“I … thought… you… said …” she whispered deliberately, emphasizing calmness, “that the enemy couldn’t detect us if we wear only native-made materials.”
“That’s if they’re being lazy and only counting on their secret weapon. But don’t forget they’ve also got infrared, radar, seismic sonar, psi — ” He stopped suddenly. A low whine approached from his left. If it was the harvester they had heard before, there might be a chance to catch a ride.
“Wait here,” he whispered.
Gailet grabbed his wrist. “No! I’m coming with you!” She looked quickly left and right, then lowered her eyes. “Don’t… don’t leave me alone.”
Fiben bit his lip. “All right. But stay down low, right behind me.”
They moved single file, hugging the ground. Slowly the whine grew louder. Soon Fiben felt a faint tingling up the back of his neck.
Gravities, he thought. It’s close.
How close he didn’t realize until the machine slipped over the grasstops, coming into view just two meters away.
He had been expecting a large vehicle. But this thing was about the size of a basketball and was covered with silvery and glassy knobs — sensors. It bobbed gently in the afternoon breeze, regarding them.
Aw hell. He sighed, sitting up on his haunches and letting his arms drop in resignation. Not far away he heard faint voices. No doubt this thing’s owners.
“It’s a battle drone, isn’t it?” Gailet asked tiredly.
He nodded. “A sniffer. Cheap model, I think. But good enough to find and hold us.”
“What do we do?”
He shrugged. “What can we do? We’d better surrender.”
Behind his back, however, he sifted through the dark soil. His fingers closed around a smooth stone.
The distant voices were coming this way. What th’ heck, he thought.
“Listen, Gailet. When I move, duck. Get outta here. Get your notes to Athaclena, if she’s still alive.”
Then, before she could ask any questions, he let out a shout and hurled the stone with all his might.
Several things happened all at once. Pain erupted in Fiben’s right wrist. There was a flash of light, so bright that it dazzled him. Then, during his leap forward, countless stinging pinpricks rained up and down his chest.
As he sailed toward the thing a sudden, strange feeling overcame Fiben, one that said that he had performed this act before — lived this particular moment of violence — not once or twice, but a hundred times, in a hundred prior lives. The wave of familiarity, hooked on the flickering edge of memory, washed over him as he dove through the drone’s pulsing gravitic field to wrap himself over the alien machine.
The world bucked and spun as the thing tried to throw him off. Its laser blasted at his shadow and grass fires broke out. Fiben held on for his life as the fields and the sky blended in a sickening blur.
The induced sense of déjà vu actually seemed to help! Fiben felt as if he had done this countless times! A small, rational corner of his mind knew that he hadn’t, but the memory misfunction said different and gave him a false confidence he badly needed right then as he dared to loosen the grip of his injured right hand and fumbled for the robot’s control box.
Ground and sky merged. Fiben tore a fingernail prying at the lid, breaking the lock. He reached in, grabbed wires.
The machine spun and careened, as if sensing his intention. Fiben’s legs lost their grip and whipped out. He was whirled around like a rag doll. When his left hand gave way he held on only by a weakening grip on the wires themselves — round and round and round…
At that moment only one thing in the world was not a blur: the lens of the robot’s laser, directly in front of him.
Goodbye, he thought, and closed his eyes.
Then something tore loose. He flew away, still holding wires in his right hand. When crunching impact came, it was almost anticlimactic. He cried out and rolled up just short of one of the smoldering fires.
Oh, there was pain, all right. Fiben’s ribs felt as if one of the big female gorillas at the Howletts Center had been affectionate with him all night. He had been shot at least twice. Still, he had expected to die. No matter what came after this, it was good just to be alive.
He blinked away dust and soot. Five meters away the wreckage of the alien probe hissed and sputtered inside a ring of blackened, smoking grass. So much for the vaunted quality of Galactic hardware.
What Eatee shyster sold the Gubru that piece of shit? Fiben wondered. I don’t care, even if it was a Jophur made often smelly sap rings, I’d kiss him right now, I really would.
Excited voices. Running feet. Fiben felt a sudden hope. He had expected Gubru to come after their downed probe. But these were chims! He winced and held his side as he managed to stand. He smiled.
The expression froze on his face when he saw who was approaching.
“Well, well, what do we have here? Mr. Bluecard himself! Looks like you’ve been running more obstacle courses, college boy. You just don’t seem to know when you’re beat.”
It was a tall chen with carefully shaved facial hair and a mustache, elegantly waxed and curled. Fiben recognized the leader of the Probationer gang at the Ape’s Grape. The one calling himself Irongrip.
Of all the chims in all the world, why did it have to be him?
Others arrived. The bright zipsuits bore an added feature, a sash and arm patch, each bearing the same sigil … a claw outstretched, three sharp talons glistening in holographic threat.
They gathered around him carrying modified saber rifles, obviously members of the new collaborators’ militia he and Gailet had heard rumors of.
“Remember me, college boy?” Irongrip asked, grinning. “Yes, I thought you would. I sure do remember you.”
Fiben sighed as he saw Gailet Jones brought forward, held firmly by two other Probationers. “Are you all right?” she asked softly. He could not read the expression in her eyes. Fiben nodded. There seemed to be little to say.
“Come on, my young genetic beauties.” Irongrip laughed as he took Fiben hard just above his wounded right wrist. “We’ve got some people we want you to meet. And this time, there won’t be any distractions.”
Fiben’s gaze was torn away from Gailet’s as a jerk on his arm sent him stumbling. He lacked the strength to put up a useless struggle.
As his captors dragged him ahead of Gailet, he had his first chance to look around and saw that they were only a few hundred meters from the edge of Port Helenia! A pair of wide-eyed chims in work dungarees watched from the running boards of a nearby cultivator.
Fiben and Gailet were being taken toward a small gate in the alien wall, the barrier that undulated complacently over the countryside like a net settled firmly over their lives.
49
Galactics
The Suzerain of Propriety displayed its agitation by huffing and dancing a brief series of hops on its Perch of Declamation. The half-formed squirms had actually delayed appearing before its judgment, withholding the news for more than a planetary rotation!
True, the survivors of the mountain ambush were still in shock. Their first thought had been to report to military command. And the military, busy cleaning up the last of the abortive insurrections in the nearby flatlands, had made them wait. What, after all, was a minor scuffle in the hills compared with a nearly effective assault on the deep-space defense battery?
The Suzerain could well understand how such mistakes were made. And yet it was frustrating. The affair in the mountains was actually far more significant than any of the other outbreaks of wild guerrilla warfare.
“You should have extinguished — caused an end — eliminated yourselves!”
The Suzerain chirped and danced out its chastisement before the Gubru scientists. The specialists still looked ruffled and unpreened from their long trek out of the hills. Now they slumped further in dejection.