“Your suggestions are insulting.”
“Let me clarify the situation, then,” Garth said, brandishing his long workman’s blade under the small nose of the skald girl. “No pain will be visited upon your bodies. Nor will any of you be exposed-if you leave me alone.”
They fell quiet again for several seconds. Garth knew they were conferring between themselves. They were not a telepathic race-that was a common misconception concerning the mysterious Tulk. They communicated with their hosts via interrupted nerve endings, and controlled muscles and thoughts in precisely the fashion a human’s mind might send an electrochemical pulse through a nerve strand to cause a finger to twitch. Amongst a collection of skalds such as these, they used a code of varied, almost imperceptible taps and pressures applied to the hands of one by the fingers of another. When touching bodies, from one skald to another, they formed a network of sorts and relayed concepts from one to the next silently and efficiently.
“Your lack of civility and ingratitude at being admitted into this sanctuary is disgusting. However, we have need of occasional systems repairs. Can you effect these adjustments for us?”
Garth considered. He’d lost his work cart and most of his tools, but he had been trained in basic maintenance. Further, he was certain a toolkit would be stashed somewhere in the large VIP suites.
“I can perform such duties, and I will do so willingly.”
“Very well, you may stay among us until such a time as we deem your presence unwarranted.”
Garth accepted this statement without comment. Privately, he calculated the odds that the skalds would be able to eject him from this place without injury to themselves were extremely low.
Garth found there were more than a few failing systems in the suites where the skalds had taken refuge. The first such system he worked on was the security network feed. There were a fair number of monitors recessed in the walls of the various saloons and lounges, but none of them could connect to the outside world of the larger ship. He spent a full day working on the security network before he managed to get it working. In the end, it turned out to be a simple burned-out coupling. This was a relief, as he’d half-expected to find an enemy shrade in the works, chewing on the cables or infecting their subsystems with viruses.
When he managed to tap into the outside feed, he looked at the screens with interest. He flicked from one input camera to the next, but things looked pretty dull out there. Every corridor was empty. Every auxiliary hold was quiet and tranquil.
Garth thought of the bridge, but the cameras there didn’t operate. He licked his lips again. Nervousness had returned. After a day of hard work, he felt a familiar tickle of fear. He checked the cameras in the main hold, and saw nothing. This proved little, as the hold was miles long and held such a vast array of goods it was hard to say what was happening inside. One might as well look at a forest while cruising above it on a skimmer and declare it lifeless.
After a moment of hesitation, he switched channels and directed the monitors to feed him the vid from the lifepods. In all honesty, he’d expected to get nothing but static air, as he had when viewing the bridge. What he found instead was exhilarating.
The crewmen were there. Dozens of them. Security people in red, maintenance in green, flight crew in royal blue. Among them were others-they could only be passengers who’d been awakened. All in all, it was a veritable army. They were well-armed, too. They carried everything from beam weapons to fire axes. No one seemed unarmed.
Garth took on a predatory-almost prideful-expression. Here were his people, marching on the enemy. They’d followed up on his warning. They’d gathered their strength, and even now they were moving in for the kill. They’d repelled these invaders once before, and although the infection had returned, they were more than ready and capable of vanquishing it again. They had done so on Garm, Neu Schweitz and this very ship in the past.
Garth reached up and switched the feed to broadcast. Every monitor in the skald suites blazed into life in response, and began relaying the vids as he watched them. Let these cowardly Tulk know what humans were capable of! Activating the loudspeaker, he keyed open the microphone and spoke into it, his breath gusting loudly in the speakers as he made an announcement.
“I am Garth, a former skald. I have repaired your video feed from the ship. I’ve discovered something interesting while testing the system. A battle is about to be joined.”
He sat back, crossed his arms and smiled at the screen. It was time to enjoy the show.
The crewmen advanced to the pods of lifeboats, creeping quietly. Garth recognized the Captain among them. They paused at the bulkheads, massing up for the final assault. A number of them carried flamethrowers. These were signaled forward. The nozzles of their weapons dribbled molten orange plasmas.
A signal was given-Garth could not hear it, as the sound was still disabled. He adjusted and readjusted the controls, vainly. This would be far better with sound.
The six entrances to the lifeboat pods on the starboard side of Gladius snapped open at once. The crewmen with flamethrowers trotted forward and let loose with flares of brilliant flame. Garth cheered appreciatively, and realized why there was no sound. He’d never turned the volume up on the video input. A moment later, sound boomed from every monitor. The skalds could scarcely ignore the battle now!
Events moved rapidly. After hosing the lifeboats with cleansing flame, the crewmen began to advance into the compartments. Garth watched tensely.
The first hint that something was amiss came from off-camera. An odd, keening sound arose. The crewmen onscreen seemed scarcely aware of it initially, but the cries were quickly joined by a dozen similar outbursts.
Next, a blaze of automatic weapons fire erupted-not in the lifeboat compartments, but out amongst the stacked cargo containers in the hold.
Garth fought the controls, finally managing to alter the angle of the camera so he could see what the fuss was about. A female crewman ran into view, clutching her helmet tightly to her head. Was she wearing a tail of some kind? No, it had to be something else. Squinting and zooming in, Garth realized she wasn’t wearing a helmet at all. There was something-something on her head. He realized with a cold shiver that it was a shrade. The enemy creatures were dropping them among the crew.
Matters became uncertain after that. More and more crewmen, people who’d been at the rear ranks with the least effective armament, rushed forward and often fell flopping onto the deck. Some were shot by their nervous comrades. More than one was burned like a flopping, staggering creature from a holovid by the overzealous members of the flamethrower squads when they came too close for comfort.
“They’re behind us, out in the hold! Forget the lifepods! Turn and take cover,” the Captain ordered. His was a booming voice, full of confidence.
The group did so, but the assaults stopped. Uncertain, the group hugged hexagonal cargo cases and peered in every direction at once.
Gunfire then rose up in a wild booming fusilade. Garth worked the camera controls, eyes bulging and looking everywhere at once. Who was firing? Every crewman he saw seemed to be ducking and cowering behind equipment.
Then they sprinted forward. A company of killbeasts. They fired as they advanced. Crewmen who dared to fire back were quickly cut down by more accurate fire, but they did managed to stop a number of the enemy. When the killbeast charge finally reached the crew’s ragged line, they set about slaughtering everyone they came in contact with, shooting them at point-blank range or kicking out with their bladed feet to maim and decapitate. More flamethrowers blazed, burning down screaming crewmen as often as silent, impossibly vital killbeasts.
In less than a minute, the charge had been broken. There were just too many crewmen, they outnumbered the aliens at least three to one. These humans had met with the aliens before, and were not as likely to panic as they might have been in the past. They knew the score: this was do or die. There was little hope that one could run away, so they did not bother. They fought until every killbeast lay still on the deck or was left draped over the cargo containers.
A ragged cheer went up from their ranks, a cry that was echoed by Garth himself. Spittle flew from his lips, but he paid no heed. He wished for a drink, and lamented that none was to be found here in the maintenance cabinets.
“See?” he shouted into the microphone. “We’ve won! We’ve beaten them back. Do you not feel like sick cowards now, Tulk?”
There was no reply from the saloons and lounges. This didn’t trouble Garth. He knew they had seen the
