by Steve Perry
After a pause, the tiny ooman stretched itself high and returned the gesture.
Dachande tilted his head at her. Fascinating!
Then it was that Tichinde clattered his mandibles and slowly got to his feet.
Dachande's anger flared. The s'yuit-de! He would die!
Dachande jumped past the ooman and whacked Tichinde's skull. The blow knocked the student to the ground.
Tichinde said nothing, but scrabbled at the pouch on his belt.
Dachande snatched the sack from the idiot yautja and held it up. Trophies.
Ooman trophies.
His rage was blinding. Tichinde had Hunted with no supervision-and had Hunted ooman!
Dachande lifted the yautja by his tresses, the fury boosting his strength. He could smell his own musk, hot and heavy with the desire to kill. He raised one fist and smashed Tichinde in the mouth.
Tichinde tried to pull away, responded with a weak blow to Dachande's gut.
Dachande howled in his face, a shriek of pure disgust and outrage. He struck again.
Tichinde was his student, once. He had broken the rules of the Hunt. There was only so much slack Dachande could give him, even as a Leader. Now the rope must be pulled taut. Now, Tichinde must be destroyed.
It was the law.
It was a matter of honor.
* * *
Chapter 22
Noguchi watched in amazement as the two huge warriors fought. The broken-tusked "patient" was the more skillful-and was winning easily.
Myriad half thoughts ran through her mind. The patient was grateful, the other was with the killers, the broken tusk was better, older, brighter perhaps, the doctor was insane, they had to get out
Miriam stood a few meters from the battle, just stood there and watched.
Noguchi ran forward, pistol ready, and grabbed the doctor by the arm.
"Come on!"
The monsters could slug it out to the death for all she cared; they had work to do.
She and Miriam ducked through the shattered wall and ran across the compound. Noguchi steered them toward the main garage, to the east. The med center was closer to the holding pens, but they would need a flyer for what she had in mind and the hover bike was totaled; there would be other bikes at the garage-
Except Miriam can't ,fly one and they won't carry two people.
Noguchi wanted to scream. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
And on the heels of the panic, she remembered the copter.
The copter!
She ran faster.
Miriam had trouble keeping up; blood ran down one of her legs. The compound was completely dark now. Many of the building lights had been broken at some point, and the few remaining only seemed to add to the shadows. A faint breeze had sprung up, hot and fetid. A death wind, full of carrion stench.
Behind them and ahead, shapes moved and shrieked. It was hard to see what was happening. Noguchi guessed that the two alien races were fighting.
Maybe they won't even notice us-
A giant black bug leapt in front of them from a shadow and raised its strange arms to attack.
Miriam screamed.
Noguchi pointed and fired twice. The first shot was too high. The second tore out the bug's throat. Blood sprayed.
A drop of the fluid spattered against one of Noguchi's padded suit arms and hissed, ate through the fabric and burned her skin.
Acid, some kind of acid--
The noxious substance ate deep into her flesh. As they ran forward the garage, Noguchi felt her own blood soak into the coverall. She ignored it as best she could; they were almost there.
They reached the garage, Miriam now stumbling badly. Noguchi half dragged her toward the back of the building. The copter was usually kept at the med center, on the roof's helipad; the doctors used it to get to emergencies. But Noguchi remembered that it needed some minor adjustment after the weapons collecting run.
I just hope it wasn't engine trouble
Noguchi laughed sharply as the rounded the corner, a short bark of relief. It was there! She looked around for trouble, but the yard seemed clean.
Miriam stumbled behind her and fell.
"Oh, shit, I can't get up, I'm sorry, Kesar, I'm sorry, I can't---" The doctor tried to hold it together, but she looked close to a breakdown. Her face was the color of dust, her eyes rolled upward.
Noguchi pulled Miriam to her feet and dragged her to the copter.
"It's okay, Miriam, you're going to be fine, okay?" She hoped she sounded soothing. "Everything will be fine, really, okay?"
