by Tanya Huff
“He’s smart enough,” Torin allowed. “But we don’t have the time.”
“I’d feel better if we could tag.”
“I’d feel better if we got to the hostages while they’re still alive. Put her where you want to leave her, and lock her up, Craig. We’ll meet you at the VTA.”
“Not like you can leave without me.” He reached up and squeezed her hand. “I want you or Werst in the second seat, in case we run into trouble from atmospheric disturbances or surface-to-air missiles on the way down.” He grinned at her expression. “Your paranoia is catching.”
“Glad to hear that.”
Binti waited for her at the hatch to the VTA. “You think they know we’re coming, Gunny?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“I are well aware there are space restrictions, this are being a very small and very uncomfortable looking vehicle.” Presit’s voice didn’t so much drift out the hatch as jab through the opening. “But I are not seeing how those restrictions are applying to me. I are half your size, I are therefore allowed twice the space.”
“We could drop Presit by the anchor,” Binti suggested. “They’d surrender in an hour. Two max.”
“Tempting.”
Of the scientists, only Dr. Ganes was large enough to use one of the two laser cutters Martin brought out of the shuttle.
“Sized for Humans.” Tilzon patted the power pack a little sadly. Arniz had watched her wield a cutter on other digs and was just as glad she wouldn’t be flinging a beam around.
“Looks like you’re up, Doc.” Martin tossed one of them at Ganes, who caught it, nearly dropped it, and straightened as Martin laughed. “Too bad you’re not human-sized, lizard.”
“Truly.” Tilzon sighed. “I’m feeling the lack.”
“And the second cutter?” Yurrisk asked. Arniz recognized the tone. He wasn’t asking for clarification; he knew the answer and wanted to know if Martin did, too.
“We’ll keep it charged and ready to trade out.”
“We haven’t time to let it sit idle. We need to be gone, with the weapon, before their supply shuttle returns. One of you will use it.”
Martin folded his arms. “One of us?”
“They’re Human-sized, Sergeant.”
As expected, Yurrisk won the staring contest. Arniz doubted anyone could look into his eyes for very long.
“Malinowski!” Martin held out the cutter as she trotted over. “You’re taking down trees.”
“Fuk you, Sarge.”
“Yeah, well, next time, don’t complain about being bored.”
Arniz didn’t understand why Martin didn’t use the Polint. They were certainly large enough and looked significantly more bored than Malinowski had, constantly shifting from foot to foot. They were even carrying large, heavy-bladed knives. Almost machetes.
“Let’s go!”
Martin, Arniz noted, yelled for the same reason Salitwisi did. To attract attention to himself.
The three di’Taykan, hair clamped close to their heads, looked as unhappy about following Martin past the mesh of vegetation that marked the edge of the jungle as Arniz felt. As she understood it, they disliked both heat and humidity. Well, in that case, they’d certainly picked the wrong dig to terrorize.
Yurrisk seemed sympathetic. “No reason you can’t sit while you guard the scientists. The shade under the trees has to be better than standing in direct sunlight.”
“Guard the scientists doing what?” Salitwisi demanded.
Turning slowly, Yurrisk waved toward the jungle. “Guard the scientists as they clear debris away from the road.”
Salitwisi’s tail rose. “We have ancillaries for that.”
“They’ll be joining you.”
The road had been obvious on the orbital surveys. Before the flacid tail-wobblers had arrived, Salitwisi and his ancillaries had begun to slowly examine the point where the road met the city wall in hope of identifying a gate house. Or, at the very least, a gate even though the surveys showed no break in the wall along the cliff. A meter and a half wide, the road seemed narrow out on the plateau and ridiculously wide in under the trees. Yurrisk had insisted they clear it completely, shouting, “Because important items are kept in buildings by the sides of roads! What use is a weapon if you can’t get to it!” Then he’d sat down heavily on a rock and waved Qurn off.
