Nimisha's Ship (13 page)

“An earlier entry by the acting captain indicates that they used the shuttle to make an aerial reconnaissance of considerable depth before they departed to establish a base,” Helm said.

“They hadn’t run out of intelligence, just good luck,” she said as she aimed the gig at a narrow gap in the foothills. She left behind the feeding territory of the slime slugs for a winding hilly pass that was strewn with boulders and such debris that slugs could not have writhed through. “Seismic activity?” she asked Helm.

“It does not appear to be a very old world, and seismic activity has been noted in the archipelagoes. That debris, however, is more consistent with land or mudslides.”

“Yes, I think I would agree,” she said, looking from one of the steep sides to the other and judging the deposits on the floor of the pass. “No vegetation to attract the hungry. Or bind soil with its root systems.” And the rocky path kept those slugs from getting through.

She came out of the pass—there were thirteen bends in all—into hilly country, the valleys dotted with many lakes as far as she could see in either direction.

“Definitely glacial formations,” Helm said, echoing her own thoughts.

“I agree. Rather pretty,” she said and then saw more of the big buffalo types grazing. There were other species as well, smaller, and each kept their distance from the other as they ate.

“Overfly one of the lakes, would you please, ma’am? I’d like a reading on any aquatic life.”

“I should get a sample of the water, too. I’d love to take a full bath,” Nimisha said. “The stream by the
Poolbeg
isn’t deep enough.”

“
When
I have checked the denizens of the desired bathing place,” Helm said sternly.

“Of course, Helm.”

So she hovered over the nearest of the lakes, a brilliant blue reflecting the clear skies above, and sent down a sample tube. She could perceive flowing figures in the water. While the explored galaxy had provided many, many different forms on land, water dwellers seemed to follow basic designs: the bottom feeders, the middle swimmers, and the upper-level insect catchers.

“Bottoms out at thirty meters, along a crest. The shallows support reed and water grasses,” Nimisha said. “I’m testing the water.” The results followed on her words. “Well, definitely drinkable, with only trace minerals and nothing toxic. I shan’t, however, go fishing quite yet.”

“Nor bathing,” Helm added repressively.

“That’s right.”

“
Alert!
” Helm’s voice reverberated through the speakers in the cabin.

“Whatever for?”

“To your port and high up, a flying object of considerable size.”

Nimisha swung the bow of the gig accordingly. “Considerable size,” she agreed drily; indeed, it was probably larger than the gig. She reached the toggle to arm the forward missiles.

“It has seen you and is diving,” Helm warned. “I am too far away to be of assistance.”

“Good thing I took the
Poolbeg
’s gig then, isn’t it?” she said, gaining altitude and setting her sensors to magnify the oncoming menace. “ ‘Ods blood!” she exclaimed, an archaic epithet that one of her more effete acquaintances had resurrected and used for many occasions. “It’s twice my size.”

“More than twice, ma’am. My advice is to fire now.”

“It’s better to wait until I can see the whites of its eyes. If it has any.”

The gig answered her touch on its control plates with more height and speed. The distance closed between predator and intended victim—she didn’t think anything with a head that crammed with teeth and already salivating at the thought of a tasty morsel half its size had friendly intentions. She bracketed her target and sent off two clusters of missiles: one at the blunt skull of the massive avian, and a second to take off one wing. Its body was long and narrow and not a good target yet. If she missed killing it, she had a chance to veer off and come up under to get the belly—if that should happen to be its vulnerable spot.

The first cluster took off the head; the second sheared the left wing, and pieces of the creature rained down to the ground, some of the carcass landing partially in one of the larger lakes. She definitely deserved her rating as crack marksperson, she mused. As she passed over it, the corpse was slightly twitching. She swung around for a second, closer look.

“Zounds!” she exclaimed, swallowing.

“That is phenomenal,” Doc remarked, evidently accessing her screens.

“I’m beginning to think that the
Poolbeg
’s crew might have succumbed, too, if this is what they had to contend with,” she said ruefully as she watched the amazing amount and variety of scavengers that swarmed over the dead flier. They oozed out of the lake and from holes in the hillside; using many varying kinds of propulsion from feet to flippers to a smaller variety of the slime slug mobility, they began to feed. “Recording, Helm? We’ll need to register as many types as possible. All of them carnivorous.”

