Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [86]
Shefen lifted his head. “Those secondary displays describe the considerable number of prey animals available to the predators. As you might imagine, creatures as big as the cartiga require a significant food source.” He gestured at the terrain around them. “Ictaya made these paths—grazing paths. They keep the vegetation down. We’ve been lucky we haven’t seen any—they’re stupid animals, who panic at nothing and stampede with frequency. What one of them does, the next does as well—if one of them trips or jumps over nothing, every ictaya behind it will do the same. They regularly run into the Legacy force field And they will mow down anything in their path.”
The rumble came more distinctly now—Riker felt it in the balls of his feet, his flexed knees, his chest. It no longer sounded like thunder. Now it came through as an ominous, continuous grumble of earth. “Let me guess,” he said, oh-so-dryly. “You think we’re in their path.”
Shefen gave a short affirmative gesture.
“Then how do we get out of their path?” There had to be some way … some pattern the animals usually followed that they could counter.
“Run.”
Riker felt like laughing … perhaps hysterically. Instead he said dryly, “In any particular direction?”
“There’s no predicting what they’ll do or where or when they’ll turn. They’re coming this way—they might stop short a kilometer from here, they might follow in our path simply because something else has recently gone that way.” Shefen stood. “Our best chance is to reach the portal.” He looked at them as they hesitated. “Now.”
“Even if we reach the portal, it will not open until the scheduled time,” Worf said, as Shefen explained the situation to the Tsorans and got them started, jogging off toward Zefan.
“You have a fine gift for stating the obvious, Mr. Worf,” Riker said, slowly climbing to his feet and brushing the sand from his sweat-damp uniform. “Let’s go.”
And they commenced to run. A run best described as a straggling jog, until they were widely spread out—one of the rangers on point and leading the way, and Worf and Riker taking up the rear. Worf jogged easily, holding himself back to maintain position, the modified Tsoran pack looking like a child’s accessory as it bounced lightly against his shoulders. Riker… Riker didn’t kid himself. He promised himself that hot shower, and then he promised himself more hours of conditioning, but mostly he just promised his lungs he’d keep dragging in that all important next breath. Breathing, the jar from heel to knee to hip that meant he’d made the next step, and an occasional swipe to take care of the sweat gathering to run into his eyes … nothing so complex as a thought to he had.
And still some part of him noticed that the rumbling grew. That it grew significantly. On the heels of Riker’s dawning realization, Worf turned for a quick glance behind them—and his eyes widened.
Riker turned to look, chancing his fooling to dead tired legs.
He wished he hadn’t.
The ictaya were on their trail, all right, running blindly along in the scent of those to pass most recently before them. Elephant-huge, all of them the same dirty brown, faded-at-the-edges color, with short necks that came off their bodies even with then” shoulders and large heads that nodded with their short-legged loping pace, they came on relentlessly, a tumble of moving bodies plowing through anything in their path.
He hadn’t thought he’d be able to move any faster. He couldn’t believe there was any adrenaline left in his body.
He’d been wrong on both counts.
“Run!” he shouted ahead, picking up speed and coming up on the heels of the lagging, injured Tsorans.
“Run!” Worf bellowed, surging ahead to where Rakal, flagging and at the end of his endurance, stumbled and started to go down. Worf scooped him up, ignoring the being’s screams of pain, and tossed him over his shoulder. Riker wanted to do the same for Ketan but knew better; he settled for grabbing Ketan’s vest belt and hauling him along, while Gavare supported him from the other side.
They ran. Riker fixed his gaze on Worf