of the alleys between barns to reach the cliffs against which they were backed.
Mitford swore, but stayed on the comunit desk for any further reports.
Two more Deski listeners reported in, also remarking on ‘wrong noise’. A runner came back and Mitford beckoned him to the desk and the comunit while he went outside to listen. There was so much noise now, with men and women running up and down, seeking their assigned vehicles and getting their gear on, that he gave up and went back inside.
His comunit went off again. This time it was Zainal.
“I hear wrong noise, too. Ship in trouble. Drive is bad.” ‘Fraggit.
· We need an operational ship,’ Mitford said, hopes blasted by the news.
“Not to worry. Attack plan may need change.”
“Not if Scott has anything to say about it, and he is in charge of Phase Two.” ‘Phase Two is my idea,’ Zainal said, and the comunit went dead.
It wasn’t long before everyone could hear the transport, wheezing and rumbling and giving off hoarse metallic shrieks, landing lights blazing and on-board sirens audible. The surface force made it to the Drop Field, and into their assigned positions, before the ailing transport came into view, barely skimming the ridge-pole trees and skidding to a stop rather than landing. As many landings as Mitford had already seen, some bouncing several times, others skidding toga stop, this was the worst. He dreaded to think of the unconscious bodies being thrown around inside the shallow decks.
I”Steam poured out of the base of the transport. The main
hatch opened and Catteni - coughing, sneezing, staggering made a disorderly descent from the vessel. All of them. Mitford counted twenty, which Zainal had estimated was the usual crew complement. And they were running as fast as they could, away from the ship.
Zainal ran into the light, waving a stunner and barking orders.
He pointed to one of the faster runners.
“Get him!” he called in English and roared louder in Catteni.
The vanguard did not slow and Zainal let off a stun bolt, hitting the Catteni in the head - a mortal shot. The next two he got in the legs and they fell, moaning in frustration. That was enough to halt the others and make them turn around, hands in the air. He barked another order and they reluctantly retraced their steps, their eyes wide and frightened, darting anxiously from Zainal to the hulk they had somehow managed to land.
Zainal called out a question. He got a response and immediately gestured for those hidden in the shadows to come out.
“Ship’s circuitry in overload. May blow. We must get people
out. Dane, Chavell, Rastancil, take control of them. Scott, we need every man you have.” He raced up the ramp, Kris and the rest of their team right behind. He went to controls set just inside the main hatch, throwing open the lid which was hot. He was muttering or cursing in Catteni. ‘Schkelk!” She felt herself go rigid with attention at his Catteni ‘listen’. ‘They will not breathe, Kris. No air. You pull down this type,’ he said, pulling the flat lever, ‘to open hatch. Push up to close. This one to change decks. Got it?
Good! BERT! MARRUCCI! YOWELL!
DOWDALL! Come with me! I go to bridge. Things can be done. I need engineers, any mechanics, pilots. AARENS!” Looking over her shoulder, she saw the deck part its horizontal doors and lights came up to reveal the pitiful mounds of people who had been thrown about in the landing. She didn’t need to shriek for rescuers: they were already running up the ramp and ducking into the fetid level. The frightened Catteni crewmen were back, too, each encouraged by a settler holding a stunner on him to unload the passengers.
The evacuation began. Catteni managed to lift two or three bodies, while their captors managed one in a fireman’s hold.
More help arrived as the ship trembled and shuddered and made the most hideous and frightening of metallic noises while steam hissed out from unlikely places. Kris’s right hand was caught in a gush just behind the control board. Whimpering from the pain, she licked and then blew on it.
“Got them all out,’ someone yelled at her.
“No, you haven’t,’ she yelled back. And switched decks. The smell that issued was appalling. Those going in to rescue coughed and gagged, but they kept at their grim task.
Men carrying tool kits hurried past her, kits bearing Baby’s markings. Th
en a group raced aft, Zainal shouting instructions at them about gauges and controls. The heat and the smells were almost more than Kris could manage, even as close as she was to the outside, and her stomach heaved in rebellion. Her hand was really hurting, and blowing didn’t much help.
