Silent Dances (41 page)

excavate large ore deposits. Some of those machines were only modified

military weapons that used concentrated energy beams. Could Bruce have

convinced the others to eradicate the Aquila? The first step would be to

disrupt their habitat.

All at once Sailor jerked his head back, staring at the close ceiling. "Run!" he signed, then leaped to his feet in one strong move, pushing against the top

of the lodge with his back. He flipped the dome over like a turtle shell before

the human could even get to her feet.

With a powerful grip that belied his thin fingers, the avian latched onto her

wrist and hauled her up. Confused and

201

fright
ened
,
Tesa scrambled for footing as Sailor began dragging her

away
.
She gl
an
ced up
,
following his gaze.

A tre
e was falling on them
.
No, not a tree, a limb-a limb bigger th
an
the
biggest tree on Earth. It had been shea
re
d from the pa
re
nt t
re
e and
was falling slowly toward them.

My nest! The Aquila chick!
her mind screamed
,
but Sailor yanked her
hard
,
nearly pulling her down
.
Regaining her feet, she reached for the
sled
,
still gliding steadily beside her. She leaped upon it as Sailor took

the lead as they flew through the dark
,
rain
-
soaked fo
re
st.

Tesa
stole quick glances back, watching the limb fall. Above it, the

Baraboo
hovere
d, gray and th
re
atening. The Aquila pa
re
nts careened
around the ship, as helpless against the metal monster as the Blue

Cloud people had been
.
Suddenly the male struck the ship with his

talons
,
slamming his wings against its forward viewpo
rt.
As he pulled
away, a blast of energy caught him, vapo
ri
zing him in one shocking

second.

The violence of it made Tesa want to vomit, but she was still too fri
ghtened

for herself to do anything but flee. Another blast
re
ached out for the

female
,
but she had lea
rn
ed
her lesson.
Vee
ri
ng off erratically
,
she
flew away
.
The shu
tt
le did not pursue her.

Tesa an
d Sailor slowed to a stop and watched the gi
an
t limb finally

crash
,
smashing the ove
rt
u
rn
ed sweat lodge
,
obliterating
it. The chick
cradled in the massive nest had to have been killed
. Tesa
's ang
ry

tears we
re
invisible on her rain-soaked face
.
She tu
rn
ed away.

Tesa glanced at her voder,
still strobing
.
She would order them to stop

the attack
.
She
was the interrelator.
They had no
ri
ght to damage T
ri
nity's environment or kill its inhabit
an
ts, no ma
tt
er what the Aquila
had done.

She was about to tap an
order into the voder when a line of dialogue
tr

ailed across the bo
tt
om
of her
small screen. The
Baraboo
was communicating with someone.

"Destroy the
camera
,"
the message read
. "
It might have filmed you
.
I'll
get Albaugh to pick it up later."

That was
not coming from the ship
.
Tesa asked the voder to locate the

coordinates of the speaker
.
The voder confirmed the transmission site.

It was coming from the
Singing Crane.

"We're being monitored." This speaker was aboard the ship. Tesa re
alized
,
too late, that her probe had ale
rt
ed the shuttle
'
s crew to her p
re
sence
. "
Who is it?"

202

"It's not Albaugh," the
Crane
said, "
but it could be anyone else. Get out of
the
re
."

"
Negative
,"
replied the ship
. "
We'll take out the camera. And the
witness."

"Negative, yourself!" ordered the
Crane.
"Do you read? Negative on that last."

"You're overruled,"
said the ship
. "
No witnesses."
They're going to kill us,
Tesa thought with surprising calm. Realizing she was being pinpointed

through the voder, Tesa gestured to Sailor as she sped away.
A blast of

power slammed the ground where the two had been
,
sta
rt
ing a fire

that was quickly snuffed out by the rain
.
As soon as the bolt struck,

she slapped the voder off and shut down the scanning equipment on

the sled, praying the ship would think she'd been hit.

The Grus youngster paced her through the woods as she dodged and

weaved,
heading for their hollow tree
.
They had to get inside
...
and
hide until the ship left.

"
Father Sun is up
,"
Tesa signed
.
Sailor uncoiled his neck. The human
had crept out a few times in the night
,
pee
ri
ng through the trees,

searching for the shuttle
'
s colored lights. She'd never seen any, but

she was still too f
ri
ghtened to risk tu
rn
ing on her voder
.
She had
even shut the sled down, for fear the ship
'
s crew might
tr
ace her

through its power cell.

It had been a long night as the two fri
ends huddled together in the belly

of the hollow tree. It had been hours before they had mustered enough

courage to even sign to each other, but finally,
Tesa
had tu
rn
ed on a
small lamp
,
and they began to
talk.

Sailor told her of the massacre, and of Peter
'
s death at Thorn
'
s hand
.

This news was more than Tesa could handle,
an
d she c
ri
ed
,
hugging
her knees
,
while Sailor
,
g
ri
ef-stricken himself
,
t
ri
ed futilely to
console her.

