by Pam Uphoff
"They may not speak English," Ra'd murmured.
"That world they merged with was English speaking. They ought to have retained the language from the person they merged with." Nighthawk kept her voice down, but the leader of the soldiers grinned.
"Oh, so you're the people we had trouble with. Well, well. You killed millions of Helaos, and you are going to pay for that."
"You killed billions." Nighthawk retorted. "Do you regret that? The first time was a horrible tragedy. The next three were cold-blooded murder on a massive scale. We will stop it from happening again."
Laughter, hungry, aggressive. They all stepped forward, leaning hard on the gradual shield.
Ebsa eyed them, puzzled. "What are you doing here? Do you have some idea of merging with dinosaurs? I really don't think that would be a good idea."
Sneering laughter, no answer. Guns coming up.
Ebsa raised the stun rifle and hesitated. "It's based on sound waves, will the force field . . . "
Nighthawk shrugged. "Try it."
The Helaos fired. Bullets slowed, curved and dropped to the ground.
Ebsa shot the leader . . . nothing.
Then pointed it again while he shoved a sleep spell as hard and far as he could. The Helaos shook his head, tilted a bit. Ebsa spun out the spell again, pulling the trigger on the stun rifle. The man sank to one knee.
"Well, it doesn't work well, through the shield." Ebsa glanced at the crawler. Tried to not sound like he was trying to be overheard. "Battery's good for another hour at most, then the shield is toast. I'll stun them all, then we'd better get back to the beacon and report in." He raised the rifle and pointed it at another soldier. Felt Ra'd's spell, fired. The man dropped. Yeah, do it with one try. See if I care. And that was a stun spell, anyway.
One man snapped out orders and they started retreating. Ebsa started shooting and throwing stun spells as quickly as possible.
"Shields are down." Nighthawk breathed.
Ebsa started aiming and . . . ran out of targets. Ra'd's range has roughly doubled from our private practice sessions at school. Do the benefits of fatherhood not kick in until the kid's in the same dimension as Dad?
Ra'd grinned. "What interesting tech we have. I wonder what, exactly, they will report to their superiors."
"Hopefully, that we have stun guns. I don't want them to realize how dangerous we are, even completely unarmed." Ebsa led the way to the crawler. "And we're now going to lead them off to the east and fake up an abandoned camp, so they think we've departed."
Nighthawk nodded. "And so they won't think to look for another camp."
Ra'd picked up the tagging gun and stepped back outside. A quick puff, and he was back. "And we can then track them down to their base."
"You shot one of them with an elephant hide piercing . . . "
Snort. "A tire. They are solid rubber, not inflated."
They drove east and found a nice campsite. Ebsa drove in and out and in several directions, to leave tracks. And came back to find the ground cleared in a wide circle, a stone ring with a fire burning down in it, and food cooking.
Ra'd was weaving a big boxy thing out of brush. He pointed. "Drive up and back a couple of times from that pit where they may think we removed a gate anchor."
Ebsa grinned and supplied the appropriate tracks. "So, Nighthawk, I see you too are a devotee of outdoor cooking."
She shook her head. "This is all Ra'd's doing."
Ebsa eyed what was obviously a chicken roasting over the coals. "And the modern bird bones will lend further authenticity to the site." I guess one could store all sorts of stuff in a dimensional bag. It never occurred to me that Ra'd would have food in his bag of the prophets. How blind of me.
She grinned and pointed at Ra'd's oversized weaving. "Not to mention the authentic deposits we'll be leaving in the privy."
"Complete with a barely adequate privacy screen. You guys are . . . thorough."
"We can't let you have all the good ideas." Ra'd strolled over and turned the chicken. "A squat trench is the least I could do. We'll leave a bit of litter, a water bottle and so forth. And then we can hunt them." He grinned. "I wish I knew how many of them there are. The stun spell worked."
"Hundreds of them might be tedious." Nighthawk shrugged. "Or I could sneak into camp and dump a potion in their water supply." She looked at Ra'd. "Stop looking so disappointed."