Sareer and Beyvek swarmed up into the trees, swinging from branch to branch using both hands and feet. Arniz could hear them yelling out directions to Ganes and whichever human had joined him. They’d left their weapons leaning against one of the thicker trunks and looked so happy it was difficult to remember they’d been a part of Dzar’s murder and the . . .
It wasn’t kidnapping, not really, they hadn’t been taken anywhere. Arniz supposed they were being held hostage, but no one had actually tried to leave, so held wasn’t entirely accurate. Science performed under duress?
Manual labor performed under duress.
“What part about ‘drop the debris off the path’ do you not understand?”
Arniz peered up at Gayun, visibly wilting in the higher humidity under the trees, brilliant blue hair flat against his head. “I was thinking. You should try it some time.”
He raised his weapon. She touched the air with her tongue and smelled the sweat staining his clothes. “You’re lucky you got old. Too many p . . . p . . . people are dead.”
“Well, the old can’t work very fast. If you helped, you’d be out of the heat faster.”
Salitwisi, Tilzon, and the four closest grad students froze in place, branches and vines dangling from their hands, a slender tree resting on two sets of shoulders.
The end of Gayun’s weapon jabbed a circular bruise into her chest. Arniz staggered back, arms flailing.
“I’ve got this, Gayun.” The warm press of Trembley’s hand on her back kept her on her feet. “Find a breeze before you melt.”
Gayun’s eyes darkened, then he muttered something Arniz didn’t catch and headed back toward the plateau. She turned just far enough to watch him go, but not so far she lost Trembley’s support.
“If he wants, he can shoot you from out there.” Trembley gave her a shove forward. “Get to work. All of you, get to work!”
Although the ends had been cauterized by the cutter, the pieces of vine were heavy and wet with sap. It seeped through the periderm all along the length, viscous and unpleasant and sticky when dry. Lifting and carrying and lifting again, Arniz could hear insects over the cutting and gathering and muttering, although it sounded as though the birds had moved deeper into the jungle away from their intrusion. The air, only four meters from the plateau, tasted of moisture held in the folds of foliage, and of rot, flora and fauna falling to decompose and become a rich humus.
Three hours later, only six meters of the road had been cleared. It was farther than Arniz had thought they’d get even for a variable definition of cleared that included abandoned stumps and roots that buckled slabs of stone up at enough of an angle edges had been visible through the mats of vine. She closed her fingers around a gauzy insect trying to drink from the surface of her eyes and listened to Yurrisk as she pulled pieces of the body out of the dried sap on her palm.
“You’re cutting organics!”
“Yeah, but really fukking tough organics.” Zhang wiped sap off the side of the cutter, continuing the motion to scrub a damp, green stripe off her cheek. She didn’t seem particularly bothered by Yurrisk’s rising anger, but Arniz assumed she’d seen battle and that had to put a crazy Krai into perspective. “Everything gets bigger and thicker the farther in we go, and I’ve got three percent power left.”
“Two five here,” Ganes panted.
Martin looked ahead into the trees and back along the road as he said, “That’s it for today.”
“That is not it!”
; Martin shrugged. “It’ll take six hours to charge the cutters back in the VTA. It’ll be dark in less than five.”
Arniz flicked the last piece of insect away and sank to the ground.
“Are you being all right?” Tyven, fur in random sap-stiffened clumps, squatted beside her. “You are having collapsed.”
“I sat quickly.” She reached out to pat the geophysicist on the arm and snatched her hand back as she thought better of it. “I’m fine. I’m tired.”
“I are . . .”
Yurrisk grabbed Tyven’s shoulder, hauled her to her feet, and shook her. “Where are the ruins?”
She twisted in his grip. “There!”
“Where?”
“There!”
It would have been funny had Tyven not been flapping back and forth, toes digging into the ground trying to keep her balance. Arniz tasted the air, the prevailing scents of dying vegetation and the bitter residue of the cutter overwhelmed by anger and fear. Both emotions coming from Yurrisk.
