Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [66]
when Riker stood away from the vine and straightened his shoulders, drawing them back in the ready for anything stance Akarr had come to expect from him.
“Akarr?” Riker said. “Are your people ready to move? We’ve got an arborata on our tails—”
Akarr shook off the internal conflict, deciding that it was merely the unwelcome influence of Riker himself, and the man’s unceasing hubris—so certain he knew how things should be handled, especially when it came to the welfare of Akarr’s men. “We’re ready,” he said, without looking back. At least now he knew what to watch for—as if anyone ever really saw an arborata before it was ready to be seen.
At least, from what trop hied kaphoora hunters had told him. Although now he suddenly wondered if those trop hied hunters had ever actually seen an arborata. None of them had ever been in this deep. Where they merely repeating the same Legacy wisdom back and forth at one another?
It occurred to him that were he one of them, he would do the same without thinking. In that moment, his world perspective gave a sudden, unwelcome lurch.
“Akarr!” Riker shouted, grabbing at his side as if he expected to find some weapon there, his gaze riveted above and behind Akarr as Worf came crashing back through the undergrowth. Arborata! Akarr whirled, drawing his trank gun—and found the arborata swooping down so closely that he squeaked—squeaked!—and fell on his bottom. But he didn’t lose the trank gun or his aim, and when the creature whooshed close overhead in the nadir of its dive, he squeezed the release—and for once, he saw the dart thunk home.
The arborata flapped its scaled, triangular wings and disappeared into the trees.
He couldn’t have been any closer. He couldn’t have been any more on-target. He hadn’t missed, not this time’ Here it comes again,” Riker said, his voice rising into a warning shout as the thing increased speed, its barbed and prehensile tail lashing, preparing to strike-looking like a giant skik as it skimmed the air, tilting to maneuver with ease between the trees. It set itself at the group of wounded, and Gavare threw himself over Ketan’s litter as the Fandrean rangers both went to their knees, trank guns braced and aimed. Two almost inaudible phuts of noise, and the arborata veered off. Moments later, it folded into a limp black arrangement of long scaled wings, floppy scooped ears, and drooping tails, crashing down through the undergrowth until it hit the ground with an audible thump.
Riker started after it.
“Commander!” Worf said, but hesitated at the look Riker gave him. Even humans, it seemed, had their daleura ranking. “With respect, sir, our priority is to return to the shuttle.”
“Humor me,” Riker said shortly, intent enough on the arborata to draw new energy from … somewhere. “It’s more important than you think. Get the others moving-I’ll catch up.”
And Akarr, though he wasn’t sure why, followed along behind Riker, Zefan in his wake. On the run and panting-hot, Akarr located Riker more by sound than by sight, batting giant leaves away from his face and ducking —at the very last moment—a huge sticky mess of an insect nest that seemed to materialize at eye level. Even as he straightened, he came upon Riker, crouching over the limp body of the arborata.
He hadn’t realized it was quite that big.
But its size didn’t seem to be what had Riker’s attention. There, buried in its plump breast, was Akarr’s dart-quite distinguishable from the Fandrean dart lodged in the muscle of one leathery gliding wing. Riker glanced up at him. “You might as well take trophy from this one before it comes around. It should have been yours.”
“I don’t understand,” Akarr said stiffly, though he was suddenly very much afraid that he did. “The creature didn’t go down with my dart. It’s not any more my trophy than—”
Than the skik claws he’d already taken.
“No?” Riker raised an eyebrow at him, a purely human gesture that Akarr associated with the wry