Cobra Outlaw

  The crash was several days old, and Merrick wasn’t sure what exactly he thought he might find there. But he needed some answers, and he and Anya needed someplace to go. The crash site seemed like a reasonable place to start.

  Merrick usually had a pretty good sense of direction. But navigating the Muninn forest proved trickier than he’d expected, with the terrain and occasional impassable clumps of trees and bushes forcing him to veer off course or sometimes turning him around completely. Fortunately, Anya had a better feel for the forest than he did and was always able to get them back on track.

  Still, between the travel and the ever-present need for vigilance, progress was slow. The distance to the crash site was less than fifteen kilometers, but it wasn’t until early afternoon that they finally arrived.

  At first glance, the ship looked to be in surprisingly good shape. It was about a hundred meters long, a fairly typical size for a Troft medium freighter. The style, too, was familiar: Merrick had seen other such ships hunting for razorarms back on Qasama. He and Anya had happened to arrive near the bow, and aside from some serious dents and cracks where the ship had plowed through the trees, it looked mostly undamaged.

  But that first look was deceptive. As they worked their way across the scorched ground alongside the wreck, Merrick saw that the aft hull plates were blackened with heat stress, and there were considerably more cracks in the sides than even at the bow.

  Anya spotted that, too. “Why is the back part more damaged than the front?” she murmured.

  “I don’t know,” Merrick said. “Let’s take a look.”

  The scorched ground and burned grass turned out to be much easier to traverse than the main part of the forest had been, though the ashes sometimes hid shards of broken tree or jutting roots that could trip up an unwary traveler. As they worked their way aft, Merrick began to pick up the stench of burned plastic, hydraulic and coolant fluids, and a dozen other odors that he couldn’t identify. Whatever had happened back there, it had clearly left a serious mess behind.

  It wasn’t until they reached the rear of the ship that they found out just how big a mess it was.

  “By the heavens and the land beneath,” Anya murmured, her voice nearly unrecognizable.

  “Yeah,” Merrick agreed grimly, staring at the gaping, ragged-edged hole in the ship’s starboard stern. Beyond the hole, the compartment’s blackened walls were bent and cracked.

  “What kind of weapon could have done such damage?” Anya asked, peering into the opening.

  “Oh, there are plenty that could do that,” Merrick said grimly. “I saw some of them on Qasama. But I don’t think it was an attack. See how the edges of the hole angle outward? That implies the explosion came from inside, not outside.”

  “Then it was an accident?”

  “Probably,” Merrick said. “Let’s see if we can get inside—I think I see some gaps we can squeeze through.”

  It had probably been an accident, Merrick reminded himself as he led the way carefully through the wrecked engine room. That was certainly the most likely explanation.

  But he couldn’t help remembering that those two Trofts on the mountainside had seemed awfully interested in seeing what Merrick and Anya knew about the wreck.

  An internal explosion could have been an accident. It could also have been sabotage.

  The engine room’s doors were warped and jammed shut. But as he’d already noted, there were several cracks in the wall where seams had burst under the shock and pressure. They were narrow, but a couple of them proved to be passable. Merrick and Anya eased their way through, being careful not to slice clothing or flesh on the jagged edges, and headed inside.

  Merrick had expected to find similar damage further in. To his mild surprise, the rest of the ship, even the sections just beyond the engine room bulkhead, seemed largely undamaged. The damage that was there looked more like a result of the crash than from the explosion. Apparently, the engine room had done a good job of containing the blast.

  Just ahead of the engine room was the cargo section, which had been partitioned off into smaller cage-size compartments by sturdy open-mesh barriers. Definitely a livestock setup, almost certainly for the razorarms they’d encountered a few times in the forest. All the cages were empty, their doors hanging open.

  “No corpses,” Anya murmured, looking around. “They must all have escaped alive.”

  “At least temporarily,” Merrick pointed out. “After a crash like that, there could have been a lot of walking wounded.”

  “They may have been injured,” Anya agreed. “But none were bleeding.”

  Merrick frowned, keying up his light-amps and infrared. There was nothing he could see in the pens that would support such a conclusion. “How do you figure that?”

  “No blood flies,” Anya said, gesturing. “If there were blood, blood flies would gather to feed.”

  Merrick winced. He hadn’t heard of blood flies before, but they didn’t sound pleasant. In fact, they sounded like something that would fit right into the Caelian ecological structure. “Unless they don’t like razorarms,” he reminded her. “They may only have a taste for local blood.”

  Anya shook her head. “It’s not the blood itself they like, but the tiny creatures that gather and grow on the blood.”

  “Tiny—? Oh; bacteria,” Merrick said, nodding. And it was reasonable to expect that some variety of Muninn’s bacteria would find razorarm blood an acceptable meal and breeding ground. “That’s good, actually. If the razorarms all made it out okay, the crew probably did, too. That means no bodies.”

  “I’ve seen bodies before,” Anya said calmly. “Many of them. They don’t disturb me.”

  Merrick felt his throat tighten. He’d seen bodies, too, far more than he liked. And they did still disturb him. “The living areas will be further forward,” he said. “We’ll take a look there, then go on up to the control section.”

