Genellan: Planetfall

Chapter 36. Scars

"You old fool! What more do you know of this matter?" Jook thundered.

Et Kalass's facile mind searched through his alternatives and their consequences. He decided to hold to plan. It was the closest to the truth.

"My concern for Et Avian overcame good judgment, Exalted One," the minister said. "I promised on his father's deathbed that no harm would come to him."

Jook looked down from his throne, fuming darkly. "Ah! No harm ever? A foolish promise, Minister. So another case of the nobility and their children! How tender!" Jook simpered.

Et Kalass dared to speak, "Et Avian' s discoveries—"

"General Gorruk would have your head!" spit the Emperor-General. "I should give it to him! Using boosters without authority—a gross assumption of power!"

Since the rout at Penc the war had gone badly. Gorruk was consumed with fending off vicious counterattacks. Missiles had resumed falling on northern territories.

"But Great and Powerful One—" Et Kalass started.

"Discoveries! You speak of discoveries," Jook preempted imperiously. "What do we know of the aliens? It is said that Et Avian has captured an alien alive."

"True, Your Greatness, though—"

"Bah! Why am I talking to you? Where is Avian?"

"In grave condition, Greatness. He faces multiple surgeries and extended rehabilitation."

"He has managed to survive an interplanetary acceleration. You are withholding something." Jook rose to his imposing height and glared down. "Bring Et Avian to me."

Et Kalass turned and scurried from the imperial chambers.

After three days Buccari's buttocks and thighs were chafed and bruised. And the obstinate beast had just given her a painful nip on the shoulder.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" MacArthur asked, his voiced concerned but his face smug—his first spoken words to her in days. He galloped up and grabbed the balky mare's reins, leaping from his stallion. "You can't be turning your back on that horse."

Buccari rubbed the tender spot and concentrated on holding her temper. Coming on the salt mission was her idea; MacArthur had not wanted her along, fearing for her safety, but she persisted.

"I guess I missed that on the checklist," she responded.

"Beg your pardon, Lieutenant?" MacArthur asked.

"Nothing! Nothing. Just a little pilot humor. Give me a boost." She grabbed the reins and moved over to the port side of the four-legged creature. She straightened the leather blanket, tightening the knot in its girth strap. MacArthur bent down and grabbed her left boot and the back of her thigh. On three, he lifted and she jumped, swinging her right leg over the animal. She landed with a painful grunt. MacArthur quickly turned away and swung up on his own mount, his shoulders gently shaking.

"Stop laughing, Corporal!" Buccari yelled, but her command disintegrated with a whimper.

"Aye, Lieutenant. Stop laughing, aye." He trotted off.

Buccari tried to ignore the trauma inflicted on her stern. She clicked her tongue and shook her reins. The horse bent its head and nibbled the grasses at its feet.

"Move, stupid!" she yelled.

"You yelling at me, Lieutenant?" MacArthur shouted back. "No," she shouted. "Not this time," she added under her breath.

"Giddap!" she barked, kicking her heels. The mare surged to a spine-jolting lope; she hung on, bouncing painfully, until her horse caught up and fell into trail, settling into a rolling walk. More passenger than pilot, Buccari relaxed and studied her surroundings. A covey of ptarmiganlike birds flushed from a weedy ru

Hunters screamed. Bottlenose glided rapidly ahead and out of sight beyond a low line of humpbacked downs. Tonto remained overhead, swerving in a nervous figure eight.

"We must be getting close," Sha

Tonto screamed, urgently and loudly. He hovered, flapping his wings.

"Let's keep moving. Something's up," MacArthur shouted, chucking his reins to the side and heeling his horse into motion.

Tonto broke hover and glided out of sight behind the ridge. The riders crested high ground and the rolling prairie dropped dramatically at their feet, leveling abruptly on the geometric flatness of the salt plains. The vista was dotted with activity. An arm of the musk-buffalo herd rumbled to the east, raising a gritty cloud. Nightmare packs harried the herd's flank, breaking out stragglers and calves, their kills marked by congregations of buzzards and eagles fighting for carrion. Buccari's horse trailed MacArthur's surefooted mount down the steep decline. The others followed.

Three hours of trotting found them on the dry patches of crusty alkaline, the terrain making the going easy except for acrid billows lifted by the horses' hooves. The riders spread out line abreast to avoid the dust. Sight lines across the salt flats were blurred with thermal distortion, but they could finally see the compact figures of cliff dwellers. Something was peculiar. The realization struck home—the cliff dwellers were fighting nightmares! Hundreds of the horrible beasts encircled the small creatures.

Braan, leader-of-hunters, knew not what to do. Normally he would signal his warriors to jettison their bags, to rise on the powerful thermals. Only this time the decision was not simple, because the long-legs were approaching—ironically, coming to help the hunters. The long-legs could not escape into the air.

Growler carcasses riddled with hunter arrows littered the field. Sentries bravely darted among the kill, retrieving their precious missiles. Hunters were injured, but only one so severely that he could not fly. That hunter, a sentry, must die if the expedition took to the air.

"Thy decision, Braan-our-leader?" Craag queried, a bleeding claw mark on his neck. "The growlers circle closer."

Braan turned to the approaching horses and their long-leg riders. A good idea—using horses to lift the burden from the shoulders of his hunters—but now it seemed foolhardy.

"Jettison the salt bags and take flight!" Braan screamed. Craag loudly echoed the command. The hunters screamed in bedlam. Salt bags not already dropped were let go, and hunters flapped their membranes, leather wings cracking and snapping. The creatures desperately reached for free air, wingspans overlapping and conflicting. The cliff dwellers elevated from the salty surface— except the injured novice, his hand and forearm broken, his left wing shredded.

The hunter leader glided to the bleeding sentry and landed with a dust-throwing skid. It was Braan's fateful job to mercifully terminate the young hunter rather than leave him to the torture of the scavenger pack. Braan had helped many warriors die. The novice stood bravely erect, eyes shining with black glory, honored to die at Braan's hands. But then the sentry's head jerked in alarm, and he whistled a warning. Vicious growls shuddered in the air, and Braan looked up to see growlers prowling close—too close. There would not be time to dispatch the sentry, yet Braan could not desert the injured one. Braan screamed and drew his sword. The hunters stood back-to-back, ready to do final battle. A mighty fanged beast broke from the skulking siege and bounded forward, its tail a whipping, whirring blur.