IronStar (34 page)

“Will the horses be able to catch
it?”

“I don't know. I've never imagined
I'd see a footrace between a Kruss and a Wrth pony. Well, I suspect it wasn't
armed. I think it would have fired on us if it could have.”

“It seemed to me, Kirrah’
jasa
,
that the …creature was more interested in departing than in fighting. There are
a great many of us, and from its actions, I doubt it wanted to be seen.”

“You have wise eyes, Irshe
’jasa
.
I believe our O'dai guests got a good look at what their captains were hiding…
Captain! Can you rescue one of the small boats off those burning warships?”
Kirrah gestured to where another small dinghy dangled by one remaining rope
from the stern of a burning ship. In moments, a couple of Talamae sailors
pulled the small boat up on the bank.

“Captain, please translate for our
guests.” Captain Og’drai stepped to her side and spoke to the two injured O'dai
sailors.

“Have you ever seen that small
creature before?” After a brief exchange in O'dai, the stocky captain
responded:

“Warmaster, they are as surprised
as we were. I believe they are telling truth.”

“Good. Tell them this. Kirrah
Warmaster is releasing you to your countrymen. Tell all of them what you saw
here. Your fleet carried a passenger who is not human. It is a beast that
thinks as well as men. Its name is Kruss. Its nation is the enemy of all
humans, on this world and on many more.

“This world is now under the
protection of my nation, the nation I came from. Our name is
Draconis
.
We have the strength to oppose the Kruss. If you want to live as free men, you
have chosen the wrong allies. They will consume you. Make alliance with us,
with Talam, and end this war. We should be helping one another, not fighting.

“If you do this, I promise you, you
will grow rich in trade. And when my countrymen arrive, they will be able to
heal your injuries, and you will both walk again. You have my word, as
Warmaster of Talam and as officer of the Regnum Draconis Survey Service.

“Go now. If your officers will
speak with me, and not try treachery as Durkalo did, tell them to row back
here, I will meet in truce and guarantee their safe return. I will wait one
takka
for them to return in this boat.”

The sailors, one with a ruined foot
and one with a rough binding on an ugly beamer wound across his lower leg, were
set not ungently into the small dinghy, and pushed off from the bank. Looking
apprehensively at their former captors, they rowed vigorously out into the
current.

Kirrah spared a glance west across
the plain where six of Peetha’s pursuit warriors were still discernible, riding
hard after a no-longer-visible Kruss. The distant
tso’ckhai
had resumed
its invisibility somewhere on the
not-grass
. By mutual consent, the
forces on opposite sides of the river had ceased active hostilities, and the
two rowing O'dai were drawing up to the opposite bank. The Talamae forces
turned their attention to the care of their own injured, and Kirrah sank down
on a piece of baggage to rest, not before spreading her suit's photocloth in
the hot noon sunlight to begin recharging her sidearm.

Half an hour later her pursuit
party returned, with an unconscious Kruss bound and slung over the withers of
one of their lathered horses. Its rider reined in and conferred briefly with
Peetha, then the two of them lifted the small being off the horse and carried
it a few meters to drop it proudly, like a hound with a rabbit, at Kirrah's
feet. She stood, stunned that they could have caught the creature and a more
than a little shocked that they were able to subdue it. The other riders turned
to the care of their hard-run mounts.

“Peetha, that is amazing! How did
they catch it?”

“Nakka'ti! Report to the
Warmaster!” Peetha barked. Somewhat to Kirrah's surprise, the wiry man was able
to communicate in the Talamae language.
Homework, I guess
…

“Yes Peetha. Warmaster, we pursued
this beast as you saw, and another two hands of
doi'la
besides. It was
very fast, at first we could hardly keep it in sight. Then it began to slow,
and we pressed two of the horses hard, and held back the others a little in
case the first two foundered. The two gained on the creature, the…”

“Kruss,” Peetha supplied.

“Yes, the Kruss. It then ran even
faster, then suddenly it fell to the ground as dead. We saw it was breathing,
so we trussed it with our war-lassos and brought it to you.”

“You have done very well,
Nakka'ti,” Kirrah said. “This is an important captive.”
…you have no idea!