They reached the vehicle. She opened the door and hustled Miriam in, still talking. "Don't worry, we're going to get out of here, okay? I'll help you fly this thing, just tell me what to do and we'll be fine."
That seemed to cut through the doctor's hysteria. Revna raised her tear-streaked face to Noguchi, eyes wide.
"Kesar always flew. I don't know how."
Dachande didn't want to spend too much time on Tichinde, much as he felt the idiot deserved to die slowly. He had to find the other yautja, if there were any. Find out what was going on, how he had come to this state. It did not feel good, what had happened.
Tichinde fell again. His tresses were matted with thwei, two of his mandibles broken and crushed against his worthless, dying skin.
Any fight the student had in him had fled. He tried to crawl away.
The sight of the yautja slowly inching from his Leader was infuriating. The kwei would die as an animal, a coward, rather than go out like a warrior.
Dachande waited no longer. He snatched Tichinde's bladed staff from the floor and raised it over his head, aimed it at the base of his student's upper spine.
Brought the sharp blade down-
Shiiink!
Dachande jerked the blade from the body in a patter of blood and then spit on the corpse. The Leader donned the kwei's armor and took his weapons; he left the bandage on his chest. There was some pain there, perhaps the dressing would help. After a second's hesitation, he pulled the recording loop from Tichinde's chest; there might be a use for it later.
Armed and ready, with a fire in his gut that screamed for justice, Dachande stepped into the dark night to find his other students. Perhaps Tichinde had been alone, but he doubted it. Hunting alone was not common behavior to the young.
And if they were here, in the ooman camp, on a Hunt-nothing would stop him from the lessons he would teach them.
"What?"
Revna nodded. "He was going to teach me-"
Noguchi tuned her out for a second.
Okay, she can't do it, we're fucked---
She searched the myriad of buttons and switches on the console and found one that said Eng. She flipped it.
The copter's engine hummed to life.
She tapped her comset. "This is Noguchi in copter'-she looked over the board quickly-"copter one. Do you read me, tower?"
A hiss of static.
And then Weaver's welcome voice.
"We copy. What's happening?"
"Miriam Revna and I are at the garage and neither of us are checked out in a copter. We could use some help here."
Weaver sounded calm. "Okay, we got you. Hit the switch that says Eng."
"Did it."
"Do you see the button that says comp? Punch that."
Noguchi spotted it and did what she was told. A small screen flickered on with program questions. She and Revna both sighed at once.
"Okay, we're on a roll," Noguchi said quietly.
"David, get over here." Weaver's voice was distant, then came back through the com. "I'm going to let Spanner talk you up, okay?"
"Fine. What's the situation there?" Noguchi touched her arm lightly and grimaced at the pain. At least the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
"We're all set for your signal. Everything's locked up, for a while at least. But you should see what's happening in the southwest quad; looks like an all-out war."
"Consider the signal given. Wait until we get off the ground, an
d then go as soon as you hear it. Good luck."
"Copy that, boss."
There was a pause; Noguchi waited for Spanner to come on and tapped the comset, anxious to get out of there. She turned to look at Miriam
-a dark shape popped up in front of the copter, a nightmare bug. Its teeth dripped and gnashed as it plunged one claw through the windshield.
Scott and Tom had stayed quiet for a long time. The sounds outside of weapons fire and death cries were incentive not to move around much. The monsters were out there and maybe if they stayed under their rock here long enough, they'd eat each other and go away.
Scott figured out that they were in the southwest quadrant of the compound, in one of the two empty holding pens. There were six others, full of bellowing rhynth; their cries mingled with the alien screams.
Harmony a la hell.
"I'm starting to think we were better off in the ship," Tom whispered.
"Yeah, right. Stuck in the spider's web waiting around for dinner. Their dinner."
Scott cracked the door slightly to see if anyone was coming to help. So far, they had seen nothing. Well, no people.
