Fic: The Summer Intern (cont.)

[jeriendhal]

Nan stared stupidly at Freya’s body, frozen in place, her ears still ringing.  The explosion had centered on the flyer’s power plant, leaving a crater surrounded by smoldering grasses as the heavy rain quickly doused the flames engulfing the twisted wreckage.  Beside her, Nez started to rush forward, but Nan grabbed her arm and pulled her back, claws digging into the wazagan’s tough skin.
 
“She’s dead,” Nan tried to whispered, unable to hear her own words.  With her head still ringing from the explosion she might have very well been shouting.  Mother knew she wanted to scream in panic just then.  “Get to Skyler and pick him up.”
 
“Pick him up?  He’s got a head injury and Allah knows what else!  I can’t move him without a back brace and…!” Nez started to protest, her voice rising until Nan grabbed her beaked muzzle with both hands and clamped it shut. 
 
“The flyer didn’t just blow up on its own!  Think about it!”  They both turned their heads as guttural voices shouted from the opposite side of the clearing.  “Go!” Nan urged.
 
Nez didn’t wait, scooping up Skyler, taking care to cradle his injured head and heading deeper into the jungle.  Nan followed, tugging her roommate’s arm when they were about ten meters away from the clearing, pointing up at the trees.  Nez looked confused, but got the idea when Nan dug her claws into the soft bark of the adolescent village tree and started climbing.  Nez hugged the still unconscious Skyler close to her, awkwardly following with only one free arm.  Nan herself very nearly plunged down to the ground when the adrenaline rush triggered by the explosion began to fade and she realized just how badly her spine and tail were hurting from being knocked over by the explosion.  With one final heave she managed to pull herself atop a branch nearly a half meter wide, hugging it for dear life with her arms and legs as Nez sat down beside her, balancing Skyler in her lap.
 
Down below, the faint voices grew closer, the words becoming more distinct.  Two heavyset, grey-skinned, adult creo, one male and one female, both armed with military energy rifles, powered down spoofer cloaks over their shoulders, paused within spitting distance of the tree where Nan and the others hid.  The male turned to his partner and growled, “They ain’t here!  I told ya once they got deep in we’d never find ‘em without scanners!  We should’a picked ‘em up first instead of scarin’ ‘em off like ya did!”
 
“I had to shoot.  That blasted fuzzy was gonna try and fly off outta range of the jammer,” the female shot back.
 
“Ya shoulda shot her instead of the flyer.  Then we could’a picked ‘em off when they rushed over to check on her.”
 
“I didn’t here you botherin’ to tell me that when I was linin’ up my shot.”
 
Up on the branch, Skyler’s head rolled to one side and he began to let out a low moan, which Nez quickly muffled by clamping her hand over his mouth, the other pressed against his wounded scalp.  To Nan it looked like he was still bleeding horribly.  She vaguely remembered that scalp wounds generally looked worse than they really were, but did that apply to ferin, with the mass of delicate nerves and power conduits running from the specialized bion generating section of their brain to their projection spurs?  As she examined Skyler she could see that his left spur was even now hanging askew from the loose flap of scalp that had been torn away.
 
Down below, the argument between the two creo was concluding, or at least taking a break until Round Two could commence.  “Rockfall, we’ll never find ‘em,” the male concluded.  “We should head back t’ camp and tell the boss.  They gotta ferin with them, so he’ll light up on a bion scanner like a beacon.  Easy enough t’ hunt ‘em down then.”
 
“Why hunt ‘em down at all?  We’ll be gone as soon we finish loadin’ the cargo.” the female said.
 
“No witnesses, remember?  He’ll want us to find ‘em.  Come on.”  The male checked an electronic mapper woven into the sleeve of his coat, and they headed in a northerly direction, presumably towards their encampment.
 
Nan let out the breath she’d been holding, once she was sure they were out of earshot.  “Did you hear all that?” she whispered to Nan, sitting up and clamping her legs around the branch.
 
Her roommate nodded.  “They mentioned cargo.  What do you think they’re talking about?”
 
