Quofum (14 page)

The Qwarm turned toward her. “Why should he? There was no reason for him to bring it up to any of you, his crew. Be assured that he did allude to it, repeatedly, in other places and times where circumstances assured that his injudicious loquacity would get back to those to whom he owed the money. They felt chafed. Laughter had been induced at their expense.” Araza straightened slightly, almost as if he was coming to attention in the presence of his unseen employers. “Safer to shoot at such people, better to beat them, than to make them the butt of cheap jokes. They do not take kindly to such embarrassment.”

N’kosi tried again. “If you were hired to kill Boylan, why did you wait as long as you did? Why didn’t you just shoot him on the ship, while he slept? Or as soon as we arrived on Quofum? Here, you could have made it look like an accident.”

Araza’s voice never changed, never altered, from its cool, calm, utterly collected tone. “I did not kill him on the ship because the vessel was new to me and I wished to be confident of its confines and secure in my knowledge of its functions. I did not kill him as soon as we arrived because—as surprising as this may sound to you—I was initially more interested in what might be learned here. There is always profit to be gained from new discoveries.” One hand gestured at the surrounding forest.

“There is clearly money to be made from this extremely strange world. A great deal of valuable information has already been uploaded to storage on the ship. It will provide the clan with a welcome bonus in addition to what they have already been paid for the specific task I was assigned to carry out here.”

N’kosi stepped reflexively forward. “That information belongs to Science Central and to every citizen of the Commonwealth.”

“A noble sentiment, and one that does you proud.” Araza smiled thinly at the protesting xenologist. “Sadly, yet another government promise that must perforce go unfulfilled.”

Haviti went cold. They had to do something, to act, and quickly. Someone had to make the first move while the opportunity to do so still presented itself. Moving slowly and carefully, she determined to draw her weapon and shoot. All those years spent buried in studies and academics, she mused apprehensively. If only she’d had some military training. Should she try to pull her sidearm quickly and fire? Or would her chances be improved by working as slowly and inconspicuously as possible? Perhaps one of her colleagues would do something to draw more of Araza’s attention. In trying to decide how best to proceed and what to do next, she ended up doing nothing.

It was to N’kosi’s credit that his voice did not crack as he asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. “Are you going to kill us, now?”

“Not at all.” This time the smile that accompanied the Qwarm’s response was slightly wider. It was almost, but not quite, genuine. “I was hired to extract recompense from Nicholai Boylan: not from any of you. Through no fault of your own you have become unfortunate accessories to an awkward set of circumstances.

“However, it must be obvious to each of you that I cannot allow you to return with me.” He raised a hand to forestall N’kosi’s reply. “There are no promises that would suffice, no assurances you can possibly give that one or all of you would not eventually decide to convey to the authorities a full or partial accounting of what has transpired here, thereby placing myself individually and my clan collectively at risk of prosecution.

“By the same token, I must take steps to ensure that you are not rescued and thus placed in a position to give such damning information. This can be done without murder. As integrated identifying factors make it virtually impossible to adequately disguise and therefore resell a Commonwealth government starship, once the
Dampier
has been stripped and gutted of all useful equipment and stores and its AI has been suitably disabled, removed, or reprogrammed, the vessel’s shell will be placed in a suitable orbit to be discovered by the authorities. Finding it thus scavenged and abandoned, they will assume that you, its crew, either participated in its demise or were lost while defending it. With the craft being rediscovered within the borders of the Commonwealth, there will be no logical reason for the authorities to assume that anyone remains here on Quofum. Therefore, no relief or rescue mission will be mounted.

“I am honestly sorry. You have been redefined, for want of a better description, as collateral loss.”

Tellenberg spoke up. “Do you really think you can make it back to the Commonwealth and to a habitable world all by yourself?”

