Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall

by Charles Ingrid

  Kerry had come down the shuttle ramp and approached them. She interrupted saying to Palchek, "You're hurt. Commander, let me take him in and get him quiet. He could have a concussion."

  Marshall nodded. Dubois waited until Palchek had limped off with the medic's help. Then he said, "We almost had the ATV out. Then one of the tree limbs broke. The ATV reared up and rolled over, right over the top of us. Dusty went under. She was swept into the deep water immediately. The ATV came down on top of me and Palchek—he was underneath, too, pinned down in the shallows. Ketchum—" Dubois faltered.

  The nester looked to the dean who had been silent during the entire exchange. The dean gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Ketchum said, "I heard her head hit rock.

  I could not catch her. The water carried her around the bend. I could help these two, so I did."

  Dubois took a deep breath. "We couldn't find her body. We drove slowly downstream. There was a series of falls-—unconscious, she must have drowned and her body swept off—God, Marshall, it happened so quickly."

  Reynolds said, "I'll find it."

  Willem shook his head. Heavily, he said, "These things can happen. We've other problems now. Dubois, go find Kerry and get that leg looked to. The dean tells me we've got a war on our doorsteps. More of those lizard people are massing. He's sent for his nation to protect us. By tomorrow morning, we'll be up to our chins in trouble. Dusty would understand, I think. In the meantime, we have some major decisions to make."

  The dean looked curiously at the commander, but bowed graciously, saying, "We shall leave you to your grief.'' He took Ketchum by the elbow and steered him to their encampment.

  Marshall watched them go. He put out a shoulder for Dubois to lean on. He said only, "It's no mistake that we're here when and where the dean needs us. Whatever decision we make, we're going to have to watch that man."

  Air trapped between her enviro suit and skin kept her somewhat buoyed up as the water swept her along. She gritted her teeth and swam as well as she could, but it was all she could do to keep her head above the white water. She'd gone rafting down the Colorado once, she and her sister Lisa, and this was mild compared to that, but as the water dragged her down again, she knew it was just as deadly.

  Her chest hurt where the nester had slammed into her with the blunt end of the log he'd been using for a lever, and her right ear felt as though it had been torn ragged by her collision with a rock. She bobbed in the water, spitting out silt and foam, her throat sore. She wasn't going to make it. Cold panic swept her. She began to thrash as the river got rougher and her head went under.

  Dusty came up screaming. Her voice rang off the sheered-off cliffs and trees. She caught a blurred kalei-dosope of wilderness and knew there was no one to hear her.

  The son of a bitch had done her in. He'd made a massive heave, overturning the ATV right on top of Dubois and Palchek, pivoted and slammed the end of the log into her, sending her head over heels out of the shallows and into deep water. It had been no accident. As she'd struck the boulder, she'd seen an expression of sad satisfaction pass over the brutal face. Then the water'd taken her and she'd been too dazed to do anything but try to stay afloat.

  Dubois and Palchek must be dead as well. What had the nester wanted? Their fantastic weapons aboard the ATV? There was nothing on the vehicle but a tool box and a flare gun. And, truthfully, the flares were probably decades old, from the last exploration and none too reliable.

  No. She'd seen the look pass between the tracker and his chieftain. The dean had wanted them out of the way.

  Dusty coughed, spit out water, and bobbed to the surface in an eddying pool of quiet water. The lack of current surprised her momentarily. She began to tread water and caught her breath, coughing and trying to breathe through a chest almost too sore to respire. Then she vomited, dirty water spewing from her, and coughed again.

  Clawing her hair from her eyes, Dusty looked about. The back eddy of current she swam in was not still, as she'd thought, though the movement was very subtle. She looked downstream and saw the river come to an abrupt end in midair. The rush of pounding water filled her hearing. That was another waterfall, and not a minor drop like the first one or two she'd been swept down.

  Her arms and legs felt like mush, each weighing hundreds of pounds. If she could sink down and touch bottom, and kick her way to shore. . . . Far from shore or rock, she was slowly being carried her way to almost certain death. If she survived the drop, she knew she would be too weak to stay afloat.

