Anne McCaffrey - Freedom 1 - Freedom's Landing

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Freedoms landing
by anne mccaffrey
Synopsis:
Kristin Bjornsen lived a normal life, right up until the day the Catteni
ships floated into view above Denver. Now, as human slaves are herded into the
maw of amassive vessel, Kristin realizes that her normal life is over, and her
fight for freedom is just beginning.
prequal to Freedoms choice
Chapter One
Kristin Bjornsen wondered if summer on the planet Barevi could possibly
be the only season. There had been remarkably little variation in temperature
in the nine months since she'd arrived there.
She'd been four months in what appeared to be the single, sprawling city
of the planet during her enslavement and now had racked up five months of
comparative freedom - albeit a parlous hand-to-mouth survival - in this
jungle, after her escape from the city in the flitter she'd stolen.
Her sleeveless one-piece tunic was made of an indestructible material,
but it wouldn't suit cold weather. The scooped neckline was indecently low and
the skirt ended midway down her long thighs. It was closely modelled, in fact,
after the miniskirted sheath she'd been wearing to class that spring morning
when the Catteni ships had descended on Denver, one of fifty cities across the
world that had been used as object lessons by the conquerors.
One moment she was on her way to the college campus; the next, she was
one of thousands of astonished and terrified Denverites being driven by
force-whips up the ramp of a spaceship that made the Queen Elizabeth look like
a tub toy. Once past the black maw of the ship, Kris, with all the others,
swiftly succumbed to the odourless gas.
When she and her fellow prisoners had awakened, they were in the slave
compounds of Barevi, waiting to be sold.
Kris aimed the avocado-sized pit of the gorupear she had just eaten at
the central stalk of a nearby thicket of purple-branched thorn-bushes. The
bush instantly rained tiny darts in all directions.
Kris laughed. She had bet it would take less than five minutes for the
young bush to re-arm itself. And it had. The larger ones took longer to
position new missiles. She'd had reason to find out.
Absently she reached above her head for another gorupear. Nothing from
good old Terra rivalled them for taste. She bit appreciatively into the firm
reddish flesh of the fruit and its succulent juices dribbled down her chin
onto her tanned breasts. Tugging at the strap of her slip-tight tunic, she
brushed the juice away. The outfit was great for tanning, but when winter
comes? And should she concentrate on gathering nuts and drying gorupears on
the rocks by the river for the cold season? She wrinkled her nose at the
half-eaten pear. They were mighty tasty but a steady diet of them left her
hungering for other basic dietary requirements. By watching the creatures of
the jungle, she'd been able to guess what might be edible for her.
Remembering her survival course gave her the clue to superficial testing
on her skin. She'd had two violent reactions to stuff that the ground animals
seemed to devour in quantity, but the avians had guided her to other
comestibles. Her tem in the food preparation unit of her "master' had given
her other commodities to look for - though few of those grew wild in this
jungle. Still, there were little yellow-scaled fish from the river that had
provided her with both protein and exercise.
A low-pitched buzz attracted her attention. She got to her feet,
balanced carefully on the high limb of the tree.
Parting the branches, she peered up at the cloudless sky.
Two of the umpteen moons that circled Barevi were visible in the west.
Below them, dots that gave off sparkles of reflected sunlight were swooping
and diving.
The boys have called another hunt, she mused to herself and, still
smiling, leant against the tree trunk to take advantage of her grandstand
seat. The jungle had quite a few really big, really savage creatures which she
had managed to avoid, making like a jungle heroine and taking to the trees and
vines. By dint of hard work and sweat, she had used the useful tools from the
kit on the ffitter to tie vines to trees that led to and from her favourite
food-browsing spots and to the river. Her escape routes were all aerial.
Before she had taken absence without leave from her situation', Kris had
done her homework on more than what was edible on Barevi. She had picked up a
good bit of the lingua Barevi, a polyglot language, made up from the words of
six or seven of the languages spoken by the slaves and used by the "masters'
to convey orders to their minions.
She had gleaned some information about those who had invaded Earth, the
Catteni. They were not, for one thing, indigenous to this world but came from
a much heavier planet nearer galactic centre. They were one of the
mercenary-explorer races employed by a vast federation.
They had only recently colonized Barevi, using it as a clearing house
for spoils acquired by looting unsuspecting non-federation planets, and a
rest-and-relaxation centre for their great ships' crews.
After years of the free-fall of space and lighter-gravity planets,
Catteni found it difficult to return to their heavy, depressing home world.
