Honor - Kevin Killiany [25]
“Ah,” said Corsi, making a note that violent head-shaking near the ground indicated laughter. “Sorry about that.”
Though the smaller trees of the forest looked like pines, they were of much denser wood. Corsi found it impossible to bend any but the smallest saplings and branches could not be casually brushed aside. If the hand axes she had heard were the invaders’ only tools, she was impressed with their tenacity.
For their part, the K’k’tict moved silently through the thick and thorny underbrush. Corsi noted they did not travel in straight lines and they varied their pace, frequently pausing to listen. Remembering Copper’s question about why she was killing K’k’tict, Corsi wondered if this stealth was instinctive or a survival skill recently mastered.
She noticed they kept their large, lemur eyes squinted almost shut long after they’d left the twilight of the banyan forest. Apparently adaptation to life beneath a few hundred meters of shade tree meant even the dappled sunlight they were moving through was painfully bright.
Copper had led them in a curving route that brought the recon party to the edge of the cleared roadway several dozen meters behind the workers. They were indeed clearing the land with only hand tools, watched over by guards armed with what looked like stylized crossbows. At first Corsi thought she was looking at slave labor, then realized the guards were watching the underbrush, not the workers. They were protection.
The beings themselves were humanoid, with skin as gray as Cardassians’, but not scaled. They also seemed to share the Cardassian fondness for wearing black, but their hair color ranged from blonder than hers through orange and red to a maroon that was almost brown. When the closest guard glanced her way, she saw his eyes were a metallic yellow that looked almost artificial.
Zaire? Zoysia? Something. Corsi knew she’d seen a data file on these people, but they were advanced way beyond hand axes and crossbows. And they should not be here. Something was not right. She rocked back on her heels, unfocusing her eyes, and waited for the memory to fully develop. Nothing.
Giving up, she signaled Copper she had seen enough. The elder K’k’tict led them away from the strangers.
“I know of this species,” Corsi said as they regrouped in a small clearing, “though I have never seen them.”
She received understandably blank looks from the other three. However, she was not about to explain data files and life on other worlds to them.
“These are not my people,” she repeated, holding up one hand back toward them. “Coloration.”
The K’k’tict bobbed, acknowledging the point.
“Could we get closer to their camp?” Corsi asked. “Perhaps we can learn more about them.”
With a typically K’k’tict lack of comment, Copper turned and began moving silently through the underbrush in a new direction. Corsi followed, bent low to stay under the stiff branches of the trees, with Lefty and Spot behind her.
The clear-cut area was not as flat as it had appeared from the banyan tree. There were piles of logs apparently curing in the sun, the acidic tang of their resin threatening to trigger a sneeze with every breath. Conical mounds of smaller branches waited to be dry enough to burn. About two hundred meters from the buildings, however, near the edge of the shallow basin lined with metal, the cover ran out. Corsi wished for a set of binoculars, but made do with squinting.
By the long runway was what appeared to be the frame of a glider being carefully dismantled. Though it was large—she estimated it could have carried perhaps two dozen of the newcomers—it was not huge. Which meant the runway’s expanse was indeed to give the landers a wide margin of error.
Gliders arriving without power and cannibalized for parts and metal meant the—what is their name?—were making a one-way trip to get here. It also explained the hand tools and crossbows. Keeping mass to a minimum meant no heavy machinery and weapons that used locally available ammunition.
But while