The Siege of New Terra (Star Sojourner Book 7) (14 page)

The odor of fish preceded Huff to the jeep. Sophia put a hand over her nose. “Somebody hose him down.”

“C'mon, big guy,” I said to Huff.

He climbed into the open compartment behind the rear seats.

“What'd you do, fur ball,” Chancey asked, “roll in dead fish to hide your smell?”

“When are you going to grow up?” Joe asked Chancey.

I sighed with relief. It was good to have our leader back, and keeping a tight rein on Chancey.

I was pulling away again when Bat shouted and trotted up with his medkit.

“I think we're going to need a bigger jeep,” I told Joe.

“Where's the party, y'all?” Bat asked breathlessly.

I stopped and Bat squeezed into the back. I studied the woods and put the jeep in gear. “I wish I knew.”

“Oh my God,” I said as a winged creature flitted across the moon like a giant bat.

“What did you see, Jules?” Sophia asked.

“It's… I pointed to the bare moon.”I think it's– “It's
what?
” Joe demanded.

“What're they doing here?” I whispered, screeched the jeep to a stop, and peered into deep woods. Suddenly the night grew fangs and we were naked. “Shayls.”

Chancey drew in a breath. “It had to be Shayls!”

Huff whined and stared at the sky. He flexed his front paws, extending sharp, curved claws. “They are the spawn of The Pit.”

“What in blue balls,” Chancey exclaimed, “are Shayls doing on New Terra?”

Joe sat back and rubbed his eyes. “Why not? It adds spice to the brew.”

“Probably hired by the mercs,” I said. “Keep your rifles handy. They're ambush predators.”

“What's a Shayl?” Bat asked.

“Something to run from, bubba!” Chancey told him. “They don't eat often, but when they do, everybody runs for cover.”

“What kind of weapons do they have?” Sophia asked.

“They're a non-tech race of lone predators, Soph, I said,”without an ounce of humanity. Their real weapon is their ability to kill without mercy or hesitation, even one another, if the situation calls for it." I thought of Drackin, a Shayl who had helped capture me for that lunatic ruler of Fartherland, General Rowdinth. “They think no more of killing for creds than we think of swatting a fly.”

“They're most likely armed,” Joe said, “by the mercs.”

“Yeah.” I turned the jeep around on the narrow dirt road. “When they fight, it's to the death.” I thought of my battle against Drackin, and drove as fast as I dared back toward the village, praying the Shayls hadn't already attacked. “Kill them,” I said, “and they keep coming until the adrenalin runs out.”
Great Mind, what were you thinking when you came up with this one?

The jeep bounced over a rock. “Their last act is to take their opponent with them,” I said. I had followed Drackin's kwaii into geth state after killing him, to offer some comfort. But he'd shrugged me off. He had given no quarter, and asked for none, not even in that disturbing state between lifebinds.

“Born assassins,” Chancey said. “And the bastards can fly.”

Sophia put a hand on my shoulder. “What do they look like?”

“Think ogre,” Chancey told her, “with bone-sharp tempers.”

“Watch out!” I shouted as the whoosh of great wings soared above us and created a wind. I swerved the jeep and took the bark off a tree.

“You forgot to tell us,” Sophia yelled and clung to the door, “that they're fast, too!”

Another Shayl swooped down in front of the jeep. I glimpsed his powerful tawny-coated body, his broad, leathery wings, his muscular arms and legs tucked as he flashed past the headlights. I swerved. The jeep lifted to two wheels and bounced back down, barely avoiding trees head-on. Joe and Chancey fired, but the Shayl was gone into the night.

“Next time,” Joe shouted at me, “hit him with the jeep!”

I raced back to the village. Were the Shayls trying to keep us out here while they attacked the Orghes?

Before we reached the village, I saw streams of blue- beam light crisscross the darkness.

“They're attacking!” Bat said.

“Dammit,” Joe exclaimed. All his meticulous guerrilla traps and pits were useless against flying creatures.

“The hovair!” Joe pointed to it, and I headed there. We would fight them in the sky.

It was a good plan, until the mercs' own hovair soared above treetops, swooped down and blasted our hovair with a series of missiles. Our craft exploded, lighting a scene of fallen Orghes and a Shayl in the dirt.

“Jesus and Vishnu,” Joe exclaimed, “we're grounded.”

Guards stationed in trees fired at wheeling Shayls who sometimes got too close and paid with their lives.

Were Shayls the advance guard, with mercs behind them, or was this a softening-up tactic? With hundreds of square miles to search, how the hell did they locate the village so fast?

