Freedom’s Choice (39 page)

“When…” demanded Scott, stretching the “n” out to stress the urgency, “will that be?”

“I heard nothing today. Tomorrow we can go elsewhere and listen, and maybe ask.”

“And all those…those desecrated people?” Scott asked, grieving so keenly that Kris saw tears in the admiral's eyes.

“We can do something about
that,
” Zainal said firmly. Then he turned to Kris and Marrucci. “Tomorrow early get the wire, the plastic, the electronic supplies needed. Be ready to move if I arrange…”

“What are you arranging?” Mitford asked, though the look on his face suggested to Kris that he already had a suspicion.

“What can be done to help. The Farmers do not
like
,” and Zainal emphasized that word, “species injuries. We show them what can happen.”

“We'll bring them back with us?” Scott began, his expression brightening for a scant second before common sense overruled that possibility. “How can we possibly care for so many damaged people?”

“We will somehow,” Kris said so fiercely that Scott recoiled. “How many are there?”

“Hundreds,” Scott said, waving a despairing hand about.

“Not all are damaged,” Zainal said. “But they
will
die in mines and fields with no care given.”

“We can't leave them if we
can
take them,” Dowdall said firmly, glancing around the table for agreement. Even the two Deski and Slav were in accord.

“Zainal, did you notice the other ship of this class a few berths down from us?” Marrucci asked, his eyes sparkling.

Bert Put, who had been silent through most of the discussion, sat up, an expectant look on his face, watching Zainal.

He nodded, a grin turning his mouth up in one corner. “I maybe go see guard tonight, drink a little pilth.”

“No,” Mitford said with an evil grin, “he'd be used to that. Take some of the hooch.”

* * *

The next morning as they breakfasted, Zainal had good news from his evening's interview. Most of the KDM's crew were on shore leave, having just completed a wide swing which had included Earth. In fact, they had brought two deckfuls of the brain-wiped humans to the slave marts and loot that would soon be available in the Barevi markets. Only two crewmen were on board, taking turns on watch. They were not happy about that duty but expected to be relieved in another two days. As was standard practice with Catteni ships, the KDM was already refueled and stocked. The crewmen said they were slated for another trip to Earth: to collect cargo as the Catteni invaders were systematically clearing warehouses and storage facilities, whether the items were useful or not.

“Whatever the Eosi hope to find on Earth, they have not,” Zainal said. “Not even information. They may even be pulling out.”

“What?”

“Leaving Earth?”

“Hurrah, we socked it to them and they couldn't take it.”

“No rush,” Zainal said, raising his hands to indicate caution. “Your Earth may never be the same.”

“Then we improve it when we get back home,” Beverly said, a fierce expression on his face.

Zainal pointedly said nothing. “I also learn that the port manager is very busy with so many ships going in and out.”

“Which means he's not checking on individual ones?” Beverly asked.

Zainal nodded. “We come at a lucky time.”

“Let's leave lucky, too,” Mitford said gruffly. “If we get all the stuff we need, can we leave tonight? I got a gut feeling we're crowding what luck we've already had. On our way back, I spotted just too many of those roving gangs charging about drunk. Glad we weren't on foot.”

Everyone looked at Zainal. He hesitated and then nodded. “Sooner is better than later, but first,” and he held up one finger, “we do not go back empty.”

“Hey, if there's only two crewmen aboard the KDM, couldn't we hijack it?” asked Gino, eagerly.

Mitford made a disgusted sound, dismissing the notion, but Scott leaned forward eagerly.

“Could we?”

“I think it would be very easy. Gino can be captain. Balenquah…” and Zainal looked around for the man.

“He was sick all night,” Mitford said sourly. “He's no use to us at all, I never did have more than a sip of pilth and that was enough to make me avoid it.”

“I told him it was no good,” Kris repeated, with an innocent expression on her face.

“Which made him all the more eager to try it, huh?” Mitford asked, giving her a dirty look.

“He deserved it…” Gino Marrucci began, but Kris kicked him under the table. “Sullen bastard that he is,”
the pilot said in place of what he had started to say.

