Cobra Outlaw - eARC (9 page)

Merrick shrugged. “Eventually, I assume they’ll either try to move the wreck to one of their bases or, if that’s not possible, to at least strip it of everything useful.”

“But this won’t be for some time yet?”

“No idea. Probably not.” Merrick frowned suddenly. “Are you suggesting what I
think
you’re suggesting?”

“We need a place to stay for a time,” Anya pointed out. “Will this not do?”

Merrick looked around, chewing the inside of his cheek. If the Trofts had finished their preliminary investigation—and they’d certainly had enough time to do that—then there was no real reason for them to come back to the wreck anytime soon. There would be food and shelter, and if they stuck to the center areas the sheer mass of metal would even absorb and dissipate their heat signatures.

But if the Trofts
did
decide to pay a surprise visit, their comfy little shelter would instantly turn into a deathtrap. “I don’t know, Anya,” he said hesitantly. “It might be safe for a day or two. But—”

He broke off, frowning in concentration. There’d been a sound just then, coming from the starboard side of the control room. A sound that had sounded like stealthy predator claws scraping softly against metal…

He looked at Anya. Her eyes were darting around the room, her throat tight. So she’d heard it too. Merrick keyed up his audios, turning his head slowly back and forth, waiting for the noise to repeat.

It did so, and this time he had it. There was a small, narrow door in the wall to the right of the main control console. An equipment access hatch, most likely. That was a good sign—if the space was mostly filled with machinery or electronics, whatever had found a way in was probably pretty small.

Which wasn’t to say it might not also be dangerous. Motioning Anya to stay back, Merrick crossed the room and crouched beside the door. Now, close up, he could see that it was slightly out of true, its frame possibly warped in the crash.

Experimentally, he gave a gentle pull on the door’s handle. The door didn’t budge, but the handle itself seemed securely attached.

There was no doubt Merrick could get the door open. The question was how close he wanted to be to the compartment, and whatever was inside it, when he did.

Fortunately, there was a simple solution.

Sitting down in front of the door, he got a grip on the handle with his right hand and set his left foot against the wall beside the latch. A good tug with servo-enhanced muscles, combined with a simultaneous shove off the wall, should open the door and at the same time scoot him a meter or two back from whatever might come leaping out. Hopefully, that would buy him enough time and distance to let him either kill or stun it.

Or so went the theory. Unfortunately, the only way to find out for sure was to do it. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself, then yanked and kicked. The door popped open as Merrick’s rear lifted briefly from the floor and then thudded down again on the deck—

And inside the compartment, twitching violently backward in surprise, was a Troft.

Not much of a Troft, really, Merrick saw as his brain reset its anticipations from possible deadly predator to probable deadlier enemy. The Troft was shorter and scrawnier than most of those Merrick and Anya had run into since leaving Qasama, with a wide-eyed and borderline terrified expression on his chicken-beaked face. His upper-arm radiator membranes were fully stretched out with fear or surprise or some other strong emotion. The compartment where he was half-lying, half-crouching was larger than Merrick had expected, but there wasn’t a lot of room to spare for its current occupant. Gripped in the Troft’s hand was what looked like a small knife.

And then, even as Merrick reflexively put targeting locks on the knife and the center of the Troft’s forehead, the membranes closed down, the alien’s whole body sagging with relief.

The posture lasted maybe two seconds. Then, just as suddenly, the Troft seemed to straighten up, or at least go as straight as his position in the cramped space would allow. [Slaves, you are,] he intoned in cattertalk.

Or tried to intone, anyway. His voice came out sounding more like that of a nervous youngling on his first trip away from home. [Assistance, I require it,] he continued, his voice sounding a little more weighty this time. [Assistance, you will provide it.]

He held out his hand, and Merrick saw now that what he’d thought was a knife was in fact only a small file. However the Troft had gotten himself stuck in there, he’d apparently been trying to grind away enough of the misaligned door to get it open.

[The order, I obey it,] Merrick said automatically, pushing himself off the deck.

And winced even before he heard Anya’s quiet but sharp intake of breath. Merrick’s accent, both his Anglic and his cattertalk, weren’t quite right for Muninn’s humans or for the Drim’hco’plai demesne Trofts who owned the planet. Anya had pointed that out even before they’d left Qasama, and they’d agreed that Merrick should pose as a mute.

