Freedom's Choice
Page 7
“Easy now, Raisha,” Mitford said, grinning at her babble.
“Oh!” She looked over to the others. “I should just debrief to you, shouldn’t I? But they all know about Phase One, don’t they? It’s…” and she stopped, took a deep breath, brushed sudden tears out of her eyes. “It’s just that once the Catteni took over, I never thought I’d make space in a real ship.” She dashed more tears from her eyes and made an obvious effort to control herself. “One helluvan astronaut I’m making.”
“You did just great, ma’am,” Mitford said in military tones, and that did the trick.
“Thank you, sergeant. I appreciate having had the honor to go.”
“‘Where no human has gone before.’” Kris heard herself repeating the Star Trek phrase.
Mitford inched closer to the open hatch but Kris reached it first.
“Zainal?” she called, damning herself for acting like a possessive female.
“On the bridge!” He sounded elated, too.
As Raisha had said, he was still explaining to Bert yaw and roll procedures and which toggles and handles were used in which situations.
“You landed her on a dime,” Kris said, looking from one to the other, and it was Bert who smiled proudly back at her.
“Zainal insisted. Damn near wet myself,” he said, but Kris only laughed at him. “There seem to be only so many ways to arrange controls and panels, so it wasn’t actually that hard. Not that Zainal wouldn’t have taken over if I glitched…” He pointed to the right-hand position at the bridge. “Mind you, those predators coming at me like F-88s were scary…”
“I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon,” Kris said. “Those that lived to fly away.”
“They don’t appear when transports do,” Zainal said, thoughtfully.
“The scout makes a sort of whistle…” Kris suggested, and he nodded. She wanted to do something more than stand there with both hands at her sides, something to show Zainal how very, very glad she was to see him. She wished Bert anywhere but on the bridge.
Then Zainal stepped to her side, pulled her so that their cheeks touched and his lips brushed her ear before he stepped back. “I go debrief to Mitford.” He turned back to Bert. “Go through the sequences. We must put her out of sight before we close her down.” Then he pushed Kris around and down the narrow passageway. “We now know much more about Botany that is useful to know.”
All Kris could think of was that he was back and Phase One complete and Mitford was willing to go to Phase Two. As she stepped out onto the field where she had lain unconscious and vulnerable nine months ago, she could scarcely believe the change in fortune. And all because she’d rescued a fugitive Catteni.
* * *
As Kris discovered, while the curious—and they came in droves down from Camp Narrow—inspected the scout ship, Zainal’s debriefing with Mitford dealt more with the details of what he had observed of the rest of the planet during the landing orbit than with the flight. He had piloted in the initial stages, past the satellite, given the scout some rolls and yaws.
“To look out of control,” Zainal said with a grin, “and then I went behind the moon and out of the satellite’s range.” Of Bert and Raisha, he said, “They know more than they think they do. Well trained. Able to drive while I looked. The scout makes fast…sketches…” He looked inquiringly at Kris, who supplied, “photos.” “Yes, photos, details of other continents. Got very close on last pass.” Zainal grinned. “Much better than what we were given.” And he paused, twitching one eyebrow in irritation over the earlier reluctant handouts.
“Raisha said something about only two continents being farmed.”
Zainal nodded. “One is empty but greening. Other not too good, I think. But I am not farmer.”
“You want us to shift our living space?” and Mitford waved over his head to mean the campsites the colonists now occupied, “and keep us out of trouble with the real landlords?”
“Land…” and Zainal separated the two words in puzzlement, “lords?”
“The race which first claimed this planet.”
“Ah, landlords. Yes. This is considerable. A people who could make a prison of that valley we explored do not act as Catteni or Eosi do. They kept something in there, or kept something from getting in. That is not how Catteni or Eosi work.”
“Nor even humans, if you look at history,” Mitford said in a droll tone, crossing his arms on his chest again.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Zainal gave Mitford a long look.
“Phase Two, sarge?”
Mitford chuckled, dropped his arms to slap his hands on his knees. “You found weapons?”
