Expendable - James Alan Gardner [38]
Two paces away, I found the nest the killdeer was protecting. There were three eggs in the nest, their shells dirty white with brown speckles.
Three beautiful eggs.
Eggs
I took the Bumbler from Yarrun and crouched beside the nest. Melaquin’s atmosphere blocked most of the X-rays emitted by the local sun, Uffree; but the Bumbler was extremely good at amplifying what little there was.
Inside each egg was a tiny bird. (Their mother squawked frantically at me from a distance.) The Bumbler showed only their skeletons, curled into positions that seemed impossibly cramped. The little birds filled the eggs completely; within hours, they would hatch.
“Greetings,” I whispered softly to them. “I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality.”
The mother squawked in anguish, dashing back and forth with her feigned broken wing.
Gone
“Where’s Chee?” Yarrun asked suddenly.
My head snapped up. Yarrun and I were alone in the meadow.
“Admiral Chee, come in, admiral,” I called over the radio, keeping my voice calm.
No response.
“Maybe he fell off the bluffs,” Yarrun suggested.
“You check.” And while Yarrun hurried toward the edge of the bluffs, I switched the Bumbler to IR, and did a fast circle. Nothing showed up anywhere near Chee’s size. He wasn’t hiding in the grass. “Admiral Chee, please respond. Admiral Ch—”
A force closed on my windpipe like a strangling hand. I stopped talking mid-syllable. I could not breathe, I could not speak.
Oh shit.
Oh Shit
My throat transceiver. Was that it? Was that all?
Oh shit.
It was something in my throat implant. It was killing me. How stupid. How mindlessly stupid. Shit.
No monsters. No sentients. No deadly physical phenomena. Just crude treachery.
And I was fool enough to feel disappointed. I had a little Prope inside me who thought death should come glamorously. How juvenile. How stupid.
Shit.
Where had Chee gone? Over the bluffs? Did it matter?
A few paces in front of me, Yarrun was ripping off his helmet. He hadn’t figured it out yet; he must have thought his suit had a malfunction.
I turned the Bumbler on him, its sensors still keyed to read X-rays. Yes, his transceiver had twisted itself around his windpipe. And now he understood—he turned to me with a look of bitter sorrow.
Shit.
They must have built the implants to kill us. Did the choking mechanism activate in response to some natural transmission generated on planet? Or did someone somewhere turn a dial? Had Harque pushed some button, just following orders? Did he know what he’d done?
Shit.
Yarrun’s hands reached for his throat. I wondered if he would try to pull off the transceiver assembly. No good, I could see that on the X-rays—the mechanism was wrapped so tightly in place, he’d just rip out his larynx.
Shit. Oh shit. Yarrun was tapping out SOS in Morse code. Tapping on the transceiver itself. Gazing hopefully at the sky. And he couldn’t know if the transceiver was still broadcasting, and he couldn’t know if any of those goddamned Vacuum assholes on the bridge had even heard of Morse code, and he was still trying the only thing he could think of to save our lives.
Shit.
I blasted him with my stunner and he went down in a spiraling slump, as if he was turning to look at me one last time.
Forget it, forget it. I dropped to my knees beside him, upturning my whole backpack in search of the scalpel from the medical kit.
Maybe I could stay conscious long enough to perform an emergency tracheotomy. Cut through Yarrun’s throat into his windpipe, below the point where the transceiver was strangling him. Open a new breathing passage.
I had done a tracheotomy once before. At the Academy. On a cadaver. I couldn’t remember what grade I’d received.