Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [51]
It took some time for the pilots to locate a suitable site. Relying on the shuttle’s landing skids, they made a bumpy, jolting, but successful touchdown. Before the craft had slid to a stop Trohanov was out of his seat and harness and racing forward.
The view out the cockpit’s wide double port was maddeningly uninformative: tall evergreens, distant tree-swathed hills, a nearby pond whose inhabitants were only now starting to return following the shuttle’s noisy landing. Everything appeared peaceful and serene.
“Where are we?”
Solnhofen, the copilot, pointed to a readout. “About two kilometers southwest of the southern runway. This appears to be a natural meadow.”
Bending over to peer out the port, Trohanov nodded once. “I don’t see any signs of catastrophe. You said the landing strips were destroyed?”
“Yes, sir.” The pilot’s face was ashen. “We didn’t get a good look at the city itself—too busy with the descent. Neither Lillie nor I have had to do a manual landing since flight school.”
“Forget it. You both did great. Could you tell what caused the damage?”
The two pilots exchanged a glance. “No, Captain,” a regretful Solnhofen told him. “It was as Dik said. We were too busy just trying to get down in one piece.”
“Right.” Turning, a couple of steps brought Trohanov back into the passenger compartment. Everyone was out of harness, fidgety and anticipative. “We’re going for a walk. Check your sidearms and make sure they’re not just decorative. I want everyone’s weapon and communications gear fully powered up.” They stared at him expectantly, and he realized they were waiting for an explanation. In the absence of one, he improvised as best he could.
“Something bad has happened here. We don’t know what yet, but we’re going to find out.”
“That’s not our job, Captain,” someone pointed out. “We’re a class three KK-drive deep-space cargo carrier, and that’s all we are.”
“You can file a formal complaint about being forced to function outside your job classification with the company later. Right now everybody here comes with me. I’ve been in Weald twice before, once as recently as last year, so I’m at least sort of familiar with the municipal layout. Stick close and don’t wander off. No matter what we find, we’ll be back here before dark.” He looked over his shoulder, toward the cockpit.
“You two stay on board. I don’t want you going outside, not even to smell the tree sap. If anything real disturbing should start to show itself, you lift off and return to ship.”
“Disturbing?” The pilot looked uncertain. “Like what, Captain?”
“Like I don’t know—yet. Use your own judgment.” He tapped the communicator on his duty belt. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Stepping out of the shuttle, it was difficult to believe that anything was amiss. Indigenous wildlife filled the nearby forest and the open meadow with intermittent alien song. Arboreal life-forms flitted among the trees and skittered through the waist-high blue-bladed ground cover. Plotting a simple straight line, Trohanov led his people away from the shuttle and into the woods.
The gently rolling ground did not slow them, and the absence of dense underbrush except in isolated copses allowed rapid progress. With the shuttleport lying to their northeast, Trohanov calculated, if they maintained their current pace they ought to reach the southernmost outskirts of the city by midafternoon. That would not allow much time for exploring, but they ought to be able to secure transport into the city center. Someone at Administration would be able to clear things up and to explain the nature of whatever emergency had befallen the colony.
But there was no transport readily available in the southern suburbs of Weald. There was very little left of the suburb they entered, or for that matter of the rest of the city.
Its inhabitants, it was revealed, were as dead as their communications.
Whatever smoke and flame had risen from the ruins had long since burned itself