  The quiet pool began to pick up speed. She whirled about lazily. She could feel the change in the water's temperature. Soon she'd be in the mainstream again—and gone.

  Dusty yelled. "Help! Dear God, somebody!" Her voice echoed through the trees bent over the rain-swollen river. Then, with a tremendous push as though shoved through, she was in the white-water current again, flailing for her life. She rode the crest of foam and spray and felt a dizzying second of weightlessness before she went over.

  "What's that?" Thomas pulled up his scrawny excuse for a horse and came to a stop between the trees.

  Drakkar had been steadily drumming a quirt cut from a tree branch to keep his mount going. It stopped so suddenly he fell forward on its neck. The horse blinked three of its eyes in rebuke. The fourth was white-clouded and useless. He could hear a river cutting its way through the wilderness ahead of them, perhaps even the roar of a waterfall. Water sounded good about now. He said, "I could use a drink.''

  Blade had not stopped listening alertly. Then Drakkar heard it, too, the high thin scream of someone in great fear. It was drowned out by the sound of the river.

  Blade kicked his mount into a lunging run. With a curse, Drakkar took his switch to his mount to keep up. The two of them burst out of the woods at the edge of a massive pool below a falls whose water boiled up in a fine white spray. They reined their ponies to a plunging halt at the river bank's steep edge.

  "There!" Blade pointed. Crimson floated on the pool's whirling surface, dragged down and surfaced again. Rags or perhaps hair ... he kicked off his horse, shed his boots, scarf and jacket. "I'm going down."

  "You idiot! You'll drown, too. Look at that current!"

  Thomas' gills fluttered in the coolish air. "I have something of an advantage," he said, poised himself on the river bank and did a stylish, curving dive into the center of the maelstrom. He hit the water with a clean cut and disappeared.

  He surfaced with his arms full of silver, like an immense trout, silver and crimson. Drakkar reacted alertly, pulling a rope off the nester saddle and going down on his stomach to pull them up. Thomas put the inert body in a sling of the rope's loop, shouting, "She's not breathing!"

  Drakkar pulled the rope up until he could catch the body with his hands and hauled her up on her stomach and left her facedown in the bruised grass while he tossed the loop back down to Thomas' reach. He returned to the still form, but she had begun to move feebly and the best he could do for her was hold her head slightly as she vomited out tons of river water and silt.

  Thomas squatted down next to him and gently moved her thick, curling auburn hair away from her face as she was ill. When she stopped, she said feebly, "Don't just let me lie here."

  The two men picked her up and moved her to higher ground, where the grass in the shade was still sweet and clean. Drakkar left to gather firewood and hobble the horses.

  She lay on the pillow of his leather jacket, eyes open, looking up to the sky as if contemplating it, her chest working like a bellows. When at last her breathing calmed, she looked back to him. "Thank you," she said and coughed again, belching air fiercely. Her color began to come back, revealing a delicate complexion. She found a fastening in that marvelous silver skin of hers and peeled it away from her neck. Underneath, he saw a damp shirt clinging to shapely young breasts. Though her body was hidden from him, he saw a young woman strangely fresh and unaffected. "Thank you," she repeated.

  He liked her voice. He thought guiltily of Lady and fo
und himself flushing. "You're welcome," he said, "but it takes a lot of water to drown me."

  She looked at him then, really looked at him, and the color bled from her face. "Oh, my God. You've got gills."

  He had his white scarf loosely wrapped about his hand, but something in her voice brought out the defiance in him. He refused to wrap them from sight. "God has nothing to do with it," he said stiffly. "And we'd both be dead if I hadn't."

  "No . . . you don't understand. ..." Dusty braced her back against his jacket and a tree stump. "You're one of them.''

  "Them? I'm Sir Thomas Blade, of Orange County. That them?" He shut his mouth with a snap. He sounded like Art Bartholomew in all his pompous glory. He reached out and touched the lapel of her suit. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He looked up. "And you must be one of them." His gaze locked with smoky gray eyes. Intelligence fairly danced in them. She was no nester or even a Mojavan. "You're from the longship."

