"Don"t know, Riker. I"d rather have it another way."
"It"s too late for any other way. Stross picked this path," said Mikken. "Then he dragged us down it. The Hidden Hand can"t find us here."
"How do you expect your handful of believers to bring down an entire planetary government?"
"The simple d-d-days," said Tritt quietly. "We have to go back to them. We just have to."
Up ahead, less than a kilometer away, the track bed ended in an old crater formed by an explosion. Durren backed the throttle down, and the car coasted to a stop within a few meters of the damaged section. A young woman waited for them, with five of the same beasts to which Tritt had tended back at the watering hole. His face lit as he saw them nibbling on some p.r.i.c.kly brush clinging to the hillock where they stood untethered. "Mori!" he shouted. The young woman replied with a wave, and Tritt jumped down to the gray sand before the car had quite stopped moving and ran over to greet the animals.
He gave each one a thump and a hug. Riker and his remaining captors followed Tritt over.
"Is he talking to them?" Riker asked.
Mikken"s head quirked in disgust. "He"s named them. Swears he recognizes each one on sight."
"Ealixes seem to know each other," Durren said.
"That"s by scent. They all smell the same to me-bad."
Riker walked cautiously around the animals, looking them over. They, on the other hand, showed little interest in him, except for twitching their snouts as they caught his scent. They looked to him like an ungainly cross between camel, horse, and hippo.
Barrel-shaped bodies with small humps just behind their withers, wide heads with dainty mouths that seemed frozen in a Mona Lisa smile, soulful eyes with long lashes, nostrils that opened and closed tightly, probably to prevent them from breathing in grit whipped up by the wind, wide flat feet with toes that splayed for better traction in the sandy terrain. Two of the ealixes also had double sets of horns sprouting from their brow ridges.
Males, Riker guessed. The only noise the animals made was a rhythmic snorting as their nostrils sealed and snapped open with each breath.
Riker approached Tritt, who was vigorously scratching the nose of one of the horned animals. The ealix yawned in pure contentment. "So these are ealixes ..."
"Best friend you could have out here." Tritt"s stammer disappeared as he stroked the animal"s neck, ruffling its fine pinkish fur.
The ealixes all had blankets thrown over their backs and bridles and reins over their heads.
Since there weren"t any bits in their mouths, Riker guessed them to be docile animals. He touched the one Tritt was petting and felt it actually purr.
The notch on its back between shoulders and hump seemed amply padded with fat to provide a reasonably comfortable seat.
Riker watched the young woman adjust an additional harness around the neck and shoulders of one of the ealixes. Another animal had a similar rig, which held a dull brown metal tube as long as a man"s armspan. "Weapons?"
Mori nodded. "Ground-to-air slasher launchers."
"What do you shoot at?"
"Government hoverjets. We were easy targets before we got these."
"And now?"
"Now we get the jets more often than they get us," she said in an a11-business tone, as if she"d been shooting down attacking aircraft most of her life, which might have been the case, for all Riker knew. "Are you a good shot?"
She fixed him with a flinty gaze. "I get my share." When she was satisfied she had the launchers hanging properly, she moved around the second ealix to face Riker. "Can you ride?"
"I"ve ridden a lot of different animals on a lot of different planets. These don"t look like much trouble."
"They"re not. Comfortable, too."
"Where are we going?"
Mori turned and pointed off to a distant pa.s.s between majestic cliffs. "Sanctuary Canyon."
"How did it get that name?"
"When our ancestors came out here to the Sa"drit, that"s where they found water and fruit growing. And that"s where our legends say Mother World handed down the Testaments-the writings that told us how to live in Fusion with the land and sky."
"Fusion. That"s the same name Stross uses for his plan."
Mori"s eyes flashed. "He stole the name, thought he could fool people. His Fusion mocks what the name stands for."
Mikken vaulted smoothly up onto one of the ealixes bearing a slasher. That didn"t surprise Riker, considering this Thiopan"s affinity for weapons. Mori climbed onto the shoulders of the other animal with the launcher rig. Riker, Durren, and Tritt mounted the remaining three. Although there were no stirrups and saddle horn, human hindquarters fit snugly into the crook of the ealix"s back and Riker felt sufficiently secure.
