Knack' Attack: A Tale of the Human-Knacker War by Robert Reginald

Author:Robert Reginald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“They’re Comin’!”

The next morn, the ninth of my Handship, I called t’gether our peoples for a confab, and Hand Avnir—he who’d been hurt by the missile-bits—asked: “Can they do us any great harm with these thin’s?”

“Not direct-like,” I said. “But if this boomin’ lasted many-many days, ’twould cover up the Cave-Hole, and block us all in, maybe for goodness-sake; but they want us for their eats, so that’s no easy way for them.

“No, I think they want to kill our corral out there, which gives us the only way to strike back at them. If they send ’nough rocks o’erhead, some’ll git through the net, and some’ll damage the mounts, and some’ll ’rupt the juice, till all goes down. Then what we have left for ourselves is jus’ the entrance-field, and they can take their sweet-’n’-sour time in rootin’ us out. That’s my ken.”

“Lead Rabbs is right,” Seer Safrans said. “They can wait and wait and wait, and we can do nigh unto nothin’ once we’re blocked down into this place. But we have no good choices to make.”

“What ’bout the Spiretown?” Missy Illus said.

“Yes, we could go there,” I said, “if the bugs didn’t take us on the way. But we have no food stored ’midst the spires, and no way of gittin’ our beasties into the Town.”

“They’ll die anyways within’ a seven-day or two,” Hand Tibbs said, “or more the like, we’ll have to kill them all for our eats, ’cause they can’t survive lon’ without feed.”

“True is truth,” I said. “So what would yous have me do?”

But no-un could think of anythin’ other to say, from what I’d said o’er and o’er ’gain ’foretimes, and we were still talkin’ when Lasto came runnin’ down, and yelled, “They’re comin’!”—and we all rushed up to our posts quick-time-like.

I’d set the corral-fence so that when the shootin’ started up ’gain, it lit up the night, ’luminatin’ all the ground ’round, and we were shootin’ and yellin’ and fightin’ like mad devils, each and ev’ry-un. But Desp’r was hurt sore by a darter, ’fore he kilt it with a knife; and the Seer, he was o’ercome by the heat, which had barely let loose of us when the dark, it came up; and he had to be carried down to the sickbeds way below. Tibbs got herself a bug with a ker’sene-bomb, so that was four of them dead, out of twelvish. We’d seen no signs yet that the Knack’s were sendin’ more troops to help their buds.

Desp’r, he died the next day, ’spite all the meds we’d scarfed from the studiants camp; we had no doc with us to cure the big-hurts that war brin’s to man and beast. We burned his body in the corral, so that no bug could e’er call it eats.

* * * * * * *

So, this is how it went from my ninth to fifteenth day as a made Hand, till fin’lly, the ’lectro-fence died the death of a thousand hurts, and I had to pull ev’ry-un back into the Big-Cave.

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