“Isn’t it obvious?  What’s the one thing worth taking on Newspring?  They’re slavers, hunting for ferin!”
 
“Slavers?” Nez hissed.  “How could any slaver ship get past the orbital picket line?  Newspring is almost as heavily defended as Vulpine Prime!”
 
“I don’t know, but they did it, and they must have a plan for taking off again.  How’s Skyler?” she asked.
 
The purple haired ferin let out another moan, louder this time.  “Skyler feels like he just got clipped by a meteorite,” he said, opening his eyes.  “Oh fragg my head hurts.”  He reached up to touch his wounded scalp, but Nan grabbed his hand and pulled it down.
 
“Don’t poke at that until Nez can examine you,” she said.  She took hold of him while Nez fished a penlight from the pocket of her jacket and shined it into his eyes.
 
“Pupils are dilated and not contracting in unison.  You’ve definitely got a concussion,” she concluded.
 
“Yeah, I guessed,” Skyler said, wincing as she touched his wound delicately with her fingers.  “Concussion from what though?  Where’s Freya?  What are we doing up this tree?”
 
“Freya is dead,” Nan told him. “She was next to the flyer when it got blown up by a couple of creo.  We think they’re slavers hunting for ferin.  They mentioned getting a bion scanner to look for us anyway.”
 
Skyler closed his eyes and let out a scatological curse, as Nez plucked a piece of hard plastic fairing the size of a decicredit bar from his scalp wound. 
 
“I’m going to need something seal the wound and bandage it properly," she said, flicking the plastic bit away.

"What about your jacket or my rain slicker?" Nan suggested.

Nez shook her head. "They're both nylon and plastic. Won't absorb blood properly, or let the wound breathe."

Nan frowned. "Well, I suppose you could use my blouse. I'm wearing a bra underneath."

"Just use my utili-kilt," Skyler piped up. "It's polyester and cotton. It should work fine."

"But then you'll be naked!" she exclaimed.

Skyler gave her a withering stare worthy of the First One. "I'm a ferin. The only reason I wear it is because I need a place to put my key cards. Help me out of it." He dug through his pockets and handed over his cards, along with a few miscellaneous scraps of paper, a stylus, two random polyhedral dice and a small tube of superglue, all of which Nan slipped into her fanny pack.

"Bismallah I wish I had some surgical glue, or even a needle and thread. It all went up with my pack in the flyer," Nez said.

"It's a pity you can't use this," Nan said to Nez, holding up the tube of glue as the wazagan started to tear Skyler's kilt into bandages with her strength and claws.

Nez's expression brightened. "Actually I can. Surgical glue and superglue are basically the same thing. It's just one is produced under sterile conditions."

"Is it going to be problem?" Nan asked, handing over the glue. After warning Skyler to stay very still, the wazagan began to squeeze out a line of glue at the seam of his wound.

"Well I don't have any sterile water or alcohol to clean it out anyway. We could hardly do worse." She shrugged. "If we aren't found by friendlies in three or four days it might be a problem. But if we aren't found by friendlies by then we're likely going to be dead."

“Do we have a com?” Skyler asked, as Nez finished knotting his bandages.  “Mine is probably wherever my shades got blasted to.  We’ll never find in this mess.”
 
"I didn't even think of that," Nez said, reaching into the inner pocket of her jacket. She withdrew the remains of her comset, broken into several irreparable pieces. "I must of fallen on it when Freya was killed," she said with chagrin. "What about you, Nan?"

Nan felt her cheeks grow warm as she took out her own comset. "Mine is all right, but it's not going to do us much good."

"What do you mean? We just have to get outside of the range of the slavers' com jammer and we can call for help," Nez said.

"It won't work," Nan said. "My phone plan is only good for calls where there's a local com network. My comset doesn't even have ground to satellite capability." As Nez and Skyler stared at her in disbelief, she quickly added, "My internship stipend isn't all that much and I figured I needed to save money somewhere."

