A Beautiful Friendship-ARC (39 page)

Part of her wanted to stay right there, hanging onto the trap with her own body weight as an added precaution. But if she’d been trapping treecats, she’d have brought along whatever sensors she could—thermal sensors for sure, if she could get a reading through the canopy—and if the trap failed to rise on its counter-grav the way it was supposed to, she’d take a really close look at it to see why.

She didn’t know what the trapper would do if she realized there was another human being present, but she had a strong suspicion that whoever it was might be tempted to go ahead and remove the evidence anyway, especially if she had gone ahead and installed an explosive charge of some kind. And if an interfering human got in the way, too bad for the human in question.

Her main concern, though, was to keep whoever it was from making off with his captive. She was confident the three cargo nets between them were enough to overcome the maximum lift capacity of a counter-grav unit small enough to fit into that trap. So unless the trapper wanted to come down after it, it wasn’t going anywhere. And if the trapper
did
come down after it
. . .

* * *

Climbs Quickly’s ears flattened as Death Fang’s Bane dropped from the golden-leaf tree to the upper branches of the net-wood and drew the thunder-barker from its holder on her belt. He’d enjoyed her training sessions as much as she had, watching (from an ear-saving distance) as she mastered the weapon and tasting her delight as she felled target after target. And he’d been glad she had it when they flew back and forth to Bright Water. He wasn’t certain if it would slay a death fang with a single bark the way the longer, more powerful weapons did, but its bite would certainly make any death fang back off. He was in favor of that. He was in favor of
anything
that didn’t require him to face another death fang or the rest of his clan to come swarming to their rescue!

But now, as he tasted Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow, watched her moving cautiously along the net-wood branch until she had a clear line of sight to both Twig Weaver’s cage and the forest floor below, delight was the last thing he felt. There was a cold lump at his person’s center—a knot of fear and dread. Not fear of whoever might be hovering overhead in the flying thing but of what she might be about to do in the next few moments. There was no hesitation in her. If it came to it, if it was the only way to protect herself or the People with her, she
would
use the weapon; Climbs Quickly knew that just as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the morning. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to do
anything
else . . . except allow an evildoer to harm the People.

* * *

Stephanie threw herself prone on the broad picketwood limb and spread her elbows in the solid isosceles triangle Frank Lethbridge and Karl Zivonik had taught her, holding the heavy pistol in both hands. She figured she was far enough from the trap to be beyond the reach of most thermal scanners, especially in such dense leaf cover, but she could see it quite clearly. In fact, she was almost perfectly positioned, not that realizing that made her feel any calmer. Her heart thundered—harder, she suspected, than it had when she and Lionheart had faced the hexapuma—and her mouth felt dry.

* * *

Tennessee Bolgeo opened the air car window as he hovered thirty meters above the tallest portion of the leaf canopy. He’d have liked to get a little lower, but he should be close enough, and staying out of the trees struck him as a very good idea.

He glanced at the trap’s position transponder one more time, fixing its location relative to the air car firmly, so he could be ready when it broke free of the branches, then pressed the recall button.

* * *

Stephanie’s breath caught as the trap suddenly twitched. It jerked in place, snatching her tied nets suddenly taut. It rose perhaps a centimeter from the branch, then stopped, quivering, unable to break free of its anchors, and she felt herself smiling as she imagined the reaction of the person who’d left it here.

* * *

Bolgeo muttered a curse.

The trap should have cleared the tree cover by now. According to the signal from it, its counter-grav was on full force, which should have shot it into the clear like a cork from a champagne bottle. But there was no sign of it, and the transponder showed it wasn’t moving at all.

It had to be stuck on something. That was the biggest potential drawback of this technique, especially in such heavy timber. He’d been lucky none of the other traps had jammed, but now he had to figure out what to do about
this
one.

