CHAPTER FOUR
Merrick Moreau had been a Troft slave for only a little over three weeks. Most of that time had been spent aboard the transport that had brought him and Anya Winghunter from Qasama to Muninn, which had meant he hadn’t had to do any genuine slave-type labor. Still, even without the work, and with only that brief exposure, he’d easily come to the obvious fact that being a slave was a terrible thing.
What hadn’t been so obvious, which Merrick had only learned over the past few hours, was that being an ex-slave was nearly as bad.
Of course, maybe that conclusion only applied to self-freed slaves. Officially freed slaves might be given food and water for the road, or at least a polite word of dismissal.
Officially freed slaves certainly wouldn’t have their former masters scouring the deep Muninn forest in search of them.
The Trofts were definitely out there. Merrick knew it as he gazed out into the starlit gloom of the night. His trick with the crashed hang glider hadn’t fooled them. They knew he was still alive, and they were going to get him back. Alive, or otherwise.
But if they were nearby, they were keeping quiet about it. Merrick’s enhanced hearing was alive with strange noises, but there was nothing he could identify with Trofts or Troft vehicles. His enhanced vision, both infrared and telescopic, showed nothing but small- to medium-sized animals and birds going busily about their lives.
There were larger predators in the forest, Merrick knew, creatures of muscle, claws, and teeth that even Cobra weapons and programmed reflexes would be hard-pressed to deal with. Luckily, like the Trofts, so far they seemed to be keeping their distance.
There was a rustling in the leaves to his left. Reflexively, Merrick tensed, his hands curling into fingertip-laser firing positions.
But it was just Anya, shifting position in her sleep.
Merrick exhaled a silent sigh. Not that she was supposed to be asleep. Not now. Certainly not here. She was supposed to be leading them to a secret hideout where she’d said they would find her parents, who’d allegedly been hiding out ever since their failed revolt against Muninn’s Troft overlords.
But he and Anya had stopped to rest, and Anya had fallen asleep, and Merrick had decided that a ten-minute nap couldn’t hurt anything.
Especially since this whole scenario was still flying a whole forest of red flags in the back of his mind.
The idea of a hidden refuge and possible allies was certainly an alluring one. It was exactly what he and Anya needed if they were to catch their breath, regroup, and figure out their next step. They’d been sent here by Commander Ukuthi of the Balin’ekha’spmi demesne in hopes of finding out what the Trofts of the Drim’hco’plai demesne were up to in their private slave preserve. But so far the two humans hadn’t made much progress.
The problem was that the abortive revolt her parents were supposedly on the run from had happened twelve years ago. Twelve years. Merrick couldn’t figure out why Anya assumed the hideout even existed anymore, let alone that anyone was still using it.
In fact, the more Merrick thought about it, the more dangerously ridiculous the assumption became. If he’d been in charge of that long-ago revolt, he would have instantly abandoned any known shelter the minute the Trofts quashed the rebellion. After all, a victor’s first step in that situation was usually to root out any surviving pockets of resistance, and part of that rooting would be to drag the location of every bolt-hole from the survivors. If the Trofts knew about Anya’s refuge, even if that knowledge was over a decade old, simply strolling into it would not be a smart thing to do.
Yet Anya, who seemed clear-headed enough in other areas, seemed to have missed that piece of logic completely. More than that, she seemed convinced that her parents would still be waiting when they arrived.
Could it be simply a matter of her wanting her parents to be there? She’d implied that they’d run off after the revolt failed, leaving their twelve-year-old daughter and the other villagers holding the bag. She’d also admitted that she still harbored some not unreasonable resentment over the fact that she’d ended up as a slave under Commander Ukuthi’s control.
But even the hottest angers tended to cool with time. After twelve years, maybe Anya was ready to offer her parents the chance to mend fences.
Or else she was looking for them in order to exact some sort of revenge. Merrick had known Anya barely a month, and he couldn’t begin to guess all of what was going on behind those clear blue eyes.
He needed time to think, and he really hadn’t had any. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to let Anya sleep as long as she wanted and in the process buy himself a little more time to ponder.
And to maybe come up with a Plan B if and when Anya’s Plan A didn’t pan out.
There was a quiet rustling in the undergrowth to Merrick’s right. Carefully, he turned his head to look.