Our backs were to the sea. We'd make our stand here or be driven into it.

I slammed on the brakes and we piled out of the jeep.

“C'mon, Huff!” I shouted as he struggled and flopped down from the rear compartment.

“Spread out and take cover,” Joe ordered. “Use your nightscopes. Don't waste batteries.”

I grabbed Sophia's hand and we ran for the cover of a half-built brick oven. Huff galloped alongside on four legs and we slid behind the oven together. Little protection, really, if it sustained a direct hit.

I swept the sky with the nightscope on my rifle, homing in on beam flashes.

“How did they find us so fast?” Sophia asked as she fired into the sky. Huff had both mouse stinglers out and was firing blindly without nightscopes.

“That's a fair question.” I tracked a flying Shayl that disappeared between trees. “I'd like some answers too.”

A Shayl crossed the moon with an Orghe struggling in his grasp.

“Oh no, don't,” I whispered. “Please don't.”

The Shayl released him and he plunged to earth with a scream.

“Oh my God,” Sophia cried. “You're right. They have no mercy. They're just
animals
.”

The merc hovair hovered out of rifle range and fired into the village.

“Land, you crotefuckers!” I muttered. “We'll give you a welcome you won't forget.”

As though to comply, a Shayl swooped down and landed. He had located the source of our fire and took cover behind a jeep.

“Hold your fire!” I told Sophia and Huff. “We can't afford to lose a jeep.”

The Shayl knew that too and fired at the oven. Top bricks burst.

“Stay here.” I rolled out from behind the oven. Unless these creatures had cat-like night vision, he wouldn't see me or expect me to leave cover.

“Jules!” Sophia called.

I heard Huff whine.

“Stay there!” I whispered and crawled along the ground, the smell of rich dirt in my nostrils as I scraped through pebbles and angled for a view of the hiding Shayl.

There!

Crouched behind the jeep, his wings folded in the green light of my nightscope. I turned the ring tight for a narrow, powerful beam.

Something raked my back through my jacket. I swallowed a scream as claws dug through material and I was rolled to my back. The rank odor of Shayl filled my throat. The creature hissed a foul breath and beat his wing against my chest and head.

I swung my rifle as his great body blocked stars, and cried out when a powerful forepaw slammed it from my hands.

“I would destroy you, Terran.” He pulled me close by my jacket. His voice was flint on stone. I almost expected fire to shoot from between his plated lips. “But my guarantor wants you alive.”

“That's OK with me,” I gasped. “I'm not going anywhere.” I felt him relax. I grabbed my stingler, but he grasped my hand and pulled it from my clutch. “OK, I give up,” I said as he got to his knees, I reached for my leg knife, pulled it from its sheath, and plunged it into his thigh.

He howled like a banshee and fell on top of me.

I yanked the knife, slitting through tough thigh muscle, and squeezed out from under him as his body spasmed and his voice lowered to anguished grunts.

I reached for my rifle, but he grabbed it first and swung toward me.

I lay frozen with terror, my spread fingers digging into dirt. A flash above my head heated my cheek like a sudden branding iron. I clutched it and thought he'd missed, but he convulsed and lay still. Smoke rose from his shattered skull.

Sophia and Huff were sprawled in shadows, their weapons aimed.

“Good job!” I said when I managed to draw in a breath.

Then I remembered the Shayl behind the jeep. But he was gone.

I rolled to my back and watched a flock of Shayls block stars and race across the moon toward the mercs' home base.

I laid my head back and gingerly touched the burn on my cheek. The skin was hot but unbroken.

I picked up my rifle, got to my feet and stood panting, my rifle hanging in one hand, staring at the dead Shayl. I lifted my mental shields against his agonized Kwaii as it plunged into geth, and doubted that Great Mind would make it an easy passage. The creature had sins to atone for before he could go on to his next lifebind. The residual guilt would follow him and, with luck, he would bind as a better entity on some distant planet.

Sophia and Huff ran to me. She threw her arms around my neck and stared anxiously into my eyes.

“I'm OK,” I said and reached out to Huff. He took my hand in both paws and squeezed, perhaps a bit too hard. “You will tear my liver in two pieces someday, my cub!”

I pulled him closer and hugged him.

Sophia stared at the dead Shayl and shook her head. “I think Chancey was wrong.”

“What?” I asked.

“It's not an ogre. It's a gargoyle.”

* * *

We counted eight among our dead, including a child. In the tradition of these people, their bodies were taken into the water by dugouts and given a sea burial. Huff paddled out with them and accompanied each weighted body as it sank to its resting place.