Now, after a day of talking with Anya without having to worry about that, Merrick had completely forgotten the role he was supposed to be playing. But it was too late now.

Fortunately, the Troft didn’t seem to notice. Possibly he had more important things to worry about.

His own current physical condition, for starters. As Merrick took the alien’s outstretched hand he realized that what he’d taken to be scrawniness was instead dehydration and malnutrition.

Had he been trapped in that narrow space since the ship crashed? It seemed incredible, but given the shape of the door Merrick couldn’t see any other possibility.

Especially now that he was close enough to see—and smell—the sanitary collection system at the back of the compartment that had been improvised from a storage pouch and tool belt.

The compartment opening was narrow, but not too narrow to be a problem. Merrick got him out easily, and at Anya’s silent prompting took a couple of respectful steps back while the alien rubbed, kneaded, and massaged his cramped arms and legs back into usefulness, all the while muttering phrases under his breath that Merrick’s cattertalk lessons had never covered.

Finally, after a couple of minutes of work and curses, he straightened up, flapping his radiator membranes once and then resettling them against his arms. He was still short and a little emaciated, but he was once again a Troft, master of Muninn and all it contained.

And Merrick and Anya were once again slaves.

[Water, you will bring it to me,] he ordered. [Food, you will bring it to me.]

[The order, we obey it,] Anya spoke up before Merrick could respond.

Which was fine with him. She knew proper slave behavior far better than he did, and there was no reason to give the Troft another crack at Merrick’s foreign accent if they could avoid it. She was welcome to take the lead from now on.

[Food and water, my companion will bring it,] she added.

Merrick gave her a little bow of his head and a mental salute for quick thinking. Perfect—setting her up as the dominant one of the pair would explain why she was doing all the talking. They’d passed the ship’s galley on the way forward; hopefully, whoever had taken away the bodies hadn’t also cleaned out the food stores. He bowed to the Troft and started to turn—

[The food and water, the female will bring it,] the Troft said. [The male, he will stay with me.]

Merrick froze in mid-turn, an uncomfortable feeling creeping up his back. He turned back to the Troft, to find the alien staring straight at him. For a half second their eyes met, before Merrick remembered his place and quickly lowered his gaze.

[The delay, why is there one?] the Troft demanded.

[The order, I obey it,] Anya said, and left the compartment.

Merrick kept his eyes on the deck, feeling sweat gathering on his forehead.
Now
what?

[Your eyes, you will raise them to me,] the Troft ordered.

Bracing himself, wondering distantly if a slave could be ordered to show disrespect to his masters, Merrick lifted his gaze to the Troft. The alien was still watching him. [Your name, you will give it to me.]

Merrick swallowed. [My name, Merrick Hopekeeper it is,] he said.

[My name, Kjoic it is,] the Troft responded. [Master Kjoic, that is how you will address me.]

[The order, I obey it, Master Kjoic,] Merrick said, frowning to himself. As far as he could remember, Kjoic was the first Troft who’d actually introduced himself since Commander Ukuthi sent him and Anya on this mission. Was Kjoic a more liberal breed of slave master? Or was he simply new to the position?

Merrick had never learned how to estimate Troft ages from their appearance. Now, he wished he had. Knowing Kjoic’s age might have offered some clue to his odd behavior.

[The food, I will eat it,] Kjoic continued. [The journey to your home, we will then begin it.]

Merrick’s stomach tightened. In retrospect, it was the obvious course of action for a rescued castaway trying to return to his people.

Except that Gangari was the absolute last place on the planet he and Anya could afford to go. After the violence of yesterday’s escape, the whole village would be crawling with Trofts hunting for a clue as to the fugitives’ whereabouts.

[The order, I obey it,] Merrick said, thinking furiously. [The hour, it is become late. The journey, it cannot be completed before nightfall.]

Kjoic’s radiator membranes fluttered. [The journey, it cannot be undertaken at night?]

[Night predators, they also journey through the forest,] Merrick said.

[The reasoning, it is valid,] Kjoic said. [The journey, we will wait until morning to begin it.]

