The Long Weekend in the Woods - Chapter 7

Clever Adolescent Panda

Jerry, Rafe, and Claire started on their way back to the cave, the two prisoners in two. They were going to try and get ready if this turns into a big fight, which looked likely. Cassanee stuck with us, or maybe with Pollock. She watched her all the time as we followed Calvin back to the opposite ridge and into the woods. Pollock didn't enjoy that very much.

"Would you stop eyeing me like I'm about to eat a small child?"

"No."

I tried to get their minds on something else. "There might be enemies all over the place in here. Can we focus on keeping an eye out for them?"

Pollock got indignant. "Tell her! I am fully aware of my surroundings at all times!"

Cassanee responded without looking at me. "I am keeping an eye on enemies."

I sped up to pull even with Calvin. He was moving at his usual steady pace, checking trees and the ground for familiar signs. The scents I was picking up said we were going the right way, but as long as he seemed sure where he was going, I didn't see the need to tell him. Even with lousy human senses, he had a good sense of direction.

He seemed absorbed in following the trail, so I was surprised when he spoke. "Couldn't handle all the hostility?"

"I don't think Cassanee will actually do anything, so I'm not going to spend time watching them." I did shoot a quick glance over my shoulder. Pollock was striding forward steadily, sulking the whole time. Cassanee was a shadow just behind her shoulder.

"As long as Pollock doesn't give her a reason, you're probably right."

"Do you think she's involved?"

He shrugged. "She says she wasn't running things during the ExpanCo days, but that could be a convenient smokescreen. On the other hand, you saw her during that stretch. She was pretty despondent most of the time. If she was playing the long game, she went all-in."

"Well, you're good at long-range planning, so she wouldn't be, right?"

"I don't know about that. I can be patient, but it's more I take time to commit to a course. Sometimes. Not the same thing. She's able to keep building companies that are moderately successful. I don't think you can do that by the seat of your pants."

"I guess."

I ran the possibilities through my head, while Calvin paused to get his bearings. After he found the path again, he said, "I don't think it's Pollock. Like you said, if it's her, why tag along but not bring more gear? She has to know you and Cass would be a handful, even with weapons. And Cass really doesn't like Pollock. Seems too dicey, even for her."

"What are you two muttering about?" Pollock had closed the gap, Cassanee staying right with her, just out of arm's reach.

Calvin spoke first. "We were debating how likely it is Cass is right about you. We decided you're probably in the clear."

"What?"

"Calvin!" What was he thinking?

He shrugged, and I was starting to get sick of him doing that in response to everything. "I didn't see a reason to lie. We said we trust her, yeah? That's a good thing to say!"

"Oh yes, a ringing endorsement."

"You want endorsements, try NASCAR." Calvin tossed that over his shoulder and kept walking. The rest of us stopped to try and follow his thinking, then gave up when called back to us. "We're here. They aren't."

We rushed up. A deserted clearing, with wallows all over, like he said. Calvin was already standing in the center. "This is where they were piling the crystals. They don't waste any time."

The rest of us joined them. There were some crystal fragments and some dust that shone faintly. "Do you think they added them all to their armor, or moved them?"

"They went this direction, and there are some small bits of crystal," Cassanee said, pointing to a clear trail heading, northwest, I think.

"Well, there are tire tracks on this side of the clearing. They don't look as recent, though." I sniffed around both trails, and the footpath had definitely been used recently. The tire marks were older. Maybe from the trucks that brought them here.

"So, do we follow, and which one?" Pollock watched me. How did I wind up in charge?

"They marched out recently, so if the crystals are weighing them down, we might be able to catch them."

Calvin raised his hand. "And when we catch them? We're probably massively outnumbered, and if we aren't, it sounds like they'll scatter to the four winds before we can take down more than a couple."

I sat down to think, crossing one arm over my chest, and tapping at my head with the other paw. Think, think, think. The longer this took, the more damage they'd do. And we couldn't stay forever. "We need to trap them."

Pollock scoffed. "Great. How do we lure them, and how do we hold them? I'm not certain those bears and raccoons will help. Not that they may be worth much, considering they could only catch one of us." She jerked her thumb at Calvin.

Cassanee was watching silently. I was a little surprised she was still there. I thought she might go down the trail alone, but she was waiting. I asked if her neighbors would help.

"For a chance to end this? Yes."

Calvin spoke up again. "Setting aside we still don't have bait, what's endgame? We lure them into a hollow at the base of a bluff, then gun them down from higher ground? We going that route?"

