Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [120]
'I'll fly the ship,' she said. 'I know the layout of the Llaro colony well enough. We'll bring the detainees home to their clans.'
'Even if we think it's just a handful of bored soldiers stationed there, we'll pretty much be going in blind,' Robb said. I'd rather not try this without top-of-the-line weaponry. There's too much that can go wrong.'
Denn considered carefully. 'After all you two have done for us around here, just figure out what you need. I'll make it happen.'
Seventy-four
Rlinda Kett
With Rhejak's tropical sun warming her skin and moist salty air filling her lungs, Rlinda lounged back in her comfortable chair. 'I sure like my job as Trade Minister. This is the kind of business meeting I could attend every day of the week, and I like this place a lot better than Earth. Quite a bit more welcoming.'
Beside her, BeBob gave a non-committal yawn. She nudged him awake. 'You do have to pay a modicum of attention. This is work, you know.'
'I'm paying attention.' But he still didn't open his eyes.
Hakim Allahu, brown-skinned spokesman for the handful of independent businesses on the former Hansa colony world, sat next to them. 'Sometimes I forget how nice we have it.' He went over the manifest of goods on the datapad propped on his knees, marking what had already been loaded aboard the Voracious Curiosity.
'I'd expect you'd have colonists standing in line from here all the way to the next Spiral Arm. How have you kept this place a secret?' Rlinda watched dark-winged gulls swooping down to gobble up jumpers that splashed out of the waves. Dark reefs formed a labyrinth in the shallow seas.
'It's no accident that we don't have a tourism board. We let everybody think we're a rugged planet with a lot of water and not much land.'
'My lips are sealed,' Rlinda said.
BeBob rubbed his eyes. 'You forgot to mention the sea monsters. Images of those things would scare away any casual tourists.'
'Those medusas are as gentle as clams… and about as intelligent,' Allahu said. 'Think of them as giant snails.'
'A snail with tentacles, and a shell as big as a house.'
'Literally,' Rlinda added. Most of the dwellings on Rhejak were composed of empty medusa shells. Each giant shell was enough to house a single person, families grouped empty shells together and drilled holes from one chamber to the next to make larger conglomerate dwellings.
The enormous creatures drifted in the calm waters between the sinuous reefs, making a low moaning sound as they swam in slow, endless feeding patterns. Grey-blue tentacles extended from the mouth of a huge curlicue shell. The things had two pairs of eyes, one set above the waterline for seeing in the air, the other beneath the surface for spotting fish. Dressed only in shorts, young boys rode on top of the great ridged shells, herding the medusas. /
'Their meat certainly is tasty, I'll grant you that.' Since landing on Rhejak two days ago, Rlinda had eaten the delicacy prepared five different ways. Medusa meat commanded an extremely high price in the Spiral Arm, but here it was as common as beans.
Rhejak and Constantine III were business partners, 'sister planets'. Allahu and his associates funded some of the commercial activities on Constantine III, in exchange for fresh seafood, which Roamers did not often get to eat. But Rhejak had much to offer beyond the obvious marine foods. From an adjacent reef rose the tall, skeletal towers of the Company Works. Huge pumps filtered the mineral-rich seawater, pulling out rare metals and distilling chemical precursors not found anywhere else in the Spiral Arm.
The reefs themselves, painstakingly built up by numerous small coral-like creatures, yielded a wealth of exotic crystalline structures, industrial abrasives, and calcium-rich compounds that had gained notoriety in certain health