Uplift - Startide Rising Part 29

"What's the matter with him?" Gillian swam up next to Makanee. She could see the captain struggle feebly, giving off a slowly diminis.h.i.+ng series of low. moans.

"I don't know. No one was watching him as the psi-bomb hit its peak! Just now I saw he was disturbed."

The large, dark gray form within the tank seemed calmer now. The muscles along Creideiki's back twitched. slowly, as he let out a low, warbling cry.

Ignacio Metz swam up alongside Gillian.

"Ah, Gillian ..." he began, "I want you to know that I'm very glad Tom is alive, although this tardiness bodes poorly. I'd still stake my life that this Trojan Seahorse plan of his is ill conceived."

"We'll have to discuss that at s.h.i.+p's council, then, won't we, Dr. Metz?" she said coolly.

Metz cleared his throat. "I'm not sure the acting captain will permit ..." He subsided under her gaze and looked away.

She glanced at Takkata-Jim. If he did anything rash, it could be the last straw that broke Streaker's morale. Gillian had to convince Takkata-Jim that he would lose if he contested with her. And he had to be offered a way out, or there might still be civil war aboard the s.h.i.+p.

Takkata-Jim looked back at her with a mixture of pure hostility and calculation. She saw the sound-sensitive tip of his jaw swing toward each of the fen in turn, gauging their reaction. The news that Thomas Orley still lived would go through the s.h.i.+p like a clarion. Already one of the armed Stenos guards, presumably carefully picked by the vicecaptain, looked mutinously jubilant and chattered hopefully with Wattaceti.

I've got to act fast, Gillian realized. He's desperate.

She swam toward Takkata-Jim, smiling. He backed away, a loyal Stenos glaring at her from his side.

Gillian spoke softly, so the others could not hear.

"Don't even think it, Takkata-Jim. The fen aboard this s.h.i.+p have Tom Orley fresh on their minds now. If you thought you could harm me before this, even you know better now."

Takkata-Jim's eyes widened, and Gillian knew she had struck on target, capitalizing on the legend of her psi ability. "Besides, I'm going to stick close to Ignacio Metz. He's gullible, but if he witnesses me being harmed, you'll lose him. You need a token man, don't you? Without at least one, even your Stenos will melt away."

Takkata-Jim clapped his jaw loudly.

"Don't try to bully me! I don't have to harm you. I am the legal authority on this s.h.i.+p. I can have you confined to quartersss!"

Gillian looked at her fingernails. 'Are you so sure?"

"You would incite the crew to disobey the legal s.h.i.+p's master?" Takkata-Jim sounded genuinely shocked. He must know that many, perhaps most of the Tursiops would follow her, whatever the law said. But that would be mutiny, and tear the crew apart.

"I have the law on my side!" he hissed.

Gillian sighed. The hand must be played out, for all the damage this would do if the dolphins of Earth found out. She whispered the two words she had not wanted to utter.

"Secret orders," she said.

Takkata-Jim stared at her, then let out a keening cry. He stood on his tail and did a back flip while his guard blinked in confusion. Gillian turned and saw Metz and Wattaceti staring at them.

"I don't believe you!" Takkata-Jim spluttered, spraying water in all directions. "On Earth we were promisssed! Streaker is our s.h.i.+p!"

Gillian shrugged. "Ask your bridge crew if the battle controls work," she offered. "Have someone try to leave through the outlock. Try to open the door to the armory"

Takkata-Jim whirled and sped to a comm screen at the far end of the room. His guard stared at Gillian momentarily, then followed. His look conveyed a sense of betrayal.

Not all of the crew would feel that way, Gillian knew. Most would probably be delighted. But deep inside an implication would settle. One of the main purposes of Streakers mission, to build in the neo-fen a sense of independence and self-confidence, had been compromised.

Did I have any other choice? Is there anything else I might have tried first?

She shook her head, wis.h.i.+ng Tom were here. Tom might have settled everything with one sarcastic little ditty in Trinary that put everybody to shame.

Oh, Tom, she thought. I should have gone instead of you.

"Gillian!"

Makanee's flukes pounded the water and her harness whirred. With one metal arm she pointed up at the wounded dolphin floating in the gravity tank.

Creideiki was looking back at her!

"Joshua H. Bar-but you said his cortex was fried!" Metz stared.

An expression of profound concentration bore down on Creideiki's features. He breathed heavily, then gave voice to a desperate cry.

"Out!:"

"It'sss not possible!" Makanee sighed. "His ssspeech centers ..."

Creideiki frowned in effort.

Out : Creideiki!

Swim : Creideiki!

It was Trinary baby talk, but with a queer tone to it. And the dark eyes burned with intelligence. Gillian's telempathic sense throbbed.

"Out!:" He whirled about in the tank and slammed his powerful flukes against the window with a loud boom. He repeated the Anglic word. The falling tone-slope was like a phrase in Primal.

