Drifter's War (12 page)

"Really?" Cy had gained some additional senses along with his artificial body but lost others as well. And the moment of nausea that most people felt while entering or leaving hyperspace was one of them. "I'll try the interface again. Maybe it'll work this time."

The cyborg squirted himself over to the black globe that he had previously identified as the drifter's NAVCOMP, extruded a pincer, and allowed it to sink through the glossy surface.

All his most recent attempts to establish contact with the ship had ended in failure. A part of him expected this one to fail as well. It didn't.

Suddenly and without warning Cy
was
the ship. He
knew
the vessel had entered normal space,
knew
the drifter was headed for the nearest planet, and
knew
hostile ships would try to intercept him.

They came in hard and fast, twelve delta-shaped interceptors of Il Ronnian design, unsure of who or what the drifter was, but determined to take control of it.

Cy felt himself bombarded with messages. They came in dozens of languages and all of them said the same thing. "Kill power, neutralize weapons systems, and wait to be boarded."

The drifter understood but made no attempt to respond. Green blobs lashed out from the hull, hit the interceptors like giant sledgehammers, and batted them away.

The surviving interceptors fired as larger ships moved in and did likewise. Missiles, torpedoes, and computer-controlled bombs struck the blobs and exploded with little or no effect.

Cy winced as the drifter lashed out in response. A pair of blobs grabbed an Il Ronnian destroyer and broke it in half. Fire blossomed, then disappeared.

"What's going on?" Lando's voice came from far, far away. It was hard to be the ship and explain things at the same time. Cy did the best he could.

"You were right about the hyperspace shift. I have data on our position but don't understand what it means. We're surrounded by Il Ronnian warships. They ordered us to stop but the drifter ignored them. Some interceptors attacked but the blobs beat 'em back. Damn… there goes a destroyer! The blobs broke it in half.

"We're heading toward what looks like an Earth-normal planet. That's our destination. I don't know
how
I know, but I know. Wait a minute, the interface is fading and the ship is pushing me out!"

Cy pulled his pincer out of the black globe and bobbed up and down apologetically. "Sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," Lando said thoughtfully. "The ship has a purpose now. It wants us to know about some things and not about others."

Della nodded in agreement. "So, what's next?"

Lando looked around almost expecting the ship to answer but it didn't. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into an hour, and hours into the better part of a day.

They were trapped in the control room. Repeated attempts to leave had proved that, so some caught up on previously interrupted sleep, and the others killed time any way they could. Lando was asleep when Della shook his arm.

"Pik… look."

The control room was filled with eerie green light. It grew stronger with each passing second.

"How long has it been here?"

"Five, maybe ten seconds."

Lando got to his feet. "I have a bad feeling about this." He gestured to Cap, Melissa, and Cy. "Come on, everybody. Get into the center of the room. Let's hold hands."

Della gave him a curious look but did as he requested. They formed a ring and held each other's hands or, in Cy's case, pincers.

The greenish light thickened around them until they couldn't see beyond it. Then it swirled and the floor dropped out from under them. Their senses told them they were falling yet nothing seemed to move. Melissa looked scared and bit her lip.

Lando swallowed and forced a smile. "Don't worry, hon. We're inside one of those green blobs. There's nothing to worry about. We'll be dirtside in a few seconds."

That's what I hope anyway, Lando thought to himself, unless this is the ship's way of ejecting unwanted debris. In which case we'll turn inside out the moment the blob disappears.

But the blob
didn't
disappear. Not until something hard materialized under their feet and the greenish light began to fade.

Yellow sunlight flooded around them, strange odors filled their nostrils, and foreign sounds assailed their ears.

"Holy Sol." Cap uttered the words softly like a prayer.

Lando knew what the older man meant. The blob had put them down in the middle of a city, or more accurately a village, because it was small and occupied the top of a low hill. The smuggler could see where the whitewashed buildings left off and the fields began.

The place had a strange feel, not primitive exactly, but not high-tech either. Maybe it was the round, almost quaint stone houses, mixed with motorized vehicles, streetlights, and agrobots.

