Chapter Nineteen
Annika could feel her face redden with discomfort and then pale with fear at the implications.
He had to be wrong, though!
Right?
She and her crew were the first humans to set eyes on the place!
Weren’t they?
And if they weren’t, then there was a damned elaborate charade being perpetrated here and she wasn’t sure she could ever figure it out let alone think of a way to report it.
She’d probably just get buried in a mental institute if she tried.
And that was assuming she could actually bypass the company men and get somewhere to report!
“That’s ... that just isn’t possible,” Annika managed to gasp finally. “None of my people have been here before! We—me and my crew—were sent to find places where colonies could be established.
“I mean ... as far as I can recall, they discovered the planet DFY1360 a couple of decades ago, but there are all sorts of studies and research that has to be done before a planet is chosen for human exploration and development. We don’t just jump into this kind of thing! We have to determine if it’s worth it economically before we put human lives at risk!”
Even as she tried to convince them, though, it was tumbling around her mind that the company had known about the planet for decades. She couldn’t say, positively, that they hadn’t ignored protocol and immediately launched a survey.
And that survey—whenever it was launched—had uncovered riches beyond imagination—deposits that would’ve been hard for anyone to resist.
It would be like discovering a sunken treasure ship off the coast of a country that refused to let you explore it and claim it even though you were the one that found it!
So she could accept that it was possible, but was it true? And could she ever really determine one way or the other?
Did it really matter as much as the outcome? The end result was that, if they weren’t stopped, the company was going to take over the entire planet. The courts might rescind their ownership and hand it back to the natives, but that wouldn’t be easy to enforce even if it went through the court system.
The company was a very wealthy and powerful entity.
“Is possible,” Ragnor insisted. “Come look. I show you.”
Annika glanced at Zhor questioningly. He reddened for some reason that she didn’t understand. “I see ting.”
Since it didn’t look like Zhor meant to object, the two men sheathed their swords and the three of them moved cautiously through the jungle on foot—to Annika’s very great relief—until they reached the edge of a clearing. They crouched there for a short while and determined that it was occupied. There were three men—that they could see—but Annika could also see that there was a sizeable habitat. This particular one was capable of housing several dozen workers.
She could see construction bots, but those could have been left over from when they cleared the site for the habitat.
It was a manufactured habitat, though, which she found disturbing. It hadn’t been built on site. It had been brought as a ship—which was basically what it was—fully capable of taking off at any moment and moving to another location or into space.
That at least supported Ragnor’s claim. The construction bots—designed for clearing and leveling the land—were the same ones used to demolish old structures as far as she knew. They were certainly capable of being programmed for that type of work. And the fact that the habitat had been flown in seemed to make the presence of the construction bots superfluous.
“I should talk to them,” Annika said after a moment.
Ragnor grabbed one arm and Zhor the other, preventing her from moving.
“No!” both said almost in unison.
Annika gaped at them. “Well! We aren’t going to find out anything here!”
“Wan Ah-na dead,” Zhor growled. “You go, dey shoot, we doan fin’ out nu’ting!”
Annika looked at Ragnor. “These are the ones that offered the bounty?”
He shrugged. “Mus’ be. No see de one come to village.”
Annika studied him but her mind was on his grasp of English. Had she but realized it before, that was proof enough that he had been around other humans—a lot. “How long has this been here?”
He shrugged. “Eighteen maybe twenty pars.”
Annika frowned. This planet had longer days than Earth—which was the ruler they used for all the worlds they knew now. Earth time. “So ... about a month?” she asked doubtfully.
Ragnor hesitated, clearly thinking, and finally shook his head. “Pars count position around star. Sixteen, go all de way ‘round.”
Annika sucked in a sharp breath. Fortunately, she remembered they were trying to hide before she blurted out anything that might have been heard. “Over a year?”
He nodded.
“So that means they were already here before we got here—if we both know what we’re talking about here. And I suppose that might explain how they could know I’d survived. If they were the ones that got there and cleaned everything up, they would’ve known a crewmember was missing. And that I probably wasn’t dead since they didn’t find me in the wreckage or anywhere around it.”
