In this universe, much of Terra was wilderness. Tahmm had flown some hundred and fifty miles since he'd last seen a village or field, or what passed for roads. Nor a solitary hut, though he might have missed a few hidden under trees. He'd seen thousands of square miles of pine, spruce and fir forest, with here and there groves and stands of leafy trees. And open bogs. And lakes by the hundreds, probably the thousands, not including ponds and beaver flowages.
Close up, one could find animals small and large, including insects in countless zillions, most notably mosquitoes. But surveys from near space had found almost no sign of humans. In the early post-glacial history of the pre-Armageddon version, there'd been scattered bands of hunting-fishing-gathering cultures there, but apparently not in this new version.
At last his scanner registered what he'd come to find, and the scout adjusted course. Soon he spotted a shuttle resting on an AG cushion, barely above a shelf of nearly black rock extending into a lake. Smooth-looking stone, polished by a long-gone glacier, and the combined action of wind and lake ice in countless springtimes.
A hundred yards from it floated a small watercraft, anchored, for the lake was ruffled by a breeze. In the boat sat another Fohannu, playing a fish; a pike weighing sixteen pounds, though Tahmm didn't know that. The lure itself had been a live ten-inch sucker. Now the pike broke the surface, thrashing, lashing its head, trying to dislodge the hook from its hard, needle-toothed mouth.
Fishing had a certain following on r'Fohann, but Tahmm hadn't thought of it as something a chaos cultist would care for. He'd approached the boat unnoticed from behind, sledding diagonally down across gravitic vectors; had very nearly stopped and was reaching for the loud-hailer switch, when another male Fohannu stepped from the shuttle onto the black rock, waving his arms, shouting to the fisherman. Who turned his head. There, twenty feet above the water and twenty-five feet behind him, was an armed scout.
The glance was fleeting, then he turned back to the pike, which had sounded. Tahmm watched the fisher play it, plunging his rod tip into the water when the fish darted under the boat. The breeze had died for the moment, and the surface was smooth. Through water dark but clear, Tahmm could see the pike fighting the tension of line and rod. Then it wrapped the line around the anchor rope. Picking up his landing net, the Helverti reached elbow deep into the cold water, netted the fish, then took out his sheath knife, cut the line, and boated the pike. He rapped it on the head with a billy, killing it, then reached in and took it from the net, holding it up for Tahmm's approval. From twenty feet now; Tahmm had inched in a bit.
Now the fisherman saw who sat beside the pilot. "I've been expecting you," Jorval called.
Even from fifteen feet (for Tahmm continued to edge in), the fisherman's aura exposed the lie. "My name is Eskonsami Tahmm," Tahmm said, "and yours is Charconvera Jorval. And this of course is—" He gestured.
"I see who it is." Jorval grimaced as if something smelled and tasted bad. "So you turned on me, Ench."
Old resentments, ugly and bitter, flared in the youth. Tahmm could feel them in Ench's energy field. Though Jorval's question had been rhetorical and directed at his nephew, it was the COB operations chief who replied. "He told me nothing, Jorval, not a word. I asked questions, fed him sorting terms, and showed him maps, all the while reading his energy field."
"Then why bring him here?"
"So you could see I have him. He saw his best friend killed in your war, the war you instigated for nothing more than your own degenerate pleasure. He was wounded himself in the attack on the fortress at Kato. Fortunately he was rescued by one of the indigenes; one of ours, not yours. Mazeppa lost the battle there, and a few days later lost again, badly, at a rural stockade. A little place named Dindigul. His northern army had already been crushed and dispersed in a battle by the Misasip, northwest of Hasty.
"At Dindigul, the indigenes captured Mazeppa himself, badly wounded. That magnificent human specimen, crippled. How does that seem to you?"
He didn't wait for a reply; simply continued. "As a matter of fact, the Dkota and their allies never won a battle. A few skirmishes, but never a battle."
Jorval brushed absently at mosquitoes. "Why should I be interested in any of this?"
"Because I'm going to send you to Dzixoss. We've been interested in your project, and as soon as we had Ench in custody—as an active, extraterrestrial combatant in the fighting—we had legal grounds for a whole new level of counter-actions. So of course we sent a corvette to Charon—the ice ball where Captain Vazzo had Satan's Delight parked. From him we learned enough to debrief his shipsmind, and . . ."
Jorval's free hand waved full-time at the mosquitoes now, their stings distracting. "You couldn't have!" he said. "It would have—"
"It didn't, and from it . . ." Tahmm's left hand gestured a Fohannid equivalent of a shrug. "Well, here I am and here you are, and over there must be Lorness and Harmu and the others. You started with certain strategic advantages, but now, to use a Terran anachronism—I hold the trumps."
"Not all of them. Lorness has a beam gun trained on you . . ."
Tahmm raised a hand, clucking. "Jorval, surely you know better. Why has your insect repellent field quit on you? One of the advantages I had from the beginning is the power to lock your beam generators, small as well as large."
The courier was barely eight feet from the boat now, and half rising, Jorval threw himself headfirst into the lake. Calmly Tahmm watched him swim downward out of sight. After twenty seconds, bubbles surfaced, and Tahmm saw the cultist rise into sight again. The white, tightly-furred head broke the surface gasping, sucking air. Briefly Jorval clung to the boat, then tried to pull himself over the side. His solid weight almost overturned it, so he worked his way along the gunwale to the transom, where he pulled himself over the stern, to lie gasping on the bottom.
"You look like the pike," Tahmm said.
"Ah shut up!" Jorval looked truly defeated, despite his ill-tempered words.
Tahmm changed tack. "No need for embarrassment. Drowning by willfully staying under water is not easy to do," he said, wondering if it was true. He turned to the compartment behind him. "Cyth, take Charconvera Jorval into custody."
A hum became audible as the AG generator changed modes, and Jorval might have turned his head to look out the window, but his seat restraint field held him too firmly. Thus he didn't see the COB personnel carrier as it settled beside the shuttle to pick up the others. Peripheral vision, however, let him see Cyth, the non-homid agent who'd manhandled him into the courier, and sat now in a customized seat at his side. The creature had produced a syringe from one of the pockets in its harness. A sedative? Jorval wondered. He felt the syringe held to his neck. It chuffed.
Relaxation spread through him, and he thought a thank you to the agent. Then nothing more, all the way to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.