by Timothy Zahn
“All the men are needed for the attack,” Amrew said a bit huffily. “As you well know. Very well. Mispacch Woman-fifth and her children are searching for edible berries at the hills near the plain. I’ll send a messenger to summon her.”
“No need,” Nicole said. She’d glimpsed Mispacch moving through the foliage when she and Jeff had first come in. “Jeff and I can go get her after he briefs the other fighters.”
“Very well.” Amrew rose to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll bring the fighters.”
He strode across the ground and disappeared back into the Micawnwi hive. “What do you think?” Jeff murmured.
“He doesn’t like it, but doesn’t see any other alternative,” Nicole said.
“He also hates you being here,” Jeff pointed out. “Maybe you ought to head out right now and find Mispacch. I can catch up once we’re finished.”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said hesitantly. “The tracks aren’t easy to find. It would kind of defeat the whole purpose if I had to stand up and wave to you.”
“Don’t worry, I saw the bushes you described on our way in,” he assured her. “I’ll find you.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, reluctantly standing up. She didn’t like leaving him alone with Amrew and the others. But he was probably right about getting her out of sight. “We’ll wait a little ways up the path.”
“I’ll find you,” he promised again. “Go on, scoot.”
A minute later, Nicole was hurrying along the stone path back toward the distant exit door and the hidden path she’d found on her last visit. A few minutes to find Mispacch, plus another few minutes to get her and her children under cover while they waited for Jeff to catch up, and the plan would be under way.
Amrew was right. It had damn well better work.
fourteen
Locating the end of the hidden track system Nicole had followed during her escape from the Cluufes was easy. Finding Mispacch and her children proved considerably harder. Nicole hadn’t expected them to be in the exact place where she’d seen them earlier that morning, but she’d assumed they would be at least in the same general area.
But they were nowhere to be found. Cursing under her breath, she pushed her way across the wilderness, wading through the tall grass, circling around bushes, and ducking under low tree branches, all the while sweating as the clock ticked down in the back of her mind. If she couldn’t find them soon, she might have to talk Amrew into letting her borrow one of the Micawnwi men after all.
She’d almost given up when she finally found the three of them sitting beside a small creek, scooping water with their pawlike hands. Mispacch looked up at Nicole’s approach, did a whole-body shuddering thing that Nicole guessed was their version of a double take, and scrambled hastily to her feet. “Sibyl!” she said, bowing in greeting. “I hadn’t thought to see you again so soon.”
“You mean so soon after running out on you?” Nicole waved a hand. “Never mind. I need your help. Yours and your children’s. You game for a little adventure?”
“Of course,” Mispacch said, her fur fluffing up and down. “Thanks to you, our hunger is eased and we have strength again.”
“Good,” Nicole said. “Because strength is exactly what I need from you.” She peered up through the tree branches at the craggy rocks in the distance. “That, and silence. Come with me, and quietly. The Cluufes may be watching.”
Jeff was waiting at the track crawlway entry point, crouched beside the trunk of a tree that was topped by a dome-shaped branch-and-leaf canopy that reminded Nicole of the top of a Russian-style church she’d seen once in a picture. “About time,” he murmured as Nicole and the three Micawnwi came up. “You get lost?”
“I didn’t, no,” Nicole said. “Where’s Amrew?”
Jeff nodded toward the Micawnwi area. “About twenty meters that way,” he said. “Any idea how long this cross-country thing will take? He needs to know when to attack.”
“Got it covered,” Nicole assured him. “Mispacch, I need you to send Daughter One back to Amrew. Have her tell him that Son One will come and let him know when we’re in position and he can launch his attack. Can you do that?”
“Of course.” Pulling her children close to her, Mispacch put her mouth to their ears and began murmuring.
“You think you can trust them?” Jeff asked quietly. “Not to screw up, I mean. It’s not like anyone in here has any kind of professional training.”
“Neither have I,” Nicole reminded him. “So far, I’m doing okay.”
