Freedom’s Choice (16 page)

“Got that lot.” Yuri stopped by her side, his face a dirty mask, his coverall blood-smeared. “How many more to go?”

“Two more decks.” She worked the controls although, with the noise the machinery made, she wasn't sure if the mechanism would shift decks at all. The metal must have warped in the heat. But slowly the third deck level was accessible. “Have many survived?”

“Others tend them.”

“We should salvage the cargo, too,” Kris said.

“Cargo? The living first.” Yuri dismissed her suggestion with a wave and ran into the newly exposed deck, ducking under the half-raised hatch.

Suddenly the levels of noise from around the ship seemed to abate and some were silenced. More men and women ran around, both aft and forward, some holding tools, carrying hoses and other equipment she realized they must have found in the transport.

One more tremendous gout of steam erupted from the deck plates beneath her feet and she jumped and skipped about, trying to find someplace not burning-hot. As soon as she could get the machinery to turn to the last deck, she darted in to help unload. The heat was almost unbearable. How long had these unconscious people endured such temperatures? Or had they?

She slung an arm over her shoulder and hoisted a body, a woman's, and staggered out and down the ramp.

“That way. Make it to the next field,” she was told,
a hand turning her in the proper direction. The sun was up and she could at least see where she was going. There were only two bodies in the field, one Catteni, one unidentifiable, and both dead. She staggered along, more conscious now of the sting in her steam-burned hand and very tender feet. The hedgerow had been cut down and boards put on either side over the ditches. This field was covered with bodies. Many of them, she thankfully saw, were moving and being attended: water poured over them or cups held to their mouths so they could drink. The field was one cacophonous moan, with weeping woven in. She staggered until she could find a free spot to lay her burden down. And seeing the awful stillness in the gray face, she felt for a pulse in the neck. There was none and with a cry of despair she curved in on herself, weeping.

“Easy, Kris,” a familiar voice said, and she looked up at Sandy Areson, who was holding a cup of water to her. “Drink.” Her gentle hand smoothed the hair back from her sweating face and patted her shoulder. “We've saved a great many. Thanks to Zainal.”

Kris started to rise. Maybe they weren't all dead on that level. But Sandy's hand held her down.

“Oh no you don't,” Sandy said. “Hey, what happened to your hand? It's blistered.”

“It is?” and Kris held it out and looked stupidly down at it. “So it is,” she heard herself say as she slipped sidewise into unconsciousness.

* * *

It took several days for the events of the momentous morning to be sorted out. Of the 728 left alive, many were injured; broken bones being the least of the problems for the triage teams that checked over each survivor. All were dehydrated and that was almost the first need addressed. Internal injuries as well as concussions were more serious, due to a rough landing which had pitched the inert bodies of the passengers around the
shallow decks, piling up and injuring those beneath them. Severe heat prostration had caused twenty major and minor heart attacks and that had probably been the cause of many more of the deaths. Of those from the lowest deck, only forty-five survived; four humans, nine Deski, twelve Turs, six Ilginish oozing green goo, and fourteen Rugarians, who had almost all their body hair singed off.

Even those who had suffered no major injuries needed reassurance, proper food, and counseling in that order to recover from their ordeal. The only true advantage the consolers had was that they had been through much the same experiences and really did understand how it affected people. Easley worked tirelessly in directing his teams, asking only for the survivors' names and their origin before turning them over to Yuri Palit's resettlement people, transporting the walking wounded to calmer surroundings as soon as possible.

The injured were transported by the air-cushion machines to Narrow for emergency treatment. “Great ambulance service,” Leon Dane commented, “nothing to bump or jar 'em!”

The Tur contingent were unusually docile from their recent horrific experience and pathetically grateful for the water and soup passed out to them. The uninjured ones—forty all told—were given such dire and terse warnings by Zainal in their own language about the dangers of the avian predators and night crawlers that they remained subdued as they were driven off to their new quarters. Joe and Whitby headed the expedition with a well-armed guard contingent. The first night out, Whitby also arranged a demonstration of what night crawlers did to a dead loo-cow, and that had kept them quiet the rest of the trip. They did not even struggle when they were lowered, with cups, blankets, knives, and generous supplies of the Catteni food bars, into the valley.

Zainal also won a second victory, aided and abetted
by Easley, Yuri Palit, and surprisingly, Mitford. The nineteen surviving Catteni crewmen were sequestered in the nearer blind valley which Ninety Doyle's team had explored. They had also had an object lesson before their departure. Zainal forced them to watch the night crawlers ingesting the bodies of those who had not survived the crash landing. He had also required Scott, Fetterman, Rastancil, and Reidenbacker to attend. It was a salutary lesson for each group.

“They expected to be thrown into the field last night, didn't they?” Doyle asked Zainal when the biggest air-cushion vehicle was finally free of its ambulance duty and the Catteni crewmen were loaded aboard.

“They expected death,” Zainal replied. “They did not expect an Emassi to be in charge.”

“Catteni better learn not to underestimate us humans,” Doyle replied as he waved his stunner to speed up the loading process. The two crewmen Zainal had stunned were still not very steady on their feet but none of their companions lent any assistance. “Mean sonsabitches even to their own, ain't they?”

“One of their most endearing traits,” Zainal said, in such a facetious tone that Doyle nearly missed the sarcasm.

As the vehicle glided silently off, the Drassi captain gave Zainal a look compounded of hatred, fear, and indignation that one of his own species was responsible for this total humiliation.

