She ran through the woods screaming for Becker, screaming Ae names of her fallen friends.
Much to her surprise, Becker and Mac, brandishing weapons, bounded toward her through the woods, Becker yelling, “Where is he? Point and duck!”
She turned and ran back toward Aari, who, much to her ^rprise, was raising himself unharmed from among curled ^leevi legs and pincers. The creature made no attempt to stop him or damage him. Instead it stayed on the ground, emitting the same high-pitched “eee-eee-eee” sound their prisoner had made back on the ship. Decker paid none of that any attention at all. As soon as Aari -was clear, Becker pressed his rifle against his hip and fired. A huge crackling hole opened up in the creature and it was still.
The echo of the shot had not yet faded when a pair of Linyaari figures carrying what looked like strips of metal came running over the hill. (Maati? Aari? By the ancestors, are they ()ea()1)
Acorna grabbed Aari’s arm and heard the mental call when she touched him. (Mother? Father?) he said, stunned.
Maati sat up, groggy. “Did somebody call me?”
Acorna released Aari and moved to kneel beside Thariinye. Her old shipmate did not look up, but she could see he was breathing. His shipsuit was a bloody mess. One of his hands dangled from a scrap of skin protruding from his sleeve. A chunk was missing from his right cheek and one of his eyes was swelled shut, the lid and brow lacerated. His horn was an inch or so shorter than it had been.
“Thariinye!” Maati cried, and rose to her hands and knees to do a very fast crawl to Thariinye’s other side. “Oh, no, look at his hand.”
“Maati? Baby, is that you, all grown up?” the male Linyaari who had appeared during the fight asked.
Maati’s face rose to look at the two tall Linyaari strangers. Once she got a good look at their faces she ran to them, crying. “Mother? Father? Help us! Thariinye’s hurt bad. He made the Khieevi fight him so it wouldn’t kill me.” She dragged her parents back to Thariinye’s side.
“My goodness,” her mother said. “The young man certainly is in a bad way, but this young lady is doing a fine job or healing him. Maati?”
The male Linyaari gently shoved Acorna aside and bent his own horn to Thariinye’s hand. “Allow me, my dear. This boy was little more than a toddler when we left narhiiVhiliinyar. And now he’s been wounded protecting our little girl.”
Acorna willingly surrendered Thariinye’s care to the man. She was weary beyond belief from her own ordeal, but she needed to see to Aari. He hadn’t appeared to be greatly harmed by his own encounter with the Khieevi, although he had been locked in its multilegged embrace. But there had been something odd about their “parting.”
Becker and Aari were both bent over the corpse of the Khieevi, studying it.
“The Khieevi -was dying when you shot it, Joh. It could not hold on to me. See how its legs are curled?”
“Lead poisoning -will do that to you,” Becker growled.
“Lead poisoning? Where was the lead?” Aari asked. “You used the laser canon.”
“Figure of speech,” Becker replied.
“Aari, are you hurt?” Acorna asked, looking him over careful. “The front of your shirt-it’s a mess.”
Aari looked down and said with satisfaction, “Khieevi blood, mostly. You or Thariinye must have wounded the creature before I reached it. I had no -weapons.”
“Neither did we,” Acorna said. “We weren’t expecting trouble here.” She knelt to examine the dead Khieevi. Gingerly, she touched its chest along the edge of the wound made by Becker’s laser cannon. “What is this? It’s not the same color as the Khieevi blood.”
“Oh-that’s from me,” Aari said, “I fell in the sap on the robohft when I left the ship. It was all over the front of my ^ipsuit.”
Acorna tried to remove the sap with her finger but it had ^tually sunk into the Khieevi’s carapace. In fact, she saw as ^e pulled some of the sap aside, it had eaten away a portion or the creature’s shell-like protection. She looked up at the two men who were frowning down watching her. “What became of the other Khieevi?”