by Eric Flint
“We didn’t,” said the captain.
“They’ve been waiting a long time,” said the Leewit. “Many generations.”
“Can you ask them about the captain’s mother?” asked Goth.
“They said she was on her way. The drums say she won’t be long. They’re very impressed that the captain is the son of the lieutenant, and the pilot. The old man says you look like your father, Captain. He was one of those who carried him to the camp of the cargo thieves.”
* * *
Goth couldn’t help but notice that the captain was looking a little pale. Space was vast, and even at the best speeds, travel was relatively slow, and subradio communication expensive. He’d been a young boy when he last saw his father and she knew that with the passing of time had assumed him to be dead…without having dealt with the grieving.
Now, faced with the crashed Imperial Navy scout ship, he was having to. “My mother never believed he was dead, you know,” he said to Goth abruptly. “I thought she just couldn’t accept it, and that it was easier for her to fool herself. Maybe if…”
Goth squeezed his hand. “And maybe if you’d married Illiya. We can’t do time over again, Captain. Look. I think she’s coming.”
Indeed, the crowd of Gyak were parting. Lina jumped down from a litter carried by a dozen of the little hominids. She was even paler than the captain. But she wasn’t looking at Pausert. She was looking at Goth, and rushing forward.
Not even the Leewit could have quite translated what she said as she hugged her and then her son, and then both of them, fiercely.
Besides, all the Gyak started cheering and clapping.
It took a while before anything sensible could be said. But when Lina could, she said, “Pnaden and his thugs are on their way. They’ve emptied their base, loaded up every weapon onto every vehicle they have, and are heading straight for here as fast as they can come.”
“Good,” said Captain Pausert. “If they want to fight, so do I.”
“On the other hand,” said Me’a, calmly, “why fight when you can just win?”
“What?” They all looked at her in puzzlement.
“They’re desperate,” said Me’a. “They’re bringing their entire strength—correct?”
“Correct,” said Lina. “They appear to have abandoned their spaceship, their base. They’re putting everything they have into this. My people are watching them, and when chance allows, killing a few of them. But they’re little hunter-gatherers against blasters and armored groundcars. Pnaden’s thugs have some heavy weaponry. They might be reluctant to use it against the spaceship. But…”
“They need either the ship, or at the very least, the main sequencer’s multiplier unit. The sequencer from the scout ship would do, if it is intact. But how long will it take them to get here?”
“They’re struggling through the jungle. I would guess at least another three or four hours. It takes too long to cut a trail, so it’s a case of finding a route.”
“I remember that all too well,” said Goth, with a grin. “It’d be quicker to walk.”
“If they try that, the Gyak will certainly shoot them,” said Lina. “But we have time. We can certainly prepare.”
“We could,” said Me’a. “Or we could just leave.”
Lina looked troubled. “I can’t just abandon the Gyak.”
“Oh, we won’t go far,” said Me’a. “Just to their base. Tell your drummers to get the Gyak to head there. We’ll wait until the smugglers are fairly close and take off. Captain Pausert can put us down on their landing field. We can deal with any defenders they’ve left there. I think the time has finally arrived for the Gyak to claim their share of the cargo there.”
“And I can get their ship going again,” said Goth. “The parts are there. Only…I’m not so sure that I can manage a launch.”
“That is something I am capable of,” said Me’a. “I’m not a pilot of Captain Pausert’s skill, but I could do it. I could certainly manage a landing from orbit, but not the sort of atmospheric tricks the captain showed us he could do. But we will have their own fortifications there. It may not even be necessary.”
“Besides, the captain and I could cripple their groundcars, if we had a few Gyak to guide us,” said Goth.
“Yes…but I cannot go,” said Lina. “The Gyak will think I am deserting them.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said the Leewit. “I like them. They’re funny.”
Lina’s eyes twinkled. “They say a lot of rude things. As they say you do too. The drums are telling about it. And you have one of the pucca. They all keep them, combing them for their hair. It is how they make their fabric here.”
