Fenrir, page 38
He snatched that box up and bounded upward and forward, to the next cross-aisle, turning the corner just as Engara fired again. Three tendrils gripping the weapon precariously, his others shoved the box inward, let his mouth rip open the seals while he once more swung into a different row.
Packaging and sealant was terribly bitter, but more important was the smooth curved contour just under his tongue. He spat out the packaging as his tendrils pulled out three packs, dropping the rest of the box. No matter—if this battle lasts that long I’ve either won or I’m dead.
Morda hit the last cross-aisle and turned back toward the rear of the room, gambling that both his pursuers would have moved toward the other row. The desperate bet paid off—neither was visible as he passed down two rows and turned down toward the side wall. Momentarily out of lines of fire, Mordanthine shoved the energy pack into the lightbeam rifle.
Instantly, the telltale lights gleamed a reassuring blue and peach. Charged, and it recognizes the clear-code. It will work for me.
Mordanthine spun around, feeling blood spraying from his rear but buoyed by a moment of hope.
A flicker of shadow gave him a single moment to raise the weapon before Engara skidded into sight, pelletblaster already up. Mordanthine pressed the firing stud.
Blue-white light blared out, searing a path through the air that slashed through two of Engara’s tendrils and scored a line down his side. Even so, the other Illikai fired almost at the same time, and one pellet stung Morda at the base of his already-injured arm. Fire and rot take them!
“Branches! He’s got a beam gun!”
There was a rattle and screech on the floor, Natta slamming to a halt just scant centimeters before she would have come into Morda’s line of fire. “Rot.”
Morda reached the wall. The shelves were anchored here, but there was half a meter of clearance at the top, allowing better air circulation. The energy of panic was unfortunately starting to ebb, but he forced his arms to obey, to dismiss the pain and the beginning dizziness, and swarmed up the shelves. They’re made of steel; unless they climb up here, too, Natta and her friends will have a hard time shooting me through that.
He had a good view of the upper part of the room here. If they climbed to his level, he’d have an excellent chance of putting a hole right through them.
Of course, that depends on them not having more clear-codes. I don’t think Natta could have gotten a universal code, but if she has any others at all . . .
“He’s gone up.” Natta’s voice was tense and angry.
Hoped it would take a few moments longer than that to figure it out.
“Alerith,” he murmured, “Imjanai, I can hold out here for . . . well, minutes, perhaps. But not very long.”
“My automata are not made for combat,” Alerith said. “It will take time to route security units. However, other assistance is on its way. You will have to hold the room until it can arrive, however.”
Other . . . ? He almost asked, but then sealed his speaking passages. The humans? Or Imjanai, or even Uloresim? Either way, I should say nothing. They may hear anything I say, even if they cannot hear Alerith.
Rattling noises came from three rows away. He heard the zip-zip sound of someone cutting open a sealed package, then several clinking sounds. Silence, broken only by indistinct hints of motion that he couldn’t place.
Abruptly, a gray sphere was lofted up to the top of his row of shelves. With a convulsive lunge, Morda hurled himself across two more rows of shelves before the grenade detonated, spraying fine-edged shrapnel everywhere. Somehow, none of it quite touched him, but that was sheer unadulterated luck. The buzzing rattle of Natta’s needlespitter sang out as he crossed, but that, too, missed.
So they have at least a code for basic shipboard grenades. It made sense; they’d chosen weapons that were meant for minimum damage to the structure of Tulima Ohn, but still effective on people. His lightbeam rifle was much more powerful than their guns, but he needed a chance to aim, to figure out where they were before they shot—or threw a grenade—at him again.
They know where I am. They have to. Even if they hadn’t been able to tell from movement and sound just how many shelves he’d moved over, there would be a trail of blood dripping down each row, pointing straight toward him.
A scraping noise, but this one he caught direction from, aimed, fired through the shelf and down.
A scream and curse was the answer. That will make you cautious!