"If they find Fort Dinosaur and attack it, we'll have to consider the hostile protocols to have kicked in. That changes the rules, no matter what that Pacifist Ebsa says."
"Hey! I'm sensible, not a pacifist."
Ra'd snorted. "That's why Paer likes you. She thinks you're nice."
Ebsa sniffed. "She thinks I'm an idiot who'd stick his hand in a T-Rex's mouth to save an asshole."
Nighthawk snickered. "She liked you before that; even I could see which way she was trending before I, umm, dropped out of college."
They ate chicken, tossed garbage around, used the primitive facilities . . .
The tracking scope showed three active tags. One was still, twelve kilometers west and a bit south.
"About right for the T-Rex." Ebsa pulled up a map and checked the scale against the scope screen. "Yeah, other side of the river. One off to the south a bit, and one coming straight at us from the southwest. Crap." He popped up the ladder and looked southwest. "Nothing in sight . . . Oh. Wait. It's the Quetzel-whatever."
It was high and no longer circling. He stepped out to the back and watched the long strong wing strokes of a half dozen flying reptiles.
"Almost sundown, they must have a roost . . . or whatever pterodactyls do when they aren't flying." Nighthawk looked back down the ladder. "How far away is the one to the south? Is it moving?"
"Twenty kilometers. Stationary. They are south of where we encountered them. Shall we move?" Ra'd sounded like he was staying at the scope.
Ebsa called down. "Yeah, before sundown, and hopefully before they send out untagged soldiers to find us." Nighthawk dropped back and he climbed down the ladder.
Ra'd was in the navigator's seat. "Let's follow our track back to the lake. We need to warn Acty to maintain radio silence and beware of this lot. And for that we'd better get line of sight and use really low power. Then we'll go back downstream to that same point, and stick to the same tracks back almost to here. Then perhaps some fresh trails east, to keep them away from the fort."
Ebsa nodded. I have no military experience at all. Ra'd, on the other hand, probably has both schooling and practical experience. Time to let him run the expedition.
He dropped down and took the driver's seat. Headed west, staying on their unfortunately quite visible trail of crushed ferns and brush.
The Helaos were gone from where they'd left them stunned. In the lake, he motored north. Cursed a bit before he located the low light settings for the front window. It amplified whatever was available, infrared through UV, and messed up the colors, but the game trail showed up well enough in the moonlight. He drove up it until Ra'd reported spotting the lights in the fort.
They set up a parabolic antenna and turned the power down low.
"Acty. Do not reply to this message. Do not use the radio at all. There are Helaos on this World. We will scout them out and return for opening the gate. You need to turn off all outside lights and close the curtains on all windows. We'll be back as soon as we have any information about them."
Ebsa cut his transmission. Listened for a long moment.
"Will he actually have the sense to not reply?" Ra'd sat up. "Ha! He's turning off the lights. Good man. We'll make a leader out of him yet."
Ebsa cut the power to the radio, got back behind the wheel and backed into the lake. Let the current carry them downstream.
Ra'd dropped down from the roof. "Now, try to find the same place we entered, before the moon is down. Follow the tracks. There was a bare ridge, very stony, we shouldn't leave tracks on the ground. We'll turn south from there, and search for their b
ase."
"We've got a UV spotlight."
"Which, if any Helaos are out with much in the way of sensors, will show up like a beacon." Ra'd looked around the crawler. "Didn't we have some goggles?"
"Yes. They're hanging in the mess hall for anyone who wants them for nighttime dinosaur observation."
He made it to the ridge before the moon set. Turned and as they got back into brush, stopped. They walked back to erase all evidence that they'd turned. Nighthawk had some really nice small-scale telekinesis, to shake up the sand then pack it down. Then she blew air over it.
She smirked at their expressions. "If you'll drive ahead, I'll see if I can straighten up the plants you squash for a quarter mile or so. If their society raises hunters, they'll see the vegetation damage. City boys, I can fool."
Ra'd hefted his weapons and walked with her. Ebsa drove slowly, trying to stick to the shorter vegetation.
A quarter mile east Ebsa stopped so they could reboard, then headed south, sticking to the swales between hills.