“Really?” Jeff countered. “The way I read it, so far you’ve mostly just been lucky.”
Nicole gave a little snort. “Yeah, getting my butt hauled across space so I can kill myself telling people like you where to stick their screwdrivers sure qualifies as lucky.”
“You know what I mean,” Jeff said. “By all rights, you should be up to your eyeballs in trouble with the Shipmasters right now. Or lying dead with a Cluufe halberd through your stomach.”
“Not a chance,” she insisted.
But down deep, she knew he was right. If Jeff and Plato hadn’t plucked her out of the middle of that battle … “Anyway, since when did you become Rambo?”
“Me? Rambo? Never,” he said, giving her a slightly superior look. “Rambo was Army. I was a Marine.”
Nicole felt her mouth drop open. Her question had been pure sarcasm. “A Marine?”
He shrugged. “Briefly.”
“And?”
“And we’ll save that story for another time,” he said, nodding toward Mispacch.
Nicole turned. The three Micawnwi had finished their huddle and Daughter One was moving through the overgrowth toward Amrew’s position. “Time to go?” Jeff asked.
“Time to go,” Nicole confirmed. “Mispacch, you and Son One follow me. Jeff, you bring up the rear. Keep it quiet, and try not to hit any of the branches. It might give away our position.”
The trip back over the hills seemed quicker this time. Part of that, Nicole knew, was because she’d already done it once. The other part was the fact that this time her ankle wasn’t throbbing with pain.
The only really tricky part was the transition from the first set of tracks to the second. Nicole stayed especially alert as she slipped across the open gap, but again she heard and saw no sign of Cluufe sentries. Mispacch followed her across, and then Jeff.
And with the three of them safely onto the final leg of the journey, Mispacch gave a hand signal to Son One, still waiting back on the other side of the gap. The child nodded and turned around, crawling swiftly along the tracks as he headed back to give Amrew the word. Assuming all of them traveled at more or less the same speed, Nicole’s group should be in position just about the time Amrew gathered his forces and marched off to the plain for their attack.
At which point, the success of Nicole’s plan would rest on Amrew’s ability to keep the Cluufes’ full attention tied up at the other end of the arena. She hoped he was up to the task.
The tracks came to an end just around the curve in the stone path where Nicole had started her sprint the previous day, and within sight of the place where she’d twisted her ankle. She and the others were in position, and Nicole was staring at the stone path, when it started.
The first sign was a sudden flurry of activity from the hive. She could hear voices, the words unintelligible but the tones clipped and taut. The voices were followed by the sound of hurrying feet, and a moment later half a dozen armed Cluufes appeared around the curve and raced down the path in the direction of the stone building.
Something brushed past Nicole’s left leg and arm, and she turned to see Jeff come up beside her. “Looks like they got the message,” he whispered.
“I guess so,” Nicole whispered back. “Did you see any messengers go past? I didn’t.”
“There hasn’t been time for messengers,” Jeff said. “Probably one of their spotters up there signaled down to them.”
Nicole frowned. “You mean with a radio or
something?”
“More likely a mirror or shiny piece of metal,” Jeff said. “A quick flash code would be simple enough to set up. This Hunter character sounds like he might have had some military training.” He shrugged. “Or else was just a very attentive Boy Scout.”
Nicole thought back to her first time in the arena, when she’d seen Hunter shooting at the stone building’s defenders and then quickly moving away before they could shoot back. “I’d vote for military,” she said grimly. “He’s organized and he can shoot.”
“All the better that they’re out of stuff to shoot with, then,” Jeff said. “Let’s hope he stays at that end and directs the battle.”
Nicole sighed. “And helps them kill a few more Micawnwi.”
“If Amrew runs his side like I told him to, there shouldn’t be any more deaths,” Jeff assured her. “Lots of noise and fury, but hopefully no one will engage hard enough to get seriously hurt.” From somewhere in the distance a warbling cry drifted across the arena. “There’s the signal,” he said, hunching up onto his hands and knees. “We’ve got ten minutes. Let’s find out if they all cleared out.”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.” Nicole gestured over her shoulder to Mispacch. “Come on, Mispacch. No noise—the Oracle will be listening.”
