What had Lawri done to activate the drive? His mind had gone blank. He tapped the blue button. No good: the blue displays disappeared, but the motor's roar continued. He restored the display.
Through a side window he glimpsed patches of Navy blue cloth moving across the bark. No time. Think Blue vertical bar surrounded by blue dashes…in a pattern like the motors at the stern. He tapped the blue bar.
The roar and the trembling died to nothing. The tree recoiled: he felt himself pulled forward. Then it was quiet.
Kendy was prepared to beam his usual message when the source of hydrogen light disappeared.
That was puzzling. Normally the CARMs main motor would run for several hours. That, or the attitude jets would send it jittering about like the ball in a soccer match. Kendy held his attention on a drifting point within the Smoke Ring maelstrom, and waited.
A dozen Navy men were making their way toward the carm, using lines and the lineholds, wary that he might start the drive again. Ordon was far ahead of the rest, mere meters from the window. There was murder in his face.
Quick, now! Hit the yellow button. The display was too cluttered: turn off the blue. Yellow display: interior lights showed dim, internal wind on, temperature shown by a vertical line with numbers and a notch in the middle; here, a complicated line thawing of the carm's cabin seen from above. The Grad closed lines that should represent the doors, with a pinching motion of his fingertips. Behind him the airlock sealed itself.
Lawri stirred.
He heard muted clanging from the doors.
The Grad began playing with the green displays, summoning different views from the carm's cameras. He had precious little time to learn to fly this starstuff relic. He felt Lawri's eyes on him, but would not look.
The clanging stopped, then resumed elsewhere. Ordon snarled through a side window. He must be clinging to the nets, pounding at the glass.
The Grad moved to the window. He spoke a word. Ordon reacted — puzzled — he couldn't hear. The Grad repeated it, exaggerating the motions of his lips the word that would justify murdering his benefactor Kiance, assaulting Lawri, betraying his friend Ordon, leaving London Tree helpless against attack.
"War, Ordon! War!"
Chapter Eighteen
The War of London Tree
CLAVE WAS BEING LEFT BEHIND. THE CARTHERS HAD JUDGED him a novice, and he was: he hadn't known how to choose among these strange pods. They had let him pick a slow one. He'd flown past the trunk, his path was curving back now. He would be among the last halfdozen to land.
Lines ran along the trunk of London Tree, and wooden boxes were rising toward the center from both ends. Clave saw both boxes break open almost simultaneously, spilling men in blue, eight to a box. The copsik runners seemed to know what they were about. They rapidly oriented themselves and fired small jet pods to send them toward the midpoint of the tree, on the eastern face.
Toward the carrier. Twenty-odd copsik runners already surrounded it. The flame at its tail had died, for whatever that might mean.
The Carthers had passed the trunk in a gust of jet pods. Now they were returning, coming up on the western side of the trunk, drastically spread out. Feathered harpoons flew from the copsik runners' long footbows. The Carther warriors sent crossbow bolts among them. They outnumbered the enemy almost two to one.
The jungle was tremendous, a green world passing less than a klomter away. Clave had wondered if it would actually hit the tree, but it seemed to be going past. The steam jet had stopped firing. The jungle trailed a curdled line of cloud an a storm of birds trying to catch up, and two dark masses: Lizeth's and Hild's clusters of twenty jet pods each.
This close to the tree, the curve of the trunk hid the ancient carrier and its mooring; but both gusts of enemy reinforcements seemed to be converging on the carrier. They would know its value too. They flew behind a thicket of feathered harpoons.
The jet from Clave's pod died away.
Curses ran through his mind while he clambered around the pod to put it between himself and the harpoons. He was still approaching the trunk. Others were there first. Carthers were using lineholds about the clustered buildings to dodge the feathered harpoons or tearing up sheets of bark for shields. The copsik runners preferred to fire on them from the sky, where their limbs were free to work their huge bows.
Anthon and a dozen warriors were firing at the carrier, using the curve of the trunk as cover.
Merril's pod struck a wooden hut with Merril behind it. She'd used the pod as a shock absorber: good technique. Some of the copsik runners were trying to reach that building. Merril shot two from behind the building, then abandoned the shelter when the rest came too close.
Something valuable in that building? The copsik runners seemed to want it. Clave put an arrow among them and thought he hit someone's foot.
They wanted the carrier more. Clave could see it now: they were all over it, hanging on the nets and the bark.
Most of the Carther warriors had reached the trunk. Clave would touch down inward from the battle, presently. For now he could only watch. From the chaos of battle, patterns began to form:
The copsik runners were outnumbered. They hung back, for that reason and another. In close work they couldn't use the bows. They had swords, and so did the Carthers; but the taller Carthers had more reach. They won such encounters.
The copsik runners had small jet pods, the kind that would grow on an integral tree. They preferred to stay in the sky.
Clave watched Carthers leap into an eight-man gust of blue ponchos. The copsik runners used their jet pods, left Carthers floundering in the sky behind them, and fired back with the footbows. Then two Carthers were among them, slaying, and two more joined them. In free-fall the copsik runners fought like children. The Carthers robbed the corpses of their jet pods.
Clave drifted, and Carther States was winning without him!
In along the trunk, a wooden box was rising slowly. It spilled reinforcements: six blue-clad footbowman and a bulky silver creature.
There was a terrible familiarity to that shape…but they wouldn't arrive for a kilobreath yet.
A copsik runner spotted Clave, a sitting target. He carefully fired a harpoon through Clave's pod, then moved in along the trunk. He'd have a clear shot when Clave came nearer. Clave fired at him. No good, the copsik runner dodged and waited. Clave could see his grin.
The grin vanished when Merril shot him from behind. The bolt protruded below the kidney. He could have fought on…but his face was a silent scream; he clawed at the bolt, then went into convulsions. That poison-fern brew must be terrible stuff.
The pod bumped wood with Clave behind it. He turned it loose, clutched bark, and made his way toward Merril with his crossbow ready. He saw blue against storm cloud sky, fired a bolt through one man, and drew his harpoon as the other came at him with a sword.
The copsik runner came too fast. Clave batted him in the face with the crossbow handle and, as he recoiled, stabbed him in the throat.
Merril was making her way around the curve of the bark. He followed her. She stopped and crouched a moment before he saw the carrier, outward along the trunk. Copsik runners were all over it.
He moved up beside her. She said, "All right, why aren't they killing us with that scientific thing?"
"Good question." Clave watched Anthon's team launching crossbow bolts from around the curve of the wood. The carrier's guardians fired back, not very successfully.
He said, "Forget it. They aren't using it. They are using those wooden boxes to get reinforcements. Let's—"
"Cut the lines."
Two lines as thick as Clave's arm ran parallel along the trunk. The last box was on its way in, nearly gone from sight. Another box must be rising. Clave and Merril made their way to the nearest line and began to chop at it.