Outward Borne (29 page)

UnaDar collected some All-1s and
set them to the human version of the Ship Language. They would need
to talk back and forth, if the little things did not run away
first. It would be fun to just pop out on them, but he fought off
the urge. They might throw something his way. So UnaDar announced
his coming before he stepped around the corner into view, it was a
dull move, but it produced enough of a shock to be
amusing.

Frightened they were, still jumpy
from the appearance of the Gracks in that sudden light, the boys
stood, stunned when the fat, slimy, wrinkled thing appeared in the
doorway. Clovic grabbed for his ax, Heneric and Elbert moved to the
far wall, but this thing did not come any farther into the room,
instead it slid some All-1s across the floor. At first they did not
realize that the thing was talking, it was such an odd rumbling
noise. He was claiming to be an ObLaDa. Could this be? Surely they
had to be more impressive than that. It did smell like the rest of
the habitat, only much stronger, and it was asking for their
help.

UnaDar sat by the door and talked
with the boys for some time. He told them about himself and his
ancestors, one of had been the captain of the Outward when it was
launched. He did not embellish too much, he thought. Clovic and
Heneric agreed go to the control deck with him. Elbert would stay
and gather any supplies or tools that they might need. Before they
started the decent, Clovic asked him why he was not wearing some
protective clothing. “We have none, at least not here,” UnaDar
answered. “No alien has been on this deck for two thousand years.
Why should we? Do you have any idea how much maintenance it takes
to keep an isolation suit in order? No, well it would be silly. I
hope I do not suffer too much from not being silly,” he
said.

Clovic was unsure if he was
serious or had made a joke. It did not seem likely, but UnaDar went
on seemingly unconcerned about any risk to his health. He showed
them his shop and a robot that was similar to the one on the
Control Deck. They took all the gear and went into the lift to the
Control level. There were a few people there. They were all in a
panic. The entry was still open and the Gracks would have free
access if they got there first. They must hurry.

“
Why did you leave it for last?”
Clovic asked. “You should have blocked it off first and then done
the other things.” But he was mistaken. It would do no good to prop
a panel next to the conduit. The Gracks could just push it over.
They needed to crash the panel and bot against the doors. Only the
weight of the robot would keep it in place.

They went to the old bot to see
what needed doing. UnaDar quickly confirmed that the instruction
box needed to be replaced, but the replacement module did not fit,
wrong configuration. It might work, UnaDar said, but it would need
to be hand-wired together. So the box was strapped onto the side of
the bot, and the boys spent a considerable time connecting wires,
one-by-one, between the machine and its new communications unit. It
took longer than they wished to get it working and even so, it had
to be controlled by hand.

UnaDar hoped that there would still be time to
make the changes that LemTer wanted, but he had done what he could.
The boys could maneuver the bot to do whatever LemTer asked, so he
sat down to rest and promptly fell asleep. Missed all the action,
he did.

The Gracks had been badly mulled
in the fabrication yard. One fighter escaped without a significant
wound and only three experienced fighters could still function
well. All of the Gracks knew the desperate nature of their
position, but for them to retreat to sit in their habitat and wait
to be set upon was not an option. They were lifelong warriors and
would not give up. Durack sent two of his youngest to the habitat
to gather anyone who could possibly help. It would be their last
fight. Two very young Gracks stepped forward and the injured, those
that could still carry a weapon, rose from their sick beds.
Hacnick’s skin was still painfully blistered, but he could now see
through his still swollen eyes, even Spatic set aside his fears and
took up a spear, but Kubac’s wound had festered and he was near
death. In the end, Durack had ten fighters. Ten others too wounded
to move, the very young, or pregnant, remained in the habitat with
instructions to set up barricades after the band had
left.

Durack once again led his force
into the conduit. Hacnick and Napolc, too injured for combat, were
left there to guard the area. The remaining Gracks moved slowly
toward the Outward Voyager control deck, perhaps for the last
time.

