Wing Commander: Freedom Flight

by Mercedes Lackey

  He must keep telling himself that. Sivar had simply used them to express his displeasure.

  "So, fearing that their souls will be lost, there is no inducement Thrakhath can offer to make them fight," Ralgha continued. "If he attempts to force them, they will revolt. They are now as fearful as cublings in the moon-dark, and every ill that befalls them will be attributed to the loss of Sivar's favor. They are as eager now to escape with a whole skin as they once were to die."

  He allowed the tips of his canines to show, for this part of the situation pleased him very much indeed. "This will not look well for the Prince, for he chose the site and he led the expedition. Sivar's displeasure falls the hardest upon him. The priestesses will be encouraging unhappiness with him."

  The priestesses would not forget that the Prince ordered some of their number taken for questioning. No. That might have been the biggest mistake of the Prince's life. While no Kilrathi could be happy with this situation, the priestesses of Sivar must be purring with a certain bitter satisfaction at this turn of events. Surely they had been whispering warnings that any who interfered with Sivar's chosen would suffer Sivar's displeasure.

  Now what had been whispered could be shouted.

  "They will be retreating as quickly as the warships can carry them," Kirha said at last, after a long silence in which the hiss of the ventilator was the only sound. "They will be turning back towards conquered space, where there are temples wherein they might try to make their amends to the god. Until they can be purified, they will go to the Great Dark, if they die." His neck-ruff stood on end, for that prospect was not one any Kilrathi would face happily.

  "Were I the commanding officer of this vessel," Ralgha said, "I would do the same as they; retreating, regrouping and bringing in reinforcements. I would not pursue them, for they are desperate, and only a fool presses on the desperate. Remember that even a herd-beast will fight when cornered. Remember that the desperate are eager only to escape and will pay any price to do so. Only when I had a substantial strength would I return. Then I would consolidate the victory."

  He yawned a little, then, and his eyes narrowed in satisfaction as Thorn slowly nodded.

  "Thank you," the Captain said, in Kilrathi. "Thank you, Lord Ralgha. I think it is possible that your meeting with High Command can take place soon."

  And with that, he was gone. The door slid shut behind his guards.

  Ralgha's polite cough at Kirha's astonished expression covered his very real satisfaction. He had preserved the lives of warriors who had done him no harm, and might be induced to swear fealty at some point to him. He had saved the humans more casualties—which they would sustain, if they pressed their advantage. It was a better outcome than he could have reasonably expected.

  But best of all, the Prince would doubtless survive, and would have a great deal to account for to the Emperor. The Emperor's displeasure was going to fall heavily on him—and on any who were his favorites. The repercussions of this disaster would echo down along the chain of command, affecting anyone who was partisan to the Prince's cause. They all, from the Prince downward, might well find themselves piloting fighters on the frontlines.

  The ancient texts said, "Revenge is best when cultured, gathered at the proper time, and lingered over."

  He would linger over this scrap of vengeance for a very long time. Perhaps it would wash away the bitterness of knowledge.

  The sure and certain knowledge of his own hand in this disaster for his people.

  Nothing had been heard from K'Kai since the Confederation forces had to abandon the planet. In the few moments that Hunter had free to think about something other than the next thirty seconds, he'd worried about her. The Kilrathi were unlikely to look kindly on a Firekkan space-ship captain; they did not permit their subject races to have command of much in the way of technology, as it made them easier to keep under their thumb. K'Kai and Larrhi represented the "aberrant" traits that the Kilrathi wanted removed from their subject races—Larrhi was out of their reach, but if K'Kai didn't have the sense to hide what she was, Hunter wouldn't give her any odds at all for surviving.

  He only hoped K'Kai had the sense to hide her ship, scatter her crew, and pretend to be whatever the Firekkan equivalent of a dirt former was.

  After a while, he no longer had time to hope anything, other than to hope that he would survive the next engagement himself.

