31

Closing In

The Lunattacks had gone back to Darkside one more time to refuel, and returned to the woods. The brat had almost three days head start now, and they had no idea where he was. He would not be home yet, although soon they would simply go there and catch him when he tried to get back into town.

"I'll kill him," Chilldon growled. "That little bastard is going to die a slow death. I am going to make him beg me to kill him!"

"Oh chill out," Infra said, then snickered at the unintentional pun. Chilldon growled at her and shot a burst of ice at the shorter Lunattack. Infra had expected it and jumped out of the way. "Hey watch it before I nail you with my disk." Her throwing disk could engulf him in fire more easily than he could freeze her, and he knew it.

"That's easy for you to say, Infra," he spat. "That miserable punk hasn't humiliated you. First at the old Lair, and now in these woods. I want him dead."

Serious now, Infra shook her head. "Well you'd better keep him alive if you catch him because Mumm-Ra wants to deal with him." Infra turned her attention to the sensors, using her own natural ability to enhance the scan. "I still can't find the little shit."

Still on the issue of whether he would kill Saber or not, Chilldon made a disgusted sound. "Oh yeah? Well Mumm-Ra can kiss my—" But he was cut off by a powerful hand gripping his throat from behind, and all that came out was a strangled outcry of startlement.

"Your what?" rumbled an angry voice. Chilldon twisted awkwardly around at the being that had lifted him so effortlessly into the air by the throat. Mumm-Ra had finished his rest and had gotten into Skytomb without setting off so much as a beeper.

"Nothing, Mumm-Ra!" Chilldon choked out. "I was just talking."

The ancient priest dropped Chilldon to the floor, where he fell and glared at the demon mage. "Watch what you talk about, Lunattack." This was all that Mumm-Ra said on the matter: he had other things to deal with. "Have you found him yet?" he asked.

"No," Infra said disgustedly. "We haven't been able to locate him. But we know where his village is, it's not far from Darkside itself; he has to be headed there. There's nowhere else for him to go. We are going to set down halfway from where we last saw him and his village, and search again. And if we don't find him within a few days, we planned on going to his town and waiting for him."

Mumm-Ra nodded silently as he stood in the shadows in the control room. He watched the female Lunattack go about her search, and watched Chilldon sulk.

After a moment Sounder entered the control room, looking disgusted. "You do not want to know what Psychren's doing," he said with a grimace of disgust. "He's got one of the female slaves in his room—"

"You're right," Infra said, cutting him off in her louder voice. "We don't want to know.

Sounder said no more and acknowledged Mumm-Ra with a slight nod as he also stood and watched. There was no more to do at the moment.

But after a while, Skytomb began to descend, with Chilldon at the weapons consoles, blasting away the trees. He was clearing enough land to land in for the large fortress. Once landed, the ranking Lunattacks; Chilldon, Infra, Earthquake, Psychren, Sounder, and Fintii exited the fortress. Fintii began barking out orders to spread out and look once more. They had the handheld scanners and sensors, and one of the lower ranking Lunattacks was manning the ones on Skytomb. They would give the search three days, and if they did not find him by then, they would attack his hometown.

A little over a day behind Saber, and a few ahead of the Lunattacks, Leyati's band of fighters was closing in on the village themselves. They were approaching from a different angle than the Lunattacks, and had not yet crossed their path. They had followed the boy's trail, getting lost a few times along the way. Only luck and a strong tracking instinct that the reptile race possessed had allowed them to be able to follow their young friend. They had seen the Lunattack fortress here and there, but Skytomb had not been interested in them, although they numbered nearly a thousand fighters. Marching in a long, long line through the woods, they had been just beyond the notice of the scanners on the massive fortress, and that was lucky. At any time, Skytomb could have blasted them.

"Are you sure this is where your young friend said his village was?" a human woman named Kentri asked the old Nai. The humans and Nai had gotten used to the idea of each other, as like Leyati, most were unfamiliar with the other.

Leyati nodded grimly. "He even described this whole area to me. This is the right place. We just have to keep going. If we hit the forbidden territory we've gone too far. He says that's where they make their gathering days."

"Well all right," Kentri said reluctantly. Months of travel had made a good deal of them irritable, and many were having second thoughts here and there. A lot had asked why so many people were risking their lives and leaving their families undefended for one small human kid who had gotten in trouble with the demons?