The Cluufe hive was indeed deserted. With Nicole in the lead, the three of them hurried across the central area and into the dispenser room.
Now that Nicole knew what to look for, it was obvious that the colored light display on the Cluufes’ dispenser was very different from the one on the Micawnwi’s. Pulling out her notepad and stylus, she pointed Jeff and Mispacch to the wall beside the dispenser and then started recording the pattern of the lights. As she worked, Jeff and Mispacch found the wall panel’s handgrips and Mispacch pulled the wall open. Jeff stepped into the gap, flicked on a penlight from his tool vest, and peered into the dispenser’s inner mechanism. He nodded in satisfaction and gave Nicole a thumbs-up.
Nicole nodded back, forcing herself not to rush. If she didn’t get the Cluufe settings exactly correct, she and Jeff would never be able to get the machine back to the way it had been. That would tip off Hunter that his hive had been invaded, and he would make damn sure Amrew and the other Micawnwi were never able to pull off this stunt again.
Besides, depending on how much output the stone building’s dispenser had, messing this one up might condemn the Cluufes to slow starvation. Nicole didn’t especially like the weasels, but she had no intention of doing that to them if she could help it. Especially not when they were probably as much pawns of the Shipmasters as the Micawnwi were.
Jeff gave a soft but surprisingly impatient-sounding hiss. Nicole ignored him, carefully finished marking down the light order, and then just as carefully double-checked it. Only then did she key back to the page with the Micawnwi settings and turn the notepad around to where Jeff could see it. He peered at the display, looked back at the controls, and set to work.
One by one, the lights on the display began to change. Nicole watched, trying not to fidget, knowing there was nothing more she could do. There wasn’t enough room for two of them back where Jeff was working, and she couldn’t help Mispacch in holding up the wall. Instead, she concentrated on keeping the notepad steady and strained her ears for any signs that the Cluufes might be returning.
Probably because she was listening so hard, she heard the quiet thump.
She frowned. The thump had been soft, but it had also been deep, like someone had hit a huge drum somewhere in the distance. Even stranger, the sound had seemed to come from all around her. Turning her head back and forth, straining even harder, she listened for it to come again.
There it was: the same thump. Only this time it was a double: thump … thump. She kept listening, and a few seconds later she heard another single thump.
What the hell?
There was a soft snap of fingers, and she looked over to see Jeff give her another thumbs-up as he stepped out of the alcove. Nicole nodded, slipping the notepad back into her pocket and pulling out the three flattened arrow quivers she’d swiped from the Micawnwi hive and tucked inside her jumpsuit. She put the open end of one of them beneath the dispenser chute and tapped the button, letting a few of the food morsels roll out. She stepped over to Mispacch, dug a couple of the morsels from the quiver, and offered them to her.
Carefully, Mispacch lowered the wall section back into position. She took the morsels and gave them a long and careful sniff. Then, with a brief fluffing of her fur, she nodded. Jeff snapped his fingers softly and pantomimed eating; Mispacch nodded and popped the bits into her mouth. She rolled them around her mouth a moment, then nodded again.
Nicole took a deep breath, feeling her muscles release some of their pent-up tension. It had worked. She and Jeff had found the right formula, and for the moment the Micawnwi food troubles were over.
There was another of the soft thumps. Frowning, Nicole pressed the quivers into Mispacch’s hands and pointed toward Jeff and the food dispenser. Fill them up, she mouthed silently toward Jeff. I’ll be right back. Without waiting for him to answer or object, she hurried out the door and into the central room beyond.
Her fear was that the sounds were somehow related to the Cluufes’ return from battle. To her relief, the areas of the arena she could see were still deserted. She walked through the doorway onto the stone path, wondering if the whole thing might have been her imagination.
