The illuminated grid stretched across the plains more than half a mile in a stumpy, irregular pentagon. As Heyoka prowled the low brush surrounding it, the night was filled with the smell of rich black earth and greenery, comfortingly familiar, but overlaid by the pervasive alien stink of flek technology and the nose-burning stench of the flek themselves. His nerves were afire; despite years of combat, he had never been this close to an actual flek installation and every instinct told him to flee. Standard Confederation strategy was to bomb such grids from armored air transports or, when feasible, fire upon them from the safety of orbit. As far as he knew, no one had ever successfully conducted a ground assault on one.
He emerged from a stand of prickly blue-leafed bushes and the air snapped with a faint redness, barely visible in the dark, even to his hrinnti eyes. He froze, pulse thundering, his fur standing on end as he took in the flat, acrid odor of a high-energy field. Beneath his feet were several small hard lumps, seared bodies of small rodentlike creatures that bore mute testimony to the nearness of death. He'd been trained to nullify energy fields, but had none of the necessary equipment, so he faded back into the untrimmed scrub and circled north, monitoring the night sounds which had finally returned, soft and hesitant, after the grid's earlier wrenching noise.
The structure loomed above him, impossibly massive, ablaze with garish pinks, greens, purples, and blues that no doubt had some function or meaning in flekish terms. Although he saw movement occasionally on the tall, irregular lattices that formed the sides and the high towers at each of the five oddly spaced points, he could discern no details. Five hundred flek could lurk within. Or five thousand. Or more.
He was panting by the time he reached the next corner, even in the cooling night air, when an agonizing squeal began, a noise like two engine parts that had never known lubrication and were scraping each other to slivers. He dropped into the stiff grass and covered his sensitive ears, gritting his teeth. Over on the far side of the grid, a vehicle of some sort launched into the star-dotted night.
After a moment, the sound receded enough to be bearable. He hunched there, ears pinned, watching the vehicle dwindle until it was only a point of light. Did this mean the flek were still limited to conventional transport? If so, then perhaps the grid wasn't as close to being operational as he had feared and time wasn't as short.
The bushes rustled behind him. He eased around, trying to sniff out who, or what, might be back there, but the wind was out of the wrong quarter. He wished for Kei's more experienced nose, but heard nothing more, and continued working his way around the grid, lattice by lattice, searching for a place where the energy field was weak, or where they could perhaps dig under it.
From somewhere inside the huge grid came a series of great clacks and groans, then the ear-splitting whine began again, vibrating through him until his bones resonated and he felt like howling with pain and frustration. An unheard snarl burst out of his throat as he sprinted toward the next tower.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught another flicker of movement and spun around. The twisting branches quivered as pale fur slipped past. His snarl became a full growl. He had left orders for everyone, human and hrinn alike, to stay back in camp on the mountain. Not one of them had any idea of how to conduct a military reconnaissance, but of course, hrinn were all so bloody independent. They always did exactly what they pleased.
The din from the grid ascended in pitch as he dove back into the brushy cover. Casting about, he sniffed not one, but several, perhaps as many as five hrinn in the low bushes. What had possessed them to follow him down here? They were jeopardizing everything.
Ebony eyes glittered to his right, and then a stocky pale-ginger female leaped for his throat with feverish eagerness, knocking him backwards. He rolled as her claws ripped his clothing to shreds and gashed his unprotected throat and chest.
He scrambled away and gasped for breath, dangerously close to the energy field protecting the grid's shining latticework. She followed, joined a second later by three more. Handclaws flexed, they fenced him in a rough half-circle, stiff and proud, eyes reflecting the green and pink and electric blue of the garish lights overhead. He recognized all of them: three were the Line Mothers who had spoken against him at the Council of Lines, the other had attacked him at the foot of the plateau when he was searching for Mitsu. This was no overeager bunch trying to help. They had been trying to stop him from the first moment he'd set foot on this world.
His savage other surfaced with a rage that made the previous tempers of his life seem like the mildest of moods. He was Leader—him! He had earned that title with tooth and claw and blood, and now none should stand in his way! How dare they challenge him yet again when so much was at stake! He would tear their ears off and feed them to the yirn, gouge their stupid short-sighted eyes out and trample what was left into the ground!
