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.
"What did you find?" While Kris told him, including her surmises as she passed over the samples she had secured, Zainal had taken several large sheets of the papery bark and was quickly sketching on them. A couple of times Kris lost the thread of her report when she saw his accurate depictions of the various types of machinery they had seen in the garages. Mitford stole the odd glance, his eyes switching to Zainal's face as the Catteni's pencil flew over the surface, but his sketches looked remarkably accurate to Kris's eyes. Zainal regarded his handiwork and then calmly made necessary amendments, correcting occasional lines. They'd had an engineer along all the time, hadn't they, thought Kris. Zainal had rather more talents than anyone had realized.
"These," Zainal said, handing over the sheaf to Mitford.
"Hey, Bob the Herb, Mack Su, Capstan, Macy, front and centre and bring those granary sketches," Mitford roared in his parade ground voice, then grinned approvingly at both Zainal and Kris. "There's quite a range of these things. Now we got to figure how to disable them."
"Why?" Kris blurted out the question.
"Like you, Bjornsen, I think there are humanoids bound to be involved in this kind of food production, seeing as how they seem to need the same sort of foods we do. It's the pits that the Deskis aren't doing too well on what they can scrounge that doesn't rot their guts and we can't find enough of those greens that Coo thought would help. However," and he went on briskly, "we're obviously dealing with a very high-tech race." Kris nodded her head vehemently. "That ship confirms some sort of periodic check. So there's got to be some sort of ongoing monitoring, even if we haven't found a central control point.
Kris wondered just how much of this Zainal understood, but he was listening with every ounce of his big frame. She could feel the tension in the thigh next to hers on the wide rock they were sitting on. Odd, that she didn't mind tactile contact with Zainal but he was so subtle about it, unlike some guys with impudent, wandering paws she'd encountered.
"So, if we start lousing up the machines, someone will come look,' Mitford concluded.
"And we just overpower them?" Kris asked, aghast at the mere thought of invading a ship the size of the collector.
Especially since the only weapons they had were knives, hatchets, spears, and bows and arrows. She let out a burst of laughter.
"Don't laugh, Bjornsen. There's more than one way of infiltrating a spacecraft. And I'm more or less counting on the fact that the investigatory ship would be smaller and have a live, not a mechanical crew. Machines are good enough for routine jobs but evaluation requires brains."
"Then what?"
"First things first. Get the investigator here." Those Mitford had called for arrived and then he roared for a cook to bring two plates of food. He must have heard Kris's stomach rumbling.
"We've been tossing ideas around while you guys were investigating, so I'll bring you up to speed, Zainal, Bjornsen," he said and nodded at them both before turning to the other patrol members. "Coo, Slav, get some grub. Go eat." He pointed to the main cave. "And thanks. Oh, Coo, Bob the Herb harvested more of that green stuff you like.
Coo nodded and, with the Rugarian, made a beeline for the main cave. Mitford's eyes followed him.
"Ration bars are now reserved for Deskis, Morphins and Turs, folks. The rest of us can live off the land.
They can't. "Really?"
"Not until we find something their stomachs don't reject." Mitford gave the sort of resigned sigh that meant he was worried about the problem. He was leader enough to want to preserve all his troops, especially those with abilities like the Deskis. "The cooks are busy whipping up a sort of pemmican for patrols to eat so you don't upset the mechanicals by reducing their herds." He grinned.
"What did you call those critters, Kris? Loo-cows." He chuckled.
"Sarge, I thought you wanted us to upset the mechanicals," Kris said, wanting clarification on that point.
"We plan the upsetting - " he grinned again, "but I don't want any of our guys to get darted out in the fields. So we disable the mechanism. OK, fellas," he said to the newcomers. Capstan and Macy were new faces and names for Kris but they seemed to know who she and Zainal were. Mitford passed Zainal's sketches around.
"Zainal's drawn the sort of mechanicals that are housed at the slaughterhouse. Seem to me to be different from the ones at the granary.
"Highly specialized equipment," Su said, leafing through the drawings, pausing briefly to scowl at several before he switched his lot with Capstan. Kris found out later that the older man had been a designer of highly specialized production-line equipment.
"Look, all of "em are solar-powered!" Su said, flicking his fingers at various flat surfaces on the individual machines. "Like I said they had to be. Ecologically sound, using renewable energy.
Small wonder the Catteni scouts thought the planet was unoccupied.
They'd probably been scanning, or whatever they do, for life-forms and those mechanicals aren't alive. Now, they have to have collectors and storage batteries, too, and where'd they. ah, yes, possibly these units. Hmmm."
"And if there's no sun? Do they all just go down when it's overcast or rainy?" Kris asked, making a mental note of the solar panels on each variety of machine.
"Hasn't rained yet and we've been here ten days," Mitford said with a sigh, his glance going up and down the ravine that had experienced floods which had left visible high-water traces on the walls.
Zainal also looked around the camp and smiled. "Much done in ten days." "Good for morale," was Mitford's terse reply but he added a brief smile at the compliment. "Now, we got individuals who've got real expert with slingshots. Can take out a rock-squat at twenty-five metres. Stones'd take out those solar panels, wouldn't they?" Su thought about that but Capstan shook his head.
"We'd have to know what sort of material they use in the mechanicals' panels. But it would follow that if enough of the surface was marred, it might not collect sufficient solar energy to perform efficiently." "Perhaps," and Kris adopted an ingenuous look and tone to her voice, "we should practise some creative mudslinging? I didn't see a car-wash in that Dalek barn." Zainal flicked her a quick glance because he didn't understand her allusion, so she charaded it and then he smiled, nodding. Su seemed to like the idea and even Capstan gave a droll little smile.
"There're sure enough brooks where we'd need "em to make mud," Su went on with enthusiasm. "And if we got enough on the panels, the sun would dry it hard in place."
"Mud at night. No machine runs in day," Zainal suggested with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Good idea, Zainal," Mitford said, grinning. "Decommission them at source.
"Well, now, hold on a moment," Capstan said. "There would have to be storage batteries, to keep them ticking over and start them off in the morning. Or there should be something like that. We'd have to disable those as well, you know."
"So we do," Mitford said cheerfully.
"I wonder how many we would have to knock out for someone to come check the situation?" That question was tossed around but they all agreed that they would first have to locate more installations for the plan to be effective. Kris, Zainal and the two aliens had not been the only patrol which Mitford had sent out and one, Mitford told them, was still missing. He wasn't worried about them - yet - because they'd gone north, away from the slaughterhouse. He admitted that there would need to be a lot more such facilities to service all the land they could see cultivated and grazed. Enough hills could be seen from the sentry posts: each range could hide more mechanicals, farming nearby arable land.
"Zainal," Kris said after a brief pause in the exchange of ideas, "how many would the prison ship have dropped in one journey?" Zainal's shrug was almost apologetic. "Don't know. No need for me to know."