Alien Shores (A Fenris Novel, Book 2) (10 page)

9

Cyrus and Skar ducked low as thunder boomed from the heavens. They hid among boulders near the edge of an incredibly deep and jagged valley.

The valley or canyon reminded Cyrus of the landscape of Mars. This canyon possessed a sheer wall that dropped straight down, possibly two kilometers. Cyrus had spied distant greenery earlier, implying crops. A blue river ran through much of the area, reminding him of the Nile in the Egyptian Sector on Earth. Did Kresh eat grains or vegetables? They looked like strict carnivores to him. In any case, various clusters to the far left showed what might be domed and strangely fluted buildings. Was that a Kresh city or a manufacturing plant, perhaps?

The booms and thunderous noise directed his attention back to the sky. The banded gas giant Pulsar took up half the heavens, while the sun shone off to the right.

“Rockets,” Skar shouted.

Cyrus shaded his eyes. He recognized them now. Twin tongues of fire showed two different descending rockets. They must be massive, gargantuan things. Between them they carried a white mountain.

“That’s an iceberg,” Cyrus said.

“Yes,” Skar said. “Ice-hauler pilots bring the bergs from the outer asteroids.”

At the far end of the valley, Cyrus could barely make out continuous white vapors billowing into the air. The vapor came from what looked like a vast terraforming machine.

The scale of Kresh tech awed him. The aliens terraformed the planet; they brought life to an otherwise barren world. Did that mean the aliens did something good? Yeah, Cyrus guessed it did mean that. The Kresh weren’t inherently evil, he supposed. They were just Sol’s enemies, as they had attacked and captured the Earth’s colonizing Teleship,
Discovery
.

He wondered how Jasper was doing. The telepath—the Special—had been one of the strongest on Earth and the first to contact a psi-master. Several years ago, Jasper had found Cyrus for Psi Force, and Jasper had helped ensure Cyrus had been on the New Eden mission. The Kresh had captured the Special along with everyone else. They probably ran hideous experiments on the man.

Cyrus knew better than to try to contact Jasper through telepathy. The enemy psi-masters would no doubt like it if he tried that. Why had the psi-masters stopped searching for him? That didn’t make sense.

He doubted they’d given up the hunt.

Cyrus forgot about that as he and Skar watched the massive rockets bring the iceberg down to the terraforming machine. How many converters were there on Jassac? It must cost a fortune to terraform a planet.

The Kresh, or perhaps the Chirr, had nuked one Earth-like planet in the star system. The place was a smoldering mass of radioactive ruin. Cyrus recalled observing it through
Discovery
’s telescopes when they’d first jumped into the system’s outer asteroids. Nuking an entire planet would cost tons of money. The war between the Chirr and the Kresh was nasty and brutish. From what he’d heard, it was also long running.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” Cyrus asked.

Skar raised an eyebrow.

“Have you ever fought in the tunnels of the Chirr before?”

“No,” Skar said in a clipped voice.

What did I say?
“Uh, is that a touchy subject?”

Skar stared at him solemnly. Finally, a bleak smile stretched the soldier’s lips. “How could you know? Masters always threaten soldiers with transfer to the Chirr War. It is considered bad luck among us to speak about it, about anything concerning the war.”

“Oh.”

Skar shook his head. “Once I joined the Resisters, I realized the foolishness of the custom. But old habits die hard.”

“It’s pretty bad in the tunnels, huh?” Cyrus asked.

“Each year, millions of Vomags die fighting the Chirr. It is a depressing and mindless war. The Chirr will never surrender and the Kresh will never stop attacking.”

“Hey, look at that,” Cyrus said. He pointed into the valley. Skar leaned over and then quickly ducked back down.

Cyrus lowered himself behind a lichen-covered boulder. Four sky vehicles lifted from the shadowy depths. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

“Who else would they seek?” Skar asked.

The two men crouched behind the boulder. They’d seen other sky vehicles these past three days. The vehicles had fanned out over the plains, disappearing. Later they reappeared, heading back for the valley. Were the Kresh capturing more primitives or were those regular sorties doing whatever the raptor-aliens did? Cyrus had no idea.