The batteries were getting low, with no sunlight on the exterior to charge them . . . "We need to stop, fire up the little gasoline generator and let them charge for a few hours."
As full dark settled in, he edged up under the trees and parked. "If we keep going we'll have to show lights." He hoisted the floor access and checked that the little engine was hooked up properly. It would run on almost any hydrocarbon fuel, but gasoline was what they had. About five liters. He filled the tank, and started it. Backed out and checked the gauges . . . charging. Good.
Ra'd looked up from the bundle in his arms. "I'll take first watch, with my daughter."
Ebsa stifled a grin and headed for his bunk. Ra'd, a doting father! He ignored a few hungry cries and Nighthawk's low-voiced opinions of men who thought lactation could be turned off and on. The clink of glass bottles.
When baby and girlfriend settled down again, he rolled out and took over the watch. Batteries half-charged, engine out of fuel. Four liters left. I want a full charge to chase Helaos.
He fueled the generator and restarted it. Climbed up to sit on the top of the crawler, listening for engines.
In the pre-dawn, he checked the tracking tags, and headed south, and a bit east. Mental shields wide open to hopefully detect the Helaos before they spotted him, eyes roving. Windows open. Speed, slow.
He heard them first, and turned abruptly into the shelter of the nearest trees.
Ra'd and Nighthawk joined him.
Nighthawk waved around the crawler. "Illusion. We now look like a heap of brush."
The low droning sound got closer. Ebsa winced. "Unmanned drone. Illusions fool brains, not machinery."
Nighthawk nodded. "And only nearby brains anyway."
The drone cruised by, a hundred feet up, nearly overhead.
"It didn't turn." Ra'd watched it out of sight. "The tree cover may have been adequate . . . or they weren't watching yet, not expecting us to be so close. Let's move. Ebsa, you drive . . . " He paused, looking at Nighthawk.
"Oak is in her bubble. Right here." She patted her collarbone. "Let me get out of this metal cage, and I'll see if I can find them." She shinnied up the ladder and opened the hatch.
Ra'd and Ebsa both followed her. He settled down and opened his mental shields . . . shut them quickly. "You guys are too bright. I can't see anything else."
Ra'd snorted. "I feel a couple dozen people. Sort of fuzzy."
"They're half a kilometer away." Nighthawk pointed the direction the drone had flown from. "Several hundred of them, I think."
"Hundreds?"
"Yes . . . they're odd. Q told me they were odd, hard to see or affect, mentally. I think that's why the sleep spells didn't work. But at least some of them are fairly bright. But fuzzy, like you said. Almost like Oners, though."
"Five hundred meters. They're right over the hill." Ra'd grinned. "Good thing you stopped here. Not that driving right up to them wouldn't work as an introduction, but it does lack subtlety."
Ebsa eyed the tracking scope. "That tag is still two kilometers south . . . but then with several hundred soldiers . . . How does the tracker work? It triangulates with the satellite, right . . . and all ground stations, which is us and Fort Dinosaur. The communications hub. Oh damn. I think it's still running, even if they aren't using it, and the automatic pings to and from the satellite . . . The Helaos can detect that. Those couple of dozen people who feel like Oners? Damn, did they find and take Fort Dinosaur?"
"Drugged prisoners . . . might feel like that." Ra'd nodded. "We'll go see. But first a bit of old-fashioned camouflage."
Cut branches leaning on the crawler. Inelegant, but probably better than illusions against a mechanized foe.
Ebsa grinned at Nighthawk's expression. "Don't worry, if searchers come through on foot, your illusions will work better than a few branches."
"Hmph! This is the sort of problem you have when you drive around in several tons of metal and electronics. You are too easy to see." She stepped away from the crawler, eyed it, and shook her head. "I don't think I can warp light around it. It's just too big. So, let's take a hike."
Chapter Nine
1 Rajab 1405 yp
World EM 0925
The camp was huge. Wedge-shaped stone walls topped with a sentries' walk behind leaning spikes. A short runway, probably for the drones. Ugly metal buildings. Prefab, shoved through the gate.
