by Timothy Zahn
Reflexively, she ducked, nearly losing her footing as her balance shifted. The object shot across the river in a shallow arc; and she had just enough time to notice that it was pulling a slender rope behind it when it crashed into the tree branches just over her head. She frowned up at it.
To find that what Kahkitah had just thrown at her was the top section of one of the medical center’s crutches, and that the rope tied to it was the plastic tubing from one of the oxygen tanks.
She looked across the river again. You’re kidding, she mouthed.
Either they couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell them or else they didn’t care. Duncan was busy pantomiming someone pushing something over and down, while Carp was pointing repeatedly at the tree beside her.
Nicole got the tubing between her hands and gave it a tentative tug. It was thick enough that she could easily hold on to it, and it certainly seemed strong enough to handle her weight.
But even if it was, she was no good at tying knots. How was she supposed to tie this to one of the trees without risking it coming loose?
Duncan was still jabbing his hand downward, and pointing to the tubing. Frowning, Nicole took another look at the crutch top. She’d used a set of those crutches once, and she knew how sturdy they were. She could also see that the tubing had been tied very securely around it by someone who knew what he was doing.
Duncan was pointing down. Carp was pointing at the tree …
She nodded as she finally understood. About waist high the trunk split into four parts, each of which then stretched upward with all the branches and leaves and stuff she’d already seen. Duncan and Carp were telling her to wedge the crutch top and tubing in where it wouldn’t come out easily.
It took her two tries to get the thing set properly. She gave the tubing a good solid tug, proving to herself that it wouldn’t simply break or untie itself, then gave a thumbs-up to the group across the river. Carp gave her a thumbs-up in return and then beckoned her toward them. Beside her, the tube went taut as Kahkitah wrapped the other end around his big hands and leaned backward, bracing himself against the side of another tree. Taking a deep breath, Nicole got a solid grip around the tubing and stepped into the river.
And instantly fell in up to her chest as the current knocked her feet out from under her.
Somehow, she managed to keep her grip on the tubing. Fighting for balance on the rocks below, feeling her feet and legs already starting to go numb with the cold, she managed to get back up on the riverbank. She unlocked her fingers from the tubing and looked across at the others.
She couldn’t tell from their expressions whether they were relieved that she hadn’t been carried off down the river or disappointed that she’d fallen in the first place. For a moment they held an inaudible conversation, and then Carp looked back at her and held his arm up, hooking the elbow downward as he pointed at the tubing.
Nicole made a face. But she still had to get across, and at least in that position she wouldn’t have to worry about losing her grip. Hooking her left elbow over the tubing and gripping her left wrist with her right hand, she again stepped into the water.
The current was as strong as ever, but this time she was ready for it and managed to keep her balance. She blinked away a sudden cloud of spray and started across.
She fell twice more before she reached the other bank, but both times she was able to get her feet back under her and keep going. Even better, with her higher grip on the tube the water only came up to her waist.
Still, she was shivering violently by the time Carp and Duncan grabbed her arms and pulled her up the bank. “You all right?” Carp shouted to her.
“If we get moving before Bungie gets here,” she shouted back.
Carp’s eyes widened. “Bungie?”
“Long story,” Nicole said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
eleven
“I don’t believe it,” Jeff growled, once again stretched out on his bed in the makeshift medical room. “They put Bungie in charge of their squad?”
“Not sure it was their idea,” Nicole said. “I got the feeling the Shipmasters pushed him on them.”
“Well, if he brings the same effort to fighting as he does to real work, we’ve got nothing to worry about,” Levi said.
“This is his real work,” Nicole growled. “Or as real as work gets for him. Fighting and trying to con people are his big things.”
“I assume he’s mostly going to do the latter,” Carp said. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole confessed. “He seems to have everyone over there convinced he can win no matter what weapons they give us.”
“Can he?” Jeff asked quietly.
Nicole swallowed. “I don’t know that, either.”
For a moment no one spoke. “Okay,” Jeff said at last. “I think I convinced the Shipmasters that I still need a couple more days to recover before I can handle any serious exercise. We’ve got that long to come up with something.”
“Can we convince them you need longer?” Carp asked.
“You were there,” Jeff reminded him. “Did they look like they could be fooled more than a couple more days?”
“I wasn’t thinking about fooling them,” Carp said. “I was thinking more like if you happened to break your leg or something—”
“No,” Nicole snapped. “Absolutely not.”
“Not so fast,” Jeff said, his tone thoughtful. “He might have a point. If I can’t lead our side, they might forget the whole thing.”
“No,” Nicole said again. “They’re here to make money off slave soldiers, and now they’ve got it stuck in their heads that they’ve had a whole crop of them under their noses this whole time. They’re not going to give up the game just because they’ve lost one of their players.”
“But not just one of their players, one of their key players,” Jeff countered. “Remember, you and I are the only ones they’ve seen fight.”
“You two and Bungie,” Levi murmured.
