He took a deep breath and considered his situation. The pod would move in another two or three days. If he headed directly for the next Extraction Point, Dagger would set up along the way, moving to intercept as necessary. If he headed up into the hills there would be even more areas for the sniper to ambush him, and he’d be approaching the fire. Not good.
It appeared it was time for a Darhel to enter once again upon the hunt. There was a thrill to that knowledge, with a foreboding cloud hanging over it. This was no game. The fates of three races and hundreds of planets, perhaps the galaxy, would balance on what Tirdal San Rintai did next, and how well his mind could fight genetic programming.
The question was what to do with the box. He pondered that for a few moments. He looked around on the plain. Then he smiled. It was a very predatory and devious smile.
The Elf had been moving steadily towards the Blob site but now he’d turned back to the west, crossing the stream to do so. There was lots of clear savanna in that direction, large enough that it was on the map. What Tirdal thought he was doing there Dagger couldn’t decide. He moved north and west, down off the bluffs and the visual advantage they gave, aiming to cut the Darhel off. The Elf had headed across the stream and onto the savanna proper, all grass and shrubs, and probably intended to get well out of range and out of sight. But to get to the pickups he’d have to come back to the east and either north or south. Best to find a good spot on his probable route and wait for him. Dagger would lurk behind him until he turned, then take the hypotenuse to cut him off. If he started at an angle, Dagger would know which extraction point he intended to move toward, and could charge ahead, around the Elf, and be waiting for him. And if Tirdal took more than two more days, he’d have to head south anyway.
Perfect.
Dagger hunkered down in the grass to wait, nerves and sensors alert for any disturbance around him, and kept an eye on the box’s movement.
This was a technique that Tirdal had rarely practiced. Alonial, the Indowy adept, was the master of projection, but Tirdal had never shown much ability at it. Still, he seemed to be managing adequately. He couldn’t tell if the large browsers were seeing him as one of them, not at all, or simply as himself and were not afraid. Their primitive eyes didn’t move to indicate the direction they were viewing, and the waving antennae were equally reticent. They weren’t spooking, however, so something was right. It took only a trickle of tal to maintain the concentration for the illusion. Of course, that trickle was in addition to handling the stress on his twice-wounded body, and aiding his focus on Dagger, and…
The gargantuan insects were quiescent though, paying no attention to the strange biped in their midst. And everyone always said that thousand-klick-an-hour tape would stick to anything.
The “herd bull” was the size of a large bison or small elephant. To support that bulk with an exoskeleton required a material far stronger than chitin and the armored carapace of the bug was at least a hand span thick. It might be an impossible kill with a punch gun, depending on how the shell reacted to the blast. It would be difficult with the rounds Dagger carried. Not impossible perhaps. The antiarmor rounds might work. Antimatter would certainly work, though it might require blowing a deep crater with multiple rounds. But Tirdal wouldn’t need to kill it and wasn’t planning to.
He crouched for a moment then leapt up and over, free of the grass and with a clear, panoramic view. Even with his chameleon in effect, this was a dangerous time, and he’d have to work quickly lest Dagger see him and take a shot. That, and the insect might spook and toss him or dislodge him, possibly stampede or crush him.
He was atop it, sitting slightly astride as he swung his pack around and ripped open the top compartment flap. He heaved out the artifact, kept hold of the pack with one arm through it as it flopped down, and held the box still with his weight while he snagged the roll of tape with his left hand, reaching over his right and into the pack in a fashion that would impress an Earth acrobat.
It wasn’t an easy task, with only one hand and his lips to get the tape going, but he succeeded. The first piece held the box just still enough for him to get a second piece on, then a third. He was stretching out a fourth piece when he suddenly found himself flying through the air from a truly elephantine buck. The giant pill bug had all the agility of a terrestrial beetle but, luckily, had the reaction speed of a slug. Perhaps it had slower neural paths, or was less sensitive on its back, or just stupid. But the herd bull now had the Aldenata artifact strapped to its magnificently striped and armored back, with the tape still hanging from the last strap he’d been fastening. And Tirdal was free to hunt. He grinned again and angled through the herd, crossing the paths of the large beasts just behind them.
Chapter 18
What in the hell did the Elf think he was doing? He’d moved along the east side of this savanna, which looked like it was probably a sinkhole lake that had emptied out, then moved rapidly west, then to the north. Now he was moving west again. Slowly. More meandering than moving. And all the while on the savanna. He had to have a better knowledge of tactics than that.
Dagger had found a lonely tree and climbed it for a good look. Generally he hated to shoot from trees. If you were detected it made you a perfect target and even without being detected it was a vulnerable spot. Better to be hunkered down on the ground. But you did what you had to do and the savanna was a mixture of high pseudograss and bushes; there was no clear view from ground level. He referred to his tracker, then tried to spot the same general area on the savanna. It was several clicks away and the ground was rough but he couldn’t spot anything that looked like the Darhel. There was a large herd of those damned beetle things that had gotten in his way before. The Darhel might be staying among them. That wasn’t a bad tactic, actually. Dagger would have to get closer to take a shot, and there’d be a lot of interference.
Then he ratcheted up the magnification on his scope and swore. The box was attached to the broad gray back of one of the damned herbivores.
Without even thinking about it he was on his way to the ground. The Darhel would come looking for him now. He couldn’t kill, though. There was one thing that all humans knew about Darhel; no matter how bad they were they couldn’t kill.
So was the shoe on the other foot or not? Oh, this was just lovely.
Why couldn’t the asshole have had the decency to die?
Tirdal paused and took a few breaths. This was really playing with the black side. The tal reacted to hatred, fear and aggression, all the demons that lurked in the Darhel soul. And it also accentuated them, causing a feedback loop. Now on the trail of his first kill, Tirdal constantly found himself forcing the glinak back in its cave. If it was this bad just trying to track in on the sniper, it would be nasty when it came time for the… the… kill.
That, and he’d have to dodge numerous shots. It was better than a draw that would leave him stranded, with Dagger in control of the pod’s landing sites, or leave both of them stranded to die. Though that option was preferable, as a last resort, than to let Dagger have the artifact. If so, Tirdal was prepared to face that death. It would be an easy one. All he had to do was let tal push him into lintatai and he’d not care what happened next. Of course, the chewing of predators would drag him out of trance in order to die, but that could be avoided by hiding in a cave or depression.