This particular animal hadn’t yet shown up on his brief tour of Muninn’s wildlife. But it was a good meter and a half long, it had the short neck, wide jaws, and long teeth of a predator, and it was moving stealthily in their direction.
If it had been broad daylight, Merrick would simply have fired a double burst from his fingertip lasers into the creature’s half-open mouth and been done with it. Unfortunately, with Troft aircars presumably still flitting around up there, a flash of even muted artificial light would be dangerous.
Something a little more subtle was called for. Watching the animal’s infrared signature closely, Merrick fired off a short burst from his sonic.
The IR pattern changed, and for a couple of seconds the creature seemed to stagger. Then the pattern returned to its original form, the animal regained its balance, and with only a brief hesitation it resumed its stalking approach.
Merrick grimaced. Unfortunately, that was more or less what he’d expected to happen. Cobras had two sets of implanted sonics: one designed to shatter glass and other resonant breakables, as well as interfering with listening devices; the other tuned to stun or disorient Trofts. The former would be of no use against an animal, and he’d now confirmed that the latter wasn’t hitting any of the predator’s vulnerable frequencies.
Merrick’s gear also included a current-based stunner, which would almost certainly put the predator down for the count. Unfortunately, the stunner worked off Merrick’s arcthrower, which would flash even more brightly than the fingertip lasers.
All of which, even more unfortunately, only left Merrick one option.
Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out the control bar he’d taken from his hang glider and got a grip on one end. The animal paused, as if evaluating this new move on the part of its prey, then continued inching forward. Merrick waited until it was just within reach, then leaned over and tapped the tip of the bar lightly against the top of its snout.
The animal snorted, twitching against what its brain probably registered as an annoying insect. Merrick tapped it again, and this time the predator snapped its head up and grabbed the end of the rod.
And with the animal’s jaws partially open, Merrick swiveled around on his hip, pressed his left heel against the gap between the upper and lower teeth, and fired his antiarmor laser down its throat.
He’d been concerned that, even with the blast mostly contained, enough of the light might leak out to create a danger. Fortunately, the sharply back-angled teeth had put his heel well inside the jawline when he fired, and the only visible flicker was off the tongue and roof of the mouth. The creature collapsed and lay still.
“Is it dead?”
Merrick looked over at Anya. She hadn’t moved, but her eyes were open. The variegated IR pattern of her face was still changing—clearly, she hadn’t been awake very long. “If it isn’t, it will be soon,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“Well enough,” she said, reaching up and briefly rubbing her eyes. She lowered her hands, and Merrick saw that her IR image had again changed with the newly altered blood flow. “Why did you let me sleep?”
“You seemed to need it,” Merrick told her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone conk out so soundly lying on leaves and half-buried roots. Though after sleeping on a mat on the Sollas subcity concrete, I suppose even tree roots are an improvement.”
“As you say, I was tired.” She hunched her shoulders and pulled herself up into a sitting position. “Shall we go?”
“In a minute,” Merrick said. “I need to ask you a couple of things first.”
“Questions can wait until we’re safely in the refuge.”
“The questions are about the refuge,” Merrick told her.
Her IR pattern changed subtly. “Ask, then.”
“Let’s start with your parents,” Merrick suggested. “Tell me about their rebellion twelve years ago.”
Another shift in the pattern. “What do you want to know?”
“What exactly happened?” Merrick asked. “I assume they didn’t just pick up rocks and charge into battle.”
“They did use rocks, where it was appropriate,” Anya said. “Not held, but catapulted. They also used arrows, blowgun darts, and weapons dropped by winghunters upon the masters’ positions.” The IR pattern changed again. “But in the end, it all came to nothing.”
Not surprising, if they were attacking laser-armed Trofts with bows and arrows. Sometimes, Merrick mused, there was a fine line between raw courage and ill-considered stupidity. “What kind of weapons did the winghunters drop?” he asked. “Homemade explosives? More arrows?”
“The winghunters dropped powder of freshly harvested bersark,” Anya said. “It was hoped it would confuse or otherwise disable them.”
Merrick winced. Unprocessed bersark, he’d been told, was a highly poisonous substance. Chemical warfare at its finest. “And if the bersark didn’t get them, crazed kilerands would?” he suggested.
“That was another hope,” Anya said, nodding. “Though kilerands normally eat bersark accidentally, when it’s mixed in with their other foods. There was no promise that they would eat the powder that was dropped.”
