Outward Borne (26 page)

Anger coursed through the room.
The ObLaDas had handled this very badly. They had been careless to
endanger the entire ship and everyone on it. Trapped, they were, by
the Oldies’ mistakes, for what choice did they have now? If the
ObLaDas were killed, or the control equipment was damaged, or
communications ruined, the ship would die and they would be doomed
along with it.

Looris stood and
walked into the light. He was a small, tough man, plainspoken, mean
some thought, but determined. “We know that these Gracks are big,
strong, experienced fighters, while we People are brave and clever,
but we have no experience or fighting ability. We have our old
stories of battles that were fought with swords, spears,
battle-axes, and shield walls. Where men stood shoulder to shoulder
against their enemies and defeated them in daylong battles. They
were men of strength, training, and courage. We have no such
training, no skill to use a long sword or body shield. So how are
these Gracks to be defeated?” he asked, puling his black robe tight
across his chest. “With simple weapons, weapons that require no
skill,” he went on, “but weapons wielded with strength, courage and
a willingness to die. Spears, axes and superior numbers, isolate
individuals, attack en masse. Attack until they are hurt or killed
no matter how many of us may be lost, I say. Our smiths are already
at work making long, heavy spears with sharp steel points capable
of penetrating the thickest skin. We will hold our spears with
pride and run at their exposed flesh, pushing our points home with
all that our strength will allow. Axes, we will follow on with
battle-axes, chopping at legs and faces, arms and heads. Great
wounds will open, spilling their awful blood. It will be a mean,
dirty fight, many will be injured, some of us will die, but if we
keep at them, our numbers will tell and the last of their breed
will fall.”
Looris’ fierce and impassioned
plea was met with the grim quiet that it deserved. Yes, that was
it, we had to fall on them and fight to the end. There was no other
choice for us.

LemTer had heard Looris’ speech
and he expressed his deepest relief and gratitude that the People
had the will and courage to fight for the survival of the mission.
He had been more fearful than he dared say. He knew better than
they how dire the consequences would be for all of them. He was not
sure what the surviving ObLaDas would do, but it was possible, even
likely, that the Filim module would be sealed off, and its
remaining life extinguished. They would not take any chance that
would endanger the rest of the ship. The ObLaDas might have a drive
to accommodate one another, but it went along with a cold
willingness to sacrifice anything for the lasting survival of the
species.

Godomir listened to all this talk
and was troubled, not about the Peoples’ will to fight, or even the
need to fight beside the ObLaDas, if it came to that. He was a
practical man, his mind quickly turned to doing, and there was the
problem. The decks of the Filim module were isolated with only the
shuttles and large conduit passing between them. The Gracks already
held the conduit, and it would be difficult to take it away from
them. How else could they get into the ObLaDas habitat? Was it even
safe to go there? Could the ObLaDas help take the conduit? Could
they shut it off? Were the shuttles working?

No! The shuttles and the truck
lift were in the arm. Damage to the conduit was extensive, even
communications with some of the upper decks had been lost. LemTer
broke off for a moment. The People waited, restless, were they
already beaten? When his voice returned, he said that there was a
way. A maintenance project had opened a small hole between the
lower decks. Suspension cables and flanges were being repaired, he
was not sure exactly, but the cable was within a protective casing.
He would tell them where. If they broke into the casing, they could
make their way to the ObLaDas decks. There were lifts between the
ObLaDas living quarters and the control deck, if they could get
there, but the repair project was the only opening from the
People’s deck.

Godomir knew the place, but the opening could
not be very large. Only one person at a time could get through
there, no more, he thought. It would be a long, slow process to get
enough people into the lower decks, if they needed to do it.
Godomir was a large man, a head taller than most, but a good, kind
person who had a gift for working with people and had long been
viewed with respect. He was their natural leader and quickly chosen
to head the People in this crisis.

Everyone knew how many there were.
One hundred and ninety-three humans now lived on the Outward
Voyager. Their numbers had gradually increased through the
generations. Ninety, perhaps a hundred or a few more, could be
committed to fight the Gracks. It was doubtful that they could make
weapons for that many in the few hours that they had to prepare,
however. It seemed an impossible dilemma. Godomir did not believe
the ObLaDas had any tactical sense at all, and he was not about to
leave any decisions to them. “It would be suicidal to move all of
our strength into the ObLaDa habitats. We would be isolated down
there. It would leave this place unprotected. The Gracks could just
walk through here and kill everyone.”

“
I agree,” Ebert replied, “it
would be an intolerable risk, but in the end, we must help the
ObLaDas and we cannot just wait to see where the Gracks chose to
go. We would never catch up with them. They may bypass our level
and attack the ObLaDas directly, but we cannot abandon our home,
women and children on a guess.”

Godomir remained divided on what
to do, but he agreed that Ebert should open the way into the
ObLaDas decks and see what they had down there, determine what help
they could give and learn their plans. Ebert went to get ready. He
was excited to be the first person to leave the habitat and see
where the ObLaDas lived. Perhaps he would even get to see one.
Shortly after Ebert left, Hilde, who was neither large nor red,
came running into the room. Godomir was startled by this unwelcome
intrusion, but Ragnar had told her to hurry. She had half changed,
with a long-sleeved, high-necked top, everyone was putting on some
type of full body covering, while still wearing a short skirt made
of loose ribbons as she often did. “Some Gracks were coming out of
the conduit,” she said. “Come.”

“
Look at that thing, what a lump
of muscle,” Ragnar said, as he looked through the spy hole they had
cut into the entry door, and saw the Grack slipping through the
lift truck opening. One of the large sliding doors had been knocked
flat, while the other bulged inward. There were four of them now,
and they gathered around the fallen door. Incredibly, they were
able to tilt the heavy thing against the conduit wall and drag it
across the dark doorway. They had some chain and cable and tied it
in place. Sitting sideways, the door ran all the way across the
opening, but it was not tall enough to completely block it
off.