Merrick bowed his head. So he’d at least bought them a few hours. Though what they would do with that extra time he couldn’t guess. [The order, I obey it,] he said.

[An order, I have not given one,] Kjoic said mildly. [Your words, they thus mean little.]

Merrick clenched his teeth. Who in hell
was
this guy? [Respect, the words are marks of it,] he explained. [The words, required of all slaves they are.]

[The words, they still mean little,] Kjoic said, sounding a little cross. [Your village, what is its name?]

Merrick froze. What was he supposed to say
now
? [My village—]

[Svipall, our village is named,] Anya voice interrupted.

Merrick looked behind him. Anya had returned, a bag of meal bars and a large bottle of water in her hands. [A full day, the journey will require it,] she added as she walked over to him.

[The journey, we will begin it in the morning,] Kjoic said, taking the bag and bottle. [The meal, I will eat it. A protective barrier against night predators, you will construct one.]

[The order, we obey it,] Anya said, bowing.

Apparently, Kjoic had no problem with a proper slave response to a proper order. That, or he was too hungry to split hairs. He was digging into the meal bar bag as Merrick and Anya left the compartment.

Merrick waited until they were two corridors away before speaking. “Nice timing,” he murmured. “I had no idea what to tell him. Is Svipall a real village, or was that just to stall him off until we can ditch him?”

“It is real,” Anya said grimly. “It is a village south of Bragi, the home of Ville Dreamsinger.”

“Oh,” Merrick said, nodding. Ville was a slave who’d been sold to one of the other Troft demesnes, and who’d been recalled when the Drim’hco’plai decided to bring them all back to Muninn. Ville had traveled from the slave ship’s landing site with Anya and Merrick and the rest of the Gangari group. “Is that a problem? I seem to remember your villagers being reasonably civil toward him when we arrived.”

“The feelings between Gangari and Bragi aren’t the difficulty,” Anya said. “The difficulty is that when I left the masters had a small presence in Svipall. It may be that they still do.”

Merrick winced. “Great.”

“I am sorry,” Anya said. “The presence was not large, and I had forgotten about it until after I spoke.”

“Yeah,” Merrick muttered. “Well…we’ve got a day to figure out something.”

“And a night,” Anya said pointedly.

“And a night,” Merrick agreed. In fact, the simplest approach might very well be to wait until Kjoic was asleep and then slip away. Whatever predators might be wandering through the Muninn darkness would be a damn sight easier to deal with than having a Troft as a traveling companion.

In the meantime, Kjoic had ordered them to secure the wrecked aft part of the ship against those predators. For the moment, at least, Merrick needed to a good, obedient little slave.

There was no possible way to block or otherwise secure the gaping hole in the outer hull. It was too large for anything Merrick had seen during their passage through the ship, and removing interior walls or furniture to fill in the empty space would be impossible to do without revealing Merrick’s Cobra weaponry and strength. Fortunately, the cracks in the inner wall, while numerous, were much easier to close. It took an hour of scrounging and another hour to figure out how to wedge everything in place, but in the end they managed to close off every opening they could find that would admit anything larger than a mouse.

Kjoic arrived on the scene just as they were finishing work on the last crack. He’d changed his clothing, Merrick noticed, and added a wide belt with a set of small tools attached. After a couple of hours with a water bottle the alien’s skin already looked a little more filled out. He must have been seriously dehydrated. [Excellence, the work has it,] the Troft declared.

[Your approval, we are grateful for it,] Anya said, bowing.

[Predators, we are safe from them.] Kjoic paused. [Safety, we nearly have it.]

Merrick frowned.
Nearly
?

As if in answer to the unspoken question, the Troft stepped to the opening Merrick and Anya had used earlier, into which Merrick had wedged a pair of bunks from the ship’s crew quarters. [This opening, predators may yet force their way through it,] he continued, pulling a small tool from one of the pouches on his belt. He slid a switch, and abruptly the corridor lit up with the acrid blue fire of a cutting torch. A few quick touches to the spots where the bunk frame pressed against the blackened frame— [Security, we now have it,] Kjoic said with satisfaction as he closed down the torch. [Entrance, predators may now not achieve it.]