Skeen's Search (10 page)

“Hmm. It's your funeral, I can fly out.”

“Get in, grump, or you'll get your fur wet.” Skeen cracked open the pilot's pod, stretched out on her stomach and pulled the cover down. She fit the commandcap onto her head, began a methodical check of the machine. When she saw that the second pod was filled and sealed, she tapped on the lift field and began a swift slanting dart for the clouds.

After a cold, rough eight-hour ride twisting through the mountain peaks, buffeted by powerful erratic winds, battered into wild swoops by a monster thunderstorm, Skeen eased the skeletal miniskip into a high dry cup just over a ridge from the lake.

Timka uncurled cramped fingers and retracted her claws. In a stiff silence she clicked open the pod cover whose padding had proved so inadequate and got to her feet groaning. When Skeen chuckled, Ti snarled then shook herself through several transformations before retrieving the hybrid Pallah cat-weasel form she'd learned on that final rush to the Gate. She bounced on her foot pads, swung her arms and purred at the rush of energy that always accompanied the assumption of this form.

Skeen stopped laughing. Her own aches and bruises were going to stay with her. “Min,” she muttered. Ignoring Timka's growing exuberance, she unstrapped the stunrifle, got the nightscope out of its case and snapped it in place. She shrugged her shoulders to make sure the pack and the groundsheet roll were sitting comfortably, then frowned up at the lowering sky. It wasn't raining here, now, but the storm was shifting north faster than she liked. It was very dark, a little over two hours till dawn. She fixed hooded stickums to her boots, straightened. “Ti?”

“Here.”

“About two hours till dawn, that time enough?”

“It'll take a while to search the camp. Hadn't we better get started?”

“Be careful when you're down there.”

“Take your own advice.”

“Not much for me to be careful about. Just sit and watch the rain come down.”

With Timka padding silent behind her, Skeen picked her way cautiously up the scree-littered slope, cursing under her breath as she started small rockslides every few steps; carefully as she tried to set her feet down she couldn't help sounding like a herd of tinks on a mating run, she could move like a ghost's dream through the most cluttered interiors in just about any city one could name and steal the sweat off a sleeper, but here.…

She reached the top and found a grassy hollow where she could look down the shallow escarpment at the lake while she lay concealed behind a dead bush with brown dead leaves clinging to branches crooked and knotty as arthritic fingers. She wrapped herself in the camouflaged groundsheet; it was waterproofed, would keep the threatened rain off her and the rifle, cut the bite of the knife-edged wind that swept over the top of the ridge and blasted down the cliff face. When she was settled she twisted her head round so she could see Timka. “You can fly in this?” She had to shout to break through the howl of the wind.

“Don't worry about me. You just be ready to drop the rope when I whistle.”

“Bona Fortuna give us you have something to whistle about.”

“You said it.” Timka moved closer to the edge, swaying as gusts of wind slammed into her; after a swifter shift than usual she was the broad-winged bird shape she'd found most efficient at coping with the gravity and the thick air.

Skeen adjusted the night goggles and watched her circle out over the water then slant toward the thick woolly treetops. Seemed like every day now Timka grew more restless, more reckless; handling her was like juggling a bomb with the failsafe missing and the timer running. Skeen watched the Ti-bird slip like smoke into the tree-tops. The two of them bumped against each other more and more whenever they were together, whether it was on Picarefy or at a Pit Stop. Or here. It was becoming obvious they weren't going to settle into a team no matter how much they liked and respected each other and how effectively they worked together. Skeen smiled when she remembered the slippery submissive Min woman way back there on Mistommerk. Set that Timka next to the one fishing in the leaves down there and you'd hardly think they were the same species. Scratching at her nose she scanned the silent canopy then the lake some dozen meters below her. A large cold raindrop spashed on her cheekbone, rolled past her mouth, another landed in her hair. She sighed, pulled the groundsheet over her head and settled to what she expected to be a long wait. Patience, Skeen. It's a job, like all the other jobs, you know how to be patient when you're working. Don't think about what happens when this is over, you don't know what's going to happen. One step at a time and keep your mind on the step, or you'll fall on your face, old girl. The raindrops were falling more heavily. The dead bush in front of her was rustling with a curious almost-music, a complex of sounds that was like the world singing to her, scratches, long creaks, the rhythmic plop plop of the rain. She was warm, dry, comfortable, the soreness from the bumpy ride was easing out of her, the greatest danger she faced was falling asleep; how many times had she waited like this, casing a building, scouting a ruin? Enough times she knew how to deal with distractions and the powerful urge to sleep washing over her. Live in the present moment. Watch. Wait. Be ready to deal with anything Timka scared up.

