by P. K. Lentz
On the way out, Arixa thanked Lugh for little favors, like saving her the trouble of telling Bowyn and Cinnea that one or both them had no choice but to disembark because otherwise she couldn’t trust the Eraínn not to Shift away without them. All the better if her party gained a volunteer instead of a hostage.
From her dealings with the Senek Baron sheltering the Dawn, Cinnea knew the codes and frequencies by which to establish contact with S’tanivek. She knew where to set down the Branch III and where the Baron’s men... lizard-men... would meet them.
“Would you like me to do the talking?” Bowyn asked while they suited.
“Why would I want that?”
“With all respect, diplomacy is, well, another subject I could stand to give you lessons in.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Please,” Bowyn said, “just don’t kill the Baron. Or take him prisoner.”
“I’ll try,” Arixa pledged. “I have mixed feelings about this lizard.”
“Trust me, I can relate.”
* * *
Cinnea’s efforts detected no sign of threat in the vicinity of Br’niss-5. The Branch III set course for the body orbiting it which had other names on charts but was, in this system, only called the Moon of Sorrows.
The small craft descended through a thick layer of purple-white clouds to soar over a barren landscape of oddly shaped formations of pink rock heavily marred by spider-like cracks. It was beautiful, in a forbidding way.
Cinnea set the ship down in the shadow of a ridge, and the five suited figures who were to disembark waited for sight of the party which would meet them.
“I’d prefer if you got out now so I could move the Branch,” Cinnea said by comm from the bridge.
“For all we know, it’s Jir who will show up,” Arixa said. “Or, what do you call it—a missile?”
“Exactly my point.”
But the five waited inside the Branch III’s airlock. From inside the helmet which she had learned to tolerate wearing, Arixa closely monitored the rose-tinted horizon. Yet it was Cinnea, via the ship’s instruments, who was first to detect and announce the incoming vehicle.
Only minutes later did Arixa note the dark shape in the distance. As it drew steadily nearer, it came to resemble a squat spider shambling over rock mounds on unbending legs. Hugging the uneven terrain, it vanished briefly into depressions before reemerging closer.
“Take-off time,” Cinnea announced. The hatch in front of Arixa, Bowyn and the three Dawners slid open. “Everyone out.”
“Eraínn go brath, Cinn,” Bowyn returned. “Keep my ship safe and stay in touch.”
“Our ship. Safe passage. Bring them back.”
“Count on it,” Arixa said and bounded down onto the alien rocks.
Bowyn, Vaspa, Shadow-man and Memnon followed. Behind them, the Red Branch III gave a sharp whine and rose from the surface before the exit had even finished sealing, then shot off and vanished into the moon’s heavy cloud cover.
Cinnea would hide the ship somewhere just within communication range. None on the ground, not even Bowyn, knew where she would be. What one didn’t know, one couldn’t give away to enemies, wittingly or unwittingly.
The iron spider crept closer, the facets of its angular body gleaming in the moon’s ambient pinkish light. Reluctantly, she had left her war-pick behind at Tabit-1, but her vazer was strapped to her hip. The others were armed with the same or else with Senekeen blasters. All but Bowyn stood with hands ready upon their weapons.
When the crawler-thing rumbled to a halt a few dozen paces away, Arixa and her party strode to meet it. A hatch at the top opened, and a figure popped up. It was helmeted, but easily identifiable by shape as a reptilian Senekeen.
Arixa had killed her share of purple lizards when a band of them had tried to seize the Sagaris. Senekeen had killed many of her people, too, but she would endeavor while dealing with them to keep in mind that these were not the ones responsible. The ones here served a different exile, Baron not Graf.
The emblem blazoned on this crawler’s hull depicted a snake and a lightning bolt, near as Arixa could tell. It was a touch ironic that even as she learned to view humans as a single tribe with one homeland, Goros-3, she had to acknowledge the differing banners under which aliens might serve. One faction might shelter your friends in time of need. Another might try to steal your ship.
“One of you is Arixa?” the Senek on top called out in a hollow, filtered voice.