“If the Leewit remains, I remain,” said Ta’zara. “I am her sworn bodyguard. If she travels overland, I must go with her.”
Me’a grimaced. “That will be somewhat awkward for me,” she said.
Lina smiled. “Do you imagine that they would let you walk or wheel yourself? They insist on carrying me everywhere.”
Me’a nodded. “Then why not? We can set off now, and the captain can take off a little later. Maybe even take a few of these Gyak with him. If they think at all like the clans on Na’kalauf, they’ll see that as a safeguard. Ours with them, theirs with ours.”
“Just make sure they’re not too frail,” said Goth. “I’d go on foot with you too, but I’m going to work the laterals, and then the guns, if they’re needed.”
“Besides,” said Lina with a trace of sadness, “you should stay with Pausert. It was a choice I wish I’d had. But the fact that you’re alive and appear well…it gives me some trace of hope for Kaen.”
“I thought he was dead,” said Goth.
Lina closed her eyes, briefly. “Yes. Effectively, anyway. He’s in the open-stasis tomb. He took the toxin from the dart intended for me. The Gyak insisted on putting him in there, at the last. He told them to. I…don’t know if he was alive or dead, then. But…” she shook her head. “I didn’t think a cure was possible. I gave orders for them to do the same for me, once I had finished his work. I think they may consider that to be destroying Pnaden’s camp and capturing his ship. To be honest, if I have done that and seen my son find you, Vala, I would not be unhappy with that.”
“I reckon we got some sorting out to do,” said the Leewit, gruffly. She didn’t deal with emotions comfortably. “Come on. Let’s get going. We can deal with all of that once we’ve sorted out their base and them.”
A few minutes later they’d all disappeared into the forest, barring the three young warriors who were going with the Venture. They were part of Lina’s guard and had learned some words of Galactic, having worked for her, and, previously, on the smuggler base. The Leewit had given them a slew of instructions, and seen them safely strapped in. They had the hatch open so they could hear the drums and could tell the captain when Pnaden’s thugs approached—that is, if they noticed. Goth wondered if introducing them to ice cubes in the drinks she made for all of them had been a good idea. They were certainly jabbering enough about them. But she’d had to do something to entertain them, because it was proving a very long wait.
Sitting next to the captain, Goth said, “We’ll come back. I want to go to those wrecked ships and read the story from them. Especially the scout ship.”
“Hard to believe anyone got out of that alive,” said the captain. “I wish I had known him better. Seen a bit more of him. I don’t remember him that well.”
“I’ll tell you at least part of his story,” promised Goth.
There was no need for the captain’s trademark takeoff, but he gave it to them anyway. The first-time passengers did compete with the roaring of the engines with their yelling, but they were the first Gyak for many thousands of years to see the forest from the sky on the viewscreens. The captain did land better than their colony ship had, though.
Goth scrambled away to the forward nova gun before the smoke and steam of landing even cleared. The captain used his external scanners to survey th
e compound, and, particularly, the other ship. Goth shifted the nova gun to lock on it, but the larger ship’s turrets never moved. The captain scanned the rest of the base carefully. There was no sign of life. “They can’t all have gone, surely?”
“Guess they could, Captain. This lot don’t trust each other much. How about if I go out in no-shape…?”
“No. We’ll go together. Vezzarn can stay on the guns. Our passengers can wait a little. Lucky I got the Leewit to teach me the word for ‘wait.’”
So they went out into the smuggler base. It was quite eerie and empty. Even the camp of the Gyak who had remained as very little more than slaves was empty. That had a broken-down fence. So Goth and the captain came back to the Venture and let the three Gyak warriors out. One of the three had a small drum with him and started beating on it.
In the meantime, Goth and the captain went to the paratha processing shed, and collected the electronic pieces Goth had stashed there. In the process they did find some people in the cells. Terrified, abandoned people, including Vanessa. “Let us out, please,” begged Vanessa.
“We’ll get to you later,” said the captain, staying Goth’s hand. “Right now you could be safer inside.”
