It hadn’t looked like lasers, though,and it didn’t actually seem to strike them that way—there were noburn marks.
They recovered.
Unfortunately.
And then they did the strangestthing.
They turned on the other cyborgs anddestroyed them.
After pondering a moment, she realizedthe other cyborgs turned on them first and attacked and weredestroyed so she wasn’t certain what was going on.
She might have dwelt on the mysterylonger, since she was in no condition to move or, in fact, doanything other than to allow her mind to wander, but she discoveredthe two had noticed her and started moving in herdirection.
That realization prompted her toattempt to move even though she’d been convinced shecouldn’t.
And her attempts proved she’d beenright. She only managed to hurt herself wiggling around. She didn’tmake any progress toward fleeing to safety.
They stopped when they reached her,looking down at her with the completely expressionless faces thatalways gave them away as cyborgs no matter how well they imitatedhumans otherwise.
Again, they surprised her.
After a moment, they turned and lookedat one another—as if sharing a silent communication.
Which they probably were. They didn’thave to verbalize to communicate like humans did.
It was just odd that they seemed to becommunicating with one another rather than some distant commanderas they typically did.
Then the taller of the twospoke.
“It is leaking vitalfluids.”
“Then it will … cease as alife form,”Scout Quanresponded.
The taller of the two completelystunned Ultima by frowning. Then he looked away and seemed tosearch their surroundings for something.
“Perhaps. I am thinking itcould be useful if we do not find Forward Scout Xi.”
Surprise flickered acrossScout Quan’s features, but he nodded agreement.“I do not understand why he was not here when we arrived.This is the designated landing zone, I presume.”
Assassin Kau shook hishead.“I will need to see if I can plugthe leaking holes or this one will be of no use to us. But I amthinking we are too exposed here.”
Scout Quan agreed.“We should move—the sooner the better. We cannotpresume that the traitor has no drones in the vicinity that itcould send to search for us—and, in any case, it will certainly beable to pinpoint the location of the missing drones quickly enough.Let us go there to the ruins and find whatever shelter we can andthen I will look for a better situation until we can make contactwith Forward Scout Xi.”
Assassin Kau looked down at the aliencreature speculatively, considering and discarding possible ways totransport it and finally simply leaned down and scooped it up withhis arms spread wide enough to balance the load he hadcalculated.
It went rigid—with fear, no doubt, anddistrust, but there was nothing he could do about that. He had noinkling of the language it spoke or even if it was capable ofcommunicating. It was certainly not advanced enough to mind-speakeven if they were compatible enough to form a link.
To prevent further harm, he trapped itbetween the arms and chest of the drone he had captured whereuponit went perfectly limp.
That disturbed him in an inexplicableway, but he finally realized that it was still breathing andtherefore could not have expired and he immediately felt alightening of that inexplicable dread that had seizedhim.
Scout Quan, weapon at the ready, ledthe way to the place he had decided would be a sufficient temporaryshelter, scanning the debris strewn landscape on either side ofthem until they reached the shadow of the crumbling wall.Indicating that Assassin Tau should wait with his burden, he wentin to investigate and came back after a few moments.
“There is not much shelterhere for beings such as these, but it would shield you from theirvision while I search for something better.”
It was poor shelter indeed, AssassinTau discovered when Quan had departed and left him to it, but hesaw Quan’s point. After scanning the area and finding nothing butdebris, he chose the ‘smoothest’ area and used his feet to shuffleas much debris aside as possible and then lowered the alien to theroughly even surface and examined it with his vision.
The drone he had captured,unfortunately, offered little that was particularly useful, but hediscovered it did have scanning capabilities and laser vision. Heused the scanner to delve the outer layers and discern the extentof injury and the laser to seal the holes once he had determinedthe best action.
