The Burning Ground

3. At the target

Shadith wormed through the patch of brush that grew across the top of a long slant of scree, moving slowly so she wouldn’t shake the tops of the bushes. The morning was heavily overcast, with an erratic wind blowing, wind that set the branches swaying, the thorns on them snagging in her clothes and hair. She was soaked with perspiration by the time she reached a place where she had an unobstructed view of the base a couple of miles below.

She snapped the glareshields onto the binocs, adjusted the focus, swept the field of view across the base. Nothing had changed; Ptaks wandered about, some were swimming in the lake, some working in the communal gardens, two young males in full mating plumes were doing a dance-fight while half a dozen others watched. Several times sleek female techs in white coats went into the Control Center, others came out. It was busier than before. She didn’t know what that meant. Trouble?

She watched a while longer. A peaceful scene, no sign of; worry in any of the faces, or bodies.. Only that increasing flurry about the Center. She sighed: “Got to see what that means.”

She gave the binocs to Luca with instructions on how to use them, told the others to take turns watching the base and getting familiar with the patterns of movement. “I want each of you to choose what you think is the best route to the lake; we’ll run through them as soon as you’ve all had your shot with the binocs. Zot, stay by me and keep watch, if you see or hear anything that bothers you, slap my arm.” She nodded as Yseyl raised a brow. “Yes, I’m going mindwalking for a while. There’re some things I need to check.”

Stretched out on a blanket, arm over her eyes, she went feeling about in the walls of the Center for a young and lively furslug. She found her mount rippling along on its double line of tiny legs, climbing a stud in the wall, and sniffing about for woodchewers. He wriggled and fussed and nearly fell before she completed her hold, clicking his teeth in extreme unhappiness as she prodded him into climbing higher, then humping along a rafter till he reached the crack she’d used for observation last time.

She gave him a quick workout, muscle against muscle, as a kind of long-distance patting, then settled him at the hole, his small bright eyes, predator sharp, sweeping the room below, his bare pink ears twitching and swiveling until they drew in the sound of Ptak speech.

“… see what it’s really like if we want more funding?”

“Vourts, what you want done with this checklist?”

“Anyone see number eight password files? I just about sifted the dust already.”

Vourts adjusted her lenses, waved away the plastic covered sheet the other tech was trying to hand her. “Chitatri! That thing looks like a swarm of krees pissed all over it.

Print up a new copy and find a see-through that doesn’t look like it’s been here-since year one.”

“Where’s that ‘bot? There’s a pile of kree shit in this drawer deep enough to drown in.”

“Eight? Isn’t that the one Tippa spilled the tasse of likken on at the year turn party? Ate through the cover and glued half the pages together. Should be paperwork on that somewhere around. Avol”

“‘Bot’s blown a bearing, Torml took it over to shop to see what Bijjer can do. Either wait or dump it yourself.”

The young mal leaned out the door to his cubicle. “Hah?”

“You got the workup for eight?”

“Anybody remember which closet has the paper stores?”

“Number two, you gant. You think we want to haul tail feathers farther’n we have to? Parts in one, paper in two.”

“Bearing? How in…”

In spite of the verbal clutter, the cleanup was going quickly and efficiently enough, perhaps because the workers were limited to the techs with access to this building. By the time the Base Exec arrived, Shadith was seething with impatience. In all the chatter she still hadn’t picked up any reason for this activity.

The Exec was a plump and self-important Ptak, a jowly male whose crest had a wet slickness as if he’d overdone the feather cream.

Vourts shooed the techs into a dusty, grubby line along the wall and joined them there, those anachronistic lenses glittering in the glare and doing a fair job of concealing her eyes.

The Exec nodded at them, but didn’t speak as he stalked to the workstation at the end of the row. He pulled up a privacy shield and proceeded to enter his override key, three linked words in tripptakh, the broken word babble invented by parents for talking over their chilclren?s heads. Shadith tucked ‘the sequence into memory and watched with amused astonishment as-he called up lists of passwords, eyes-only files, access logs, and other artifacts of the techs’ daily activities. With slow, labored touches on the sensor board and constant consultation of the notebook at his side, he changed the file names into more tripptakh. When he finished, he grunted with satisfaction, logged off, and lowered the shields. He got to his feet and snapped his fingers. As the techs broke the line and went back to their cleaning, he wandered about the room, kicking at debris and running his finger across surfaces, sneering at the dust he picked up.

At the door, he turned. “The Col-Kirag will be here in two hours. Vourts, you and Ke’ik will be on duty here, go get cleaned up. Rest of you, I want this place spotless by the time that flier lands. And I’ll expect you to be on line with the honor guard ready for inspection. Drill Field. We won’t be making her climb ladders. For your ears only, my sources say she’s on a royal tear, some local git has been putting out antiwar songs that are making the tourists nervous, at least they were before she blocked that part of the feed. And that Cobben that fell over its feet and did zip that they were supposed to-they screwed death duties out of her and she’s looking for hide to chew on.”

Shadith sat up, rubbed at her temples.

A hand touched her arm. Yseyl held out a mug of tea. “Thought you might like this.” She waited till Shadith got down a few swallows, said, “Anything interesting?”

“Think so. We’re about to be the benefactors of a bit of luck I can brag I set up. The song that got you and the rest of them. And a warning I slipped in.” She swallowed a gulp of tea. “Ah, that’s good. It always feels like a gift when doing the ethical thing turns out to be good tactics.”

Yseyl raised her brows.

“Never mind. Just a stroke for my soul.” Shadith finished the tea and set the mug beside her. “Time to concentrate on the practical. There’ll be a juiced-up flier on that open ground by the lake. Very convenient. Means we don’t have to head for the hollow which cuts the escape route nearly in half. And if we have a staying rain tonight, we could all get out intact.”