And Such Are Stones

4. Ug-Tuk the Nik

Ug-Tuk was napping behind a few wooden crates when the horns blew. It was his shift, but things had been pretty slow lately. Nobody cared if a Nik was napping as long as he made the muster. The last time the horns had blown was at least ten sleep cycles past. It wasn't what you would call a really busy season.

He could feel his heart beating rapidly as his thoughts and instincts covered all the possibilities. He had to shake his head to clear it from the dream he was in the middle of, and he started gathering his gear. No one could ever know what was in the works when the horn blew. It could be anything from a small merchant vessel approaching, which would be really nice for a change, to a sighting of a Foille, with a net in tow, crossing the Gap.

He quickly readied himself for the hunt and scrambled to the Raider deck. At least three Raider craft were already in the air, and the fourth was picking up its pouch.

Ug-Tuk was barely able to make the jump to the pouch just seconds before the lift. He still didn't know what was going on yet, but he could see the excitement on the faces of the rest of the crew. They were all ready for something new to happen. They were ready for anything to break the boredom.

He probably picked a bad day to slip off for a nap. If he had missed the lift, it would have been four strikes on his chip, and that usually means a forever trip to the core. Strikes don't come off ... they just stay on your record until you run out.

No one ever comes back from the core. At least not with all his limbs attached. The Whites weren't very forgiving when one of the Niks crossed their boundary. If it weren't for all that good scrap that the Whites were hoarding down there, then no one would ever be sent in to try and take it in the first place. Niks liked scrap. They lived off of the scrap of everyone else, and the ancient yards of the Mogaitep were hidden within the growth of the Wilds ... right in the middle of the territory of the Whites.

Airborne now, the Raiders were almost to the no-grav. That's where the pull from the moon gives way to the no-gravity sky of the Evers. It was the break-over point, where you had best be hooked on, or you might float away until you ran into something.

Ug-Tuk couldn't see the target yet, but he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen four Raiders in a lift, so whatever it was, it must be pretty tasty. Four Raiders ... it had to be a transport. Transports were the cream. They were the ships that carried the good stuff. There were never any ships that came to stay. It was always stuff that was just passing through. The good stuff never made it to a stopping point in the Evers. There weren't even markets in the Evers.

The Evers was "that place" that you wished you could go around but didn't really have a road to get you there. To go past, you had to go right through the middle. The middle was where the Wilds were, and the Wilds were where the Niks lived. So, if you are a captain on a transport, you really don't have a whole bunch of options. About all they could do, and always did, was pay the Bashindi to guard their flanks with the Cleets.

All the Niks on the front two pouches started whooping their war cries and coiling the cords for their grapple bows as soon as they felt the float from hitting the no-grave. A couple of seconds later, Ug-Tuk could feel it, too. It is like a falling sensation in the pit of your stomach when your weight drops off, and you are really glad you didn't forget to hook your leg through the pouch mesh when you jumped on.

At least in the no-grav, it wasn't hard to hang on. It was difficult to stabilize enough to get a clean shot with the bow, though. Wasted or missed shots took way too much time to recoil, so you wanted to sink one in on the first pass.

Ug-Tuk could see it now. It was a Trawler with a cargo pod in tow, and there were no Cleets in sight. It was risky for a captain to try to jump the Gap without an escort, but they still did it all the time. Security costs extra ... and the extra could just as easily pad the retirement of the captain. They had to balance the risk against the potential profit.

The whole Raider crew was whooping now. Blades and axes were out on display, and bows were being readied. The Trawler was about 200 yards out when it banked towards a near moon to keep from being encircled. It was a race now.

The Raiders kept pace, but they didn't all have the same speed, so they lined up single file while giving chase. Raiders were a hodge-podge of grouped together parts salvaged from whatever ships were unlucky enough to be caught in the Gap. The Niks weren't very good at hodge-podging, and some of their stuff could barely fly.

Ug-Tuk could see the clear spot where the operator sat and could make out the frantic movements of the crew as they ran, hand-over-hand, to their defensive positions. They tried to think ahead and position themselves with axes to cut loose any lines that sunk into the rigging. If they waited until a Nik was in the air, then a cut line was a Nik that probably wouldn't make it back again.

He got an evil grin, thinking about the battle that was about to take place ... slaughter, more like it. He had to wonder what was in the pod that a captain would risk life and limb for. It could be anything. There was once a load of women headed for a colony somewhere. Here in the Evers, women were about the most valuable commodity there is. Ug-Tuk could use a nice woman right about now.

They were getting close enough for the first Raider to lay some lines in. A few Niks got shots away on the near side of their pouch, and the rest were working their way around the pouch to shoot a line in of their own. The crew on the Trawler were working frantically to get to the lines before the Niks could crawl over.

Several Niks were already in the sky and crawling up their lines when the horns sounded again. There shouldn't be any horns sounding now. Horns right now were a bad thing. Horns were a "Get ready," they were a "Reassemble," and they were an "Oh Crap ... run for your Nik lives". It was way too early for a "Reassemble." There had to be a threat coming that was more along the lines of an "Oh Crap."

Everyone started looking around to see what the new threat was, and a cold chill went up Ug-Tuk's spine when he saw the flight of Cleets, mounted with cutters, coming to the aid of the Trawler. They had been hiding around the curve of the moon and came when they got the call from the Trawler.

The Bashindi had been much sneakier lately ... lying in wait and trailing, just out of sight. The Com had been talking about putting together a crew for a Cleet destroyer, but it probably wouldn't ever get made, though. Niks were cheap, and boats were valuable ... do the math.

It was already too late for the crew of the first pair of Nik Raiders. They were already in the sky, with no way to return to their pouch. You couldn't be connected in two places at once. When you swung out on a line, you were pretty much committed. Some of the Raiders themselves had a large grapple that would shoot in to hold another ship, but these boats still depended on a pouch that would be crawling with Niks to do the dirty work.

The Cleets cut through the lines like a blade through tall grass, and the Niks in the sky were sent flying off in every direction. If you were cut loose in the sky, you could tumble for a very long time. There wasn't really a gravity pull to any of the moons. It was more of a drifting on the air currents until you got eaten by something or maybe came close enough to a moon to catch the gravity field and fall to the ground.

The remaining Nik Raiders didn't even try to see if they could pick up their strays. They dove steeply towards the nearest moon and turned to head back to the Wilds. This was a no-win situation for them now. With all the Cleets in the sky, this raid was done. The remaining Raiders were willing to cut their losses. The Niks in the no-grav would just have to fend for themselves. Sorry guys ... too bad for you.

Ug-Tuk watched the Niks in the sky continue to tumble as the Raiders moved away. He wasn't concerned about them; they had already been written off. He was thinking more about the booty he was going to take from their racks. The stuff that they had put away from other lifts, the stuff they had to trade with. None of the Niks in the sky would ever need that stuff anymore.

When the Raiders returned, it would be a mad dash to see who could get to the racks first. Sure, there would be a few fights over the better stuff ... but wasn't that what life was all about?

(Fin ... ad infin)