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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Hawaikan threw up one hand in a beseeching gesture and then went to his knees in the corridor. "Great One! Great One!" The words came from his lips in a breathy hiss as he groveled. Then his body went flaccid, and he sprawled face down, his twisted leg drawn up as if he would run but could not. "Foanna!" The one word came out of the walls themselves, or so it seemed.
Ross glanced at the prisoner. The alien had wriggled about, striving to raise his head against the wall as a support. His captor pulled the Hawaikan into a sitting position, but the native accepted that aid almost as if he were not even aware of Ross's hands on his body. He stared with a kind of horrified disbelief at the bobbing dolphin heads. "He is afraid," Karara reported.
As such, they were armored by the "magic" of their masters. "If the Foanna are so powerful," Ross had demanded, "why do you go with us against them?" To depend so heavily on the native made him uneasy. The Hawaikan looked to Karara. One of his hands raised; his fingers sketched a sign toward the girl. "With the Sea Maid and her magic I do not fear."
"These star men" Ross set down the cup, tried to choose the most telling words in his limited Hawaikan vocabulary "possess weapons and powers you can not dream of, that you have no defense against. Back at Kyn Add we were lucky. The salkars attacked their sub and halted the broadcast powering their flamers. Otherwise we could not have taken them, even though we were many against their few.
The citadel of the Foanna was distinctly forbidden ground, not only for Loketh's people but also for the Foanna's Hawaikan followers who were housed and labored in an outer ring of fortification-cum-village. Those natives were, Ross gathered, a hereditary corps of servants and warriors, born to that status and not recruited from the native population at large.
"His lameness it could be a bridge," she observed, to Ross's mystification. "A bridge what do you mean?" The girl shook her head. "This is only a feeling, not a true thought. But also it is important. Look, I think he is waking." The lids above those large eyes were fluttering. Then with a shake of the head, the Hawaikan blinked up at them.
"Foanna the wise learn what lies before them when they walk alone in the dark." The Hawaikan speech was stilted, accented, but understandable. Ross stood motionless. Had they somehow seen him through Loketh's eyes? Or had they been alerted merely by the Hawaikan's call? They believed he was one of the Foanna. Well, he would play that role. "Foanna!" Sharper this time, demanding.
He put a question to Karara, who relayed it to the dolphins. In turn, they asked it mentally of the Hawaikan and conveyed his answer back via the same route. It took some time to allay the fears of the stranger. But at last the Hawaikan entered wholeheartedly into the exchange. "He is the son of the lord ruling the castle above." Karara produced the first rational and complete answer.
He strove to hear and think through the pain in his head, the bewilderment. "Loketh?" He was certain that the Hawaikan had been dumped into the same hold. The only answer was a low moan, a mutter from the dark. Ross began to inch his way in that direction. He was no seaman, but during that worm's progress he realized that the ship itself had changed.
But Ross was also certain that a successful cruiser commander must possess a level-headed leaven of intelligence and be a strategist of parts. The Hawaikan force needed a key which would open the Baldy base as the salkars had opened the lagoon. And all they had to aid them was a handful of facts gained from their prisoners.
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