“Sure, let me take a look.” The musician bent down to examine the door.
A bass rumble started up from somewhere deep inside the sky ship. She could feel a vibration from the deck plates that jarred her teeth. What now? “Could you hurry it up a little?” she urged.
“I’ve located what must be the door control,” Alondo replied. “But it seems to be housed behind glass. I can’t see any obvious way to open it.”
“Stand aside.” Alondo and Rael turned their heads. Her fingers brushed the darkwood, feeling its reassuring smoothness. “Now.” They stepped back. She drew her staff, took aim, and thrust it at the panel. The glass shattered and the lights surrounding the door began to glow bright green. Immediately an intermittent alarm sounded—a regular, insistent pulse that made her temples throb—followed by urgent, raised voices from somewhere off to her left. Boots pounded against the metal floor. Headed their way.
She stepped up to the broken panel, located a prominent red button, and punched it. The door clanked and swung open. “Get inside, both of you,” she ordered. After a moment’s hesitation, they stepped through the open hatchway. As she made to follow Rael, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Three blue-coated figures were rounding the corner right behind her. She yelled through the opening, “Get out of here,” kicked the door shut, and turned to face the advancing crew, staff held out defensively before her.
She had not taken to heart every lesson Lyall had taught her, but there was one at least that she understood intimately. One in which she would not let him down.
Sacrifice.
~
Hatchet-faced and raw-boned, with close-cropped hair, the lead hu-man skidded to a halt before Shann and glowered at her, then lurched forward in an ungainly manner as the others barrelled into him from behind. He hastily regained his composure and rounded on his companions. “Watch it, will you?”
The other two withdrew sheepishly and chorused like a double act. “Sorry, Chief.”
One of them, a fresh-faced youth with a disgusting pink complexion, looked up, and his eyes grew as large as a fish’s. “Look. It’s one of them. One of them natives that we threw in the brig. They’ve escaped.”
Hatchet-face bawled at him. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Of course they’ve escaped, you idiot.”
The other hu-man, a compact and sinewy type, seemed unfazed by the outburst. “D’you think it’s them that’s attacking us?”
Hatchet-face turned to Shann and sized her up with an unpleasant look. “Not them, but their green-skinned friends maybe. Talk. Who’s out there?”
“I don’t know,” she replied honestly.
“We need to get to launch positions,” the youth urged.
“I know that,” Hatchet-face snapped back. “All right, girl, you just ran out of time.” He drew a stubby silver tube and levelled it at her. She stiffened. A clap of thunder shook the passageway and knocked her feet from under her. She lay on the floor for a moment before realising that she was whole. The thunder had not come from the hu-man’s weapon.
She snatched her staff and scrabbled to her feet. The hu-mans lay prostrate on the floor. Hatchet-face had dropped his weapon and was clutching his head. The others were moving slowly and painfully. Ignoring her own bruises, she advanced, placed a boot on Hatchet-face’s chest, and whipped the diamond blade around so that it rested against his throat. The man squeezed his eyes shut and made a half-strangled sound.
She heard a clank, followed by a creaking. She hazarded a glance behind her and saw Alondo’s moon face peeking out from behind the open hatch door.
He took in the scene and then smiled quizzically. “If you’ve quite finished playing with your new friends, it’s time to leave now.”
~
“You’re sure you’ve got this thing figured out?” Shann tried to hide the anxiety in her voice and almost succeeded.
Rael pursed his lips. “No problem. An escape module is for emergency use, so its design has to be pretty well idiot-proof.” A witty riposte popped into her head, but she dismissed it. She was in no mood for jesting. “Are you strapped in?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Rael pushed a large lever forward. There was a snap, followed by a whooshing sound, and she was hurled back into her seat. She turned her head towards one of the tiny windows in the module and saw empty sky rushing past. Soon the pressure on her shoulders eased and she felt the module descend slowly. At length, she felt a light bump and the module settled back and came to rest.
Rael got up from his seat, went to the rear hatch, and opened it. Daylight filtered into the tiny compartment. Shann joined him, with Alondo just behind her, and jumped to the ground first. They were on the valley floor some distance from the sky ship. As they watched, an incandescent glow appeared at its base and the ship began to rise, slowly at first, then gathering speed until it was a blazing star amid the cerulean sky.
It was Shann who broke the silence. “I know what you’re going to say.” She paused to allow for a response from the other two, but there was none. She pressed on with a heavy heart. “You’re going to say that I should have listened to you—that we should have gone along with Lyall’s plan and remained on board the sky ship.”
To her surprise, Rael shook his head. “No. We all thought the ship was about to be destroyed. You did what you thought was necessary to save all of our lives. It’s exactly what Lyall would have done in your place.”
“Rael is right,” Alondo added. “You got us out of there safely. Lyall would be proud.”
No, she thought ruefully, it was you two who did that. I was just along for the ride. Still, now was not the time to argue the matter. “Rael, do you think the Diametric Drive could be made operational?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Then we can still get back. When I was there, I got a good look at the controls. I’m sure that between us, you and I could pilot it. We can fly to the other side, meet up with Lyall, and find out what he has planned.”