Strange humanoid creatures were at war with the bizarre animals that had taken over the ship. It was too dark to make anything out clearly, but the situation was obvious; between the screams and the weapons, there was one fuck of a battle going on out there. They couldn't tell who was doing what to whom and for what reasons, but it was bad.
Scott was exhausted and he felt like shit. They had been stuck there for what felt like days. He wanted a shower, a steak, a few beers, and a soft bed. No way he was going out there to get it, but it helped to take his mind off of the situation at hand. Which looked like Armageddon. It was all so . . . unreal.
Tom groaned softly and shifted to sit on the dirty floor. He was sick, had been coughing and having cramps for over an hour, but he was trying to keep it to himself; the look on his face expressed enough. Scott looked at his friend, worried, then back out at the bloody combat.
Something screamed piercingly and then was silenced.
"Hang on, Tommy," Scott whispered. "We're going to be okay."
Yeah. Maybe we'll sprout wings and just fly back to Earth.
Noguchi jabbed her leg forward and up and pushed as hard as she could. The bug barely moved, but it was enough. Maybe.
She pulled the trigger four times, fast. The animal's head exploded, sent a spray of deadly blood across the windshield and onto the console. The noise of the gun hit her ears like hard slaps. The plexi material began to smoke immediately and the small compartment filled with a foul and acrid stink.
Noguchi whipped her head around. Nothing else coming at the moment.
"You okay?"
Revna held up one shaky hand and nodded.
Noguchi took a deep breath and strapped herself into the chair. "Buckle up, Miriam."
She ejected the spent shells and slammed another speedloader in before she looked down at the controls and took a deep breath.
"Let's do it, Spanner. What's first?"
The copter rose in a series of sharp jerks before Noguchi turned it toward the south end of the complex. Miriam still wasn't sure what the plan was, but she was glad to get off of the ground.
She felt her injured leg carefully and winced. It was a bad wound. Each second that passed left her weaker, dizzier; she had lost a lot of blood, maybe too much
Miriam applied pressure to the wound with part of her jacket and prayed silently that she and Kesar would be together soon.
Dachande ran through the oddly structured system of ooman buildings toward the sounds of battle. He ached all over and at least two of his ribs were broken, but he put the pain aside for now.
Shattered buildings and other rubble littered the grounds. Dachande hopped over the torso of a fallen drone; its life fluid still hissed on the soil.
He heard burners and screams in the distance, to the left. He cursed mentally and ran in that direction.
The syuit-de! They Hunted oomans, worse, they did so without proper surveillance. It was bad enough to have broken the law; to use poor strategy and tactics only compounded the error.
The other two Blooded must certainly be dead; they would not have allowed this. As sketchily trained as these yautja were, the bugs would be more than just a minor challenge. Armed oomans would be worse.
A small torrent of the Hard Meat appeared suddenly, leapt from the dark shadows to scream at him. Dachande pulled his burner. He was in too much of a hurry for prowess feats.
There were four. They circled him.
The first darted forward, teeth chittering. The outer jaws spread wide, the smaller teeth on the inner rod gaped.
Dachande burned it, the hollow thump of the weapon exploding the drone's gut into bloody bits. Without turning, Dachande took out the second and the third. He shot one, and used the spear in hiju position to disembowel the other.
The final drone screeched, turned, and ran. Unusual behavior, but they sometimes did that when there was a queen nearby. It was not fear, for they had none, but instinct to warn the nest.
Dachande sped on. Perhaps a few of the students would be salvageable. If not, he would have to kill them. Whatever they had stepped into on this world, they had sunk up to their necks in it and the stink was bad. Real bad.
Roth loaded food and water packs into the AVs with the others. With any luck they'd be back the next day, but they had taken almost everything. Most of the ranchers were seated and ready; just a final check and they could move.