He was tempted to just go away and come back later that night when he could collect this one and also the other occupied traps while the treecats were hopefully huddled in their nests wondering what had happened to their friends and relations. The downside of that was that by now any treecats in the vicinity must have heard his air car. If they came scampering to investigate, they’d probably find their trapped relative. Whether they’d be able to tell anyone—like that pestiferous Harrington family—about it was problematical, but they’d know what had been happening, and the likelihood of his catching any more of them would plummet. On the other hand
. . .

He pulled out his thermal scanner, trying to get a reading on the trap and its vicinity. For all he knew there were already a dozen treecats down there. From what he’d been able to learn of them, they’d certainly rally around to guard one of their own in a situation like this, and the thought of tangling with something which had managed—allegedly—to pull down a hexapuma wasn’t high on Tennessee Bolgeo’s to-do list.

The sheer vertical depth of the dense leaves defeated his scanner, however. He couldn’t make out a thing through them, which left him in an unpalatable position.

Well
, he thought,
the enviro suit’s made for some pretty nasty hostile environments. I kind of doubt anything the size of a treecat’s going to manage to get a claw through it! Besides, even if all the stories about them killing the hexapuma are accurate, it took
dozens
of them
.

He hesitated for a few more moments, then shook his head with a sigh.

If you want the big bucks, you’ve got to suck it up and do what it takes to earn them
, he told himself, and turned the air car towards the riverbank where he’d landed the night he distributed his traps.

* * *

The trap stopped quivering and smacked back down on the branch as its counter-grav exhausted its power supply. Stephanie felt a cautious glow of optimism, which strengthened quickly when the air car turned and moved off.

She was actually surprised the trapper had given up so easily, but just as she was about to sit up and return her pistol to its holster, she heard the pitch of the air car’s noise shift. It was coming lower. It was landing!

She cocked her head, eyes closed, trying to follow its flightpath by hearing alone, and her jaw muscles tightened. Whoever it was, she was heading for the river which supplied Lionheart’s clan with fresh water. It also opened a break in the otherwise solid tree canopy, and a good air car pilot could get in under the picketwood that way if she was careful. Which meant—

She started to reach for her uni-link, then stopped herself, brown eyes hard. Scott and the rangers were already coming as quickly as they possibly could. Telling them what was happening wouldn’t get them here any sooner, but it would give them the opportunity to tell her little girls had no business facing unknown numbers of illegal poachers with a gun. She
knew
what they’d say . . . and a part of her suspected they’d be right. But knowing what they
would
say was very different from actually hearing them say it.

She sat up, looking around with narrow, calculating eyes. If the air car was landing near the river, the poachers would be coming from about . . .
that
direction, she decided. They’d probably come straight across to the base of this tree, then use their own counter-grav to reach the trap. If they did that, then they’d take off from just about . . . there.

Stephanie had never tried to fire a weapon while hovering on counter-grav, but she suspected it wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the galaxy to do. Or the most accurate. So
her
best move would be to let whoever it was get off the ground but not onto the crown oak limb. Catch the bad guys in midair, when she’d have all the advantages.

Of course, even if I do, she’s likely to figure a “little kid” like me wouldn’t really squeeze the trigger
, she thought grimly.
If she does, she may try to ignore me or even come right at me, figuring I’ll freeze
.

She remembered something Ainsley Jedrusinski had said to her. The ranger’s expression had been very serious, her voice level.

“Never draw a weapon unless you intend to use it, Stephanie,” she’d said. “Never aim a weapon at another person unless you intend to shoot her. And never shoot at another person unless you intend to kill her.”

Stephanie had felt her eyes go wide, felt Lionheart sitting very still on her shoulder, and Ainsley had shaken her head slowly.

“If you aim a weapon at someone else, you raise the stakes. Whoever it is has to assume you will—or may, at least—pull the trigger. If she’s willing to back down, well and good. If she’s not, and some people won’t be, she may decide to go for broke, instead. If she’s got a weapon of her own, she’ll use it. If she doesn’t, she’ll try to take
your
weapon, and if that happens, she’ll probably use it against
you
. So never think for a moment that simply waving a gun at someone is going to magically make them do whatever it is you want them to do.

