Fire in the Sky

3

Kurz woke with the sun, crawled out of the shelter, and took a quick run round the islet. His were the only prints visible. There’d been a windy thunderstorm late last night that left the damp sand as neat as if it had been raked. He came back to the trees, pulled on his clothes, and inspected the shelter.

There were hundreds of small discoloration speckled over the upper curve. They’d bleached some color from the polymer sizing applied over the fabric but hadn’t done damage to the fibers themselves as far as he could see. Not yet, anyway. It was the first time he’d seen anything that could get that polymer to admit it existed. He didn’t touch the spots until he’d rinsed the shelter repeatedly with water from the spring.

He listened to the noise made by the tip of his claw passing over one of the tiny splotches. Rough. Catching on the edges of broken bubbles. The cloth underneath seemed intact, but it was woven from Menaviddan spider silk and there wasn’t much that could injure that. He checked over the gear he’d hoisted into the trees, but that was untouched. It was after him, whatever it was. He shrugged. No matter, he wasn’t going to be here long. He clipped a yagamouche and its holster to his belt, pulled his tunic down over it, slipped a stunner into the pocket built for it inside the tunic, checked to make sure his other weapons were in place, then he peeled a trail bar and started toward the chorek settlement, jaws working on the hard sticky confection as he splashed through water and muck, pounded across sand spits.

The satwatch reports were enough to give him a good notion of the habits of the chorek who lived there. Six men, four women. Two of the women seemed bonded, the other two available to all the men. Even the women never rose much before noon, though they were about earlier than the men, getting meals fixed and doing other chores. There were no sentries, just one man each night taking his turn to keep the fire going in the round stone firepit at the center of the village.

When he viewed the reports, he wondered why a fire in a place that warm and humid. He understood it now, understood the stack of poles beside the firepit, poles with bundles of rags bound round the ends, rags saturated with a dark, sticky liquid. Whatever it was that had come after him last night-that’s what they’d got ready for. It was a comfort to him that crude torches would drive the thing off; his yagamouche could melt a hole through the hide of a Sancheren tantserbok.

He slowed his pace as he got near the settlement, began choosing his path carefully, keeping himself sheltered from view as much as he could. It only needed one restless kreash stumbling out to relieve himself to see him and rouse the camp.

When he reached the shack he’d pinned as the leader’s hole, he ignored the doors and windows, caught hold of a projecting rafter, and hauled himself onto the roof. Using his claws as pries, he extracted shakes until he had a hole large enough to ease through and balance on one of the crooked beams that supported the roof.

A man and a woman lay snoring, tangled in a nest of filthy blankets, a clumsy jug beside then. Kurz wrinkled his nose at the stench that rose to meet him, a mix of sweat and sex with a sour overbite from that jug. Must be something on the order of old Farkli’s yang. He reached inside his tunic, eased the stunner free, and put both of them out.

A few beats later he had trees and sawgrass between him and the settlement and was trotting easily through shallow water, the naked and filthy chorek wound into an equally filthy blanket and draped over his shoulder. Though he hated touching the creature, Kurz held him in place, arm across the backs of his knees. The chorek’s arms hung loose behind him and slapped against him with every step he took. He closed his mind to this and to the stench, concentrated on getting back to his camp as quickly as he could. Trying to hide his trail would just waste time; he couldn’t beat the trailcraft these swampbyks were likely to have.

When he reached the islet, he bound the chorek to the trunk of one of the trees, clipping off a loop of the filament cord and passing it under his arms and over a thick stub of a branch so he couldn’t work the loop down and step out of it, knotting a much shorter length about his wrists. He left the man sagging over the chestrope and lowered miniskip and the weapons cache. He collapsed the shelter, loaded the rest of the gear into the drag trailer, and clicked the lid down. He didn’t lock it. This was only the first of several sites he planned to visit. Having the weapons cache out and open, giving the chorek a taste of bounty that could be his, that was part of his plan. And there was even a chance he’d have to kill his captive and haul all the weapons to another site. If the male was locked into challenge mode and unwilling to listen, there’d be no point in continuing his speech.

He pressed his hand against the palm lock, then threw the lid back so his captive could see the neat rows of cutters in their velvet niches. He set the stim spray in the turned back lid and, careful to pick a spot upwind from the chorek, hunkered down to inspect his captive.