“Actually, I’m not sure they’ve seen Bungie do anything but talk,” Nicole said, frowning. An odd idea was starting to come together … “Jeff, remember Plato tried to convince them that you and I were different somehow, and that normal humans couldn’t fight. Maybe we can still go that direction.”
“I thought you said the green group probably wouldn’t be willing to play ball,” Carp reminded her.
Nicole braced herself. “I wasn’t planning to give them a choice.”
“Whoa,” Levi said cautiously. “You’re not suggesting we sneak over there at night and break their legs, are you?”
“I was thinking of something a little safer,” Nicole said. “Like maybe putting something in their food.”
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “Something to make them dizzy or uncoordinated. I don’t know what kinds of drugs would do that.”
“You think you could get it into their food?”
Nicole nodded. “I know I could.”
“Into their food,” Jeff said, “and into ours.”
The others’ mouths dropped. “In our food?” Levi demanded.
“You’re not serious,” Carp added.
“Think about it,” Jeff said. “We all need to show the same symptoms if we’re going to convince them that humans react like rabbits to the thought of fighting.” He looked at Nicole. “This has got some possibilities. Let’s follow it a second and see where it leads. Do you know what kind of drugs might be aboard and where they would be kept?”
“No, but I can find out,” Nicole said. “One problem: I have to get back to Q4, and that means getting past the Shipmasters and Wisps on Q1. Maybe Q2, too, if they’ve figured out how to take control of that group.”
There was a soft bird warble. “May I help?” Kahkitah asked, almost shyly.
“Of course,” Nicole assured him, feeling a little ashamed of having ignored him through the whole conversation. When the bi
g Ghorf didn’t move or speak for a while, it was oddly easy to forget he was even there. “I might need you to kick more Wisps out of my way.”
“You’ve been punting Wisps?” Jeff asked, frowning. “You didn’t mention that one.”
“It’s a little complicated,” Nicole said. “Right now, I need to know if you’ve run into any buckets around here.”
“Buckets?” Carp asked.
“Or something else that can hold a lot of water,” Nicole said. “This big yellow splotch on my shoulder makes me pretty visible. Getting the jumpsuit wet made everything turn black.”
“Yeah, we noticed that,” Levi said. “But they’ll still recognize your face, won’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “But I can’t do anything about my face. I can make the jumpsuit color go away.”
“How were you planning to get out of here?” Jeff asked. “Through one of the main doors?”
“That’s probably what they’ll expect me to do,” Nicole said. “Luckily, there’s another choice. Kahkitah and I came down from the Shipmaster observation balcony above the arena, which is where I left the Q2 Wisps who brought us over here. I’m thinking that’s the way we’ll go out.”
“Assuming the Wisps are still there,” Levi murmured.
“And assuming the Shipmasters aren’t,” Carp added.
Nicole winced. “Yeah, that could be a problem,” she conceded.
“Well, either way, you don’t want a bucket,” Jeff said.
“I just told you—”
“Because if you’re dripping water you’ll be leaving puddles and wet footprints the whole the way.”
Nicole stopped, feeling her face warming. “Oh. Right. Damn.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t get you wet,” Jeff assured her. “It just means we don’t completely soak you.”
“Right,” Nicole said. “So … just a spray from the water tap in the food dispenser room?”
“Or we could pat you down with a wet towel or something,” Jeff said. “Levi, go see if you can find something she can use, will you?”
“Sure,” Levi said. He straightened up from the doorway where he’d been leaning and headed out, turning toward the bathroom area.
“As long as we’ve got a minute,” Jeff went on, “what are the Wisps doing that Kahkitah needs to throw them around?”
“Okay, but just a minute,” Nicole warned. They had to get going before the Wisps tracked her down. “The thing is that the Wisps in this part of the Fyrantha seem to be under the Shipmasters’ control. A group of them came at us as soon as we got here, and—well, I’m not sure exactly what they were planning. But I’m pretty sure they were at least trying to keep me from getting into the arena.”
“Or if you got here, to evict you as fast as they could,” Jeff said thoughtfully. “I assume you’re going to take one of the side doors out of the arena like the one you disappeared through back in Q4?”
Nicole winced at the memory. She hadn’t left through that door on purpose, but the fact remained that her unexpected departure had left Jeff alone to face an angry group of aliens. “At least this time you’re—never mind. I was going to say that at least this time you’re safe. Only you aren’t, are you?”
“Not so much,” Jeff said with a wry smile. “But at least I don’t have the Wisps hunting me.”
“Maybe not today,” Nicole said. “I wouldn’t make any bets on tomorrow, though.”
“Neither should they,” he countered darkly. “You found something?” he added, his eyes shifting over her shoulder.
Nicole turned to see Levi reappear around the corner, holding a smooth metal container in one hand and a folded towel in the other. “Spare collector for the trail mix they’ve been feeding us,” he said, lifting the container a couple of inches, “and a towel. Sorry, the water’s pretty cold—the drinking spigot was closer, and it sounded like you were in a hurry.”
“Can’t be colder than that river,” Nicole assured him, walking over and taking the towel. “Let’s see if this works.”
