Outward Borne (23 page)

Suddenly, two bright, probing
lamps lit the underside of the lander. Their beams moved across the
field below the ship, exposing the Gracks and their movements. The
lights moved rapidly from the torches to the running Gracks. They
had been detected. An increasingly loud whining noise sounded from
deep inside the craft’s body, but still it did not move.

Durack’s troops threw torches onto
the brush piles. They quickly took fire and smoke enveloped the
craft. The lander must lurch forward to escape the flames where it
would destroy itself on the spears. It was a good plan for as long
as it lasted, which was not for long. The robotics onboard may not
have had many weapons, but it was not without immense power. The
vertically aligned engines were ignited. The down thrust of the hot
exhaust blew the flames, brush, and a goodly number of Gracks into
the air. The ship never changed position, but the balance of power
took a decided shift.

Durack ducked as the blast of hot
air passed over. He scrambled to his feet and was confused. None of
the things that had been beneath the ship just a moment before were
still there. Durack stumbled forward. Ropac and two others he could
not recognize were dead. Grabbing and pulling his stunned troops,
he pushed them toward the hills and away for the open field. The
surviving Gracks gradually reassembled and conducted a well-ordered
retreat to their cliff side stronghold to plan for a prolonged
harassing fight.

The level of hostility the Gracks
displayed was so great that the ObLaDas decided to rescind further
operations. There was even some concern about bringing this violent
life form on board, but they were clearly intelligent and had an
organized, if warring, society. The ObLaDas had seen other species
advance in behavior, learning, and civilization after being exposed
to a settled, more stimulating, life within the Outward Voyager.
Perhaps these aliens had the potential to develop a more settled
society if placed in a peaceful environment. With that optimistic
decision made, the robotics were instructed to initiate a sedation
and collection operation.

Even this simple agenda did not go
well. All young Gracks were proficient in the use of slings and
were they were able to bring down flybots when they came toward
them. This small victory proved to be the last gasp for the Gracks,
however, as the lander was able to complete the abduction during
that night. In all, thirty-three Gracks were taken, of these,
twenty-eight survived transportation and insertion into to the
Outward. Durack was one of them.

Over seven hundred years had
passed since the Cathian revolt and the resulting changes in the
ObLaDa leadership and culture. Substantial improvements had been
made in the alien habitats and living conditions within the Outward
Voyager since that time. Most of the captive societies were now
stable and some even prospered. The humans had been given access to
the deck outside of their habitat for parts of each day, but they
had never gotten into any other part of the ship. While changes had
been made, the ObLaDas’ had failed to progress further. They had
adopted the practice of cloning notable individuals and that
practice was still maintained. The Das favored a rigid consistency
and were still bound to their original mission priorities. They
continued to search for and collect intelligent life forms even
though many of the questions they had been sent to resolve were, in
fact, resolved.

Now those priorities led the
ObLaDas to make a serious mistake. They were transporting a
massive, aggressive alien species to the Outward that they could
not properly house. They had underestimated the size and strength
of the Gracks. The standard habitats were too lightly built for
these large aliens, but nothing else was available. When they
arrived, the Gracks were assigned a half-deck built from three
levels of standard modules. It was intended to be temporary
housing, while the ObLaDas rushed to complete a more suitable
facility in the Farside module. The floors bent and creaked as the
heavy aliens moved through the confining corridors they had been
given. They could be fit into this limited area because of their
small numbers, but it was far from a comfortable
solution.

The Gracks lived within the
Outward for eight long months, their anger and aggression
increasing along with their sense of frustration and their
inability to comprehend what had happened to them. They were in a
seething ferment, determined to fight back. But how? Against what?
Durack remained their leader, the only one that had survived, but
he struggled to keep what was left of the tribe under control. It
was clear enough that they were captives and were being held some
distance from their valley, and that they were being watched. For
what purpose, they did not know and did not particularly care.
Durack was committed to fighting and winning back their rightful
land and he was cunning enough to know that they should not reveal
their strength, plans, or intentions until they were prepared to
act.

The goal was clear, the objective
certain, but the path was cloudy. Durack had twenty-eight Gracks
with him; twenty-one were fighters. Too few to succeed, he thought,
but he did not know. They were accustomed to the forest, the
established terrain, the well-known enemy, where they could judge
the force needed to win a battle down to a single soldier and the
last weapon. Here they knew nothing. Their unseen and unknown enemy
had great power and was operating within its own territory. They
had seen the large, lumbering Das in their gold body covering when
they were first brought into the Outward Voyager. They were big
enough, but Durack sensed that there were not very many ObLaDas and
they did not act, for all their success, as if they were battle
savvy, or even well armed. They had machines to do their work,
machines that were weak and easily defeated. But where were their
captors now? Could they get to them? What weapons would they
need?

With so little known, Durack held
tight his fear that the Gracks were not strong enough to win a war
against the ObLaDas. Gracks favored assault by an overwhelming
force to assure a complete victory. Survivors led to future
problems, gave hope to enemies. With only a small force, this fight
would need to be different and losses would be unacceptable. It
would take years to increase their number and they did not have so
much time.