They had barely gotten the parts reinstalled and the Bolivar capable of flying again, when the drumming announced that the first of the Gyak had arrived. Unsurprisingly, they were carrying the Leewit, wearing a broad hat of metal-tree leaves. The others were not far behind.
Several hours later, there wasn’t much of a base for the smugglers to return to. It was all broken down in a surprisingly orderly fashion, with startling speed, with everything demolished and carried off to the jungle. From the wire to the buildings it came down and was pulled apart, with Lina proving exceptionally adept at dividing things up. “I spent years uniting the various little tribes. Only one tribe stayed with the smugglers, believing they’d be rewarded in the end. They’re hunter-gatherers, so they live in small family tribes, and a bit of steel is a treasure. They’re all happy so long as their own little tribe got something. Not that they don’t have their own treasures, and tools and weapons, but this was a hard world for humans crash-landed with nothing to adapt to.”
“They are humans then? I mean the hair? The tails?” asked Goth.
“The hair is just hair. And the tails are just plaited hair. They wear their hair over their faces to protect their skin in the sun.” She cocked her head. “By the way, the drums say the smugglers are returning. They should get back a bit faster than they got there, as they now have a trail to follow. What are your plans then?”
“Well, the Bolivar is ready to fly. I think the despair of coming back to nothing, not even a base, will give them a decent lesson. We may add them to the other prisoners we’ve got locked in the empty hold on the Bolivar.” Pausert sighed. “We still need to talk, to plan. I know this may seem strange, but we haven’t actually discharged one of our main reasons for coming here. I think we may have been mistaken in that. We were looking for aliens…to return to them something they had lost.”
“This was an alien world,” said Lina. “It’s still full of these huge alien structures. I know the smugglers landed originally to try and blast one open, but they failed. They should have tried the next one, the one you landed near to. It’s open, or at least part of it is. It is a stasis tomb of some kind. Or I think that’s what it is. Nothing rots or changes visibly inside. The Gyak use it as burial place for their lieutenants.”
“Lieutenants?”
“Yes, the surviving officer of the colony ship was a lieutenant. And thus that’s what their leaders have always been called. The tombs are very strange places. You can’t go past a certain line, without the stasis field taking effect. They push their dead in with a long, flat paddle. I am their current lieutenant.” She hesitated. “Forgive me. But I have been talking to the Leewit, and Me’a, and Ta’zara. I remember enough about the stories about my Great Uncle Threbus too…I don’t dare to hope…but Kaen… Is it possible?”
“We’ll find out, Mother,” said the captain. “But even Karres can’t do everything.”
The drums could be heard beating like a pulse across the hot jungle during her silence. At length she sighed. “I already have more than I hoped for. The drums say that one of the lead vehicles broke down. A fight started between the smugglers from that one and the next two. Three of the vehicles are burning, and they are fighting each other. There are only two vehicles left. I don’t think a lot of them will be coming back.”
“And when they do,” said Pausert, “it will be to nothing. I think that’ll be a small payback for what they did to others, to the Gyak, to my father, to you, and what they would have done to Goth. We’re going back to the wreck of my father’s ship. I felt that was the right place to be. Let’s let Me’a know she has a ship to fly. I think I’ll give her Vezzarn to help with the process. He is experienced, even if he doesn’t have the confidence. If any of the Gyak would like a flight—we will have some space on both ships.”
Lina smiled. “Well, the three warriors who came with you are very occupied in telling everyone what great sky-travelers they are, so, yes, just to stop them becoming too vain—they’re nice youngsters—I think we should take as many as you can. I can go with you, I think, this time. Let me go and arrange it all. It’s best to keep busy, I find. It stopped me brooding. I will arrange for the surviving smugglers to continue being watched.”
So they returned to the site of the scout ship’s crash. “I think,” said Pausert, when both ships were safely set down, “that we ought to go and have a look at this alien building. Maybe take the Leewit along too.”