“Enough to overpower stupid Drassi,” Zainal said almost contemptuously.
“Things are getting more and more interesting, aren’t they?” Mitford said to no one in particular.
Someone nearby cleared his throat and Kris looked over her shoulder at a group of men she vaguely remembered were formerly military and naval brass. Instantly she was alarmed for Mitford’s sake. She didn’t want him summarily replaced by newcomers who figured they knew more about running this world than Mitford. It was Peter Easley who had cleared his throat.
“Sergeant, when you have a chance, we’d like a few words with you?”
“More than a few and your being here saves me sending for you,” Mitford said, stepping down from the driver’s seat. “Have you met Emassi Zainal and Kris Bjornsen yet?”
There was a formal shaking of hands all round, hands which Kris noticed were callused and hardened by “civilian” labors. She noticed that everyone was respectful to both her and Zainal and told herself that she was imagining “hostile takeovers.” The cordiality of all nine did not seem forced. Their comments ranged from “Well done” to “A terrific boost to morale here.”
“What Earth rank is ‘Emassi’ equal to, Zainal?” Mitford asked, and winked at Kris.
“‘Emassi’ is captain,” Zainal informed Mitford, regarding him blandly. “Emassi outranks sergeant,” he added, and grinned.
“Beg pardon,” Peter Easley said, leaning forward politely, as if he thought he had missed something.
“Old joke,” Mitford said. “Have you been in the ship yet, gentlemen?”
They all nodded and grins widened.
“Might we get filled in on the details?” asked a silver-haired man—one of the generals, Kris thought. His eyes traveled from Zainal to Kris to Mitford and then Easley. “The implications of such a capture are staggering. Rastancil, Major General,” and he added with a rueful expression, “retired.”
“As I said,” Mitford began, “I was going to send for you as soon as I could report that Phase One was successful.” He gestured toward the ship, frowned briefly as there was a scuffle at the hatch. Cupping his hands over his mouth, he let out his parade-ground voice. “EASY DOWN THERE! OR NO ONE GOES IN! LATORE, DOYLE, MAKE ’EM FORM A PROPER LINE. Sorry about that,” and he turned back to the brass. “It is successful and I think it’s time I turned the matter over to Tactics or Strategy or whatever you want to call an appropriate body.”
“Sergeant, if you got this much done,” Rastancil said, “you’ve more than earned the right to sit in on a Phase Two, if you mean what I think you do.”
Mitford nodded sharply. “A Phase Two and a Phase Three.” He gestured to Zainal again. “Yeah, we do need to talk.” More sharp yells of protest from the spaceship. “Lemme handle this first,” he said, and slipping back into the runabout, his expression ominous, he circled down to the crowd around the hatch.
“Just what had you in mind for Phase Two, Emassi Zainal?” one of the naval men asked. He had a definite British accent, so Kris placed him as Geoffrey Ainger.
“I am Zainal, no more Emassi,” he said. “I will tell you about Phase One.”
“Then do it up at Narrow, why don’t you?” Kris suggested as yet more people swarmed across the field to set eyes on the space vehicle. “I’ll wait here for the sergeant.”
If there were one or two men who cleared their throats or raised eyebrows in surprise at that firmly delivered suggestion, Easley was so deft at easing them the way he wanted them to go that they all complied. When they got to the spot, Zainal crossed his ankles and sank gracefully to the ground. Kris sat beside him and Easley on Zainal’s other side, facing the others as they made themselves comfortable. He gave a concise report of Phase One, from the first report by Coo to the moment it landed. Kris was particularly proud of his English, maybe not perfectly grammatical, but concise.
When he was finished, a balding, stockily built man with a weather-beaten face and a fine scar from jaw to temple, held up his hand. “Why would you have been the object of such a concerted kidnap attempt, Zainal?”
“How much do you know of Eosi?”
“More than I like but not enough to understand why they’d hunt out one man,” was the reply.