"Out there, Riker, is the heart of the Sa"drit, the heart of the Sojourners," Mikken said with a grim smile. "The heart of the revolution that"s going to save Thiopa from ruin at the hands of Ruer Stross."
They left the rail line behind and began to ride across the barren plain of the Sa"drit Void.
From the slate-colored faces of far-off mountains to the pallid gray-blue of the sky, this land was as bleak as a moonscape. Riker wondered at the crazed courage it must have taken for the first Sojourners to venture out here centuries ago-and at the fanatical dedication to a Sojourner renaissance that was driving these people who"d had the audacity to s.n.a.t.c.h him from the middle of Bareesh.
Along the way, they pa.s.sed mute evidence of past clashes-burned carca.s.ses of hoverjets scattered grotesquely, like dead birds shot down by desert marksmen. Whether because of the destructive power of the slasher weapons, the impact of the crash, or both, little 167 was left to give Riker an idea what the hoverjets would look like whole. But the charred and twisted bits told a story all their own. The other side of the story was also told by the ashes of a small encampment, still retaining the two-dimen sional layout of a place where people had lived. But the third dimension, height, had been burned to the ground. Somehow, a tent pole here, a structural frame there, still stood, blackened and so fragile they would not stand long against a strong wind.
The caravan slowed as it pa.s.sed the burned campsite. "What happened here?" Riker asked Mori, who rode flank to swaying flank with his ealix. "This is what the hoverjets could do anytime they wanted before we got the launchers."
"When was that?"
"Six months ago."
"Where did you get the weapons?"
"From the Nuarans."
Riker was shocked. "The Nuaransl I thought you hated them."
"We do," Durren dissd from the animal behind Riker. "But they gave us what we needed to defend our land."
"Your archenemy gave you weapons?"
"They sold them to us," Durren said, "in return for the rights to future resource mining in our territory and any other places we might conquer."
"They were hedging their bets," Riker concluded.
"Just in case. But I thought there wasn"t anything left to mine out in Endraya."
"There"s plenty," Mikken said from the lead ealix. "It"s just that the mines had to be dug deeper and 168 deeper, and out in areas that were open to our surprise attacks. The government decided it was too expensive and too dangerous. That"s about when they broke off ties with the Nuarans. So the Nuarans came to us."
"I"m a little surprised the Sojourners would deal with the embodiment of evil," Riker said.
"The Nuamns are not honorable," Durren said.
"And so we took their weapons, knowing we would never give them anything in return."
"What if they come back to take what they want?
They can do a lot more damage than government hoverjets."
"We can handle it," Mikken boasted.
Without anyone else noticing, Tritt had reined his mount away from the others and was-wandering through the ruined camp as if searching halfheartedly for something he knew wasn"t really there.
"d.a.m.n him," Mikken said. "Does he have to do that every time we pa.s.s this place?"
Mori silenced Mikken"s complaint with a warning glare. "You can hardly blame him."
"Why?" said Riker. "What happened?"
"Tritt lived here," Mori explained. "He lost his wife and child when the hoverjets attacked. Almost everyone in the camp died."
"When was this?"
"Almost a year ago," Mori said. "Back then we still had some people living outside of Sanctuary Canyon trying to farm, trying to lead a normal life. They were the brave ones-was "Stupid ones," Mikken sneered. "You can"t farm in a war zone."
"It wasn"t supposed to be a war zone:" 169 "Lessandra never should have let them live here,"
Mikken went on. "We warned them..."
"We are supposed to be fighting for the freedom to live anywhere and in any way we want."
Mori"s face reddened and her voice rose in anger. "We are not supposed to be telling people how to live."
"Dream all you want." Mikken swung his arm out toward the ashes of the settlement. "This is reality.
The sooner we accept, that, the sooner we"ll take Thiopa and get back to the circle."
Riker had noticed that Durren was steering clear of the heated exchange, concentrating instead on humming to himself. Silently, Tritt and his ealix drifted back to the group and fell in at the rear, leaving a plume of ash and dust curling up into the breeze behind him. The bickering between Mikken and Mori faded, and Riker thought about the latest twists in what he knew of the Thiopan conflict.