“He wanted to sear Zainal's skin off him,” Sarah told Kris, and gave her shoulders a shake to rid herself of that memory. “Hope it doesn't turn out later that it would have been wiser to stake 'em out.”

“No, we'd be no better than they are doing an eye-for-an-eye bit,” she said, and then inhaled sharply in pain. Sarah was checking the blisters on her steam-burned hand. There was nothing to treat it with nor the very tender soles of her feet. The soles of her Catteni
boots had melted on the hot deck plates, and had she waited much longer, the injuries might have been even more severe. Leon had seen her injuries, rueful that he had nothing, even from the medical stores of the scout, with which to treat the burns.

“I think there won't be any lasting damage, Kris,” he said, gently laying her hand back in the sling. “Once that main blister has popped, it'll ease off and your body will take over the healing process. We do have that salve Patti Sue made up which the cooks all swear by, to keep the skin supple. Might ease the soles of your feet, too.”

“I'm not complaining,” she said. “Sarah was a little officious, taking you away from the ones who really need you.”

“Oh, never fear, m'dear,” Leon said, grinning. “We've got quite a, list of specialists these days, you know. And a supply of the gas they use. It makes an effective anesthesia.” He gave a little shudder. “Thank God. Some of the repair work would have been barbaric without it.”

Kris had refused to go back to the Rock, wanting to stay near the hub of activity, and Zainal, and very eager to hear how they had kept the ship from blowing. Sarah and Leila kept her informed and helped her down to the main mess hall, where she could listen to the “hourly bulletins,” as Sarah called them, updating those not involved with various aspects of what was going on.

Zainal and the engineers had managed to jury-rig the control board, venting the buildup to an explosion. A pump was found, disconnected from the ship, and dropped into the nearby stream. By combining all the hoses on the Catteni ship, the fuel tanks had been kept from exploding and the reduction in temperature had saved other systems from reacting to the intense heat.

“If they hadn't managed, the explosion would have altered the landscape considerably,” Sarah went on, talking to distract Kris from her tender ministrations to
the raw sole of her right foot. “But the fuel got saved and there's plenty for Baby now.”

“So that's why the Catteni were running away as fast as they could,” Kris said through clenched teeth. “Was the ship badly damaged inside? Can we make use of anything?” Granted all she had seen was just inside the cargo area, with bursting conduits and pipes and hot deck plates, but surely something was salvageable.

Sarah grinned up at her from bandaging her feet with sufficient fluff to form a protective layer. “You better believe it! The entire bridge!”

“Really!”

Sarah chuckled in a mock-malicious way. “Well, what there actually is of it. Anyone who's ever flown anything is wondering how the damned thing stayed in the air, much less made journeys out into space. However, Scott wanted it where it can be used. And the interior of the transport still stinks to high heaven, so it was dismantled and it's been reconstructed in the hangar. They've even got the communications up and running. And solar panels on the hangar to power it.

“Everyone's over the transport like ants, taking it apart. It's nothing but a shell now—which still stinks. The mechanics and engineers are having a field day with all these new treasures, even if most of the loot is secondhand, slightly damaged goods. But it's more than we've ever had to work with.

“Then there's real competition over who can sound more Catteni than another. More learned the language than you might think.”

“I suppose that knowledge didn't make you all that popular on Earth,” Kris mused. “But why is there a competition? You said the crew was sequestered in a valley.” Kris tried to keep her concentration on what Sarah was saying, rather than on the painful dressing of her feet.

“Sorry, luv, I keep thinking you've been in on all the
briefings. The Drassi captain sent out a Mayday, or whatever Catteni call an emergency, to another transport, which said, and I quote, they'd get around to picking up the crew when they were on their way back to base. That is, if they survive the crash landing.”

“So that's why Scott wanted the bridge operational.” Kris grinned, for it was easy to see what was likely to happen next. “So, have they reported they survived?”

Sarah nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “Leon did it. He's still the best but not for long.”

“When do they expect this rescue vessel?”

Sarah shrugged. “From what Zainal discovered in questioning the crew—the captain wouldn't say doodly to him—it's a bigger, newer ship, with a longer range and so we have to wait for another message from them when to expect them. So there's plenty of time to prepare, rehearse, and drill for their arrival.”

“A bigger, newer ship?” Kris repeated. Then she chuckled to herself, thinking of Admiral Scott's bridge, being run from a hangar. “And we'll have three ships!” She was so proud of Zainal that she wriggled in the bed.

“Scott's even acting as if Zainal's not so bad after all,” Sarah said. “And he's got a committee working to find out something that will add the necessary gray tinge to human skin. Those loose uniforms they wear will camouflage who's in them but they gotta have gray skin. Leon's dying to take part but he's really too tall to play a Drassi.”

“So is Zainal.” Kris began to worry again. Zainal was taking so many risks. A bigger, newer ship would be better captained and crewed. But then surprise was still on their side.

The dressings were now complete, she glared down at her feet. They'd better be completely healed. She had to be able to be at this second enactment of Phase Two.

W
hen Zainal spent more time explaining to the mechanics and engineers what the salvageable material had been used for, they could more knowledgeably adapt it to their needs. Once the bridge was sited and up and working again, Scott preempted him to translate the data on the transport's log files.

“Much is routine,” Zainal said, scrolling at a fast pace through the entries.

“But we need to know where they have been, how long it takes, the protocols they use…” Scott said, scowling.

“I think I've found someone from the latest drop who can manage to translate routine reports,” Easley said, once again diplomatically inserting his presence. “In fact, several someones who have a good working knowledge of the glyphs. Learned to help decipher Catteni documents captured during raids.”