“Bring more ropes, strong mooring
lines from the boats. This Kruss must be secured very well. Listen to me, all
of you. This creature will deceive you. It is as small as a child, but as
clever as a seasoned warrior and as strong as two men. Do not underestimate it.
Everyone has seen how fast it is. Its strength is in its legs and the claws on
its feet, in its teeth, and in its speed. The strongest and best warrior among
us, armed and armored, is no match for this thing. Even without its armor, it
could easily slay a warrior with teeth and speed, before he could move to
defend himself. We must keep it from using its legs.” As Kirrah spoke, several
of the boatmen arrived with stout three-centimeter fiber ropes and began
wrapping the Kruss from the ankles up.

“Wrap its tail to its left leg, so…
that will keep it from jumping,” Kirrah instructed. As they continued working,
she examined the Kruss' suit. It appeared to be a standard-issue
hostile-environment suit, as tough and versatile as hers, but not powered as
combat armor could be. She removed both its bushknives - slightly curved, dark
blue metal, gleaming and wickedly sharp, longer than her own survival blade -
and the few other loose tools clipped to the outside of the suit.

The helmet was open to the collar,
probably in an attempt to get more air for an extended run. The being's head
was about the size and shape of an ancient Terran football, one end being the
snout. Black lips closed over a predator's maw. Brown-dappled gray skin covered
the face and throat, and the top of the head and back and sides of the neck
were overlaid with soft, short gray and brown fur. Ears were unadorned shallow depressions
on either side of the head, low on the skull, and air soughed regularly in and
out of a pair of openings in the skull just above and behind them.
Forward-facing eyes currently closed with sphincters of dark skin, rather than
terrestrial-style eyelids, completed the picture. The creature's body plan
would have reminded a twentieth century Terran of a cross between a baboon and
a miniature Tyrannosaurus Rex. It would have been described by a
fifteenth-century Terran as a devil.

Now if I remember my
xenotechnology classes
… Kirrah examined the ends of the armored sleeves
covering the Kruss' short upper limbs. Yes, there it is… As soon as its legs
were securely bound, she knelt with her beamer set to
cut/weld
and
thumbed it on. A pale yellow thread of light sprang from its business end to
touch the bulge at the back of a small rod nestled along the bottom of the
Kruss suit's left forearm. A spot on the metallic bulge began to glow, dull
red, then orange, then purple, then brilliant white. After almost half a
minute, the metal of the bulge gave a small sigh and sagged. Tiny crackling
sounds and a wisp of smoke announced the complete destruction of the Kruss'
built-in beamer.

Let's make a thorough job of it
…
As her companions watched in fascination, she burned two more holes in the
alien suit's backpack, hopefully ruining its power storage and life support
mechanisms and destroying its communications gear. As an added precaution, she
ordered its forelimbs tied to its sides and took Peetha’s hip-knife and lashed
it across the suit's collar behind the being's head, where it would either
interfere with the helmet's closing, or possibly decapitate the Kruss as it
closed.
Now we can talk
. Kirrah straightened and said:

“Nakka'ti, Peetha.” The two
materialized in front of her as though by magic. “To express my thanks for your
excellent service today, I present you each with a war-prize.” Their eyes
widened in feral delight as she held out the two captured Kruss knives. “Only
do not be surprised by their sharpness. Your iron blades are as grass to this
edge.” The man picked up a spent crossbow bolt from the
not-grass
nearby
and swung the Kruss blade against the pencil-thick hardwood. The shaft parted
cleanly with no apparent effort. He drew his own iron blade and pressed the two
edges together. The iron weapon yielded visibly under moderate hand-pressure,
leaving a five-millimeter nick in its edge. Nakka'ti gave a huge smile, bowed
and saluted his Warmaster. Peetha was holding her new blade like a medieval
knight who’d just been handed the Holy Grail.

“Warmaster, the O'dai are coming to
talk,” said Captain Og'drai a few minutes later. “And the Wrth, looks like. You
finally managed to get their attention.”

