Ambassador 5: Blue Diamond Sky (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller Series) Page 16

  Reida leaned over for a look. “We’re being watched.”

  Thayu nodded. “Probably.”

  Langga was looking at the screen as well.

  “Do you know what is there?” I asked him.

  “Thousand Islands tribe,” he said, in his clipped accent. “They live there.”

  “The traditional settlements are like big hives made from dead wood,” Reida said.

  I knew. I’d seen pictures of the main settlement of the Washing Stones tribe, at the mouth of a creek where a waterfall cascaded from the escarpment onto large boulders called the Washing Stones. The story had it that the people would stand under the water to clean themselves.

  The other two boats veered away from the coast, and Langga followed their example. No good seeking unnecessary trouble with the tribe. Yes, we were probably being watched, because besides these platforms—and the Pengali had excellent eyes—they were not shy in using modern technology. I’d seen many a traditional-looking Pengali fisherman with a satellite transmitter in a pouch.

  Once we were in the shelter of the offshore islands, the sea got a lot less choppy. The island where Robert and Melissa were was the furthest from the shore out of a group of three. The islands stuck out of the water like giant boulders, with steep sides and forested tops. The island in question was no more than a rocky knoll. The beach was visible as a fine white line at the point where the cliffs met the sea. The water was very calm here, almost mirror-like. You couldn’t see the bottom, but on occasion, we crossed underwater ridges covered in sea growths.

  Thayu was studying the island through the lens on her reader, her brow furrowed.

  “There!” Reida called out. He pointed in the water ahead.

  I saw them, too, a group of beisili frolicking on the surface.

  “There’s at least five of them.”

  One of the animals stuck its head up, looking at us. Another pounced in the water close to the first one, and the first one grabbed the second one by the scruff of the neck. The two rolled in the water with a lot of splashing of flippers and tails.

  “Oh, they’re having a fight,” Reida said.

  “Mating season,” Langga said, his voice dark. His huge eyes scanned the water.

  Then another animal surfaced really close to us. The light grey colour made it a female, and it was huge. Its back was heavily ridged, as was the top of its head. A carpet of marine growths grew on its back and neck and the top of its head. Its eye was about the size of my hand, and deep cobalt blue. There were two smaller animals with it, last year’s young probably.

  Langga let out a loud whistle and cut the engine. The boat floated forward, and he had to steer it to the side to avoid coming too close to the group. The other two boats did the same.

  The large female looked at us, then pulled its head under the water and flapped away languidly, not fast enough to let us through, and not deep enough so that we could go over the top.

  We followed the animals in the direction of the island.

  Reida was mesmerised. He sat in the bow and Sheydu in the other boat kept yelling at him to keep his hands out of the water. He seemed determined to touch one of the animals.

  Meanwhile, the skirmishes in the other group continued. There were now three animals threshing and rolling in the water and the mother and two young we were following appeared to be going in that direction. The group was tossing something around. A dead fish, Thayu said.

  When we came closer, we saw that it wasn’t. It was a body, half-eaten, with bits of dark-coloured clothing still adhering.

  Thayu yelled, “Whoa, stop!”

  Langga reversed the engine and the boat stopped. The other boats stopped, too. We drifted together again.

  “Did you see that?” Thayu asked, her eyes wide. “They’re tossing a dead body around.”

  “They’re scavengers,” Langga said, as if he witnessed this every day.

  I remembered that traditional burials in Barresh involved putting the dead person on a raft made from reeds and pushing it out into the channel. The current would take the raft out to sea, until it sank and nature could reclaim the body. I didn’t think too many people still used that type of burial. Maybe the Pengali did. On second thoughts, I was sure it was a keihu custom, not a Pengali one. And the rafts I had seen would never have made it this far out.

  I felt sick.

  This had to be someone from either Roberts or Melissa’s party.

  “We should go and look,” I said.

  Langga gave me an uncertain glance. “They’re fighting. They’re mating. You don’t go near beisili when they’re mating.”

  “We need to know who that is.” And we needed to do it quickly, before there was nothing left.

  Langga eyed the fighting and jostling group. He called something in Pengali to the other boats. Della replied, and accompanied it with a snap of her tail. Maray waved her tail from side to side, almost hitting Veyada in the face.

  “We can go a bit closer,” Langga said. “Not much. Maybe you can see. Maybe not.” He reversed the engine flow again. The boat moved slowly forward.

  The big female we had been trailing stuck its head out of the water, snorting. The two younger ones had gone ahead and were now joining the other group’s fighting and jostling. We followed carefully. Langga scanned the water, his big eyes roving. Every muscle in his arms and legs was tense, ready to spring, ready to flip the rudder around, to reverse the boat away.

  The group moved away a fraction. We moved closer. They moved away again.

  Then the female let out a loud hooting honk, punctuated with clicking sounds. All of a sudden, the other animals stuck their heads out of the water, and then, as one, took off in the direction of the open sea.

  The boat with Maray led our convoy to where the group had been. We searched, but found no sign of the body. We brought our three boats together.