“Natta! Are you all right?”
“Burned my left forefoot. Nothing terrible. Quiet, he’s shooting by sound!”
Mordanthine confirmed Nattasoin’s guess by firing once at each voice, then heaved himself to another shelf.
There was a distant thud, and the air seemed to shift for a moment.
“What— Voalanta, what was that?”
“I don’t know,” answered the youngest of the Zalak. “It came from centerward. Should I look?”
“I . . . wait.” Natta’s voice had moved two or three rows; no point in shooting now. “Broken branches, we don’t have time for this. The Yuula will get here soon, assuming that traitor Uloresim doesn’t catch up. Voala, get to Three-Five-Zero and prepare. If we don’t join you—or if the traitors get there first—you know what to do.”
“Tree and Root,” Voala said in a sort of horrified joy. “Yes, I know.” There was a rattle as she departed.
Rot! “Alerith,” he whispered. “Voala’s headed to the antimatter.” All I can hope is that Alerith’s automata can stop Voala before . . .
“I’m covering the door,” Engarafa said. “Morda, you’re not getting out of here.”
You’re most likely right. He was starting to feel sluggish, even the uninjured arms vaguely aching from loss of blood. But I’m not dumb enough to answer you, not yet.
More movement; Nattasoin adjusting her position, looking down the rows, following the trail of blood until it ended, most likely. Once she knew which row Morda was on, another grenade. She probably didn’t have access to more than one box—if she’d had a broad-access clear-code, she’d have gotten herself a beam gun to cut Morda down.
But a box had six grenades, and Mordanthine really didn’t think he could survive another five on luck. It sounded like Natta must be getting close to his row, so he took a chance and fired three times in that general direction.
Natta cursed, but it was just startlement, not pain. Still, it made her cautious, and he took the chance to move over two more shelves—and then back one. Confuse the trail, give me a few more minutes. He couldn’t go forward too many more rows, anyway; he’d end up in sight of the door and Engarafa.
If I’d had more time, could have gotten a shield, or armor. But if he’d had enough time for that, he’d have been able to stop Natta in the first place. Might as well wish for a branch to the Tree itself.
Sounds of a needlespitter echoed down the corridor from the distance. That’s Voalanta! Must have seen the automata approaching. Regular maintenance automata didn’t feel pain, but they weren’t armored, either; the high-velocity needles could damage them, and would.
Another grenade arced into sight—this one aimed at the shelf he’d been on before. She guessed I’d doubled back, just thought I’d come farther! He squeezed down, closing his eyes, covering his head with the injured arm. This time, a spray of stabbing pains ripped across his body. Fire and rot, I can’t take much more of this. He blasted another three shots in the direction of the grenade’s source, and then one toward the door, just to keep Engarafa worried.
The other shelves were starting to look farther away. Not sure if I can swing that far again. But he had to. She knew where he was.
Mordanthine sucked in the deepest breath he could, then forced himself into motion one more time, toward the back of the room again—just as a third grenade hurtled toward him.
He was already moving, and the sight of the gray sphere sent the last dregs of his furinisin surging through his veins. Arms and legs pulled and lunged, and he bounded across one, two, three, and then let himself drop to the floor.
That put the shelves between him and the blast, and—just possibly—gave him one last advantage. If Natta followed . . . if she thought he was still up on the top . . .
Nattasoin shuffled into view, eyes focused upward.
She registered the movement as he aimed the lightbeam, yanked herself sideways in the moment he fired. Instead of punching straight through Natta, Mordanthine’s bolt of energy blew the muzzle of her needlespitter to vapor.
The flare of boiling composite and metal dazzled Morda, and when his vision cleared Natta was nowhere in sight. She’s still got three grenades, and she outweighs me. I’m not safe yet, not close. She might have access to another spitter or a pelletblaster, too.
There was a faint darkening, a shadow from the front. The door! Is it closing . . . ?