When she thought of Thorn,
the pain was sharp, but after what she
'
d

read on her voder she could no longer deny his involvement. His
an
d

how m
an
y others? Even so
,
Tesa believed it was the p
ri
vateers that
had masterminded
an
d commi
tt
ed the massac
re
, though it seemed
someone
had loan
ed them the
Baraboo
to do it.

She laughed bitt
erly
.
The
re
would be no First Contact now. Not on T
ri
nity
.
The
re
was nothing she could do about it, either. Sailor wondered
if the
Baraboo
had followed him. He

203

couldn
'
t imagine any other reason for its appe
ar
ance, until the ship
attacked the Aquila
.
He confessed that pa
rt
of him had rejoiced when
the male had been killed
,
but then
an
other pa
rt
of him was repelled
.
It
wasn't
ri
ght
,
he decided
,
for outsiders to kill the c
re
atures of the
World,
even creatures as despised as Death
.
The whole thing had him

thoroughly confused.

Tesa also wondered why the ship had appeared. Scott had
speculated that

the
re
might be some connection between the criminals and the Aquila
.

But what kind of a relationship could it be
,
if the humans slaughtered

the Aquila
an
d their chicks?

Tesa and Sailor had discussed these questions long into the night,
but still

had no answers
.
Now, in the pale light of mo
rn
ing, they cautiously left
their hiding place.

Searching the sky, Tesa could not see the shuttle and Sailor
couldn
'
t he
ar
it
,
either
.
Hesitantly, Tesa tu
rn
ed on her sled, leaving the scanners off.

She did not d
ar
e activate the voder. Besides
,
who could she call
,
who
could she trust
?
She refused
to believe Meg was involved, but if she

risked contacting her
she might be putting the older wom
an
in danger.

Sailor helped her remove her things from the hollow tree
and secure them

on the sled. "Let
'
s go back to the sweat lodge
,"
Tesa signed
. "
I want
to salvage my blanket and feather shi
rt
."

The young Grus looked at her skeptically with one eye. She didn't tell him

she wanted to search for the Aquila chick,
though she held li
tt
le hope that
it was still alive.

When they reached the attack site, Tesa ran her hand over
the blackened

end of the gi
an
t limb
. They walked
the length
of it, one on either side, until they found the sweat lodge re
mains.

The lodge was completely obliterated, with only a few saplings sticking out

from under the limb to mark the place. A little farther away, Tesa found a

corner of her grandmother's quilt and a piece of her feathered shirt poking

out. She pushed
against the limb, but they were too f
ar
under to dig out

without help. She fought back tears
,
not w
an
ting the loss of these two
things to become her breaking point.
They're not lost forever,
she told

herself.
I'll get them out someday.
Taking a deep breath, Tesa walked on.

Sailor hesitated when he
re
cognized the
re
mnants of an Aquila nest
,
but finally followed
.
Tesa pushed on, wanting to know the worst
.
For
some
re
ason
,
she felt that someone other

204

than
the chick
'
s mother should know of his death
an
d mou
rn
him.

The end of the limb fan
ned out into m
an
y smaller branches, cupping

the nest
.
Tesa could not see the chick. Had a predator
carried off his

body already?

Scrambling through the flexible branches
,
she pushed aside the

flaming
red leaves.

"What are you doing?" Sailor signed.

By now Tesa was searching fr
an
tically
,
and his question
triggered the flood of tears she'd been barely holding back. She shook her head, unable

to answer, and kept searching. Finally, seeing how upset she was, he began

timidly poking through the leaves. Tesa stifled a surge of manic laughter as

Sailor dutifully explored even though he didn't know why.

"The baby," she explained, "I've got to find the baby." His willingness to help visibly fading, Sailor explored with
less interest
. Suddenly he jumped back

so violently, he had to fan his wings to land. Tesa scrambled to the spot,

heedless of
branches that slapped her knees and shins. His reaction

had to
mean he'd found the chick, alive!When she pushed back the

cushiony curtain of leaves, the chick lunged at her, nearly grabbing her

thumb. Tesa fought for control. Out of the nightmare and bloodshed,

something
had survived! She began pulling off her boot, planning to use her

sock to hood the chick.

She gl
an
ced at Sailor
.
He was keeping his dist
an
ce
,
standing as still
as one of the trees behind him
.
He must think she'd
gone crazy. Well,

perhaps she had, but she was
damned
if anything else would die today!

Yanking off her sock, Tesa rolled it up, then pushed back the leaves with the

hand holding the sock and grabbed the chick's head with the other. Holding

the thrashing avian's head, she pulled the toe of the sock over his beak until

the anklet was down around his hunched shoulders. She could feel the

vibrations of the Aquila baby's terrified screams.

Wrapping her arms around his plump body, Tesa lifted the chick carefully out

of the cushiony leaves that had no doubt
saved his life. Unable to see
,
the

avian now offered little resistance
.
He was big enough to fill her arms
.

She set the creature carefully on the forest floor.

He had a few bruises,
a couple of cuts, but nothing was b
ro
ken
.
His
legs
,
a pale yellow
,
ju
tt
ed out from his pelvis