Lina nodded. “But, honestly, it is something that should be handled with some respect to the Gyak. It’s their tomb of kings, so to speak. They have a feast planned to celebrate that the cargo has finally come and I owe them that much. They’re still not sure about a ship to take them home. A lot are saying that this is home.”
“That’s true, I suppose. Look: The Leewit is feeding the Arerrerr. She says it is very happy with the leaves—they’re all the right kind of leaves,” said Goth.
Lina laughed. “About half the food here is leaves of some sort. It’s a strange world. Quite surprising the little Gyak have adapted to it so well. Would you like to visit the original ship? It’s very old, and is now something of a temple. The original crew must have been desperate for rescue. There’s an old treadmill that the Gyak treat like a prayer wheel. They keep it turning night and day. They claim it calls to heaven for help to come and fetch them.”
“It does,” said Me’a. “It still sends out a weak signal.”
They went down the trail to the old ship, while the feast was being prepared. It was…strange.
“Where did it come from? I’ve never seen any ship quite like it,” said the captain.
Goth touched the wall of what must once—long before trees now taller than the Venture grew through the twisted I-beams—have been a control room. “It came from what we call old Yarthe. In the days before the first Empire,” she said in a curiously singsong voice. “Take me away, please, Captain. I don’t want to be here anymore. Too many thousands of people died here. Too many dreams died here.”
So they left. “Your father made extensive notes on the old ship,” said Lina. “Fully half of it is engines, but he recognized none of it. He wrote that it might be some kind of dimensional manipulation drive. I think he might have hoped to get a working ship built out of it—but that, it seems, was a dream. The Gyak don’t even really work metal—they just use pieces of the metal-leaf trees. He wrote textbooks for them. They have some ancient texts—on metal sheets, from the ship, but the script was not anything he recognized. He was teaching them…” She sighed. “I went on with his work. Of course, his expertise was astrogation, engineering, and space combat. Mine was xenobotany. So we took different directions.”
“But they’re better off than they were?” asked Goth.
“Maybe,” she said
with a smile. “They’re generally a happy people. They like to hunt, they keep their pucca, and they love their families. There are worse places to live and people to live amongst, now they have gotten rid of those smugglers, who were set on making them slaves and clearing their forests.”
She cocked her head. “Speaking of which, the surviving smugglers are apparently killing each other again. The drums say they’re out of lightning to throw, and are hitting each other. And both of their surviving vehicles are now burning.”
“Lightning?”
“Blasters.”
Goth laughed. “The boxes of spare charges are still in the lubricant store on the Bolivar. I found them there.”
By the time they got back to the Venture the feast was prepared under the trees. There were hundreds of Gyak, with bright sashes of woven rochat hair, and various bright seed ornaments in their hair. Everyone, the Venture’s crew included, sat on the ground around the cook fires, as people brought platters of food to them. They were of course brought the first and choicest of platters.
“What do we eat with?” asked the Leewit, looking at the piled leaf platter.
“Your fingers. And they’re waiting for us to begin.” Lina took a small piece of the varied pile on her platter.
“Stop,” said Goth, sniffing at the food. “It’s full of paratha.”
Lina began to laugh. “You’ll struggle to find any food on Lumajo that isn’t. And if I’d finished my work on Morteen on the supposed drug instead of getting myself on board the smuggler’s ship, there probably wouldn’t be any there, or in half the Empire either. It’s entirely harmless, except for binding some toxic metals and making them safe to eat—without which the Gyak would starve. The problem with paratha is not that you eat it, it’s not eating enough of it. If you only eat a flake, all you want is more. If you just keep eating it, you get mightily sick of it. I worked it out fairly fast as a prisoner. I could have told Pnaden and his thugs too, and helped them succeed in growing it. Honestly. It’s a shade-loving forest plant. Grows wild all over the forest. It likes a compost of metal-tree leaves, and lots of moisture. And they’re trying to grow it as a field crop in the blazing sun, after they had their fallout with the Gyak tribes. It’s stunted and most of it dies.” She put her morsel in her mouth and chewed. “Eat it. You are quite safe.”
