“A vehicle passed through here five minutes ago,” the man in the road said. “They didn’t say nothing about armed blokes coming up the road behind them, let alone that someone was broken down and needed help.”
“And I would like to know why,” Drake said, his tone peevish. “We tried to flag them down. They didn’t so much as slow their lorry.”
“Yeah,” Tolvern grumbled next to him. “What’s up with that? Is this a no hitchhiking zone, or what?”
“Maybe they thought we were lurkers,” Drake said. “They looked terrified enough.”
“Probably afraid of mosquitoes, is all,” she said. “You see those guys in the back flailing at the bugs?”
The man at the window snorted, and even the Hroom smiled at this. Some of the suspicion faded from the eyes of the man who’d been questioning them.
Drake was dripping with sweat. The sun was the hammer and the humid air the hot tongs that had squeezed their bodies of liquid. Not one of them had more than a mouthful of water left in their canteens. But it wasn’t only the sun making Drake sweat now.
Don’t be idiots, he thought. I don’t want to kill you.
“You can use our com link,” the guard said at last. “But what the hell are you doing out there? There’s nine of you, all armed, and you aren’t on our list of arrivals.”
Drake had given this some thought on their approach, and the lie came easily to his lips. “Like I said, we work for Malthorne, we’re trying to put down the insurgency in the lowlands. You know the free Hroom attacks? Over the last week, we’ve been chasing a band into the highlands. We think they might have a base up here somewhere.”
“Never heard of them in the highlands,” the man said. “They generally stick to attacking the plantations. Well, I guess that’s good enough. You can use the com.”
Drake started to step forward, waving his hands at his companions to follow. A few more steps, and they’d be up to the wide-open door of the guardhouse. A quick command, and they’d have these three prisoners.
“They’re lying,” the Hroom guard said unexpectedly.
He hadn’t spoken a word to that point, and Drake had paid him little attention, figuring that the alien’s thoughts would be turned to his next sugar ration.
“Shut up,” his companion said, good-naturedly. “We don’t need to know everything going on out there.”
The Hroom stared at Nyb Pim, who was in the middle of Drake’s team, Carvalho and Haws, but hardly inconspicuous, being over seven feet tall. This one facing them was shorter, but still tall, but the thing that set him apart was his light pink, almost white skin, the color not so different from a redheaded human with a sunburn. The hue was nothing like Nyb Pim’s skin, now almost completely returned to its natural pigmentation. Even before the Hroom spoke, Drake knew what he would say.
“He’s not an eater, he’s a free Hroom.” The alien kept his gun pointed at Drake’s chest.
“Big deal,” Tolvern said quickly. “We’re from Albion, and we don’t need permission from you to bring a free Hroom to Hot Barsa.”
“Hold on, he’s right,” the human guard said. “Why would Malthorne send a free Hroom down to fight free Hroom? What kind of idiots do you—”
A gunshot. The Hroom guard’s head jerked backward, and bits of brain and blood sprayed out. Drake threw himself to the side as the surviving guard in the road lifted his weapon. Drake came up shooting, even as bullets zipped past his head. His weapon joined others in gunning down their opponent. In seconds, both guards lay dead in the road.
But getting the final man was a different matter. He’d pulled back inside the guard box at the first shot and shoved the window shut. A second, smaller slit opened below, no wider than the barrel of the gun that now thrust through. A spray of gunfire splattered the road. One of Drake’s companions cried out, but he didn’t turn to see who had been hit. Instead, he squirmed forward on his belly until he got a good angle on the guardhouse door, which was still open. Tolvern came up beside him and took a knee. He hiked himself up so he’d be in better position.
“I’m going in,” she said.
“No. Shoot at the door. He’ll come to close it.”
The rest of his team were blasting away at the building, and chips of stone went flying, but they couldn’t get into the guardhouse and even had a hard time suppressing return fire from the solitary enemy inside. Tolvern fired twice through the open door, then waited.