During her brief enslavement, Kris had heard the Catteni boast of dying
everywhere in the galaxy except Catten. The way they "played', Kris thought to
herself, was rough enough to ensure that they died young as well as far from
Catten.
Huge predators roamed the unspoiled plains and jungles of Barevi, and
the Catteni considered it great sport to stand up to a rhinolike monster with
only a single spear.
That is, Kris remembered with a grim smile, when they weren't brawling
among themselves over imagined slurs and insults. Two slaves, friends of hers,
had been crushed under the massive bodies of Catteni during a free-for-all.
Since she had come to the valley, she had witnessed half a dozen
encounters between the rhinos and the Catteni.
Accustomed to a much heavier gravity than Barevi, the Catteni were able
to execute incredible manoeuvres as they softened their prey for the kill. The
poor creatures had less chance than Spanish bulls and, in all the hunts Kris
had seen, only one man had been injured and that had been a slight graze.
As the flitters neared, she realized that they were not acting like a
hunting party. For one thing, one dot was considerably ahead of the others.
And by God, she saw the light flashes of the trailing ffitters' forward guns
firing at the "leader' Hunted and hunters were at the foot of her valley now.
Suddenly black smoke erupted from the rear of the pursued ffitter. It nosed
upwards. It hovered reluctantly, then dived, slantingly, to strike the tumble
of boulders along the river's edge, not far from her hiding place.
Kris gasped as she saw a figure, half-leaping, halfstaggering out of the
badly smashed flitter. She could scarcely believe that even a Catteni could
survive such a crash. Wideyed, she watched as he struggled to his feet, then
reeled from boulder to boulder, to get away from the smouldering wreck.
With a stunningly brilliant flare, the craft exploded.
Fragments whistled into the underbrush as far up the slope as her
retreat, and the idiotic thorn-bushes she had recently triggered sprayed out
their poison-tipped little darts.
The smoke of the burnihg ffitter obscured her view now and Kris lost
sight of the man. The other ffitters had reached the wreck and were hovering
over it, like so many angry King Kongish bees, swooping, diving, trying to
penetrate the smoke.
An afternoon breeze swirled the black clouds about and Kris caught
glimpses of the man, lurching still farther from the crash site. She saw him
stumble and fall, after which he made no move to rise. Above, the bees buzzed
angrily, circling the smoke and probably wondering if their prey had gone up
in the explosion.
Catteni didn't hunt each other as a rule, she told herself, surprised to
find that she was halfway down from her perch. They fight like Irishmen, sure,
but to chase a man so far from the city? What could he have done?
The crash had been too far away for Kris to distinguish the hunted man's
features or build. He might just be an escaped slave, like herself. If not
Terran, he might be from one of the half-dozen other subjugated races that
lived on Barevi. Someone who had had the guts to steal a ffitter didn't
deserve to die under Catteni force-whips.
Kris made her way down the slope, careful to avoid the numerous thorn
thickets that dominated these woods.
She had once amused herself with the whimsy that the thorn were the
gorupear's protectors, for the two plants invariably grew close together.
At the top of the sheer precipice above the falls of the river, she
grabbed the vine she had attached there for speedy descent. Once on the river
bank she stuck to the dry flat rocks until she came to the stepping-stones
that allowed her to cross the river below the wide pool made by the little
falls. Down a gully, across another thorn-bush-filled clearing, and then she
was directly above the spot where she had last seen the man.
Keeping close to the brown rocks so nearly the shade of her own tanned
skin, she crossed the remaining distance.
She all but tripped over him as the wind puffed black smoke down among
the rocks.
"Catteni!" she cried, furious as she bent to examine the unconscious man
and recognized the grey and yellow uniform despite its tattered and black
smeared condition.
With a disdainful foot under his shoulder, she tried to turn him over.
And couldn't. The man might as well have been a boulder. She knelt and yanked
his head around by the thick slate-grey hair which, in a Catteni, did not
indicate age: they all had the same colour hair.
Maybe he was dead?
No such luck. He was breathing. A bruise mark on his temple showed one
reason for his unconscious state.
For a Catteni, he was almost good-looking. Most of them tended to have
brutish, coarse features but this one had a straight, almost patrician nose -
even if there was a lot more of it than an elephant would want to claim - and
a wide well-shaped mouth. The Catteni to whom she had been sold had had thick
blubbery lips, and she'd known that Catteni were developing a sexual appetite
for Terran women.
A sizzling crack jerked her head around in the direction of the wreck.
The damned fools were shooting at the burning craft now. Kris looked down at
the unconscious man, wondering what on earth he had done to provoke such
vindictive thoroughness. They sure wanted him good and dead.
