He lined up along one side, drew his pistol and sighted carefully. It was actually practical, given the animal’s carapace, to simply shoot. The light load would cause no damage, indeed might not even be noticed. It would rip the tape, however. He thumbed the selector to automatic and fired. A ripping sound of projectiles tore through the night air.
He’d anticipated a reaction. The herd might scatter, spooked. They might charge each other or Tirdal or anything. They might rear and attack. He wasn’t prepared for the reaction he got, however.
Nothing.
The tape had been sheared cleanly, and the artifact wobbled as the creature wandered forward. Tirdal followed, alert for trouble that never came, and within two hundred meters the box tumbled off one side, dangled from a strip of tape, then fell. He walked over, grabbed it by the handles and hefted it over his brutalized shoulders.
Step One accomplished.
He was quite loaded down with gear once again, but no one was pursuing so he could rest periodically and walk upright in the near silence. Those two simple things made it a much easier task. He decided to travel at night and rest days, as they had before. Daylight would make it easier to find a secure resting place, and the life here seemed in general to be diurnal, so predators would be stalking in the daytime and less likely to cross his path.
He turned again, back to the north and east. It would be his last direction change, he hoped.
The real advantage to the current state of affairs, Tirdal reflected, was that he could move as he should. The Tslek presence was far behind and no longer sensible. There were no humans to play down to, and he could trot at a good rate. He stopped twice a day for food and water and rest, slept once for five hours and was at the second extraction point in less than four local days. It was a moral victory only. Ferret had been wounded by the neural grenade and then shot. His own injured heel — from Dagger’s shot — had gone numb and would need treatment. His injured shoulders — from Dagger’s shot — were tight and painful, and might be becoming infected. The wound oozed and was starting to smell. His chest plate — from Dagger’s shot — would need surgery to correct the way it was crookedly healing. The wound in his thigh from the beasts would need attention. His ankle was swollen and only medication and Jem discipline let him ignore it. In fact, he was only the winner by a lucky chance of the scavengers, but luck was an essential if unreliable part of warfare. The load he carried made it worse, but the artifact had to be recovered, and Dagger’s rifle was the only weapon heavy enough for any real fighting at this point. He was reluctant to abandon its ten kilos, especially after a smaller predator form had tried to leap on him. There were other issues, too.
Converted leaves kept him fed sufficiently, though there was a demand for that taste of meat in his mind that would take much work to suppress. He would suffer the privations necessary to avoid meat, and further drowning in tal. His water was adequate; Darhel have very efficient “kidneys,” and he didn’t need that much to stay healthy if not comfortable.
He could see what was likely the shore ahead. He took a cautious look around, realized it was unnecessary, then decided to do so anyway. It would be a supreme irony to die so close to the end. He sent the signal, then repeated his surveillance.
Everything appearing clear, he crept forward over rolling hummocks of sand with tough grass clinging to them, dragging gear behind him, and slipped into the water among a patch of reeds. Shortly, he was submerged to his neck. Then he considered that there might be vicious aquatic predators, which might mean the shore was, in fact, safer. It was too late for indecision now, however. He’d remain here.
He was nervous for a while as the pod approached, slowly and deliberately, a rising dark dome like something from a human horror story… Cthulhu? But it came as ordered. Then there was another brutal swim. Swimming was not something Darhel did, because of their density, especially not when burdened with an Aldenata artifact. He’d abandoned everything else save one item in the grass behind, and left an enzymic package to hasten the destruction. Even on this duned shore, the plants should quickly grow over the nondegradable materials left, and it really wasn’t a concern.
The gentle chop of the waves was enough to exhaust him. Still, swimming, while draining, was low impact, which relieved much of the pain in his heel. It hurt his ankle beyond what he could handle at the moment, so he reduced his stroke with that foot, letting himself bob in the water. He was gasping, pulse thudding, before he reached out a hand, grabbed an extruded stanchion, and swung himself up into the hatch. He took one last look around. Less than fifteen days he’d spent here, yet it would be part of him forever, with all that had happened. The team. The encounters with insects and flyers. The Tslek “base.” The chase. Ferret, without question. Dagger most of all.
Part of the past. Now was time for the future.
Thrust tapered off as the ship injected into low orbit. Tirdal San Rintai looked at the hologram of the planet in the tank before him. An off-center quarter was visible from this angle, swelling toward him with the terminator a knife-edge across it. A pleasant enough place for humans, if they ever drove back the Tslek. With their enviable ability to kill, they could keep the predatory insectoids controlled. An interesting place for Darhel, but not a home, even if the climate was so enjoyable.
He touched the telltale from the garbage eject then and the Aldenata box began its slow tumble through space to annihilation. Attached to it was Dagger’s rifle. He couldn’t say why he’d done that, but it seemed appropriate. It was probably his imagination but he thought he could just see the box begin to burn up on reentry, an orange pinpoint in the hazy arc of atmosphere. It was a shame to destroy it after all this trouble, but it couldn’t be allowed to fall into human hands. Or Tslek pseudopods. Atmospheric friction and impact would accomplish what heavy energy weapons would otherwise have been needed for.
He lay back in his contoured couch and pondered the humans’ probable reactions.
Chapter 21
The room would have been recognizable to a human martial artist. It had that spare look that avoided excess visual stimulation, while being elegant and attractive. Knifelike and spearlike weapons covered two of the walls in geometric precision that was inhuman but logical. A trained human fighter would have deduced the means of using most of them.
Tirdal sat, legs folded, near a small charcoal brazier above which was suspended the Darhel equivalent of a teapot. The steeping herbs within were fragrant and rich. All of this added to the environment, making it tastefully exotic to the untrained but familiar and conducive to proper mental energies in those who understood the Art. The mysticism surrounding any good martial art is not so much religion as mindset. One must feel the form. The clean, charred smell of the fire came to Tirdal, too. For a moment, the steeping beverage reminded him of Gorilla’s tea. It had taken days to reach this level of calm, and he was almost back to normal, that “normal” having been imposed on his species by a race that dared to play deity. Then he reached the critical point and suddenly he was… there. In touch with himself mentally and physically, in touch with his Master, in touch with the universe. The pleading, demanding tendrils of tal, pulling at his mind and spirit, receded below the threshold to what was considered safe and untroublesome. Their retreat left only memories, which could be assimilated with his mastery of the Art into greater control for next time it became necessary to court lintatai for survival.