“Sheesh,” Becker said, holding his nose. “What are these, skunk vines?”
Acorna looked around. “No. They are the same sort of plants as the rest, but see how the flowers are closing up and the scent they are emitting is changing? It is as if they are afraid of us.”
“Hmmm, well, it does smell like the last guy who tried to gyp me out of some money he promised me,” Becker admitted. He leaned closer to a stalk and the stench grew stronger. “Joh, don’t,” Aari said.
“Just testing,” Becker said. “Sony, plants. No harm intended.”
Aari was busy unwinding twine with one hand and holding the scanner with the other. “It should not be far now, Joh,” he said. “The salvage is just ahead.”
An opening in the canopy was visible before them, and Acorna saw a long cylindrical pod lying among some twisted and charred stalks right in their path.
Becker prodded it and turned it over. Beyond it, they could see other bits of the downed ship visible among the stalks. Although there was nothing overtly useful in the wreckage they could see, Becker decided he wanted to haul all of the pieces back to the Condor. “We might be able to figure out why the Niriians sent the mayday,” he said. “Maybe find some clue to who exactly they were, what kind of trouble they were in, who attacked them.” He scratched his head. “Don’t think that this is a normal part of my business, Acorna, because it’s not. Finding wrecked ships, yes, but not stumbling on the wreckage before it’s cold. And I have a funny feeling about this one.”
“Me, too,” Acorna said.
Aari looked up, surprised at their words. “I apologize, Joh, Khornya. I did not realize that you had not understood the Hamgaar()‘s, broadcast. I would have translated it for you if I’d known.”
“Hamgaarts?” Becker asked.
“That is the name of the Niriian ship that broadcast the message that brought us here. Niriians have been trading partners of my people for many, many years. Like us, they are a nonaggressive race. Before I-before my brother was lost-I traveled on more than one trading mission to Nirii.”
He turned away, stepping over nearer pieces of wreckage to retrieve others farther from the ship.
Acorna noticed as she picked up the fragments of ship that they were sticky with some reddish fluid. At first she thought it was blood, but then she saw that it was actually more of a deep amber in color and far too transparent to be either human or Linyaari blood. It was clearly the source of the acrid smell they had noted earlier, and she wrinkled her nose. “Phew,” she told Becker. “This is what is causing the stink.”
Becker looked more closely at the damaged vines all around them, gleaming with redness that Acorna had not noticed in the plants nearer the ship. “I think you’re right. Look there. They’re weeping this stuff.”
Acorna looked. The redness ran down the stalks, pooled at the base of the stems, and was slowly encroaching on the wreckage.
“We’re going to have to give this stuff a good scrubbing,” Becker said disgustedly.
Aari was looking, too, and nodding. Then all of a sudden he turned toward them, leaped over the wreckage, and ran back to the ship as fast as Acorna had ever seen him run.
“Hey, buddy, wait up, -what is it?” Becker asked as they chased after their friend, but Aari was back on the robolift platform before they could catch him, curled up in a fetal position on the very center of the platform, his eyes tightly closed, and his entire body shaking. Sweat and tears ran off his face and wet the deck beneath him. RK dabbed at him -with an experimental paw and then looked up at Becker, wide-eyed.
Becker raised the robolift and he and Acorna shepherded Aari back to his bunk. “You stay here with him,” Becker told her. “I’ll get the KEN unit to help me load the cargo.”
Acorna had leaned against Aari so that he was in contact with her horn all the time they were loading him and he was quieter now. His trembling had stopped and he was no longer sweating. Her healing abilities worked to some degree with mental as well as physical wounds, but she was learning that she had limits. There was only so much she could do with deeply embedded psychological injuries, particularly with Aari.