Arixa raised her pick-less but still deadly right arm. “I am Arixa. You represent the Baron S’tanovik? Or are you the Baron?”
“We will take you to him. You must surrender your arms.”
“We refuse. You have my people. We won’t harm you.”
“If you wish to walk, that is your choice,” the Senek replied. “But it will cause considerable delay.”
“Cinnea vouches for them, Arixa,” Bowyn advised her privately by comm. “We didn’t come all this way to scuttle the deal for lack of good faith.”
Walking forward, he set his blaster down on the rocks before resuming his position by Arixa. With a sigh reflected back onto her lips by the suit visor, Arixa followed suit, and so did the Dawn.
A door at the rear of the crawler hissed open, and two Senekeen trotted out on their thin legs. One retrieved the surrendered weapons and hurried back while the second beckoned Arixa’s party closer. She and the others followed it to the crawler’s rear where they were invited to board, joining six more Senekeen on benches on either side of a windowless compartment.
Though all were armed, none of the weapons, for the moment, were pointed at the Gorosian guests. This was a promising sign, Arixa supposed.
The party took their seats, the hatch was shut and the crawler’s engines roared. When the Senekeen began removing their helmets, revealing scaly, ridged, purple faces with toothy mouths and sickly yellow eyes, Arixa gladly shed her own. So did the other humans.
While the lizard men chattered in their own sibilant, tongue-flicking language, Arixa interrupted to ask about her people, only to be told she’d have to wait and talk to the Baron when they arrived, in a couple of hours.
“Time enough for a reading lesson,” Bowyn jokingly suggested.
They had come so far that another short wait was of little consequence. Arixa did nothing to pass the time except envision her reunion—and the destruction of anything which threatened to prevent it.
She thought what she might do to rescue Ivar from the Jir, if it turned out he was still in-system. It was hardly of consequence that the Eraínn believed the sole purpose of this venture to be the retrieval of the Dawners in the Baron’s custody. She could pilot the Branch III herself, if it came to it. So could Vaspa. Should even the remotest opportunity arise to find or help Ivar, no Eraínn would stand in the way.
If she mistrusted Bowyn, it wasn’t only because of his past actions. It was also because he was unwise to trust her back.
After a long while, the sounds emanating from the crawler’s hull began to change.
“Have we arrived?” Arixa asked the Senek who’d spoken before.
“Affirmative.”
The crawler’s engine cut, and the rear door opened. Already on her feet, Arixa reluctantly complied with a gloved Senek hand holding her back until a number of aliens had exited first. Then the guests were beckoned out.
Helmets in hand, the party of Gorosians set foot on the smooth, expansive floor of a high-roofed room resembling one of the Sagaris’s hangars. It contained more spider-like crawlers like the one they’d just disembarked as well as other conveyances which might have been intended for land or air, Arixa could scarcely tell. Some of the walls were of pink rock, others metal. Various surfaces were adorned with the snake-and-bolt emblem.
A bare-faced Senek flanked by an armed retinue stood not far off, watching. His manner of dress was ostentatious, comprised of orange robes, a scarf of many shades and an abundance of jewelry. When the lead trooper from the crawler trotted up and saluted th
e brightly dressed Senek, Arixa became certain of his identity and wasted no time.
She took broad steps in the Baron’s direction. Some guards cried out, blasters were aimed, and Arixa reluctantly halted.
“Baron!” Arixa’s voice echoed in the cavernous hall. “Where are my people?”
After brief words exchanged privately with an aide, the Baron started forward.
“Diplomacy...” Bowyn muttered pointedly, coming up beside her along with the rest of her party.
The Baron stopped a conversational distance away. “I treasure the sight of Arixa,” the Senek exile said. “And esteemed others. Welcome to my home.”
Bowyn spoke swiftly, preempting Arixa. “The honor is ours, Honored Baron S’tanovik. Thank you for having us.”
“Nice house, Baron,” Arixa said in service to diplomacy as soon as Bowyn had finished. “Now, where are my people?”
The Baron flashed pointy teeth. “It mystifies me why Ivar believed you wouldn’t come, Captain Arixa. Your dedication is evident.”
