EIGHT

Oliat Signature

"Skhe don't have purple blood!" said one Cassrian, bending to poke his leptolizer into Rndeel's wound.

Amid the excited whistle-clicks of Cassrian dialects, Krinata caught the Standard word, Dushau. She dragged her feet under her and took the weight off her shoulders. The sharp chitin of her captors' exoskeletons dug into her flesh, as unpleasant a contact for them as for her.

Her hair, short as it was, had plastered itself to her forehead and was dripping foul crud into her eyes.

This is my fault. Oh, why did I obey that order like a sub-sentient machine! If she had yielded to Jindigar's movement, they might have gotten away. He was the field operative, not her. He knew what to do. Oh, Jindigar!

She twisted to wipe her forehead on her shoulder, suppressing a whimper at the sudden void where Jindigar had been. Then she forced herself to look around. She could barely see through the late afternoon brilliance without her goggles, but the contact lenses Arlai had insisted on helped. Behind the troops, she could make out the embankment where tall rushes grew from the mud. She thought she caught a gleam there. Another dead Cassrian?

One of the troops with the medic insignia rose from examining Trassle's eldest son. "Dead," he said in cultivated Standard. "Shot three times."

She had never witnessed violent death before. A detached, clinical part of her knew she was staring, brain empty, too cold to shiver, because she was going into shock. She heard herself say, "He was only a child!"

"Raised on Dushau sufferance!" spat the commander who'd ordered her out of the water.

The commander's hatred came across the species barrier between them. "What did they ever do to you?" pled Krinata sniffing back bitter tears.

"The Emperor promised my sept a planet to rule, but each one we discovered was ruled out by the Dushau. Now that our new Emperor is freeing us of their tyranny, good talents will be put to work, and there will be jobs and plenty for all!"

As the commander proclaimed this, the other Cassrians clicked their cheers at him. Horrifyingly enough, Krinata was sure they were sincere. Cassrians, Terrans, Holot, or Skhe– all produced some greedy individuals. But Jindigar had not been like that.

Unable to stand the touch of such beings a moment longer, she wrenched her arms out of their grasps, not caring how the sharp edges bit into her flesh. Simultaneously, through clenched teeth, she roared her disgust and defiance, hoping that if they shot her, she'd die instantly. But she was intent only on getting as far away from them as possible.

She was more surprised than her captors to find herself stumbling forward. She put her head down, and with the force of her greater mass, she rammed the nearest guard. As he fell, he fired into the sky, the beam singeing her ear. She staggered on, shoving stunned Cassrians out of her path and gaining speed on a downslope toward a heavy undergrowth surrounding the flat riverbank.

She'd barely reached a full run when zapping crackles erupted behind her. She heard the unmistakable hunting scream of a piol. Trying to look behind her, she fell and rolled, beams crackling through the space her body had just vacated. It was a melee.

Imp squealed and she saw his body fly through the sat.

Trassle was rolling with one of the guards, getting the worst of it. His wife had a sport weapon that shot darts, and she was prone in the grass by the riverbank, picking off guards and trying to keep her children from joining the fight.

Then Arlai's lander roared in over the clearing dumping clouds of glittering soot onto the official vehicles grounded there. Before the murk filled the air, Krinata saw more landers taking off from near the house, heading toward them.

With her last strength, she picked herself up and lunged back into the tumbling mass of Cassrians, determined to drag Jindigar's body into that lander if she died trying. It was stupid. It was irrational. She never knew why she did it. But in the heat of that moment, it seemed as if she were rescuing her own severed limb.

When she reached Jindigar's side, Trassle had downed two guards and was taking a beating from the others. Imp was on Jindigar's chest, snarling and swiping with his long claws at everything moving nearby. His coat was slimy with mud.

One of the Cassrian guards she'd knocked down came at Krinata, and she kicked out at him. Imp screamed and went at the Cassrian's eyes, all claws and teeth. Krinata couldn't spare energy to control Imp. She got a grip on Jindigar's shoulders and began to drag the body toward the lander's hatch, yelling at Trassle and his family to hurry aboard.

Somehow, they managed a retreat of sorts. As she reached the ramp, an official craft attempted to land in the billowing clouds of soot, and apparently came in on top of one of the other craft, exploding in a sheet of fire that seared Krinata's already boiled face. She didn't even stop for the pain to recede, but just kept dragging and yelling at the top of her ragged voice.

Her whole universe became a slanting ramp, black scintillating, choking, stinging particles, and oozing purple and red blood mixing to make her grip slippery. She could no longer smell or taste, and she couldn't feel anything but the pain in her upper arms that screeched brightly with every tug. Her hands were numb, her feet increasingly clumsy, but she'd set herself, and she insanely refused to give up.

That was all she remembered. She never knew when she reached the interior of the lander. She never remembered scrabbling feebly onward after she fell. She never heard Trassle's desperate plea to Arlai to get them out of there.

The next thing she knew she was in Truth's sickbay, amid sterile green sheets on a low platform surrounded by thick drapes and orange healing lamps. The sound of Jindigar plucking his whule echoed richly through the chamber. Her right arm was tightly gripped by Arlai's telemband, and the upper arms were bandaged, though they didn't hurt as much as she thought they ought to.

"Arlai, what happened?" It came out a thready whisper even she could barely hear.

A bright projection appeared beside the bed, Arlai's Dushau image. "Your biceps have been sliced halfway to the bone. I've repaired the nerve damage. But you've lost a lot of blood which I couldn't replace because I don't stock human blood, nor can I trust my synthesizers just now. You have some bad burns, and your eyes took a bit too much radiation. Overall radiation exposure is not alarming. I've forestalled all infection. Your injuries are painful, debilitating, but essentially trivial. I can't determine why you've remained unconscious for nearly three days."

She sat bolt upright. "Three days!"

The simulacrum patted the air urging her to lie back. "We are on course for Khol, but avoiding the main traffic lanes. You have several days before anything will be required of you. For now, it is enough you are awake. Is there anything I could do to make you more comfortable?"

"Turn off that music!" she said, beginning to assimilate it all. She turned to bury her face in the mattress since there was no pillow, though pain kept her arms from wrapping around her head. She'd given her life, and it had not been accepted. "Jindigar's dead!" She remembered Arlai's plea to her to accompany Jindigar and bring him safely home. And all she'd brought was a corpse. Now Arlai was prattling about going on to Khol, expecting her to continue the mission. Was she trapped, the victim of an insane Sentient? She hardly dared let out the sobs of grief that washed through her.

The music ceased. Moments later the whisper of a scurry's wheels approached the bed. She had to peek through a veil of tears, over her shoulder.