"Out-t-t!: "

"Help him out-t!" Makanee commanded her a.s.sistants. "Gently! Quickly!"

Takkata-Jim was heading back from his comm screen at high speed, wrath on his face. But he stopped abruptly at the gravity tank, and stared at the bright eye of the captain.

It was the last straw.

He rolled back and forth, as if unable to decide on appropriate body language. Takkata-Jim turned to Gillian.

"What I've done was in, what I believed to be the best interest of the s.h.i.+p, crew, and mission. I could make a very good case on Earth."

Gillian shrugged. "Let's hope you get the chance."

Takkata-Jim laughed dryly. "Very well, we'll hold this charade s.h.i.+p'sss council. I'll call it for one hour from now. But let me warn you, don't push too far, Dr. Baskin. I have powers ssstill. We must find a compromise. Try to pillory me and you will divide the s.h.i.+p.

"And then I will fight-t-t you" he added, low.

Gillian nodded. She had achieved what she had to. Even if Takkata-Jim had done the worst things Makanee suspected of him, there was no proof, and it was a matter of compromise or lose the s.h.i.+p to civil war. The first officer had to be offered an out. "I'll remember, Takkata-Jim. In one hour, then. I'll be there."

Takkata-Jim swirled about to leave, followed by his two loyal security guards.

Gillian saw Ignacio Metz staring after the dolphin lieutenant. "You lost control, didn't you?" she asked dryly as she swam past him.

The geneticist's head jerked. "What, Gillian? What do you mean?" But his face betrayed him. Like many others, Metz tended to overestimate her psychic powers. Now he must be wondering if she had read his mind.

"Never mind," Gillian's smile was narrow. "Let's go and witness this miracle."

She swam to where Makanee waited anxiously for the emerging Creideiki. Metz looked after her uncertainly, before following.

51 ::: Thomas Orley With trembling hands, he pulled vines away from the cave entrance. He crept out of his shelter and blinked at the hazy morning.

A thick layer of low clouds had gathered. There were no alien s.h.i.+ps, yet, and that was just as well. He had feared they would arrive while he was helpless, struggling against the effects of the psi-bomb.

It hadn't been fun. In the first few minutes the psychic blasts had beaten away at his hypnotic defenses, cresting over them and drenching his brain in alien howling. For two hours-it had felt like eternity-he had wrestled with crazy images, pulsing, nerve-evoked lights and sounds. Tom still shook with reaction.

I sure hope there are still Thennanin out there, and that they fall for it. It had better have been worth it.

According to Gillian, the Niss machine had been confident it had found the right codes in the Library taken from the Thennanin wreck. If there were still Thennanin in the system, they should try to answer. The bomb must have been detectable for millions of miles in all directions.

He dragged a handful of muck out of the gap in the weeds and flung it aside. Sc.u.mmy sea water welled up almost to the surface of the hole. Another gap probably lay only a few meters beyond the next hummock the weedscape flexed and breathed incessantly-but Tom wanted a water entrance near at hand.

He scooped away the slime as best he could, then wiped his hands and settled down to scan the sky from his shelter. On his lap he arranged his remaining psi-bombs.

Fortunately, these wouldn't pack the wallop of the Thennanin distress call. They were simply pre-recorded message casts, designed to carry a brief code a few thousand kilometers.

He had only recovered three of the message globes from the glider wreck, so he could only broadcast a narrow range of facts. Depending on which bomb he set off; Gillian and Creideiki would know what kind of aliens had come to investigate the distress call.

Of course, something might happen that didn't fit into any of the scenarios they had discussed. Then he would have to decide whether to broadcast an ambiguous message or do nothing and wait.

Maybe it would have been better to bring a radio, he thought. But a wars.h.i.+p in the vicinity could pinpoint a radio transmission almost instantly, and blast his position before he spoke a few words. A message bomb could do its work in a second or so, and would be much harder to locate.

Tom thought about Streaker. It seemed like forever since he had last been there. Everything desirable was there -- food, sleep, hot showers, his woman.

He smiled at the way the priorities had come out in his thoughts. Ah, well, Jill would understand.

Streaker might have to abandon him, if his experiment led to a brief chance to blast away from Kithrup. It would not be a dishonorable way to die.

He wasn't afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.

Another image came to him, far more unpleasant-Streaker already captured, the s.p.a.ce battle already over, all of his efforts useless.

Tom shuddered. It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.

A stiff breeze kept the clouds moving. They merged and separated in thick, wet drifts. Tom shaded his eyes against the glare to the east. About a radian south of the haze shrouded morning sun, he thought he saw motion in the sky. He huddled deeper into his makes.h.i.+ft cave.

Out of one of the eastern cloud-drifts, a dark object slowly descended. Swirling vapor momentarily obscured its shape and size as it hung high above the sea of weeds.