With a snarl, he drew the laser pistol holstered at his side and fired at the nearest, an old dark-gray female wearing the red of Vvok. As she threw herself aside, fur singed, the other three closed and carried him back into the searing bite of the flek's energy field.
His muscles convulsed into painful, unresponding knots and his entire nervous system exploded with pain. The laser pistol slipped from his fingers into the grass. He dimly sensed the other three tumbling around him, writhing in agony, clawing great clods out of the turf. From training, he knew they had scant seconds before the high-energy field cooked their brains, but he could see nothing, feel nothing, but the terrifying electric redness sizzling through him. He smelled the stench of his smoking fur; in another second his body would be incinerated . . . by the field, a faint voice insisted somewhere in the back of his mind, by energy.
Even as the pain drove white-hot sparks through his brain, he tried to get his claws into that thought . . . what was it . . . about energy . . . ? His hands convulsed, claws flexed and useless, then a blue spark jumped from one to the other . . . energy . . . power! Suddenly he understood. Unlike humans, or flek, he had channels for handling outside energy within his body. And although he didn't know the consequences if he laid himself open to so much power, he was dying anyway. He quit fighting and embraced the raw redness, letting it surge through him as though he were a living wire. For an instant, he thought he would explode, then the field snapped out and took him with it . . .
He sprawled stunned and dry-mouthed in the wiry grass, the indifferent stars winking down, someone's twitching arm tumbled against him. Vaguely, he realized the field had been disrupted. The pain had stopped, but his thoughts darted first one way and then another, like a pool of frightened fish, and comprehended little beyond that one essential fact.
An alarm blared high up in the grid. He heard frantic chittering, the rattle of exoskeletons against plastic. He was in danger. The energy field could come back on any second, so he had to move out of range. His muscles were still spasming, and he couldn't seem to make his nerves carry the messages necessary to move. He felt hot and sick, unable to focus. A few feet away, he saw a dark-furred hrinn limping back into the brush. One of his attackers still lived! If he died, she could still betray the rest of his force on the mountain to the flek!
"No!" Had he said that in Standard or Hrinnti? He couldn't tell. Somehow, he made his hands and arms work together enough to crawl forward, inch by precious inch, on his stomach. One of his legs tingled, then cramped, the muscles contracting into a hot knot of agony. He lurched forward on hands and knees, then collapsed on his face. Was he far enough? He suddenly realized total silence had fallen. Even the alarm had ceased its mind-numbing blare.
Then the power sprang back into life, the red field snapping just inches behind his left foot and the air choked with the stench of burning fur. Rolling over on his side, he stared at the three hrinnti bodies inside the force field lying next to his laser pistol.
"Damnation!" He couldn't afford to lose that pistol. They had so few modern weapons as it was. Forcing himself back onto his hands and knees, he hung there trying to regain his balance while the brush swooped around him in great stomach-churning circles. If he could just find a long stick, perhaps he could hook the gun and pull it out, although the flek would be here any second, checking the perimeter for the source of disruption.
"So, Levv, there must be some truth to the old legends after all." The dark-gray female hobbled into his field of vision. "No ordinary hrinn could have taken that and lived." She limped closer and he saw the many silver and gold bracelets catching the crazed flek colors as they clinked down her thin old arm. "But fortunately, nothing in the legend suggests a Black/on/black cannot die."
He caught the gleam of purple and green and pink on something metallic held awkwardly in her hand. With a shock, he realized it was a laser pistol. "Whe-where did y-you get that!" he demanded, struggling with his continuing lack of coordination.
"Not everyone is as stuffy and conservative as Levv, Outsider." Holding the gun steady, she leaned over, fitting her digits with difficulty to the grip designed for four fingers and a single thumb. Her tongue flicked out around her muzzle. "Of course, Levv is not anything at all these days, is it? Just a few nit-infested culls left, and soon those will be finished too."
The noise from the grid rose again, but this time the tones were different, more frenzied, dissonant. They were probably testing, searching for the disruption, he thought. "We can settle this later. We have to get out of here."