She was still looking around when she heard yet another thud.
She chewed at her lip. Could it be her imagination? Jeff certainly didn’t seem to have heard anything.
But Jeff was focused on his work. Anyway, the thud seemed to be closer and louder out here.
She took a few more steps out into the arena, trying to figure out what might make a sound like that. There was another double thump, again sounding closer than it had indoors, and this time she had the impression that it had come from the curved wall to her left that arched up into the arena ceiling. She walked toward it, trying to pierce the trees and bushes that hid the lower part of the wall from sight.
She’d made it past the first line of short trees when, ten feet directly ahead, there was a rustling in the bushes.
Instantly, she dropped into a crouch, pressing close against the nearest tree, her pulse pounding in her ears. Her first impulse was to leap back to her feet and try to make it back to the Cluufe hive. But she’d seen Cluufes in action, and if that was one of them she would never get back to Jeff and Mispacch before he ran her down. The hidden track crawlway was no better; she might make it there ahead of her pursuer, but it offered no refuge and simply by going there she would betray its presence and destroy any future usefulness it might have.
But she had to do something. Too late, she wished she’d taken the time to grab a wrench or heavy screwdriver from Jeff’s tool vest. At least then she’d have a weapon. But all she had in her own vest were food bars, a couple of small and useless tools, and water bottles.
Still, even a water bottle was better than nothing. Carefully, she slipped one out of its pocket and got a grip around its neck. The bushes rustled again …
And a Wisp stepped into view.
Nicole huffed out the breath she’d been holding. What was it with these damn things? “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded as the thing glided toward her. “In case you missed it, there’s a war going on a couple hundred yards that way—”
Right in the middle of her sentence, the Wisp stopped in front of her, wrapped its long arms around her torso—
And just like on the day when she and Bungie were snatched out of the early-morning Philadelphia sunlight, she found herself totally paralyzed.
She tried to shout. Nothing. She tried to kick, or to twist her arms against the Wisp’s grip, or to slam her forehead against the silver-threaded white skin two inches from her eyes. She couldn’t do any of those things. The Wisp turned around and headed back the way it had come, carrying Nicole pressed agai
nst its chest.
She couldn’t even find her voice to ask where they were going. Not that the Wisp was likely to answer.
They passed beyond the last line of trees, and in her peripheral vision she saw the smooth curve of the wall rising up behind her. Was there some other door back here that she’d never noticed? Maybe a hidden path alongside the wall that would get them past the Micawnwi and Cluufes squaring off over there?
Or had the Shipmasters finally gotten so annoyed at Nicole’s meddling that they’d sent a Wisp to haul her across the arena and hand her over to the Cluufes?
Even as that awful thought struck her, there was a soft whoosh, a longer and deeper sound than the ones that usually accompanied the Fyrantha’s opening doors. A sudden blast of hot air burst out behind her, shoving against her back like a steady August wind. The Wisp walked straight into the wind, and Nicole saw its butterfly wings unfurl behind it. The hot wind continued to press at her, and Nicole felt sweat breaking out across her skin.
And then the Wisp carried her through a wide opening in the wall and into a deep blackness.
There was a moment of turbulence as the wind suddenly seemed to be coming from every direction at once. Then it settled down, only now instead of blowing against her back it was an even hotter and more powerful upward blast that tore at the legs and back of her jumpsuit. In that same confused heartbeat she had the horrible sensation of falling. Then the Wisp’s outstretched wings caught the airflow.
And as the door they’d come through slid shut, Nicole found herself and the Wisp rising rapidly on the wind.
Don’t worry, Nicole. I won’t let you go.
Nicole felt a grimace trying to form on her frozen lips. It was the same thing that first Wisp had said, the one who’d snatched her and Bungie and Sam. Whatever the damn things were, they seemed to have one-track minds. I’m not worried about falling, you idiot, she snarled silently at her captor. I want to know where the hell we’re going.