From the shadows where she lurked, quite at home, she saw a lone Federation officer approach an apparently disabled flitter. The flitter lay abandoned in the field between the wall and where the Condor and the Traveler were docked. The large spacegoing vessels blocked the small local transport craft from the view of the Federation headquarters building. So no one would see her take out the officer and relocate, in military parlance, his or her uniform to her own person.
Unfortunately she had lacked worthy opponents since she'd taken the cushy job with Hafiz. Her reflexes and defensive instincts were not what they once had been. She circled around behind the officer and grabbed him as he bent toward the flitter.
But just then she was distracted by the Condor's robolift cranking and shuddering toward the ground. She looked toward it for just a moment, thinking somebody ought to oil that thing. And that, of course, was when someone attacked her from behind. No low-tech scruples for this assailant, she thought as she crumpled to the ground with the force of the stun waves from the gun. It was her last thought for some time.
"For a horse-and-buggy civilization, these guys make tracks," Becker said, sounding worried. "This is starting to look ugly. I'm guessing the welcome wagons with the poison goodies are Edu's advance guard. Soften 'em up with the disease and then send in the regular troops to finish them off or at least subdue them. Maybe we should have left both of the kids with the cat queen, rather than just one. The Mulzar won't know for quite a while that his trick didn't work at the jungle temple."
Acorna didn't translate verbally this time. She just transferred Becker's ideas into Miw-Sher's head.
"You can't leave me behind," Miw-Sher protested, without even questioning how she understood Becker's words. "You need me to show you where to go-or at least sort of where to go. We need to find my uncle Tagoth. We need his help. We've got to get to the Aridimi Stronghold before the Mulzar's men do. It is really hard to find. Or at least that's what Tagoth says, but he knows how to get to it. He's been there before."
Acorna patted the girl's hand, trying to cut through the questions and feelings that were cycloning through her own mind and concentrate instead on reassuring the frightened child. They both had a job to do.
"I'm sure that we can find Tagoth if we need to," Acorna said. "He can't have gone too far on foot. Had I known we were going to have the use of the flitter, I would have asked him to wait for us at some hidden place, and we could have all gone there together. But why is it we need to find this stronghold, especially right now? Do the Aridimi also have many cats and other creatures who could be endangered?"
"Oh, yes," Miw-Sher said. "Next to the Makaviti Temple, the Aridimi one is said to be the most highly guarded on our world. You see, it is where all of our sacred stones come from. I am sure that the Mulzar will be wild to get to it. Were it not for the Aridimi location being secret and hidden, all of the tribes would have raided it long ago, Tagoth says. It is so far out in the desert that none of our armies can survive the trip. But I believe we can get there in this conveyance."
"So what heading should I take?" Becker said.
Acorna relayed the question and Miw-Sher said, "North, as if to Hissim, but then west toward the dunes and white hills. We call them the Serpent Spine. That is as far as I know how to go. But I think we should be able to see Uncle Tagoth easily from this machine. The desert is vast, but it is barren, and he will be going the same direction as we are."
Acorna passed the information to Becker as they overflew the last of the rainforest and saw the terraced steppes rising before them, wrapped with glittering ribbons of water. This close to the jungle, and far from the Temple where Edu's plague had been introduced, the fields were healthy and fertile, covered with red, green, and golden grasses waving in the wind.
"Pit stop," Becker announced, and landed the flitter.
"Why is he stopping?" Miw-Sher asked. "I thought everyone agreed that we need to hurry."
Acorna wanted to know exactly the same thing. She turned to Becker and asked him.
"Well, this is as close to safe as we're likely to be for quite a while. The first wave of bad guys headed in our direction have been apprehended by the jungle cat folk, who may be making lunch of them right now. I don't think the second wave is going to be coming in the next few minutes.
"So now is as good a time as any-maybe the best time for Linyaari girls who have healed well but not always wisely to graze and get drinks of water. All of us need a break-pussycats, too. Maybe they can catch a quick mouse or something-that is, if they can move after all they ate last night. We don't know what kind of reception we're in for."
"But the stronghold…" Miw-Sher protested.
Becker held up his hand to ward off her objection. "If this Aridimi place is so hard to find, I bet their pussycats haven't got their nice present from the Mulzar yet, and we've got a little head start here, thanks to this flitter. We need to take the time to take care of ourselves. I think we should be as ready as we can be for whatever will happen. Heck, I have to go find a handy bush myself."
Acorna didn't translate the last part. She did realize that Becker's point was well taken. She needed to eat and drink as well as rest long enough to catch her breath, if she was to do any more mass healings. Possibly he was also correct that the cats at the Aridimi stronghold wouldn't require her help as a healer, but if they did, she must be prepared.
The place Becker had set the flitter down was as beautiful as any Linyaari dream of the lost homeworld. A stream frothed like fine lace over rocks that glittered with as many colors as a gemstone tiara. The water's depths were the soft, clear pink of rose quartz. Still, just to be safe, Acorna dipped her horn into the running water and also cleansed the grasses of the field before she ate them.
"RK, you and the guardians should bring any prey you catch to me to purify before you eat it."
To the disgust of the cats, however, the fields were barren of even the smallest prey, which made Acorna fear that the plague had already spread farther among the animals of the world than she had previously believed.
The grasses were delicious, though, and the water as well. She enjoyed the chance to stretch and walk about. She was feeling more like herself by the time they reboarded the flitter.
That was when she realized Becker had not been following his own advice about relaxing. "Mac, come in. Do you hear me? Condor, this is your captain speaking. Give me a call if you can hear my voice." But despite his various attempts to adjust, repair, and reset the equipment, all he received in return was static.
Had Mac been a purely organic being, he might have felt chagrin at Becker's response to his attempt to ascertain the field functionality of the flitter and to educate the crew regarding its upgraded equipment. When the Condor's com receiver suddenly filled with static, Mac's initial reaction had been that Captain Becker, in one of his customary fits of gruffness, had "hung up" on him. But then he realized that the monitoring had somehow penetrated his careful programming and those who were doing the monitoring had cut off the transmission.
He needed to do something about that, but he wasn't sure what. His programming was now quite advanced, as evidenced in his promotion to uniformed crewman, but although he was capable of independent thought, he was not actually programmed to think strategically.
He was pondering what response if any would be appropriate when he observed irregular activity in the aft view screen. Earlier in the morning a flitter had made a short hop from behind the headquarters building to the field east of the Condor's docking bay. Now three figures approached it, each from a different angle. Zooming in, he recognized the person nearest the flitter as Lieutenant Commander Macostut.