The barrage pulverized what was left of the ffitter, leaving the fire no
fuel. The wind, laden with coarse dust, blew an acrid stench from the
wreckage. The man stirred and vainly tried to raise himself, only to sink back
to the ground with a groan. Kris saw the ffitters circling to land on the
plateau below the wreck.
"Going to case the scene of the crime, huh?" It was completely
illogical, Kris told herself, to help a Catteni simply because there were
others of his race out to get him. Rut...She backtracked his route, just in
case he had left any marks for them to follow. She went as far as she could on
the bare rock. Where dirt began, ash had settled in a thick layer,
obliterating any tracks he might have made.
After all, the Catteni might stumble on her if they did a thorough
search, thinking their victim had escaped the crash.
He had got to his feet when she returned to him, dazed, heavy arms
hanging by his sides as he tried to get his eyes to focus. She attempted to
guide him but it was like trying to direct a mountain to move.
"Come on, Mahomet," she urged softly. "Just walk like a nice little boy
to the river and I'll duck you in. Cold water should bring you round.
A sharp distant gabble of voices made her start nervously. God, those
Catteni had got up that rock-face in a hurry. She'd forgotten they could take
prodigious leaps on this light-gravity planet.
"They're coming. Follow me," she said in lingua Barevi.
He groaned again, shaking his head to clear his senses. He turned
towards her, his great yellow eyes still dazed with shock. She would never get
used to such butter-coloured pupils with black irises.
"This way! Quickly!" She urgently tugged at him. If he didn't shake his
tree-stump legs, she was going to leave him. Good Samaritans on Barevi had
better not get caught by Catteni.
She pulled at his arm and he seemed to make a decision.
He lurched forward, one great hand grasping her shoulder in a vice-like
grip. They reached the river bank, still ahead of the searchers. But Kris
groaned as she realized that the barely conscious man would never be able to
navigate the stepping-stones.
The shouts behind them indicated that the others were fanning out to
search the rocks. Urgently she grabbed several fingers of his big hand,
leading him to the base of the falls.
"If you can't float, it's just too damned bad," she said grimly.
She dropped his hand, stepped back and leaping forward again, shouldered
him into the water.
She dived in, right beside him, and when he continued to sink, she
grabbed and caught him by the thick hair.
Fortunately, the water made even a solid Catteni manageable.
Exerting all her strength and skill as a swimmer, she got his head above
water and held it up with a chinlock.
By sheer good luck, they had surfaced in the space between the arc of
the falls and the cliff, the curtain of water shielding them from view. As the
Catteni began to struggle in her grasp, the five hunters leapt spectacularly
into view in the clearing by the pool. Her "Mahomet' was instantly alert and,
instead of struggling, began to tread water beside her.
The Catteni were arguing with each other now and each seemed to be
issuing conflicting orders to the others.
Mahomet released himself from her chinhold, his yellow eyes never
leaving the party on the bank. They watched, hands making as little movement
as possible although the falls would conceal any ripples their motions made.
One Catteni, after a heated debate, crossed the wide pool in a fantastic
- to Kris - standing leap. He and another began to move downstream, carefully
examining both banks and casually surmounting up-ended barge-sized boulders
with no effort. The other three went charging back the way they had come,
still arguing.
Mter an endless interval, during which the icy water chilled Kris to the
bone, the refugee touched her shoulder and nodded towards the shore. But when
she realized that he was going to head back the way they had come, she shook
her head emphatically, pointing to the other side.
"Safe! That way," she shouted at him over the noise of the falls.
He frowned. "I've a flitter to hide in." She jabbed her finger in the
direction of her hidden vehicle.
Stunned as she suddenly realized what she had just said, she stared at
him. "Oh, God!" He raised an eyebrow in surprise, and she hoped for one long
moment that he had not understood what she had said.
But he had, and now his yellow eyes gleamed at her in the gloom with a
different sort of interest.
He's like a great lion, Kris thought and almost choked on fear.
"You have aided a Catteni," he said in a deep rumbling voice in the
lingua Barevi. "You shall not suffer for that!" Kris wasn't so sure when she
tried to climb out of the river and found herself numb with cold, and
strengthless.
He, on the other hand, strode easily out of the water He looked down at
her ineffectual struggles, frowning irritably. Then, with no apparent effort,
he curled the long fingers of one hand around her upper arm and simply
withdrew her from the water, supporting her until she got her balance.
