by John Grant
One quarter of the copse was designated the latrine area, and by now people walked very cautiously there.
Strider was proud of her tribe. Whatever their living conditions might look like from the outside, they had accepted the rules she had imposed on them and were in fact a disciplined little community. The chores were shared around, and everybody did what they were supposed to do. Meals were eaten exclusively during daylight hours, because Strider reckoned that heat-seeking surveillance devices wouldn't spot the fires over which the meat was cooked when the rest of the landscape was so hot. If you got hungry at night . . . well, the taste of rotting maize went away after a while, or if you were very lucky there might be some cold arachnibunny left over from the afternoon.
She liked being a primitive. Her body was covered in scratches where she'd stumbled into thorny undergrowth, but once she'd learnt that the pain didn't hurt that much it didn't matter any more. The soles of her feet were quite another consideration: after some experimentation she and everyone else kept their boots on.
Strider would have been happy to stay here for the rest of her life except for three facts. Sooner or later they were going to be discovered. The food supply was, as they'd known from the start, not infinite. And, by the law of averages, someone was almost certainly already pregnant: although there was a chance Pinocchio could perform the delivery safely, it wasn't something Strider wanted to prove empirically.
She was levelling her lazgun at an arachnibunny when the fighter craft arrived. At first she didn't pay attention to the faint whine, assuming that someone had disturbed a swarm of the insect-analogues that plagued the copse and inflicted the occasional irritating bite. A single shot drilled through the arachnibunny's head and the creature slumped. She gave it another blast to be certain that it was dead, and was glad that she had done so because it gave a little reflexive kick of its legs.
The buzzing noise continued.
She moved forward to grab the arachnibunny by a leg, and then Ten Per Cent Extra Free spoke.
You are needed on the far side of the copse.
"Why?"
Your people have been discovered by the forces of F-14. They have brought a fleet of fighters.
"Oh. Great."
She looked at the dead animal. It could wait for a while.
Strider half-ran, half-tripped through the undergrowth. Now that haste was needed, being naked didn't seem to be such a good idea after all. Someone had had the sense to tell everyone else to shut up, because nobody—not even the kids—had started screaming. The whining sound decreased in volume. The Autarchy must have pretty goddam good technology if it could move heavy vehicles through the air with so little noise.
She tripped on a root and fell, knocking the wind out of herself. Some of the plants in this copse had stinging leaves, and one of them stung her just above the navel. It was exactly what she could have done without. She heaved herself to her feet and carried on, pushing away branches and tall, swaying plants with her hands.
This wasn't going to be the most elegant way to fight a battle, wearing boots and nothing else. With luck there wouldn't be too many war photographers around.
When she got to the end of the copse she threw herself down beside Pinocchio, who was lying flat on his stomach as he looked down the slope. His lazgun was in his hand, sweeping from side to side as if in search of something to shoot.
"The fighters are about a hundred meters downhill from us," he said. "There are approximately fourteen of them. I may have miscounted."
Strider had difficulty controlling her breathing enough to be able to form words.
"I can't see anything."
"They're small. The biggest of them is five meters across and about twenty-five centimeters high." Pinocchio for once was sounding uncertain of himself—almost afraid, if that were possible. "I think they must be remotes. What they likely want to do is blow away half the hillside and bury us in the rubble."
"You'll probably be able to dig yourself out," said Strider. The words were coming more easily now.
"Almost certainly," said the bot. "But only to find myself alone."
WE HAVE MADE CONTACT WITH THE F-14 FORCES, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"Good," said Strider. "Could you persuade a few of them to autodestruct?"
I THINK YOU MISPERCEIVE THE SITUATION.
#
The alien spaceship had been a fertile field. Segrill had expected that it would be fitted with the tachyonic drive, of course, but he had not expected the Pockets. He had wasted rather more time than he ought to have done playing with these, buzzing his head against each of them in turn and watching the wildest of his imaginings being brought into being. At last he had realized what the gadgets were for, and had called up a vision of the fleeing party of aliens. They were travelling on the Preeae's transportation system, something that Segrill had experienced once and had vowed never to do again. They looked as if they were rigid with fear, which Segrill could understand. They were certainly rigid with something.
The nearest Preeae access point was about four hundred and fifty kilometers away. That was probably where the Humans were being taken. Speaking quickly into his kreebolly, he issued orders that twenty of the fighters should go to that point at once. The officer who took the instructions was obviously confused as to why he was being sent to this particular set of co-ordinates. Segrill decided not to explain. The fighters were to stay as high as possible and do nothing more than observe, because the Humans—if the technology aboard this spaceship was anything to go by—were probably equipped with pretty impressive weaponry.