“The way I heard it, Baron,” Bowyn replied on the party’s behalf, “it was more Ivar’s wish than his belief that his Captain would stay away. He held it on account of the great risk we face in coming here. That is the cause of any impatience.”
Arixa bit her tongue. This Baron had willingly handed Ivar to an enemy.
“I’m well aware of risk,” the Baron said. “The greatest one is arguably mine. I also understand that Captain Arixa’s sibling is among those in my care.”
“And mine,” Memnon needlessly inserted.
“Your eagerness is understandable,” the Baron went on. “Reunion is imminent. Your followers are currently en route from a secret facility of mine where they were being sheltered.”
“Where?” Arixa demanded. “We’ll go to them. Or send our ship.”
“The facility is secret because I am careful about exposing its location. Your people are being moved via underground passage and shall arrive here within an hour. In the meantime, I hope you will let me show you the same hospitality I showed Ivar.”
“Before you sold him and others for your own benefit,” Arixa could not keep herself from saying.
Bowyn was quick to interject, “Baron, what she means is—”
“I know,” the Baron calmly cut him off. “Your anger is justifiable, Arixa. I am not proud to have sent the Shieldbreaker to his end.” He paused thoughtfully. “I admired Ivar. But that which lies in the past, there it forever remains. I can only endeavor to live up to his brave example in future.”
“We need allies,” Arixa said, suppressing less diplomatic instincts. “You can honor him by becoming one.”
“I shall... consider it,” the Baron said. His hesitation made it all but certain, to Arixa, what his eventual answer would be—if he bothered to give one. “Now, come. While we await—”
A dull, rumbling explosion made S’tanovik stop short. He and his retinue looked about in confusion, turning weapons in every direction but finding no targets. Lacking them, some muzzles wound up on the Gorosians.
Arixa’s left hand found her empty vazer holster as she joined the aliens in seeking the source of the blast.
“Be ready, my Dawn. This is an attack.”
The Baron’s guards and chattering aides had evidently drawn the same conclusion. Forming a tight ring around their leader, they made to escort him away.
There was another, sharper explosion, this one accompanied by smoke and flying debris. Having traveled only a few paces, the group escorting the Baron halted, for the blast came from the direction in which they had intended to flee.
All looked to the source. A section of the hangar wall had fallen away, and from the resulting hole, moving in a cloud of dust and smoke, poured forth a cluster of armed and dark-suited Jir troopers.
Sixteen
“Baron, this way!” Arixa cried out. Rather than waiting for him or his followers to act, she raced forward and inserted herself into the cluster of Senekeen just as the report of Jir slug-throwers began to fill the hangar. The sound was different than Arixa was used to, a deeper and heavier sound than the arms the Jir used shipboard and which were incapable of puncturing hulls.
Scrambling, the Baron’s lizard-men returned blaster fire in the direction of the breach. Dark purple gore exploded from the back of one near Arixa, spattering the Baron’s bright robes.
“To the crawler!” Arixa screamed at the aliens, shoving them in an effort to reach the Baron, which she finally did. With a hand on his shoulder she spun him and gave a push toward the crawler just as another of his retinue fell dead at his feet.
Along with S’tanovik and several of his guards, plus her three Dawners, Arixa raced back to the vehicle, where they found a helmeted Bowyn already sheltering behind one of its six folded metal legs. The sight of his covered face made Arixa realize she had tossed her own helmet aside in darting for the Baron, and she made a detour to retrieve it.
Even if she didn’t relish the thought of engaging an enemy from inside a shell, it seemed a wise idea to put something hard between her head and the hail of bone-shattering slugs.
Once behind the crawler with the rest, she slapped the helmet over her head. At the same time, it occurred to her that parked here in front of their faces was a much bigger and better metal shell.
She grabbed the nearest armed Senek and ordered it to open the crawler’s hatch.
“It’s not built for battle,” the Baron stupidly protested.
“It’s metal, it moves, and it’s armed! Open it!”
