Survivors - Jean Lorrah [15]
“Shhh!” Yar said-
-and was rewarded with a klaxon and flashing lights!
The huts on shore erupted with white-skinned, green-haired natives!
“Khest!” Yar exclaimed, as fluently and inaccurately as any Klingon-that expletive was one Klingon term every cadet knew, and used daily. “Give me manual control!” she demanded, getting no response as she spoke those words in English.
Spears thudded against the canopy and the sides of the boat.
“Stop, you idiots! You’ll hole it!” somebody shouted in gutteral, sibilant tones.
The hissing in the voice told Yar where she’d gone wrong: the language she had not recognized was Orion, and the Orion signal for danger was to hiss like a snake!
Adrenaline stimulated her thinking-suddenly she remembered the Klingon term for “Manual override!” She hit the starter, and the engines came alive.
The lightweight craft rose nearly out of the water, wonderfully responsive to her touch-but it swung in an arc, moored to a post on shore!
Yar grasped her machete and crawled forward beneath the canopy-
-as the boat’s owner reached her and swung aboard!
He was a huge Orion male, gray-skinned reptilian face looming, yellow eyes glaring from beneath his flat headgear. He grabbed Yar’s legs and pulled her back before she could cut through the lanyard.
Yar twisted in his grip, trying to swing the machete into position to slash at him.
But for all his size he was fast. He jerked her toward him, and an iron hand clasped over her wrist. It squeezed.
Yar twisted one leg free of his grip and knocked the breath out of him with a kick to his solar plexus.
But he did not let go! As he fell backward, he maintained his grasp on her one calf and the opposite wrist-and in a flash of blinding pain she felt her wrist break in the sheer strength of his hand. The machete fell to the deck with a dull clatter.
She had made the fatal error of a small combatant against a larger, stronger opponent: she had let him get a grip on her.
But in the close confines of the boat—
No. No excuses. She had lost this round, but the fight was not necessarily over. She must simply make the Orion think it was.
She moaned, and pretended to pass out, collapsing on his chest.
It didn’t fool him, or else he was taking no chances. Before he let go of her broken wrist, he transferred his other hand to her good arm. Then he snapped a manacle about her good wrist, fastened it to one of many rings set into the hull of the boat-a slaver’s vessel-and only then let go of her.
“Computer,” he growled, “dock the boat and turn the bloody motor off!”
Yar understood his words-his universal translator was working.
The Orion poured a bucket of water over Yar’s head, and with a splutter she was forced to acknowledge consciousness.
“What’s this then?” he was asking. “A human? What’re you doing on Priam IV, woman?”
She was so covered with mud that her uniform must be unrecognizable. “I’m a free trader. My ship crashed here,” she replied. “When I saw your boat, I thought you might help me.”
“So you decided to steal it?”
“When I saw it belonged to an Orion slaver.”
He nodded. “Smart move. Too bad you couldn’t carry it out-too bad for you, that is. For me, you’ll make a nice extra.” He grasped her chin and turned her face this way and that. “You’ll clean up pretty enough, and you’re stronger than you look or you wouldn’t have survived. Some lonely dilithium miner will pay a pretty penny for a woman who’s a looker and also has a strong back.”
He got out a medical kit, scanned her wrist, hauled the bones back into alignment with no care for her cry of pain, and put a regen brace on it. The pain began to recede.
By this time the boat was back to its mooring, and three curious natives peered in at them. “Oh, my God,” said one of them. “One of the cadets did survive!”
“Shut up!” growled a second-but it was too late.
So was Yar’s second thought. In her pain and shock she blurted out, “You’re Federation!”
Oh damn, damn, damn-why hadn’t she had the sense to pretend to be unconscious or uncomprehending?
“Kill her!” said the first