  The moment he had lost flight controls of that Dralthi and ditched her, he had been absolutely positive that he wouldn't even do that. And the same when he thought he'd lost the Claw. Those experiences had shaken him in ways he still was coming to terms with. He'd never had to confront his own mortality quite so closely before. In better times, he'd have had a chance to retreat to sickbay and shake for a few days—but he couldn't be spared, and he was no sooner back on the Claw then someone was throwing him into a fighter again, and sending him out.

  He could have broken, as Maniac was threatening to do at any moment, as dozens of others had. Somehow, he didn't. He still didn't know why.

  Suddenly, it was over, and the Claw was in retreat—but oddly enough, not because they had lost, but because they had won. The Kilrathi were retreating in disorder, but the Confederation was not pursuing. Halcyon explained it to them, but frankly, Hunter was too tired and too overloaded to understand even a tenth of it. It was enough that the fighting was over for now, and that they had won. He wasn't so gung-ho that he wanted to chase after the cats. Let them run. Hunter went to his bunk, fell asleep, and slept dreamlessly for three days straight. He was not the only fighter pilot to do so.

  In the days and weeks that followed, he had far more leisure to think about K'Kai and her crew than he would have liked. He kept thinking about that final farewell—and hoping she had survived.

  A leave down on good old Earth would do very little to make him forget, when all was said and done. It would be a relief when the orders came, sending the Claw and her crews back to Firekka. At least he would know, one way or another, what had happened to her.

  "Read 'em and weep, guys," Blair said, spreading out his cards. Two kings, three queens; Hunter whistled softly in admiration. Amazing; Blair had been enjoying an incredible run of luck lately—well, in cards, anyway. His lovelife was pretty barren, or so Hunter had heard. Not that his had been much better, but Hunter wasn't going to complain. He was afraid he'd used up most of his lifetime quota of luck just surviving that Dralthi ejection. He hadn't played many card games or chased any lovely ladies since; he hadn't wanted to use up any luck he'd had left. Flying with Maniac as occasional wingman was taking up more than enough of that remaining luck.

  For the first time in his life, he was superstitious. Maybe it would wear off, in time. The psychs said it would. "Just let things ride," they told him.

  Blair sat back in his chair, grinning, as the rest of the poker players threw down their cards with varying degrees of chagrin and disgust. No one had anything like that hand. Blair raked in his winnings, his grin broadening, and invited the other players to try their luck again.

  Jazz grimaced, and bowed out. Blair lifted an eyebrow in Hunter's direction, a clear invitation to take the chair Jazz was vacating. But before Hunter had to make any kind of disclaimer, one of the fighter-pilots newly assigned to the Claw stuck his head into the room and spotted him.

  "St. John, Halcyon wants you on Flight Deck A-5, ASAP." He vanished before Hunter could ask why, or what the Colonel wanted. He looked at Blair, shrugged wordlessly, and followed in the messenger's wake.

  The Flight Deck in question was empty, the squadron housed there currently out on patrol, looking for Kilrathi stragglers.

  Empty? No—not quite. Off on the side, out of the way of the fighters that would be returning shortly, was a battered, tired-looking freighter, a small one, but still Jump-capable. The model was an old one—outmoded, but somehow familiar.

  Familiar, then all at once, he knew. Knew it before he glimpsed plumes, beaks, or Firekkan writing, half-erased
, on the freighter's nose.

  "K'Kai!" he shouted, breaking into a run. A dozen beaked heads swiveled in his direction; a chorus of excited squawks arose as the Firekkan crew spotted him. They began running, wings half-spread, converging on him.

  In moments, he was surrounded by excited Firekkans, most of them showing signs of distress as well as excitement, and all of them the worse for wear. Most were missing feathers; many had injuries both old and new. He was half afraid of what he would find when he finally reached K'Kai herself.

  But as he managed to work his way through the agitated flock, he caught a glimpse of her in excited conversation with Colonel Halcyon. The Colonel didn't seem to be catching more than one word in four, she was speaking so quickly, and he greeted Hunter's appearance with the pleasure of a drowning man on seeing a life-preserver.

  "St. John, get over here!" the Colonel shouted over the din, then reached out and grabbed Hunter by the uniform sleeve and dragged him through the mob of Firekkans. "Here, K'Kai, tell Hunter what you want—"

  And with that set of instructions, the Colonel beat a hasty retreat.