"Of course, we have only your word that these creatures mean us harm." She bared her broken, yellowed teeth down at him. "Perhaps they have come to give us all the devices and knowledge the humans would not and our Outsider was one of them. If so, he was remarkably free with his gifts." She wrinkled her nose and leaned closer. "Perhaps we should welcome them."
"You don't know what you're saying!" Heyoka tried to gather his muscles for a single great leap. "You have not seen what they do to a world once they steal it, but I have."
"Fool!" She steadied the pistol. "You are not wanted here—"
Heyoka launched himself at her, but landed short, his handclaws just grazing the silver circlets around her ankle. A laser bolt scorched his right shoulder. He fell heavily as a massive blackness burst the low tangled brush and crushed her to the ground just beyond his nose.
Suddenly, the scrubby blue-leafed bushes seemed alive with hrinn, whispered with their passage, the garish lights gleaming in their black eyes. Several pairs of strong hands scooped him up from the ground and supported him as a huge black-furred hrinn struggled with the smaller dark-gray. He caught a glimpse of the pale-beige patches behind the big black's ears—Kei. "Don't kill her!" He struggled against the hands supporting him. "She knows the truth about Levv, about all of this! If you kill her, we will never—"
Glancing up, Kei hesitated, his bared double rows of white teeth strangely pink and green in the light of the grid. The old Line Mother fastened her broken fangs into the young male's throat. Enraged, he broke her back like a stick of firewood and dashed the twitching body to the ground.
Heyoka didn't realize he was still struggling until a tawny young female flexed claws into his arm. He stopped, but the ground reeled beneath his feet, and he saw lights bobbing down the grid's lattices. "We have—to get out of here!" His voice was hoarse. "If the flek find us here, everything is lost!"
Kei met his gaze, muzzle slicked with blood, eyes huge and so very, very black.
Blacker than the deepest space where stars had yet to be born, Heyoka thought wearily, trying to force his reluctant legs to hold him up, blacker than anything a human could have understood or named. The big Levv male flicked an ear, and the hrinn melted back into the brush, dragging Heyoka along with them.
Sanyha leaned over and sniffed the haunch of kikinti meat roasting on the makeshift spit. Even though she felt too bone-crushingly weary to eat, her mouth was watering. She rotated the spit a quarter turn, then sat back and watched the sparks dance skyward on the hot updraft. If this march hadn't had such a desperate purpose, she could have enjoyed eating outdoors and sleeping under the stars. It had been years since she had enjoyed such simple pleasures.
The breeze shifted and the head of every hrinn in camp suddenly swiveled to look downslope. Then a huge black-furred male dressed in brown strode into the firelight, followed by a whole host of brown-robed hrinn, two of whom were supporting the limp form of Sergeant Blackeagle between them.
"What happened?" She jumped to her feet and dusted her hands on her ragged station pants. "Are you hurt?"
Blackeagle raised his head and blinked dully at her. He looked shocky to her experienced eye and his muscles were spasming. "No." He ran a trembling hand over his face, then flinched and stared at it. "I'm—I'm all right."
Scott hurried up. "Well, you look like hell." He reached for Blackeagle's arm, but the two hrinn holding him laid their ears back and snarled.
"We not—hurt—" Sanyha began in broken Hrinnti, then stopped. By the fierceness in those faces, they would just as soon tear her heart out as look at her.
Blackeagle raised his head, eyes glazed, then snarled something short and sharp that she couldn't make out. The two hesitated and the big black-furred male stalked over to add his voice. They eased Blackeagle to the ground beside the fire and retreated from the light. His robes were soaked with blood and burned in several places. She could see now that the palms of his hands were scorched, as well as the bottoms of his feet. He must have tangled with the flek.
"It—" His eyes closed, and he just sat there in the shifting firelight, panting, shaking. "It means—something."
Sanyha knelt at his side and gingerly peeled away the bloody black fabric that had been cut to shreds over his chest. Red-orange blood oozed from a dozen gashes, and one slash near his throat pulsed with bright blood at every breath. "I think you've nicked an artery. Sit still while I get my supplies."