Leaning around the open door, inhaling the fresher air outside, she
managed to filter some of the stench by drawing the front
of her coverall over her mouth and nose, hunching down in a cramped position to do so.
“Got that lot.” Yuri stopped by her side, his face a dirty mask, his coverall blood-smeared. ‘How many more to go?” ‘Two more decks.” She worked the controls, although with the noise the machinery made she wasn’t sure if the mechanism would shift decks at all. The metal must have warped in the heat. But slowly the third deck level was accessible. ‘Have many survived?”
“Others tend them.”
“We should salvage the cargo, too,’ Kris said.
“Cargo? The living first.” Yuri dismissed her suggestion with a wave and ran into the newly exposed deck, ducking under the half-raised hatch.
Suddenly the levels of noise from around the ship seemed to abate, and some were silenced. More men and women ran around, both aft and forward, some holding tools, carrying hoses and other equipment she realized they must have found in the transport.
One more tremendous gout of steam erupted from the deck plates beneath her feet and she jumped and skipped about, trying to find some place not burning hot. As soon as she could get the machinery to turn to the last deck, she darted in to help unload. The heat was almost unbearable. How long had these unconscious people endured such temperatures? Or had they?
She slung an arm over her shoulder and hoisted a body, a woman’s, and staggered out and down the ramp.
“That way. Make it to the next field,’ she was told, a hand turning her in the proper direction. The sun was up and at least she could see where she was going. There were only two bodies in this field - one Catteni, one unidentifiable, and both dead.
She staggered along, more conscious now of the sting in her steam-burned hand and very tender feet. The hedgerow had been cut down and boards put on either side over the ditches.
This field was covered with bodies. Many of them, she thankfully saw, were moving and being attended: water poured over them or cups held to their mouths so they could drink. The field was one cacophonous moan, with weeping woven in. She staggered until she could find a free spot to lay her burden down. And seeing the awful stillness in the grey face, she felt for a pulse in the neck. There was none and with a cry of despair she curved in on herself, weeping.
“Easy, Kris,’ a familiar voice said, and she looked up at Sandy Areson, who was holding out a cup of water to her.
“Drink.” Sandy’s gentle hand soothed the hair back from her sweating face and patted her shoulder. ‘We’ve saved a great many.
Thanks to Zainal.” Kris started to rise. Maybe they weren’t all dead on that level. But Sandy’s hand held her down.
“Oh no, you don’t,’ Sandy said and pushed her back. ‘Hey, what happened to your hand? It’s blistered.” ‘It is?” and Kris held it out and looked stupidly down at it.
“So it is,’ she heard herself say as she slipped sideways into unconsciousness.
It took several days for the events of the momentous morning to be sorted out. Of the 728 left alive, many were injured: broken bones being the least of the problems for the triage teams that checked over each survivor. All were dehydrated, and that was almost the first need addressed. Internal injuries as well as concussions were more serious, due to a rough landing which had pitched the inert bodies of the passengers around the shallow decks, piling up and injuring those beneath them.
Severe heat prostration had caused twenty major and minor heart attacks, which had probably been the cause of many more of the deaths.
Of those from the lowest deck, only 39 survived: 4 humans, 9
Deski, 12 Turs, 6 Ilginishs oozing green goo, and 14 Rugarians who had almost all their body hair singed off.
Even those who had suffered no major injuries needed reassurance, proper food and counselling in that order to recover from their ordeal.
The only true advantage the consolers had was that they had been through much the same experiences and really did understand how it affected people. Easley worked tirelessly in directing his teams, asking only for their names and their origin before turning them over to Yuri Palit’s resettlement people, transporting the ‘walking wounded’ to calmer surroundings as soon as possible.
The injured were transported by the air-cushion machines to Narrow for emergency treatment. ‘Great ambulance service,’ Leon Dane commented, ‘nothing to bump or jar ‘em!” The Tur contingent were unusually docile from their recent horrific experience and pathetically grateful for the water and soup passed out to them. The uninjured ones - forty in all were given such dire and terse warnings by Zainal in their own language about the dangers of the avian predators and nightcrawlers that they remained subdued as they were driven off to their new quarters. Joe and Whitby headed the expedition with a well-armed guard contingent. The first night out, Whitby also arranged a demonstration of what night-crawlers did to a dead loo-cow, and that had kept them cowed the rest of the trip.