  I breathed out heavily. “It looks like they took it.” I had half expected to find Melissa or Robert, or Gusamo.

  A heavy silence followed my words. People nodded, most still searching the glassy surface.

  “We need to go ashore,” Thayu said. “We can’t risk getting stuck out here at night.”

  “If there is anyone on the island, they should have seen us by now,” Nicha said.

  Nods all around. We were not that far from the shore. From here, we could just make out an upturned boat and something that looked like a shelter under the trees. The solar panels that we’d seen on the satellite image were gone.

  If someone had been alive, and able, they would have run onto the beach, waving their arms.

  “Maybe that body was the last survivor,” Evi said, his voice dark.

  I sighed. “Maybe. But either way, we need to know. We need to bring back evidence, because if nothing else, Nations of Earth is going to ask for it.”

  We kept going, a lot more subdued, afraid of what we would find.

  Thayu stood on the bow, studying the island through her reader. The beach was on the southeastern end, facing the mainland, and the light from the low suns hampered her vision. The island showed up as a black silhouette and, to get any kind of resolution in the shade, she needed to dial the contrast so far down that all lines acquired an aura.

  “It’s hard to see,” she complained. “I think there is something on the top of that rock, and there is also something in the forest. The infrared is useless because all that rock is still radiating heat.”

  We were already in the shade of the island, gliding into the bay. A second boat became visible on the beach behind the first.

  Not a sign of life appeared on the beach.

  We came closer and closer. Telaris took his gun from the arm bracket, constantly scanning the forest and the cliffs behind it. The bay was like a mirror and when Langga cut the engine, the boat glided over the shallow water to the beach. The other boat was slightly ahead of us. Veyada jumped into the thigh-deep water, holding the rope to pull the boat up onto the sand.

 
; Then Thayu yelled out, “Action!”

  CHAPTER 16

  * * *

  VEYADA DROPPED himself in the water. Sheydu, Deyu and Evi dropped as one to the bottom of the boat. A shot flew over the top and hit the water just in front of the bow of our boat.

  Splash. A bullet.

  Thayu pulled me down. Reida and Telaris also fell between the benches.

  I lay, panting, on the hard and disgusting bottom, half in a puddle that stank of rotting fish.

  I said, “What the fuck do they think they’re doing?”

  “They don’t want us around,” Reida said.

  Telaris muttered, “Someone recommend that kid for a prize in logic.”

  Damn it, I hadn’t yet spoken to my association about easing off on teasing Reida.

  I carefully rolled onto my back.

  Langga sat behind the engine housing, holding the rudder with his tail. If ever I was going to die and come back in a different body, it would have to be one with a tail.

  Thayu was using her reader to spy over the boat’s side.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I can see Veyada. He’s on our side of the boat.”

  “He’s all right?”

  “As far as I can see. He’s got his gun.” That had to be a measure of being all right.

  “What about Nicha?”

  “I can’t see their boat.”

  “They’re behind us,” Telaris said. “I think they’ve already backed away. I can hear an engine.”

  I heard nothing except the roaring of blood in my ears. What the hell, just what the hell was going on?

  “We need to get out of here,” Thayu said. “We can go around the point to another beach or something, but it’s fast getting dark, but I don’t want to fight any Pengali in the dark.”

  These were likely to be Thousand Islands tribe fighters. Pengali were nocturnal. Of course I had come here with a group of highly trained people, who were also known to have rotten night vision.

  “All right.” I turned my head to Langga. “Can you reverse the boat from where you’re sitting?”

  “Not a problem.” He opened a little door in the engine casing, where there was a second control panel. He turned a knob which reversed the engine’s airflow. Air roared over my head. The boat moved, backwards, I hoped.

  After a while, Thayu pushed herself up and I followed her lead.

  We had moved a good distance away from the beach.

  Veyada had climbed back into the other boat, and he and Sheydu had their guns trained on the shore, probably peering through the sights to spot signs of movement in the infrared scan.

  I was glad to see the third boat, with the plane, Della and Nicha, safely with us. Telaris had been right, they had backed away earlier, and Nicha was using his reader to study the beach.

  The drivers steered the boats close together.

  “See anything?” I asked Nicha.

  “There is a little hut to the side. I could see some movement in there for a bit, but it’s gone now.”

  “I’m guessing they’re from the Thousand Islands tribe?”

  “No,” Langga, Della and Maray said at the same time.

  “Well,” Langga added. “At least not from the settlement. There would have been more of them, and they would have chased us much further.”

  “How many people do you reckon there are?”

  When Pengali shrugged, they flicked their tails. “Hard to tell. There could be one, there could be more.” That was a typical Pengali answer.

  “But less than there would have been if they were from the settlement?”

  “Yah.”

  But it was getting dark, and whoever was there had the advantage of being hidden and knowing the place, and we did not.

  “Change of plan,” I said. “We’ll go around the point to another beach and we’ll camp there. Then we’ll figure out what to do tomorrow morn—”

  Someone behind us yelled, “Oy!”