“Though even if they did, you’d still need the Trofts to make loud noises,” Merrick pointed out. “That’s what draws them, right? Loud noises?”
“There was no fear of that,” Anya said bitterly. “The masters continually make loud noises. They shout when they want us to work. They shout when they want us to cower.” Her throat worked. “They shout when they want us to die.”
“I gather the bersark approach didn’t work any better than the rest of it?”
Anya shook her head. “It was my parents’ best hope. The masters had spent much of their rule in their own areas, isolated from the forest villages, and the rebels hoped they hadn’t learned the nature of all our plants and animals. But they knew bersark well enough to know how to avoid it or counteract its effects.”
“So the rebellion failed,” Merrick said. “And your parents fled to this hideout? The one we’re currently headed for?”
“Yes,” Anya said. “It was secure, unknown to the masters.”
“Was,” Merrick said, leaning heavily on the word. “That’s the operative word here. Was. What makes you think the Trofts didn’t have every local bolt-hole and hiding place identified and raided two hours after the last rebel surrendered?”
The blood flow in Anya’s face again changed. “I don’t understand.”
“They would have interrogated their prisoners, Anya,” Merrick said patiently. Was she really that naïve? “I know your people are brave, but a good interrogator can—”
“There were no prisoners,” Anya said. “The masters killed them all.”
Merrick frowned. “What are you talking about? There are always prisoners.”
“Not here,” Anya said, her face suddenly blazing with heat. “Not us. We do not surrender.”
Merrick stared at her, a sudden chill running through him. He’d read about warrior cultures, mostly on Earth but some on other Dominion worlds, where surrender in battle was simply not an option. But neither the Cobra Worlds nor the Qasamans had any such military conviction.
It seemed unbelievable. Still, maybe he’d already seen a hint of that philosophy in action. Yesterday, high up on the cliff, Anya had been prepared to sacrifice her life to keep Merrick’s secret from the Trofts. Maybe that readiness to die had been part of her culture, a part he’d never even suspected.
And as the new reality sank in, the conversation in Gangari on the previous day suddenly took on new meaning. [The dark memory of years past, you still have it?] one of the Trofts had asked.
[The dark memory, we still have it,] the man Anya had named as Henson Hillclimber had answered.
At the time, Merrick had assumed the alien and the human had been talking about the same thing. Now, he realized they hadn’t.
The Troft’s dark memory had been the insurrection itself. Henson’s dark memory had been the shame of Anya’s parents surviving the rebellion instead of dying with the other fighters.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand,” Merrick said in a low voice. “So they’ve been hiding out here all these years?”
“I don’t know what they’ve been doing,” Anya said, a little stiffly. “Whether hiding or continuing the fight. But if they’re still alive, they’ll be here. There’s nowhere else for them to go.”
“Ah,” Merrick said. It seemed a rather dogmatic statement, given that they were sitting in the middle of hundreds of square kilometers of forest. But there was clearly a lot he still didn’t know about Muninn and its people, and he didn’t feel like arguing from ignorance twice in the same conversation. “Just the same, it might be better if I went ahead and checked things out.”
Anya gave a short, rather hollow laugh. “And you think you can find it without my help? A hidden sanctuary which the masters have undoubtedly searched for years to discover?”
“I thought you said they didn’t know it was out here.”
“They know there was a rebellion,” Anya said. “They will surely be on the watch for future trouble.”
And the forest was the obvious place for disaffected elements to meet and plan, away from prying eyes. The Trofts would have to be blind and stupid to miss that one. “All the more reason for me to go first,” Merrick said. “Make sure there aren’t any hidden watchers or search equipment.”
“We go together,” Anya said firmly. She shot a furtive look at the predator Merrick had killed and pushed herself to her feet. “Stay close, and be as quiet as you can.”
Ten minutes later, they were there.
Though it took Merrick another minute to realize that. The clump of rock nestled among the bushes and matted grass looked no different than a hundred similar rocks they’d already passed on their nighttime trek. It was only when Anya turned to him and raised her eyebrows questioningly that he realized she was waiting for the threat assessment he’d promised.
Slowly, carefully, he gave the area a visual sweep. There were several animals within range of his infrareds, but none of them seemed interested in the two humans who’d strayed into their territory. There was no hint of any Troft presence, either by sight or by sound. Either the aliens were still concentrating on the river ravine where Anya had dumped Merrick’s hang glider or else they’d left their aircars back at base and were conducting their search on foot.