It was too soon. The way to the
computer room was still wide open and the humans were scattered
around looking at locations they may need to defend. More Gracks
were coming than LemTer had thought possible. They were already
moving through the conduit. He called to UnFel to give him the
urgent warning. UnFel, surprised as he was, knew that disaster
would follow if the Gracks got into the deck before the humans had
assembled. He urged Clovic to hurry. The old bot was difficult to
manage. It had bashed against a wall and the heavy panel had broken
loose. The boys were trying to get it reattached when UnFel’s
panicked call came through. They left off the repairs, and had sent
the bot pushing and sliding the heavy wall unit down the wide
entryway and smashed it against the conduit entry. It crushed the
outer skin, wobbled, and held still. The flat panel did not
completely block the rounded opening, but they hoped that it would
be enough to slow the Gracks. Clovic and Heneric left the bot and
hid behind the Propulsion Management Module to watch the Gracks,
but the lights went out and they could see no more.

Durack could touch the smooth
panel through entry doors. He could judge its weight and solidity.
It had not been there before. There was some room around the edges,
but not enough to get through. He called forward those who carried
axes and set them to hacking away the hard, ancient surface. It did
not take long to make a hole large enough to squeeze through.
Durack pulled the workers aside and squeezed into the ancient
control deck. He looked into the darkness, his short spear ready
and was surprised. No one was there to mount an attack. They had
missed opportunity. He wondered why.

The Control space was deserted.
Sounds echoed through the open room. Torches were lit and the
Gracks moved together into the wide passageways, trashing the few
open rooms they came upon. They could hear the humans running,
calling to one another in the distance.

Godomir was moving his men through the lifts
as quickly as they could go. He had no grand plan, no more than the
Gracks had. They would form up in groups of ten to fifteen and
stalk through the corridors until they came on the Gracks and then
would try to surround them or at least attack from two
sides.

As the Gracks moved further into
the dark spaces Yacork grew worried, felt that something was wrong.
The place seemed to have no purpose, the layout made no sense,
large courtyards that held nothing, hallways that turned then
turned again and went on too long without leading to any useful
rooms. Durack, alerted by Yacork’s tension, he called the Gracks
together and motioned for silence.

Yacork pressed its body against a
wall. There were vibrations on the far side. The Gracks were
standing outside of the communication room with its constant low
hum of activity. Durack sent two youths around the side of the
enclosure to find the entry. There was none. He pounded its fist
against the thick wall, a dull thud of frustration. They had been
fooled, led in circles. “Break it down,” Durack bellowed. Axes
pounded against the hard surface chipping away at the
barrier.

Godomir cursed as he watched the
Gracks regroup. He hurried his men through the openings toward the
communications room. They would come at the Gracks from both sides,
in this Durack was right. Godomir had the numbers to keep at the
Gracks and wear them down. In the end he would win, but it was
already an overly bloody business.

The Gracks had moved away from the conduit,
all but a few lookouts and they were inside. Clovic and Heneric
snuck up to the bot and hooked the chains holding the wall panel.
Godomir told him that it could be used to disrupt the Gracks, if he
could get it free, but the heavy panel held the rig and they could
not get it to back away.

“
Can’t you wiggle it away?”
Heneric asked, but no, the restraining cable had become tangled
with something on the conduit and that heavy slab was too massive
to pry away. It was stuck fast against the conduit. Heneric climbed
on the thing working to cut through the cable. Clovic had a boxy
old container ready. At last the wires sprung free and the bot
backed away. Clovic had it pick up the metal cabinet and trundled
it toward the fighting. If they could get it turned the right way,
it could crash into the Gracks, break them up. The old robot would
not last a minute with its guts unprotected and the open
communication circuit taped onto its side, but there was no time to
do anything about that.

Already another twenty-three of
the People had fallen. Some gains had been made, but it was hard to
judge. So many of the Gracks were injured even as the fight
started. Finally, the bot came on. It was effective on the first
pass, splitting off three Gracks that were soon beaten down, but
that was it for the old dear. A side panel had been pulled off and
a spear thrust into the circuitry. It was enough,
however.