There were people around them, humanoids anyway, who looked as dumbfounded as they felt. All had lavender-colored skin, four-fingered hands, and bald heads. They were muscular and built low to the ground. They looked like a race of weight lifters. What he assumed were males tended toward craggy brows, massive shoulders, and short, muscular legs. Most wore little more than shorts and sandals.

The females, and they seemed obviously female, had the same low foreheads but more rounded faces. They wore brightly colored saronglike dresses that covered them from chest to midthigh.

Children ran here and there, screamed with excitement, and gabbled things in a language that he'd never heard before.

Though different from each other the humanoids looked similar as well, as if they all belonged to the same family. The adults seemed curious rather than scared and talked excitedly among themselves.

Lando stepped forward. "Does anyone speak standard?"

A male, this one older than the rest, stepped forward to meet him. He gestured toward the center of the village and said something the smuggler couldn't understand.

Lando started to smile, remembered that bared teeth can be interpreted in a lot of different ways, and settled for a nod instead.

The smuggler was just about to try universal sign language when the crowd parted and another being appeared. This individual was unlike the villagers in every way.

She was tall, slender, and pink. Not white-pink, but pink-pink, like a neon sign. She had large eyes, a long, narrow face, and wore a cloak that rippled in the breeze.

A leader perhaps? Some sort of official? There was no way to be sure.

The female looked around, said something to the elderly male, and nodded at his reply. Though unlike anything Lando had seen before her sign language was clear enough. She pointed to the sky and then to Lando.

"You came from the sky?"

Lando repeated her motions and added a nod.

"Yes."

Though unsure of her facial expressions Lando thought she was more pleased than surprised. What did that mean? Were green blobs a common occurrence? Did visitors arrive all the time?

The female pointed to the sky, made hard jabbing motions with her index finger, and drew an imaginary circle around the humans.

Lando turned to Della. "I missed that one. Any ideas?"

"I think she means combat," Della answered. "She's asking if the Il Ronnians attacked us."

Lando raised an eyebrow. It didn't seem all that clear to him, but anything was possible, so he delivered a formal nod.

"Yes."

The female bowed. She turned and spoke to the crowd. Although Lando didn't understand a single word of what she said, there was a commanding quality to the way she said it, and a sense of urgency as well. And the way that the villagers hurried off served to reinforce that impression.

The female waved an arm. The meaning was obvious. "Come with me."

Lando looked at the others. Della nodded, Cap shrugged, and Cy bobbed up and down. Melissa was using sign language to communicate with a peer. The other child was inspecting her hair.

"Hey, Mel."

"Yes?"

"We're leaving."

"Okay." Melissa signed something to her friend. The other little girl smiled shyly, bobbed her head, and ran away.

Lando filed it away. Smiles were okay.

Melissa ran to catch up. She took her father's hand. "That was Lela-17. Pretty, isn't she?"

Cap nodded dutifully and Lando smiled. If only grown-ups could make friends as easily as children did.

The female led them out of the village and into the fields. She walked so fast that Melissa had to jog in order to keep up. Why? It was as if the female knew that some kind of trouble was on the way.

The crops were richly green, small bushes mostly, that bore brightly colored berries. They grew in surveyor-straight rows and were drip irrigated. Miles of clear plastic tubing stretched in every direction.

Lando found that interesting since it implied long dry spells and a certain level of technological sophistication.

They had gone a mile, maybe two, when Lando heard a low rumble. It came from the east. Lando looked and saw four black specks. Aerospace fighters or something very similar. The Il Ronnians had tracked the green blob all the way to the ground and sent aircraft to investigate!

Their guide reacted before Lando could. She waved her arms, spoke rapidly, and herded them into the nearest field. The soil gave slightly under their feet. Lando noticed that the bushes had a rich spicy smell.

The female said something urgent and gestured toward a wooden platform. The message was clear. "Move this, and move it fast."

