Rebellion of Stars (Starship Blackbeard Book 4) (15 page)

“Someone must have moved it!”

“Nobody moved it. You would see where it had come out of the water.”

That was true. There were various tracks out of the water, places where the reeds had bent and broken as if some large animal had dragged itself to shore, but nothing nearly the size of the away pod.

“I don’t know, a helicopter, then. The humans must have spotted us landing, maybe detected us from space. They came down, hooked up chains, and lifted it straight up.”

“Doubtful.”

“You’re right, it’s got to be here. For God’s sake, you’ve got to give us a little more time. Look, I’ll find it myself.”

Without waiting to see if he would stop her, she stripped off her boots and socks and peeled off her jump suit until she stood in her underwear. She slogged through the mud past Carvalho.

When the water began to climb thigh high, she eyed the overturned lily pad and dove in. The last thing she heard before going into the warm water was Carvalho calling out for her to be careful.

She came up with a slimy taste in her mouth. The edge of the away pod should be right beneath her, within reach of where Carvalho and the others were poking around with their poles. But hadn’t it landed on this side? The higher part would be out another fifteen feet or so, in deeper water.

She swam out and prodded around with her feet. Carvalho had felt it right under him. She couldn’t feel anything, but she was also shorter than he was. She kicked up her feet and dove down to find it with her hands. It was dark as ink, and she couldn’t see a thing. Something long and serpentine slid past her in the water, brushing her with its body.

Tolvern swam down until her fingers groped at the mud. Dammit. Not down here. She came up, took a big gulp of air, and went down again. Nothing. Where the hell was it?

When she came up a second time, Carvalho pointed to her left. “You’re over too far. Move that way.”

The Hroom were talking in excited tones, pointing out to the center of the lake. Brockett was on his feet, watching her, but now his attention moved to where the Hroom were gesturing. His eyes widened.

Tolvern didn’t look, afraid that whatever she saw would terrify her into swimming for shore. And then Pez Rykan would seize her for treachery, and that would be the end of them all.

She swam to where Carvalho was pointing. She kicked up her heels and dove. Again her fingers touched the mud, but this time she didn’t come back up. She swam in circles until her lungs burned, growing more and more frustrated, as well as afraid of whatever creature the others had spotted. Then she bumped into something hard and flat. She found the edge and felt along it, and found one of the large hooks they used when loading the pods into their ejection carriages.

It was the pod all right, way down in the mud, where it must have been settling since it fell, sinking until it was nearly buried. Another day or so, and it might disappear entirely. Tolvern came up, lungs bursting.

“I found it!”

Nobody cared. It was all commotion on the bank. Carvalho yelled at her to get out of the water. She swam furiously for the shore, and he came in up to his waist to grab her arms. He dragged her into the reeds, where they promptly fell into the mud.

The Hroom were shouting, and the air sizzled with the sound of electricity and the smell of ozone. Something huge splashed behind Tolvern, but she was tangled with Carvalho and mired in the mud and couldn’t get up. Brockett screamed for them to get out and onto dry land.

“Get off me!” Carvalho said.

“I’m trying!”

A roar of pain from behind them, another huge splash, and the Hroom fell silent, except for gasps and short, relieved-sounding conversations. Whatever it was, it was over.

Tolvern was face to face with Carvalho. He looked up at her and grinned through his mud-splattered face.

“Well, Tolvern, I thought it might be pleasant to have you naked on top of me, but I thought perhaps we might do it in private.”

She picked herself up with a grunt, then helped him to his feet without covering herself. She refused to be embarrassed by her state of undress. The scoundrel had the nerve to let his eyes roam up and down her muddy body.

“Are you literally waggling your eyebrows at me?” she asked.

“Very well, I will stop.” He gave her a mocking shrug and turned his back.

She returned cautiously to the water’s edge to wash up. Without ever taking her eyes from the water, which still swirled from whatever had disturbed it, she hurriedly splashed some of the mud from her body. Carvalho did the same to one side, no longer staring at her.

Once back on shore, she told Pez Rykan what she’d found as she picked off leeches. He still seemed suspicious.

