Evershore(Skyward #3.1)(15)

Alanik shot me a look. Cuna really had to stop announcing that they found every species we met to be beneath them. We’d brought them along to help with diplomacy, but I didn’t want it to seem like they spoke for all of us.

“And this is FM,” I said. “She’s our…diplomatic specialist.”

FM’s mouth fell open. I raised an eyebrow at her, questioning whether she was going to argue with me. I probably should have put her in charge of this interaction to begin with. I’d been too busy avoiding her to think of it, which meant I was letting my own personal feelings get in the way of my job. That had to stop.

“Thank you for the invitation to your beautiful planet,” FM said. “That rock formation we passed over on our way in—was that a city?”

Cuna bared their teeth in one of their strange smiles, which I thought meant they were okay with FM taking the lead.

Whether they were okay with it or not, it was clearly necessary.

“Yes!” Kauri said. “The Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! You may call it Dreamspring, if you wish.”

“Dreamspring,” FM said. “That’s beautiful. I would love to see more of it.”

“And I would love to share it with you,” Kauri said. “But we must be careful. Not all of my people will welcome your—oh, how unfortunate.”

She looked up at something in the sky over my shoulder, and I turned to see another starship approaching. This one had a startling number of guns mounted on the front, far too many to be tactically effective.

“Humans!” said a kitsen voice through a loudspeaker on the ship. “Your invasion stops here! You shall not step one more foot into the beauty of the Burrow from Which Spring Dreams Both Sweet and Sorrowful! We will cut you down where you stand.”

Scud. I took a step backward, taking shelter against my ship, and FM and Alanik joined me. If that ship let loose its destructors we were dead, all of us. The rest of the flight scattered, ducking beneath wings and jumping back into ships.

“It’s all right!” Kauri said. “That’s Goro. I will speak with him.”

“He said he was going to cut us down,” I said. “I don’t think that implies a lot of talking.”

“Yes,” Kauri said. “And he wonders why the Superiority thinks we’re primitive.”

The other ship didn’t fire, but instead began to lower itself onto the sand. Bits of grit blew in our direction, and I shielded my eyes.

A host of kitsen poured out of the ship, all of them wearing tiny suits of power armor and carrying guns no longer than my hand. That made them enormous to a kitsen though, and they all wore tiny metal helmets with a visor over their eyes and holes cut out for their ears.

That seemed somewhat impractical—I wondered if they used their ears to regulate their temperature like some animals did back on Old Earth. Or perhaps their ears grew back and were therefore seen as expendable.

In the air above them, riding on another dinner-plate-size platform, was a large kitsen wearing richly ornamented plate armor that looked like something out of another century entirely. His helmet had curved horns jutting out of it, so large that they almost reached the tips of his ears.

Oh, Spensa would really have loved this.

“Scudballs,” I heard Arturo say.

“Oh dear,” Cuna said. “Such aggression.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The kitsen swiftly marched across the sand. More of my flightmates climbed back into their ships. Since we were currently being flanked by what amounted to rats with rifles, I didn’t blame them. I supposed I should give orders to my flight, but I didn’t have any better idea what to do in this situation than they did.

FM stayed by my side, Alanik and Cuna a step behind.

Kauri rotated her platform to float between us and the oncoming kitsen, though her other people mostly seemed to be getting out of the way. Since they were both unarmed and unarmored, I didn’t blame them either.

“Goro,” Kauri said. “What are you doing?”

“We intercepted your transmission, traitor!” Goro said. “You invited these treacherous giants onto our planet. Bad enough that any of their kind are being permitted to sully our sands. We should have blown them out of the sky when they first appeared.”

“No one is getting blown out of the sky!” Kauri said. “These are friends of a friend.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Aren’t you?”

“Um, yes,” I said.

“Other kitsen!” FM said. “I am a diplomatic representative from our people.” I barely heard her add “apparently” under her breath. “We’re here to collect our lost friends and discuss an alliance. We’re not…invading anything, and we don’t mean to…sully your sands.”

“This is heresy!” Goro shouted, pointing a furry finger at me. He had quite a loud voice for such a small creature. “We will not be fooled by your gilded words! The Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time has seen the last of your tyranny and we will not suffer it again!”

“I’m sorry about him,” said a voice near my feet, and I looked down to see that one of Kauri’s people had scurried over to join us. “Goro has…a tendency toward the dramatic.”

“It’s understandable,” Cuna said. “Your culture is not yet advanced enough to move beyond these aggressions.”