Tim didn’t like that, but again, it was the best option. Had he still been a cyborg, it was what he’d have done.
“I don’t like it,” Riina said.
“No,” Tim agreed. So far, there was nothing to like about this planet or their current situation. The skitterfin made a noise in his ear. Did that mean it agreed with him? He reached up and touched its nose. The skitterfin seemed to rub the tip of his finger.
At least it hadn’t bit him.
Tim, Riina noted, kept the shuttle at its slowest hover speed, but they still had to circle back to Trac when they got too far ahead of him.
“How far could they have gotten from our rendezvous location?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.
There was too much they didn’t know, about the planet’s topography, about the timing of the attack, about who had been with Harold and Dr. Walker (the correct answer should have been nobody or just the side chick), how well their gear could protect them and whether it could shield them from life signs detection.
After being attacked, they would be attempting stealthy progress—or they should be. She’d have been keeping her head down.
The presence of the other flyers troubled her. Who and how many others had known about their impending arrival?
Was it happenstance or deliberate choice that the attack had commenced before they could get there? Had this alien entity known they were coming?
They’d made no attempt to contact them, so either they didn’t care, didn’t know or…planned to deal with them later.
She couldn’t, she realized wryly, blame them if they didn’t see the Quendala as a threat. It wasn’t a ship of war, though it was well-supplied with weaponry. And it was cloaked, she reminded herself. Odds were that the entity couldn’t detect it.
And the question after that? Was it well supplied with the right weaponry?
“There is no way to know this,” Veirn—or Veirn’s snippet said.
It took Rinna a minute to figure out which question it had answered. Inside her head, she’d already moved on.
“Yeah,” she said, to let Veirn know she’d heard it. Then she resumed her own thoughts. They’d never encountered anything like the entity, so how did she know if anything they carried would work against it if it turned out to be hostile to them? Or that the cloak would work against it?
“I wish we knew if any population centers have been impacted,” she said. She didn’t see how the planet could get by without some losses, even if the entity was trying to avoid populations. And right now, there was no way to know if that was the case.
“I have found them,” Trac said, suddenly.
Fred lifted its head, peering out the front window and his wings shifted slightly. He made that soft sound again. Rinna glanced at him, but he was looking forward. Trac wasn’t currently in sight. They were once more ahead of Trac and had to circle back to find the cyborg standing in a circle of what appeared to be armed humans. Humans all pointing their weapons at Trac.
Fred made a sound that seemed scornful to Riina.
It was brave of them to point weapons at Trac, she conceded. It was a good thing that he was, for a cyborg, pretty chill. He’d even lifted his arms in an attempt to appear non-threatening.
It was a vain attempt, of course. He wasn’t the scariest of the cyborg models, but they didn’t know that. And he didn’t have to be. All he had to be was who he was.
No one had, as yet, fired on him. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t panic and start. It wasn’t a huge worry. Nothing they were aiming at him would even make a dent.
“Dr. Walker?” Riina figured it was worth a try, though the EM pulse must have surely fried his comms. It wasn’t a surprise when Harold answered.
“Dr. Walker is unable to communicate,” it said.
“But he and you are okay?” Riina persisted.
“We are not dead,” Harold said. “Dr. Walker has been secured with local restraints. He is worried about becoming an alien autopsy.”
It wasn’t clear if Harold shared that worry or not.
“Our planetary contacts, Lira and her father, are also under restraint. Most of these humans are not official representatives of the government, but there is one.” And then Harold added, “I would assess them all as what Earthlings would call trigger happy. Approach with caution.”
Riina wanted to go out alone to meet the group of humans. She thought she looked less threatening. If that were her criteria, then they should send Lt. Dish out, Tim thought.