Pollock shrugged. "Given our limited time and resources, it might be the safest option."

Cassanee's voice was flat. "They can surrender if they want."

I hate these kinds of conversations, about acceptable losses and everything. "I don't want to kill them if we can do this another way."

"I'm with CAP," Calvin said. "I'm not sure they're anything other than hired muscle. They might even have been created for this job. The person behind it might be somewhere else entirely."

"Easy to say. It's not your home." I'd never heard Cassanee sound so angry at anyone other than Guyamo. I worried I had someone else I'd have to protect from her.

Calvin didn't seem fazed, though. Maybe a little angry himself. "You're right. But we're still here, because you're a friend."

"Then help!" It echoed around the clearing.

We were all silent, staring at the ground. Then Calvin spoke. "Pollock, that repellent field. Could it keep something trapped inside if you turned it around?"

"'Turned it around?'" Pollock sounded amused.

Calvin sighed. "You know what I mean."

"I do. We can't so much turn it around, but if we can project it from multiple places at once towards a single point, it could keep a very large flying insect in place."

We all stared, blinking dumbly. "A large insect."

"Yes, big as a house, probably. I told you the field works by emitting a subharmonic that disrupts their wing beats."

"The Amilgars don't fly," Cassanee said, sounding angry again.

(She'd told us "Amilgar" was a word for "wrecker", or "destroyer" in one of the languages in the area.)

"You and your subharmonics," I grumbled, until it hit me. "The Predator Drone!"

"What about it?"

"It disrupts our motion centers with a subharmonic in its voice, right?"

"Roughly, yes, but the Drone is dead, and Stefan is unavailable."

Calvin leaned against a tree, starting to grin. He saw where I was going. "Yeah, but you know the frequency, right? It was either in your peoples' papers, or you mapped it when you taught the Furby to mimic it."

"You want me to change the frequency the belt emits to match it, then project that."

"Yep."

"Theoretically possible, but one, I need tools. Two, this," she pointed at the belt, "won't do it. I'd need something larger to project the field through, and something to power that."

"Claire's working on an engine to power whatever she can come up with, and the raccoons have lots of wrenches."

"I can't build something like this with wrenches!"

"We might convince them to trade their art for tools instead of peanut butter and oats if you ask nicely."

"Please, which of us negotiates business deals for a living? I can convince them easily."

"That's what Ellis said in Die Hard before Alan Rickman shot him in the head," Calvin observed.

Pollock gave him a withering look (which Calvin ignored) before continuing. "I'd still need something to run the current through to project the field. Something with tensile strength, but flexible."

"Like the sides of a camper?"

"Uh, maybe? It would depen -"

I smiled. We could make this work.

"You trap them. What then?"

I turned my head to look at Cassanee, who was definitely skeptical. "If we can hold them, it might give me time to get some other pandas here, and we can take them back with us. If they're being used or controlled maybe we can help them. I can try to contact them soon if we want to do this."

She didn't seem convinced. "The plan is trap them and wait?"

I looked at Pollock and Calvin. They gave me almost identical shrugs. If they'd noticed, they'd have been horrified. Especially Pollock. "It's worth a try."

Pollock said, "We're going to need help building this. Bring your neighbors. If things go wrong, it doesn't work, you do what you have to."

Cassanee nodded as Calvin spoke up. "Unless someone knows the Amilgars' favorite food, I'm guessing we're using crystals as bait. How do we get enough?"

Cassanee answered with no hesitation. "Take theirs." She started down the trail.

I called after her. "How do we coordinate?" She tossed me a radio.

"Call when you're ready. Tell me where to lead them. I'll tell my people to meet you wherever you need."

"Hang on a sec. I'm coming with you." Calvin trotted up to her as Cassanee turned, surprised. He shrugged. "They'll be busy negotiating and building stuff. I'm crap at both those things. But years of friendship with CAP have made me pretty good at grabbing stuff and running away." He continued on the trail. Cassanee watched him for a moment, then she quickly pulled even with him.

I turned to Pollock. "We better hurry. We have a lot of stops to make."

Calvin

After Cass spent a couple of minutes on her radio, contacting her people and explaining the situation, there was no talk. We moved swiftly through the woods. Swiftly for me, at least. Cass was clearly holding back. As usual, I began to second-guess myself.