She frowned, but she couldn’t make sense of the puzzle. It gave her a blinding headache just trying to unravel it.
“Appearances,” she finally decided. “If we assume they’re up to no good and they don’t want to get caught, then they would try to make everything look ‘normal’ and above board.
“Maybe I could sneak in and find out what’s going on?”
“No!” Zhor managed to get the objection out before Ragnor that time.
“No can get in dere,” Ragnor added.
“Some ting dere,” Zhor said.
Annika glanced from one to the other. “The force field? I can deactivate that ... I’m pretty sure.”
Both men looked confused. Annika sighed. “Standard security. The company uses the same code on all of the facilities like this. They don’t have to worry about the natives figuring it out—only whether or not a rival company wants to get in to sabotage them. And that isn’t a major concern in general. There are billions of planets out there. No point in wasting time fighting over one when they can find something as good or better very easily—well, this place is in a class all its own, but if they’ve been keeping it quiet, the other companies probably don’t know.
“It won’t hurt to check. If nothing else, I could grab some supplies. We might need medicines. That small pox is still alive and kicking in the city. I’ve been vaccinated but I’m sure neither of you have. You might have become naturally immune, but why take the chance when there would be medicine in the med center?”
Of course that was assuming they were close enough, genetically, for the medicine to work at all and not kill them, but they didn’t have a lot of options as far as she could see. Both of them had been exposed. She thought they ought to at least make a push to prevent the disease from going rampant through the population again and possibly wiping out the survivors.
She was mostly interested in Zhor, naturally, but through him ....
Zhor didn’t get half of what she’d said. She could see that Ragnor had—at least most of it and was considering the odds and the potential for benefit. Neither of them seemed very enthusiastic about her plan, though.
“You aren’t going to get in at all without me.”
The two men exchanged a long look that was so very male her palm itched.
“Fine! Go ahead. See how far you get. And, assuming you get in, you’re going to find your way to the med center without me and you’ll know which medicine is the right stuff because both of you have dicks and I’m just a girl ....”
Ragnor grinned a little sheepishly and actually seemed to blush faintly, although that might have been her imagination. He glanced from her to Zhor. “I try. No can get in.”
“We do not need to,” Zhor said grimly. “They are a threat to Ah-na. I am not allowing her to go any closer. In fact, I have every intention of taking her as far away as possible.”
Ragnor shook his head. “You cannot take her far enough to keep her safe from them. This thing may look too big and awkward to fly, but I have seen it. And they have smaller things for individuals that can fly also.
“You cannot make her safe just by taking her away and hiding her. I am not certain what you could do that would, but hiding would only be a temporary solution at best.”
“You may be right,” Zhor responded tightly, “but it is all that I can do—take her away and try to keep her safe. Eventually, it is not unreasonable to think that they will cease to consider her a threat and stop looking.”
He hoped.
“That may be so,” Ragnor said after a long moment, clearly considering options. “I will take the two of you to my village. No one—not Kerrie, zorph, or her kind—will bother you there. It will give us time to think what may be done about the situation and to learn what it is that these people plan for our world.
Zhor would have liked to argue the statement but, unfortunately, he knew that it was nothing but the truth. No one in their right mind would consider attacking a conkerrie village—which meant it was the safest place he could find for Ah-na. He did not believe even the humans were that stupid in their arrogance! “Your people are not known for welcoming outlanders—and she is not even of our world,” he pointed out dryly.
Ragnor shrugged. “They will not defy me. If I say you are welcome there, they will accept.”
He seemed both sincere and certain. Zhor was still doubtful, but the truth was he had not been able to think of any place that would be safe and also comfortable for his woman, his Ah-na. The city was a dead place full of ghosts and beyond that might still carry the sickness that had all but wiped out his people.
Was there really any choice when they had nothing and nowhere to go?
He nodded finally, hoping they were not walking into a trap, that he was not taking Ah-na to her death. “We will go with you.”