The camp was a group of mud-wattle huts built around tree trunks, their floors a meter and a half off the ground. Rain dripping in sharp brittle tip tap tunks about her, Ti-cat slid through the deep shadow under the huts, nervous because those high floors suggested strongly that predators like the skitterdiscs prowled here at night. She circled the outer rim of the camp, but found no sentries. That made her yet more nervous. There should have been sentries. Either she was missing them in the noise of the rain and wind, or the fugitives who lived here depended on local predators for their security. Lifefire, I've haven't time to waste on this. She ghosted to the nearest hut, lengthened her neck and nosed aside the leather curtain blocking the small doorway. Two sleepers inside. She readjusted her vision, moved her head carefully so she could see the faces. No Rostico Burn here. She brought her neck back to normal, slid to the next hut, repeated the process. One by one she searched the huts, her stomach in knots, her ears flared to catch the slightest sound, hoping the watchbeasts had gone off to sleep since dawn was galloping closer, not really believing that. Hut after hut. Her neck muscles ached, the colloid was thudding in the veins in her temples, she felt like throwing up. Time passed. She squeezed down on frustration and impatience, continued with her careful controlled exploration. Long neck, nose about inside the hut, short neck, move on, slow slow, never relaxing, methodical, taking each hut as it came, working in ragged spiral deeper and deeper into the camp, cold uncomfortable, wet and angry.

She moved round a patch of berry brambles and stopped.

A rough cage made of lake reeds bound together with thin tough cords about three meters across and two meters high. Someone inside stretched out on the mud, sluggish streams of mud or blood moving across pale skin.

She edged closer. Her foot touched cold metal sunk out of sight in earth the consistency of thick soup. A chain snaked past her, one end locked around the nearest tree, the other end about the captive's waist. A man, naked, prone, either asleep or unconscious. From the look of his back, he'd been severely beaten and raped before he was thrown in the cage. Her muzzle wrinkled into an unhappy snarl. I don't like this; Mala Fortuna, as Skeen would say. His head was turned away from the chain tree; she padded around the cage, dropped on her stomach in the mud and lengthened her neck again.

He twitched and shivered, groaned as her head moved toward him. What she could see of his face was contused and distorted, but enough like the fots she'd examined to leave little question about who he was. Rostico Burn, Mala Mala Mala Fortuna yes. And he was very like Skeen, more than she'd expected now that she saw him in the flesh. She retracted her head, shook herself into shape for running

A powerful kick in the side sent her tumbling over and over to crash into the chain tree. Dazed, she scrambled to get away, managed to throw herself around the tree in time to avoid a second blow though the skitterdisc's foreclaws scraped a deep furrow into her flank before the tree intervened. The thing was fighting as silently as the other had, the one that followed them from the shelter; praying that it would maintain that silence, Timka clawed up the tree until she pulled herself onto a broad limb springing horizontally from the trunk; the tree shivered and swayed as the skitterdisc slammed into it, the limb groaned under her weight threatening to drop her under the claws of the silent furious beast below her.

Flustered and panting, Timka clung a moment to the brittle bark, struggling to concentrate. She huddled next to the trunk, got herself propped as steadily as she could and finally managed the shift to her birdform. The shaking got more frantic. The skitterdisc whined, the sound rising and falling, growing louder and louder. Timka shuddered, her feathers rasping against the bark. She forced her mind away from her doubts and fears, began climbing higher in the tree using talons and beak to pull herself up. Nearly drowning as leaves emptied rain on her, fighting to hold on in spite of the soaking and the sway which got wider and more violent, she wrenched herself upward until she reached a level where there was a fragment of open sky. She launched herself into the rain, sank heavily until her wings bit into the air and powered her up again.