"If you think time's of the essence and want to go ahead, you can. I'll keep as close as I can manage." Frankly, my chances of being useful might be higher if Cass was already causing chaos among their ranks. But she shook her head.

"What we do will depend on what they're doing when we catch up. Harder if we're separated. Easier to watch each other's backs this way."

"OK, I just don't want to be a drag on this. I know it's important." I sped up as much as I could, which Cass matched easily. We kept going. The trail was running downhill on a ridgeline. The Sun was sinking lower, slowly. But on Site 9, it could choose to drop below the horizon in an instant. I really didn't want to try and handle this in the dark.

After a few more minutes' silence, Cass spoke. "Sorry I was angry earlier."

"Don't be. You were right. I liked being down here - well, not here specifically, Site 9 was an unending nightmare for me - but it's your home. It's personal." She nodded. "After this is over, will you rebuild in a new spot, or come back?"

"Most people want to come back. Others, aren't sure. Guyamo, now this. Maybe the place is trouble." After a moment's silence, she shifted topics. "What if she is behind this?"

"You mean if Pollock did engineer all this? Don't know. CAP would be pretty sore, but I'd think you and yours would make the call." That surprised her.

"You'd hand her over to us?"

"I don't think I'd be doing the handing. Pollock would hand me my head. But you're the ones whose homes were destroyed, so I'd think she has to answer to you. She'd get a trial, right?"

"There would be a trial. By fire. We throw her in a fire pit. If she climbs out, she's free."

"Are you joking about that or-" I saw a smile around the corner or her hood, which didn't answer the question, but there was no time for clarifying things. The trail was getting fresher, and we could hear footsteps up ahead. We slowed our pace and drifted off the trail. Another few minutes and we spotted the rear of the line. We moved further away from the line so we could pull up alongside. I was very conscious of my red cap, and Cass' orange cloak. She didn't seem concerned, her eyes scanning the line.

There were between two dozen and thirty, moving steadily but with little urgency. Some were still pausing to check the ground as they passed. I thought they were on the lookout for crystals, but one of them found a mushroom and gobbled it down.

We were still moving downslope and the light was getting dimmer. I wondered if they'd stop for the night. How good is their night vision, or can they move by scent? None of them looked armed, but all of them had those shards stuck in the armor, so they might not need weapons. Smack in the middle of the line were three of the Amilgars carrying sacks. The contents scraped and clattered against each other. Cass pointed to them and I nodded, then whispered, "Do we try to hit them now?"

She shook her head, slowly. "Too bunched up. We need to get in and out quickly. Wait for them to settle, hope they spread out."

So we stayed on our parallel track. I picked off ticks when I noticed them. Cass didn't, although I couldn't tell any were bothering her. Another half-hour passed, and the procession halted. The ones carrying the sacks set them down together, then started looking for their own places. Leaves and sticks were pushed aside, as each one tried to find somewhere without too many rocks. If they liked the spot, they'd work at the soil just enough to loosen it up. Then they rolled on their backs, trying to increase the size of the depression.

Finding spots that aren't rocky around here is a challenge, so they did spread out, a few moving in our direction. Cass led me further away as the Amilgars tore up small trees and brush to clear more space. We stopped maybe two hundred yards away behind a large walnut tree. "Now?" I asked. My nerves were getting worse.

"We'll check with the others." She raised the radio and called CAP. Our furry bundle of fun replied almost immediately.

"We read you!" I winced at the volume and looked back towards the encampment.

"Status?"

"Jerry and Rafe are sending some of their group with Claire to get the engine. We met your neighbors, a couple are going to bring fuel. The rest of us are moving the metal for the trap."

"Where do we need to be?"

There was silence for maybe 10, 15 seconds. "Lyn says you know it as Gordon's Hollow?"

"I know it. How soon?"

The silence stretched longer. When it ended, Pollock's voice was the one we heard. "It won't be soon. Getting all the pieces will take time. Cobbling them together, more time. Then we have to figure out how to disguise it. Everyone has assured the panda and I you won't be able to just run them into a corral."

"How long?"

"If things go well, tomorrow morning."

"Understood. We'll check back then." Cass turned to me, to see if I'd heard everything. I had.

"So, we wait until dawn?"

She nodded. "Or we steal them now, and let them chase us until dawn."

I shook my head. "Even assuming we, OK I, could evade them all night, they'd end up scattered across the countryside. We'd never get them together."

"Agreed. We wait."

Swell, and my nerves grow louder. . .