An arm came out to grab for the handle. Drake took aim and shot it. A cry of pain. The arm jerked back inside.
Suddenly, the guard was shouting. “Help! I’m under attack.” He must be on the com. “They killed the others. I’m the only one—”
Drake and Tolvern sprang to their feet and sprinted for the open door. They came through to find the remaining guard sitting with his left hand mashing down a button on the com link and his right cradled in front of him, bleeding. His gun lay on the floor. As they entered, the man looked up at them with a wild, panicked expression.
“For God’s sake!”
It was unclear if the man was demanding help from the estate or pleading for mercy from the attackers. But Drake couldn’t wait for more information to reach his enemies. He lifted his gun and finished it.
#
Drake was down a man after the attack on the guard post, or more precisely, a woman. Her name was Silva, and she’d been one of the new crew from San Pablo. Silva had volunteered to go with the away team, and her short, muscular body seemed well suited for the mission. But nobody seemed to know much about her, not Carvalho, who had recruited her, nor any of the others who’d joined them in the sweltering spaceport on San Pablo.
After a quick inspection proved that no more enemies remained inside the squat guard building, Drake glanced at Silva’s body, sprawled on the road, her mouth and eyes open to the bruised sky as the drizzle splattered across her face. One hand still gripped her rifle, which Carvalho now pried loose. A white scar stretched across the dead woman’s palm from her index finger to the corner opposite her thumb. It looked like a scar from grabbing a blade in a fight, which reminded Drake that Silva was a woman with a history, an individual.
“Get her into the guard building,” he ordered. “I won’t leave her out here to be dragged off by animals.” After additional thought, he added, “Get the dead guards inside, too. They deserve the same.”
Drake turned over his options. His first choice was to simply call the estate headquarters and say no worries, everything was under control. Bluff that he was one of the guards. But given the final, frantic communication from the guard post, that would hardly be believed. Instead, Drake thought he might get someone on the com and embellish the story. They had been attacked, the guard’s two companions killed. By whom? By animals. Yes, some wild pack of something had come out of the brush, crossed the first bridge, and ambushed the other two guards.
Before this thought could clarify itself, the telltale rumble of a lorry engine reached his ears.
“Take cover!” Tolvern said. “We’ve got company!”
Where to take cover was the real question. The guard post sat on an island of sorts, between two ravines. There were no trees or rocks behind which to hide, only ankle-length grass with sharp, serrated blades. They could take cover in the guard post, but that would be exactly the place to draw attention from the arriving vehicle. Then they’d face another firefight, and perhaps not come out on top this time.
If instead Drake could get his forces across the second bridge, they could perhaps gain the trees on the estate side. But the bridge was a good hundred feet wide as it crossed the ravine. If the lorry reached the bridge before they got across, they’d be exposed with nowhere to run. The expedition would come to a swift and inglorious end.
Drake eyed the ravine beneath the bridge, and that gave him an idea. “Down below. Quickly!”
Few people seemed keen on this plan, for it meant descending the muddy slope toward the sluggish water below, and they were no d
oubt thinking of giant eels. To punctuate this worry, something big swirled below the surface of the water as they approached the edge of the ravine.
“I’m not going down there,” Haws said in a nervous voice. “Them eels are down there. Maybe crocodiles, too.”
“It’s bullets you should be worried about,” Tolvern said. “Now move it!”
With encouragement from the braver in the group, they scrambled down the muddy slope, then moved along the bottom of the ravine to get some distance from the bridge above. They flattened themselves against the muddy side and waited. The buzz of insects filled the air, but it was soon overpowered by the approaching rumble of the lorry.
“Listen to me,” Drake said, his face pressed into the mud. “The water can’t be more than ten feet wide.”
“Don’t tell me we’re swimming across,” someone moaned.
The rumbling engine was growing louder. It had been long enough that Drake now wondered if they might have crossed the bridge in time after all. But there had been no way to be certain.