Leyati had answered this quietly when a group of them had asked this, and said that they were leaving. The old Nai said, "We don't risk ourselves for one boy, my friend. We risk ourselves for freedom. For too long we've let them terrorize us, let them take from us what's ours. If that one boy has a strong enough spirit to inspire so many to fight, and has the courage to stand alone if he has to... I can do nothing more than stand with him."

That had quieted the more sullen of them, and made the others understand; no one had turned back that day. And now they neared the spot where most of them knew in their hearts they would finally stand. And they were ready.

Saber had made good distance in this time, travelling faster than he had most of his journey. Now that he had encountered the ones that were after him, he was anxious to get home as fast as he could. A week after his fight with the icy Lunattack of Plundaar, Saber's injury had mostly healed. It had scabbed up horribly, and hurt a lot for a long time. But now it was finally healing, and Saber had been able to scrub the scab off with little pain. Had he lived centuries ago he probably would not have healed so quickly, but quicker healing was part of evolution.

It was going to leave a nasty scar, he could see that. As after the attack from the Bolkins, he felt two ways about this. He almost did not like having a big scar on his body, a mark that was not supposed to be there, but on the other hand he thought it was cool. And this was a real battle scar, gotten in a fight with an enemy.

But even his fascination with the scar was forgotten as he neared his home. Soon he would find out the questions he had asked himself weeks ago: how would his parents react? How would his people react? He would soon find out.

***

The Lunattacks did give their search a few days. But when they found nothing, not even a trace, Mumm-Ra finally ordered them to go straight to his home, and terrorize the villagers until they gave the boy up. And if he was not there yet, they would wait for him. The Lunattacks, weary of searching, were more than happy to comply. They were itching for some violence.

Skytomb flew over the trees, Mumm-Ra hovering close-by. "What the hell is that?" Chilldon asked, pointing to a strange readout on the scanners.

"Beats me," Infra said, and tuned the signal in. Then he laughed in amazement. "Berbils!" she exclaimed.

"That brat did mention them, didn't he? I guess he was right." Chilldon got a nasty grin on his face. "I've always wanted to strafe a Berbil village...heard about them, but I've never actually seen one. What do You say?"

Infra laughed. "I say you get your personal Icerunner, and I'll take the larger one, and let's go!" A few hours shouldn't make any difference in a search of days. She got Fintii's approval for the joyride, and a group of the Lunattacks ran for the hangar.

Down below, Robearbill was outside picking the tainted candifruit from the vines within the village when he heard it. Looking up to see a fortress that his run-down, malfunctioning memory banks knew well, he could only stare in shock. As from it two vehicles, a High-grav Lunattack, and a jet pack carrying Infra's little brother emerged from it and began firing at one of the weed-ridden, overgrown crops, he still could only stare.

"This is fun!" Infra's brother laughed as he zoomed by his sister, piloting the larger model Icerunner. He activated the lasers on his jetpack and blasted three rows of candifruit in the fields, firing at the Berbils that worked there as they had every day for thousands of years. "What the hell, they're only standing there..."

The others had moved onto the town, and were setting the village on fire. Huts that had been burned down and rebuilt too many times to count were again blasted to the ground, and Berbils were destroyed as they strafed the place. But unlike the playacted attack Saber had witnessed all those months ago, the Berbils did not race around in a panick as they would have in the days of Third Earth. They only stood there, gaping.

Of course the Berbils did nothing. Now that there was a real attack after so many centuries, they no longer knew what to do. The basic, primal instinct of their few biological parts had long since ceased to work right, and everything was not preprogrammed, rehearsed from some memory of an attack hundreds of years ago. And so they could only stare in shock as their village was destroyed.

"And this is just a dress rehearsal!" Chilldon called gleefully as he blasted one of the bear people to smithereens. A bluieish gray colored one was torn apart by his laser fire. "I needed this! Next stop, that miserable little shit's town!"

Finally they stopped their attack, leaving the forgotten little town smoking, in ruins. After so many months of frustration, this was just what they had needed to warm up for the real thing, yet to come.

Part 32: Journey's End

Table of Contents
ThunderCat Stories Page
Main Page