by Tanya Huff
The Artek flanked the path. Firiv’vrak had pointed out that she was a better shot with a ship around her, but carried two slender rods strapped to the sides of her abdomen and a double line of chargers along her thorax. Energy weapons were useless in infantry battles where both sides used EMPs, but for Justice work, it was only familiarity with the weapon that kept the KCs—and on this mission the RKahs—in play.
Keeleeki’ka, duct tape stabilizing the rear curve of her carapace, had refused to be left behind.
“I go,” she repeated, eyestalks drawn in close to her body, “where the story is.”
Torin abandoned diplomacy. “You go where I tell you to. You’re staying in the VTA. You’re not trained for this.”
“Neither is Firiv’vrak.”
“But she has had training.”
“You can’t keep me from the story. It’s why the council agreed to my presence.”
Presit applauded. “I are liking her persistence. I are being right beside her if not for the discovery of murderously large insect life. Which she, of course, can be ignoring being murderously large insect life herself.”
“Presit . . .”
“I, of course, am not requiring story. I are having plenty of story to go around. I are requiring facts and I are able to get them from the helmet scanners without needing to be risking my life.”
Keeleeki’ka rose onto her rear legs. “To risk a life in the pursuit of story creates shadows that highlight meaning.”
“I are having no idea what you are talking about.”
Torin ignored them both and turned to Vertic. “Could my keeping her safe in restraints derail the Confederation/Primacy cooperation attempt?”
Vertic spread her hands. “She’s a representative of a powerful lobby.”
No one was saying “more important than she appears” in either Artek’s hearing if only to keep Firiv’vrak from overreacting.
“Look at the bright side, Gunny, they’re hard to kill.”
“Gunny!”
“Don’t do that!” Binti stumbled, grabbed a vine to stop herself from tripping over Firiv’vrak, and snatched her hand back as soon as she had her balance. “Son of a . . .”
Torin ducked, and the partially crushed, yellow slug Binti flicked off her fingers flew past her.
“Gunny!” Firiv’vrak tapped Torin’s knee. “A herd of mammals are about to cross our trail.”
“Bertecnic, Dutavar; hold!” In the sudden silence that marked the interruption in Polint trail making, Torin heard nothing she hadn’t already begun to internalize as normal. “About to?”
“They’re moving fast, almost as fast as we do,” Keeleeki’ka said, from Torin’s other side.
“Wear a fukking bell,” Binti muttered.
“They look like the animals we fought in the ruins. Same hide. Same coloring. Same shape.” She tucked herself in behind Torin’s legs. “Smaller, though.”
“How many in the herd?”
“Fifteen.” Firiv’vrak’s eyes swiveled toward the left side of the path. “Maybe sixteen. They’ve excellent . . .”
Bertecnic dropped low and reached for his RKah as the first crossed no more than a meter in front of him.
“. . . camouflage.”
The scales that had appeared silver gray inside the ruins were greenish gray surrounded by foliage, light shifting the shades as they moved. Most of them were half a meter at the shoulder, but a few in the center of the herd were smaller. They all had the slightly out-of-proportion look of juveniles and none of them did more than glance at Bertecnic as they raced across the path. Now she wasn’t fighting an enraged parent, Torin could see they had curled their long front toes under during the upper extension of their stride, extending them again as their heels hit the ground.
“Locals passing.” Torin pitched her voice to carry to both ends of the march, both through implants and air. “We won’t be stopped long.”
“Any danger?” Vertic called.
“No, I think they’re juveniles.” The foliage closed unmarked behind the last, and Torin had to use the zoom on her scanner to see footprints, speed combined with the broad splay of their feet keeping them from sinking into the jungle floor. “It must take them a few years to get to breeding size.” She frowned at the uneven claw indents around the faint imprint of a front paw and tried to remember why they looked familiar. “Alamber.”
*On it, Boss. Sending images from your helmet scan down the line.*
“Those are big babies.” Binti leaned around Torin and stared at the place they’d crossed. “You think there’s something in here big enough to eat them?”
“If there is, high odds we neither smell nor look like it. Which is interesting as the insect life finds both Polint and Humans edible.”
“Nice of the Ministry to mention the possibility of large predators. Of course,” Binti added, “the Ministry didn’t mention the things large predators eat either.”
“Incomplete surveys aren’t that unusual. And we heard a group go by when were out before.” Ressk dropped down to a lower branch, Werst crouched on a branch over his head, knees raised, KC held across his shins. “They can’t be seen from up here unless they cross an open area and the little fukkers are fast. I think they’re livestock gone wild.”
“Livestock?” Merinim pushed her helmet back to stare up at Ressk. “Seriously?”
“There was a city here, right? That kind of population density eats a lot of food. Pre-tech means they probably had livestock inside the walls. The population’s gone. The walls are gone. That doesn’t mean the livestock’s gone.”