“Right,” Rael agreed. “All we need to do is find one of the hu-man avionics and fly it back to Kieroth.”
“Hey, those things only carry two people. Where am I going to fit?” Alondo protested.
Before anyone could answer, a steady hum began to fill the air. Shann cast about but could not determine the source.
“There.”
Rael pointed behind them. Sunlight glinted off the fuselage of a slim dart that was following the line of the canyon. Bearing down on them.
“Get down.” She swivelled around and saw Rael hunched down in the lee of the escape module. She signalled to Alondo, then dashed back and hunkered down next to Rael, raising her voice against the growing engine whine. “You think that thing is what attacked the sky ship?”
“I think it’s a fair assumption,” he replied.
She scanned the canyon floor, but other than the module, there was nothing that resembled cover. They were pinned down. Maybe the avionic would overfly them, deciding that an escape module was not worth the bother.
Her heart sank as the flying machine passed overhead, tilted its fans, and turned a hundred and eighty degrees, slowing to a hover. It hung in the air for some moments as though undecided. Finally, it began to sink to the ground, kicking up whorls of dust and sand. Her hand moved involuntarily to her staff. It’s not firing on us. Not yet, at least.
The avionic settled back on its landing struts and its engines gradually died. As she peered through the clearing dust, the canopy swung upward and a figure rose from the rear seat. Hu-man. Broad-shouldered and with a profusion of salt-and-pepper hair that sprouted from his face and chin. No. It couldn’t be...
She stood up calmly.
“What are you doing?” Rael hissed.
“Renewing an old acquaintance.”
“You know this hu-man?”
“We’ve met,” she said evenly. “Although I’m not sure he’s going to be too pleased to
see me... Wait here, would you?”
Turning a deaf ear to the protests behind her, she began to walk forward. The hu-man clambered down from the cockpit and turned towards her. Blue eyes narrowed beneath heavy brows. She stopped a short distance away. “McCann.”
The eyes widened with recognition. “It is you. From the Tower at Akalon.” He glanced nervously left and right. “Where’s the other one?”
Keris. “She’s not here,” Shann replied. “You’ll have to deal with me.”
“That’s a shame. I was looking forward to thanking her personally for the little trick she played on me.”
“You were spying on us,” she reminded him.
McCann let out a sigh. “Yes, well. That was then and this is now. Times change, as do allegiances. For example, do you mind telling me what you were doing inside the shuttle?”
“We were ‘guests’ of your friend Wang—the hu-man who is posing as Prophet in our world.”
McCann’s eyes flicked towards the escape module behind her. “Yet it seems that you eschewed his hospitality.”
“We escaped when the ship came under attack. You wouldn’t happen to know who was responsible for that, by any chance?”
He smiled. “You’re right. It was me.”
“Mind telling me why you would try to kill your own people?”
The smile vanished. “I wasn’t trying to kill anybody. I was just trying to disable the shuttle.”
“You didn’t do a very good job,” she observed.
“You’re right. Apparently I am a lot better engineer than I am a marksman. My intention was to cripple the ship and then destroy the remaining avionics.”
“You wanted to destroy all of your ships? Why would you do a thing like that?”
“To prevent them from ever doing again what they did to Kieroth.” His face fell. “I’m sorry. There’s no reason you should know.” He swallowed. “The Captain ordered my people to attack the town. Day before yesterday.”
Shann cursed under her breath. “What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. It seems to have been some sort of reprisal for a terrorist attack by your people which destroyed our facility here on this island. I was travelling with a Kelanni on the mainland. When we arrived at Kieroth, the attack was already underway.”
“You were travelling with a Kelanni?”
“It’s... a long story. Anyway, they destroyed several designated targets, including the observatory. By the time I arrived they were taking potshots at the local populace. There was widespread damage to the town. I barely got out of there alive. I managed to flag down one of the attacking avionics and knock out the pilot. Then I headed here.”
The observatory. Gone. Shann’s mind reeled. Hannath, Meira, Byrdach, Solvi, Ravid—there was no way to know if they were alive or dead. She heard herself, but it was as if it were another person speaking. “What about the Kelanni that was with you?”
“He’s all right, as far as I know. I ordered him to get out of the town and head home as fast as he could. By that time, the attack was winding down. If he listened to me then he should be okay.”
Shann’s first instinct was to turn her back on this hu-man. But he might well have information she needed. She suppressed her natural disgust and applied cold logic. “What does your Captain intend to do now?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been out of the loop ever since your friend stripped me of my Speaker Ring and sent me to the butt end of Antarctica. However, I suspect it won’t be good for your people. Now that the Osiris has left, he and his crew are stranded on this world. And they have nothing to lose.”
His Kelanni was excellent, with only a slight inflection. He had obviously spent a considerable amount of time with her people, although the colloquial references were lost on her. “We can take care of ourselves, thank you.”
He met her steady gaze. “I can see that you don’t exactly trust me. I suppose that’s understandable, given the circumstances. At least let me offer my assistance in getting you off this island and back to the mainland.”