  "But—" Hunter said desperately after the Colonel's retreating back. "But I—"

  Too late.

  K'Kai and her entire crew surrounded him, gabbling at the tops of their lungs, until he finally lost patience with them all.

  "Shut UP!" he roared. A blessed silence descended, as the Firekkans rolled wide, startled eyes at him. He turned to K'Kai. "Right. What happened? What's wrong?"

  K'Kai shook her feathers, and stared at him out of wide, half-stunned eyes. A couple of the others made little meeping noises, but he ignored them. Finally she clacked her beak a couple of times, and began speaking. Slower, this time.

  Even so, it took Hunter several tries and a lot of cross-questioning to get the whole story out of her. When he did, he didn't blame her or her flock for being upset.

  The Kilrathi had taken hostages—not something they did, normally, but evidently the ambitious Prince Thrakhath had thought it would be advantageous to his plans to have hostages… or perhaps they were only prized slaves. In view of the disastrous Sivar Eshrad ceremony, the total subjugation of Firekka had been the Prince's only remaining means of saving face.

  One of those nests was K'Kai's family, and one of the hostages her young niece Rikik. Rikik's mother had been killed during the battle to rescue the hostages, and that he'd made Rikik, young as she was, the titular head of the flock. Her very youth made her a good hostage; she was so frightened and vulnerable that no adult Firekkan would resist the Kilrathi Prince's orders, knowing that she would suffer if they rebelled.

  One of the first orders had been to pinion every adult so that they could not fly. K'Kai had the bright notion to make the Kilrathi think that removing only the first two secondaries on each wing would make Firekkans ground-bound—and once she sped the idea through the nests, the rest went along with the ruse. They planted the misinformation in their own records, and feigned their loss of flight when the feathers were removed, taking to the air only within the nest, or where they were certain no Kilrathi could observe them.

  The Kilrathi Prince neither knew nor cared that pinioning every adult would cripple them, make it impossible for them to reach feeding-platforms and sleep-perches within the nest. His orders grew progressively cruder, but with their leaders in Kilrathi hands, there was nothing the avians could do but obey, and fight a covert battle to retake their world, letting the Kilrathi think that the fighters were from outside the city, as Hunter had seen for himself.

  "And they departed from Firekka," K'Kai concluded. She shook her head. "But the first ship off-world took with it not only the Prince, but his hostages. They took our flock leaders with them! They said that if Firekka could not be theirs to conquer, then they would see to it that it would not ally with you! That was what I came here to tell you—those leaders who are left will cancel the treaty! They will not risk the lives of our flock leaders!"

  With each sentence, she grew shriller and shriller, until at last she was shrieking again. As Hunter tried to calm her down, his mind was really on her alarming news.

  The Confederation needed Firekka. Not for any strategic reason… the planet was too isolated from the rest of Terran space to make any real difference in the war… but for political reasons. The Confed had sworn to protect Firekka against the Kilrathi, and hadn't. If the Firekkans broke the treaty, how many other Confed planets would follow?

  "Come on, K'Kai," he said. "You and me have a sudden date with Captain Thorn."

  He bullied and wheedled his way to the Captain, but once there, Thorn made it clear that this was not a matter for a lowly pilot, flock-friend or not. So he had to leave K'Kai there, without knowing what Thorn would do for her.

  But he had confidence in the Captain, and as much in K'Kai. She was in good hands. Thorn would get her to Confed High Command, and see that she spoke to the right people.

  Something would be done.

  Something would be done!

  Chapter Nine

  "Meal time, kitty," the human voice said, shoving a bowl and a mug through the slot in his cell door.

  The human's words and a terrible smell awakened Kirha from a sound sleep on the floor. The smell was coming from the mug, which smelled of rotting plants of some kind. He moved closer to the door and stared at the contents of the mug, a foul bubbling yellow liquid, then at the bowl. It was filled with a strange mixture of plants and roots, not real food. He could see some meat mixed in with it, but the meat was brown and looked terrible, nothing that he could eat.

