A World for the Taking Ch. 05

She smacked him and scowled. After a moment they both began to laugh.

*****

"Look what I did," whispered Yoshi. He stood over the Dusig soldier with the arrow in its neck. It didn't look Human. Bipedal with four limbs, its neck was way too long, its face too narrow. Yoshi blinked and felt a numb. The soldier still whimpered and clutched weakly at the protruding shaft. "I killed him."

"Yoshi?" Jean said softly.

"I killed him," the boy said again. He looked at his bow and then back down on the Dusig.

"You had to, Yoshi," she said, putting her hand gently on his shoulder. "You were really brave."

He shook his head. "I almost pissed myself."

"You were brave," she insisted and pulled him into her arms. "Come on. Don't look at it."

Jean led him off a few paces and held him. Yoshi was shaking but he did not cry. He returned her hug and buried his face in her hair and they stood there in the firelight not thinking about what they had just been through.

*****

F`reet `du Hom picked up one of the Dusig weapons, a standard issue qui`istle*, checked it and slung it on her shoulder. She knelt and removed the weapons belt from the one she had killed and added that to her gear, slipping the knife back into its scabbard. Seeing the teens embracing she looked over at the wounded Dusig near the fire. The one the young male had shot was clearly dying so she went and gave his head a hard twist, breaking his neck. The one that had been shot by T` Emmi or Rddoy had taken a bullet through the gap where the breastplate and leg armor met. She dragged the dead one aside and examined the wounded one more closely. She did not know this Dusig by sight or scent. He had not been part of her crew.

"Must have come aboard with your matriarch," she guessed and knelt beside him.

Picking up the medical kit dropped by his comrades she ran the scanner over him and found he was not critically injured, though the wound was severe. Sedatives had been administered and a clotting agent had been sprayed inexpertly on the hole in his belly. She opened the clasps fastening his armor and pulled the breastplate off none too gently.

"Could have been worse for you," she said. "Let's bring you around. I have questions."

When the Dusig awoke his blotchy brown skin became even more blotchy and he grimaced as if in great pain. He looked wildly around at his dead comrades and then at the jZav`Etch female standing over him. F`reet `du Hom smiled and her tail flicked as she aimed her appropriated rifle at his head.

"No!" the Dusig cried in panic. He spoke in Meith `pth qHrr, the jZav`Etch military/diplomatic language. "Mistress, no!"

"How many of you are on this planet?" she demanded, holding the rifle steady.

He shook his head and she shot him with a crowd dispersal round. It shocked him and where the tiny ferrous pellets struck his skin, they burned painfully. He shivered and forced himself to open his eyes. F`reet `du Hom waited a couple of beats and shot him again. The blast ran agony through his system and he flailed in the dirt. The Human adolescents stood and stared, mouths agape.

"How many?" she demanded again. When he did not answer she fired. He screamed. She smiled. "You killed my captain. You killed my friends. You killed jZav`Etch."

Her finger stroked the trigger again and the Dusig howled. He squirmed in the dirt, spitting stinging pellets from his mouth. She fired again and then waited for him to calm.

"I could use a drug to get what I want from you," she lied. She had no idea how to formulate such a drug. "But I'm enjoying this right now. You know, your people cut my captain's head off? Tell me what I want to know and I will stop this."

Panting and unable to remain still the Dusig nodded. He said, "Three hands of hands, mistress. And the pilots."

Three hands of hands? One hundred eight soldiers plus six pilots for the shuttles. Why so large a force? That was more than what they would need to recapture her. And why even bother to try? They could simply have gone off to wherever they were planning to go.

F`reet `du Hom gazed down the barrel of her weapon at the rebel on the ground. She was pleased to see the blood oozing from his many small wounds. The pain on his face pleased her more. Dusig, brave and resourceful, could be the most reliable of the subject races in the Hegemony, but when they rebelled, they became the worst of enemies. That was why they were not permitted to self-govern, as yet. They could not command their own forces. They were not permitted interstellar ships. They had no officers, only senior soldiers. And this one called her 'mistress' rather than pilot. That could be because she was not in uniform, but surely all these rebels would know she had been the pilot. The more probable explanation, then, was that they were not professional soldiers.

That tracked with what she had seen of their sloppy discipline. This group, separated from the main force, had not deployed any sensors. They had no proper battle armor. They did not know how to use their weapons. That had been obvious when they failed to hit anything. Where had the weapons come from? Her ship had not had a large armory so these had to have been brought aboard by the matriarch's crew. That implied they had foreseen the need of them. Was it possible they intended to take over this planet? Was that why she had come here instead of running for jZav`Etch space? She still could not recall clearly what had transpired after being hit in the head. She barely remembered being hit, actually.