“Listen up,” he said. “The lorry will go straight to the guard post. It will take them a minute or two to puzzle out what happened. By the time they figure it out, we’ll be on the other side—and yes, we’re going to swim.”
“What about the eels?” Tolvern said. “I hate to sound nervous, but . . .”
“That wasn’t an eel,” Nyb Pim said. “Looked more like a crocodile.”
“Wonderful,” she said.
“You’re being ridiculous, all of you,” Drake said. “Forget the gunfire, the guards trying to kill us, what’s got you terrified is the thought that an overgrown lizard has crawled into this little puddle?”
He was about to assure them that they’d be across in two seconds, but then the lorry came bumping and coughing over the bridge. Nobody spoke or moved. Drake didn’t so much as turn his head to look up. If they were spotted, if one of the men above happened to look down instead of across to the guardhouse, Drake and his companions would be mowed down before they had a chance to lift their weapons. Then the lorry was gone and rumbling to a stop by the guardhouse.
“Up, everyone,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Go!”
Nyb Pim was already entering the water, and waded to the other side without swimming. It came up to the tall Hroom’s shoulders, though, and others were forced to paddle with their weapons and gear held above the water until they were scrambling terrified out the other side. They didn’t hesitate, but went clawing and fighting up the slope to the grass and trees above them.
Drake waited until all the others were either on the opposite side or in the water before entering. He was halfway across, his boots shoving off the mud at the bottom as he paddle-swam, when Tolvern looked back at him as she gained the bank, and let out a squeak. She pointed, gaping, toward the water. It churned, and a knobby, scaly snout broke the surface. Drake lunged forward. He caught Tolvern’s outstretched arm and hauled himself onshore. She grabbed for her gun.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted.
Instead, she dragged out her saber. Water dripped off the end. Drake felt something at his back as he rose and drew his machete. He turned to see an enormous snout lunging for him. Not so much like a crocodile, but like a long, sharp beak with opposing slicing horns on the front, for shearing. Tolvern swung her blade as the scaly monster snapped for Drake’s legs. The blade caught it across its snout, and it twisted, snarling, to take her instead.
Drake hacked at its scaled belly with all his strength. Its skin was hard, but he’d caught the thing right beneath its foremost clawed leg, and it hissed and snapped at the machete. It fell back into the water with a thunderous splash.
Drake was sure that all the noise would have alerted the occupants of the lorry, but as he joined the last of his comrades, he could hear the guards shouting to each other about what had happened at the guardhouse. It was too distant to pick out distinct words.
Drake’s team hid in the brush, and somehow he wasn’t surprised that even this Terran vegetation hid vermin: biting ants and enormous wasps. Carvalho brushed into a stinging plant and soon had a rash. The climate seemed tailored to encourage unpleasant biting, stinging things. But nobody complained; it was better than the crocodile with the monstrous, turtle-like beak.
They were still hiding in the brush above the ravine when the lorry came back across a few minutes later. Drake supposed they’d left some of the guards behind at the post, but it was hard to say what they were thinking at the estate. Maybe the estate thought it was a quick raid, or maybe they were fully alert. Could be that Drake had made a mistake in leaving Silva’s body behind. Or maybe that had successfully confused Malthorne’s people.
When he determined it was safe to move again, Drake looked around for Smythe, who he discovered hunched miserably a few feet away. “How long until the woods thin out?”
The tech officer wiped his computer screen on the back of his pant leg and peered down at it. “A quarter mile, more or less.”
“Good, let’s move out,” Drake told the others. “Stick to the trees.”
He glanced back into the ravine a final time before they left. Two eyes emerged from the water and looked up at him. He caught a glimpse of the long, horny snout, and some fifteen feet away, the tip of the thing’s tail. Then it submerged again. Tolvern stood by Drake’s shoulder, looking down.
“Some planet, huh?”
“About this Hroom rebellion,” he said. “Maybe we should let them have the place. Keep their crocodiles all to themselves.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What, that little thing? I thought you said it was just an overgrown lizard.”