“Further, every War is rich in
particular facts, while at the same time each is an unexplored sea, full of
rocks which the General may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen
with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night.” -
General Carl Von Clausewitz, ‘
On War’,
1832 A.D.; Berlin, Terra

Lucinda Dunning stepped through the
hatchway into the cool, dimly-lit nerve center of her small task force, buried
deep within the heart of her flagship. Captain DaCosta was huddled over one of
the auxiliary display tanks with two crew plus his XO, Commander Rachel McKai -
a steel-haired, steel-eyed woman a little shorter and a little older than
Lucinda. The four looked up at her approach, and an ensign at a workstation to
the left of her hatchway exclaimed:

“Admiral on deck!” which
immediately brought the entire skeleton staff of a dozen men and women to
attention.

“As you were, people,” the Admiral
said, casually returning the salutes. She crossed briskly to the small group
huddled with the Captain. Slowly the room’s sounds of hushed efficiency
returned. “What do you have for me, Captain?” she asked, glancing at the view
in the display tank. “Isn’t that the hablet the
Arvida-Yee
reported?”

“Yes, Ma’am, it is. When we dropped
sub-c just an hour ago for our regular nav sighting, a mailtube from NavInt
Trailway was waiting for us. It seems shortly after we got under way, their
analysts came up with… well, I’ve asked Lieutenant Maurais, my sensor
specialist, to brief you.”

“Ahem, aye Sir, Ma’am.” The young
sandy-haired and slightly nervous man touched the tank’s controls, and the view
shifted to display a schematic of the solar system S22041. “The Admiral will
recognize our destination system, and here’s the last available data on the
scout’s course…” A thin yellow line stretched across the muted pastel rings
denoting planets’ orbits, crossing high over the sun’s north pole and ending
abruptly well over the hablet’s position.

“The scout released their mailtube
here…” a cursor flashed at the end of the yellow line, “…ballistic, with a
delayed activation.” A dashed yellow line projected well out of the tank’s
field of view.
The prudent act of a properly paranoid captain,
Luce
reflected.
I just hope you were paranoid enough…

“As the Admiral remembers,” the
Lieutenant continued, “the scout also released a drone some hours earlier which
preceded them into the system, also ballistic.” A green line appeared in the
display, nearer the ecliptic, and passing close over the blue spark of the new
hablet. “The drone’s data, up to the point they released the mailtube, was
included with their own sensor uptake in their last …ah, that is, their latest
message.”

“Yes, Lieutenant, I understand this
much. I believe their probe’s data was just slightly more informative than
their own sensors.”

“Yes Ma’am.” The young man
swallowed unobtrusively.
Don’t bore your admiral, son, get to the drek. If
there weren’t drek, we wouldn’t be having this meeting…

“What we just received from
Trailway, Ma’am, is the result of cross-correlation of the two sensor uptakes,
the drone’s and the scout’s. This was done as a matter of routine, but someone
in the Analysis group took a special interest and applied a new piece of
experimental AI tech to the correlation problem. What they came up with is a
significant improvement in image resolution. By comparing simultaneous views
from the two different angles down through the atmosphere, the Scout’s and the
drone’s, they were able to eliminate more of the atmospheric distortion… it’s
just brilliant work… yes, sorry Captain,” the intense young man twitched as the
Captain shifted his feet a little impatiently.

“So basically, Ma’am, what they
were able to do, is get us from
this
…” the view shifted and zoomed down
onto the planet, closing in on the southern shore of a large lake in the
northern hemisphere. Three nearly-parallel brown rivers crossed a mottled green
plain and emptied into the lake from the south. Patches of brown and beige
dappled the yellow-green land from the narrow cream strip of shoreline and
partway up the rivers. As the view reeled down to maximum magnification, the
image quality deteriorated into vague blurs.

“…to
this
,” the Lieutenant
said, as dramatically and proudly as though he had done it all himself. The
view cleared somewhat, oval patches of blur turning into long narrow streaks.
“err, sorry, Ma’am, Captain, that was before reapplying the transFourier
enhancement, ahh,
here
…” And the view cleared, not to perfection, but
quite adequately to resolve the brown patches into squares and rectangles with
lines running between them, varicolored fields surrounding the, the
city
,
that was the only word for it. Lucinda’s eyes widened and she felt her jaw just
barely stop itself from sagging open.