  What had happened to those humans from the ship, the ones who had known what a Kilrathi warrior needed? From decent food and decent quarters, he had come to this—burned trash and treatment he would not have given to a slave.

  He heard the footsteps walking away, and held back his rage. A warrior of Kilrah did not lose his dignity by shrieking at empty walls. Kirha sat back on his haunches, steadfastly ignoring the hunger gnawing at his innards, and waited.

  It had been like this since the Kilrathi retreat, and their arrival at Sol, when they had separated him from Ralgha. He had not seen Ralgha, nor his lord the human called Hunter, since.

  Where is my liege lord? he wondered. How can he leave me here in this awful place ?

  Has he completely forgotten me?

  He leaped to his feet and stalked the length of his cell, padding angrily. The cell was tiny, and empty but for a white plastic source of water in the corner, another odd plastic fixture attached to the wall, and a strange elevated pile of compressed fabric in the corner, which he assumed was the necessary, since nothing else in the cell even vaguely looked usable for that purpose. The place he and Ralgha had shared had a necessary, one recognizable as such. This cell had nothing of the sort. The end result was a foul odor that Kirha could do nothing about, but which only added to the humiliation of his incarceration.

  Lord Ralgha would have been kinder to let me die, he thought sadly, curling up on the floor for another nap.

  Another sound awakened him, and he blinked at the bright light streaming in from the hallway. Someone was standing in the open cell doorway, a tall human. This human had longer head-fur than most of the humans, a tawny gold fur that was nearly the same color as the fur of Major H'hristy Mar'kss, but he also had fur on his face. His chin was bare, but there was a small line of golden fur beneath his nose that extended down the sides of his mouth. That mouth was frowning now, as he stepped into the cell.

  "I'faith, it reeks like the devil in here!" the human said, his words oddly accented and more difficult for Kirha to understand. "Dinna someone ever come in to clean this place, laddie?"

  Was this another interrogation? He thought they had ended with that, since no one had come to take him to the interrogation room for several eights of hours. He hated it every time they came to take him away. The drugs they gave him made him dizzy and sick, and they always asked the same questions, over and over again. Kirha knew none o
f the answers to them. Fleet movements, battle plans, any of it.

  This human, though, seemed different. Instead of the pair of human guards that always tied his arms behind him before taking him to the interrogation room, this human only closed the cell door, then turned to stare at Kirha.

  "So why aren't ye eating any food, laddie?" the human male asked. "The brig guards tell me that ye haven't eaten anything in two days now."

  Kirha was uncertain whether he should answer the human. After all, this was one of the enemy… or was he? Captain Ian St. John, also known as Hunter, was human, and Kirha would have gladly answered any of his questions without hesitation. Perhaps he ought to honor the human's request for an answer, if only not to risk bringing shame or disgrace upon his liege lord.

  "They have not given me anything to eat!" Kirha said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. "I would like to eat, but they do not give me any food!"

  The human sat down on the bunk across from him. "Well, that's not what they're sayin'. Duke said that they gave you some beef stew yesterday, and again this morning, and you haven't touched it. See, there it is, sittin' on the floor. They even gave you a beer, I see, in the hopes that it'd help your appetite."

  It seemed the stranger was at least asking questions. "I do not know what this 'beef stew' is, but what they gave me was harakh, not food for a warrior! Am I a prey-species, to be fed roots and berries?"

  "Ah, I see," the human said, baring his teeth in a smile. "That was an easy mistake for the guards to make. You're the first Kilrathi prisoner we've had on Sol Station. Usually captured Kilrathi are held on the fleet ships and then transported directly to a prisoner camp, not here to Sol Station. You're a unique case, lad… and your Captain wasn't here long enough to eat a meal before they took him down planet-side. So, Kilrathi warrior, what would you rather eat?"

  Oh, this was better. Like the humans upon the ship, the Claw of the Tiger. Humans who would listen to him, not order him about. Humans like the one called Hunter. "Meat. Fresh meat, not burned in a fire. And no plants or roots mixed it with it. And I would like some arakh leaves," he added hopefully.