Startide Rising (53 page)

Sah’ot swam alongside.

“Say, Dennie, as long as we’re going to try to relax, want to trade backrubs?”

Dennie laughed. “Sure, Sah’ot. Just don’t get carried away, okay?”

Creideiki tried to reason with them one more time.

: We Are Desperate : As You Once Were : We Offer Hope To Little Unfinished Ones On This Very World : Hope To Grow Unbent :

: Our Enemies Will Harm You, As Well, In Time :

: Help Us :

The static pulsed and throbbed in response. It carried a partly psychic feeling of closedness, of pressure and molten heat. It was a claustrophilic song, in praise of rough hard stone and flowing metal.

+ CEASE -

- PEACE +

+ RELEASE!! -

- ISOLATION +

Silence fell suddenly with a squeal of tortured machinery. The old robot which had so long hung two kilometers down the narrow drill-tree shaft had been destroyed.

Creideiki clicked a familiar phrase in Trinary.

* It is, that is—*

He was tempted to enter the Dream again. But there was, on this level of reality, no time for such things.

This level of reality was where duty lay, for the moment. Later, perhaps. Later he would visit Nukapai again. Perhaps she would show him the untellable things that she heard through the vague avenues of prescience.

He headed back to the airlock of the tiny spaceship. Hikahi, seeing him approach, started warming up the engines.

…
a small group of dolphins spotted a few hundred paktaars north of this location! They were moving north quite rapidly. They may have come this way to see what all the fighting was about. Hurry! Now is the time to strike!”

Tom clicked off the receiver. His head hurt from the concentration it took to speak Galactic Ten rapidly. Not that he expected the Brothers of the Night to believe his was the voice of one of their missing scouts. That didn’t matter to his plan. All he wanted to do was stir up their interest before the final jab.

He switched frequency and pursed his lips in preparation to speaking Galactic Twelve.

Actually, this was fun! It distracted him from his exhaustion and hunger and satisfied his aesthetic sense, even if it did mean everyone and his client would be down here shortly, all looking for him.

“…Paha warriors! Paha-ab-Kleppko -ab-puber ab-Soro ab-Hul! Inform the Soro fleet-mistress we have news!”

Tom chuckled as he thought of a pun that could only be phrased in Galactic Twelve and which, nevertheless, he was sure the Soro would never get.

S
omething was making the fleets shift all of a sudden. Small squadrons raveled off the battered fleets and joined tiny groups from Kithrup’s moons, all heading toward the planet. As they merged, the groups swirled about and tiny explosions took the place of individual lights.

What in the world was going on? Whatever it was, Gillian felt a glimmer of opportunity.

“Dr. Bassskin! Gillian!” Tsh’t’s voice came over the commspeaker. “We’re getting radio traffic from the planet’s surface again. It’sss from a single transmitter, but it keeps putting out stuff in different Galactic languages! Yet I ssswear they all sound like one voice!”

She leaned forward and touched a switch. “I’m on my way up, Tsh’t. Please call half of the off-duty shift to stations. We’ll let the others rest a while longer.” She switched off the unit.

Oh, Tom, she thought as she hurried out the door. Why this? Couldn’t you have come up with anything more elegant? Anything less desperate?

Of course he couldn’t, she chided herself as she ran down the hallway. Come on, Jill. The least you can do is not be a nag.

In moments she was on the bridge, listening for herself.

C
ornered, Toshio couldn’t even climb a tree. They were too close, and would be on him the instant they heard him move.

He could hear them as they spiraled closer, tightening the noose. Toshio clutched his needler and decided he had better attack first, before they were close enough to support each other. It would be a small handgun against armored machines and high-powered lasers, and he was no marksman like Tom Orley. In fact, he had never fired at a sentient being before. But it beat waiting here.

He crouched and began to crawl to his right, toward the shoreline. He tried not to snap any twigs, but a minute after leaving his hiding place he flushed some small animal, which fled noisily through the bushes.

Immediately he heard the noise of approaching mechanicals. Toshio slithered quickly under a thick bush, only to emerge facing the broad footpad of a spider.