“All right,” Scott said, getting back to the jobs at hand, “we find out what we can about the…disabled. Right?” He looked at Zainal, who nodded. “You got yesterday's list, Kris? So today escort Mack Su, Ninety, and Marrucci for whatever electronics we can acquire…”

“We'll find plenty,” Kris said, scowling. “I only had a quick glance but everywhere I looked I could see things that had to have come from home.”

“Good,” Mack said, “that means we'll have a good chance of finding what we need. We've done as much as we can with the Farmers' material. But we could do a helluva lot more with familiar components, couldn't we. Dowdall?”

“Also get more hand units.” And Zainal tapped his Catteni comunit. “We need all we can get, or make.”

Kris handed him a pencil and the thin plastic that the Catteni used for notes. “Make us out another shopping list, Drassi Kubitai!”

Zainal grimaced. “I do not know the Catteni shapes,” he admitted wryly.

“No word for ‘spare parts' in Catteni?” Mack asked, grinning.

“Ah, yes,” and Zainal deftly created the glyph, adding tails and squiggles to it. “That means anything to repair electronics.” He peered at it. “I think.”

“Have we completely contaminated an upright Catteni lad?” Mack asked with one of his displays of whimsy.

“Absolutely,” Zainal agreed heartily. “Let us make…con…con something plans…”

“Contingency plans?” Kris asked.

“Them. In case there can be two shipments of humans to mines or colonies or wherever they plan to send them. We are ready to go and take the problems with us,” Zainal said. “I call in to Chuck, I tell him where to bring
KDM. Then, sergeant, you will take more hooch to guard on duty. The other will be sleeping. You will know what to do. Then Gino, Beverly, Coo, Pess, and Slav get aboard as crew. Bert, Gino, be ready to bring the ships where I tell you.” He flipped through the pile of maps and charts and found the one he wanted. “Here are slave pens, but you must go around the city, not overfly.”

“Don't we have to clear takeoff with the port authority?” Gino asked.

Zainal slapped his forehead and sucked breath in between his teeth.

“After we secure the KDM, I can come back and do that, Zainal,” Mitford said. “Give me the words for ‘slave compound' in Catteni. I only know Barevi.”

“Use Barevi if you need to,” Zainal said, rocking one hand to indicate that the port authorities would know both. Then he rose in a decisive manner. “Good luck.” And he gave the thumbs-up signal, grinning when his eyes fell on Kris.

“Right back atcha,” she said as everyone else got to their feet. “And watch your face paint if you start to sweat, you guys. And, for godssake, remember to keep your caps down, shading your eyes. No Catteni I've ever seen has blue ones, much less brown.”

“Slav, Pess, Coo, you guard ship,” was Zainal's final order as he made for the hatch.

* * *

Kris, with Dowdall, Mack, and Ninety, got the last remaining flitter outside the port. The driver grumbled that the market wasn't open yet.

“Shop I go is,” Kris answered in Barevi. “Drassi says so.”

That ended any further inquiries from the Catteni. He had no left hand, a hook attachment replacing it, but a flitter was easily driven with only one. Did only disabled Catteni get taxi licenses on Barevi?

As the craft made its way to the market area, they all noticed smoke rising from various places.

“Many fights?” Ninety asked in Barevi, grinning but remembering to keep his lips over his teeth.

“Many,” replied the Catteni in his own language and in a sour tone. “Nine ship gangs. Biggest fights in weeks.”

Which meant the survivors would likely be sleeping off pilth as well as any injuries from the fighting. Or hiding out for the requisite twenty-four hours. Luck was again with them, she hoped, and didn't dare hope too loudly.

Much of the first marketplace that they overflew—the one they had shopped in the day before—was a wreck of tangled stalls, debris, and shopkeepers sorting for what might still be salable. As they crossed over the line of apartments separating the two, she saw that streamers of fabric, probably from some of the shops she had visited, festooned the area.

“Boys had lots of fun,” Ninety muttered, and got Kris' elbow in his ribs for speaking in English. He rolled his eyes in apology but the driver had not heard.

There was not quite as much damage in the third rectangle, the one they had directed the flitter to. Possibly because there were fewer drink and food stands in this one. But one section seemed to have been leveled. Kris just hoped it wasn't the very one they needed the most.

