by Timothy Zahn
“He needs rest and further treatment,” Sam added just as cautiously. “We were about to take him back to the hive medical center and then return him to his quarters.”
“No need,” Fievj said calmly. “I’ll take him.”
Another quick exchange of looks. “We appreciate the offer, Shipmaster,” Plato said. “But we can get him back to the hive ourselves.”
“You misunderstand,” Fievj said. “He isn’t going to the hive. He’s coming with me.”
Nicole looked at Bungie, still half sitting, half lying, on the deck. He was looking up at Fievj, a measuring look on his face. “He’s right—I’m in pretty bad shape,” he told the centaur. “I never should have been brought here in the first place. Just send me back to Earth and I won’t be any more trouble.”
“You’ll heal,” Fievj said. Extending his hand, he made an odd gesture toward Bungie with his armored fingertips. “Come.”
“I might die if I have to stay here,” Bungie warned, getting slowly to his feet.
“You won’t die,” Fievj assured him. “Not yet.”
Bungie’s face stiffened. He shot a look at Nicole, then looked back at the others still standing together across the room.
And as his eyes fell on Plato, Nicole saw some of the tension leave his face. Fievj was offering a vague, future death. Plato had promised an execution right here and now.
Like most of Trake’s group, Bungie loved playing the odds. He didn’t play them well, but he loved playing them.
“Fine—you’re on,” he said, taking a step closer to Fievj. “Lead the way.”
“In a moment.” Fievj turned his armored faceplate to Nicole. “You—Sibyl. You came looking for a weapon.”
Nicole swallowed hard. With her whole attention focused on getting Bungie out of here, and then scrambled by Fievj’s unexpected appearance in the middle of her move, she’d almost forgotten about Jeff. “Yes,” she said carefully. “But not for myself. The Cluufes in the arena—”
“I know,” Fievj interrupted. He half turned, reaching back over his long horse back.
And to Nicole’s amazement, the top of the horse opened up, the metal armor sliding around and disappearing behind the side armor like an old rolltop desk one of her grandmother’s friends had owned.
In the opening, racked neatly side by side, were six four-foot-long black tubes.
Greenfire guns.
“This is for you,” Fievj said, reaching into the compartment and detaching one of the weapons from its clamps. “Return with it to the arena.” He turned back and offered it to her.
Gingerly, an eerie feeling shivering through her, Nicole took it. The weapon was lighter than she’d expected, much lighter than the halberd. “But it has only three shots,” Fievj warned as the armor rolled back into place over the storage compartment. “Use them wisely.”
He gestured to Bungie. “Come,” he said again, and turned and walked out into the hallway.
Bungie threw an unreadable look at Nicole, and then an all-too-readable smirk at Plato and Sam. “Nice seeing you again, kiddies,” he said.
“Enjoy your last taste of freedom,” Plato said, his voice dark and bitter. “From this point on, you’re their slave. And sooner or later, you will die.”
For a second, Bungie’s smirk faltered. But it came back quickly, and with a final sneer he turned and followed Fievj into the hallway.
And Nicole was alone. With three of her companions.
Holding a gun that held three shots.
Was Fievj expecting her to shoot them?
Carefully, she turned around. None of the three had moved, either to rush her or to run for cover. “I need to leave now,” she said between stiff lips.
“Let them die, Nicole,” Plato said quietly. “You have to.”
“Jeff too?” Nicole shot back.
She saw Plato’s throat work. “Jeff too,” he said. “Even now—even with Bungie in their hands—we still have a chance. If you go back in there, it’ll all be over.”
Nicole shivered. The man was serious, all right. Deadly serious.
Which meant nothing, of course. She’d seen people get just as serious over the proper way to cook chicken. “You want me to stay out?” she demanded. “Then give me a good reason. Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“You have to tell her, Plato,” Sam urged. “She can handle it.”
Plato shot a sideways look at Kahkitah. Then, he took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Look—”
“Sibyl?”
Nicole spun back around. Fievj had returned and was again standing in the doorway. “Yes?” she asked.
“You will leave now,” the centaur said. “Those in the test arena await you.”
Nicole looked back at Plato and Sam. Their faces had gone rigid.
But there was nothing she could do but obey. “All right,” she said. “See you later, Plato.”
She’d hoped that Fievj might watch her leave the room and then return to wherever he’d left Bungie. That would give her a chance to double back and find out what this big secret was that Plato was finally ready to tell her.
No such luck. With his four feet softly thunking against the flooring behind her the entire way, he escorted her in silence to the arena and watched as she keyed in the code. She pulled the door open and stepped inside, and Fievj himself closed and sealed the door behind her.
She swore under her breath. So much for Plato and his big secret. Clearly, Fievj wanted her to deliver the greenfire weapon to Hunter.
First rescuing Bungie, and now making sure Jeff got out of here in one piece. Maybe the lives of their human workers were more important to the Shipmasters than she’d realized.
Or maybe Fievj knew something Nicole didn’t. Could Hunter be planning to change the deal again? Maybe ask for something else once he had the gun?