“
There is our opportunity,”
Magnaric said. He wanted to scale the barrier and take control of
the conduit. “If we could do that, all problems would be
solved.”

An exaggeration, but worth trying, Godomir
decided.

LemTer was told of this plan. He
had no good impression of the human’s capabilities. They looked to
be small and weak, but he sent them the details of the conduit. It
was not a favorable place for fighting, not much room to move
about, too easily defended, but they would try. Some weapons were
already finished, not many, but enough for a small
group.

The ObLaDas had a workshop on the
second deck, at least old Unadar had a shop, and he had access to a
full supply of metal and tools. Unadar was much too old to do much.
He was approaching his one hundred year termination day, but he was
humored, if you can say so about a species with no such sense,
because he was occasionally helpful. Ever since he learned of the
threat from the Gracks, however, Unadar had been busy thinking
about and making weapons. He cut wedges off iron bars and welded
them onto steel rods to make crude battle-axes and spears. But he
wanted to make his spears more effective. Poking small holes in
giant Gracks might not be sufficiently harmful, he thought.
Detachable points, they could come off once the spear penetrated
flesh. Yes, and what if the point was attached to the shaft by thin
cable? The humans could yank on the spear shaft and the embedded
spearhead would turn sideways, making the wound larger. Good! He
was not a kindly old Das.

It did not take long to gather
twenty men to make a try. Only a few could get into the conduit,
more would be in the way. “We will need to climb the barrier and
move around the narrow ledge near the entry, and we will need to be
quick about it,” Magnaric said. “I doubt it will take the Gracks
more than fifteen or twenty minutes to react to an alarm and come
pouring onto us, less if they have guards stationed near their
entry port.” There had been no sign of the Gracks since the barrier
had been set in place. “We must hope the left the entry
unguarded.”

“
We can hope, but they don’t seem
to be that careless to me,” Godomir said. They were not. Kitrack
had left three brutes in the conduit. There was ample space across
the top of the doorway for the humans to come through if they were
foolish enough to try it. The three Gracks spread out along the
narrow ledge that ran around the inside of the conduit. They stood
on either side of the doorway and waited as still and silent as
their most ancient ancestors.

Six men moved to the edge of the
lift port and slid their long pry bars between the broken door and
conduit wall to force the opening. They needed only a small space
to slide through, but no, the chains held firm. Ladders were
propped against the barrier. Magnaric climbed up near the center of
the door and hung two lamps over the side. Light reflected off the
smooth wall twenty-five meters away, nothing in between or below
but dark empty space. The beam barely reached the bottom of the
shaft. Magnaric moved the light around the cavern, but could not
see the Gracks or any movement.

“
Go now,” he called. “Get ready to
climb onto the next deck as soon as we get ten men over.” The first
six disappeared over the barrier and the next were on their way
when he heard the cry.

“
Glick,” Lutic called out sharply.
The Gracks stepped out of the shadows, leveling their long poles at
the startled men. They easily slid the tip of the metal rods along
the smooth wall wedging the humans into the void. Two of the men
saw what was happening and were able to pull themselves back to
safety. The others were stabbed with the sharpened poles until they
lost their grip and fell away.

Magnaric was stunned at the speed
of the disaster. He had lost five men within seconds, surely dead,
and every chance at isolating the Grack forces was gone. Grabbing
one of the long spears, he scrambled up the ladder, stabbing at the
nearest Grack, but the creature easily pulled it out of his hands
and in one motion, it turned the spear and jabbed at Magnaric.
Magnaric ducked, but not before a tearing pain ran across the side
of his head. Bleeding, he jumped down, angry, frustrated, he was
carried back into the habitat.

The lowest deck, the outermost in
the Filim module, contained the Outward’s control facilities and
the one above that, their living quarters. The ObLaDas occupied a
complex of buildings that spread across the deck, but it was not
enclosed like the alien habitats. Passageways and ramps radiated
through the area and gave free access to the interior, so it would
be wide open to an invasion. But the Control Deck was LemTer’s real
concern. It was far more important and even more vulnerable. That
level held all of the vital equipment and control stations. They
were housed in large complexes built from a collection of large
heavy wall units. The walls were strong enough to withstand the
Gracks efforts to break them down, but that would hardly be
necessary, as the stations were wide open, built without doors to
provide free access. Unless they did something, the Gracks would be
able to walk right in and destroy the ship’s control and
communications stations, their main robotic control units, and much
of their computer capacity. It might not cripple the ship entirely,
for the Outward was built with duplicate control stations and
computers on the Farside module, but all of the ship coordinators
were trapped in the Filim module. None of the ObLaDas in the rest
of the ship knew how to operate the key equipment. LemTer was not
certain that they would be able to keep the ship operational in a
crisis. He hoped that the People would be strong enough to hold off
the Gracks, but he feared not.

Ebert and Euric cut their way into
the pillar. The section blew away with a whoosh with the high
pressure knocking the two men back against the wall, not by the
gust of air, but by the smell. Unexpected, rank and irritating.
Ebert held a rag against his face as he stepped into the narrow
space. He could breathe the moist air, just barely. A thick
load-bearing cable ran down through the center of the casing. A
hole had been chipped into the composite floor, and the flange that
had supported the deck had been removed and set aside. He could
look down into the dim light of the ObLaDa habitat. The badly
deteriorated cable disappeared through the flat roof of a building
below. Euric had a length of knotted rope that they could climb
down, but he would need to make a ladder if they were going to move
there in force.