Engarafa shrieked, a scream of unbelieving horror, and his pelletblaster fired, a staccato pulsing chatter of desperate destruction. Pellets ricocheted about the room before a tremendous deep-throated blast almost deafened Morda.
“Engarafa!” Natta shouted.
Something moved forward, something that moved with a measured thud . . . thud . . . thud of sound unlike anything Mordanthine had ever heard.
“Nattasoin,” said Alerith’s voice, coming from the same location. “Surrender. Engarafa is, I am afraid, dead, and both Voalanta and Kallabatin are in custody. We do not wish to kill you. The Illikai cannot afford to lose our people.”
Through the small gaps between weapons and other supplies, Mordanthine could see an immense and alien shape, head nearly reaching the ceiling two and a half meters up, made of polished alloy and composite, and felt his colors shift reflexively, camouflaging him instinctively from something monstrous.
“You have already lost our people,” Natta said, her voice strained and yet almost peaceful. “But I will not be lost. The Tree knows its own.”
The triple blast was muffled, and a pathetic and horrid spray of blood and flesh showered the room.
There was a moment of silence, then an alien, yet familiar sound, a sigh. A deep voice spoke, its incomprehensible sounds translated to words: “All clear. She . . . had grenades.”
“We heard.” Alerith’s voice was filled with sorrow. “Mordanthine, are you all right?”
“I am . . . alive. That is . . . a human?”
The huge figure moved into sight, and he could now see one of the broad human faces looking out through a window—a faceplate—at the top, a face fringed with light-colored hair. “Sergeant Peter VanBuskirk, Royal Netherlands Marine Corps,” the alien said. Then, in a tone even Morda could recognize as shocked, “O mijn God!”
Mordanthine realized that he had, somehow, dropped the beam gun. His tendrils seemed very weak, and he could barely lift his arms. “I think . . . I do not look good, Imjanai,” he said. “Please apologize . . . to my rescuer.”
The world began to dwindle, making even the giant armored alien shrink, even as it moved forward.
Chapter 63:
An Unexpected Subject
“Well, you’re the hero of the hour, maybe the week, Morda,” Angus said. “Though you look more like a package wrapped by a toddler.”
It was true; on the large screen in Angus’s cell, the Illikai’s body was covered with bandages, two arms held up by sling-wires, tendrils dotted with the green that was one of the Illikai antibiotic salves. But the eyes were focused, and the former leader of the Zalak was, Angus had been informed, going to recover fully.
“A decent recompense for having been part of the mutiny in the first place,” Mordanthine conceded. “We remain alive rather than vapor, which is also a good thing.”
“True enough, and glad I am of that,” agreed Angus. “And glad to see you survived the experience.”
“Did not want to lose your equivalent?”
“I admit, there has been a touch of comfort in the whole situation, knowing that the Illikai and humans are so very much the same, even in our more irrational ways.”
A whistle of laughter that cut off in pain. “Tch! Don’t make me do that!”
Angus grinned wider. “Oh, but that’s a tradition, making your friend in hospital laugh ’til it hurts!”
This time there were several whistles before Mordanthine stopped to recover. “You are right. We are very much the same.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He raised a glass of orange juice and nodded in Mordanthine’s direction. “There is a bright side to this, you know.”
Mordanthine’s eyes shifted thoughtfully, then his colors flickered approval. “Yes. The fanatics revealed themselves. We need worry much less about that problem.”
“Exactly. I haven’t been given details, mind, so could you give me a bit more on just what that particular group was thinking?”
A pained, derisive buzz, along with clashing colors. “It is an insult to the concept to say they were thinking. They were feeling, and following branches rotted away before their clan’s foreparents were conceived. Not that I wasn’t . . . touched with a bit of the same feeling-madness, so I grasp them a bit better than, say, Imjanai, who is something like your director.” Morda sighed, something not very different from the human sound. “I knew exactly what Natta was like when she used that word to describe Imja—a word that used to mean simply ‘small,’ but used by particularly vile people in our past against the, um, short-bodied.”
