Freedom's Landing
- Автор: Маккефри Энн
- Серия: Catteni Sequence #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Freedom's Landing». Краткое содержание книги:
The alien Catteni value strength and intelligence in their slaves—and Kristin has managed to survive her enslavement while hundreds of other humans have not. But her trial has just begun, for now she finds herself part of a massive experiment. The aliens have discovered a new world, and they have a simple way of finding out if it’s habitable: drop hundreds of slaves on the surface and see what happens.
If they survive, colonization can begin. If not, there are always more slaves.
"I think we need the twenty-eight hour day to get everything done," Kris murmured.
Considerably refreshed and cleaner, Kris was quite ready now to get the rest her body urgently desired. She yawned all the way to the cave. That had improved, too.
With beds made of mounds of branches and, she thought, filled in with more of the cat-tails.
She stretched herself out, turned to her right side, sighed with relief to have her sore hips cushioned, and never even felt the blanket which Patti lovingly spread over her.
Chapter Seven
The aroma of roasting meat roused Kris, although her stomach was probably sending the message - it was empty. She could hear muted voices, pleasant voices, and feeling encouraged, she angled herself up out of the flattened bed. One other sleeping accommodation in her cave room was occupied by a sleeper and she slipped into her footwear as quietly as possible and left.
Neither Sandy nor Patti Sue were in the main cave but she spotted Bart and approached to see if she could scrounge a meal off him.
"Hey, Kris," the man said, smiling a welcome, "you did great!" and he dished up some of the food he was cooking onto a nearly round clay plate.
"Me? At what?" she asked with a cautious grin. When he also handed her a wooden fork, she exclaimed in surprise, "All the comforts of home." "We're improving. And I mean the rescue of all those folks trapped by the mechanicals.
"Oh, that. That was Zainal. He knew how to open the doors."
"Yeah, but I ask myself, how did he know how to open them?"
"Aw, c'mon now. Bart!" And Kris quickly donned her public relations hat. "He knew how, so what? Maybe I could have opened it, given a hair pin or a credit card which I didn't have. Door catches are door catches: there are only so many ways to lock one. He figured out the mechanism and opened it. The important thing is that he did know how and we could get all the others out before they got slaughtered."
"I heard…" Bart began uncertainly "What you heard and what happened could be two different things entirely. Who did you hear from?" Bart shifted uneasily. "One of the guys that came in with you."
"Wouldn't be named "Aarens", would he?" Kris asked, letting her tone drip with scorn.
"Next thing you hear, he'll be saying we oughtn't to listen to Mitford "cos he's a slave driver, a martinet, endangering us, who does he think he is, when he was only a sergeant at that, and what does he know?" Kris waved her arm around, at the well-organized kitchen area, the pots and pottery, the water crates, people moving about at assigned tasks.
"Well, Mitford knows enough to organize us to an amazing degree of self-sufficiency, I'd say. Aarens is a trouble-maker and he started almost the moment we hauled him out of that barn." Bart glared at Kris, resenting her tirade, so she smiled at him.
"You're too smart to fall for that kind of drivel, Bart, and this smells too good for me to let it get cold." She sat herself down on a convenient rock and started to eat.
"Now, can I give you the facts, nothing but the facts, about the great slaughterhouse rescue? I'd hate for you to have a bad opinion of me because I stuck up for the guy responsible for saving forty-five people, forty-six if Anna has her baby." The expression on his face told her it wasn't her he had a bad opinion of, which meant she really needed to put the record straight.
"Well, maybe what I heard was a bit garbled - "Scariest moment in my life was waking up in that barn " she said, giving a shudder, and was still answering his questions when Jay Greene spotted her.
"Sarge needs you, Kris," he said.
"Great meal, Bart," Kris said, standing up and then looking about her for the proper place to dispose of her plate and fork.
Bart grinned as he pointed. "Outside, to your left.
Aarens himself is on KP."
"No better man," she said and left the hearth with Jay.
"I'll take that," Jay said, removing the plate from her hands.
"You don't need to meet Aarens."
"Why? Is he poor-mouthing me? Or Zainal?" Jay snorted. "Don't worry. Mitford has his measure."
"Does everyone else?" Kris asked urgently. "Hell, he'd've been better off we'd be better off - with him as sausage meat after all," she added callously "He'll spend some time in the stocks if he keeps up "Which will only confirm his opinion of this chickenshit outfit."
"Who cares?" "Speaking of caring," and they were now outside in the bright sunlight.
Mitford was precisely where she had left him a good - she checked the sundial - nine hours ago. "Does he never rest?" Her question was hypothetical for she went on, How's Anna Bollinger, our pregnant lady?" "Doc says she'll be fine - Although she's grieving for her husband." He paused to click his tongue over that tragedy. "Janet's making her her special assignment - Janet and Patti Sue. Was that girl raped?"
"I suspect so."
"She never said anything?"
"It'll take a long while before she's able to talk about whatever it was happened to her."
"Oh?"
"You like her?"
"She's a sweet kid," Jay said, shaking his head, with a "gone" smile on his face.
"Go as slow as slow."
"I figured that. Kris went down the steps while Jay turned left towards the crates where Aarens was clumsily drying cups with cat-tail fibres. They must have found a humongous supply of the things for them to be used in so many different ways.
The man in the stocks was gone and Kris wished she'd thought to ask Jay what his offence had been. Was that why he'd asked had Patti Sue been raped? Mitford had meant what he said about punishing harassers.
Kris heard steps on the stone behind her and, looking over her shoulder, saw Zainal with Slav and Coo right behind him. She wondered if they shared a cave. All of them looked clean and rested "What are you guys doing up so early?" she demanded.
"I slept much," Zainal said, grinning back at her, his marvellously weird yellow eyes echoing his good humour.
"Slav and Coo well rested. Lot to do."
"Lots to do," she corrected him absently, then hastily added, "but you're real quick to learn."
"Need to learn," he replied, his smile broadened.
"Ve all learn," Slav said in his liquid voice. "Hi, Kn.ssss, he added, emphasizing the sibilant.
Just then the Deskis on the heights let out the whistling alarm and slid, as suddenly, down out of sight.
"Flyers?" someone cried anxiously.
All activity in the camp was suspended. A beat later, everyone out in the open made for caves. Kris looked skyward, pivoting, as Zainal, Coo and Slav were, to scan the horizon. So was Mitford in his exposed position on the floor of the ravine.
Coo gave an odd and ear-splitting cry, which was echoed from above.
"Large thing," the Deski said, spreading his arms to their furthest extension, indicating great size. He rolled his eyes.
"Baaaaaaad. Bad, bad, bad, bad," he repeated, shaking his head and then covering his ears tightly.
But that was as much to mask the noise which was becoming very, very loud - like half a dozen subway trains converging on you and every one of them clanking anff grinding and needing full servicing - as to stress the approaching danger. Kris thought the intensity of the sound was comparable to standing in a continuous sonic boom. Her bones began to vibrate right up to her teeth.
Even the stone under her feet reverberated.
She wanted to ask where the noise was coming from and what made it but she wouldn't be heard above that racket.
The shadow of it came first - longer and wider by far than the ravine, even the hill the ravine dissected. The shadow came on and on, and then they saw the blunt prow of the leviathan that growled and rumbled and still made the very stones shake.