“I’ll swim down with the rope myself,” she said. “There’s a big hook along one side where I can tie it. There’s that monster to think about, though.”

“We gave it a severe jolt with our weapons,” the chief said. “I believe it will look for an easier meal, at least for now. There would be no better time to go than this moment.”

Tolvern didn’t relish the thought of returning to the water. But there seemed to be no other option. Carvalho offered to go, and she supposed she could have even pressed Brockett into action. He’d been lounging on the shore this whole time, after all. But no.

Soon enough, she was back in the water and diving with the rope. For all Pez Rykan’s reassurances, he kept his forces poised at the shore to defend her. Thankfully, the creature didn’t return. Soon, she had the rope secured and was safely out of the water.

The rope was strong enough, but the pod had nearly buried itself deep in the mud. Working together, human and Hroom, they heaved for several minutes with little effort, but by now, Pez Rykan seemed convinced and wouldn’t give up. He sent his Hroom to dive and dig through the mud to try to free the massive thing. Shortly, the straining rope caught a little slack. They redoubled their effort.

The pod came loose at last, popping out like a rotten tooth. There must have remained a small pocket of air, because once it was free of the mud, it had enough buoyancy that they were able to drag the whole thing into the reeds. There it sat, immobile, as inky water, mud, and squirming, eel-like fish drained out.

It took a few minutes of hauling out the sealed supply boxes before they got to the larger containers holding thousands of doses of sugar antidote. Carvalho and Tolvern dragged out one of the containers to Brockett, who popped the seal. Tolvern held her breath, worried that water had infiltrated and destroyed it all.

It had not. Inside, the individual boxes were all intact and dry. The individual gelatin caplets containing the antidote were undamaged.

Tolvern, excited, grabbed Carvalho by the shoulders and shook him. He stared back, grinning.

“All right, Tolvern. All right. You are going to shake my teeth right out of my skull.”

Pez Rykan stood next to them, watching with a solemn expression. “What is this?”

Tolvern stretched to clap him on the shoulder, forgetting momentarily that he’d been threatening to torture them to death only minutes earlier, and that in any event, he was not Nyb Pim, but a strange and brooding Hroom.

“This, my friend, is your magic weapon. It may not look like much, but it will change the course of the war.”

“It does not look like anything. It looks like little pills.”

“Only to the untrained eye, you grumpy Hroom. This is a weapon, believe me.”

“Speak plainly. I do not like your riddles.”

“A cure, Pez Rykan. An antidote. Feed this to an eater, and he is cured forever.”

#

There was a great deal of excitement in the camp when the Hroom realized what their chief had brought back with him. Arguments broke out, presumably about whether or not it was another human lie.

Tolvern insisted they release Nyb Pim. They shoved him roughly from the house where he’d been confined all day, and he told the other Hroom that he’d received the sugar antidote himself, and that it worked. Brockett produced a sugar sample, at which point the entire village fell silent. Horror on some faces, naked desire on others. Long tongues darted over lips as if in anticipation.

Once an eater, always an eater.
 

Tolvern had heard that expression a thousand times, usually from those convinced of the weak moral fiber of your typical Hroom and the weakness and decadence of the Hroom civilization. Practically speaking, there was some truth in it. You could cure a Hroom of short-term addiction, but you could never cure him entirely. He was always one taste away from utter collapse into depravity.

Nyb Pim tore the top off the sugar packet. He tilted his head and poured the sugar into his mouth. There was a collective gasp.

The Hroom watched Nyb Pim, wide-eyed, waiting for him to swoon. Tolvern half expected it herself, even though she knew better.

“I don’t like the way they’re looking at me,” Brockett whispered.

“They know you have more sugar.”

“I do! There’s some in my pocket.”

“I wouldn’t advertise the fact.”

She glanced at the Hroom. Most of them were staring at Nyb Pim, but some fixed their attention on the young science officer, as if they would tear his clothes off to search every body cavity for hidden sugar. How did Pez Rykan lead these people in attacking the sugar plantations without them fighting their way to the nearest mill and eating themselves to oblivion?

Nyb Pim remained calm and clear-eyed. It soon became obvious that nothing would happen to him. The sugar had been rendered harmless.