# Gotcha! Gotcha! #

There was a squeal of triumph. He looked up to meet the mad eye of Sreekah-pol. The fin leered as he commanded the spider to lift its leg.

Toshio rolled aside as the foot crashed down where his head had been. He reversed direction, avoiding a kick. The mechanical reared back, bringing both front legs into play. Toshio saw no place to turn. He fired his small pistol against the armored belly of the machine, and tiny needles ricocheted harmlessly into the forest.

The triumphant whistle was pure Primal.

# Gotcha! #

Then the island began to shake.

The ground heaved up and down. Toshio was jounced right and left and his head hit the loam rhythmically. The spider teetered, then crashed backward into the forest.

The shaking accelerated. Toshio somehow rolled over onto his stomach, he fought the oscillations to rise to his knees.

There was a crunching sound as two spider-riders stumbled into the clearing. One crashed past Toshio in panic. The other, though, saw him and squawked in wrath.

Toshio tried to hold out his needler, but the island’s trembling began to turn into a list. It became a race between him and the mad dolphin to see who could aim and fire first.

Then both of them were staggered by a scream that echoed within their heads.

+ BAD! -

- BAD ONES! +

+ LEAVE -

- US +

+ ALONE! -

It was a roar of rejection that made Toshio moan and grab at his temples. The needler slipped out of his grasp and fell to the rapidly tilting ground.

The dolphin whistled shrilly as its spider collapsed in convulsions. It wailed in a foxhole lamentation.

# Sorry! Sorry!

# Patron forgive!

# Forgive! #

Toshio stumbled forward. “Forgiven,” he managed to say as he hurried past. He couldn’t deal with the fin’s schizoid conversion. “Come this way if you can!” he called back, as he tried to make it to the shore. The noise in his head was like an earthquake. Somehow Toshio managed to stay on his feet and stumble through the forest.

When he reached the edge of the mound the sea was a froth below. Toshio looked right and left and saw no place that looked any better.

At that moment, a scream of engines pealed forth. He looked back to see a tornado of broken vegetation fly up from a spot only a hundred meters away. The gun-metal gray longboat rose above the rapidly tilting forest. It was surrounded by a glowing nimbus of ionization. Toshio’s hackles rose as the island was swept by the throbbing antigravity field. The boat turned slowly and seemed to hesitate. Then, with a thunderclap, it speared into the eastern sky.

Toshio crouched as the boom whipped at him, tugging at his clothes.

There was no time to delay. Either Charles Dart had got away or he hadn’t. Toshio pulled his mask up over his face, held it with one hand, and leapt.

“Ifni’s boss…” he prayed. And he fell into the stormy waters.

A
bove the planet small flotillas of battered warships paused suddenly in their multi-sided butchery.

They had left hiding places on Kithrup’s tiny moons, gambling all on the chance that the strange radio broadcasts from the planet’s northern hemisphere were, indeed, of human origin. On their way down to Kithrup, the tiny alliances sniped at each other with their waning strength, until a sudden wave of psychic noise hit the entire motley ensemble. It rose from the planet with a power none could have expected, overwhelming psi-shields and striking the crews temporarily motionless.

The ships continued to plunge toward the planet, but their living crews blinked limply, unable to fire their weapons or guide their vessels.

If it had been a weapon, the psychic shout would have cleansed half of the ships of their crews. As it was, the mental scream of anger and rejection reverberated within their brains, driving a few of the least flexible completely mad.

For long moments the cruisers drifted out of formation, uncontrolled, downward into the upper fringes of the atmosphere.

Finally, the psi-scream began to fade. The grating anger growled and diminished, leaving burning after-images as the numb crews slowly came to their senses.

The Xatinni and their clients, having drifted away from the others, looked about and discovered that they had lost their appetite for further fighting. They decided to accept the pointed invitation to depart. Their four ragged ships left Kthsemenee’s system as quickly as their laboring engines could manage.

The J’8lek were slow coming around. After succumbing to the numbing mind-scream, they drifted in amongst the ships of the Brothers of the Night. The Brothers awakened sooner, and used the J’8lek for target practice.