“Omnivorous might be the more exact classification,” Doc remarked.

She turned away from the gorging, rippling mass beneath her and aimed for the foothills.

“If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late for the party,” she said as she saw still more creatures gathering to partake of the feast. Did Erehwon give life to anything that wasn’t dangerous? What would have happened to her if she had taken a swim in the first of the tempting blue lakes? She shuddered. She would get enough water from the stream by the
Poolbeg
to bathe in safety in the Fiver.

It was sunset on Erehwon when she reached the point indicated on the map as the
Poolbeg
’s base.

They had chosen well: high up on an isolated plateau, backed against a precipice down which fell a graceful cataract, so they’d had fresh water in easy reach. They had even started to build dwellings out of rock. There was no sign of the larger shuttle they’d used to transport themselves. No sign of discarded equipment either. She landed the gig as close as she could to the half-finished dwellings. No, correction: The shelters had been finished. The roofs had collapsed inward. Could the avian she had just dispatched, or more of its kind, have dive-bombed the houses? She found no corpses, but she did find pots and eating utensils in one, messed up with the debris of the roof. She found scatterings of other possessions and a graveyard containing five larger and six smaller graves. She could see where markers had been hammered in, but no inscriptions remained. As she stood in the evening wind, watching Erehwon’s sun go down, she rather thought that winter winds could have blown away anything short of a stone slab. Had the winds blown in the roofs? Had the camp been untenable in the winter season? They would have had the weapons to defend themselves against aerial dive-bombers. Or had such forays continued until their weapons had been emptied? Where had they gone?

“It is respectfully recommended that you return to the Fiver, ma’am,” Helm said after a longish pause.

“I think you’re absolutely right. I’ll be with you shortly.”

And she was, dead tired, and quite ready to eat seconds of the delicious meal Cater prepared for her.

“May I respectfully request that further aerial reconnaissance be done by the Fiver? The bow is equipped with asteroid defense missiles,” Helm said the next morning as she entered the bridge in full protective gear.

“A good notion. I can follow in the gig. It’s already been exceedingly useful so far, and I don’t think it will fit on the Fiver even if I were to remove the skiff.”

The small skiff, suitable for either planetary use or short hops to a space station or between ships, would have to be abandoned in order to shoehorn the gig into the garage space. She didn’t wish to lose any equipment even if the skiff was unarmed and possibly too frail to withstand an attack by the aerial menaces Erehwon had spawned.

“I recommend a high-altitude search, ma’am.”

“I concur,” she said. “Patch it into the gig.” She hoisted the supplies she had collected—food, water, and some heavier weapons—and exited the Fiver to the gig.

At three thousand meters, they leveled off and retraced her flight to the ruined base camp. She paused briefly at the lake, magnifying the site where the avian had fallen. There wasn’t a shred left to show her kill. This was a hungry world, as well as omnivorous. When they reached the base camp, they hovered to take aerial records of the deserted buildings.

“If I were being attacked from under and over, I’d go somewhere no one could reach me,” she said. “Let’s continue to the mountain range. There may be caves that are suitable.”

Humankind started off in caves, and they were still useful natural refuges on many worlds. Especially when colonists were starting off with only elementary tools with which to create new homes and societies. She had no idea what sort of equipment an exploratory vessel carried as standard supplies. They crossed another high plateau to the rough-toothed crags of the mountain range.

“Metallic object to starboard, ma’am,” Helm told her as they traversed another deep valley. This one was covered with vegetation that resembled the Terran-type forests planted on Vega III, varietals that had adapted to slightly different soils. A robust river followed the course of least resistance toward a distant sea, foaming over rapids and flowing into pools that did not tempt her to bathe in them—just yet.

The shuttle was visible on the ground. And suddenly a flare lanced into the sky.

“Someone’s alive,” Nimisha said with a tremendous feeling of relief.

“Three . . . no, four humans, one young,” Helm confirmed.

“I think that river meadow will accommodate both of us,” Nimisha said. “I’ll go in first and explain why I’ve purloined their gig.”

“I doubt they’ll mind,” Doc said. “I’ll want to check them over as soon as possible. This world breeds a lot of peculiar things.”