Or was Jeff already dead?
With an effort, she shook the thought away. Surely Hunter wasn’t stupid enough to lose the only leverage he had against her. Especially not before he had the gun he’d demanded.
Even more especially when she had the gun ready to point at him.
Of course, the gun only had three shots. But Hunter wouldn’t know that. Nicole could march up to him, press the muzzle against his stomach, and demand they turn Jeff loose. Once the two humans were clear of the guards and back in the main part of the arena, she decided, she would throw the weapon as far as she could into the bushes and make a mad break for it. Hopefully, she and Jeff would be clear before Hunter could get the gun back.
At which point, of course, the Micawnwi would still have to face the Cluufes and their new weapon. But it wasn’t like the Cluufes could mow down the whole bunch of them or anything. Anyway, she’d already done way more for the Micawnwi than anyone could expect.
Whatever happened from now on wasn’t her concern. All she cared about was getting Jeff free and escaping this damn hellhole. Squaring her shoulders, she started across the field toward the stone building—
“Nicole!” a voice called hoarsely from the trees.
—and jerked to a stop again as a figure emerged from cover and loped toward her.
It was Jeff.
“About time,” he breathed as he reached her, his tool vests bouncing and jangling together as he came to a halt. “The damn door is locked from this side. I couldn’t get out.”
“It’s locked from both sides,” Nicole growled, her stunned disbelief at his unexpected appearance starting to turn into anger. She’d knocked herself out getting this gun to trade for him, and then he’d just walked away from Hunter on his own? “How the hell did you get away?”
“I didn’t,” he said grimly. “They let me go when the guy in metal armor came in and gave Hunter a couple of guns.”
Nicole stared at him. “What are you talking about? What guy?”
“He didn’t introduce himself,” Jeff said. “Just a guy in metal armor. He brought two of those”—he pointed at the weapon in Nicole’s hand
—“said he was was sending you in with one for the Micawnwi, and told Hunter to let me go.”
Nicole looked down at the weapon, her head spinning. What the hell was going on? Hunter had demanded a weapon, so Fievj and his buddies just gave him one? And then—?
She caught her breath. And then Fievj had given her one, too. Knowing that she’d been helping the Micawnwi. Clearly anticipating that once Jeff was free she’d give it to Amrew. “Did he say anything about how many shots the guns had?” she asked.
“Nothing that I heard,” he said, frowning. “No, scratch that—make that nothing, period. I know, because we walked out together. Well, unless he went back and talked with Hunter after I’d gone.”
“Probably not,” Nicole said. “They’re not much for talking.”
“I noticed.” Jeff frowned. “What’s the matter? At least both sides have guns now.”
“What’s wrong is that it’s a scam,” Nicole bit out, hefting the gun. “This one only has three shots.”
Jeff’s face went tight. “Oh, hell,” he said quietly. “They’re expecting a massacre. No, not expecting. They’re planning a massacre.”
“I don’t know what they’re planning anymore,” Nicole said, her stomach tightening into a hard knot. “Why are they doing this to these people, anyway?”
“Maybe they just like watching,” Jeff said. “Well, they’re going to get their money’s worth tonight.”
Nicole let her gaze drift past him to the arena’s trees and hills. There had to be a way to stop this. Something she could do to stop the battle and prevent the slaughter. Or something to at least give the Micawnwi a fighting chance.
And then her eyes fell on the tree she’d noticed earlier, the bushy-topped one that reminded her of the dome of a Russian church.
It was a lunatic idea. But it was all she had.
“No, they’re not,” she told Jeff firmly as she swung the greenfire gun up onto her shoulder. “Or at least they’re not going to get the one-sided slaughter Fievj’s expecting. Come on, we need to get to the Micawnwi hive.”
“You have a plan?” Jeff asked hopefully as they headed off down the stone pathway.
“I think so,” Nicole said. “Let’s find out.”
seventeen
Jeff wasn’t wild about the plan. Neither was Amrew.
But neither liked the look of the black tube in Nicole’s hand. Nor did they like her description of its firepower.
They especially didn’t like the fact that the Cluufes had two of them.
What probably made it worse, at least from Amrew’s point of view, was that even while he dithered about the plan, Mispacch and the other women had already accepted their own roles in Nicole’s proposed strategy. Women, apparently, shouldn’t be willing to take risks that the men weren’t.
But no one had a better plan to offer. In the end, reluctantly, they accepted Nicole’s.
Nicole had been concerned that they would have to cut down the dome-canopied tree near the exit, the one that had first sparked this whole crazy idea. It was certainly the most convenient, but the very fact that it was the one closest to the stone building would likely tip Hunter off that the Micawnwi were up to something.
Fortunately, there were two similar trees near the Micawnwi hive that would serve equally well. Nicole chose the one with the narrowest, bushiest branch canopy and had the Micawnwi chop it down with their halberds. Hopefully, any Cluufe watchers would think they were simply planning to use the tree to build a barricade across the entrance to their hive.