“Got you. We’ve a few words like that ourselves. So there was a systematic prejudice against people like Imjanai?”
“Mostly long ago. But . . . not a branch entirely ended, either, as we can see, though even Ulo and I did not imagine that Natta had so many same-thinkers with her. That prejudice was mixed with a rather self-righteous interpretation of the . . .” Mordanthine paused, and there was a quick exchange of Illikai with, Angus presumed, Alerith, before the alien continued in translation. “. . . . the Faith of the Tree, Alerith says would be the best translation.”
“A religion?”
“Yes. Their . . . sect, cult, whatever the right term is, was much more self . . . congratulatory? Centered? Pampering?”
“You mean, it made everyone in it feel very special, better than anyone outside.”
“Yes! Exactly. Combined . . . well, you can see that aliens would be unwelcome at best, and for Natta’s particular group, seen as something . . . abominable. That group, the Enganit . . . well, they were the cause of our worst war, many, many years ago.”
“Your Nazis, then?”
“With more of a religious element, yes, that would be a fair description.”
“Hm. I’d have thought you’d screen out people like that. I had to work hard to make sure they chose me, and if they’d gotten the wrong idea—well, the right idea, really—about what I was like, I’d never have gotten onboard.”
“Carpathia was a single—and by comparison, tiny—vessel with a tiny crew,” Mordanthine pointed out. “You could afford to pick exactly who you wanted on your ship and leave everyone else behind. And they did include you anyway.”
“True, true. But . . . Morda, are you saying there were more ships like Tulima Ohn?”
“Oh, yes. At least twenty.”
Accustomed as he was now to adjusting his worldview, that was a mind-boggler if there ever was one. “Twenty? Good God, how?”
“How did you build Carpathia in two years? Angus, we are . . . were far ahead of you in expansion. We had made multiple space colonies, settled more than one world in our system, created far-reaching mining and manufacturing enterprises throughout the system. When the need came upon us, all worked together, the entirety of the Illikai drove ourselves to the breaking point to give our species the chance to survive.”
Angus leaned forward. “Noticed a bit of a gap in our knowledge there. Your people haven’t told us why you sent a colony ship here.”
Alerith’s icon flickered, but she remained silent.
The shimmer of color and shift in pose of Mordanthine made Angus think of a humorless grin. “No, we wouldn’t have. Embarrassing to admit how stupid we were.”
“You’re not saying you doomed your own worlds?”
Another icon appeared. “Morda, is this the right time for this?” Imjanai’s voice in translation was both concerned and pained.
“We’ve no pride to save now, Imja. And they’ve a need, now, to know everything. Would have in the end, anyhow, and with the branch we’re running now . . .”
“Alerith?”
“It is not my decision, Imjanai. I am made to provide information, to be honest and informative and supportive. Any decision to restrict information is that of the Illikai. You are the leader of the Yuula. Uloresim, are you aware of this discussion?”
The leader of the Zalak appeared; he had a few bandages and antibiotic spots, but nothing like Mordanthine’s mummy imitation. “I was not following. Summarize?”
A quick buzz-squeal and flicker of Illikai, and Uloresim’s skin underwent multiple rapid color shifts. At last, he spoke. “I cannot argue with Morda’s position. I do not like parts of our story, but the whole tale? That is not something we should hide. It remains . . . vital.”
“Imjanai?”
“I . . . oh, yes, I suppose. We should not have hidden it . . . save I was afraid of how our new friends would see us.”
“They have done equally foolish things,” Alerith said. “It is only the fact that they had not advanced so far that has prevented theirs from being as . . . spectacular.”
“Hold a moment,” Angus said. “Much as I’d be pleased to be the first and only human to hear about your greatest screwup, strikes me we should get the director, the captain, and a few others in, if it’s actually important we all know this.”
“Oh, great Tree,” murmured Imjanai. “But, no, you’re right.”