Chapter Eight
They suffered no more misadventures as they approached the heart of Admiral Malthorne’s estate. Once they emerged from the jungle and passed the security on the perimeter, the grounds took on the appearance of a country estate on Albion, albeit with sharp-bladed grass infested with biting ants. The tropical trees dripped with moss, looking nothing like the stately oak and maple of the Drake estate in the Zealand Islands.
Mounds rose here and there across the grass, some only a couple of feet high, but others ten, twenty, even thirty feet tall. More overgrown ruins, apparently, and Drake was reminded that there was an entire Hroom city buried beneath his feet. Once there had been elevated rail cars, twisting skyscrapers, and vast, ziggurat-like temple complexes.
The trees grew thicker for a stretch, and they followed an overgrown trail for several minutes before the woods thinned to present a view of the heart of the estate, which sat on a grassy hill several hundred yards from their position. Tolvern passed Drake the binoculars, and he took a closer look. The hill seemed to be a flat platform like the one where they’d landed Blackbeard, only several times the size and height.
A road twisted in three switchbacks to reach the top of the platform. Two large buildings sat up top across a flat expanse. Lorries parked in front of the buildings to the left, and people were moving about up there, although from this distance it was impossible to tell if they were armed, or even if they were human or Hroom.
A traditional manor house sat to the right of these buildings, the sort that fine gentlemen and ladies had been building for a thousand years, since the days when the peerage of Old England built them across the breadth of their small island home.
Drake had seen many of the fine manor houses on Albion, and it wasn’t until he glanced away that he realized how ridiculous the house looked, here on a distant world, squatting atop the temple platform of some ancient, alien god. The lord admiral didn’t even live here. Did he ever come? Even in the highlands, the climate was rarely pleasant. And it was a backwater. When Malthorne was on shore leave, he would surely stay at his home estate, where he would be surrounded by others of rank and privilege.
The buildings to the left looked nothing like the manor. Rather, they had the appearance of warehouses or factories. What were the dark things out front by the lorries? They looked like the brok
en shell plates of a giant beetle.
He handed the binoculars back to Tolvern and asked her opinion. “Looks like a ship’s hull,” she said.
Drake took them back. Yes, of course. A ship’s hull, broken into pieces. He could see it now.
“I guess we found Henry Upton,” he said. “Or what’s left of her.”
“May she burn for the eternities,” Nyb Pim said, his voice hollow. “And if her captain and crew survived, let them die badly.”
Drake glanced at his pilot, surprised to hear the Hroom curses coming out of his mouth. In addition to being maledictions of a sort, the phrases also indicated a certain religious sense, and Drake had never taken his pilot for one who held to traditional Hroom beliefs. There was an Old Earth saying about atheists and foxholes, and he supposed the same would hold for a Hroom who’d been a sugar eater carried off to slavery.
Smythe took a turn at the binoculars. “That’s them, that’s what we’re looking for. The laboratory is on the left. The other building is a factory.” He handed them back.
Drake took a closer look at the people moving about in front of the laboratory. They seemed to be armed gunmen hurrying toward the manor house. No doubt Drake’s forces were the cause of the alarm. But whatever steward lived in the house in Malthorne’s absence must not comprehend the nature of the threat. Armed attackers had overrun one of the outer guardhouses and disappeared, that much was apparently known. That the target was the laboratories, rather than the manor house, was not.
“Smythe, you said you can jam the security perimeter?” Drake asked.
“Working on it now, sir.”
“How long?”
“Five minutes, maybe a bit longer.”
“Quicker would be better.” Drake turned to the others. “Carvalho, Haws, go to the edge of the woods and find a better view of the estate. See if you can see around that ship wreckage and tell me what’s behind it. I need to know what we’re dealing with here.” He dialed through to the ship, hooking Tolvern in on the call. “This is the captain. We’ve found the laboratory, and we’re going in.”
Lords of Space (Starship Blackbeard Book 2) Page 6