“You are the American general, Bull Fetterman?” A nod answered Zainal’s question and Kris gave him full marks for having sorted out names and ranks. Zainal kept himself informed of what sort of people had been dropped, and knew, from Mitford’s report, of the presence of military and naval officers. “Then you will know that Eosi command Catteni maneuvers.” Fetterman wasn’t the only one who nodded. “They pick Emassi to make longer their lives.”
“Say what?” Bull Fetterman assumed a posture and an expression that had undoubtedly given him his nickname.
“They subsume the Catteni totally,” Kris said. “Zainal would have become a zombie…or worse…. He wouldn’t be dead but he wouldn’t have any personality left. Like Heinlein’s Puppet Masters’ yarn.”
“And the first scout came to take you back because you’d been chosen?” Easley asked.
Zainal nodded.
“I heard it was some sort of honor,” Rastancil said, though his expression suggested he didn’t consider it so.
“It is.” And then Zainal grinned. “But I was dropped. I stay.” He made a scissors motion with his big hands. “I am off the honors list.”
Easley blinked and grinned. Rastancil did, too.
“But it was duty?” Fetterman said.
“Not once I was dropped here,” And Zainal pointed emphatically at the ground.
“Someone has to take your place?” asked a black officer—late forties, Kris judged his age.
“Another male of my line. There are several,” Zainal said with a shrug.
“What about reprisals here?” another man asked. Kris thought he was Reidenbacker. She’d been reviewing in her mind all the names and occupations on drop lists and was putting them now to faces.
“The last place they will look is here,” Zainal said.
“You’re sure of that?” Admiral Scott asked, his tone barely civil.
“He’s got a point, Ray,” Rastancil replied. “If you were deserting, the last place you’d go to is the place you deserted from.”
“I do not desert,” Zainal said with a slight frown. “I was dropped. I stay.”
“Then that’s some kind of duty or just a personal preference?” Scott wanted to know.
“Zainal is referring to the fact that no one placed on one of these trial planetary occupations is ever released,” Kris said firmly and trying not to glare at Scott. “This is essentially a penal colony, you know. Zainal refused the option to leave because that would break another rule: only because it suited his superiors. If they’d retrieved him before he was sent off with us dissenters, it would’ve been another matter entirely. But they let him get sent.” She added that, whether it was true or not, just to make sure Scott wasn’t going to call Zainal a deserter or coward or anything like that.
“We concede the issue,” Rastancil said, smiling.
“So we can be sure we won’t be in for any reprisals because you brought the scout here,” Scott added.
“I think we’ve established that that is unlikely,” Easley said, trying to end that topic, “since Zainal deliberately took a course that would take him out of this system on his departure. Ah, here’s the sergeant.”
Mitford cleared the look of irritation from his face as he stepped down from his runabout.
“Damn Aarens claiming he had rights…” he muttered to Kris as he hunkered down beside her. “Finished discussing Phase One?”
“Indeed we have…” Easley began.
“Could we have a written report for the record?” Scott asked.
“One’s all we got paper for, sir,” Mitford said with no apology. “Kris, can you do it for me? So, Zainal, if you’ll describe Phase Two just as you told it to me three nights ago…”
Zainal suddenly rose to his feet. Even though most of the brass were sitting on a slope, his new position required them all to look up at him, as neat a bit of strategy as Kris had ever seen.
“The transports that make the drops come more often. Your planet is giving Catteni trouble they did not expect. The ships are not in good repair. We have weapons now. We can take a second ship.” He held up one hand to forestall questions that goal provoked. The gesture was one of such dignified command that even Scott subsided, scowling. “We take transport. Then scout takes load of metals from mechs and bomb and explode in space far enough up there…” He extended his hand upward. “Satellite is geo-syn-chron-ous,” and if he sounded out the syllables, he had them in the right order. “Can only see this side. Will see explosion.” He made the scissors gesture again.
“Now don’t try to tell me the Catteni will let that go without some sort of an in-depth investigation!” Scott said, making no attempt to disguise his skepticism and disapproval.
“Not if crew’s last message tells of…system’s failure.” Zainal had to work to find the words, but he found the right ones.