An array of vehicles, from the bugs through trucks with rounded cross sections for gate travel, all the way to tanks. Three meters wide, lower silhouette. They must gate them on flats, like that truck right there.
"Nighthawk? You said you could open a gate, but with poor control of destination?"
She nodded. "I think I could find Embassy. And home, I know I could feel where home is. You want to get your scientists out of here, don't you?"
"Yes, and to raise the alarm."
"But first." Rad pointed. "We may have to rescue them. Captured and drugged would explain why I can't actually talk to them."
"You still can't sense the Helaos? Umm, you two shield, please?" Ebsa dropped his shields and focused on the nearest soldier. Pair of soldiers, strolling the narrow path on top of the rock wall. He closed his eyes. Barely a glow. "I've seen animals with more glow. Is it an effect of merging? It messes up the brain pattern so much that we can't even see them, and mental spells don't work?" The dozen or so glows clumped half a kilometer further off were brighter.
"Or genetics." Nighthawk shrugged. "Dad says some people are just born hard to read."
"So . . . how do we get to those people we can sort of see?" Ebsa eyed Nighthawk. "Can you teleport?"
"I umm, due to a problem with my mother, I'm a bit behind on learning some basics, before I can start advanced stuff . . . That is to say, no. But I can make a light warp. That's a physical effect, that should fool both their eyes and their electronics."
"We ought to wait for dark . . . except we don't have night-vision gear and they do."
"Right." Ebsa started to get up, then hesitated. "Umm, how hard are corridors to make, in case we need to get out of there in a hurry?"
"Oh! Damn, now I feel like an amateur." Nighthawk scowled back the way they'd come. "I should have started one from the crawler . . . Be right back." She made a sideways swipe and disappeared. Running footsteps faded in the distance.
Ra'd grinned. "The gestures may be obvious, but the magic is impressive. If I didn't infuriate every bureaucrat I've ever met, I'd find a way to get assigned to learning their magic."
"Do people get assigned like that?"
"Yeah. I've heard that Xen Wolfson drills the Disco people on Comet Fall techniques." Ra'd shrugged. "Not that they'd send me. They don't trust me."
"The Teams situation is . . . it needs adjusting. For things like this dinosaur study, yeah, some shooters and hunters would be nice. But with Disco . . . we don't need bullies and brutes, and sure as hell no more rapists." Ebsa looked down the hill at the Helaos base
. "Military scouts, on the other hand . . . "
"Yes. Interesting. Disco has changed the way we ought to be approaching newly discovered worlds. Trade, not conquest. Embassy guards, not enforcers and hit squads. Ajki's trying, but we haven't even begun to change the culture of the Action Teams. I will have to talk to some people about it."
Ebsa turned his head away from the Helaos to eye the other man. "In fact they've gone defensive, haven't they? Protecting their turf. I suspect that's why they kicked me into clerical stuff, and you into jail, when they couldn't corrupt you."
Snort. "When I took exception to something I have been ordered to not speak of, one of them suggested I bring my sister for a visit so they could entertain her."
"And he survived?"
"Yes. I put four of my own Team in the hospital. Isakson was disgusted and suggested that instead of getting into a fight, I simply kill the offender as quickly as feasible. Next time."
All those old laws on the books. Terribly amusing, like Warriors of the One always have the Right of Way. There's probably one about Warriors of the One being required to kill anyone who threatens a child of a Prophet or some such. Which would be an interesting defense in court. Ebsa winced and went back to watching Helaos. "I . . . think even you are better adjusted to here and now than Isakson."
"Indeed." Ra'd turned his head at running footsteps. "So, let's go see if this lot has captured some of our scientists."
***
Being invisible was odd. Firstly, the "light warp" bent all the light around them except the low infrared, and a second spell shifted that into the visible range. They circled to the east side, and climbed with the morning sun in the eyes of anyone looking their way, then dropped down into the shadows for the climb down. Which made climbing up an almost vertical rock wall, then squirming between closely spaced thick spikes, all while staying close enough to Nighthawk to keep the warp around them a bit . . . weird. The inside of the wall was much more sloped, and easy enough to get down.