In fact, Amrew suggested that exact strategy as his men worked to take the tree down. But Nicole pointed out the fatal flaw: settling into a defensive position would gain them nothing but slow starvation. Their only hope was to take the battle to the Cluufes and make one final attempt to capture the stone building and its food dispenser.
A minute later, the tree was down. The next step was to strip off a carefully selected section of its branches. That part went quickly, with the men again chopping off the branches where Nicole directed them, leaving the debris to be collected and removed by the women and children.
Midway through the operation, Amrew once again made a suggestion, this time that the women stack the branches at both sides of the hive entrance. Mildly surprised that he’d actually come up with something that subtle, Nicole agreed. With luck, it would lull any Cluufes watching the operation into concluding that the whole tree thing really was part of a defense setup.
Once all the cutting was done came the task of removing the axe heads from all the halberds. It turned out to be trickier than Nicole had expected, and cost them the destruction of one of Jeff’s wrenches before they finally figured out the right technique. After that, though, the job went quickly.
And with that, the preparations were complete. Now, it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together and getting everyone in place.
And, for Nicole, hoping privately and fervently that she hadn’t just sentenced all of them to death.
* * *
The light in the arena was starting to dim to its nighttime level by the time Son One crossed the gap between the concealed sections of the hidden crawlway, gave the thumbs-up signal that Nicole had taught him, and continued on down the hill.
Jeff, sitting with his back against the leftmost of their pair of adjoining trees, leaned a few inches closer to Nicole. “Five minutes,” he whispered. “You ready?”
It was, Nicole thought fleetingly, a stupid question. Her part of the operation had mostly ended when she’d loaded the four Micawnwi men with detached halberd axe heads and sent them and Son One up the crawlway to their positions near the Cluufe hive. All she had to do now was help Jeff figure out where the other two greenfire guns were, and she was pretty sure Jeff could do most of that by himself.
But right behind that thought came understanding. Jeff knew she had little more to do. His question was an effort to gauge how nervous she was about the upcoming battle. Maybe he was also trying not to let his own nervousness show.
So Nicole merely nodded, gazed at the view stretched out in front of her, and tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong.
There were plenty of them. The four Micawnwi waiting silently at the Cluufe end of the rail crawlway had instructions to wait until all the Cluufes were heading for the stone building before making their move. But Nicole’s food raid had surely taught Hunter not to leave the hive completely unguarded, and he would probably be expecting the same kind of diversionary attack the Micawnwi had launched that time. Still, no matter how many guards he left behind, axe heads thrown with Micawnwi strength would be devastating weapons, especially against halberds.
Unless Hunter had left one of his two greenfire guns at the hive. If he had, all the Micawnwi strength in the world would be useless.
Then there was the main attack itself, and all the things that could go wrong there. And finally, if Hunter did have both guns protecting the stone building, Jeff was going to have to take both of them out with only three shots. That was the trickiest part of all, especially if the Cluufes had spotters concealed up here in these same hills who would be charging down on them the minute Jeff’s first shot revealed their position.
Nicole shook the swirling what-ifs out of her mind. She’d been in worse situations with Trake’s group, and she’d lived through them. She would live through this one, too.
Pulling one of the water bottles from her vest, she uncapped it and took a sip. Jeff had argued against wearing their vests up here, pointing out that they could catch on something or even entangle their arms at a crucial moment. Nicole had argued in return that the vests’ darker color would help mask the blue of their jumpsuits, thus providing a little better camouflage. And while the extra layer of material probably wouldn’t stop a greenfire blast, it might be of some help against a glancing blow from a halberd.
In the end, they’d split the difference. She’d worn her vest, and he’d left his back at the Micawnwi hive.
Those movements had been increasing steadily over the past couple of minutes. Jeff had once speculated that Hunter had spotters with mirrors positioned up on the rocky ridges. Certainly any such spotters would have to be blind to miss what was going on down in the Micawnwi part of the arena.
A smile tugged at Nicole’s lips. The spotters might be able to see what the Micawnwi were doing, but whatever flash code Hunter had set up couldn’t possibly be capable of describing the situation.
It was almost a shame, Nicole thought briefly, that she wouldn’t get to see Hunter’s reaction when he saw what the Micawnwi had in store for him.
A shiver drove the smile from her face. Given that Hunter’s expression would probably be situated directly above the muzzle of a greenfire gun, it was just as well that she wouldn’t be getting a closer look.
“Here they come,” Jeff murmured.
Nicole craned her neck. There, just emerging from around a stand of bushes at the edge of her view, were the Micawnwi.
The Micawnwi, and their tree.
It was, Nicole had to admit, even more bizarre than she’d expected it to look. The tree they’d cut down was waddling its way across the landscape like a giant bug or humped green worm, its trunk held horizontal, its domed end pointing forward toward the Cluufes, the flattened side of the dome where the Micawnwi had cut back the branches facing downward with the cut ends of the branches about a foot above the ground. The Micawnwi women who were carrying the tree were invisible, spread out along the trunk and concealed by the leaf-covered branches.