The skin under the oily patina of the forever unwashed was sickly pale and the chorek’s long thin arms and legs, the torso with its ribs showing, his incipient pot belly made him look half-starved and diseased. Kurz discounted both impressions. Though Hunnar’s Pet was clean and a lot older, his skin was like this one’s, fragile as a kaliba’s soaring skins, but he was spry enough. And his body shape wasn’t that different. This chorek was reasonably set up for his age and circumstances.

A scar wandered down the side of his face, a thin line with dots along side from the sutures. Knife cut. Probably a fight. Which he won, otherwise no one would have bothered to sew him up. Puncture wound just above his left hip. That one could have killed him if it had been a hair to one side. Small red dots on his belly and thighs. Good thing the bugs on this world don’t like the way Chave taste. Odd puckered scars on his arms, one on his shoulder near the neck, several of them with what looked like burn marks across them. He’d lived hard and used up more than his share of luck in staying alive.

Kurz frowned. He’d taken this one because analysis of the satwatch data showed he was the leader. Easier to convince one kreash than trying to herd half a dozen hostile mud-humpers. And he’d chosen to begin with this band because they were among the most active-and successful-of the choreks working out of this Marish. A bloody, greedy collection of sublife.

Kurz glanced to the west. The sun was a red blur behind a thickening layer of clouds. They were blowing inland faster than he’d expected, starting to fade the shadow cast by the trees. Not to his taste, flying in that muck, but hanging about here was even less attractive an option.

He took up the stim shot, pressed the end against the side of the chorek’s neck, stepped back as it took hold, and stood watching him come back to awareness.

The slack mouth with its sickly pink lips opened and closed, the matted beard and mustache moving greasily with it. The eyes that blinked open were that peculiar blue that many of these mudhumpers had. Surrounded by those straw-colored cilia, they were disgusting. The chorek jerked at the braided strands holding him against the tree, stopped when he decided he hadn’t a hope of breaking them. He realized that quickly enough to warn Kurz that he was clever and therefore not to be trusted.

The chorek hawked up a glob of mucus and spat it at Kurz.

It fell short, of course. Such a trite reaction. Kurz was disappointed, but was careful not to let it influence his estimate of the man. “You will listen,” he said and was pleased at the effect of the words on the chorek. He didn’t like language transfers, they made his head hurt, and all these subhuman langues put ideas in his head he didn’t like to see there, but it was indeed useful to be able to talk to them. “You don’t like me,” he said. He picked up one of the pods the tree had dropped during the night, used his thumb claw to dig a bit of fluff from inside it, then blew it away. He sat watching it a moment, then turned back to the chorek. “What you like and don’t like is worth that to me. I come to offer a trade which will get us both what we want.”

The chorek glared at him. “Mesuch. I wouldn’t give you a handful of wet chert.”

“Unless you’re very stupid, you will. Listen to me. It hurts nothing to listen, and you’re certainly going nowhere. We want this world cleared of Yaraka. You know them. The furfaces. You want that, too. You want to be rid of us. We will confine our activities to Melitoлh, leaving Banikoлh to you. We want metals and minerals. When those are gone, we are gone. This is a light world. We don’t like light worlds. We live most comfortably on worlds that would crack your bones and suck your guts out through your crotch. The Yaraka are different. They are after drugs and botanicals. Plants is what that means. Plants never run out, they make themselves over and over again. The Yaraka are here forever unless you get rid of them now.”

The chorek’s eyelids flickered and his face softened. “I can see that,” he said and his mouth moved in what he must have thought was a guileless smile. “So cut me loose and we can make our deal.”

Kurz sighed. They always think it’s so easy. “In a while I will, but not yet.” He reached into the cache and lifted out a cutter. “This is a weapon that regenerates its force if you push this slide back…” He used the claw on his forefinger to snap the thin metal cap along its grooves, exposing the collector beneath. “Thus. Set the weapon in full sunlight for a minimum of four hours, and by the end of that time it will be strong again. It is a fire at your fingertips, one that will only burn your enemies. Thus.” He shoved the slide home, lifted the cutter, and sliced the outer end of a limb not far above the chorek’s head. It brushed his shoulder as it fell. “You can see what it does to wood. Consider what it would do to flesh and bone.”

He got to his feet, walked out of the shadow under the trees, exposed the collector and set the cutter on the sand to replace the small bit of energy he’d expended.

When he was back hunkered beside the cache, he said, “It is as easy as that. The weapon will be at full strength again in less time than it will take me to say these words. There is no danger of overcharging. It was developed with folk like you in mind, men who have little acquaintance with such weapons.” Made to withstand the stupidity of fools like you.

