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.
Shaking her head, Kris followed him, pausing only briefly when the roar of engines told her that the ship was boosting out of planetary gravity. The flame of its propellant was as vivid as the launches she remembered from Cape Kennedy. She would have liked to watch but had to keep up with Zainal.
They met up with the others in moments, considering the pace that Zainal was setting.
"The ship's already dumped its load," she told them, clinging to someone as support as she gasped out an explanation. "Back that way.
We gotta get there before the scavengers murder "em all."
"Was that why the Cat was in such a flaming hurry?"
"Hell, he wanted to catch up with them and get off this bleeding planet," another man managed to gasp out.
"Think what you will, but are you going to help?" Kris cried, shouting the last of her challenge over her shoulder as she took off after Zainal.
They did gather more help as they went back through the ravine again. Dawn was brightening the sky, so it was easier to see where to put your feet. Where the track split, right down into the ravine, or left to continue on the upper ridge, Zainal signalled for Kris to report to Mitford who was standing in his office, fists on his belt as he saw them emerge on the height.
"Need Slav badly," Zainal added and then charged off again.
"What "n'ell's going on?" Kris stopped, hands on knees, catching enough breath to speak. "We need Slav. Ship took off. It's already dropped its load. We gotta get there or the scavengers will."
"Right on!" And Mitford snapped into action, yelling for Slav, Pess, Tesco, Su, and Dowdall as she took up her chase of Zainal.
She finally caught up with him when he stopped by one of the many streams to rinse out his mouth. The sun wasn't up yet and the air was cool, but she was hot from her exertions and wondering if she would last the distance.
"Mitford's organized more help. Is it far?" He shook his head.
"Ship climbing." He looked up at the lightening sky. "Lucky." She hoped so, but how long did those creatures scavenge? Would this half-light be sufficient to send them wherever they spent the daylight hours? She had her breath back and now dropped to her belly, burying her hot face in the cool water, intaking a mouthful to moisten her throat and letting only a little trickle down to her stomach. She was on her feet when he was.
And they ran on.
Actually this wasn't a bad pace, she thought, now she had her second wind. She tried to keep her mind off what scavengers could do to a field full of nice juicy warm live bodies. Now that wasn't a productive thought! At least it should now be clear to everyone at the camp that Zainal had been motivated to "save' people, not get himself off this planet. Though she wouldn't blame him if that had been his goal. Would he have taken her with him? That, too, was not a productive thought but she was beginning to appreciate how much the big man meant to her. She'd never found anyone else who treated her as a competent equal, who had never once tried to come on since the day she had floored him in the flitter. She knew from comments made back in the kitchens at Barevi that, while the Catteni were equipped, to put it discreetly, much the same way as human males were - only more so, as one woman had said drily - the two species were incompatible as far as procreation was concerned. No Catteni-Human offspring would be forthcoming. But, since the day she had clobbered him in the flyer back on Barevi, Zainal had never visibly lusted after her. And she was quite familiar with that sort of look. Zainal treated her not quite as he treated the male members of their patrols, but with a courtesy she found unusual and, maybe even, special to her - even when he knew that it was her fault he was stuck with this bunch of suspicious, unappreciative and sometimes intolerant mixed bag of humanoids. Oddly enough, though the Catteni were the subjugating race, the Deskis and Rugarians didn't seem to feel any animosity towards Zainal… certainly not as much as the Terrans did.
This was not terrain she was familiar with and Kris was relieved to see the sun coming up and clearing away the shadows so there was less danger of her stumbling on the rough ground. That was the one thing she did fear - an injury that their meagre first-aid supplies could not remedy. Or unfamiliar infections that were life-threatening.
The Catteni antiseptic lotion was not a specific cure for everything that could happen to the unwary. But the anaesthetic from the darts could be a boon.
Zainal was bounding up the hill in front of them now, then switching to a zig zag on the steeper parts. He waited on the height for her and pointed. Two fields over she could see the cubes of Catteni supply crates and the fringes of space occupied by inert bodies. At this distance, she couldn't tell if they were being beset by scavengers yet.
Zainal cupped his mouth and hollered a weird cry.
It was answered, she thought, by one of the aliens following. He nodded satisfaction and began the descent.
This hillside was covered with some sort of thorny growth that clung to the fabric of their coveralls with a tenacity which made her glad it wasn't her flesh that was bared.
Zainal, caught on a thick limb, hauled out his hatchet and hewed the limb. Even separated from the mother bush, it still clung to him.
"Careful," Zainal said, holding up his free hand to warn her back.
"Chop first," he added, pointing to the bushes in her way.
"Can I help you?"
"Go down. Hurry," he said, gesturing emphatically to the field now out of sight behind the next rise.
"Stamp, yell." She hesitated a brief moment more but the flash of his eyes when he glanced up from disentangling the thicket branch from his coverall was enough to send her on her way. She used her hatchet to slash and bash a way in front of her and succeeded in reaching clear ground, covered by a stubble of harvested crops, with no further delays.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him finally free of the branch. So she ran on, across the field, neatly leaping the low hedge on the far side and down into the next. She thought she heard cries rising from the drop field. That made her run faster, shouting, giving the cowboy yells she had practised as a tomboy. She paused long enough at the separating hedge to pick up handfuls of stones. Then she leapt over that hedge and almost landed on someone's face. A human. In fact, every body near her was human.
Some had already been attacked by the scavengers.
First she threw her rocks in as wide an arc as she could, shouting as she did so. Then she stomped her way up the long side of the field, sometimes running and jumping down as hard as she could on landing, yelling and yodelling as she stamped until she reached the upper boundary. There were no signs of the scavengers in the centre of the field so she continued her progress around the outer edge, stamping, yelling, pausing only when she had to get her breath and try to moisten the dry tissues of her mouth. She'd completed two sides of the big field when she saw others arriving and yelled and gestured at them to square the field in the other direction.
Then she spotted several people rousing from their drugged sleep and went to assist them. Once again the Catteni had dropped people comfortably near water and she borrowed cups from belts to give people that much comfort in recovering from their ordeal.
Dowdall was opening the crates, going first for the first-aid kits and blankets while the others did what they could for those the scavengers had attacked. She was so busy that she didn't at first realize that Zainal was not among the rescuers.
"Tesco, where's Zainal?" she asked when she did notice his absence.
"Saw him back there," and Tesco pointed vaguely over his shoulder before kneeling to give water to a groggy woman.