The Nuarans giving weapons to the Sojourners-that was a shock. Did the Nuarans do it just to wreak vegeance on the Thiopan government, which had booted them off the planet? Or did they really believe they could turn the Sojourners away from their sacred quest? And how did the Sojourners justify their acceptance of help from the off-wonders who personified everything they were fighting against?
From a pragmatic standpoint, the Sojourners"
actions made a certain amount of short-term sense.
Accepting the weapons was the only way they could obtain the armaments they needed to keep Stross"s protectorate from overrunning Sojourner positions out here in Endraya. But how many principles could the Sojourners overlook, and for how long, before 170 they began to forget the beliefs that ignited the whole conflict? It was a rare cause that reached its goals without some compromise, Riker knew. But the purer the underlying principles, the more brittle the crusade.
And the Sojourners were obviously a zealous lot, guided by a righteous doctrine that did not appear to leave much room for transgressions. If his escorts were at all representative of the att.i.tudes of their group as a whole, Riker wondered if they would defeat themselves from within before the government could do it from without. Durren suddenly stopped humming and swiveled about, scanning the sky all around for-for what? Tritt, who"d claimed to have a sharper sense of sight, apparently had better hearing, too. He spun halfway around on his ealix, then pointed in the direction of the pollution-veiled sun.
"Out there."
An instant later, Riker picked up the sound, too-a throaty whine that came from flying dots too small to see in detail. But there was no doubting what was about to happen. Mori goaded her ealix into a trot. The others followed her toward a steep hill. Once they reached its protective shadow, the Thiopans and then Riker dismounted and took up defensive positions behind a pile of boulders.
Mori and Mikken each hefted a slasher, balanced it on one shoulder, and sighted through scopes protruding from the launcher barrels.
"Do they know we"re here?" Riker asked.
"Probably. They may be looking for you,"
Durren said.
Riker grunted. "Great to be wanted."
"But we want you alive. They might be just as happy to send you back dead."
"So they could tell Captain Picard the nasty Sojourners killed me?" Durren nodded.
"Stross can claim he did his best to get you back alive-but got there too late to save you from those fanatics in the desert."
The hoverjets were close enough to make out now-a random formation of four bullet-shaped craft, glinting white against the sky. They were moving slowly, drifting in a search pattern, their verticalcontrol engines kicking up clouds of dust as they combed the badlands for their quarry. "Can you hit them from this distance?"
"Yes," Mikken said quickly.
"Maybe," Mori said. "Once we fire, if we miss, they"ll be locked onto our position-was "And then it"s a matter of who"s got a faster trigger finger," Riker said.
Mori nodded. "Right. Also, if we can shoot when they"re closer together, if we hit one, the explosion might take a second one out, too."
"The waiting game," Riker observed. "Tests your nerves."
"We may not be able to wait," Durren said. "It looks as if they"ve found us."
The four hovercraft slid into a stricter formation.
They were indeed headed directly for the Sojourners"
hiding place. Riker gland at Mori and Mikken.
Both seemed steady, their fingers poised on the trigger b.u.t.tons. Riker wished he had something to shoot, too. It 172 would be better than sitting like a clay pigeon waiting to get blown away. He licked his lips and peeked over the rocks. The hoverjets had slowed their advance. What the h.e.l.l are they doing? he wondered. Somebody"s going to take the first shot.
If it"s them, they could blast the mountain open and bury us. In this case, I"ll be a lot happier if we shoot first and ask questions later.
As if reading Riker"s mind, Mori centered a hoverjet in her cross-hairs and squeezed the trigger. A red ball of roiling energy pulsed out the front of her barrel and screamed across the desert.
The hoverjets saw it coming and broke their grouping, spiraling as they tried to evade the slasher bolt.
Mikken fired his weapon an instant after Mori, knowing her decision to fire first meant the enemy was on the defensive until Mori"s shot either hit or missed. It hit-dead onand the lead hoverjet exploded into a fireball. But the other three were far enough away to escape the black smoke from the fist of flame that was already crashing to the ground.
Two hovercraft cannons opened fire, spraying a volley of pinpoint energy bursts. The top of the hill erupted in a shower of dirt and rock. Riker and the Thiopans ducked and covered their heads. The hill itself was too thick for the government aircraft to shoot through. They"d have to move around it, and that"s what they did. Two came from one side, the third from the other.