Weaver had outlined Noguchi's plan briefly; it was shaky, but there was a chance it could work. Only a few people had protested-Ackland's voice above the rest, of course-but Weaver had shut them up with a few well-chosen words. Roth had liked "or we'll kick your fucking ass" in particular.
Roth stood cover outside the east lock as Weaver directed the last few people to either an AV or a ship loader. The largest piece of machinery, one of the carts that had carried most of the building supplies for the shield wall, now held thirty-seven people. Most of the transmitting equipment was also loaded-they would continue the CDS from the desert.
If they got that far.
Creep whined softly at the sound of one of the children crying. He kept saying that it was too hot outside. Roth silently agreed; she was reminded of the thunderstorms in southern Texas, where she had grown up. The stifling summer air would get even hotter as the clouds pressed down; as a child, she had waited eagerly for the first drops to fall, filled with the joy of expectation. There was a wild feeling in the air that had always made her think of carnivals in the dark, although she didn't know why. And then the rain, heavy and warm-
Weaver interrupted her thoughts. "We're ready."
Roth nodded and whistled for Creep to get on the bike. Cathie was watching some of the children in one of Harrison's AV; they would hook up later.
A low rumble shook the ground with no warning and then grew louder. Roth hopped on a bike and started it up, the sound quickly lost in the rising tremors that beat through the soil. Goddamn if that didn't sound like thunder; Roth hit the accelerator and headed east, the AVs and loaders behind.
Miriam opened her eyes and looked down when the noise rolled over them. There was an ocean of life directly below them; the entire compound was moving, undulating in a quake of heaving bodies and animal cries.
Noguchi had stampeded the rhynth.
* * *
Chapter 23
Dachande heard the rumble and immediately ran for the nearest structure he could climb.
Directly after he had attained Leader, he had taken a group on a Hunt and he had heard the same rumble; it was the sound of many animals running in mindless gry'sui-bpe. The yautja had clambered onto a low rise and watched as a herd of four-legged hosts had stampeded past in front of them. Had they stayed on the low ground, they would have been trampled.
He spotted a ladder bolted to a tall structure and ran for it.
He had not found t
he students yet, but before he could do so, he needed to avoid being crushed by the stampede. He hoped the students would understand what the sound meant and seek high ground or protection.
He growled in irritation as he climbed the rungs of the ladder. If they paid attention to his lessons, maybe they wouldn't die. If they had not listened, then they deserved to die. That was the way of it. His hope was not all that good.
Considering how well they've learned so far . . .
Dachande climbed as the rumble thickened into an all encompassing roar.
Noguchi buzzed the pens as low as she dared and hoped the locks had opened according to the codes she'd set.
The rhynth had been in the hot sunlight all day without food and a minimum of water. The sound of the copter must have echoed loudly in the pens. It only took one spooked animal to get it going. And as soon as one rhynth jumped forward, the rest followed.
The animals tore through the doors she had unlocked.
Within a few seconds, all of the rhynth joined the stampede, headed straight through Prosperity Wells. Anything small enough to get in their way was trampled, crushed, kicked aside.
The searchlight on the copter illuminated the scene dimly. Noguchi only glanced at the panicked herds; she had her hands full piloting. Miriam Revna cried out in delight.
"They just ran over about two dozen of the unclassifieds!" It was hard to hear over the clatter of hooves and the bellows of the frightened rhynth.
Noguchi smiled tightly and pulled up on the control stick. She wanted to check and see if the ranchers had gotten out-
She veered east. All she needed to see were the lights of the AVs-
Noguchi allowed herself a short rush of relief. The low red and white lights were visible. The ranchers and staff were headed away from town into open desert.
It was working! Her plan was working!
She circled the copter back toward The Lector to make another run on the animals. The colonists were headed to relative safety, and the rhynth were stomping everything in sight. Maybe she wouldn't have to sacrifice anything else.
Of course, there were still the creatures on the ship to deal with-and it was probable that a few of the other kind had survived. But to take out the majority . . .