Freedom Omnibus Read online

  “Half a tank of fuel,” he muttered and cursorily checked the other readings. He glanced up at the transparent top, camouflaged by the intertwining leafy limbs, at the bed she had made herself on the deck, at the utensils she had fashioned from spare parts in the lockers.

  “So it was you who stole the commander’s personal car,” he said, looking intently at her Kris jerked her chin up.

  “At least I landed it in one piece,” she said.

  At that he gave one bark of laughter.

  “Dropping it in a thicket like this?”

  “On purpose!”

  “You’re one of the new species?”

  “I’m a Terran,” she said with haughty pride, her stance marred by a convulsive shiver.

  “Thin-skinned species,” he remarked. He looked at her chest, noticed the slight heave from her recent exertions that made her breasts strain against the all too inadequate covering and slowly started to stroke her shoulder with one finger. His touch was unexpectedly feather-light and more. “Soft to the touch,” he said absently. “I haven’t tried a Terran yet “And you’re not going to start on this one,” she said, jumping as far away from him as she could in the confines of the cabin.

  His expression altered from bemusement to annoyance.

  “I will if i so choose.”

  “I saved your life!”

  “Which is why I intend to reward you suitably “By raping me?” She felt for and found a heavy metal tool. Not that such a comparative “toothpick’ would do a Catteni much damage but she was determined to try.

  A Catteni was not her idea of a candidate for the role of lover.

  “Raping you?” His surprise was ludicrous.

  “Did you think Terran women would faint with joy to he had by the likes of you?” she said, speaking in a low menacing voice and resetting her grip on the tool.

  “None have complained - -“ He broke off, ducking with incredible reflexes to a crouch as they both heard harsh cursing.

  In the next instant, he had one large hand over her mouth and was pinning her body to his like a fly to sticky paper. The metal tool dangled uselessly in her hand. Neither of them had closed the flitter door and the vrrh vrrh as the thorn-bushes released their darts was plaluly audible. There were loud exclamations of disgust and further cursings. Screwing her eyes around, she could just see the Catteni’s face and his left eye dancing with malicious amusement.

  An authoritative voice uttered a rough command, and even Kris understood that it would probably translate “get the hell out of here.

  Nothing came this way.” Mahomet shifted her slightly, looking down at her face as he dropped his hand from her mouth, a gesture that was in part a challenge for her to scream. She glared back at him. He knew perfectly well that she stood to lose more if she did cry out.

  They stayed like that until wildlife noises were again to be heard outside the flitter. Then he stood her back on her feet and glanced about him again.

  “This car has been gone five months. Why have you stayed so long alone? Are there others of you near by?” He peered out of the one portion of the wraparound window that had a view of more than branches.

  “Just me.” She still had the metal tool in her hand and was wondering if she could hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious.

  “Why were other Catteni so bent on catching you?”

  “Oh,” and he shrugged negligently, “a tactical error. I was forced to kill their patrol leader. He had insulted a brother emassi,” and now she caught the syllables of the strange word. “As I was without allies, I withdrew.” “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day?”

  “The next day,” he corrected her absently.

  “The next day!”

  “Certainly. It is the Catteni Law that a quarrel may not be continued past the same hour of the following day. I have only to lie hidden,” and he grinned at her, “until tomorrow at sun zenith and then I can return.”

  “They won’t be waiting for you?” He shook his head violently. “Against the Law. Otherwise, we Catteni would quickly exterminate each other.”

  “You honestly mean to tell me that, if they can’t find you before noon tomorrow, they have to give up?” He nodded.

  “Even when you killed their patrol leader?” He looked surprised.

  “It was a fair fight.”

  “I didn’t know you Catteni fought fair.”

  “We do,’ and he bridled at her accusation, then his face cleared of irritation and he grinned. “Oh, you think it wasn’t fair of us to take over your planet?” j “Precisely.” He straddled the pilot’s chair and rested his heavily muscled forearms on the back of it, highly amused by her indignation.

  “Your planet had no defences. It was pathetically easy to subjugate.”

  “You do that a lot, then?”

  “A highly profitable business, I assure you . . . How have you fed yourself?” he asked and she heard the most incredible sound coming from him, and realized that Catteni stomachs could rumble with hunger just like humans’. Oddly enough that made him seem less menacing.

  “There’s a lot edible in this forest and I fish from the river.”

  “You do?”

  “I come from an ingenious species,” she said. “I’ve had no trouble at all keeping myself well led.

  He inclined his head respectfully. “Have you any supplies in here?” Deciding that she did not care to come within grabbing distance, she nodded to the basket on the control panel behind him. “Gorupears and the roots of a white plant that I have found quite edible.” As he turned, she caught him wrinkling his nose and heard him sigh. “No diet for a Catteni, I’m sure, accustomed as you are to the best viands in the galaxy but the simple fare will stop your stomach roaring. The noise of it could give our position away.” He did not, as she had observed some Catteni do, cram the entire pear in his mouth. He also picked up one of the roots which had a sweetish taste, not unlike a carrot, and switched from one hand to the other, taking polite mouthfuls. Finishing the first pear, he turned to her and raised his eyebrows in a polite query.

