100 ::: Toshio
Cornered, Toshio couldn't even climb a tree. They were too close, and would be on him the instant they heard him move.
He could hear them as they spiraled closer, tightening the noose. Toshio clutched his needler and decided he had better attack first, before they were close enough to support each other. It would be a small handgun against armored machines and high-powered lasers, and he was no marksman like Tom Orley. In fact, he had never fired at a sentient being before. But it beat waiting here.
He crouched and began to crawl to his right, toward the shoreline. He tried not to snap any twigs, but a minute after leaving his hiding place he flushed some small animal, which fled noisily through the bushes.
Immediately he heard the noise of approaching mechanicals. Toshio slithered quickly under a thick bush, only to emerge facing the broad footpad of a spider.
# Gotcha! Gotcha! #
There was a squeal of triumph. He looked up to meet the mad eye of Sreekah-pol. The fin leered as he commanded the spider to lift its leg.
Toshio rolled aside as the foot crashed down where his head had been. He reversed direction, avoiding a kick. The mechanical reared back, bringing both front legs into play. Toshio saw no place to turn. He fired his small pistol against the armored belly of the machine, and tiny needles ricocheted harmlessly into the forest.
The triumphant whistle was pure Primal.
# Gotcha! #
Then the island began to shake.
The ground heaved up and down. Toshio was jounced right and left and his head hit the loam rhythmically. The spider teetered, then crashed backward into the forest.
The shaking accelerated. Toshio somehow rolled over onto his stomach. he fought the oscillations to rise to his knees.
There was a crunching sound as two spider-riders stumbled into the clearing. One crashed past Toshio in panic. The other, though, saw him and squawked in wrath.
Toshio tried to hold out his needler, but the island's trembling began to turn into a list. It became a race between him and the mad dolphin to see who could aim and fire first.
Then both of them were staggered by a scream that echoed within their heads.
+ BAD! -
— BAD ONES! +
+ LEAVE -
— US +
+ ALONE! -
It was a roar of rejection that made Toshio moan and grab at his temples. The needler slipped out of his grasp and fell to the rapidly tilting ground.
The dolphin whistled shrilly as its spider collapsed in convulsions. It wailed in a foxhole lamentation.
# Sorry! Sorry!
# Patron forgive!
# Forgive! #
Toshio stumbled forward. 'Forgiven,' he managed to say as he hurried past. He couldn't deal with the fin's schizoid conversion. 'Come this way if you can!' he called back, as he tried to make it to the shore. The noise in his head was like an earthquake. Somehow Toshio managed to stay on his feet and stumble through the forest.
When he reached the edge of the mound the sea was a froth below. Toshio looked right and left and saw no place that looked any better.
At that moment, a scream of engines pealed forth. He looked back to see a tornado of broken vegetation fly up from a spot only a hundred meters away. The gun-metal gray longboat rose above the rapidly tilting forest. It was surrounded by a glowing nimbus of ionization. Toshio's hackles rose as the island was swept by the throbbing antigravity field. The boat turned slowly and seemed to hesitate. Then, with a thunderclap, it speared into the eastern sky.
Toshio crouched as the boom whipped at him, tugging at his clothes.
There was no time to delay. Either Charles Dart had got away or he hadn't. Toshio pulled his mask up over his face, held it with one hand, and leapt.
'Ifni's boss…' he prayed. And he fell into the stormy waters.
101 ::: Galactics
Above the planet small flotillas of battered warships paused suddenly in their multi-sided butchery.
They had left hiding places on Kithrup's tiny moons, gambling all on the chance that the strange radio broadcasts from the planet's northern hemisphere were, indeed, of human origin. On their way down to Kithrup, the tiny alliances sniped at each other with their waning strength, until a sudden wave of psychic noise hit the entire motley ensemble. It rose from the planet with a power none could have expected, overwhelming psi-shields and striking the crews temporarily motionless.
The ships continued to plunge toward the planet, but their living crews blinked limply, unable to fire their weapons or guide their vessels.
If it had been a weapon, the psychic shout would have cleansed half of the ships of their crews. As it was, the mental scream of anger and rejection reverberated within their brains, driving a few of the least flexible completely mad.
For long moments the cruisers drifted out of formation, uncontrolled, downward into the upper fringes of the atmosphere.
Finally, the psi-scream began to fade. The grating anger growled and diminished, leaving burning after-images as the numb crews slowly came to their senses.
The Xatinni and their clients, having drifted away from the others, looked about and discovered that they had lost their appetite for further fighting. They decided to accept the pointed invitation to depart. Their four ragged ships left Kthsemenee's system as quickly as their laboring engines could manage.
The J'8lek were slow coming around. After succumbing to the numbing mind-scream, they drifted in amongst the ships of the Brothers of the Night. The Brothers awakened sooner, and used the J'8lek for target practice.
Sophisticated autopilots brought two Jophur warships to land on the slope of a steaming mountain, far to the south of their original destination. Automatic weapons kept watch for enemies while the Jophur struggled with their confusion. Finally, as the stunning psychic noise subsided, the crews began to revive and retake control of their grounded ships.
The Jophur were almost ready to lift off again, and head north to rejoin the fray, when the entire top of their mountain blew away in a column of superheated steam.
Gillian stared, slack jawed, until the grating 'sounds' finally began to fade. She swallowed. Her ears popped, and she shook her head to clear away the numb feeling. Then she saw that the dolphins were staring at her.
'That was awful!' she stated. 'Is everybody all right?'
Tsh't looked relieved. 'We're all fine, Gillian. We detected an extremely powerful psi-explosion a few moments ago. It easily pierced our shields, and seems to have dazed you for a few minutes. But except for some momentary discomfort, we hardly felt it!'
Gillian rubbed her temples. 'It must be my esper sensitivity that made me susceptible. Let's just hope the Eatees don't follow that attack up with another even closer…' She stopped. Tsh't was shaking her head.
'Gillian, I don't think it was the Eatees. Or if it was, they weren't aiming for us. Instruments indicate that that burst came from very close nearby, and was almost perfectly tuned not to be received by cetaceans! Your brain is similar to ours, so you only felt it a little. Suessi reports hardly feeling a thing.
'But I imagine some of the Galactics had a rough t-time weathering that psi-storm!'
Gillian shook her head a second time. 'I don't understand.'
'That makes two of usss. But I don't suppose we have to understand. All I can tell you is thisss — at almost the same rime that psi-burst went off, there was an intense ground tremor not two hundred klicks from here. The crustal waves are only now starting to arrive.'
Gillian swam over to Tsh't's station in the glassy sphere of Streaker's bridge. The dolphin lieutenant pointed with her jaw toward a globe model of the planet.
Not far from Streakers position on the globe, a small cluster of flashing red symbols was displayed.
'That's Toshio's island!' Gillian said. 'Then Charlie did have a spare bomb after all!'
'Beg p-pardon?' Tsh't looked confused. 'But I thought Takkata-Jim had confiscated…'