Fortunately, the sky vehicles were half a kilometer away from their position, heading for the plains. It was hard to tell, but it looked as if the cars carried two Kresh per vehicle.

There was so much Cyrus didn’t know about the aliens, and about the star system. So far he had discovered there was a three-way war. The Chirr and the Kresh fought land campaigns against each other on the two Earth-like planets, these days mainly on the second planet, second from its sun. He also knew humanoid cyborgs had attacked the star system at least once.

The Kresh had originally thought
Discovery
was another cyborg military vessel. That the cyborgs had made it out here—two hundred and thirty light years from Sol—indicated they had a type of Teleship, too. It indicated the cyborgs had possessed such a vessel at the end of the Cyborg or Doom Star War one hundred years ago in the solar system.

“So how are we going to reach the other side of the valley?” Cyrus asked.

“There are two choices,” Skar said.

Cyrus already knew what they were. Either they had to go around the canyon ends or they had to climb down, walk across the bottom, and climb back up.

“Maybe it would be easier ambushing one of the sky vehicles,” Cyrus said, “and using it. We could cover a lot more territory that way.”

“Not anymore,” Skar said. “The Kresh will be wary after the original loss.”

“Yeah . . . you’re probably right.” He kept thinking about one hundred sleeps. That was a long time to search an alien planet for one man.

They waited to see if any more sky vehicles would show up. None did, although Cyrus noticed a small cloud scudding across the sky. The two humans followed a faint ground trial. Cyrus was hoping there was a way down. One thing was certain: this place was beautiful in a stark way. Too bad aliens had to be in the star system.

New Eden, we called it. What a joke. We should have known such precious territory would have snakes
.

A half hour later, they saw what seemed like a cross between a coyote and a spider. It had furry limbs and eight legs, scuttling fast. It chased a smaller creature with large ears.

Cyrus threw himself down with his arms outstretched and the heat gun in his hands. They were almost out of food concentrates. Fortunately, they had found plenty of small streams, drinking their fill each time and refilling their canteens.

Cyrus tracked the strange creature, willing it to come closer. It did, and he could hear something on the ends of its legs clacking against the rocks. Were those claws?

“Now,” Skar whispered. “It will sense you soon, and then it will move too fast for you to hit.”

Cyrus’s stomach growled, and the spider-coyote paused. He squeezed the trigger of his pistol. A blob of heat sizzled from the barrel and it struck the creature in its main body. The thing made an odd wheezing, hissing sound, and it sagged. Belatedly, it scuttled away in slow motion. Cyrus fired again, and this time he killed it. It looked horrid, but as he rose from the rock, Cyrus’s mouth had already started watering.

They had a long way to go to get across to the other side. Skar drew his axe. Cyrus holstered his gun and pulled out his knife. A fire was out of the question. That might alert the Kresh. They would have to eat the spider-coyote meat raw.

The two crouched over the dead creature and began to hack it apart. It was messy, and the meat was slimy and bloody. Skar chewed noisily, tearing away chunks of meat with his teeth. Cyrus tried that once, and he gagged, almost throwing up as his stomach heaved.

“Is there a problem?” Skar asked.

“No,” Cyrus said. He sliced his meat into tiny portions, held his breath each time, and swallowed them like large pills. Several times he had to wash a hunk down his throat. He never wanted to eat like this again.

Afterward, they wiped their hands on the dirt.

The meat sat heavily in Cyrus’s stomach. He tried to think about something else. He didn’t want to vomit. He needed the food if he was going to find Klane.

They trudged along the edge of the canyon, seeking a way down. An hour passed, so did a second, and then a third. Finally, thunderous booms alerted them: the two rockets blasted off from the vast converter, minus the iceberg. They headed back into space.

Cyrus watched the heavy lifters and the long, trailing flames. He sat on a rock and shook his head. Who was he fooling? Getting across was going to be murder. After that, they would have to hunt for months, and the Tash-Toi kept shifting their location. What had he expected anyway, another Resister to show up and tell him exactly what to do? There was nothing but desolation out here, vast canyons and the occasional Kresh compound—oh, and don’t forget rockets bringing ice down from space. How was he supposed to find a needle in a haystack the size of Earth?

“You know what?” he told Skar.