“Are you not seeing that ridge?”
Arniz could see only vegetation, insects, and shadows, but the Krai had eyesight almost as good as the Katrien.
“It’s a fallen tree.”
“No! It are being an intact wall.”
He stopped shaking her. “A building.”
“A wall,” she repeated. “There are being no more than a meter remaining. Maybe less. Maybe more. Organic cover are being deceptive.”
He shook her again. “I want buildings! Storage! They should be by the road!”
“How are you knowing? We are knowing almost nothing about those who are being pre-destruction!”
“Because this is a city, and not the best part of a city either, given communal latrines.”
“Everyone shits,” Arniz muttered. And Yurrisk needed to make up his retunin mind. One minute yelling and shaking, the next all quiet reason even while maintaining his grip on Tyven’s shoulder as though expecting her to hold him up.
“Cities, especially walled cities, have limited space,” he continued. “They’re not going to waste that limited space by setting buildings back from the road.”
Tyven waved her arms. “We are not knowing how many people this city are holding. There are maybe being small numbers and big properties.”
“The amount of work a city this size requires wouldn’t be practical for small numbers.”
“We are not knowing what is being practical for the pre-destruction people. We are having nothing to extrapolate from. We are only beginning to study . . .”
“You be taking your hands off her!”
Arniz turned in time to see Lows hit the ground, Gayun’s foot in his back, boot almost covered by fur.
“Lows!” Tyven fought to get to her bonded. Yurrisk had to hold on with both hands.
“I need buildings!”
And there was the yelling and shaking again.
“It are not working that way!”
Arniz hissed as she rose to her feet, cutting in before Yurrisk could respond. “According to the survey, the first intact buildings are five hundred meters in from the plateau. We’ve gone six. Barely. Why don’t you join your people on the high road to the ruins . . .” Sareer and Beyvek hadn’t touched ground all day. “. . . the three of you can spend the time looking for your weapon instead of landscaping. I thought Krai were all about climbing.”
Breathing heavily, hands opening and closing, Yurrisk glared down at her for a moment, then turned and vomited.
“I thought the Krai are not doing that?” Tyven muttered.
“What’s going on here?” Martin demanded, punctuating his arrival by crushing a round-bodied insect under his boot.
“None of your b . . . b . . . business, Sergeant.” Gayun stepped between the two as Qurn hurried past and handed Yurrisk a bottle of water.
“My business is keeping the peace, through force if necessary.” Martin sneered at the di’Taykan. “Looks like this is my business, Lieutenant.”
“Blades,” Yurrisk said, spat, and stood. “We need heavy cutting blades.”
“You are really not understanding archeolo . . .”
The force of Martin’s kick threw both Tyven and Arniz back. Spores exploded under Arniz’s head as she slammed into a round gray-green fungus. Trying to catch her breath, Tyven began to cough.
“The Polint have b . . . b . . . blades,” Gayun pointed back toward the plateau. “They’re more than just b . . . b . . . big knives, that’s for sure.”
Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Cutting brush was not what the Polint were contracted to do.”
Yurrisk’s nostril ridges closed. “Then I suggest you convince them to amend the contract.”
“Boss, that medical discharge Yurrisk got?” Alamber passed her his slate. “I took a look at the details.”
“Wasn’t that redacted?”
“Sure, but the information’s still there if you dig deep enough and medical files all use the same encryptions. You manage to get into one file, you can get into all of them. Long story short, Krai bone still surrounds a delicious creamy center and Yurrisk’s got whipped.”
Vertic leaned forward and grunted. The VTA had been modified to hold the Polint, but the strapping had been designed for safety not comfort. “What’s he talking about?”
“Brain injury.” Torin frowned down at the screen. “Transient vertigo and acrophobia on top of what has to be a really messed-up head space given all the redaction.” Bodies could be rebuilt. Brains couldn’t always be rewired. “Werst, could he . . .”