Durack could no longer hold off
the swarm of men. Only a few weakened and injured fighters were
still standing. He pulled them together so that they were almost
back-to-back then took up two axes and charged through the humans.
Running and fighting as he went, meeting one group of reserves
after another, he would never have made it to the conduit if it
were not for the speed and surprise of the assault. Durack called
for Hacnick and Napolc and together they fought their way back to
the surviving Gracks. Durack carried Upoc and the others dragged
injured bodies into the conduit, and back up to their habitat. Two
more Gracks were killed during their retreat. They were hard
pressed by the People, all of who were desperate to finish the
weakened aliens. Only six fighters made it back. Magnaric and his
fellows pursued them to the end.

Magnaric’s men climbed past the
Grack’s habitat into the decks above. They positioned themselves
around the wide dark tube, to block any attempt the Gracks might
make to reach the higher levels of the Filim module. Godomir and
his surviving men struggled through the conduit, with its rough
metal surfaces and slick oil-coated rungs, to barricade the Gracks
into their complex. There would be no more fighting.

Sixty-seven men and women died or
were crippled in the Grack war. Many others succumbed to a wasting
disease in the days and weeks following the battle. Several went
blind from a severe irritation that corroded the surface of their
corneas. Many years passed before the People fully recovered from
their encounter with the Gracks and their prolonged exposure to the
ObLaDa environment, but when they did, they were living in a
different world.

The ObLaDas had come to accept the
People, not just an alien species to be studied, but as a society
to whom they owed a debt, and as partners in the survival of the
Outward Voyager. The ObLaDas built isolation suits to fit the
humans and gave the People access to the rest of the ship. In the
centuries that followed, the People would be employed throughout
the Outward. They would help with its incessant repairs and,
eventually, in rebuilding the Filim arm. The ObLaDas would provide
them with whatever they could use. Life went on. No of the People
ever knew what exactly happened to the Gracks after they were
sealed into their habitat. Work on their new complex stopped. It
was never used.

Chapter 17 Kalekto

MaxNi9 trudged toward his office,
feeling sick, dragging along his foul mood from the just completed
meeting. He felt good about what they had done, it was a tremendous
achievement, but it was now having some unintended consequences
that he would rather not endure.

Rebuilding the Outward Voyager had
been a lifetime job for MaxNi9 and for the seven generations of
captains that preceded him. He, the ninth clone of the famous MaxNi
MaxRo, had the honor of being the first to occupy the new Filim arm
and its recently completed habitat module. The massive undertaking
was essentially complete. The ancient arm had been cut loose and
was undergoing robotic demolition and recycling, even that was
almost complete.

The long process of rebuilding the
Outward Voyager and its many alien habitats had changed the ObLaDas
as much as it changed the Outward. The crew shifted toward an all
female gender mix and only recently began to swing back. Their long
hiatus from star searching, filled instead by habitat building for
the ObLaDas and all the resident species, gradually fostered a new
more nurturing concept of the Voyager’s purpose. A new mission for
a new ship, they were now saying.

These frankly revolutionary ideas
had become widely discussed and debated in recent months and MaxNi9
didn't like how the opposing positions had hardened. It was not the
ObLaDa way. Today's argument started with that annoying YuLon Lim’s
proposal to initiate a new planetary search and capture mission. It
would require a change from the already plotted course and, to the
more contentious point and hitting the philosophical hot button of
the day, undertake the capture of another alien life form. Most of
the Outward’s crew, other than YuLon and a couple of closed-mouthed
supporters, had proposed a different course. The Outward Voyager
should, now and henceforward, actively intervene and promote the
development and survival of intelligent, technically progressing
civilizations. They would end the detached capture-and-examination
cycle that the ObLaDas had followed for so long and replace it with
an active role in fostering advanced life within the
galaxy.