  She sucked her breath in. "How did you—"

  "If you've been with the nesters, you must think us very primitive." He moved back a step and reached for his boots. If she decided to bolt, he wasn't going to run after her barefooted. "We're survivors, not leftovers."

  "I didn't mean—" the woman stopped. She took a deep breath. "Yes, I'm from the longship. I'm Gemma Barlowe, but my friends and saviors call me Dusty."

  There was a crackle of dried branches behind them. Drakkar said, "And my enemies call me Drakkar."

  She couldn't hide the fear that sprang into her face though her hands went up to stifle the noise she made. Thomas turned toward Drakkar.

  "Quit scaring the locals," he said.

  Drakkar made his mocking half-bow. "Sorry. They call me the dragon boy at home." His crest was up, though what had alerted him, Thomas couldn't tell. The plumage caught the slanting rays of sunlight and was a dazzling display of blue and teal.

  "Are those ... is that . . . yours? Instead of hair?"

  "Everybody should have feathers instead of hair. Insults, like water off a duck's back, roll off." Drakkar began to stack wood into a base for a fire. Thomas was not sure if he read arrogance or hurt in the young man's features.

  The young woman brought her hands all the way down from her face. "I don't know if I'm dead or alive," she said, finally. "I can't tell."

  Thomas stood up, then, and wrapped his scarf about his gills as the wind took on a chill. He carefully took his jacket from behind her, bracing her against the tree trunk instead. As he shrugged the leather coat on, her eyes brightened.

  "You're the one!"

  Drakkar lit the fire, keeping his silence. Thomas watched him begin to prepare a pot of tea.

  "The one who saved you, yes."

  "No, no." Dusty got her legs under her, shapely despite being hidden by her silver shell. "The one in the drawing. God, I'm so stupid. I saw the pictures the boy drew. ..." She looked up at him keenly. "Was he yours? Your son, I mean?"

  Thomas only knew of one artist she might have encountered. "Almond eyes, hair as dark as ink."

  "Yes, that's him." She was on her feet now, though shaky. "You bastard. You sent them to attack us? You sent them to a slaughterhouse!"

  "I didn't send them anywhere," Thomas said cooly. "They were mappers, Surveyors. And if they attacked you, they had a damn good reason. And no, Jeong wasn't my son." Although, and he knew it even as he said it, they'd all been his sons, in a way. "Did you . . . see them die?"

  She nodded, miserably. "They were just kids ... we burned the bodies. They burned the bodies. Ketchum wouldn't even let me keep the notebook.''

  Drakkar had put the tea pot in a frame over the fire. He faced them both. "Who's Ketchum?"

  "The nester who dumped me in the river. I swear, he meant to. The dean told him to. . . ." Dusty pushed her hair behind her ear and moved toward the warmth of the fire. Thomas grabbed her by the wrist and spun her on her heel.

  "What do you know about the dean?"

  "He met us at the landing. He showed us the wreckage of the Vaults. He's been the only one here who's asked questions first before attacking." Dusty made a quick move, releasing herself as quickly as he'd grabbed her. An expression passed over his face that she could not read . . . approval? She gathered herself, ready to sprint for one of those sorry excuses for a horse.

  "The dean blew up the Vaults himself, though granted we were all involved in a bit of a fracas. I don't have time to apologize to you or tell you the history of my people, or the nesters, or the Mojavans—" again, that half-bow from Drakkar, "or convince you what a son of a bitch you're dealing with. But you will take me to him."

  She lifted her chin. "Or else what?"

  Drakkar laughed softly. "I wouldn't argue with him. He's the executioner for the Seven Counties."

  Marshall called the Challenger again, just before dawn. Dubois, on lookout, confirmed that there were two armies camped on the plains. Sun looked tired as he came on-screen.

  "What is it, Willem?"