Anger and frustration were
building among the survivors. Aggression, a driving force to
survival, was working against them here. Their habitat was small
and flimsy, passages were tight, floors bent as if they would
collapse, walls buckled if pushed against. Food was terrible, not
that that mattered much, it was the hunting and killing that the
Gracks missed. This place was intolerable, and Durack had a hard
time keeping its followers from going out on their own. Durack knew
well that the Gracks could break through the interior walls of
their habitat and he had a good notion that they could go through
the outer walls as well, but Durack wanted this kept quiet. They
should not provoke their captors into reinforcing the structure,
but the fact that the Gracks could get out of the habitat at will
added to the tension created by the festering dissent. Inevitably,
Durack’s authority began to be questioned. Not openly, but there
was constant pressure for action and Durack’s resolve was being
questioned. They only needed to try in order to succeed, some
believed, and implied that those who were loyal to Durack lacked
courage. Never confident, Durack felt the dissention and loss of
authority that followed. Durack tried to defend himself, but it did
not work. Had not Durack failed to drive off the lander? Had they
not been captured? Slowly and against his instincts and judgment,
Durack was being forced to order the escape.

The battle-hardened Gracks would
find and attack the ObLaDas and return to their homes, or to die in
the attempt. How to get it done became the subject of much argument
and not a few fights, but as they were in almost complete ignorance
of the ground and the enemy, there was little that could be
planned. What was beyond the all-enclosing walls? They could do
nothing but go forward and react to whatever they found, preferably
fast and in force. But without weapons? There were none to speak
of.

The ObLaDas had been careful to
give the Gracks very little that could be made into a weapon,
nothing long, heavy, hard or capable of holding an edge, no tools
of any kind, not much that could be pulled apart and exploited.
There was always a pointed stick or some kind of club to be found,
but these would not be sufficient to kill any but the weakest
enemy. Finding or making better weapons was a priority, and if that
took some time and effort, it must still be done.

The Gracks had poked and probed
their habitat ever since they had been put there and had found a
spot in the outer wall, on the lowest level, that seemed to be
relatively weak. They planned to push the wall open at that point
and pour out into whatever lay beyond. For months, they had been
listening to and tracking sounds from outside their habitat. They
could hear robots moving through the service corridors, which they
figured, correctly, ran around the outside of their complex, but
only on the lowest level. Occasionally there were sounds that
seemed to come from above and below their complex. The shuttle
elevator car created a rumble as it passed by their deck. It rarely
stopped nearby, neither on their deck nor the one below, but it
made many trips to a site farther down. Something was busy down
there, and it became the most promising objective for the
assault.

The crudely armed Grackian units
formed for the breakout. They had captured and incapacitated a
large service bot some days before and now used it to bash through
the outer wall. After more effort than they expected, they
succeeded in forcing the panels apart and pushed their way through
the small opening and into a narrow, very tall space. There were
rough walls with pipes and tubes, like the side of a cliff, but
manufactured like everything here, no vegetation, no rocks, no
streams. There were lights on, though dim. Durack was disappointed
that they were still within some building, but he was not
surprised. The Gracks deployed in both directions along the narrow
corridors that circled the habitat. There were a few bots standing
around, but these had been turned off and were soon destroyed. The
Gracks found the conduit near the entry doors of their habitat. The
large round structure ran from floor to ceiling with two pairs of
sliding doors for the shuttle tubes and larger doors beyond.
Somehow, it all looked to be very old, but Durack could not tell
exactly why. He did not know what it was, but suspected that it
might be a passageway into other levels. Yacork came through the
corridor at a run. He had found another large structure, almost
certainly another habitat. It was on the far side of this round
thing, and took up most of the rest of the deck.

Durack was concerned about this
place and what it might contain. If it was another habitat, it may
hold other Gracks, or something else entirely. Their captors might
be there, but Durack did not think so. They had never heard much
activity around that place, but it would be a risk to pass it by
and leave themselves or their habitat vulnerable. He knew better
than to take such chances and decided to neutralize, or liberate,
or destroy the place.

He sent eight fighters to scout
around the building and chose a favorite, Hacnick, to break in. The
structure appeared from the outside to be exactly the same as the
one that they occupied. Panels were the same size and material,
height looked to be the same, three levels high, even the big entry
doors were in the same place, but there was no sign of any recent
use. If the complex was the like theirs, they could break open
these doors and gain entry into all its levels, if it had
any.

Hacnick had the battered, broken
service bot dragged to the entryway. The doors opened inward, which
was a stupid way to build, too easy to break in. They readied for
the push into the portal, when suddenly they all lurched in alarm.
A great roar of sound blared from within the complex. It seemed to
come from just beyond those very doors. They must have been seen,
surprise lost. Whatever was in there was preparing to meet their
attack, Hacnick thought, blowing on war horns to build courage no
doubt. Hacnick gave the order to smash in the doors before the
things could launch their attack. With four Gracks pushing on the
battering bot, the doors buckled far inward, but the latch held.
When they stopped shaking, the noise had stopped as well, very
suddenly. The next try burst the doors apart with some
force.

The Frits were a small, completely
fuzz-covered species, just about knee high. There is not much to
describe. The Frits, beyond being cute, was their fuzz. It covered
everything but their small red eyes, their only defined feature. It
was not fur as we know it, more like frizzy feathers, tufts
perhaps, but it stuck out and made them look larger than they were.
The Frits were rather like stocky, longhaired meerkats in shape and
with a similar ability to run around low to the ground then
suddenly sit upright. They were very skilled and energetic builders
and could make most anything they wished. In fact, the Frits were
one of the ObLaDas great successes. Intelligent, though not
scientifically advanced, they were social, well organized, well
adapted, and had made themselves very much at home on the
Outward.