  I looked over my shoulder. The beisili had returned. There were at least twelve of them, a varied group with dark-coloured males and several large females. They circled our three boats. One stuck a head out of the water, floating closer. Its eyes were deep blue, and the top of its head was so heavily encrusted with growths that it looked like a carpet of thorns. It was a huge, mature animal—female, judging by the light grey colour of the parts of the skin that were visible.

  “Get the fuck away from us!” Sheydu yelled.

  She had drawn her gun. The animal observed her coolly, blowing out a snorting breath. Then it languidly sank under the water with a couple of lazy flaps of her flippers. Another one swam right behind it. This one was also a female, but much younger. The skin on its back was smooth, with only a few encrustations, and the ridges were only starting to develop. This animal, too, stuck its head out of the water to gawk at us. Its eyes were bright blue.

  A third animal rushed up from below. Darker, its back full of growths, male. It tried to push itself in between the two females, who pushed close together. They swam in circles, the females keeping together, the male jostling, coming really close to our boats.

  Langga shouted something in Pengali to the others. Della had already started the engine.

  And all of a sudden, the male jumped half out of the water, on top of the younger female. The big female seized him by his neck and pulled him over the top of her, into a roll. Tails and flippers cast a wide spray of water. They went under, came back up in a tangle of tails and bodies and necks. They rolled around, coming perilously close to the boat with Sheydu and Veyada. Maray was frantically trying to start the engine on their boat.

  The female honked. She had him in a death grip, holding him so tightly with her flippers that they almost vanished in the soft rolls of flesh on his underside. He threshed in the water, letting out a squeal. A cloud of red bloomed.

  The other animals joined, threshing tails and flippers. The water became a boiling pool of froth.

  And then the fight stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the beisili all bobbed up, skimming the froth off the water, slurping and licking, and smacking their mouths.

  “What the hell?”

  Langga stood staring at the animals. The engine was running, and we were slowly drifting back from the group.

  “Beisili mating,” he said. “Few people ever see this.”

  Holy crap.

  I went back through the events. The two females, mother and daughter, the male showing an interest in the daughter, but the mother got jealous and claimed him for herself. Was that how it went? And the red stuff was not blood but sperm, which they also considered a delicacy?

  Ew, seriously.

  The boats started making their way around the point at the end of the beach where sheer cliffs met the ocean. Both suns were now under the horizon and the sky above turned purple and dark green.

  “These beisili, they will be a problem for us,” Langga continued. “This is their territory. The male wants the young female, but the older female won’t let him have her. The longer the fight goes on, the more beisili will come, and the more they will mate. The seed attracts others, and it attracts fish and can even bring eels out here.”

  For now, the sea was deceptively quiet.

  The beach around the corner wasn’t a beach as much as a collection of boulders at the bottom of a cliff. It was utterly unsuitable for going ashore. We threw out anchors and tied the boats together into a large platform.

  The shore was close enough, but not even the Pengali were keen to get into the water to check it out. Beyond the boulders was a narrow section of dense shrubbery and behind that the solid, inhospitable cliff face, with not as much as a tiny ledge to climb it.

  The stone looked like a type of granite, and rainwater and algae had painted dark and lighter stripes across the vertical face. The only vegetation that grew on it was at the very top.

  By the last of the dying daylight, we unpacked some of our supplies and ate bread and fruit. We fill
ed up the space between the benches with bags and rolled out our mats over the top. There wasn’t nearly enough space, especially for Evi and Telaris.

  We tied the oiled cloth over the top, held up by the engine housing, in case it rained, and it looked like it might.

  We gathered in Maray’s boat by the eerie green glow of a pearl light that Thayu had brought.

  It was a group of miserable-looking faces.

  “Well,” I said. “That changes things a bit. Anyone got a clue about what’s going on and what we should do tomorrow?”

  “We should try to approach the beach from another side,” Sheydu said.

  “Is there an approach from any other side?” Nicha asked. “I mean . . . look at these cliffs.”

  Thayu was studying a generated 3D image of the island on her reader. The bluish light lit her face from below. “The western side of the island looks a bit more accessible. There is another beach on that side, and the cliffs are lower and less solid.”

  “Is it a real beach in the way this here is not a beach?” Reida said, gesturing at the boulders.

  “The map isn’t that detailed, so yes, maybe, or maybe not.”

  “That side of the island is exposed to the ocean,” Langga said. “It will be a lot harder to stay close.”

  “We can use the plane,” Veyada said.

  “Yes, we can,” Sheydu said. “But first of all, we need to figure out what we’re doing. Simply said: we need to know how many people with guns there are and whether we care if we kill them.”

  Trust Sheydu to make a blunt remark.

  “What we really need to know: this Robert guy of yours,” —she looked at me— “was he the one at the end of that gun, or was it someone else?”

  I would have loved to be able to say that it would be someone else, but I remembered those pictures of Robert and his wife at the gun show. That splash in the water had been created by a projectile, not a discharge. Pengali sometimes used darts, but our drivers would have known if Pengali were involved.

  It did look like it was Robert. But why send us a help note and then pick off any help that came?