SERPENT’S REACH BY C.J. Cherryh

And the majat were cut off by the cluster of buildings; that was why there was no rush as yet. Majat sought them visually, and the buildings were between. The group-mind had to be informed, to make nexus.

Quickly now she passed among the azi still outside, touched shoulders, ordered them into the truck with the tank most full. Warrior danced about in her wake, quivering with anxiety, wanting instruction. “You too,” she told it. “Get inside, inside the front of the truck, this side, understand? Merry, we may have to give up on the second.”

“First is full.” Merry snatched the nozzle from the first truck and passed it to another man, who swung the tantalus over to the second. Ire put the cap on. “We can make it, sera. And if one should break down on the road—”

“I’m putting most of the men in my truck. We’ll sort things out if we both get out of here.”

“Good, sera. Leave me two men, that’s all.”

“Get up there and be sure this thing starts,” she yelled at him, over a rising in the majat-sound. She hastened then, saw that Warrior had contrived to work its unyielding body into the cab. She slammed the door on it, raced round the back, giving last orders to the men jammed inside, vulnerable with the rear of the truck open to the air. “Get the tanks when we’re clear,” she shouted at them. “Pick your time and do it.”

“Sera!” several cried suddenly.

She looked over her shoulder. A glittering tide swept under the lights and the girders, with speed almost too great for the eye to comprehend.

“Merry!” she screamed, and ran, flung herself into her seat, slammed the door, rolled the window up as she started the motor. It took. She slung the truck back and around, screening Merry for the instant, saw him and his partners dive for the cab and get the doors closed. The truck rocked, and all at once majat were all over them, tearing at the metal and battering at the glass. Some had weapons, and sought targets for their vision.

Merry’s truck started moving, lurched forward at full; she hit the accelerator hard behind him. The tantalus ripped loose and raked the majat clinging to the front; Warrior, tucked beside her, squirmed and shrilled in its own language, deafening, itself blind by reason of the glass about it. “Sit still,” Raen shouted at it, trying to rake majat against the corner of a building.

Suddenly everything flared with light.

The tanks. One of the men had gotten them. Majat dropped from the truck; rear-mirrors showed an inferno and majat scattering across the face of it, blinded in that maelstrom of heat. Red fire laced in their wake, and open road and grass showed before them, the whole area alight with that burning. Buildings caught, and blazed red.

She sucked in a breath, fought the wheel to keep in Merry’s wake, down the road, her own vehicle overladen, but free. A sound pierced her ears, Warrior’s shrill voice, passing down into human range. “Kill,” Warrior said, seeming satisfied.

The road smoothed out. They began to make time, blind as they were in Merry’s dust cloud.

And when the light was out of sight over several hills she punched in the com and raised Merry. “Good work. Are you all right up there?”

“All right,” he confirmed.

“Pull off and leave the motor running.”

He did so, easing to a comfortable stop. She pulled in behind and ran round the front to open the door for Warrior before it panicked. It disentangled itself, climbed down, grooming itself in distaste, muttering of gold-scent.

“Life-fluids,” it said. “Kill many.”

“Go now,” she bade it. “Tell all you know to Mother. And tell Mother these azi and I are coming to blue-hive’s Hill, to the new human-hive nearest it. Let Warriors meet us there.”

“Know this place,” Warrior confirmed. “Strange azi.”

“Tell Mother these things. Go as quickly as you can.”

“Yess,” it agreed, bowed for taste, that for its kind was the essence of message. She gave it, that gesture very like a kiss, and the majat drew back. “Kethiuy-queen,” it said. And strangely: “Sug-ar-water.”

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