  “Thank you, no. I had just eaten when I saw the dogfight.”

  “Dogfight?” “A Terran tem, derived from the aerial combat of fighter planes.” “Fighter planes?”

  “We had achieved space flight, too,” she added, wondering as pride made her speak out, if any of the SAC units had been launched when the Catteni had invaded Terran space.

  “Ah, yes, so you had. Primitive defences but manned by brave fighters.” Her heart sank. So often lately, the answers she discovered were not the ones she wanted to hear. One of the slaves in the compound from the Chicago area had said that surface to air missiles had been fired at the Catteni vessels. Terran national leaders had been slow to take a defensive position, not knowing who or what had penetrated so far into the atmosphere. They had dallied too long to make any difference. Bill had been wearing his Walkman and had heard the broadcasts up till the time he had been whipped into the Catteni ship. By talking amongst themselves, the captives had learnt that not all big cities had been attacked and looted: just sufficient so that the entire world recognized the superiority of the invaders. Not much consolation for those who had been abducted but enough to restore some pride.

  “We disarmed most of them’, Mahomet went on in a matter-of-fact voice, “and grounded the air ships. Clumsy but showing some signs of developments to come.”

  “Thanks.” He raised his eyebrows queringly.

  “For what?”

  “Such praise for the primitive savages!” Then he threw back his head and indulged in a loud guffaw.

  “Ssssh, they’ll hear you. You bray like an ass!”

  “And you talk like a Catteni female!”

  “Do I take that as a compliment?”

  “You may,” and he inclined his head in her direction, his yellow eyes twinkling in a humorous response she had never seen in other Catteni.

  “You’re not at all like the others.
<
br />   “Which others?”

  “ALL the other Catteni I’ve met, and observed.”

  “Of course I’m not. I’m Emassi, he said with a quiet pride, splaying his great hand across his chest in what she could interpret as a proud gesture.

  “Whatever that is.”

  “A high rank,” he said. With a dismissive flick of fingers sticky with gorupear juice in the general direction of the city she had escaped from, he consigned the local Catteni to an inferior status. “I order. They obey,” he added, making certain she understood the distinction.

  “And those trying to kill you? They obeyed?”

  “Their patrol leader’s dying words,” he said, with a negligent shrug and a grin, “to make me pay for his death.” Then he frowned, looking down at the floor as if reconsidering their import. “Never mind. By noon tomorrow all will revert. Now,” and as he began to rise from the chair, intent plain on his face, Kris no longer hesitated.

  With a karate-style leap, she flung herself at him, both hands on the metal tool, and brought it down with all the strength in her body on the side of his head. With a groan he collapsed to the floor.

  Had she killed him? Horrified at taking a life, even that of an arrogant Catteni, she knelt beside him, noting that red blood flowed from the creased skull, and felt his throat. If he had blood, he had veins: and since he was shaped like most humanoids, he ought to have a pulse in the neck to carry blood to the brain she had just tried to smash. He had! It wasn’t even faint but a firm throb against her seeking fingers. Which quickly became sticky with the blood that pulsed from his head wound.

  Oh, this would never do, she told herself. The little nasty stingers would smell blood and come searching for the source. The flitter would be unliveable. First she bound up the wound with the absorbent material she had found in the lockers. Then she carefully cleaned up the rest of the blood on his face and rubbed the exposed greyish skin with gorupear juice. That had neutralized the smell for stingers on other occasions: a handy survival tip she had serendipitously discovered on her own.

  One of his massive legs had caught on the chair as he fell. It looked uncomfortable that way, and the fabric of his trousers was caught against his genitals, outlining the size of them in a way that made her acutely embarrassed for him. And affected her in the oddest way. Well, she told herself, she had no reason, really, to offend the dignity of another living being if she objected to indignities herself.

  Kris had a strong sense of fair play. She might have conked him to protect her virtue, but that done, she felt obliged to make him as comfortable as possible. How long would the blow keep him unconscious?

  And, once he regained his senses, what would he do to her? Well, she thought, she could always cite the Catteni rule about reprisals! Quite likely that rule did not apply to slaves or non-Catteni. She looked through the lockers to find something to tie him up with. There was a length of sturdy rope but no chains and that was the only sort of restraint that might prove effective against Catteni strength.

  She sat down on the pilot’s chair and rethought her circumstances.

  It had been a tiring day. And nearly at its end. Well, what if she returned him whence he had come? With darkness falling, there’d be a fair amount of tralfic back into the city so this purloined flitter might not be recognized: not after five months. How long did Catteni keep up “wanted’ notices? Twenty-four hours?

  Perhaps for Catteni emassis but not for escaped slaves that is, if anyone had even noticed her disappearance. She switched on the controls, reassured that he had said the tank was half full. She couldn’t remember how the gauge had stood when she absconded but he little aircraft was supposed to be economical, which was why there were so many in use.

  She knew the coordinates of the city, a good two-hour flight from here, but surely there’d be enough fuel for her to get back. No matter. She had to dump Mahomet.