“No. Live with ground dwellers, sure, but he’d never be able to live on a Krai planet, with Krai.”
“They’re arboreal,” Torin explained before Vertic could ask. “Natural forests where possible, concrete towers where it isn’t.”
“I’m not sure how perceiving the world as swaying when it isn’t would prevent him from living arboreally—trees sway in the Confederation, don’t they?”
“They sway when they sway,” Werst told her. “Not when they don’t. If they zig when you zag.” He slapped his palms together. “Impact.”
“I see.” Vertic tucked her thumbs behind the straps over her chest. “I see how fear of heights could be a problem, if the translator has defined acrophobia correctly, but he’s on a ship. A ship that goes into space.”
“He has both feet on the deck.”
“What if he looks out a window?”
“Both feet on the deck,” Werst repeated. “That’s what matters.”
Vertic shook her head. “That’s . . .”
“That’s what matters to the Krai, Durlan. If he loses his ship, he loses the only home he’s comfortable in.”
“So Yurrisk’s hiring mercs and holding scientists hostage because he picked up a brain injury while serving and psych dropped the ball. He can’t live with his own kind, so he crossed the line in order to keep his ship, the one thing he has left, flying.” Binti spread her hands. “You sure this isn’t a job for Veterans’ Affairs, Gunny?”
“Depends on how many hostages we find alive.”
“Hands and feet inside the ride, kids.” Craig cut off any response. “Atmosphere in three, two, one . . .”
“Brenda!”
“What?” Trembley, dripping sweat, leaned into her line of sight.
Arniz straightened, trying to work the kinks out of her back. They wouldn’t be able to keep going much longer. It got dark under the trees first and the road was as much a suggestion as a guide. “Brenda Zhang. It’s the shorter, female Human’s name.”
Trembley shrugged and slapped at an insect. “Well, yeah. So?”
“I have a theory that it’s harder to kill people who know your name.”
“Unless you kill them because they know your name. What?” Her expression pushed him back a step. “It
’s just another theory. We’re here for the weapon. Nobody’s going to get killed.”
“Else. Nobody else is going to get killed,” she added when he looked confused.
His brows drew in and he looked back along the path, as though he thought he’d be able to see the anchor where Dzar still lay in a stasis pod in the infirmary, out of the sun. “That’s not . . .” He frowned.
She waited.
“Get back to work!” he snarled instead of telling her what it wasn’t.
Arniz knew guilt when she saw it. Guilt for watching beings smaller and older than he was work themselves to exhaustion. Maybe guilt for allowing Dzar to die and doing nothing to stop it, but maybe not. Age had taught her it was easier to acknowledge smaller guilt, however angrily, than larger.
Stomach growling, she staggered as she dragged a branch to the side of the road, tripped on the mossy edge of a slab, and pitched forward into the tree where Sareer and Beyvek had leaned their weapons. Hands out in full view, she backed away as quickly as she was able. No telling what Martin would do if he saw her near the guns, but her options weren’t good. He enjoyed hurting people.
“Are you being all right, Harveer?” Magyr, one of Tyven’s ancillaries steadied her as she stumbled.
“No. I’m tired and hungry and bruised.” Arniz didn’t know Magyr well. They hadn’t been here long enough, but she seemed intelligent and not particularly entitled which was the minimum Arniz required. She patted the young Katrien on the arm with the back of her hand to keep from clumping yet more fur together. “But then I expect everyone is.”
She trudged back to the debris she’d been clearing, paused when she realized Magyr hadn’t followed, and turned to find the ancillary still standing by the tree. Staring down at the weapons. Probably wondering why the horrible things existed now the war was over. Arniz certainly was. She’d never given them a second thought until she’d suddenly seen how quickly they could end a life. And yes, so could a rail car, she acknowledged, forcing her back to bend, reaching for another armload of cut vines, but a rail car would have been harder to acquire and significantly less portable. Although Arniz had no doubt that, if given a chance, Martin would happily use one to . . .