Abruptly, Anya clutched his arm. “Over there,” she whispered urgently. “In the reedgrass.”
“It’s okay,” Merrick soothed. “It’s just a razorarm. Like the one we saw our first day on Muninn.”
“I remember,” Anya said tensely. “I also remember the battles you had with the same creatures in the Games on Qasama.”
“Those were from a different group,” Merrick reminded her. “They hadn’t seen humans before and didn’t know we were dangerous enough to avoid. This bunch has, and they do.”
“That’s an assumption,” Anya shot back. “And a dangerous one. Why would the masters bring predators who avoid humans in order to discourage us from traveling through the forest?”
“We don’t know that’s why they brought them,” Merrick countered. “We were just guessing.”
“It was your own idea.”
“And I was just guessing,” Merrick said, starting to feel a little annoyed. How many times did he have to foul up before Anya gave up this belief that he always knew what he was doing? Especially here on Muninn? “I might easily have been wrong, or only partially right. Besides, there’s also that wrecked Troft ship to consider. If the razorarm came from that, there’s no telling where they were originally headed, or for what purpose.”
“Perhaps,” Anya said reluctantly, still staring in the razorarm’s direction. “We must still be cautious.”
“We are,” Merrick assured her. “You can’t see it in the darkness, but the razorarm’s spines are still tucked against its forelegs, and it’s standing straight up instead of crouching to spring. It knows we’re here, but it’s making no attempt to even get any closer, much less try for a snack. How does this door work?”
“You must lift the stone,” Anya said. She didn’t sound totally convinced, but she sounded marginally less nervous. “Normally it would require two or three men with bersarkis patches for extra strength to lift. But you should be able to move it alone.”
“Probably,” Merrick said, wincing. Yesterday, in Gangari, he’d been treated to a demonstration of what the refined poison bersarkis could do to people. It hadn’t been pretty. “I thought it was only good for healing and driving teenagers into killing rages.”
“It can also give added strength,” Anya said. If she was offended by his reference to the Game testing yesterday, she gave no sign. “Its precise properties depend on the specific refining process used.”
“Handy,” Merrick said with a grunt. “Any way to tell which particular formulation is which? Color, texture, odor, an ingredients label—anything?”
“There are chemical tests,” Anya said. “I know of no other way to distinguish one from another without trying it.” She risked a look away from the razorarm. “But you have abilities far beyond ours. Perhaps you will be able to tell one from another simply by looking.”
“We see if we get a chance to find out,” Merrick said, heading through the last line of trees to the boulder.
Confident words and analysis aside, he made sure to watch the razorarm as he walked.
But the predator did nothing but back up a couple of silent steps in response to Merrick’s approach. It had a healthy respect for humans, all right. “Any special place I need to grab this thing?” he asked over his shoulder.
“There are knobs that are slightly smoother than the rest of the stone,” she said. “Those are what the men usually use.”
“Got it,” Merrick said, nodding as he spotted the handholds. Crouching down, he locked his fingers around the two most convenient ones and eased back and up.
The boulder was heavy enough, and he could see why it normally took three juiced-up Muninnites to handle it. But it wasn’t nearly as heavy as it ought to have been, which implied that someone had hollowed out part of it. He lifted it high above the surrounding grass, mindful of the clues that oddly damaged plant life could offer to searchers, and set it down on a thick mat of leaves that had collected beside a dead tree.
Beneath the boulder, as advertised, was a wood-lined shaft leading downward. Leaning gingerly forward, he peered into it.
The shaft went straight down about eight meters, with a ladder connected to the side to facilitate movement up and down. At the bottom it appeared to connect to horizontal tunnels or wide spots heading off in opposite directions. It was a bit difficult to tell from above, but Merrick’s rangefinder put the size of the tunnels as a bit shorter than average human height, and not much wider. His infrareds showed no indication that there was any life bigger than a mole down there.
Still, the vital areas could be hidden behind baffles or heat sinks. The only way to find out would be to go down and take a look.
And it was for damn sure that he, a total stranger to anyone who might be down there, wasn’t going to be first in line.
He straightened up and gestured Anya forward. “Here we are,” he said. “After you.”
The hideout consisted of two rooms, one at the end of each of the two short horizontal tunnels he’d seen from above. Both rooms were deserted.