  The living areas were a mess. Chairs and tables that should have been stowed or secured were scattered around, and the decks were littered with small items that should similarly have been put away before landing. “The crash definitely seems to have taken them by surprise,” Merrick commented as they peered through the galley door. “Don’t seem to be any foodstuffs mixed in, though, so I’d guess no one was eating when the engine blew.”

  “Does that mean they must have been nearly to the ground?” Anya asked. “All would have jobs to do at that time, would they not?”

  “I don’t know,” Merrick said. “I really haven’t the faintest idea how a ship like this works.”

  “But I thought you had penetrated to the control areas of the ship that brought us here,” Anya objected. “Didn’t you see how they operated?”

  “Different situation,” Merrick said. “I only saw one small monitor station. Anyway, we were still just cruising at the time. I assume everyone has a job for landing, but I don’t know . . .” He paused as an odd thought struck him.

  “What is it?” Anya asked, craning her neck to see further into the galley. “What do you see?”

  “Nothing here,” Merrick said. “I was just thinking about the engine room. If someone was on duty back there, he would probably have been vaporized by the explosion. That means a lot of blood, probably pretty evenly spread across the walls.” He gestured aft. “So just how fast do these blood flies of yours chow down, anyway?”

  “Not so fast that they would have finished and been gone in only these few days,” Anya said slowly.

  “So no one was on duty back there,” Merrick concluded, a knot starting to form in the pit of his stomach. He really didn’t know anything about spaceships; but at the same time, he couldn’t remember seeing a single drama set in space where someone wasn’t in the engine room, especially during liftoff and landing.

  Of course, those dramas had dealt with human ships, not the Troft equivalents. On top of that, they had been fiction.

  But it still seemed odd. “Or else he was on his way back—??
?

  He tensed, looking around him. Somehow, while he’d been contemplating the mystery of the missing engineer, Anya had managed to slip away. “Anya?” he called, turning around.

  She was nowhere to be seen. “Anya!”

  “Here,” her voice came from around the next corner ahead. “I thought I heard—”

  Her voice cut off in mid-sentence. Swearing under his breath, Merrick charged down the corridor, hands curling into fingertip-laser positions. He rounded the corner—

  And came to a sudden halt. Anya was standing in the middle of the corridor two meters ahead, her back to him, her shoulders stiff. “What is it?” Merrick asked, coming up beside her.

  She lifted a hand to point in front of her. “Look.”

  At a half-dozen places down the corridor were clusters of softly buzzing insects, some motionless on the deck, the rest swarming lazily around them or going back and forth between the various clusters. Merrick frowned.

  And then, the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. “Are those . . . ?”

  Anya nodded. “Blood flies,” she said quietly. “How many masters, do you think, were aboard?”

  Merrick looked down the corridor. Six clusters of flies. Six patches of blood.

  Six dead Trofts?

  Only it made no sense. This was a corridor, for heaven’s sake. Not the bridge; not engineering; not sick bay; not the mess room. The patches weren’t even clustered up against a wall, where the unfortunates might have been thrown by the impact of the crash.

  Why in the Worlds would they all have been here? More importantly, why would they all have died here?

  “Do we continue on?” Anya murmured.

  Merrick took a careful breath. Six dead Trofts . . . “We go on,” he said. “There might be other . . . evidence . . . further forward.”

  He was very careful, as he led the way past the flies, not to step on the spots where they were feeding.

  They found no more clusters of flies as they moved through the corridors. But a few of the flies were still in evidence, flittering lazily about or pausing here and there on the deck. Merrick and Anya kept going; and finally, at the very front of the ship, they reached the control room.

  To find one final cluster of blood flies, this group gathered around the pilot’s seat.

  “So there was a seventh master aboard?” Anya asked, gazing at the circling insects.

  “Looks like it,” Merrick said. “Remember the flies we passed on the way here? I think they were working on a blood trail.” He pointed aft. “Whatever happened back there, I’m thinking the pilot was still alive. He’d mostly bled out, but he had enough strength and presence of mind left to crawl up here and bring the ship down with a minimum of damage.”

  “And then he died,” Anya murmured. “And then the other masters took away the bodies?”

  “I assume so,” Merrick said. “It’s not like you could crash a ship like this without someone noticing. There would have been Trofts on the scene as soon as they could scramble their aircars, probably within an hour. They’d have searched the ship, retrieved the bodies—” He scowled at a conspicuously empty pair of slots on the control board. “And pulled the data records,” he finished. “Which means this little side trip was a complete waste of time. We still don’t know why the Trofts are bringing razorarms to Muninn, and it doesn’t look like there’s anything left in here that’s going to tell us.”

  “Yet perhaps the ship could be of other use,” Anya said thoughtfully. “As you say, the masters have been here. Are they likely to return?”

  Merrick shrugged. “Eventually, I assume they’ll either try to move the wreck to one of their bases or, if that’s not possible, to at least strip it of everything useful.”

  “But this won’t be for some time yet?”

  “No idea. Probably not.” Merrick frowned suddenly. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “We need a place to stay for a time,” Anya pointed out. “Will this not do?”

