Thorarinn Gunnarsson - Tactical Error

“That always amazes me,” she remarked.

“That it flies?” the Feldenneh asked.

“No, that anyone would fly it.”

The nose of the shuttle split, moving open to either side, and the cargo ramp rolled out. They approached the ramp, careful of the outer shell of the ship, which was still radiating considerable heat acquired through its rather inadequate shields. She did know from experience that the ship would be too hot to touch for some time.

“I am not entirely thrilled by this,” Keflyn commented in the Feldenneh language, to be very sure that Jon Addesin did not overhear her. “Are you absolutely certain that your cargo scout cannot be repaired?”

“You have not seen what is left of it,” Derrighan answered, and his regret was genuine. If they had not needed Jon Addesin’s skyvan, they would not have needed Jon Addesin.

They entered the shuttle’s long, narrow bay, which, Keflyn had always been interested to note, was decked in worn, scratched wood. The skyvan was lashed down in the center of the bay, held to the deck by a web of cargo straps. It reminded Keflyn somewhat of a very small version of a Starwolf transport, a long, rectangular hull with a blunt nose that contained the narrow cockpit, the rest of the craft given over to a cargo hold. It had no wings or control surfaces, relying entirely upon field drives, with pairs of retractable wheels in front and rear for land use.

“I am somewhat relieved,” Keflyn commented as she began removing the cargo straps. “It seems to be in a much higher state of preservation than the rest of the ship.”

“Considering what you were able to dismantle and carry with you, I suppose that you might have squeezed a ship of your own into two more bags,” Derrighan remarked.

“So there you are,” Jon Addesin declared cheerfully as he descended the ladder from the cockpit. “I hope you’re ready. We can be on our way as soon as we can roll this baby out of the bay.”

Keflyn paused to stare at him. He was up to something, excited, nervous and just a bit desperate, and acting very hard as if nothing was wrong. There was now a timetable that she did not understand. For some reason, he wanted this expedition done as soon as possible, although she was not telepathic enough with humans to determine more. She doubted that it was anything more than the launch of a major campaign to seduce her.

“Is your handsome pet going along?” he asked next, which suggested that her guess was correct.

“I have duties of my own to attend here,” Derrighan answered vaguely, his annoyance obvious at that less-than-subtle derogatory comment.

The young Feldenneh had first meant to go along, but according to their plan, he was now to stay behind in the event of trouble. If Keflyn could not return, he had been taught to assemble and use her achronic transceiver to call in the Methryn. He was also the colony’s only qualified pilot and helm. If necessary, he could use Addesin’s own shuttle to take a boarding party up to commandeer the Thermopylae . This was by no means Keflyn’s idea, but her capitulation of the fears of both Derrighan and Kalmedhae. Whatever secret the Feldenneh were hiding on this icy world, they were unusually fearful over it.

Addesin was perfectly true to his word on one point. The little transport was already loaded with all of the supplies they needed for their journey, so that Keflyn needed only to toss on board her personal belongings. One thing that she insisted upon taking was a good supply of food that she had selected. Kelvessan had to eat prodigiously to maintain their fierce metabolism, and they generally did not share human tastes.

They were under way in a matter of minutes, traveling west and south over the lesser mountains to the plains and light forests beyond. The skyvan was a game little flyer but it was hardly capable of supersonic flights; at its best speed of about 300 kilometers per hour, they would still need the rest of the day to cross half a continent to reach their destination. Jon Addesin was as secretive as the Feldenneh about their destination, but for his own reasons. He was enjoying what he considered to be dramatic effect.

They were passing over one area of scattered plains and light forests when Addesin suddenly turned the skyvan sharply to one side and began to climb steeply. Keflyn knew an evasive maneuver when she saw one.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Spark dragon,” he explained simply.

“What?” Keflyn asked incredulously. Spark dragons were native to a world very far away. The large, flying mammals possessed a sonic blast that was as powerful as a disrupter at short range. Contrary to their names, they generated no electricity at all, although their sonic beam caused metal to throw bright sparks as it was molecularly disrupted. That made them dangerous even to the skyvan, or at least its vulnerable electronics.

“Let me show you something especially interesting,” Addesin said, turning the skyvan toward an open area of the plains.

He slowed the transport as they crossed the distance quickly, no more than a couple of kilometers, and Keflyn saw what he was steering toward. There was a herd of perhaps a couple of hundred large animals grazing their slow way through the deep grass. Her enhanced vision had already shown her that there were two similar species of animals gathered there. The largest group she recognized immediately as thark bison, also native of a very distant world and now domesticated throughout both Union and Republic space. The other, more massive beasts she did not recognize at all.

“Thark bison and Terran bison,” he explained. “The two types apparently get along quite well and often travel together. In the farther north, you will also find them living alongside beasts the Feldenneh tell me are the modern descendants of Terran musk ox. It took them a while to identify those two, since they now exist only here. At night you will hear the howls of the Terran wolves and the barks of the Callian herrimeyens that hunt them.”

“This world is a regular zoo,” Keflyn commented, watching the herd out of the skyvan’s side window as they moved past. In her own mind, this was proof enough that this had once been a major world. Domestic breeds were one thing, but no one imported something like a Kandian spark dragon or a herrimeyen except for exhibition. The sonic dragons were dangerous enough to have under any circumstances.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Addesin told her. “This is definitely the strangest world I’ve ever seen, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

Five hundred centuries, especially under a cruel climate, could be disastrous to any civilization. It certainly had not done this planet any favors. Keflyn had spent a long day poking through the ruins that Jon Addesin had brought her to see, even employing her tremendous strength to do a fair amount of excavation, and all that she could say for certain was that the ruins of a large city lay beneath those rolling, sparsely wooded hills. Only the downtown section had once had buildings large enough that their crumbled remains were recognizable as anything that had never been a part of nature.

One thing that Keflyn had not discovered was evidence of battle. She had found stone, metal, and even glass that was shattered, crumbling, and corroded almost beyond recognition, but none of it burned or melted. Buildings had slowly collapsed in upon themselves, and some of the taller ones had even fallen, but she did not see any indication that they had been reduced by some tremendous explosion, or that a large blast such as a nuclear or conversion explosion had ever occurred anywhere in the area.

The frustrating part was that there was no real hint of the world this had once been, no hint of the personal lives of the people who had built this city or even any clear indication of their race. There was nothing she had seen to even prove that they had been indisputably human. There had been no doorways or windows left intact to suggest their shape or height, no furnishing buried beneath collapsed walls or roofs. Metal, except for the splintered remains of heavy beams, had been reduced to dust, and wood had been gone for ages.