“It does indeed,” Nimisha heartily agreed. As she swung down and circled to land, she saw that the roof of the shuttle was scarred and dented. She wondered which denizens had been able to leave combat marks on a petralloy hull.

Two men, one of them with the child in his arms, and one woman came racing to the edge of the meadow, shielding their eyes from the glare of the sun. They wore uniforms and coverings of what must be local fur hides. The temperature outside registered as twelve degrees Celsius . . . cool. The woman wore a long tunic of the most beautiful gray-blue fur. The child was dressed in leather with a fur coat.

“Ma’am, are we glad to see you!” cried the man who reached her first. The other was encumbered with the child and the woman had a noticeable limp. All three were grinning from ear to ear. The child burrowed its head into the man’s neck, suddenly shy in the presence of an unknown person.

“Jonagren Svangel, ma’am,” said the man in the lead, reaching out his hand to grasp hers. “Lieutenant Commander and acting captain of the
Poolbeg.
”

“Well done, Commander . . .” she started to say and then saw the ineffable sadness in his face. She was filled with an unexpected desire to see that sadness dispelled.

“There’re only the three of us left—and Tim, of course,” he said as the others arrived. “This is jig Casper Ontell and Ensign Syrona Lester-Pitt.”

They shook hands amid a babble of greetings until Jonagren held up his hand. “You’re not the rescue party, are you?” he said, his tanned and weather-beaten face losing the exultation of being found.

“No, in fact, I’m trapped, too,” she said. “I’m Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense. I was doing a shakedown cruise on my ship, there, when it was captured by that damned wormhole. Come, the Fiver’s landing and I’m sure you’d like a change from whatever rations you might have left.”

“We’ve been pretty much living off what we could find,” Casper said, spreading an arm in the direction of the meadow, river, and forest behind them. “Not everything is toxic.” He grimaced.

“Just most,” Syrona said shyly.

“I’ve a medical unit, Syrona,” Nimisha said, leading the way to where the Fiver had touched down as delicately as a fashionable lady not wishing to sully her footwear on soil.

“How many in your crew? Were you able to launch a beacon back through the wormhole?” Jonagren asked eagerly.

“As I said, I was doing a trial run on my ship . . .”

All three adults stopped as they took in the sleek lines of the Fiver and her scratched hull.

“No, I didn’t escape entirely without some damage,” she said, seeing them focus on the scrapes. “But nothing that breached hull integrity.”

“You were lucky,” Jonagren said ruefully.

“I’ve no other crew aboard. I use AI’s for Helm, Doc, and Cater,” Nimisha went on and wondered at Jonagren’s intense look of disappointment. She noticed that it was Casper, still holding the child, who took Syrona’s arm to assist her up the ramp.

“Permission to come aboard,” Jonagren said at the hatch in the traditional request. His eyes glinted with just a hint of humor. A very likable man, was this Jonagren Svangel, Nimisha decided.

“Permission most certainly granted,” Helm said, startling all four newcomers.

“Oh!” There was a very professional gleam in Jonagren’s eye.

“Any business for me?” Doc asked.

“May I offer you refreshment?” was Cater’s query.

“Syrona, would you like to go first?” Nimisha offered, gesturing toward the medical unit.

“No, Timmy first,” she said anxiously. “I’ve been so worried he’s not getting a balanced-enough diet.”

Timmy had other ideas, screaming with fright at being placed on the strange surface. An extendible snuck up behind him and administered a mild sedative and, when he had calmed down, he permitted himself to be laid supine on the couch. His eyelids drooped and his frantic breathing eased.

Once the boy was settled, Nimisha gestured for the men to go to the dispenser while she asked Syrona what she’d like to drink.

“Oh, anything with caffeine and restoratives in it,” Syrona said, a tired smile on her face. “Timmy doesn’t sleep well, and I’m pregnant again.”

A deep sadness in her eyes suggested to Nimisha that she had lost more than she had birthed. That would account for some of the small graves at the ruined base camp. When Nimisha brought Syrona’s drink to the medical unit, Timmy looked to be fast asleep, his head angled to one side, hands lax and open at his sides while his mother watched. Syrona drank absently as she observed the visible reports the medical unit was processing.