Nez raised her eyes skyward. "Yah Rubbi, inty marra gahbiyah! We're going to be hunted down and killed because you had to go with a cheap phone service!"

"Well forgive me for not planning on being trapped in the middle of a fragging rainforest surrounded by murderous slavers!" Nan shot back.

"Girls, girls, no yelling, please," Skyler begging, pressing his hand to his forehead.

"Bismallah, I'm sorry, Nan," Nez said, digging her claws into the bark of the tree. "I'm just... Oh all merciful God, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Nan replied, running her paw agitatedly through her head fur. "Oh, Mother, Freya is dead. They killed her. They burned her." She let out one short, desperate sob, before clamping hard on it. She couldn't go to pieces now. She couldn't. She just couldn't.

Nez reached out and took hold of her paw, squeezing it hard. Nan squeezed back and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry too, Nez. Look, we've got to figure a way to get the word out about what happened. If the slavers have kidnapped any ferin, we have to tell somebody. We can't just wait for Ranger Central to notice Freya hasn't checked in yet and send a search party. It might be days before they find us."

"Agreed," Nez said. "What then?"

Nan tried to think. She looked over to Skyler, who was sitting quietly, one hand pressing against his bandage, his tail and working spur flat with worry. "Skyler," she said. "Can you use your bion?"

He shook his head carefully, then looked like he regretted it. "If I tried to zap anyone with one working spur, I'm more likely to just electrocute myself."

"No, no. I mean can you still detect bion trails?"

"Sure," he said. Skyler grew excited as he came to the same conclusion Nan just had. "Hey, I just need to find a fresh bion trail and follow it to the nearest troupe. Even if they don't have a comset they can find the closest troupe that does."

"But will you be able to find a troupe quickly enough with us following along?" Nez asked.

"Damn, good point," he admitted. "Nothing personal, but neither of you are natural born tree hoppers."

"You'll have to do it without us then," Nan said.

"What?" Nez exclaimed. "Are you crazy, Nan? He's just had a major head trauma and is suffering from a concussion. Skyler needs to be taken to hospital and run through a GRI to check for traumatic brain injury, not go jumping through the jungle by himself. What do you think will happen if he suffers a stroke or worse, all alone?"

"I fall out of the trees and if I manage miss snapping my neck completely I go into a healing coma," Skyler cut in. "Look, I stay with you two then the slavers will find us when they come back with their scanners. I go off by myself then you'll be lost in the background biomass. There are a lot critters out here the size of a vulpine and a wazagan in the deep jungle. I'll go for help and you guys stay under cover near the flyer, in case the ranger come flying in to investigate. Okay?"

"It's a bad idea," Nez said stubbornly.

"It's our only choice," Skyler said. He stood up on tree branch, one hand on the village tree's trunk for support. "I'll see you both when I come back with the cavalry. Now stay up here and out of sight!" And with that he made a five meter jump to the branches of the next village tree, spade tail streaming behind him, claws digging into the bark as he nearly overshot his landing. He turned back towards them once to wave, then disappeared into the dense rain forest.

"What now?" Nez asked, staring in the direction where Skyler had disappeared.

"We should do as Skyler said and stay here near the flyer," Nan said.

Nez looked in the direction of the smoldering wreckage and the black furred body on the ground beside it. "What about the slavers? What if they leave with the ferin they've captured before help arrives?"

"Well then..." Nan rubbed her muzzle. "I know we can't really do anything, but I'd rather not look the First One in the face and tell him we didn't even try."

"Agreed."

Nan smiled wanly. "Your god have any sayings about fools rushing into danger?"

Nez smiled back. "Can't think of one at the moment. How about the Holy Den Mother?"

"Not offhand. I'm sure if we screw up she'll tell me a few in person though. Let's go." Together they climbed down the tree and headed in the direction the two creo had gone.

TBC

Notes: I'm really regretting making Nan and Nez's names so similar. But I am rather pleased with my solution to the Cell Phone Problem. Many thanks to Wazaga for Arabic language advice.