The next few days were spent probing through the rest of the spaceship's appurtenances. Segrill watched entertainment holos which made very little sense to him as of course he couldn't understand a word of what the Humans were saying although he began to have a shrewd notion of their mating habits; he was less certain why sometimes two of the Humans would remove their clothing and roll around together. He accidentally fired off one of the Santa Maria's missiles, and was thankful that they were in the middle of a desert: the resultant plume of sand was very impressive, and could probably have been seen five hundred kilometers away. Other items of technology were far more mysterious, having no apparent purpose that Segrill and his people could ascertain. There was a machine that emitted a roar of cacophonous noise when a button was pressed and then could only be turned off again with great ingenuity. Bots of various kinds crawled around the interior of the vessel, busily continuing to do whatever it was that they were supposed to do; some were clearly cultivating what Segrill recognized as tilled fields, but others had tasks that were quite inscrutable. There were also animals in forms that Segrill had never seen before, from small fluttering things not totally unlike himself to much larger quadrupedal creatures with nubby horns and the habit of excreting at unpredictable moments.
Through his kreebolly he called up data on the known life-forms of The Wondervale, ruthlessly narrowing down the scope of his search as he progressed. There was nothing the kreebolly could tell him about any of these creatures, nor about the dominant species: double-armed bipeds were prolific throughout the galaxy, of course, but none approximated to these except the Lingk-kreatzai, a barely sentient species (although Segrill had his doubts) that lived in conditions of astonishing filth on a world that closely orbited a red dwarf at the opposite extreme of The Wondervale. That the Humans were not the Runtuata was readily apparent from the debris they had left behind them. They were from a high-tech species.
Through his kreebolly he also recited a series of carefully constructed, carefully boring reports back to his deputy in Hallaroi. He had found an alien spacecraft, he said. The aliens had all died when the ship had crashlanded. There was little of technological interest here—that was probably why the craft had been able to slip through F-14's defenses—but it was worth picking through what there was just in case something useful might be salvageable.
Segrill made sure that none of his people was withi
n earshot whenever he made his reports, even though they were all utterly loyal to him . . . he was almost certain.
He had a sudden inspiration.
If the Pockets were capable of calling up anything he asked them for, presumably he could ask them to show him the surrounds of this ship as they had been a few days ago. That way he might be able to start guessing about where the aliens had come from.
Yes.
It worked.
He saw this ship in the middle of a sea of others. There were thousands of them there.
F-14 had several hundred warcruisers of its own, newly made and ready to be sent to various parts of the Autarchy. Segrill had, therefore, a personal space armada.
Joined to the vast fleet from which the Humans had come, it would be worth twice as much—no, far more than that, because on its own it would be next to useless against whatever the Autarch Nalla might think to put up, given time.
Segrill had never considered himself to be particularly philosophical or spiritual, but when he saw that fleet of alien starships he suddenly felt as if he were there at one of those infinitely rare moments when a corner of history was being turned.
Just as an experiment, he tried using the Pocket to look into the Santa Maria's future.
It didn't work.
#
Strider didn't see the alien at first. It came hopping across the blue-green vegetation, winged itself into the air for a few meters, and then started hopping towards her again. She saw it out of the corner of her eye, but assumed that the local bird-analogue life had chosen a singularly inappropriate moment to display itself. She kept the downslope covered with her lazgun, moving it steadily one way and the other. The lazgun wasn't going to be a lot of use if those things out there were just remotes, but neither was anything else.
The little creature almost jumped on to her hand before she gave it proper attention. It had bird-like wings, but its body was more like that of a tailless mouse. Its head was vaguely reminiscent of that of a mouse as well, except that there were no visible ears.
THIS PERSON WISHES TO SPEAK WITH YOU, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"Which person?"
THE ONE STANDING ALMOST DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU. HIS NAME IS COMMANDER EBERRY SEGRILL. HE IS THE HEAD OF SECURITY ON THIS PLANET.
Strider focused on the small winged animal. She had been just about to bat it out of the way with the back of her hand.
"You mean he wants to kill us?"
I THINK YOU HAD BETTER SPEAK WITH HIM.
She looked more closely at the little creature, and then held out her hand. Without hesitation Segrill hopped on to her palm.
"We must talk to each other," he said. Strider could hear both the piping noise he made and the words interpreted by Ten Per Cent Extra Free. The proposition seemed ludicrous on the face of it. If she clenched her hand tightly she could crush this tiny animal to a pulp. Yet Segrill was chief of what was presumably an efficient strike force and she was the leader of a band of primitives . . .
"Please explain," she said.
"Not everyone who is in the thrall of the Autarchy wishes to see it persist," said Segrill.
"How do I know I can trust a single word you say?"
"I will permit you to read my mind in its entirety," said Segrill.