There was a shine to the chorek’s eyes and a tension in his shoulders that told Kurz he’d got his first customer well and truly hooked. “So I see what you’re offering,” he said. “What you asking?”

That you don’t massacre each other, but go after the Yaraka. I wonder if this is worth the cost. Hm, if nothing else, you’ll keep the Yarks chasing their tails a while.

Kurz went to fetch the cutter. He showed the chorek the green light that meant the weapon was fully charged, then replaced it in its niche.

“We want the group from University dead. Whoever supplies proof of this will receive two bods of gold for each person removed. The proof must be convincing, but we will leave that to you to figure out. For the death of any of the Yaraka we will offer a bounty of five kolts weight in pure gold. For the death of the Goлs Koraka hoeh Dexios, I mean the Yarak who is the chief of all the Yaraka here on Bйluchad, for him we will offer seven bods of gold. Again, upon proof that he is truly dead.”

“So we fight your war for you.”

“It’s one way of saying it.”

“Get ourselves killed for a crann of mesuch?”

“No. For yourselves. We don’t want this world, just its metals. We’ll leave you alone when we’ve got what we came, for.”

“You say it. Do your folks back home say it?”

“Either your accept what I say or you don’t. I’m not going to play stupid games with you.” He lifted a section of the top tray from the weapons cache, six cutters in their velvet niches, set the section on the sand, closed the lid and palmed the lock shut. He took hold of the handles, grunted to his feet and hauled the cache to the drag trailer, popped the lid, and slid the cache into the place he’d left for it.

“Ihoi! You’re not going to leave me tied here. Hoy! Let me loose.”

Kurz turned and gazed at him. There was panic in the hoarse voice. He was really terrified of whatever haunted this islet. “I slept here last night. I was not disturbed.”

“Maybe they don’t like the way you taste. Come on, let me loose. My word on it, all I want to do is get away from here.”

“They? What are they?”

“The melmot. They hang round here. It’s the water and the fruit from those caor trees that pulls them. And the salt lick there next to the spring. They don’t need salt, they get all they need from your blood, but it draws critters here.”

“Describe the melmot.”

The chorek was calmer now, his brain engaged. He was using his voice and information to hold Kurz there, to persuade where pleading hadn’t worked. Kurz was pleased. That quickness to grasp a situation would make him a dangerous enemy to the Yaraka.

“They are like the Eolt, but no bigger than the palm of an open hand. They move mostly at night and in herds, twenty, thirty at a time.” The tip of the chorek’s tongue flickered across his bottom lip. He looked nervously upward, a tic pulsing by one eye. “They sting you till you can’t move, then dissolve your flesh and suck it up through their eating tubes.”

“At night? It is my understanding that Keteng go dormant at night.”

His shoulders hunched, the chorek tried another of his impossibly guileless smiles. “They store sunlight. And there’s energy from the food.” He spoke slowly, trying to hold Kurz’s eyes as the muscles tensed and shifted under his filthy hide. He was rubbing the wrist knots against the tree’s rough bark. He didn’t know about polymer fibers and how futile his actions were and Kurz wasn’t about to enlighten him. “Most Keteng can, though they don’t do it much. They don’t like the way they feel after. One of ‘em told me once it was like a hangover without the fun of getting drunk.”

“You know a lot about this.”

The chorek managed a shrug. “I spent a few years studying at Chuta Meredel.” A rustle in the leaves brought his head up, but it was only an angi carrying off a stem of caor berries. “I don’t like Eolt much. Got on my nerves. So I left.”

Kurz stared at him, watched his eyes shift, his face pucker into a scowl. Kicked out, most likely. I’m going to leave him another sixpack. He’s a better choice than I knew. Nothing like the spite of a failed academic.

After he’d set a second section of cutters on the first and locked down the drag trailer, Kurz moved behind the chorek and cut his hands loose. The strain the chorek had put on the filament had tightened it so his hands were red and swollen, falling uselessly at his side when they were released.

Kurz walked back around the tree and thrust the knife into the ground a short distance away. If he stretched the chorek could reach it with one of his feet.

“Ihoi! I can’t do you anything. Cut this stuff. Hoy!”

Kurz straddled the miniskip, bent, and tapped on the lift field, settling himself in the saddle as it rose. Ignoring the shouts from the chorek, he rode the skip into the open, took it and the drag trailer to canopy level and started for the second of his chosen drop sites.