Yobu looked back at Keene and nodded. “Yes. Is so.”
Keene gestured at himself with both hands, then indicated the ridge again. He wanted to go up there. It was urgent.
Anything to keep Keene’s mind off Rakki and the warriors, before the argument got any worse, Yobu thought to himself. He called the three boys over, who were still nearby with their spears, keeping a protective eye on things. “Take the Sky Man up there, and show him where the wounded bird lies that Enka brought down with his bow,” he instructed.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In the instrumentation bay aboard the orbiting Varuna where the survey probes were fitted out and checked, Kerry Heeland floated below a probe in one of the service cradles, disconnecting an underbelly camera that was malfunctioning and would have to come out. He felt frustration and despondency. As a Kronian, he had been outraged by Gallian’s murder. And then the whole thing had taken on an additional personal dimension with the shooting and incarceration of Owen Erskine, who had been a close friend of Heeland’s as well as a work colleague. He couldn’t understand why everyone down there didn’t just go for Zeigler’s thugs en masse the way Owen had tried to do. Surely there were enough of them. So there was risk, and a few would very likely get hurt. But few worthwhile things in life had been achieved without some kind of risk. Just about everybody else that he had talked to in the Varuna felt the same. But there was little they could do up here, isolated in the ship, with all communications to ground routed via Zeigler’s headquarters, and the supplies they depended on transferred down to the surface. So they carried on with their jobs as directed. And they waited.
A duty operator from the Probe Director Section drifted in through the far doorway, singled out Heeland, and propelled himself across. “We’ve got a transmission from the surface coming in on emergency band,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s Landen Keene. He’s asking for you personally.”
Puzzled, Heeland left what he was doing and followed the operator back into PDS. They stopped at the console of screens monitoring the probes and airmobiles currently deployed. The line flashing red on one of the displays identified the signal as coming from the disabled probe at Joburg. Keene’s face, haggard, windblown, and unshaven, was staring from the screen indicated by the alarm signal. “Okay, I’ll handle this,” Heeland said tersely. The operator nodded and moved away to another station.
“Lan,” Heeland muttered. “What in Hell . . . ?”
“Explanations later.” Keene’s voice was croaky and weak.
“You’re at Joburg?”
“Yes. Look, I wanted your help on something, but things have gotten even more complicated now. First, can you get access to the Varuna’s long-range communications somehow? I need to get a message to the Aztec if it isn’t too late already. They could be next.”
Similar thoughts had crossed Heeland’s mind. “That could be a tough one,” he replied. “Control is locked into OpCom down on the surface.”
“I know. But the channels go out on the ship’s lasers. There has to be some way of tapping in up there.”
“You’re talking to the wrong person for this, Lan.”
“I guessed that too. But you’re the only one I knew how to contact via this probe’s E-band.”
“I’ll have to check with the comm techs and see,” Heeland said after a pause. “What was the other thing?”
“Did you know that Zeigler has been arming the natives here at Joburg and training them?”
Heeland’s face hardened. “No, I didn’t. But we don’t get to learn about much of anything up here.”
“Jorff just left here with two flyers carrying Rakki with his pals and all the soldiers. I want to find out where they went and what they’re doing.”
Heeland shook his head. This was confusing. “Wait a minute. . . . You’re there at Joburg, and you know they were training Rakki’s guys, but you don’t know where they went,” he checked. So you weren’t with them?”
“Of course not.”
“So how did you get there?”
“I said, explanations later. I’m here with Charlie Hu. We started out in one of the site runabouts, but it got wrecked. Charlie’s sick but being taken care of. But is there some way of finding out where Jorff and the others went? Can you track nav beacons on the flyers via the sat grid from up there?”