Araza turned to confront the xenologist. “Do you really think I would have accepted this assignment and come all this way without confidence in my ability to do exactly that? While there are exceptional occasions on which a Qwarm will consent to a suicidal mission, this is not one of them. You know as well as I do, Esra Tellenberg, that a modern KK-drive vessel is operated and navigated by its AI, and that an organic presence such as Captain Boylan is required only for supervisorial purposes. Interstellar space-plus navigation being what it is, no human or thranx or representative of any other organic species is capable of the mental contortions necessary to effectively fly such incredibly complex craft. Only a machine can do that. I assure you that the one controlling the vessel that brought us to this world will respond to my commands and requests as readily as it did to those of the recently deceased Mr. Boylan.” His smile vanished.

“It will be especially responsive under ‘crisis’ conditions. The crisis in this instance being my need to return to orbit around a certain world without being observed by Commonwealth Science Central while doing so.” He turned back toward the boarding ramp.

“I would have left yesterday after concluding my work here, but there was some minor trouble with the shuttle. I thought it better to make certain everything was working at maximum efficiency before departing. I was just about to be on my way when you arrived, thereby avoiding any need for this present discussion.” He eyed them all in turn, lizard-quick, without spending more than a second or two appraising each of them individually.

“Perhaps this way is better. I, of course, feel no remorse at carrying out my assignment, but I shall take some satisfaction in knowing that I was not obliged to perform any unnecessary additional murder. The Qwarm pride themselves on efficiency and an absence of untidiness.”

“‘Untidiness’?” N’kosi gaped at him. “If you leave us here and allow the empty ship to be found back in the Commonwealth then you’re killing us as surely as if you put a hole through each of our heads, just like you did to Boylan! What about the hostile natives? We’ve barely been here a week and they’ve already succeeded in penetrating the compound once. Even if you leave us alive, sooner or later they’re likely to slaughter us.”

Araza shrugged indifferently. “Maybe you can join the alliance of the stick-jellies and fuzzies against the spikers and the hardshells. That’s assuming the stick-jellies and the fuzzies don’t try to kill you, too.” Turning away from him, he started up the ramp.

An increasingly desperate Haviti took a couple of steps forward. “You can’t do this, Salvador! You can’t abandon us here with no means of getting back or expecting relief. It isn’t
civilized
!”

Partway up the ramp he paused to look back at her. “Every civilization redefines itself, Ms. Haviti. The Greeks thought the tribes of the British Isles uncivilized. Later, the British thought the Hindus uncivilized. The American tribe believed those of Islamic faith to be uncivilized. When the thranx first encountered humans, they believed us to be uncivilized. Today we know that all the so-called nations of primitive one-world Earth were nothing more than glorified tribes, as barbaric and uncivilized as all the various other smaller tribes who preceded them. The only difference was that their huts were bigger. They fought and warred among themselves over such inconsequentialities as personal faith and combustible hydrocarbons, over the accumulation of simple metals, and even the percentage of melanin some people carried within their skin. Every sentient being contains within themselves their own individual standards and definition of what it means to be civilized. Frequently that definition excludes everyone in the universe except themselves.” Once more he turned away.

“Many disagree with the standards held by the Qwarm—but at least we are consistent.”

As she listened to him her hand continued to hover in the vicinity of her sidearm. For a split second it drew close, only to fall away. She slowly raised her fingers toward the seal, but despite her desperation and determination she could not bring herself to shift them the few final millimeters necessary to un-seal it and draw the waiting weapon within. She screamed silently, cursing herself for drowning in a mixture of indecision and cowardice. She was convinced she could see him watching her out of the corner of one eye as he mounted the ramp.

Similarly convinced that the Qwarm was concentrating on the only female member of the team, Tellenberg reached down and drew his sidearm.

He was neither as slow nor as clumsy as one might have thought. It did not matter. A black blur, Araza spun, raised his own compact weapon, and fired.

The coherent sonic burst struck Tellenberg above the bridge of his nose and directly between the eyes. Such accuracy with such a small weapon over such a distance was remarkable. None of those in a position to observe it ventured a comment, however—unless one discounted the flurry of shocked obscenities and Haviti’s scream.