If she needed another reason, her party’s confiscated weapons were inside the crawler, or at least she hadn’t witnessed their removal—and she had paid attention.
The Baron bade his guard comply. While Jir weapons loudly spat slugs that gouged the smooth floor and hammered the crawler’s body, the Senek made his way under his comrades’ covering fire to the vehicle’s rear and opened it.
By good fortune, the entrance didn’t directly face the enemy. Arixa, Baron in hand, flew toward it with the rest following close behind. All piled inside the crawler, and when the last Senek ceased firing and leaped in, the hatch was shut.
Other lizard-men remained without, offering resistance which couldn’t be counted on to last long. Their blasters could be heard faintly during the rare pauses in the relentless chatter of Jir guns.
“Whoever can make this thing move, move it!” Arixa said. “I know it has guns. Fire them! Now!”
Well before the Baron urged them to listen to her, Senekeen retainers were already scrambling through small interior hatchways to obey Arixa.
“Our weapons,” Arixa said next.
Within seconds, an open box clattered in front of her containing the demanded items. She took her vazer from it, recognizable by the rising sun, the emblem of the Dawn, she had scratched on its side during the voyage from Earth. She restored it to the makeshift rawhide holster on her left hip.
An unseen Senek, one of those who’d left the cabin, projected his voice from elsewhere in the crawler: “Where do we go?”
He pointedly neglected to address the question to the Baron. Even he knew the decision was Arixa’s.
Over the muffled sounds of battle, she asked S’tanovik, “Where’s an exit?”
“The ramp is—”
“Never mind!” The Jir would expect that, and if they took this crawler out onto the moon’s surface it would become an easy target for skycraft. Besides, she had no intention of abandoning the ones for whom they’d come.
“Drive straight at them!” Arixa instructed the unseen driver.
“Are there no windows in this thing?” Baako raged. The vazer freshly restored to him remained unholstered, and he clearly itched to use it.
“There are hatches above,” Arixa said. “Find them. You Senekeen, too. As many as will fit.”
Led by a quick-reacting Senek, Baako made for the same hatch another of the lizard-men had used. Passage required the Shadow-man to fold his tall
frame nearly in half. Vaspa and Memnon followed, both nearly falling over when the crawler’s engines roared and the cabin floor abruptly lurched. Two of the remaining four Senekeen accompanied them, while two stayed behind with their Baron.
“Are you part of this or just along for the ride?” Arixa asked Bowyn.
“I’d hate to get in the way. When my moment comes—”
She shoved him onto a bench. “Don’t get too comfortable.”
Metal screeched and groaned, and the cabin shook violently, forcing Arixa to steady herself on Bowyn’s outstretched arm.
“I will address these Jir,” the Baron said hopelessly. “A way forward might be found without—”
“They didn’t come to talk! I’m not dying here, and I won’t let you trade us. Driver!” Arixa called. “Can you hear me?”
The Senek answered via speaker,“Yes, Captain,”
“Head for a spot where we can leave this beast and reach an exit quickly on foot.”
“Affirmative.”
The crawler’s motion shifted, sending S’tanovik onto a bench. Looking down on him, Arixa understood what total despair looked like in the bulbous yellow eyes of a lizard.
It was obvious that the Pentarchy had been waiting for them. The Baron’s reaction was what convinced Arixa that he hadn’t known in advance, which was why she let him live.
“If my people are coming by tunnel, we have to go meet them,” she said. If the Jir hadn’t taken them already. “When we’re out, lead me to where they will be. No hesitation.”
The despondent Baron agreed.
The cabin vibrated again, now with a persistent chug-chug-chug that could only be the crawler’s own cannon, drowning out the Jir weapons. It sounded formidable, but whatever force the enemy had brought, it was probably not to be defeated by this hulk. Arixa only hoped it could hold them off long enough to allow an escape.
For a short time, the crawler’s forward motion could be felt. Then a fresh blast rocked the cabin. In a cacophony of screeching and grinding sounds, the crawler’s movement shifted violently sideways. The floor tilted, sending the passengers, including Arixa, tumbling and clinging to handholds.