Sophisticated autopilots brought two Jophur warships to land on the slope of a steaming mountain, far to the south of their original destination. Automatic weapons kept watch for enemies while the Jophur struggled with their confusion. Finally, as the stunning psychic noise subsided, the crews began to revive and retake control of their grounded ships.

The Jophur were almost ready to lift off again, and head north to rejoin the fray, when the entire top of their mountain blew away in a column of superheated steam.

G
illian stared, slack jawed, until the grating “sounds” finally began to fade. She swallowed. Her ears popped, and she shook her head to clear away the numb feeling. Then she saw that the dolphins were staring at her.

“That was awful!” she stated. “Is everybody all right?”

Tsh’t looked relieved. “We’re all fine, Gillian. We detected an extremely powerful psi-explosion a few moments ago. It easily pierced our shields, and seems to have dazed you for a few minutes. But except for some momentary discomfort, we hardly felt it!”

Gillian rubbed her temples. “It must be my esper sensitivity that made me susceptible. Let’s just hope the Eatees don’t follow that attack up with another even closer…” She stopped. Tsh’t was shaking her head.

“Gillian, I don’t think it was the Eatees. Or if it was, they weren’t aiming for us. Instruments indicate that that burst came from very close nearby, and was almost perfectly tuned not to be received by cetaceans! Your brain is similar to ours, so you only felt it a little. Suessi reports hardly feeling a thing.

“But I imagine some of the Galactics had a rough’t-time weathering that psi-storm!”

Gillian shook her head a second time. “I don’t understand.”

“That makes two of usss. But I don’t suppose we have to understand. All I can tell you is thisss—at almost the same rime that psi-burst went off, there was an intense ground tremor not two hundred klicks from here. The crustal waves are only now starting to arrive.”

Gillian swam over to Tsh’t’s station in the glassy sphere of Streaker’s bridge. The dolphin lieutenant pointed with her jaw toward a globe model of the planet.

Not far from Streaker’s position on the globe, a small cluster of flashing red symbols was displayed.

“That’s Toshio’s island!” Gillian said. “Then Charlie did have a spare bomb after all!”

“Beg p-pardon?” Tsh’t looked confused. “But I thought Takkata-Jim had confiscated…”

“Ship rising!” A detection officer announced. “Anti-g and stasis—from the same site as the crust tremors, one hundred and fifty klicks from here. Tracking … tracking … Ship is now heading off at Mach two, due east!”

Gillian looked at Tsh’t. They shared the same thought.

Takkata-Jim.

Gillian saw the question in the dolphin officer’s eye. “We may face a decision shortly. Have his blip followed to see where he’s headed. And we’d better start awakening the rest of the off duty crew”

“Aye, sir. Those that managed to remain asleep through the last few minutes.” Tsh’t turned and relayed the command. A few minutes later the battle computer began to chatter.

“What now?” Gillian asked.

Bright yellow pinpoints began to glow up and down a long jagged streak on the globe of Kithrup, starting from the site of Toshio’s island.

“Detonations of some sort,” Tsh’t commented. “The computer’s interpreting them as bombings, but we’ve detected no missiles! And why this scattered pattern? The detonations are only occurring along thisss narrow stripe of longitude!”

“More psi disturbances!” an operator announced. “Strong! And from numerous sources, all on the planet!”

Gillian frowned. “Those detonations aren’t bombings. I remember seeing that pattern before. That’s the boundary of this planetary crustal plate. Those disturbances may be volcanoes.

“I’d say it’s the locals’ way of showing they’re unhappy.”

“?” Tsh’t queried confusedly.

Gillian’s expression was thoughtful, as if she was looking at something very far away. “I think I’m starting to understand what’s been going on. We can thank Creideiki for the fact that the psi-disturbances don’t affect dolphins, for instance.”

The dolphins stared at her. Gillian smiled and patted Tsh’t’s flank.

“Not to worry, fem-fin. It’s a long story, but I’ll explain if we have time. I expect the biggest effect all this will have on us is crustquakes. We should be getting some shortly. Will we be able to ride them out down here?”