The people returned silently to the beach, except for Huff, who sat in the sand, lifted his snout and howled. I stood beside Sophia, Joe, and Chancey. Bat was tending the wounded with the help of Orghe women. I knew better than to go to Huff. This was part of the Vegan Ritual of Death. My friend and teammate was calling upon the Ten Gods of Kresthaven, his home world, to gently carry the kwaiis of his companions, and especially the child, to a better lifebind on a blue world.

I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer to Great Mind to please heed Huff's request.

Gentle waves lapped the shore, undisturbed by our burial.

“Go gently,” I whispered and stared at the sea, the sea that covers the dead even quicker than grass. Sophia put her arm around my waist and I hugged her close.

I looked back at the village where silent people were gathered. “We can't stay here, Joe.”

He nodded. “I think we all know that.”

“Somebody had to give the mercs our location!” I said between teeth.

“You got any thoughts on that?” Chancey asked me. “Any productive tel-probes, my man?”

I shook my head.

Oldore came up with Anbria by his side. “My wife wishes to know if you'd like her to sew your jacket. The back is badly torn.”

“My jacket?”
At a time like this?
I thought. “I don't know.” I shrugged. “I guess so, if she wants to.”

“You are strangers to our ways,” Oldore told my group. “We do not mention the names of the dead for fear that…what you Terrans call devils, will find them.”

“OK. They're gone.” I took off my jacket and handed it to Anbria with a smile. “Thank you.
De ordo elmis,
” I said. Thank you in the Orghe native tongue. I think.

She smiled discreetly, refraining from a grin, I thought, took the jacket and wiped a hand across her eyes.

I nodded, having given up on that particular gesture.

“Where to now, Oldore?” Joe gazed out to sea. “Another island?”

“There are no other islands for us,” Oldore explained. He stared at the black water. “When there is no place left for us to go, we will give our spirits to the sea.”

I felt a chill run up my spine that had nothing to do with the night air and my thin shirt.

* * *

We were on the road again, traveling for the rest of that night in the three jeeps and by draks, who towed dugouts and other belongings on poles.

Oldore led his people to a high plain, protected from overhead view by thick pines, and difficult to reach by vehicles, which had to slow to a crawl over a road so rocky and strewn with patches of snow and ice that little dirt showed through.

We settled in an area between tall trees. The people quietly unloaded their belongings, though I heard sad hoots and cries among them.

We were far from the ocean, but a lake caught moonbeams perhaps a quarter of a mile away. This was not good land for farming, except in tended gardens, and even those, in this cold clime, would have short growing seasons. The fishing and hunting might be good, though, and there should be berries and nuts for the picking. But I was thinking too far ahead. I'm sure the community's survival into the next day was priority one in everybody's mind.

We were all bone-tired. Oldore posted guards with an order to watch for any lone person leaving the community, and to let him know if one did.

It was early morning when we all finally settled down to sleep. My team had gathered under a broad deciduous tree, with leaves for bedding.

“Going to be a cold day.” Joe sighed.

“Cuddle with somebody, Joe.” I drew Sophia close to me.

Goldrin approached, carrying rolled blankets. I sat up.

“Oldore said I should bring these to you.” He laid them down, looked around, and hesitated.

“OK, you brought them.” I threw them to my group while Sophia untied one for us and rolled it out.

“He, uh,,” Galrin pulled at his long lower lip, “he also said that I should be your sim until the next turning of the moon.”

“Sim?” I asked.

“Oh. Servant in stelspeak.” He drew down lips tightly.

“Can I trust you?” I asked him.

“You cut me like a knife.” He lowered his head.

“That's only the first cut,” I said.

“Jules.” Sophia put a hand on my arm. “He's trying to make amends.”

I heard Chancey chuckle.

“Go to sleep, scud,” I said. “There's a lot more cuts where that came from,” I told Galrin.

He wiped a hand across his eyes. “I am to bear all your cuts, B'wen, for one turning.”

“B'wen?” I asked.

“B'wen. Master,” he whispered.

“And don't forget it!” I laid back on the spread blanket and Sophia covered me and herself.

“I will remember.” Galrin hooted sadly and laid beside Huff, who reached over in his sleep and threw a forearm across the kid's shoulder. “The dires are running,” he mumbled.

I gazed at broken patches of stars between trees and listened for the whine of engines.
That's not the only thing that's running,
I thought.

I slept fitfully, with images of the Orghe lifted aloft and dropped by the Shayl. I must have moaned in my sleep because Sophia shook me and called my name.