“Another ticco if you wait,” she told the driver in her gravelly Catteni voice. She was getting so she could do it whenever she needed to, though her throat was a trifle sore from all the rough-voiced bargaining she'd done yesterday.

“Just one ticco?” he complained.

“Wait and see,” she said, leaving it up to him. She handed him a smaller coin and pointed to the stand selling hot drinks and the almost indigestible bread Catteni baked.

That sweetened him sufficiently and she walked off with the others, to find the spare parts.

Four shops which displayed boxes spilling loose chips in their grilled windows, were not open. They came upon a fifth on the long end of the rectangular market area and the shopkeeper was sweeping up components and/or chips with total disregard for the damage done. Mack and Dowdall winced and Kris hissed at them for falling out of character.

“You selling?” she asked, acting the stupid Catteni Tudo.

“What does it look like?” the shopkeeper replied angrily, gesturing at the havoc within and without. He ranted on, switching from Barevi to Catteni in his fury.

Kris held up Zainal's glyphed note. “You got some?”

The shopkeeper paused long enough in his description of what he would do to the gang who had smashed and kicked his stock into garbage and, eyeing her suspiciously, then turned his attention to Mack and Dowdall, who were lovingly picking up this and that which had not been damaged.

“Got everything needed for repair. And then some…if it hasn't all been smashed.”

He put down the broom and led them through the shop, palmed open a rear door and showed them unopened cardboard boxes, all bar-coded and listing the contents in English, French, German, and either Japanese or Chinese…Kris couldn't tell the difference.

“Ah, many unhurt,” she cried. “Drassi wants.”

“All?” The shopkeeper was both delighted and suspicious.

“Drassi Kubitai trades,” said Dowdall, winking as he began removing boxes from the shelves and stacking them in the center. His eyes were so alight with success that Kris yanked furiously at her own cap to warn him. “Kubitai pleased with us,” he said in Barevi, turning his face away.

“Not all, but samples to show. How much?” Kris began, tapping the boxes Dowdall had chosen and to which Mack was adding selections, breathing heavily with excitement but remembering to keep his head down. “You deliver?”

“Ha! When I must clean this and lock up before they come back again?”

“Kubitai wants comunits, Drassi?” Mack asked, returning from a back shelf with a crate. “And wires?”

Kris pretended to look at the list. The shopkeeper pointed to the right glyph.

“Here, stupid,” he said, his yellow eyes turning crafty as he suspected he might be able to do her on the prices.

“I count well,” she said, jerking her cap to shade her eyes but looking fiercely at him. “I be Drassi soon. You see.”

“Ha!” was his reply, but he began to move the chosen boxes toward the front of the shop. “You got transport?”

“Flitter,” she said. “I call it over.”

She had to go get the flitter driver, who had indeed been treating himself to a meal on her coin. When he saw how much was stacked out in the litter in front of the smashed shop, he shook his head.

“Call another,” she told him, pointing to his control panel. “Drassi Kubitai very happy with us. We get long shore leave.” She strutted back to the shop to find Dowdall who was looking anxious.

“Won't he suspect when we order so much? And check out the KDI?” He spoke in a barely articulated whisper.

“He probably has, and if the port authority has time to answer him, will know which berth the KDI has,” she murmured back, and, then, seeing the shop man out of the corner of her eye, punched Dowdall in the arm. “Work! No work, no leave!”

However, greed—and possibly the call to the dock to verify that a KDI with a Drassi Kubitai was in port—moved the shopkeeper to encourage the large order.

Kris bargained in earnest with him, as part of her character as not so stupid Tudo messenger. She had no idea of what the parts would have cost on Earth but Mack was slightly agog at the range of the merchandise. There were even laptops still in their packing cases. Now what possible use would the Catteni have for such items? They couldn't even read the manuals, much less figure out what the icons meant. She'd had enough trouble with her 286 IBM clone at college. She noticed a dozen units along with all the other parts, plus tool kits and several cases of floppies. She devoutly hoped she wouldn't have to explain why those were among her purchases. She only knew so much Catteni and Barevi.