“I think we can handle that.” She turned and began walking away.
“If you’re thinking of commandeering one of our avionics, I should tell you that they are protected by a computer access code,” he called after her. “I’m an engineer. I know how to bypass it.”
She stopped and directed a silent question at Rael and Alondo, who were still crouched down next to the escape module. They shook their heads in turn. An enemy spy turned ally; could he really be trusted? He could easily be lying about the avionics. But if she refused his help now and it turned out that he was telling the truth...
She turned back. “Very well, we would appreciate your help.”
A row of off-white teeth appeared amid the facial hair. It was the most unpleasant sight she had ever witnessed. “Follow me, then. I’ll take you to where they are located.”
A thought occurred to her belatedly. A promise she had made and one that she was honour-bound to keep. “There is one more thing. I have a message for you.”
McCann’s face registered genuine surprise. “A message? Forget it. I’m not interested in anything Wang has to say.”
“It isn’t from your Captain,” she explained. “It’s from Susan Gilmer.”
<><><><><>
Chapter 28
Shann sat in the lee of a drab grey stone structure and watched the twin suns descend towards the eastern horizon. Too late to head back. If they set off now, they would end up flying mostly in the dark. In the flattened area before her, half a dozen parked avionics cast lengthening shadows. Ensconced in the cockpit of one of them, ostensibly in the act of freeing the locked-down controls, was the hu-man McCann.
She had thought of keeping watch on him as he worked, but there seemed little point. She had no way to determine the necessity or the veracity of what he was doing; more than that, if he suddenly decided to lift off without them, there would be nothing she could do to stop him. There seemed little risk of that, however. After all, if he wanted to abandon them, he could simply have flown off in his own machine earlier.
That left the question of his true motives. As she had delivered Susan Gilmer’s message and recounted the events leading up to her act of self-sacrifice, she watched his reactions carefully. She was conscious of the fact that she lacked Lyall’s talent for sizing people up. However, if McCann’s shock and upset were contrived, then he was an extremely good actor.
The attack on the sky ship also appeared to be genuine—she had felt it personally. There were clearly some parts of his story that it was impossible to verify—most significantly, the destruction of Kieroth. However, try as she might, she was unable to discern a grain of untruth or a crack of insincerity.
Which was not to say that she trusted him. Not by a long stretch. He’s a hu-man, after all. The image of Susan Gilmer suddenly filled her thoughts, and she felt a pang of conscience.
Twin silhouettes passed in front of the sinking suns. She looked up to see Rael and Alondo standing in front of her. They glanced at each other conspiratorially.
“Fancy a last meal?” Alondo asked breezily. She decided that the question was not as ominous as it sounded. “I have the last of the shipboard rations we brought with us,” he continued. “It’s a good thing we’re leaving; otherwise we would have had to start living off the land. Catching things and hacking bits off them isn’t exactly my idea of fun.”
She smiled up at him. “So, what’s on the menu?”
“Well, let me see.” He dived into the bottom of a small sack. “I have something that’s brownish and something else that’s yellowish.”
“What’s the brown stuff?” she inquired.
Alondo pulled out something odd and lumpy and turned it over, feigning a detailed examination. “It’s either a very new egg or a very old fruit.”
“I’ll take the yellow,” she said.
Clearly, it didn’t take both of them to deliver a meal. She knew a deputation when she saw
one. She chewed silently and waited for them to come to the point. She did not have to wait long.
“I see your friend is working on the second avionic,” Rael began.
Shann swallowed her current mouthful and stared into space. “He’s not my friend.”
“Yet he seems to have joined our party,” Alondo observed.
She met his questioning gaze. “Apparently, we need him to get off this island.”
“Actually, we only have his word for that,” Rael pointed out.
“True,” she said. “But I couldn’t take the chance.”
“Are you sure he can be trusted?” he pressed.
“He was a close friend of Susan Gilmer.”
Rael bit his lower lip. “So, any friend of Susan Gilmer is a friend of ours; is that what we’re saying?”
“Not exactly,” she returned. “However, it’s clear that Susan Gilmer had a high regard for him. That means something—at least it does to me.”
“She left a message for him, it’s true,” Rael agreed. “But we don’t really know the nature of their relationship. Her faith in him could have been misguided. Or he could have been misleading her, for all we know. Other than the fact that up until a few days ago, he was working for Wang and spying on us, we know virtually nothing about him.”
“He attacked the sky ship,” she reminded him.
“Ineffectually, it seems.”
“He’s a poor shot.”
Rael’s mouth twisted. “So he says. Doesn’t it seem to you that the timing of the attack that made our escape possible was a little convenient?”
Shann’s brow furrowed. The more she thought about it, the more persuasive Rael’s argument seemed. Was it possible that it was all a part of some elaborate setup? Was she allowing her guilt over Susan Gilmer’s fate to blind her to the danger that this hu-man represented?
She let out a sigh. “You’re right. That’s why I’ve refrained from telling him anything about Lyall’s plan. In the short term, I think we need to—”
The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) Page 95