She blinked as a bug fried in the helmet’s adaptive shielding. “You’ve studied ancient civilizations?”
Ressk grinned. “I know food.”
“They have teeth and claws,” Keeleeki’ka protested.
He shrugged. “Maybe they preferred food that fought back.”
“Lots of food does,” Torin pointed out. “When my brother was eight, he had his arm broken by a goose.”
“I don’t even know what a goose is,” Binti admitted. “And I’m the same species you are.”
*Torin grew up on a farm.* Craig sounded amused. *In the country. Not yeast vats and hydroponics, but animals and seeds grown in dirt. She can identify multiple types of shit.*
“Multiple kinds of shit?” Binti folded her hands on her KC and rocked back on her heels. “Why did I never know this about you, Gunny?”
*She’s never taken you home to meet her parents.*
“True. She hasn’t. Why is that, Gunny? Are you ashamed of me?”
“Yes, that would be why. Listen up.” Torin raised her voice. “The parade’s past, let’s move. Best speed. Those hostages aren’t freeing themselves.”
“Humans are weird,” Firiv’vrak said, and, for a moment, the smell of cherry candy overwhelmed the smell of jungle.
With the occasional exception of the large roots, very little foliage grew around the outside edge of the building. Even mosses and lichens stayed nearly a meter away. Arniz tottered a little just because she felt like allowing Hyrinzatil to carry part of her weight—whether he wanted to or not. She missed sand and dry air and the way the dig had started, varying disciplines taking their time mapping the plateau, primes turning everything up to and including unpacking the supplies in the anchor into a lesson for their ancillaries, no one dying . . .
Trembley turned to walk backward in front of them. “Are you all right?”
“I’m exhausted and annoyed, and I don’t like jungles. The soil contains far too much botany. Why?”
“You were hissing.”
“Your superior has killed two ancillaries; I’m entitled.”
“Magyr picked up a gun,” Hyrinzatil began.
Arniz smacked him on the back of the thighs with her tail and tightened her grip when he tried
to pull his arm away. “Which she didn’t know how to use.”
“That actually makes her more dangerous,” Trembley pointed out.
“In what universe? Because it’s somehow worse to be shot by accident than on purpose? Are you saying that Martin, twice her size and trained in violence, couldn’t have taken the weapon away from her?”
“No . . .”
“Good.” She cut him off before he added a but and she lost what little control her exhaustion was allowing her to maintain. “And don’t tell me Dzar’s death taught us not to fight you. We’re scientists and are all perfectly capable of applying the concept of consequences. Except for Dr. Ganes, none of us had seen a weapon fired; Martin could’ve shot and destroyed a . . . a chair.”
“I know.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
Trembley shrugged, stumbled over the edge of a canted paving stone, and said, “Lieutenant Commander Ganes said sort of the same thing last . . .” He jumped backward, fumbling to aim his weapon. “What the flying fuk is that? It’s got like a billion legs!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Well, how many, then?”
“How would I know? I’m not an entomologist.” It was about half a meter long, shiny bronze, and moving very quickly between the stone Trembley had tripped over and another triangular crack. “Don’t!” she snapped when he moved toward it. “They’re on the toxic list, I very much doubt you lot took precautions before you arrived, and we’ve already determined the native insect life likes how you taste.”
“Then why not let it taste him?” Hyrinzatil muttered.
“Did you miss the part where Martin killed two people for no reason?” Arniz took her hand off his arm and pushed her face so close to his, he had no choice but to recognize the scent of her anger. “Do you want to give him a reason to kill more?”
“No, but . . .”
“No buts. What has Salitwisi been teaching you? Honestly. And you . . .” Her tone jerked Trembley’s attention off the last few pairs of legs disappearing into the hole. “. . . stay out of the bracken, don’t stick bare body parts into dark corners, and rock any stones before you sit on them. And, since I would like to get out of the looming shadow of a depressing building built by long-dead enigmas, I suggest we get moving.”
“So, to you, me staying alive is only a means to keeping the sergeant from taking revenge.”
She sighed. “Your life, Emile Trembley, is as important to me as every other life. Empathy is one of the building blocks of sentience, and I’ve long considered myself a sentient being.” Sweeping her gaze over the two of them, she snorted and started toward the distant end of the building at the best speed she was still capable of. “Opinion, however, is still out on the two of you.”
The latrines were right where she expected them to be. Once a species began living in cities, quite a number of functions began to follow form.
“Look at the differences in the vegetation.” Arniz gestured at an area just inside the remains of the wall that defined the open end of the courtyard. “In the same way that the dark stone clearly only feeds the slender trees, look at the pattern, at the oval created by these plants with the tufted stems.”
“Doesn’t look like an oval to me, Harveer.”
Trembley nodded. “Or me.”
“Fine.” She sighed at the rigidity of youth. “Extended oval.”
“And there’s another bunch of those plants there, on the other side of the wall.”