Someone exclaimed in surprise, and then all the Hroom exploded into chatter for several minutes. Tolvern watched them, amused. For a people who had built a long-lived empire stretching across dozens of star systems, they were surprisingly naïve. How easy it would have been to fake the whole experiment. How did they even know it was sugar Brockett fed Nyb Pim? Could have been some other substance. Could have been salt. The whole thing could be a plot to addict the remaining free Hroom on the planet. That’s what a human would be thinking.

Two Hroom began to edge over to where the three humans stood together. The rest clustered around Nyb Pim, babbling questions.

“You have got some of that antidote on you?” Carvalho asked, watching the approaching Hroom through narrowed eyes. “Might want to break it out right about now.”

“I was thinking about that,” Brockett said, looking distracted. “If we cut the dosage—”

Tolvern and Carvalho shielded him. “Maybe we’ll worry about that later,” she said.

She motioned for Pez Rykan to come over. The chief scowled, a facial expression that transferred readily between Hroom and human, but he came to her. As he did, the approaching pair faded back toward those surrounding Nyb Pim.

“I do not like that gesture, human,” Pez Rykan said. “It is the gesture of a taskmaster to his slave.”

“Call me by my name, and I’ll call you by yours. Like two civilized beings. Anyway, that’s not how I meant it. Listen, we’ve got to distribute the antidote to your people as fast as possible.”

“I am not yet decided.”

“No?” she said. “Then you’d better stand guard over those crates we hauled back. You’ve got eaters in your village. Reformed, yes, but not fully cured. Someone is going to get the idea that destroying the antidote is the best course.”

“Ah. Yes, I see. I believe you are right.”

“You
know
I’m right.”

“And then what? Say I do what you ask?”

Tolvern smiled. “How far did you say the nearest plantation is from here? A day’s march?”

“That is correct.”

“And what would happen if thousands of sugar slaves suddenly became immune?”

Pez Rykan stared at her for a long moment. Understanding dawned on his face.

“Yes,” she told him. “Now you see.”

Chapter Sixteen

Late the next day, when the company had stopped to camp before the final approach to the plantation, Tolvern finally reached someone on the handheld computer she’d rescued from the away pod. To her surprise, it was Henny Capp who appeared on the other side.

“You!” she said.

Capp grinned insolently. “Aye. Were you expecting Malthorne?”

Tolvern had tried to raise
Blackbeard
yesterday, but failed. She tried a couple of other ships in the fleet, but nobody answered. But she guessed Drake was out there; how else to explain the orbital battle she’d witnessed? Could he be attempting to seize the forts? She sent a cautious, coded message to the forts. Fort Gamma answered.

“Where you been?” Capp asked. “King’s balls, we thought you’d been killed.”

“Nope. Not dead. What the devil are you doing?”

The other woman leaned back in her chair, her hands behind her shaved head. “I’m in charge of this joint, wouldn’t you believe it?”

“Frankly, no,” Tolvern said, laughing. “I don’t believe that for one second.”

“You’d better, ’cause it’s the God’s honest truth. Cap’n forced this Gibbs lady to surrender, but he don’t trust her yet. Wants me to hold things down until we get stuff figured out. Then we’ll be off again.”

“Where?”

“Oh, you know. It’s that bastard Lindsell. He’s keeping us from getting our goods here and all.”

“What about
Dreadnought
?”

“Nope, she ain’t here yet. You don’t need to know nothing about that, what with your own troubles. Listen, you taking care of that big oaf of mine?”

Tolvern cast a glance at the camp, where two Hroom were showing Carvalho and Brockett how to gut and dress a large, scaly, pig-like thing they’d shot in the underbrush. Carvalho plunged his arms into the beast’s abdomen and pulled out a mess of guts. Brockett looked pale and swallowed hard.

“A few narrow scrapes, but we’re all right,” Tolvern said. “I still don’t understand. How are you in charge? Nyb Pim is with me. Who’s piloting
Blackbeard
?”

“Rutherford’s subpilot. It’s me and some of the boys down here now. Anyone acts up before Drake puts Gibbs back in charge, we’ll knock ’em around a bit. Want me to put you through to the cap’n?”