Lando and Melissa took one side with Della and Cap on the other. The female made no effort to help.

The planes were louder now and Lando remembered his earlier thoughts. The female had known the Il Ronn were on the way. Was that simply a good guess? Or something a good deal more?

Della took command. "On three. One, two, and three!" The platform was heavy but manageable. It came away from the ground suddenly as if it hadn't been moved for a long, long time. A host of insects scurried for cover.

A vertical shaft was revealed. The top portion of a ladder could be seen. The female pointed emphatically downward.

Cap went first, followed by Melissa, Della, Cy, and Lando.

The female came last. Like Cap, Della, and Lando, she used every other rung of the ladder, which suggested that it had been constructed by and for the villagers.

Regardless of that, her descent afforded Lando a glimpse of some long shapely legs. His smile disappeared when he turned to find Della watching him with an amused smile. He coughed and looked the other way.

The ladder rested on a gallery that ran the length of the tunnel. Thousands of footsteps had beaten it hard and flat.

The tunnel was well engineered. It was fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, arrow-straight, and reinforced with sturdy beams. Lando touched one and encountered metal rather than wood. Another interesting discovery. The villagers, or if not them, then whoever had constructed the tunnel, built things to last.

A stream ran along the very bottom of the tunnel. It made gurgling sounds and was the source of water for the fields above.

There was a series of dull thumps and the ground shook. Bombs? Lando thought about the villagers and hoped they were okay.

The female said something and waved them on. They followed her into a sort of murky twilight. Looking ahead, Lando saw evenly spaced pools of light that marched away to vanish in the distance. Someone had used arrays of cleverly angled mirrors to bring sunlight down from the surface. More evidence of technological sophistication.

But by whom? The villagers? Something about their dress and behavior made that seem unlikely. The female? Or others like her? Possibly… but why so helpless in the face of Il Ronnian aggression? There were lots of questions and very few answers.

They walked for the better part of three hours. During that time Lando saw little that was new. Oh, there were some cave-ins that needed repair, some pumps that forced water up to the surface, but very little else. Just tunnel, tunnel, and more tunnel. The fact that it was arrow-straight made the trip even more tiresome.

Melissa took turns riding on Lando's and Della's shoulders.

Cy took to skimming the surface of the water, scouting ahead, and exploring side tunnels to break the monotony. If the cyborg's actions troubled their guide, she gave no sign of it and continued to move ahead.

Finally, just when Lando had concluded that the journey would never end, the tunnel became wider and ended in a large cavern. A double set of mirrors brought light down from the surface. Other tunnels ended there as well. They came in from every direction like the spokes of a wheel. He saw that water could be channeled from one aqueduct to another by means of sluice gates.

The female led them around the machinery that occupied the center of the cavern, over a footbridge, and down into a rough and ready living area. Lando supposed that the room was for the convenience of the work crew who maintained the tunnels.

It consisted of earthen walls, a hard-packed floor, and a trestle table loaded with food. Lando's stomach gave a hearty grumble and he felt very hungry. It had been a long time since his last box of E-rations aboard ship.

Ten or twelve mismatched chairs had been placed around the table. Two were occupied. Both beings got to their feet. One was tall and slender like their guide, the other short and stocky like the villagers.

The taller of the two was handsome in a long-faced ascetic way. But his eyes hid more than they showed and there was something hard and unyielding about the way that he held himself.

The shorter individual was a male with wide-set eyes, a broadly handsome face, and a muscular body. An Il Ronnian translator hung around his neck. He removed the device and let it dangle from a work-roughened finger.

"I am unused to this machine. Greetings and welcome. Do you understand my words?"

The smuggler moved closer to the translator. "Yes," he replied carefully, "I do. And I would like to thank you for the hospitality and protection provided by your people."

There was a pause as if the other being was processing Lando's words. The smile came slowly. "Your words are kind, but since we have provided little more than a tour of our irrigation canals, we cannot accept them. I am Wexel-15. I apologize for the meeting place but danger roams above."