“And there,” Trembley added.
She sighed again. “Yes, but they’re thickest here. Just the same way they were thickest over the latrines out on the plateau. Fortunately, because of the openings in the canopy, they’re getting enough sunlight and making identification easy for us. Dr. Tilzonicazic took samples, and I expect we’ll find that these particular plants prefer highly acidic soil given the amount of urea found in the one latrine I was actually allowed to do a comprehensive scan on, but only because it was done before . . .”
“Harveer?” Hyrinzatil dropped to his knees and ran his hands in under the edge of the patch of plants in question. “There’s no stone under these plants and the last slab has a finished edge. Wouldn’t that be a better determinant than plants. Plants die.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Then can we drop the probes?” He stood and stretched. “I now know all I need to know about these particular shit pits—they haven’t any architecture.”
“That,” she said over Hyrinzatil’s head to Trembley, “is the problem with ancillaries these days. Narrow fields of study.”
The ancillary in question blinked, inner eyelids flicking back and forth at speed. “You study soil, Harveer. When my prime asked you to identify a spur of surface rock, you asked him if you looked like a geologist.”
“Which I don’t.” She brushed at a sap stain on her overalls. “Get started, then.” Perched on a curve of root, she watched him adjust the scanner and log the position before he sent the first electronic probe. To give Salitwisi credit where it was due, his ancillary appeared to have been well trained on this particular piece of equipment. She supposed that meant there was a way to use them architecturally, but she didn’t care and was content to give over control. With the scanner calibrated exclusively to find plastic residue, she had little interest in the results.
As Hyrinzatil swept the probe slowly back and forth, Trembley approached, weapon hanging across his back, holding two of the tufted, stemmed plants. “What are they called?”
“They haven’t a name yet. The Ministry will take the specifics Dr. Tilzonicazic sent them under advisement and eventually agree on a scientific designation. Don’t hold your breath.”
He pressed the plants together. The tufts interlaced and held, even in the face of a vigorous flailing. “I’m going to call them sticky stems.”
“Seems apt.”
“Do you think the Ministry will use the name?”
“Only botanists care what the Ministry calls things. Sticky stems is a name that the rest of us would use.”
“Really?” He beamed down at her with so much innocent pleasure on his face that she revisited the idea of poison sacs and a moment spent with her teeth in Martin’s forearm, wondered if she could prove corruption of youth to the Wardens, then realized she didn’t have to. They’d be after him for two murders.
Her tail twitched.
Martin had to know that.
Was he arrogant enough to assume there was enough empty space to hide his . . .
Head cocked toward the two-story part of the complex, she tasted the air. Tasted only jungle. Didn’t hear a repeat of the shout that had attracted her attention.
“Harveer! There’s no plastic residue in here.”
“That you found,” Trembley pointed out smugly.
Arniz felt it fortunate Trembley couldn’t read the complete disdain of Hyrinzatil’s expression. “If I haven’t found it, I can’t speak to its existence, can I?”
“If you can’t find it, Martin’s going to be pissed.” Trembley rocked back on his boot heels. “Likely order me to shoot you both.” He rocked back a little further and murmured, “But I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Good.” Arniz rubbed her temples. In spite of the constant humidity, her scales felt dry.
“All right. Fine.” Hyrinzatil set the scanner carefully on the ground and crossed his arms. “If you don’t consider the scanner and my analysis of its data sufficient, we should go get the digger.”
The digger had been returned to its charging station in the anchor. Ganes had been unable or unwilling to reprogram it to clear the road, claiming that as the only part of the site they had legal access to was essentially grassland, the digger wasn’t designed for rough terrain.
“The digger has destroyed one set of historical data, let’s not compound the fo
lly.” Moving slowly, sore muscles having stiffened during her rest, she got down off the root and shuffled over to Hyrinzatil’s side. “This is still a Class 2 Designate. If we dig in here, if we disturb the site to that extent, the Ministry . . .”
Trembley’s raised hand cut her off. “We’re not worried about the . . .”
A high-pitched shriek cut him off. Arniz couldn’t tell if the sound was pain or anger, but it hadn’t come from the throat of a Niln or a Katrien, that much she could guarantee.
She turned toward the sound in time to see a large quadruped flung out of a first-floor window at the far end of the courtyard. It had claws and teeth and the gleam of scales although the air was scented with angry mammal.
And blood.
It got to its feet. Shook itself. Deep-red drops sprayed from a wound in its side, splashing black against the stone.
It took a deep breath, mouth open, tongue out.
Stared directly at her.
Started to run.
Hyrinzatil screamed, and Arniz could hear the snapping of stalks and branches as he ran.
The quadruped ran silently, although the motion of its front paws suggested it should be slapping at the ground.
She felt as though roots had poured from her legs and anchored her.
She would die here. Like Dzar had. And for no better reason.
Then she heard a crack. A clean sound. Like a pickax splitting stone.
