Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [96]
“Christ!” he exclaimed. “This thing is fast!”
“It is a large structure,” the consul replied. “The top is three kilometers from the ground.”
He nodded, impressed. The Shamani woman was looking straight ahead, the green lenses masking her eyes to an even higher level of inscrutability than usual. The officer cleared his throat.
“Thanks,” he said. “That wouldn’t have been possible without you.”
“No,” she said, “it would not have.” Char-Kane turned suddenly and appeared to look the SEALS lieutenant up and down with a curious sense of appraisal. “But I could not have created the aura of command. You made them fear you, just as they would fear a true savant. My heart was pounding in my throat, and you looked like you would have struck one of them dead if he so much as dared to look you in the eye.”
He was suddenly embarrassed. Touching the blueprints, which were thin enough for him to fold multiple layers into a tiny bundle concealed in his tunic, he reflected on her skill at manipulating the communications machine.
“You’re a remarkable woman—person,” he said. “You can land a shuttle, operate a complicated processor, and infiltrate an enemy installation.”
Her eyes turned down to the floor for just a moment until she raised them to look at him frankly. “I spent much of my childhood among the Eluoi,” she offered. “The language and the symbology are very familiar to me.”
“Were you some sort of exchange student?” wondered Jackson.
She snorted dismissively. “Hardly,” she replied. “I was a slave. I was rescued during the Second Spider War, when the Shamani armies expelled the Eluoi from an entire star cluster. But I used my time with the enemy well.”
She held out her arms and hands, flexing her fingers as she gestured to Jackson’s. “And besides, we all share the same basic physiology and anatomy. The tools of the Eluoi, or the Assarn, or the Shamani, all fit the hands of the three races.”
“Four races, don’t you mean?” Jackson suggested. “Or are you forgetting us Earthlings?”
For the first time ever in the lieutenant’s experience, the consul de campe of the Shamani actually smiled, a thin, wry expression that indisputably conveyed humor. “I think you will find—eventually—that you humans are not so different from the rest of us as you think.” She stopped, pensive for a second, and Jackson saw that look again. He was sure it was an expression of affection, and it was strangely disconcerting, as well as appealing, on the vaguely Asian features of the haughty Shamani.
“Perhaps,” she said softly, “it is we who are more like you than our people would have suspected.”
“What do you mean by that?” the SEALS challenged as the gravity increased abruptly and dramatically. The two passengers in the car flexed their knees against the sudden heaviness and felt the ride come to a smooth halt.
“We can talk about it later,” Char-Kane said, still amused. “This is our floor.”
As soon as they were back at the jetcar concealed in the crater, the lieutenant gathered his men, as well as the Assarn pilot and Consul de Campe Char-Kane, for a council of war. He was moderately surprised to see that the world of Batuun—this side of it, anyway—was shrouded in twilight. A lush mixture of purples and violets shaded the west, the setting sun still visible but low between the towering clouds.
Harry Teal spoke to him privately: Robinson’s condition had continued to deteriorate even though the corpsman had used the most powerful antibiotics in his medkit. The wounded man needed a hospital soon if they were to have any chance of saving his life. With a muffled curse, Jackson accepted the report, knowing there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
The Team, together with Parvik and Char-Kane, assembled quickly, squatting on the rough stone under one of the aircraft’s stubby wings, and considered the myriad