“And while she’s doing that,” Jeff added, “see if you can scare up another of those containers and fill it with water.”
“You thirsty?” Levi asked, frowning.
“Not exactly,” Jeff said, stepping to a cabinet along the wall and opening one of the drawers. “And I need it here by the time Nicole’s finished,” he added over his shoulder. “So hoof it.”
It took more water than Nicole had expected to turn her jumpsuit black, though less than she’d feared. Levi did indeed make it back before she was finished, still frowning, with the container full of water that Jeff had requested.
Jeff accepted Levi’s donation with a nod, then went back to whatever he was fiddling with. Nicole tried to see what he was doing, but the table he was working on was just out of her view and she didn’t want to drip water any more than she had to.
Finally, she was finished. “How does it look?” she asked, a shiver running through her as she set down the towel and did a slow turn. Levi had been right about the water being cold.
“Good,” Jeff said. “I can tell where the yellow splotch is if I look hard, but from any distance it should be invisible. You’d better get going before it starts wearing off.”
“Right,” Nicole said, moving toward the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” Jeff called. “Be ready—with luck we’ll be able to clear some of the Wisps and Shipmasters away for you.”
Nicole frowned. “How?”
“If it works, you’ll know,” Jeff said. “If it doesn’t, I guess you’ll be on your own.”
“Jeff—”
“We need to go,” Kahkitah said, taking her arm. “Thank you, Jeff.”
“No problem,” Jeff said. “Good luck.”
Nicole had been worried that the Wisps who came into the arena after her might have noticed and removed the cloth strip she and Kahkitah had used to prop the door open. But it was still sitting where they’d left it, and with a little effort they got the door open.
“What will we do if the Shipmasters are still in the observation room?” Kahkitah asked softly as they carefully closed the door again over the cloth strip.
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. She’d thought about removing the strip, but it had occurred to her that even if she and Kahkitah found another route into the arena they might still want to get out again this way. Taking out the strip now would make that impossible. “We’ll just have to see what we’ve got and go from there.”
He waited until she had the door set the way she wanted it. “There’s still the rack of weapons,” he reminded her.
Nicole felt her throat tighten. Yes: the greenfire weapons. Not just weapons, but weapons she even knew how to use.
But an open attack on the Shipmasters would be the absolutely worst thing she could do. “You heard what I told the others,” she said. “We have to prove to them that human beings don’t fight. Come on.”
She started up the steps, but paused as Kahkitah put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps I could try to fight them,” he offered.
Nicole snorted. “You want your people to end up dead on someone else’s battlefield?”
“The Shipmasters know we would make terrible soldiers,” Kahkitah said. “We are … you know already. Strong, but not very clever.”
“I don’t think cleverness is what they’re looking for,” Nicole told him. “Doesn’t matter. Neither of us is going to fight them. If they’re there, we’ll just have to figure out a way around them.”
“And trust that they didn’t chase away the Wisps from Q2.”
Nicole grimaced. “Yeah. That, too.”
There had been occasional times in Nicole’s life—not many, but one or two—when everything had gone exactly the way she’d hoped or planned. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of them. She and Kahkitah were only halfway up the stairs when she caught the faint murmur of conversation from above. She put a warning hand
on Kahkitah’s arm, and they took the rest of the stairway at an even more cautious pace. They reached the top; motioning Kahkitah to stay where he was, she crawled over to the waist-high ceramic barrier that ran around the inner edge of the wide balcony and eased her head carefully up for a look.
They were there, all right: three of them, Fievj and the same two Shipmasters who’d been there before, standing together on the far side of the observation deck.
Nicole froze in place, wondering if she’d been seen. But their full attention was elsewhere, either on some of the instruments beside them or down into the arena itself.
She chewed at her lip, trying to think. Three Shipmasters, all of them between her and the door where the Q2 Wisps were hopefully waiting. The first quarter of that trip would be easy enough—as long as she and Kahkitah stayed low, the barrier would keep them out of the Shipmasters’ sight. But as soon as they rounded the curve and came within sight of the trio, all bets were off.
Lowering her head again, she looked around. There were a few consoles around the outer edge of the balcony, similar to consoles she’d seen elsewhere on the Fyrantha, and a couple of them looked wide enough for even Kahkitah to hide behind if the Shipmasters weren’t watching very closely. But getting to one of them would mean crossing a lot of open space, and unless the Shipmasters were really locked on to what they were doing there was no way they could miss that. Jeff had said he had a way to draw away the Wisps and Shipmasters, but she still had no idea what that plan might be.
No, she and Kahkitah were on their own. Somehow, Nicole needed to find a way to either distract them or get them out of here entirely.
She was still looking around for inspiration when one of the Shipmasters made a horrible screech.
Reflexively, Nicole dropped flat onto her stomach, her whole body shaking. If they’d seen her—and with that rack of greenfire weapons within easy reach of where they were standing—
“Look there!” the translation came. “Look there! Fire!”
Nicole felt her eyes go wide. Fire? Clenching her teeth, she eased her eyes back up over the barricade.
