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holds up to a. ..." Des squeezed off a shot. A cloud of steam went up from the
advancing alien's hard brown carapace, and one of its many legs disappeared,
but the other limbs kept inexorably moving. Some of the legs fired green
energy bolts at the cabin.
Des ducked, looked at the weapon in his hand, and swore. "Damn fools gave me
your blaster!"
"What's wrong with that?"
"Got mine fitted with a PowrChargr last station," Des said, naming one of the
many enhancements that was considered illegal and immoral in the civilized
world. This particular one was supposed to allow an ordinary hand blaster to
spread its stun range over half a klick, or alternatively to narrow and
concentrate its power in one needle-sharp pulse that would vaporize the object
it hit.
"Shit!" Des squeezed off half a dozen more shots as the alien advanced, coolly
picking off the jointed legs along one side of its flat body until they were
all gone. The alien toppled to one side and lay wriggling its other legs
helplessly.
"Give me the pole." Des squeezed his bulk through the open window with a few
rips, scratches, and curses, dropped with a thump onto the muddy ground, and
charged without stopping to catch his breath. The hooked pole went into a
bulbous, gleaming structure on the alien's head and sank deep within,
splashing Des with the black fluid that spurted from the sphere. Ed clenched
his teeth against the wave of nausea rising from his guts.
A moment later Des was back at the window, saying, "Come on, get 'em all out
this way. We can't stay in the house, it's an obvious target."
"What's the point of leaving it?"
"Easy," Des said. His teeth gleamed white among the blood, foam, and black
droplets that decorated his face. "We'll lure the bugs into the house, then
fire off a couple of blaster shots and bring that cliff down on 'em . . . it's
not all that stable now, didn't you notice that when we were coming down the
track?"
Ed certainly had. And though he had little or no faith in Smirnoff's plan, he
couldn't think of anything better-so he begged, bullied, or persuaded the
remaining settlers to crawl through the back window and follow Des along the
narrow track he had temporarily cleared.
For one dark moment he wondered exactly how Des planned to "lure" the Khieevi
into the cabin and who was going to play "bait," but One-One Otimie solved
that question once he understood the plan. From an overlooked cupboard above
the food stores he produced battered musicubes and a solar-powered player.
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"Kirilatova," he said, jamming a cube into the player -with ruthless
disrespect for the delicate workings of the machinery. "Figaro. Remastered
from the originals." He cackled at the look of surprise on Ed's face. "Thought
we was all uncultured backcountry folks, din't you, sonny? Hee-hee-hee. I like
opera just fine; its people I wanted to get away from."
As they scrambled through the back window, the last two humans to clear the
cabin, the seductive strains of Susannah's aria, "Deh vieni, non tadar,"
floated through the air. Ed only hoped the song would be as enticing to the
Khieevi as it had been meant to sound in the opera.
He was almost disgusted at how well Des's crude plan worked. The cockroachlike
Khieevi approached the cabin, cautiously at first, then more openly as no one
fired on them. They made sharp crackling noises among themselves as they drew
closer, firing occasional bolts into the cabin; Ed could almost have sworn the
two in the lead were laughing and rubbing their forelegs together in
anticipation of a jolly time. He remembered the vids Ikwaskwan had copied from
the Linyaari and used as training films, and felt sick all over at the memory
of what the Khieevi considered light entertainment. He had a terrible moment
as he worried that everybody was out of the cabin. He couldn't have left a dog
to the mercies of those-those things. . . .
Every muscle of his body screamed to run, run now before they noticed their
quarry had escaped, but Des coolly waited through agonizing seconds until all
but one of the advancing aliens was out of sight inside the cabin. Then he and
One-One fired blasters at the designated weak spots, dissolving a long line of
muddy earth and stone into a bubbling liquid that let the front face of the
cliff slide downward with a long, final sigh. Slabs of stone tilted slowly
forward and smashed the cabin roof flat; one of them fell half across the one
Khieev who remained outside, turning his body into a mangled mess that leaked
black fluid and curls of steam. The stone slabs were followed by a slow but
inexorable tide of wet dirt and the molten lava created by the blasters, which
buried the cabin and its occupants under a newly created hill.
"Come on," Des hissed before the wave of mud and lava had settled, "gotta take
their ship before they catch on to what just happened!"
"Before who catch on?" gasped Ed, at his side. "We just killed-oh." More
cockroaches were pouring out of the squat, alien-looking ship that stood in
the clearing.
"You are so damn dumb, Minkus. Would you leave a ship totally unguarded while
everybody chased the natives?" Des gave him a look of disgust. "Yeah, you
probably would. Give me that pole, you don't know what to do -with it." And he
plunged in among the Khieevi with a battle yell of pure, savage joy, stabbing
the pole down with unerring aim into the enemies' soft spots.
Someone thrust a cleaver into Ed's hand, and the wave of yelling settlers
carried him on until he found himself in the thick of the fight, chopping off
legs with his cleaver, dodging the energy bolts, frantically waving his free
arm to defend himself from the gouts of black acid the aliens spat . . . and
then, before he knew it, they were through and on the farside of the aliens,
and Des was shouting at them to follow him into the ship itself. Ed stepped
over blobs of black guck, already crusting over, and kicked a dying Khieev off
the ladder with one booted foot.
There were no more Khieev inside ... no more living, that is ... though the
stench of their dying and the acid whiff of their black . . . blood? . . .
whatever . . . infested the entire ship. The settlers crowding after Ed forced
him forward and into the tiny section covered with unreadable instrumentation
that Des already occupied. He was squatting on the low, narrow bench that the
Khieevi must have used instead of chairs.
After a moment's uncomfortable experimentation, Ed decided that Smirnoff had
found the only possible adaptation of the human anatomy to these furnishings.
Wide metal columns behind them, their outer walls curved in a concave form
that must have been designed to fit a Khieev carapace, promised support and
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protection during takeoff, and the straps that dangled from the columns could,
with some ingenuity, be arranged to hold a human body. Ed hoped the settlers
had made their own accommodations to the Khieev interior; Des was already
punching buttons with mad abandon in search of the one that would fire up the
ship's engines.
"You think you can fly one of these things?" he asked doubtfully.
"Can't be all that different from ours," Des said. "Same problems, same type
solutions. They gotta get free of gravity, navigate, correct position, and
tilt. . . Yeeehaw!" he screamed in triumph as one of the buttons he'd punched
resulted in a " blast of flame that lifted the ship from its landing place
wild
with a sickening double punch and sway. "Ikwaskwan, here we come! See if you
can find a portable corn system among all that crud the settlers dragged on,
Ed. It might be polite to announce we're on our way!"
Haven, Unified Federation Date334.05.26
With the Khieevi mother ships disabled and their pods pinned down on Rushima
by the orbiting ships of the Red Bracelets, there was time to discuss Markel's [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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