They did not even struggle when they were lowered, with cups, blankets, knives and generous supplies of the Catteni food bars, into the valley.
Zainal also won a second victory, aided and abetted by Easley, Yuri Palit and, surprisingly, Mitford. The nineteen surviving Catteni crewmen were sequestered in the nearer blind valley which Ninety Doyle’s team had explored. They had also had an object lesson before their departure, when Zainal forced them to watch the night-crawlers ingesting the bodies of those who had not survived the crash landing.
He had also required Scott, Fetterman, Rastancil and Reidenbacker to attend. It was a salutary lesson for each group.
“They expected to be thrown into the field last night, didn’t they?” Doyle asked Zainal when the biggest air-cushion vehicle was finally free of its ambulance duty and the Catteni crewmen were loaded aboard.
“They expected death,’ Zainal replied. ‘They did not expect an Emassi to be in charge.”
“Catteni better learn not to underestimate us humans,’ Doyle replied as he waved his stunner to speed up the loading process.
The two crewmen Zainal had stunned were still not very steady on their feet, but none of their companions lent any assistance.
“Mean sonsabitches even to their own, ain’t they?” ‘One of their most endearing traits,’ Zainal said in such a facetious tone that Doyle nearly missed the sarcasm.
As the vehicle glided silently off, the Drassi captain gave Zainal a look, compounded of hatred, fear, and indignation that one of his own species was responsible for this total humiliation.
“He wanted to sear Zainal’s skin off him,’ Sarah told Kris, and gave her shoulders a shake to rid herself of that memory.
“Hope it doesn’t turn out later that it would have been wiser to stake ‘em out.” ‘No, we’d be no better than they are, doing an eye-for-an-eye bit,’ she said and then inhaled sharply in pain. Sarah was checking the blisters on her steam-burned hand. There was nothing to treat it, nor the very tender soles of her feet. The soles of her Catteni boots had melted on the hot deck-plates and, had she waited much longer, the injuries might have been even more severe. Leon had seen her, rueful that he had nothing, even from the medical stores of the scout, with which to treat the burns.
“I think there won’t be any lasting damage, Kris,’ he said, gently laying her hand back in the sling. ‘Once that main blister has popped, it’ll ease off and your body will take over the healing process. We do have that salve Patti made up which the cooks all swear by, to keep the skin supple. Might ease the soles of your feet, too.” ‘I’m not complaining,’ she said. ‘Sarah was a little officious, taking you away from the ones who really need you.” �
��Oh, never fear, m’dear,’ Leon said, grinning. ‘We’ve got quite a list of specialists these days, you know. And a supply of the gas they use; it makes an effective anaesthetic.” He gave a little shudder. ‘Thank God. Some of the repair work would have been barbaric without it.”
Kris had refused to go back to the Rock - wanting to stay
near the hub of activity, and Zainal, and very eager to hear how they had kept the ship from blowing. Sarah and Leila kept her informed and helped her down to the main mess hall where she could listen to the ‘hourly bulletins’ as Sarah called them, updating those not involved with various aspects of what was going on.
Zainal and the engineers had managed to jury-rig the control board, venting the build-up to an explosion. A pump was found, disconnected from the ship, and dropped into the nearby stream. By combining all the hose on the Catteni ship, the fuel tanks had been kept from exploding and the reduction in temperature had saved other systems from reacting to the intense heat.
“If they hadn’t managed, the explosion would have altered the landscape considerably,’ Sarah went on, talking to distract Kris from her tender ministrations to the raw sole of her right foot. ‘But the fuel got saved and there’s plenty for Baby now.” ‘So that’s why the Catteni were running away as fast as they could,’ said Kris through clenched teeth. ‘Was the ship badly damaged inside? Can we make use of anything?” Granted all she had seen was just inside the cargo area, with bursting conduits and pipes and hot deck-plates, but surely something was salvageable.
Sarah grinned up from bandaging her feet with sufficient fluff to form a protective layer. ‘You better believe it! The entire bridge!’