Leaving the golden circle of light, she hurried through the darkness to the meager medical supplies they had salvaged from the bombed-out station. She could taste the bitterness of panic in the back of her throat though. She was not an expert on hrinnti physiology and body chemistry, as her earlier attempt to treat Blackeagle had aptly demonstrated, and she had so little with which to work.
Fumbling with the straps of a half-charred backpack, she sorted out a few items that might be of use, then dashed back to the fireside, pushing her way through a circle of watching hrinn. She wondered what would happen to their small company of humans if Blackeagle died. He was the only link between the humans and the natives—as well as the only trained soldier among them. What had happened down there? Were the flek trailing him back here right this very minute?
Kneeling at his side, she checked his eyes again. They were glassy and his skin was too cold. He was definitely slipping into shock. She looked down at the drugs she'd brought, a chill running through her because she had no idea what effect they would have on him. Trembling, she finally made herself choose a disinfectant. Surely that would be all—
A gentle double-thumbed hand grasped her arm. Startled, Sanyha looked up into a pale-gray face, the same female who had met them back at the river and brought them to Blackeagle. The female spoke to her in the low growly tongue that, even after all these years, Sanyha could only half-translate and barely speak.
"What?" Sanyha glanced aside at Blackeagle who was staring into the fire. "Not—understand."
Without being rough, the female moved her aside, then squatted down in her place. Hands gripped her shoulders and Sanyha looked around into Scott Cuppertino's concerned face. "I think they want to take care of him themselves." He kept his voice pitched low, quiet. "They probably see injuries like this all the time."
But they were savages! Sanyha wanted to shout. She was a trained doctor with centuries of civilized research in medicine behind her. She couldn't just stand by and watch them chant a few spells over him while their only chance for survival died of shock and blood loss.
"When I—they lost—power." Blackeagle looked up from the fire and tried to focus on her face. "That's it! That's how—we'll—how we'll do it!"
The tall, graceful gray-furred female motioned to the huge black hrinn and he reached down from behind to pin Blackeagle's shoulders. Then the female traced her finger along the terrible gaping gash that ran from the side of his neck down onto his chest.
Sanyha forgot to breathe as she watched the hrinn's moving finger mark a line of coruscating blue fire over the bloody wound. Blackeagle stiffened, then the inner nictitating membranes spasmed shut over his black eyes and he slumped against the large male holding him. The pale-gray never stopped, tracing the length of the deep slash until she had reached its end.
When she had finished, she sat there, head bowed, breathing in great heavy pants as though she had run a marathon. Sanyha edged closer to examine the wound. Although a few bright beads of blood still dotted the jagged line, the gash was closed.
Mitsu could hear the angry chittering songs echoing through the interior of the great transfer grid. A storm of distress swept the hive, uniting the castes. Security had been breached. Even now warrior-drones were searching the perimeter, tracing the cause.
Unfortunately, the temporal point at which the grid had gone dark had been most critical. Piles of ash smoldered in the center of the transfer platform where the incoming shipment had been just about to coalesce when the power had failed. The tech-drones had lost several of their number who had been too certain that this time they would succeed and rushed forward to view the materialization.
As soon as their bodies had been consumed, work would continue. The hive never mourned and certainly never wasted time in sleep. Mitsu shrank back against the slick white wall as several replacement techs, newly hatched, rushed to take the fallen drones' places. As soon as they had ingested their instructions by consuming the dead drones' bodies, preparations would continue. Very soon now, this freezing rock heap would be completely theirs.
Had the humans caused this? She started to scratch the itchy spot just behind her third arm, then realized she had none anymore. She glanced down in dismay at the soft disgusting pink of her hands, then, sickened, looked away.
Unbidden, a memory of a time when those same hands had held a rifle seeped back into her mind, a time when she had fought chittering dead-white creatures that swept against Confederation troops in the millions once they had broken through to a planet. Once, she had laid her life on the line to fight those creatures.
But now she was here.
An egg-matron stalked along the high passageway where Mitsu stood, then paused to glare at her with smoldering red eyes. For a second, she dared to stare back, then it struck her to the floor with both pairs of arms.
Huddling against the wall at the creature's feet, Mitsu shut her eyes and beat out a tune of despair on her fingers. She understood, of course; she was disgusting.