Eric Flint - The Sorceress of Karres

…

The gray-skinned red eyed ones seemed to have taken what had happened as a personal attack, and one to be severely dealt with. They were busy dealing out more pain with a device that was intended to affect the host's nervous system.

It didn't affect the mother-plant. But they were outnumbered. And more gray-skins were running out of the mound.

None of them were responding to having been enspored. The plant did not, by the standards of its host, make intuitive leaps. But this conclusion was all too easy to reach. The Illtraming, vile rebellious slaves, evil beyond the comprehension of the plant, had made the skin of their foot soldiers skin somehow proof against the mother-plant.

Anathema! To be destroyed!

By sheer weight of numbers and physical superiority the Megair Cannibals were overpowering the mother-plant. The mother-plant realized that it could have come so far, gotten so close, simply to have the hosts dismembered and eaten.

So be it. The plant could grow from broken fragments of tissue. And mere stomach acid would not kill it.

There was a reserve of the mother-plant back in the Venture. But would the gray ones not destroy that? A glance back in the midst of the fight-the mother-plant still had many eyes-said that they had already. The Venture was gone. But the parts of the plant inside the vessel said it was still there! The mother-plant decided she'd call some of those resources to help. The bodyguard was a powerful fighter.

Only the mother-plant couldn't find that element.

Had it died without her being aware?

The mother-plant was not accustomed to fear. Caution, sometimes. A slow burning determination for dominance, always.

Fear? No.

Even when the motherworld had been destroyed, reduced from endless forest to a slag-covered cinder, the mother-plant's spores survived. But these were new and doughty foes. And the hosts' juices were remarkably sour right now. The ones back in the Empire were still sweet. It must be the beating it was taking.

From inside the Venture, Ta'zara had watched as the fight raged. He'd wanted to be out there, defending the Leewit and her sister. But, he had to admit, their abilities probably made him a liability. He wasn't even sure where they were. Still, he was a Na'kalauf warrior, and the little one had given him back that pride and heritage. He would die before anyone could take it away again.

So, here on the ship, he'd taken his responsibilities seriously. He'd quietly made sure, with Vezzarn's help, that Captain Pausert wasn't going anywhere. They'd locked him into a stateroom. They had audio via the intercom and had rigged a visual input from the room too. The two waited in the darkened hold, knowing that if the Megair Cannibals fired on the Venture, the ship was a sitting duck.

"Can we walk a little slower?" said Goth.

"Sure," said the Leewit. "What's up? Not like you to want to walk slower."

"Doing too many things. No shape for us. False appearance for the Venture," She waved a hand at the mound. "And porting little rocks into the spaceguns' energy chambers. If they fire, they're going to blow," said Goth. "I'm chewing energy."

She didn't want to admit that at least some of that was displacement activity. She was afraid that the local food would not have had any effect on Captain Pausert. Her range was not much above a light-second. She'd started 'porting leaves up from the world below a good two and half hours ago. Maybe it was bacteria in the local air-but he'd breathed that. Or the water…

The Venture was close now.

"Cargo bay airlock is open just a crack, " said the Leewit. "Vezzarn must have got that right, at least."

"Good," said Goth, tiredly. "All I want is to get out of here, right now."

"'nother couple of yards, sis," said the Leewit, sounding atypically considerate.

And then they were there, calling quietly to the watchers, having the lock opened slightly, and being hauled up by strong hands into the belly of the Venture. With a sigh of relief, Goth let go of the light-shift, as the lock closed behind them.

"Any change from the… plant people?" She couldn't bring herself to specifically name Pausert.

"Not yet," said Vezzarn. "But we have got the captain locked away. There are three others in that room, and two more in the entry hall. And the pilot and another one in the control room, three in the passenger lounge."

"Goth," said the Leewit. "I think it's time we took over the ship, and clumping well got out of here."

"What's that on your neck, missy?" asked Vezzarn suddenly.

"It's an explosive collar that Marshi made us put on," said Goth. "She said if we co-operated she'd unlock it."

"But we knew we've got the best lock-picker in the galaxy here. So we didn't worry," said the Leewit cheerfully. "Take them off for us, will you Vezzarn."

He suddenly looked very, very afraid. "I can't do that, Missy. That collar… it's got a circuit in it-if that circuit breaks the amalite goes off. There is no way of taking it off. Amalite is so fast and explosive… "

Goth took a deep breath. "I guess I could 'port them off," she said. "Never done it with something this tight around a neck before."

But even making the attempt was delayed by the appearance of one of Marshi's goons. Ta'zara grabbed the man and threw him, as he reached for a weapon. He bounced against the wall, and the Leewit whistled at him, stunning him.

"Patham! What brought him back here?" asked Goth crossly. "Well, they'll all know now. Let's move. No shape. We need the control room."

They rushed up the passage, encountering two more en route. They were no match for the combination of the Leewit and Ta'zara.

But they'd locked the door to control room.

The mother-plant prime haploid was still aware. The host-animal it occupied was barely so, as it was dragged along. However, it could see the tunnels of the plant nursery, so typically and carefully built and ornamented by the Illtraming. The old host animals were fond of their precious "art"-something the mother-plant had never understood, but had allowed them to create. It kept the little animals content, and it was instinctive for them to wish to decorate things.

But these tunnels had had their ceilings coarsely ripped higher so that the lanky Megair Cannibals did not dash their brains on them.

The mother-plant reached the inevitable conclusion. The Illtramings' own slaves must have rebelled. They were no more. At least not here. The ships that had so defended this place… It should have planned to seize one of those… if they had Illtraming on them? The mother-plant was having trouble accessing memory, but most of them had been drones.

The host-body the Megair Cannibals were dragging started to shake as the microscopic hyphae that had been in the host's nervous system began to withdraw. The mother-plant did not know that the Megair Cannibal had dropped the battered Marshi. It knew nothing except extreme distress. The role of prime haploid passed from it as it tried to escape.

On the Empire world of Freeman, the haploid in a human host started to grow aggressively in its human. It was the new haploid-prime. There were few of them left now, and the spores had all been lost. If the mother-plant was to survive, it would have to make some form of plan. It relied heavily on the ingenuity of the host for such plans-but this was an ingenious species.

Did any of the Illtraming still survive?

Not on Megair 4, it was sure.

It had been touch-and-go, there, Goth had to admit. The pilot had saved them, in the end. The plant-person in the room had been intent on wrecking the controls. The pilot had tried to stop him. He'd saved the Venture, and bought them the time they needed for Vezzarn to open the lock. But he had not saved himself. And not even the Leewit could put together his burned-out chest.