Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [33]
closer look showed it coated with sap—already fresh liquid oozed to fill the gap he’d created—and covered thickly with insects.
Not your basic Alaskan taiga. Remember that.
The shuttle’s flight path left a scar of loamy brown against the green undergrowth—a darker green than seemed natural to Riker’s eyes. He followed it a short distance. Easy going, this, and directional as well. If he couldn’t talk Akarr out of walking out, this was the place to start. And ahh … he remembered this bounce, the biggest during their final plunging descent. He stood at the edge of a particularly deep gouge, well through the thin soil and into light, chunky clay-and rock layers, and contemplated their almost-fate… how if he’d come in at a slightly steeper angle … None of them would have survived that one.
Something flittered above him; of the creatures they’d scared off, apparently some were bolder in returning than others. The silent jungle had begun to rustle and chirp again. Riker felt the weight of the knife at his calf, and wished for the weight of a phaser in his hand. Time to return for the bat’leth.
He met Takan and Rakal at the back of the shuttle; already they panted slightly in the heat, their short, cupped ears blushing a bruised color and fanning thin to distribute heat. “Be careful,” he said. “Whatever we scared off is coming back.”
“It was expected,” Rakal said. In Akarr’s presence he had taken no special note of Riker; now he raked him up and down with a dark and scornful gaze. Riker had not paid much attention before, but he suddenly recognized the cinnamon cast to Rakal’s coat, the pattern of his vest… this was the Tsoran who’d scuffled with Dougherty on the shuttle. Wonderful. Of the two uninjured guards, one of them bore Riker a grudge simply for being embarrassed in his presence.
“We’ve gone beyond expected.” Riker looked into the trees as something let loose a raucous cry. “We’re running headlong into now.”
Takan lifted his weapon—a short-barreled, extremely short range dart-propulsion gun. “We are prepared to deal with them. If you are not, then you should return to the shuttle.”
I’m about to get prepared to deal with them. But of course he didn’t say it. He returned the Tsoran’s stare and said, “No, Guinan, you win. It doesn’t get any easier.” That baffled them completely, which was almost as good as shedding his good-guy Federation Officer face and taking these Tsorans down a peg or two. Never mind that those teeth jutted out for slashing in a fight, just like a boar’s. And never mind that they had stout, sharp claws on all four fingers and both thumbs of each hand.
Stop it. Survival, that was the goal here. And to do it in such a manner that the Tsorans weren’t alienated beyond allowing the Ntignano evacuation to traverse the edges of their space. So, trying to take the belligerence out of his posture, he added, “Looks like a good spot to bury Pavar back there, if that’s what you want to do with him. We dug it out on the way in.”
They didn’t reply. But they did start down the crash path. Riker returned to the shuttle door the way he’d left, and tried not to smile at the sight of Tsoran fur running the length of the sticky vine.
Akarr sat at the shuttle entrance, sitting on the ground and shoving darts into the chamber of his own tranquilizer gun. Gavare, damply clean, seemed to have ceased wandering, but Regen kept a close eye on him anyway. Ketan simply sat at the side of the shuttle looking miser
able. Akarr looked up at Riker, closing the chamber on his little weapon by feel. Like the other Tsorans, he also had a knife at his side, and unlike the other two, he wore a highly decorated, ceremonial trophy knife jammed