“But they were here,” Anya insisted plaintively as she walked back and forth between the two rooms, her feet slapping softly on the dirt floor, her voice echoing slightly from the rough-cut wooden boards forming the roof and partial wall shoring. “They were.”
“It’s been twelve years,” Merrick reminded her, peering into one of the three bins against the wall of one of the rooms. The bin had been completely emptied, without any scraps or crumbs to indicate what might have stored there. “There are any number of reasons why they might have left.”
“But . . .” Anya trailed off.
“If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t look like the Trofts got them,” Merrick said, waving at the bins and the similarly empty shelves along one wall. “At least, not here. They wouldn’t have bothered cleaning out everything. Or replacing the boulder up top, for that matter.”
Anya didn’t reply. Her gaze continued to move around the room, then past the vertical shaft to the other one, as if she thought that if she kept at it long enough her parents would eventually appear.
“Is there anywhere else you can think of that they might have gone?” Merrick asked into the silence. “One of the villages, maybe? Not Gangari, of course, but one of the others?”
“No,” Anya said. She took a deep breath, her head and shoulders bowed slightly, her gaze on the floor in front of her. “Not to one of the villages. Not anywhere.”
So much for that line of questioning. The absence of any life here seemed to have thrown Anya for a complete loop. “Okay,” Merrick said after another moment of uncomfortable silence. “So we’re all alone in this. That’s fine—we were alone before we got here, and we did okay. Any thoughts as to what we should do now?”
Anya took another deep breath. “No,” she said simply. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Merrick assured her, trying to think. His Cobra training had included a unit on wilderness survival, and the Qasamans had given him some abbreviated instruction on infiltration, combat tactics, and evading enemy surveillance. In and among all of that, he ought to be able to come up with a plan.
Except that his brain was too exhausted to focus. But that was okay. Sleep could also be a plan. “First thing we need is rest,” he told Anya. “The floor looks even less comfortable than the ground up top, but down here we won’t have to worry about Trofts and predators. We’ll crash for a few hours, then reassess the situation when our minds are clearer.”
“We cannot stay here,” Anya said. “There is no food. Or supplies, or weapons.”
“That’s why we’re only going to stay long enough for some sleep,” Merrick said, frowning as he looked around. There was no food, all right. But there were also no bunks, air supply or filtration gear, or bathroom facilities.
This wasn’t any kind of hidden rebel headquarters, at least not the kind Anya had implied. It was no more than a way station, a quick bolthole for emergencies.
Had Anya known that from the start, and deliberately misled him? Or had she herself misunderstood?
Or had someone specifically and deliberately lied to her?
In which case, this might be a trap.
Merrick tensed, but a second later relaxed again. They’d been in the cavern for at least three minutes, and had been in the vicinity of the entrance for two or three more. If it was a trap, it should have been sprung long ago.
“If you wish sleep, then we shall sleep,” Anya said, her voice dull with fatigue and a black disappointment. “It makes little difference to me.”
“Come on, don’t be that way,” Merrick chided. “Anyway, just the fact you’re talking like that is a classic sign of fatigue. Tell you what: you see if there are any sections of the floor that are—I don’t know; maybe a little less hard than the rest. I’ll go grab enough leaves to at least make a couple of half-decent pillows. I’ll also put the rock back over the entrance in case the Trofts wander this direction.”
“All right.” Anya hesitated. “I’m sorry, Merrick Moreau. I’ve failed us.”
“Oh, come on—we’ve hardly even started,” Merrick said. “And don’t forget, we wouldn’t have gotten even this far if you hadn’t taught me how to hang glide and then dropped my glider into the ravine. Under the circumstances, I think we’re doing just fine. Some sleep, and then we’ll figure out our next step. I’ll get the leaves and be right back.”
He headed up the ladder, feeling a grim set to his jaw. In fact, he’d already figured out what their next move would be. The wrecked Troft ship, the one whose crash site they’d spotted from the mountain, wasn’t more than a few hours’ journey away. He’d planned to visit it sometime anyway; first, to confirm that it was the source of the stray razorarms they’d run into; and second, to see if there were any clues as to what had caused the crash.
But for the moment that plan was going to remain his secret. He didn’t think Anya was playing games with him, but with their lives firmly on the betting table he had no intention of taking unnecessary chances. Once they’d rested, and the sun had risen and warmed the forest enough to make them harder to spot on Troft infrareds, would be soon enough to share it with her.