He picked splinters of glass from the bipe's shattered instrument faces out of his leathery gray skin, working deftly with his extended claws.
Gray skin? Claws? For an instant, they seemed alien. Shouldn't he have flat fingernails and a pinkish-tan skin?
Kranath smiled, dismissing such ridiculous thoughts. He was groggy from the crash, that was all. This was no more than a dream, insignificant.
He climbed from what was left of the cockpit and surveyed the remains of his aircraft. Not much of the little biplane still held together, he saw with regret. The wings were splinters and shredded fabric, the fuselage little more.
His head was beginning to clear, so he decided to check the engine. The prop would be shattered, of course, but the engine might be salvageable, if the brush that had cushioned the crash for him had done the same for it. Engines were handmade and expensive, not to be abandoned lightly even by a rich clan—which St'nar was not.
Kranath was relieved to see only minor damage. St'nar's artisans would have no difficulty repairing a cracked cylinder head and a bent push rod. His problem, then, was to get back to the clanhome. He smiled at that thought. To a scout-pilot, walking out of the wilderness in spring should be almost a vacation. He wore flying leathers, was armed with a dagger and a medium-caliber handgun, and the plane carried a full survival kit. It was far more equipment than he'd had for wilderness survival during his Ordeal of Honor, and he'd managed quite comfortably even then.
This hike would be shorter, probably less than three days, and there was no point in delay. Returning to the cockpit, he dug out the survival kit and slung it on his back, then detached the compass, which fortunately was undamaged, from the control panel and consulted his flight map.
Kranath saw with dismay that St'nar's clanhome was almost directly south, but taking that route directly was just asking for trouble. He'd have to go around. He headed southeast and began his trek.
The underbrush, while light, was growing too irregularly for him to settle into the ground-eating lope a Traiti fighter could maintain all day. Keeping down to walking speed frustrated him since St'nar needed all its pilots, including him, in the current battle with N'chark. But he'd survived the crash; he'd fly for St'nar again. He enjoyed flying and fighting, though the toll interclan battles were taking of late disturbed him more than he cared to admit. The death rate was too high, far higher now than the birth rate.
(So the Traiti had almost been wiped out in a genocidal war once before, thought a tiny detached fragment that was still Steve Tarlac. It was an interesting parallel to the problem he faced.)