While Shiva handled the housekeeping, Bell Toll examined the artifact. He ran his fingertips over the surface, seeking controls or seams. There were none apparent in this light. Shrugging inwardly, he reached into his gear and pulled out a tracer-transponder. It wasn’t really necessary, and he was probably overreacting, but they’d all hate to lose such a prize. It couldn’t hurt to mark it, so he did. He slapped it onto a corner and the molecularly thin film of it fused with the artifact’s surface and became effectively part of it and invisible.
Dagger had slipped alongside him, undetected until the last moment. Bell Toll started slightly, but kept it from showing. Dammit, he hated when the sniper did that. He did it just because he could, and it only encouraged him if he thought he’d got one over on you.
“Yes, Dagger? Are you here to take advantage of the commander’s open-door policy?” he asked.
“Nah, just wanted another gander at the box, sir. I didn’t get a good look earlier,” he said, moving in close. He was shoulder to shoulder now, and it made Bell Toll uncomfortable. Frankly, he’d rather have Tirdal that close than Dagger. One was unknown, the other a pain.
“Well, this is the artifact, Dagger. Artifact, meet Dagger,” he said, trying to inject some levity into the situation.
“Charmed,” Dagger joked. Hell, he wasn’t that bad, Bell Toll thought. Just another kid with something to prove. Give him five years and he’d mellow. When he’d first arrived he’d been all attitude, now it was partly an act. He’d get over it, and if there were opportunities to let him act like a mature person, they should be encouraged.
Dagger was poring over the device in the growing light. His fingers traced the raised symbols that might be long dead controls, followed the contours and hefting it. “What is it and why is it here?” he asked, mostly to himself.
“We might never know,” Bell Toll said. “Some can be opened inside a stasis field, though some are equipped to self-destruct. Others are unresponsive. The fact that this one still has latent power is a good sign.”
“Any guess what it might be, sir?” Dagger asked, his sharp, perfect eyes still focused on the box, examining every line, every dirt-filled pit.
“No clue. A ship’s control box, unlikely. A base computer, possible, though I’d think they’d have extracted it when the base was abandoned, or an enemy would have seized it. Anything else I couldn’t say. I’ve had briefings, but I’m no expert.” He shrugged.
Dagger shrugged also. “I see what are obviously seams, but I don’t see a way to make them budge. We going to take turns humping this?”
“No, Dagger,” Bell Toll replied, smiling. “In this case, the commander will assume the horrible burden of carting the cargo, thus to spare his troops a strain that wasn’t in the original plan. Besides, it’s my ass if we lose it.”
“Yeah, I could just see that one. ‘We found this Aldenata artifact and dropped it in a lake. So sorry. but it really was cool at the time.’ I can’t see them buying that.”
“Right,” Bell Toll chuckled. “Well, I’m going to wrap it back up, so show and tell is over.”
“Right, sir. I’ll keep an eye out tonight. And I can set some of my sensors to act as additional alarms if you’d like.”
“Please,” he agreed as Dagger walked in a crouch back across to his gear. He reflected that Dagger wasn’t so bad when his interests were challenged. It was boredom that made him awkward.
It was dinnertime again. Hopefully, there’d be few more of those on this patrol. As shifting, flashing sparks of false dawn warned of the coming light, they plowed into their food. Hunger helped and so did long practice, as well as awareness that they’d be out of here in very few sleeps.
“Tuna again,” Gun Doll bitched. “Who eats this crap?”
“Sorry, Doll,” Thor said. “But I’m not swapping my pork fritter.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, resignation and a sigh in her voice. “I’ll eat it.”
Dagger said, “Be right back. Gotta drain the vein,” as he rose and walked toward the large rock.
“Why didn’t you go in the stream like the rest of us?” Thor joked. Then he wondered why the sniper was walking out past the rocks, and with his rifle. “Hey, Dagger, the slit is over th—”
As he passed the rock, Dagger grabbed a neural grenade from the pouch on his harness and tossed it back into the middle of the team.
Chapter 10
Tirdal felt Dagger’s aggression smack him. It was palpable, vicious, and thoroughly emotionless under the surface. The incoming feeling was so strong, it was one of the few visual senses he’d ever had. The feeling hit him and rolled over him, creating a link for a bare fraction of a second. He could feel the callous smirk on his/Dagger’s face, see the grenade arc from his/Dagger’s hand. The sudden image of a fangar, a predator on Shartan, came through clearly. Dagger was not only committing mass murder, he was enjoying it. It was an intense moment, the sensat equivalent of orgasm, personal and powerful. They were Tirdal’s specialty. He couldn’t always “feel” people in his area. But he always knew when they were participating in a kill.
He also knew that there wasn’t time to stop it. His punch gun would go right through the boulder the sniper was using as a shield against the neural lash but the grenade was already in the air as the Darhel surged to his feet. Stopping to kill the sniper would just leave the entire team dead on the ground. Their vital information, and the possibly more vital artifact, would never make it back.
This thought process occurred in an instant and Tirdal knew what he had to do. Saving the team was out of the question; he couldn’t reach the grenade and throw it out of range in time. All he could do was avoid the death himself. And keep the box, which had to be Dagger’s target, out of the hands of the sniper turned traitor.
But to do everything that he had to do, it would be necessary to use tal hormones. Which was another problem.
Tirdal summoned the tal, letting the natural anger at the sniper’s betrayal slither a tiny tendril past hard-held defenses. The mere touch of anger triggered the tal gland, dumping a modicum of hormone into the Darhel’s system and slowing his subjective time and the world around him as he reached for the box.
The captain was slowly looking at him in consternation but Tirdal didn’t pay any attention; the captain, who was a decent person, really, was dead and didn’t know it. Tirdal’s knife-blade hand struck the officer’s wrist, breaking it and releasing the hold on the box.
As soon as he had the box secured Tirdal turned and dove over the boulder behind him. The whole world seemed to slow as he could see both Shiva’s and Gun Doll’s looks of horror at the sight of the grenade out of the corners of his eyes. His vision split, one eye tracking on potential threats to the right as the other looked to the left where the grenade was coming in. Humans couldn’t do that, he remembered. It might be useful knowledge later.
He had the box, his punch gun and his combat harness with its small patrol pack. What he didn’t have was his rucksack. But as soon as he had the bulk of the granite between him and the grenade he intended to teach the sniper a few things about Darhel.
One of which was that they really hated traitors. At least Bane Sidhe Darhel did.
He leapt up and back, and one hand struck the top of the boulder to correct his course with a twist. Fingers tougher than granite left small scars as they drove him forward and down into the tangled undergrowth. The landing would receive no praise from his master, and he felt one shoulder give. But then he was flat on the ground, if somewhat battered, when the neural grenade gave its snarl.
Breathing slowly and deeply to prevent lintatai, Tirdal spun around on his belly and, carefully controlling his tal reaction, fired back along the line towards the spot the sniper had thrown from. Carefully. He was just shooting boulders and dirt. Not a person. If the person happened to be in the way that would be a pure accident. But not a kill. Never a kill.