“Two famous last messages and each time a ship disappears?” Scott said, openly scoffing.
“Only Drassi are on transport ship. No big loss,” Zainal said coldly. “Catteni…” and he laid an emphasis on the word, “do not worry over small casualties. Ship or Drassi. You should know that by now.”
“Does that mean you, a Catteni officer, are willing to let us kill Catteni?” Scott demanded, watching Zainal with narrowed eyes.
Zainal gave a shrug. “War makes casualties. You know that. I know that. Or,” and he let a wry smile play on his lips, “do as Catteni do. Let crew go free, those that remain alive. If they are not found in one whole day,” and he lifted a finger, “they live and join us. They are dropped. They stay.”
Kris hastily covered her mouth with her hand but she scanned faces to see who understood Zainal’s wit. More got it than didn’t. These guys were sharp enough. Scott seemed the only hard critic.
“You did know about that Catteni rule, didn’t you, admiral?” Mitford asked very politely.
Scott gave him a curt nod.
“With respect, sir, in case no one mentioned it,” the sergeant went on, “Zainal was shanghaied aboard that ship in contradiction to that rule. Just in case any of you wondered why he didn’t feel he had to comply with any further orders from Emassi.”
“Thank you for explaining that, sergeant,” Easley said. “I think that should clear up any lingering doubts about where Zainal’s loyalties now lie. To return to Phase Two, what good does it do us to have a ship that may not be useful? Even if Zainal believes we can disregard reprisals.”
“I think of the Farmers,” Zainal said, and all eyes were on him again. “With two ships, we can send one with their transport…”
Scott dismissed that notion with a snort and looked away.
“Now, wait a minute, Scott,” Fetterman said. “I’m not entirely clear on these Farmers or Mech Makers or whatever you want to call them.” Then he turned back to Zainal. “You want them to know we’re squatting on their lan
d?”
“Squatting?” Puzzled, Zainal looked down at Kris for an explanation.
“Slang for taking over lands or a place that you don’t own,” she said quickly. “Actually, that’s Phase Three.” Before they started arguing over Phase Two, Kris wanted them to have some grasp of the scope of Zainal’s plans. “Forming an alliance with the Farmers against the Eosi because if they can farm a planet without any sentient being in charge, Zainal thinks they may have a sufficiently sophisticated technology to help the Catteni get out from under the domination of the Eosi—and stop being made into zombies and doing things because the Eosi order them to be done. Like take over Earth.”
“Whoa, there, young lady,” Fetterman said, but he was grinning and so was Rastancil, while Scott looked more annoyed than ever. “Pretty ambitious, if you ask me.”
“The longest journey starts with the first step,” she said in a firm but clear voice, and gestured back over her shoulder at the spaceship. “Step number one.”
“Kris has a point,” Easley said, once again taking charge as he seemed able to do almost effortlessly. “Until this morning none of us would have remotely considered the possibility of hijacking a Catteni ship…”
“Having a damaged transport’s no damned good…for going after Catteni or Eosi or these Farmers,” Scott said, standing up.
“But transport allows us to shift a lot of people to one of the other continents that the Farmers are not using,” Mitford said, beginning to let his irritation show. “It’s another step to owning ourselves instead of being a goddamned Catteni colony they think they can just walk into and take over when it gets on its feet. That’s the usual plan, isn’t it, Zainal?”
Kris watched Mitford winding himself up and looked anxiously in Easley’s direction, but the man was watching eagerly as if he wanted Mitford to sound off.
“Well, a scout’s a start on our Botany Defense Initiative and I’ll back Phase Two with every man and woman that’s been following me the past nine months.” Then Mitford caught hold of himself, took a deep breath. “If we pull that off, too, then we can reevaluate the situation. And there’s more than just the Catteni to worry about. There’re the Farmers and how they’ll take to us being dropped here on their prime real estate without their say-so. Now I know I’ve mentioned to you that most of us are beginning to think we ought to leave the Farmers’ installations alone and find our own. That’s why I have scout parties out all over the continent.”