INSPECTION RUN

By Rodlox
spoilers: El Serpiente
crossover with: The UpLift Universe.

~~~~

The soldiers were out hunting down El Serpiente. Montoya and the Dons were keeping their eye on the soldiers. The wives and children had been evacuated to more secure places...like the haciendas. They had taken all of their personal property with them. With a setting like that, the pueblo was nearly deserted.

Nearly. Almost. Not Quite.

Nobody was aware of the little spaceship that landed silently in the center of the pueblo, gravitic engines holding it motionless above the fountain. A ramp flowed down the now-opening door of the scout ship. A dozen arthropod legs calmly walked down the ramp and gathered at the fountain, with another dozen following behind.

Four Tandu were now on the planet.

They were here, indeed, in direct violation of treaties. This space, this solar system and neighbors, were presently Zang property...and Hydrogen Breathers did not care for trespassers. It was a risk just being here. But then, Tandu often engaged in many risky ventures. It was a property of their biology.

"Artificial," the third Tandu remarked, reading the equipment in one of it's hands while looking at the fountain with another set of eyes.

"The Zang were UpLifting oxygen-breathing lifeforms?" the fourth Tandu asked. "Could such information be used to extract favorable treaty terms with Zang?"

"Yes to the latter," the first commented; this was the Librarian Tandu. "To the former, the alternative is that it was built by Wolflings."

A grating sound - Tandu laughter, generated in part by limbs popping and rachetting - sounded from all four of them. Wolflings were supposedly intelligent creatures without a Patron to make them so. The things also did not exist.

A lone creature, with four legs, no arms, and a thick head-and-neck, raced up to the Tandu, and reared up. A random kick splattered one Tandu head. The assaulted Tandu, using a secondary head-bulb to see, engaged a stasis web around the quadraped.

"Limited digit flexibility," the second Tandu reported. "No other manipulatory organs present. Single brain, not yet size of Potential Client."

"Interesting natural developments," the third Tandu commented, head-bulbs arrayed for the widest view of the pueblo around them. "Likely from micro-vertabrates, such as on E|cts' Sui|."

"Nothing of value here," the fourth Tandu, the largest and strongest, said. "Time to leave."

And so they left, taking the hooved creature with them, as a momento. And perhaps the Poa could do something with it -- after all, they had converted the traeki into the Jophur.

~~

Later, when the dons and everyone else returned to the pueblo, one cry rang out above all others...

"WHERE IS MY HORSE?" El Colonel hollered angrily. Now he was madder at the Queen than ever before!

END.