Strider didn't understand for a moment. Then realization struck her. The little alien assumed that the Images were an integral part of this particular small band of human beings. Why should he think anything different? Ten Per Cent Extra Free was currently operating out of Pinocchio, but of course Segrill couldn't see that. He must assume humans were telepathic. It might be wise to let him continue thinking that for a while.
"I've already done so," she said. Because the alien was so close to her she couldn't even subvocalize. Have you done a sweep of his mind? she thought at Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
HE IS SINCERE, said the Image. I SHALL LET YOU KNOW IF HE STARTS TO LIE.
"And how can I know that I can trust you?" said Segrill.
"Because you're standing in the palm of my hand. More to the point, I'm metaphorically in the palm of yours. Each of us could destroy the other very easily."
"That is true," said Segrill. "My people have lazcannon trained on you right at this minute."
Strider hesitated. That was something more than she had anticipated. She had better get her mind together. If she continued to find it difficult to take this alien seriously she might find herself and all the rest of her personnel dead very much more quickly than she expected.
"What can you offer us?" she said.
Segrill explained how the techs working on F-14 were, in effect, a legion of revolutionaries just waiting for the right moment to rise up. He had seen the huge fleet of Human warcruisers—it took Strider a further moment of thought to understand that what he had seen was the Helgiolath armada—and believed that he could add several hundred warcruisers to it, each crewed by dedicated warriors. The techs knew more about the Autarchy's weaponry—its strengths and weaknesses—than even the Autarch's military themselves, so that in effect he would be almost doubling the size of the "Human" fleet. Although the Autarch, with warning, could set up a force much larger than the combined fleets, they would have the advantage of surprise—they might even be able to strike at Qitanefermeartha itself before they were faced by any greater firepower.
Strider decided to put her cards on the table.
"Tell him what the true situation is," she said to Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"Are your friends the Helgiolath likely to accept us?" said Segrill after a short pause.
"If you're with us. If I'm able to talk to Kortland through a Pocket and persuade him that you're not snakes in the grass."
This last metaphor clearly didn't translate too clearly. Strider had to explain it in two or three different versions before finally Ten Per Cent Extra Free hit on one that Segrill could understand.
"We must get you back to your spaceship," said Segrill at length.
"How are you going to do that? I mean"—she waved with her free hand in the general direction of the hillside where the fighter craft lay squatly and small—"you couldn't fit even half of one of us into your ships. By the way, just how big are these warcruisers you're offering?"
"Some of them are forty times the size of your own."
"Um."
"The techs vary in size between species very much smaller than I am myself up to others that are nearly fifty meters tall. We all work together."
"Are any of the cruisers as small as those fighters?" she said.
"Those fighters could very simply be converted into warcruisers, but you must understand that their firepower would not be great."
"I think I just have the first glimmerings of an idea," said Strider. "I also think we have a partnership. I'd like to shake on it, except that probably you have some completely different method of signalling agreement and anyway I'm not sure I could do it without breaking your hand."
SEGRILL'S SPECIES NORMALLY CONFIRM AN AGREEMENT BY HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free. WE THINK THAT IN THIS INSTANCE . . .
She stroked the top of Segrill's head, making sure that her touch was as gentle as possible.
"We're an alliance," she said.
He leapt off her hand.
"Agreed."
Then he was flying away across the hillside. He wheeled up into the sky for a moment, performing a complicated wing-movement that undoubtedly meant something to his troops—something like "Don't shoot yet"—before she lost him from sight.
#
It was good to be back on board the Santa Maria again, and to be able to take a bath: that was just about the first thing most of the personnel had done.
Not Strider or her main officers, however: furtively hoping that they didn't smell as bad to other people as they did to themselves, they were trying to power the ship up, aided by the Images and by various of Segrill's techs. The difficulty was that, while the Santa Ma
ria had been redesigned so that it could be operated in an atmosphere, it hadn't been adapted for landing or takeoff. It had jets that, with a little bit of cunning, could be used to lift it a few tens of meters off the ground, but thereafter its rocketry would be useful only for turning several thousand square kilometers of desert, and whoever happened to be there, into glass.
Segrill had transported them from their leafy hideaway back to the desert by calling up one of the fighters under his command: this ship, crewed by the Bredai, who were rather larger than the average nightmare and required a methane atmosphere, had been almost of the same size as the Santa Maria itself. A human behavioral therapist, interested in the way these aliens interacted, had gone too close to one of them and been rendered, on the floor, as something quite disturbingly like a Preeae except for the bits and pieces of spacesuit scattered around the splotch. Strider didn't allow herself to spend too much time thinking about what had happened to the guy: someone had shovelled him up and they'd all given him a burial—a ceremony that had clearly baffled the aliens.
