Power Lines
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: Petaybee #2
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Power Lines». Краткое содержание книги:
Only solid evidence would convince the company to leave the planet alone, and for all its sentience, Petaybee's communications were highly subjective; indeed, some outsiders seemed entirely immune to its voice. So Yana and her friends would have to find some other way to prove that the planet was worth more to the company alive than dead...
"What kind of people are you anyway?"
"Don't ask them anything," Krisuk said disgustedly. "She's at Satok's. You can bet on it. He took her."
"Then I'm going to get her," Diego said.
"You can't!" Iva said. "He can kill you-kill us all-he might turn the planet against us again, make it swallow us up. He's too powerful for any of us to fight."
"He sure is if you just sit there," Diego said. "And the planet has no reason at all to like him. If you looked a few yards beyond the ends of your noses, you'd know that."
"You're not going alone," Krisuk said.
"No?"
"No. Come on, Da, Mother. You kids," Krisuk added addressing his younger brothers and sisters. "You go wake the neighbors. Bring them to the meeting cave." His siblings looked up at him as if they'd been stunned, unmoving till his five-year-old sister, Marie, jumped to her feet.
"I'll go!"
"Me, too," one of the younger brothers said.
Diego had stripped one of the quilts from the beds to cover Dinah, while one of the older sisters began cleaning the dog's wound.
Seeing that the dog was in good hands, Diego grabbed a knife from its hook above the stove and ran out the door again and up the path.
"Wait!" Krisuk said. "Diego, not that way. You'll be too good a target."
"I'm not going to just let him have her because you're all scared of him," Diego shouted back, never shortening his stride though the wind battered him. He didn't hear what Krisuk said in response.
Diego was about to pass the cave entrance when Krisuk caught up with him and pulled him back.
"Look, you can't just go confront him," he hollered above the wind. "But remember the upper passage? I'll bet it leads up to his house."
Diego paused for a moment. He had read a lot of hard-copy books, and many of his favorites had secret passages and tunnels in them, something he had previously related only to the ventilation systems in ships and space stations. "Maybe so," he said. "But if it doesn't, we lose a lot of time. We don't know how much we've lost already."
Krisuk said, "According to Da, they heard Bunny hollering about an hour ago. Look, I can get them to follow me into the cave. I want to show them what Satok's done. But they're too scared to go to his house. It's a strong house and he's armed."
Diego shook his arm loose. "If you want to go that way, then you go that way. I'm going straight to the house. I'm not going to risk Bunny's life again because your folks don't want me to stand up to Satok."
"Okay then, I'll try the cave and if it doesn't work out, I'll come up and help you, so take it easy, okay? Unless you see he's actually-well, unless she really needs you right then, don't jump in until I get there "
Diego was already striding forward. "I'll handle it," he said, and began to climb up the hill leading to Satok's.
The house was visible from the top of the path, a stone building about a half a mile away set back in a meadow. The windows were lit, and as Diego approached, a banshee chorus of howls heralded his arrival.
Satok pinned Bunny to the mattress and snatched at the band of her trousers. She tried to kick him, but he'd pinned one of her knees down with one of his own. Her right arm, stuck between her back and the mattress, groped for her weapon, which was digging into her hip.
All of a sudden the dogs began to howl. Satok swore and rose, grabbing a weapon as he turned toward the door. Almost as an afterthought, he turned on Bunny. As he struck her open handed across the face, her teeth bit into her cheeks with an explosion of pain.
"Don't move," he said, waggling his finger with mock playfulness.
Of course, she did move the moment he threw the bolt on the door. It was hopeless to dart past him into the night, and the trap door was too far away, but at least she was able to pull out her ice pick.
"Shut up, you lazy pack of mutts, or you don't eat for another week!" he bellowed out the door. The howling quieted to a whine. He took a long look around, then turned back to Bunny.
Fresh out of more subtle tricks, she jumped up and ran back to the trap door. She was smart enough not to show her weapon.
"Don't you touch me again, mister," she said, lisping a little through her cut lip.
The dogs began howling again, but this time Satok refused to be diverted. He reached Bunny in two seconds flat, and Bunny, backing up, found she was against a wall with nowhere to run, not a good position for any animal to be in. Further more, Satok was standing on the trap door as he closed in on her, his hands going for her throat.
The front door slammed open, flooding the room with strong icy wind.
Bunny punched upward with her ice pick and felt the pointed tip sink into meat. Satok's grip on her loosened, but he had twisted away from her to face the front door and her weapon didn't make the lethal strike she intended. She was trying to loosen her neck from his arm and her weapon from his wound when another body crashed into them, almost strangling her as the impact drove Satok's arm against her wind pipe.
As Satok whirled to meet the new attacker, Bunny dove out of the way, searching for another weapon.
Diego was riding the big man's back, punching at him with a dagger, but Satok reached back and wrested the dagger from the boy's hand as if he were taking a rattle from a baby. Bunny groaned. Diego was good with books and computers-he wasn't a fighter.
She picked up a wrench and danced around the two of them, trying to get in a lick here and there but she was afraid of hitting Diego.
Satok looked annoyed, but hardly worried. Still standing on the trap door, he reached back and grabbed Diego's head in both hands and started pulling him over his shoulder.
Bunny dropped to her knees, threw herself forward, and whacked the big man hard with the wrench, first on the knees, then the shins. He whirled around, still holding Diego's head in a vise, and she slammed the wrench against the backs of his knees. He fell to the ground with a crash that swept Diego's legs against the computer table and toppled the machine to the floor.
But when he and Diego fell forward, they cleared the trap door, and the pounding under the door that had been obscured by the sounds of the fight became clear. Bunny crawled to the door and pulled up the ring. Through the widening crack, Krisuk's arms and head appeared, and with a shove he pushed the door back across Satok's calves.
Satok was slamming Diego's head against the floor.
Gaining confidence at the sight of Krisuk climbing out of the hole, followed closely by his father, Bunny dove toward Satok's head and brought her wrench down over it. Again, the man twisted at a crucial point, and Bunny's wrench only tore loose the back of his ear just as a third person emerged from the secret passage.
Satok grabbed the injured ear, staggered to his feet, and ran, Krisuk and the others after him.
Bunny knelt beside Diego. "Are you okay?" she asked.
He blinked at her twice, rubbed the back of his head, and said ruefully, "I came to your rescue."
She kissed him, bloody nose and all. "You sure did. Are you hurt bad?"
His hand came away bloody "Not bad. I think. My dad always said my skull was the hardest part of me."
Iva was kneeling beside them now. "Come on and I'll bandage that for you." she said. "We've seen what Satok did to the planet. Some talk he had! The others will catch him and he'll tell his lies no more."
"No," Diego said. "We've got to get to Sean and Yana and tell them what Satok's done."
"How did you know he was a pirate?" Bunny said.
"If we go back through the cave, you'll-" Diego stopped and stared at her. "What do you mean, pirate? As in pirate pirate?"
"He's one of Onidi Louchard's shipmates," Bunny said. "I think he's still working with them to loot Petaybee."
"Frag! We gotta warn the others!"
"Shh," Iva Connelly said. "You're not going anyplace till I bandage your wounds. You, too, young lady."