As Tellenberg stumbled backward a couple of steps, blood began to flow copiously from the hole in front and the hole in the rear of his skull. Unlike Boylan his eyes never closed, not even when the xenologist toppled over onto his back.

From holding his arm out straight as an arrow, Araza slowly lowered it back to his side. “A pity. That annuls a portion of the satisfaction that only a moment ago I said I was feeling about not having to kill any of you outright.”

Having as thorough an awareness of what certain humans were capable of (and perhaps more than most of them), Valnadireb had turned and sprinted on all six legs for the protection of the camp’s entry module. N’kosi was right behind him. More stunned by the shooting than either of her companions, Haviti had retreated only a couple of steps. Almost as if she had forgotten Araza she kept staring at the prone, profusely bleeding body of her friend and fellow scientist Esra Tellenberg.

The Qwarm, however, had not forgotten her. Shifting his stance slightly, he started to raise the stiletto a second time. He could have killed her effortlessly, with one eye closed and the other half open. As the members of his clan were wont to say, “A Qwarm has no qualms.” Instead he exhaled softly, pivoted, and resumed his climb up the boarding ramp. He did not forget her entirely, but neither was he especially concerned that she might try to shoot him in the back. If she had possessed the guts, she would have tried already. By this time he was reasonably certain she would not, could not, do it.

He was a professional, and he knew the signs.

Haviti took a couple of steps toward the body, then stopped. Esra Tellenberg was no more. However brave and well intentioned he had been in life, he could not help them. Looking up at the shuttle entryway she saw that the lock was already beginning to cycle shut behind Araza. If they were going to stop him, if they had any chance of surviving, wasting time keening over the body of a friend was not going to help.

For an instant she considered drawing her sidearm and firing on the shuttle. Designed for travel in both space and atmosphere, resistant to extreme heat, cold, and violent changes in pressure, its hull would not be easy for a simple biofield sidearm to penetrate. Such an assault might also prompt Araza to delay his departure for the moment or two it would be required for him to deal with her.

It struck her forcefully that in that event she would be confronting the certified assassin alone. Turning, she ran as hard as she could for the nearest modules.

Valnadireb and N’kosi were where she expected to find them: in communications central. Though it sounded impressive, CC was little more than a couple of self-contained consoles linked together. They could not stop Araza, but maybe they could stop the shuttle. Ideally, they would have taken control of the mother ship’s AI. All communications with the main vessel, however, had to be relayed through the shuttle. In answer to her breathless query, N’kosi announced glumly that the ever-efficient Araza had already blocked that channel of contact. That meant they had to find another way to somehow prevent the shuttle from lifting off—and quickly.

“Can we interface with the shuttle’s AI?” She fought to slow her breathing.

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” A harried N’kosi was trying to make sense of the camp communications system’s more arcane possibilities. Like her and the equally anxious Valnadireb, he was a field xenologist. It was not necessary for him to understand the inner intricacies of such devices. Only how to use them.

Pushing past his clearly overwhelmed colleague, Valnadireb addressed the console’s aural pickup. “Shuttle is not to lift off! This is an emergency override. Shuttle
Hyla
is not to lift off.
Confirm!
”

It was a worthy effort. When in doubt as to which command to recite, an admiring and hopeful Haviti reflected, try shouting. The response from the console, however, was disheartening.

“I am under direct crew command. Preparations for orbital return have commenced. Emergency override can only be initiated from on board.”

That route was also closed to them, Haviti realized with a sinking dread. Araza had restricted all commands to crew already on board. To himself. They could not verbally countermand his instructions from within the camp. Leaning forward and resting her hands on the lower edge of the console, she tried to divine the purpose of each individual control, the meaning of every lambent telltale.

There had to be something they could do. Some switch that could be thrown, some order that could be given, some override that could be engaged. There
had
to be!