Shivering, she looked up at him. God, he was big: the tallest Catteni
she had yet seen. She had inherited the height of her Swedish father and stood
five-foot ten in her bare feet. She had topped most of the Catteni she had
encountered by several inches, but his eyes tilted downwards to regard her.
And his shoulders were as broad as the scoop of a JCB.
"Where is this flitter?" he demanded curtly.
She pointed, furious that she obeyed him so instantly and that she
couldn't control the chattering of her teeth or the trembling of her body. He
reached for her hand, relaxing his grip a little at her involuntary gasp of
pain. Replace "grubby paws' with "high-gravity paws', she told herself in an
effort to keep up her spirits as she stepped out in front of him.
"I'll have to lead the way through the thorns," she said. "Or maybe
thorns don't bother Catteni hides?" she added pertly.
To her surprise, he grinned at her.
"It is perhaps fortunate for you that they do.
As she turned, she realized that she had never seen a Catteni smile
before. She noticed, too, that he was following carefully in her footsteps. It
was good to know that he was no more anxious to disturb the thorn-bushes with
their vicious little barbs than she was.
They were halfway to the hidden flitter when both heard, off to the
right in the valley, the staccato volley of loud Catteni voices.
Mahomet paused, dropping to a half-crouch, instinctively angling his
body so that he did not touch the close-growing vegetation. He listened, and
although the words were too distorted for Kris to catch, he evidently
understood them. A humourless smile touched his lips and his eyes gleamed with
a light that frightened Kris.
"They have seen movement here. Hurry!" he said in a low voice.
Kris broke into a jog trot; the twisting path made a faster pace unwise.
When they broke into the dell just before the extensive thicket, she paused.
"Where? Are you lost?" he asked.
"Through those bushes. Watch. And when I say move, move!" He frowned
sceptically as she picked up a handful of small stones. With a practised ease
and careful gauge, she threw in a broad cast to left and right, watching and
counting the thorn sprays to be sure she had triggered every bush. To be on
the safe side, she scooped up one more handful of pebbles and threw that in a
wider arc.
No further thorns showered.
"Move!" His reaction time was so much faster than hers that he was
hallway across the clearing before she got to the V. She dashed in front of
him. "We have five minutes to cross before they re-arm." An expression that
was almost respectful crossed his face. Impatiently, she tugged at him and
then began to weave her way among the bushes, following her well memorized
private route through this obstacle. When she made the last turn and he saw
the flitter, its nose cushioned in the heavy cluster of thorn-thicket limbs,
he gave what Kris assumed was a Catteni chuckle.
She waved open the flitter door and regally gestured for him to enter.
He walked straight to the instrument panel, grunting as he activated the main
switch.
"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.
"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 trunk 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.
The cold of the wall felt good against a sore cheek.
But there was movement now her eyes were open and adjusted to the
semi-gloom. It was a low-ceilinged chamber of crowd containment size: she
could barely make out the perimeter. The place seethed with bodies, but then
she saw that there were two openings and bodies were being pushed out into a
brighter space beyond.
Catteni whips sssslashed out again, and those around her got quickly to
their feet, following the example of those in the outer ranks. Rank was right,
she thought, breathing shallowly so as not to taste the disgusting air she had
to inhale.
She got to her feet by supporting herself against the wall. The person
on her right groaned in pain. Kris found herself trying to help the woman, for
it was a female, one of the Deski, so slight and spindly limbed that she was
afraid even her helping hand would break a bone.
They must be a lot tougher than they look, she thought, or they'd never
survive the usual callous treatment accorded all species by the Catteni.
The whip lash sang dangerously close to her and she ducked. One of the
disadvantages of being tall, but she'd got the Deski to her feet and supported
her swaying body. Having the reflexes of a good Samaritan was also a
disadvantage, she thought. You can't help everyone. So help the ones you can.
She put both hands on the Deski's stick-thin shoulders to keep the creature
upright as they moved away from the wall in the general direction the Catteni
wanted them to move - the doors.
So she - and Mahomet - had been caught up in the Catteni crowd control.
Well, he was probably out of it, since they could scarcely think he was one of
the mob that they had quelled with their gas sprays. Her timing was, as usual,
faultless: she was right back where she'd started. Well, not quite, but near
摘要：

FreedomslandingbyannemccaffreySynopsis:KristinBjornsenlivedanormallife,rightupuntilthedaytheCattenishipsfloatedintoviewaboveDenver.Now,ashumanslavesareherdedintothemawofamassivevessel,Kristinrealizesthathernormallifeisover,andherfightforfreedomisjustbeginning.prequaltoFreedomschoiceChapterOneKristin...

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