Unwilling to fight the windshears along the face of the low scarp, Timka flew the extra distance around the end of the lake where the slope and windspeed both were gentler, circled round behind the ridge and finally dropped beside Skeen, cawing a warning before she settled. She shifted to Pallah, shivered and grew herself a thick coat of fur. Though the rain had slackened a little, it cut deeper, combed into long stinging lines by the icy wind.

Skeen twisted round, pulling the ground sheet tight about her face, blinking away the rain that hit the side of her head and dripped into her eyes. “Well?”

“Found him,” Timka said. “There's a problem. He's inside a cage and chained to a tree. And he's been pounded into chopped meat, he's not going to be walking out of there. Another problem. The men there don't bother with sentries, they sleep in huts they've built in the trees and let a herd of skitterdiscs handle their security. One of them nearly got me, came down on me before I knew it was there. Between the wind, the rain and the mud, I wouldn't have noticed a stampede of draft horses.”

“Shit.”

“True. You'll have to help me carry him. Will that thing keep the skitters off?” She leaned over and tapped the barrel of the stun rifle.

“I think so. Let's hope I don't have to use it. Noisy. If you and that skitter haven't already waked the camp, this will do it.”

“Maybe we should wait till tomorrow night.”

Skeen moved restlessly, the ground sheet rustling as it shifted about her body. “We probably should. No.” She turned her hand over, looked at the ringchron. “We've still got an hour of real dark and there's more rain blowing up, I want to go now.” She frowned. “You're sure it's him?”

“He's enough like you he could be your brother.” Timka grinned at her. “A MUCH younger brother.”

“Snip. You're going to have to swim me across that lake.” She got to her feet, shook out the groundsheet and rolled it into a small neat bundle, then she took the rope and the piton that had shared the sheet's shelter with her, exploded the piton into the stone and dropped the rope over the rim. “Come on. The sooner we get started.…”

Timka flowed out of the shadow under the trees, shifted to the Pallah-cat hybrid. “As far as I can tell no one woke or noticed the noise the skitter and I made. There's a herd of the beasts poking in the mud around something that smells like a garbage dump, but none prowling in the rest of the camp, the one who chased me must've given up and gone back to his kin. Mud's getting deeper by the minute. If Burn doesn't wake up soon, he's going to drown in it.” She dragged her arm across her flat muzzle, squeezing some water out of the short plushy fur on it, water immediately replaced by the hard rain now falling about them.

Skeen kicked at something obscured by the mud. “I cut two of the reeds in case we need a stretcher to carry the man.”

Timka clicked her tongue against her teeth. “To get him across the lake, maybe. Better I carry him and leave you loose to guard us.”

“If you can manage the weight …”

An exasperated snort. “Better than you, Nemin.”

Skeen knelt beside the cage, cursing under her breath as the light blade labored to cut through the tough reeds. Built the fuckin' cage around the man and didn't include a door, stupid gits. Timka prowled about, nervously alert, watching for early risers and wandering skitterdiscs, feeling the miniscule changes that announced the arrival of dawn. Rain dropped around her, the drops splatting like bullets into the mud; the wind was turning erratic, the steady pressure changing to powerful gusts that swung unpredictably from side to side.

Setting the lengths of reed beside the stun rifle that she'd left leaning against the cage, Skeen crawled through the opening. The captive was blowing bubbles in the mud; as Timka said, a bit more and he'd drown in it. The light blade cut through the soft iron of the chain far faster than it had the reeds. She put her hand on the man's shoulder, cursed again. Hot. She lifted his head, slapped him lightly. He grunted incoherently, moved his arms, his hands in feeble aimless gropings, subsided into passivity. “Djabo,” she muttered. She touched the butt of the darter, shook her head. “Better not.” She got him belly down over her shoulder and began crawling through the opening.

Timka was waiting there. She knelt and took the body as Skeen slid it off. A hand on his wrists to hold him in place, she shrugged his body about until she was satisfied with her balance, then rose carefully to her feet. “Far as I can tell nothing's moving,” she told Skeen.