Acorna's Rebels Part 38

But she did.

Acorna fell. And lay still.

No.

RK's world crashed from night blackness to a darkness far more profound.

"Captain Becker, do you read me now?" Mac's voice woke Becker from a fitful doze.

The com unit was live again!

"Mac, funny you should mention. I was going to call you as soon as I got the com unit back up. How did you fix it anyway?" He was genuinely curious, but remembering Mac's tendency toward long-winded explanations, he decided curiosity could wait. "Never mind. No time now. I need to recalibrate the scanner to pick up someone on the ground and I need to do it now, without having to figure it out. Run through it with me."

"Yes, Captain, but..."

"I'd ask Acorna, but she has other fish to fry back at the Temple. Nadhari is somewhere out in the desert, hurt. I need to find her."

"I am distressed to hear that, Captain, but..."

"No ifs, ands, or buts about it, guy. Tell me how now before I miss her and she ends up dying."

"Very well, Captain," Mac said. He rattled off the computations and Becker entered them quickly, his concentration narrowing to just the screen. No sooner had he adjusted his instruments than he spotted something right about where he supposed Nadhari might have been ditched. "Stay tuned, Mac. I think I got her now."

"Oh, very good, Captain. Do you want to know... ?"

"Not now, Mac," Becker said, setting the flitter down in the smoothly, even artistically drifted desert sands. The night was calm and bright with striped moonlight and seemed to be saying "Sandstorm? What sandstorm?"

But bleeding atop one of the dunes, stripped of most of her clothing and a lot of her skin, lay a person Becker barely recognized as Nadhari.

"Hey, babe, come here often?" he called.

"Jonas, you junkman in s.h.i.+ning armor," Nadhari said, or tried to say. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and cracked; her hands, arms, and torso were so abraded he could see very little skin through the blood. Though she'd s.h.i.+elded her face pretty well, her cheeks and forehead also looked like raw hamburger.

"Oh, honeybunny, we need to get you to Acorna right away, doll. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I can't believe he dumped you out here!"

She smiled a little, painfully, and her teeth were pink outlined in red. "I dumped him," she rasped.

He tried to find spots on her anatomy he could hold so that he could carry her, but in the end getting her to the flitter involved him supporting and her half walking, half being pushed and dragged. She sucked in her breath a lot, but otherwise was quiet, even though that walk had to have hurt like blazes. She was a tough lady.

He would have covered her with something except he didn't want to get anything else in those wounds. He helped her arrange herself as comfortably as possible in the back of the flitter. She was half fainting from pain, loss of blood, and exhaustion.

"Mac, you still there?" he asked, toggling the com unit.

"Yes, Captain. Do you have Nadhari Kando?"

"I do and I gotta get her to Acorna right now. She's a real mess."

"Captain, since you have been preoccupied during this transmission, I took the liberty of acquiring your position from your signal. I wish to inform you that the wii-Balakiire is not far from you and closing quickly."

"The what?"

"The wii-Balakiire, the shuttle belonging to the Linyaari s.h.i.+p Balakiire, with crew members..."

"I know what the wii-Balakiire is. I was just wondering when and how they got here so fast."

"They arrived only moments ago by folio-wing the same course we took, which I downloaded directly into their computer banks, correcting our coordinates so that they did not end up mired on Praxos. It saved a lot of time."

"I'll bet it did."

"Melireenya asked me to inquire if the crew might not be able to offer their a.s.sistance so that Nadhari would not have to suffer through the journey?"

"Sure thing. You told me how they found us, but you haven't said to what we owe the honor of their company?"

"When Acorna contacted MOO from Captain MacDonald's s.h.i.+p, she told her friends about the plague here. They decided to come and help."

"Save it, Mac. Patch me through to the wii-Balakiire now."

"Very well, sir. I can do that easily since Chief Petty Officer Lea removed the jamming signal she devised to interfere with the Linyaari signal, so we may all converse freely."

"That was nice of her, whoever she is," Becker said. "Hurry up, will you?"

"This is Melireenya on the wii-Balakiire, Captain Becker. We have made visual contact with you, and if you look up and a bit to your right, you will do likewise with us."

Becker did and saw the Linyaari shuttle berth itself in the

sand. Six Linyaari waved at him through the viewport. He couldn't tell in the darkness who they were exactly, but he was glad to see them.

Opening the hatch, he stepped out and allowed two of the Linyaari to enter in his place. They immediately turned to Nadhari and began laying hands and horns tenderly upon her wounds.

"I don't suppose any of you ladies brought an extra tunic or something, did you? She might get a little chilly-you know, shock and stuff-once you put her back together."

"Certainly, Captain," said the one nearest him. As soon as she spoke, he recognized her as Acorna's Aunt Neeva. She blithely stripped off her tunic and handed it to him. "She can wear mine."

"But I - er-what will you..."he stammered, trying not to look.

"If you think it necessary that I cover myself to preserve the good opinion of Kh.o.r.n.ya's new friends, then I'm sure I'll find something. I actually felt that in such a warm climate, perhaps the att.i.tude toward clothing was more relaxed than it is among your own people. But now you must tell me how to contact Kh.o.r.n.ya. I have been trying to reach her, but I can't seem to. Mac tells us that she is inside some sort of stronghold, so I am a.s.suming that it has some sort of barrier to telepathic communication."

"No, there's no such barrier. She contacted me that way when she was inside the stronghold and I was out in the flitter," Becker told her.

Just then Khaari poked her head out of the hatch and said, "Nadhari says her cousin and that crooked Federation commander were armed, and were setting out to destroy a sacred lake and kill the inhabitants."

"How is she?" Becker asked them.

Nadhari herself answered in a strong voice. "I'm fine, Jonas. But something is wrong at the lake. I can't get Acorna to answer me."

"That's bad," Becker said, adding to Khaari and Melireenya,

"You ladies better sit down or get back to your own vessel. We have to get back to the lake, and fast."