  "I want to bring us back, Commander." He quickly outlined his idea, painstakingly checked and rechecked. Dakin waited until he was done and then pain creased the normally placid face.

  "No, Marshall. I can't let you do it."

  "Sun, we don't have anything to come home to. These are savages living down here—savages at each others' throats. We don't even know if the lizard men think like humans."

  "Save your fuel. Make a survey flight and land elsewhere. You've got whole continents to look over. Find us a home."

  Marshall felt his anxiety crowding him. He didn't like losing Dusty without cause and he hated being in the middle of a war, even though he could technically just lock his doors and wait until they destroyed each other. "I can't do that and still get back."

  "You were never intended to come back," Dakin reminded him gently. "You volunteered for a one-way mission."

  "I volunteered for a one-way mission because I'm one hell of a pilot and I knew I could get the shuttle down with fuel to spare."

  Sun massaged the bridge of his nose. He sighed. "Willem, we've begun breaking down. Slowly, like the Gorbachev and the Maggie. You may have nothing to come back to. Heredia's brought the Mayflower over, but she can only take on so many passengers. We're going to have to abandon ship. You're going to have to find us a place to land before then."

  His chest felt as though it were packed with ice. "How long have you got?"

  Dakin smiled wearily. "We don't know."

  Marshall put his hand up, to turn the screen off, saying, "I'll hurry." Dakin faded from sight. Willem muttered, "Shit!" and sat at the deadened screen for long minutes.

  The dean camped by the belly of the shuttle, claiming it for protection as much as anything else. He emerged in the first gray-purple hours of dawn and took a deep breath. Ketchum had been sitting nester-style by a waning campfire and stood up to greet him.

  His nation had claimed the mesa top. Below, at the foot of the gradual rise, he could see the campfires of the Mojavans. He rubbed his hands together with immense satisfaction. The longshippers would help him remove the Mojavans. Then nothing could stand between him and the counties. Nothing Blade could say or do would save or protect any of his people. Then the dean would be free to return to his people, the longshippers, true humans, and the nesters would serve as the brute strength they would need to develop the earth. Many hands and strong backs.

  Ketchum had been staring into his face as though reading his thoughts. He turned his face away as the dean looked keenly at him. Still animal, thought the man. Still unable to meet my stare.

  The nester said flatly, "Do we fight?"

  "Undoubtedly. But we don't attack first. Let the Mojavans come to us."

  An uphill offense would slaughter most of the troops early on. The dean smiled in anticipation. He laughed at Ketchum's hesitation. "Don't worry so much. I have allies in those troops. They'll carry the fight to us. I have the longshippers in the palm of my hand. They'll defend us if necessary. Today, we will carv
e a hole in the gut of the Mojavan nation, one that Denethan will not be able to survive. Then, the counties. Water, Ketchum. All the water and fertile land we deserve.''

  The shuttle began to open with a faint whine, the ramp coming down. The dean smiled broadly and went to greet them.

  Marshall had worn his dress suit, beige uniform contrasting sharply with his coffee-colored skin. He was flanked by Reynolds and Dubois. He inclined his chin off the mesa, in the direction of the Mojavan army.

  "What is this?"

  "Strength in numbers, Commander Marshall." The dean brightened his expression. "We can always hope they came to parlay.''

  "And if not?"

  "Then," and the dean bowed graciously, "my clans and I will defend you to our last man."

  ' 'What do you suggest we do?''

  "Ah," the dean said. "I suggest we wait and let them make the first move."

  A sharp whistle broke the morning air. Ketchum bounded to the edge of the mesa, looked down across the plain toward the mountains. There was sudden activity among the Mojavans.

  "What is it?" the dean asked sharply. He had given no signals yet.

  "I don't know. Two riders, I think. The Mojavans are giving way to them."

  The dean, joined by Willem and the crew, left the shelter of the shuttle to watch. Reynolds held a pair of binoculars out to Marshall even as the dean lifted his from under cover of his robes and they scanned the plains below. The nesters moved restlessly about their campfires.