  Merrick looked around, chewing the inside of his cheek. If the Trofts had finished their preliminary investigation—and they’d certainly had enough time to do that—then there was no real reason for them to come back to the wreck anytime soon. There would be food and shelter, and if they stuck to the center areas, the sheer mass of metal would even absorb and dissipate their heat signatures.

  But if the Trofts did decide to pay a surprise visit, their comfy little shelter would instantly turn into a death trap. “I don’t know, Anya,” he said hesitantly. “It might be safe for a day or two. But—”

  He broke off, frowning in concentration. There’d been a sound just then, coming from the starboard side of the control room. A sound that had sounded like stealthy predator claws scraping softly against metal . . .

  He looked at Anya. Her eyes were darting around the room, her throat tight. So she’d heard it too. Merrick keyed up his audios, turning his head slowly back and forth, waiting for the noise to repeat.

  It did so, and this time he had it. There was a small, narrow door in the wall to the right of the main control console. An equipment access hatch, most likely. That was a good sign—if the space was mostly filled with machinery or electronics, whatever had found a way in was probably pretty small.

  Which wasn’t to say it might not also be dangerous. Motioning Anya to stay back, Merrick crossed the room and crouched beside the door. Now, close up, he could see that it was slightly out of true, its frame possibly warped in the crash.

  Experimentally, he gave a gentle pull on the door’s handle. The door didn’t budge, but the handle itself seemed securely attached.

  There was no doubt Merrick could get the door open. The question was how close he wanted to be to the compartment, and whatever was inside it, when he did.

  Fortunately, there was a simple solution.

  Sitting down in front of the door, he got a grip on the handle with his right hand and set his left foot against the wall beside the latch. A good tug with servo-enhanced muscles, combined with a simultaneous shove off the wall, should open the door and at the same time scoot him a meter or two back from whatever might come leaping out. Hopefully, that would buy him enough time and distance to let him either kill or stun it.

  Or so went the theory. Unfortunately, the only way to find out for sure was to do it. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself, then yanked and kicked. The door popped open as Merrick’s rear lifted briefly from the floor and then thudded down again on the deck—

  And inside the compartment, twitching violently backward in surprise, was a Troft.

  Not much of a Troft, really, Merrick saw as his brain reset its anticipations from possible deadly predator to probable deadlier enemy. The Troft was shorter and scrawnier than most of those Merrick and Anya had run into since leaving Qasama, with a wide-eyed and borderline terrified expression on his chicken-beaked face. His upper-arm radiator membranes were fully stretched out with fear or surprise or some other strong emotion. The compartment where he was half-lying, half-crouching was larger than Merrick had expected, but there wasn’t a lot of room to spare for its current occupant. Gripped in the Troft’s hand was what looked like a small knife.

  And then, even as Merrick reflexively put targeting locks on the knife and the center of the Troft’s forehead, the membranes closed down, the alien’s whole body sagging with relief.

  The posture lasted maybe two seconds. Then, just as suddenly, the Troft seemed to straighten up, or at least go as straight as his position in the cramped space would allow. [Slaves, you are,] he intoned in cattertalk.

  Or tried to intone, anyway. His voice came out sounding more like that of a nervous youngling on his first trip away from home. [Assistance, I require it,] he continued, his voice sounding a little more weighty this time. [Assistance, you will provide it.]

  He held out his hand, and Merrick saw now that what he’d thought was a knife was in fact only a small file. However the Troft had gotten himself stuck in the
re, he’d apparently been trying to grind away enough of the misaligned door to get it open.

  [The order, I obey it,] Merrick said automatically, pushing himself off the deck.

  And winced even before he heard Anya’s quiet but sharp intake of breath. Merrick’s accent, both his Anglic and his cattertalk, weren’t quite right for Muninn’s humans or for the Drim’hco’plai demesne Trofts who owned the planet. Anya had pointed that out even before they’d left Qasama, and they’d agreed that Merrick should pose as a mute.

  Now, after a day of talking with Anya without having to worry about that, Merrick had completely forgotten the role he was supposed to be playing. But it was too late now.

  Fortunately, the Troft didn’t seem to notice. Possibly he had more important things to worry about.

  His own current physical condition, for starters. As Merrick took the alien’s outstretched hand he realized that what he’d taken to be scrawniness was instead dehydration and malnutrition.

  Had he been trapped in that narrow space since the ship crashed? It seemed incredible, but given the shape of the door Merrick couldn’t see any other possibility.

  Especially now that he was close enough to see—and smell—the sanitary collection system at the back of the compartment that had been improvised from a storage pouch and tool belt.

  The compartment opening was narrow, but not too narrow to be a problem. Merrick got him out easily, and at Anya’s silent prompting took a couple of respectful steps back while the alien rubbed, kneaded, and massaged his cramped arms and legs back into usefulness, all the while muttering phrases under his breath that Merrick’s cattertalk lessons had never covered.

  Finally, after a couple of minutes of work and curses, he straightened up, flapping his radiator membranes once and then resettling them against his arms. He was still short and a little emaciated, but he was once again a Troft, master of Muninn and all it contained.