The soldier turned around.

“This . . .” Cyrus waved his hand. “This is hopeless.”

“It was hopeless on High Station 3,” Skar said, “but we escaped.”

“I’d say we had plenty of help then.”

“We are free now, truly free, and know what direction to travel.”

“Skar, look around you. Do you see Klane? Do you have any idea where to look other than somewhere on the other side of those mountains?”

“I am not the Tracker,” Skar said. “You are the Tracker.”

Cyrus laughed. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I don’t have a clue how to go about tracking this hero. It’s not as if we have freedom to go wherever we want. The Kresh are hunting us. We’re not going to stay out of their sight forever. That means we have an extremely narrow window of opportunity, and Klane could be one hundred sleeps away.”

Skar sat erectly on a rock. He put a hand on each knee, and he frowned. “I am a soldier. I fight. You are the thinker, the strategy maker between us. If you don’t have a plan, you must make one.”

“I do have a plan: find Klane.”

“How will you find him?”

“I have no bloody idea other than marching across those mountains and asking whoever we run into.”

“Then you do not have a plan, you have a dream or a hope.”

“Yeah,” Cyrus said. He used to have plans. That had been back in the days of his youth when he’d been on his own and then as a member of the Latin Kings. Later, in Psi Force, Jasper had shared his plan with a young ex-gang member: freedom from the inhibitors in their brains. The Normals of the solar system had chained Specials like animals, putting in the inhibitor so they could turn off the psionic abilities if they wished. During the journey, Jasper had figured out—with psi-master help—how to short the inhibitors. For several weeks now, Cyrus had followed the Resister plan: find the Anointed One. Maybe it was time he made his own plans, lived his life his way.

“I’m not much of a Tracker,” Cyrus said. “If I were the real thing, I’d at least know what to do. Wandering this planet, asking the locals if they’ve seen Klane doesn’t seem smart. In the long run, how does that help Earth?”

“I do not know,” Skar said.

“I need to think of something practical. This . . . holo-vid drama—Reacher, Tracker, Anointed One—just doesn’t seem rational anymore. I’m stuck on a foreign world with raptor-aliens hunting me. Who am I kidding?”

Skar looked away. “If you are not the Tracker, why did the people on High Station 3 die to help us?”

“You mean the Resisters?”

“Them,” Skar said, “and the others who died in the blast.”

The Resisters had blown up some of the space habitat on High Station 3, helping to cover their escape in the needle-ship.

“Good people have died helping me,” Cyrus said, feeling a twinge of guilt. “And I know they’re counting on me to save them. I appreciate their help and their dream. But we have to be realistic.”

Cyrus made a fist and banged it several times against his knee. “What’s the problem? Maybe if I state it in its bald form, something will light up in my head. Okay. The Kresh control humanity here and twist them into all kinds of forms as if they’re different breeds of animals.”

“We are cattle,” Skar agreed.

“No, you’re people. I talked to Argon—he was a member of our expedition. Anyway, I talked to him before about some of this stuff. He believed in the Creator. He told me once that people were made in the Creator’s image. That means they had the divine spark in them. Animals don’t have that. Therefore, humanity, people have true dignity. The Kresh don’t give people dignity, but have made them like animals. The Kresh have tons of Specials in their Bo Taw, in their psi-masters. As crazy as it sounds, as impossible to achieve, instead of finding Klane, I need to find a way back to the solar system so we can really do something to help the people here.”

“How would you do that?” Skar asked.

“It seems impossible, but at least I’d have a goal that I know could help those on Earth and possibly here, too. What is a single primitive going to do against the Kresh? Not a whole heck of a lot,” Cyrus said. “The solar system is another matter. But before I can think about getting back to Earth, I’d need a spaceship to get off Jassac, right? I need to get back into space and . . .”

Cyrus exhaled. “Suppose I stole a Kresh military vessel. If I could reach the speed of light, it would take me two hundred and thirty years to reach Earth. I need a Teleship, and the Kresh have the only one here.”

“Is there a way to take your Earth vessel back from them?” Skar asked.

“I’d need space marines for that, or a whole lot of Vomags.”

“The Kresh—”

Cyrus snapped his fingers. “Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way.”