A faint drumming sound reached Tom. He squinted from his hiding place, wis.h.i.+ng for his lost binoculars. Then the mists parted briefly, and he saw the hovering s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p clearly. It looked like some monstrous dragonfly, sharply tapered and wickedly dangerous.

Few races delved so deeply into the Library for weird designs as did the idiosyncratic, ruthless Tandu. Wild protrusions extended from the narrow hull in all directions, a Tandu hallmark.

At one end, however, a blunt, wedge-shaped appendage clashed with the overall impression of careless, cruel delicacy. It didn't seem to fit into the overall design.

Before he could get a better view, the clouds came together, concealing the floating cruiser from sight. The faint hum of powerful engines grew slowly louder, however.

Tom scratched at an itchy five-day growth of beard. The Tandu were bad news. If they were the only ones to show themselves, he would have to set off message bomb number three, to tell Streaker to lock up and get ready for a death-fight.

This was an enemy with whom Mankind had never been able to negotiate. In skirmishes on the Galactic marshes, Terran s.h.i.+ps had seldom conquered Tandu vessels, even with the odds in their favor. And, when there were no witnesses around, the Tandu loved to pick fights. Standing orders were to avoid them at all costs, until such time as Tymbrimi advisors could teach human crews the rare knack of beating these masters of the sneak-and-strike.

If the Tandu were the only ones to appear, it also meant be had likely seen his last sunrise. For in setting off a message bomb he'd almost certainly give away his position. The Tandu had clients who could psi-sniff even a thought, if they once caught the mental scent.

Tell you what, Ifni, he thought. You send someone else into this confrontation. I won't insist it be Thennanin. A Jophur fighting-planetoid will suffice. Mix things up here and I promise to say five sutras, ten Hail Marys, and Kiddush when I get home. Okay? I'll even dump some credits in a slot machine, if you like.

He envisioned a Tymbrimi-Human-Synthian battle fleet erupting out of the clouds, blasting the Tandu to fragments and sweeping the sky clear of fanatics. It was a lovely image, although he could think of a dozen reasons why it wasn't likely. For one thing, the Synthians, friendly as they were, wouldn't intervene unless it was a sure thing. The Tymbrimi, for that matter, would probably help Earth defend herself, but wouldn't stick their lovely humanoid necks too far out for a bunch of lost wolflings.

Okay Ifni, you lady of luck and chance. He fingered bomb number three. I'll settle for a single, beat-up, old Thennanin cruiser.

Infinity gave him no immediate answer. He hadn't expected one.

The thrumming seemed to pa.s.s right over his head. His hackles rose as the s.h.i.+p's strong-field region swept the area. Its s.h.i.+elds screeched at his modest psi sense.

Then the crawling rumble began slowly to recede to his left. Tom looked to the west. The ragged clouds separated just long enough to display the Tandu cruiser-a light destroyer, he now saw, and not really a battles.h.i.+p-only a couple of miles away.

As he watched, the blunt appendage detached from the mother s.h.i.+p and began to drift slowly to the south. Tom frowned. That thing didn't look like the Tandu scout s.h.i.+ps he was familiar with. It was a totally different design, stout and stolid, like ...

The haze came together again, frustratingly, covering the two s.h.i.+ps. Their muttering growl covered the muted grumblings of the nearby volcano.

Suddenly three brilliant streams of green light speared down from the clouds where Tom had last seen the Tandu s.h.i.+p, to hit the sea with flas.h.i.+ng incandescence. There came a peal of supersonic thunder.

First he thought the Tandu were blasting the surface below. But a crackling bright explosion in the clouds showed that the destroyer itself was at the receiving end. Something high above the cloud deck was shooting at the Tandu!

He was too busy s.n.a.t.c.hing up his gear to waste time in exultation. He kept his head averted, and so was spared blindness as the destroyer began firing actinic beams of antimatter at its a.s.sailant. Waves of heat scorched the back of his head and his left arm, as he stuffed the psi-bombs under his waistband and snapped his breather mask over his head.

The beams of annihilation made streaks of solar heat across the sky. He grabbed up his pack and dove into the hole he had earlier cleared in the thickly woven weeds.

The thunder suddenly muted as he splashed into a jungle of dangling vines. Straight shafts of flickering battlelight speared into the gloom through gaps in the weed.

Tom found he was automatically holding his breath. That didn't make much sense. The breather mask would not allow much oxygen to escape, but it would pa.s.s carbon dioxide. He started inhaling and exhaling as he grabbed a strong root for an anchor.

He found he was laboring for breath. With all the vegetation around him, he had expected the oxygen content to be high. But the tiny indicator on the rim of his mask told him that the opposite was true. The water was depleted compared to the normally rich brine of Kithrup's sea. The waving gill fins of the mask were picking up only a third as much oxygen as he would need to maintain himself, even if he stayed perfectly still.