  She’d get him to the outskirts where a limp body wouldn’t be that uncommon. Well, maybe not the outskirts where the slaves and hangers-on lived in semi-squalor, but there were all those assembly areas where Catteni held drills and public meetings. She’d been to one or two with the cook who found such displays helpful in maintaining discipline. One view of a miscreant lashed to death with the force-whips was enough for her. Enough to revive her desire to get as far away from such a discipline as possible.

  Powered up, she reversed the flitter out of its concealing thicket. She really had been lucky in that landing which had by no means been as planned as she inferred to Mahomet. She hadn’t been watching the altimeter the night of her escape or realized that the plains surrounding the city had altered to a hilly terrain. She’d felt the scrape of something on the belly of the flitter, panicked and the nose had dipped. She’d been in the middle of the thicket, and plastered with thorns from the angry bushes, before she could correct the error.

  It had worked out. Kris had a great and abiding belief that things would work out - if you lived long enough to let them.

  She headed the flitter southeast, but not before marking again the coordinates of her retreat. She’d have to come back in daylight or she’d miss the thicket.

  The branches sprang back up again as soon as the flitter released them.

  The lights of the city guided her more surely than the directional equipment. Only the altering position of the needle on one dial-face informed her that it was a compass. She supposed there was an auto-pilot but she hadn’t figured which switch for that. She knew as much as she did about flying because she’d had to accompany the cook to the markets for fresh produce every day and had figured out the basics from watching him. Then, when she’d seen the commander’s flitter, she couldn’t resist the temptation it presented. So she hadn’t. Like Oscar Wilde, she could resist anything except temptation.

  Much good her English Literature was doing her now: it was all the extra-curricular stuff, like orienteering, that course in survival skills which her mother had laughed about, and her karate course that were invaluable. Like downing heavy-planet denizens. She glanced down at Mahomet but he hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle.

  The bleeding had apparently stopped.

  The city looked rather nice lit up, she thought, with floodlights on some of the more unusual architectural styles: not that the huge looming Catteni Headquarters building smack dab in the centre of the hub layout of Barevi City would win any prizes. There seemed to be a lot of lights on in the city or maybe it was because she was seeing it on an overview, rather than being in the middle of it. There wasn’t enough lighting in the outskirts as she approached them for her to find a good landing spot. Well, she’d go on until she found one of the assembly areas. They were ringed by the stumpy tree-forms that had been planted to supply some shade for onlookers of Catteni ceremonies.

  Plenty of space for her to land the flitter. Strangely enough she didn’t see many flitters coming into the city from her direction.

  Well, she had come from open jungle lands. But there seemed to be a great number of the larger army type spreading out from the Catteni HQ.

  Something was going on, she realized when she opened the door of the flitter. There was a lot of noise and it had a menacing sound to it. Of course such distant murmurs often sounded more threatening than they were. She’d just hurry and be out of here in next to no time and on her way back to her hideaway.

  She got the rope she’d seen in the locker and tied it around Mahomet’s feet. Then she looped that about a stumpy tree trunk. She’d winch his body out. She got his feet and most of his legs but his butt stuck at the lip of the door fratne. She was so busy tugging and pulling his posterior over the obstacle that she didn’t notice how much closer all that sound was. And lights. Even the dark assembly area was brighter. Peering down the access lanes that led to the area, she could see lights? Torches? And the rumble was definitely intimidating. What was going on in Barevi City?

  The sound made her redouble her efforts to haul Mahomet out of the flitter. The t
runk of the man must weigh half a ton, for she could not budge it. The noise was very definitely heading in this direction and so was the aerial traffic. She stepped over his inert body and tried to lift his torso and shove him out the door. He’d only drop a foot and with his hard head, he was unlikely to hurt himself. Grunting, straining, propping her feet against the column of the pilot’s chair, she tried every which way to move Mahomet.

  Noise and light were erupting into the far side of the assembly area.

  She’d better get him back in and leave!

  She skipped over his body, undid the rope from his feet and was starting to angle his legs back inside the flitter when she heard the heavy rumble of big aircraft and felt the compression of air over her.

  She was panting with her exertions and had no time to cover her nose and mouth as the first sweet, and all too familiar, reek filled the air about her. She collapsed over her victim’s feet, wondering why she had been foolish enough to risk her freedom for a Catteni overlord!

  Chapter Two

  The indescribable stench of many frightened bodies in close confinement and the unmistakable ssssslash of a force-whip followed by a scream roused Kris to her recurrent nightmare. She was lodged between two warm and sweating bodies, her cheek against a cold hard surface, her knees up under her chin, in an awkward and uncomfortable position. She wondered that she’d remained unconscious for so long.

  Maybe she just didn’t want to recognize that she was in a Catteni holding cell.

  Which was holding far too many right now. It was dark, though not as dark as the hold of the transport vessel had been. She didn’t know if that was a blessing or not.

  She moved carefully, because she seemed to ache all over, and she could feel bruises and scrapes on her uncovered legs, arms and face.