"Mistress?" panted the wounded Dusig.

The sound of heavy bodies pushing through undergrowth drew her attention to the path from the woods. T` Emmi and Rddoy appeared from the shadows of the forest astride their mounts and she was relieved to see her two young companions whole and alive, though their expressions looked haunted.

"Mistress?" the Dusig said again, a little louder.

As she turned back to face him, F`reet `du Hom's thumb brushed the control on the side of her weapon and her next shot was a bolt of ferro-plastic that blew the creature's head clean off his shoulders in a flash of viridian light.

*****

"Jesus Christ!" swore Roy, witnessing the jZav`Etch pilot execute the wounded soldier.

"F`reet `du Hom!" protested Tammy. She sprang from Boudi's back and ran to the pilot's side, staring down at the smoldering mess at her feet. "Why?"

"She was talking to him," Jean said in a small, frightened voice.

"She killed him?" said Yoshi.

"He's pretty dead," Roy confirmed, coming up behind Tammy and staring at the headless body.

F`reet `du Hom collected the other rifles from the dead soldiers and took their weapons belts while the teens tried to get their minds around what they had just done. She ejected magazines and took something from each of the long guns, tossing whatever it was into the campfire. Gradually the teens realized they were wasting time and like zombies they went to bring in the other steelies and the carry pack.

"How could she just execute him like that?" Yoshi asked, sounding more like his old self.

"The Dusig cut her crewmate's head off," Roy told him woodenly. "Maybe that was the guy that did it. Doesn't matter. She killed him. Can't do anything about it now."

"But still!" said Yoshi.

"She's an alien, Yoshi," said Tammy. "We can't expect her to act the same as we do."

"You don't act like that," he said.

"Tammy isn't an alien!" Jean said a little defensively. "She's my sister. She was raised here."

Yoshi dropped his gaze.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it like that."

"It's alright," Tammy said, patting his arm. "We need to get the transceiver and get out of here before they send more soldiers."

When they got back to the ship they found the fire had nearly burned out and F`reet `du Hom was nowhere to be seen. Noises from inside her ship drew them there. Roy entered first, carrying the largest toolbox. He was glad to discover the headless body had been carefully covered with a tarp.

"Whew! That smell," Yoshi said, coming in behind him.

"Shut up," Roy hissed. "That's her crewmate. Don't piss her off."

F`reet `du Hom had removed the cockpit center seat and was working on fastenings under the control panel. She looked at them and smiled as if pleased they had returned. Beside her was a large, multi-tray box of strangely fashioned tools.

"I told you we wouldn't need these," grumbled Yoshi, shaking the box in his hand.

"We couldn't know that," Tammy said and pushed past him to get into the cockpit.

"Better to have a tool and not need it than to need a tool and not have it," Roy said, quoting a frontier maxim.

It did not take them long to remove the transceiver. Yoshi was right in beside the jZav`Etch pilot, watching everything she did. He even collected some of the cables she discarded in case they would be useful when they installed her transceiver at the tower. The device proved much smaller than anticipated. Similar to CP equipment of the same sort, it was compact and modular, made to be removed and replaced quickly rather than repaired in situ.

"Why do you think they haven't sent another ship with troops?" Tammy asked Roy while Yoshi and Jean loaded the tools into the carry pack and F`reet `du Hom examined the transceiver using a piece of digital equipment from the jZav`Etch toolbox.

"Not sure," he said, checking Gamble's saddle cinch. "Your dad must have done something pretty big. That explosion might have been him and the rest of our folks taking out their shuttles."

"We haven't heard any shooting since the start," she said.

"Too far for rifles to be heard," he pointed out. "And the guns they use don't make much more noise. If the only big guns they had were on the shuttles, maybe all three shuttles were destroyed or at least damaged. Maybe they can't fly."

"What do you think our folks did?" she asked.

"I don't know." Roy rubbed his chin. His beard was much thicker than it had been only a few short days ago. "Honestly, I'm halfway tempted to just go back to the rock shelter. I think we really need to go ahead and finish this, though. Worst case is that we're wasting our time. Maybe we get the tower up and running and find out it's all over with. Then we have a long ride home."

*****

*ferro-plas - Ferrous Plastic - In this case it refers to the charged particle colloid shot from the jZav`Etch manufactured personal weapons.

*qui`istle - jZav`Etch ferro-plas rifle.

* B`hag`Geera's Thumb - The jZav`Etch cartography ship on which F`reet `du Hom served as pilot prior to the Dusig mutiny.