“But the flip side of that is that you’d better be sure—
damned
sure—the stakes are worth escalating a confrontation that way. If there’s
any
question in your mind that stopping the other person justifies killing her, then it doesn’t. Because the truth is that once you shoot someone, you can never put that bullet back into the gun. It’s going to hit them, Stephanie, and if it comes out of something as powerful as the pistol we’ve been teaching you to use, the odds are that it
will
kill whoever you shoot, whether that’s what you want or not. So make up your mind. If you decide to aim your weapon at someone else, then you aim—and you
shoot
, if it comes to that—to kill. Not to wound your opponent like some holo drama hero. To
kill
. Because you’ve decided it’s better they be dead than that you or someone else be dead. If you’re justified in shooting at all, then your sole object should be to neutralize the other person as quickly as possible, and the fastest way to do that is to shoot to kill. And if you deliberately shoot to kill, at least you’ll never know you killed someone by
accident
.”

Stephanie had thought then that at least part of it had been Ainsley making sure she’d be scared spitless at the thought of actually shooting another human being. But she’d also realized that what Ainsley was telling her was the grim truth, the consequences of picking up a weapon. That her friend and teacher was telling her that now so it wouldn’t come at her cold and unconsidered if the moment ever arrived.

I hope it hasn’t arrived now
, she thought, climbing up one branch and working her way several meters further out from the main picketwood trunk to get the best angle.
I hope it hasn’t. But if it
has
, Ainsley, I’ll remember
.

28

Tennessee Bolgeo finished wiggling into the environmental suit and sealed the closures. He checked the heads-up display on the inside of the transparent plastic face shield and nodded in satisfaction. Everything in the green. He had fourteen hours worth of air, which certainly ought to be plenty, since he was no more than two or three hundred meters from his trap.

He picked up the trank rifle and checked it for readiness. It was a selective-fire weapon, capable of single shots or full automatic. Its magazine contained forty darts, each guaranteed to knock a treecat off its feet instantly, and he had two more mags on his belt. He didn’t expect to need them, but between the armor of his environmental suit and the firepower of the trank gun, he wasn’t especially worried about meeting up with a handful of treecats.

He looked at his GPS tracker, which showed the position of the trap’s transponder, and started trudging through the drifts of ancient leaves.

* * *

<
It is Speaks Falsely!
> Climbs Quickly said suddenly as he recognized the approaching mind-glow, then wondered why he felt surprised. Certainly Speaks Falsely’s emotions had made it amply clear how
he
regarded the People!

<
What shall we do, Climbs Quickly?
> Broken Tooth asked urgently. Four or five hands of scouts and hunters had followed them out to rescue Twig Weaver. Now all of them sat silently in the branches, following the approaching mind-glow, and anger rose off of them like smoke.

Climbs Quickly glanced at Broken Tooth, faintly amused that the elder who had been so adamantly against closer contact with the two-legs was asking
him
what to do in this situation. But the amusement faded quickly, and he looked at Death Fang’s Bane.

She was lying very still, once again in the position her weapons teachers had taught her, and he tasted the absolute intensity of her focus.

<
I am not sure, Broken Tooth
,> he admitted. <
Death Fang’s Bane has decided what
she
is going to do. I fear that anything
we
might do could interfere with that, confuse her or startle her at exactly the wrong moment
.>

<
She is only a youngling, Climbs Quickly. It is not right that the weight of this should fall only on her
.>

Climbs Quickly tasted the sincerity in Broken Tooth’s mind-glow and sent back a quick, warm wash of gratitude. But—

<
A youngling, yes, Broken Tooth. But never
“only”
a youngling. It is true the weight of defending our clan should not fall only on her, but it is a weight she has chosen to bear. All we can do is wait and see what chances
.>