Кристофер Банч - The Wolf Worlds

"Could I, Nem!i. chief of all the Stra!bo"—he belched— "become that confused?"

"Drinkin" this yak-pee," Bet said, "easily." Acau/lay had already passed out beside her.

"Do herdsmen have gray rafts that float in the air instead of the water? Do herdsmen have their huts shaped like fish, that can also fly through the air?"

"Offworlders," Sten said with satisfaction.

"And will you take us to these traders'?" Bet asked. She sounded almost sober.

"For my new friends, who have been blooded by the rites of the Stra!bo…tomorrow or the next feast day I will send you, accompanied by my best warriors."

"We thank you, chief," Sten said, realizing he was starting to sound about as formally drunk as Nem!i.

"It is, I must say," the old chief wheezed, "a long and hard journey of some thirty risings and settings of the sun."

"Nem!i, what're the hazards that…"

Bet stopped. Nem!i had sagged gently against Sten and started snoring. Sten and Bet looked at each other. Bet shrugged and picked up another gourd.

"Well," Bet said, "I guess we'll be able to get off this… charming world and not have to spend the rest of our days drinking blood and pushing calcium critters around. So shall we follow the example of the noble Nem!i'?"

"Why not," Sten said, and took the gourd. It seemed as good an idea as any other.

STEN CAME AWAKE to the glare of an evil, yellow sun that was hurling spears through the cracks of the hut. He moaned gently and shut his eyes.

His head felt like a thousand—no, two thousand—ungulates had hooved through his brain, then paused to graze and defecate on his tongue.

Someone stirred next to him.

"I think I'm gonna die." he said, holding his eyes tightly shut.

"You are," Ida answered.

"Shut up. Ida. I'm not kidding."

"Neither am I. We're all gonna die."

Sten came fully awake. Sat up and stared through bloody eyes at the rest of the group already up and glooming around the sleeping hut.

"For once." Bet said, "Ida isn't exaggerating. We've got some kind of bug. And it's gonna kill us in about…"

"Twenty days," Ida said.

"Clot on that." Alex said. "At the moment Ah need a wee bit of the dog that gnawed the dirty Campbell if Ah'm gonna see the end of this day."

Sten ignored this. "Would you mind explaining what's going on?"

Ida flicked her hand scanner on Medic-probe and gave it to Sten. He peered at the tiny screen. And found another creature staring back at him with DNA hate in its single-glowing protein eye.

The Bug, as Bet had called it, was a rippling blue ribbon with the thinnest of green edges to mark the boundaries of its form. Spotted about its perimeter were tiny, bright red dots, like so many gun nests.

"What the clot is is?"

"Some kind of a mycoplasm," Ida said. "Note, it is a cell, but it has no cell walls. It's probably the oldest life-form in the Galaxy. It's mean, lean, and hungry. And we've been breathing in millions of them since we landed. Interesting that mycoplasms do occur in areas of volcanic activity."

"I'm not interested in its lifestyle, Ida. What about our own?"

"Like I said, Sten, twenty days."

"No prophylaxis?"

"None—except getting offworld."

"Twenty days," Bet mused. "Which puts us ten days short of the traders' post."

Sten rubbed his head, which was moving from the gong solo to the tympani section of the program, then looked back up at his equally gloomy friends.

"Fine news. Now what else can go wrong?"

And above them the air split open with a blinding shriek. The hut shook, and a cloud of insects from the thatched roof floated down about them.

Sten and the others ran outside, to see the Jann ship scuttling across the sky.

Alex turned to Sten, smiling oddly. "Y'beit tha luckiest lad Ah'm knowit," he said, then pointed up at the Turnmaa as it climbed, then banked back toward the Stra!bo village, braked, and settled for a landing.

"If die we mus', tha wee beastie'll hae to stan' in line."

"IN THE NAME OF TALAMEIN WE DEMAND THAT YOU DELIVER UP THE OFFWORLDERS."

The Jannisar captain's voice boomed across the savannah, drowning out even the chants of a thousand warriors drawn up before his ship.

A forest of spears shook back in defiance.

"It's bloody foolishness," Alex said.

Sten, Alex, and the others were hiding in a small grove of trees watching the confrontation.

Sten had to admire the Janns' efficiency. They were very well trained soldiers. The ship had landed. Before the dust of the ship's landing had a chance to settle, the Janns had swarmed out, dug in, sandbagged, and set up their squad automatic projectile weapons.

On the ship itself, the top-turret chain-gun moved back and forth, tracing the line of warriors.

It reminded Sten of the volcanic mycoplasm hunting in their veins. The mycoplasm with its hateful DNA swinging back and forth, waiting for the pounce.

"IN THE NAME OF TALAMEIN…"

"We can't let this happen." Bet said, rising to her feet. The others—even Doc—rose with her. Sten started out of the trees first.

And then they heard Acau/lay's cry for combat.

"/ARI!CIA!"

"/ARI!CIA!"

Acau/lay stepped away from the crowd and stalked toward the ship. He was carrying the bundle of weapons—a gift for the enemy he would slay with love in the grove.

"/ARI!CIA!" He cried again. Coming to a stop in front of the waving turret of the chain-gun.

"S'BE'T," the Jann captain's voice boomed back.

Acau/lay hurled the bundle of weapons down on the ground. Drew back, pointing at the grove of trees and urging the ritual combat.

"/ARI!CIA!"

"/Ari!…"

And the chain-gun boomed out. Cutting off Acau/lay's final cry to fight. The projectiles stitched across him, literally cutting him in half.

As one body, the warriors hurled themselves forward, and all the Jann guns opened up instantly, cutting and spewing fire. Before the Mantis team could move, a hundred Stra!bo were dying on the ground and the others were fleeing.

In a crazy moment. Bet remembered Acau/lay telling her of the Stra!bo pride. In their two-million-year history they had never broke and run.

The tear-runnels had dried, but still marked Nem!i's cheekbones. He and Alex lay below the crest of the low hill overlooking the Jann cruiser.

"If these men are beyond custom, then they are beyond the law," the alien whispered.

"Y'ken right," Alex said. "Ae Ah said b'fore, they're naught better'n ae scum a' Campbells."

Sten lay on the hilltop, binoc-lenses carefully shielded from reflection, staring down at the cruiser.

"If they do not have the law, then we cannot surrender our friends to them," Nem!i continued his careful analysis. He was still deeply shocked by Acau/lay's murder. "So this will mean…"

Sten clicked the binocs off and back-slithered down the hill beside them. He'd overheard the last of Nem!i's whisper.

"This will mean," he interrupted flatly, "that at night's fall we kill them. We kill them all."

As the sun was occulted by the crater wall, an exterior speaker crackled:

"Evening stand-to. All bow. Talamein, we thank thee for thy recognition of our might. We thank thee for our strength as Jannisars and for proclaiming our duty on this world of unbelievers."

There was no movement around the cruiser as the black-uniformed troops listened to the prayer, except the endless, automatic sweep of the chain-gun's turret atop the ship.

"We thank you in advance," the captain's voice rasped on, "for the boon which you will grant us on the morrow as our due for pursuing these unknown raiders. S'be't."

The soldiers moved quietly into their nightwatch positions.