Mitsu was in a fever to catch up, but Heyoka set the pace. They had to be cautious, in case their squadmates were captives of the flek, rather than the other way round. Avians were thick along the edge of the forest and curious, often following them short distances and creating a disturbance that might mark their presence to anyone who was paying attention.
The Oleaakan sun beat down from the blue-green sky, taxing both his endurance and hers. He tried his com repeatedly, but no one answered. Twice, they stopped to catch their breath and drink from one of the tumbling mountain streams. Each time, Mitsu threw her head back and pressed her hands over her eyes, looking on the thin edge of exhaustion.
"I think they're heading back to the cave's lower entrance," he said as they worked their way downhill along the stream. The ground was soft and spongy, due to the daily quota of rain. The smell of sun-heated mud filled the air. "Maybe we should go back to where you fell through, and slip up on them, just until we know what the situation is."
Her face was set and white. He could see memories flickering in her eyes, what she had done back on Anktan, what she had been.
"You know you can't go down there," she said. "Not if the crystals are activated. They'll burst your eardrums."
He didn't look at her. "I got through it before. I can again if I have to."
She whirled to face him and nearly lost her footing on the soft bank. One boot slipped into the water. "You don't think I can do it by myself!"
"I think we're a team," he said. "We work better together."
"We didn't at Anktan," she said, "and it almost cost your life."
"Anktan was not your fault," he said. "You can't blame yourself for that."
She didn't answer, just pushed herself harder, pacing impatiently each time he had to smell out the next turn in their quarry's trail, then leaping ahead, running when possible, climbing, sliding, a small determined engine in perpetual motion.
They reached a thick stand of trees so dark green, they were almost black. His nose twitched as he smelled blood, though it was neither human nor hrinnti. He examined the ground and found dirt heaped where bones had been buried to avoid drawing scavengers. "Someone made a kill here," he said.
Her face was pale, strained. Her haunted eyes flickered from point to point to point, as though every tree, every bush held a potential enemy. "Flek don't hunt and they sure as hell aren't neat."
"No." He cast about for the trail. "So that must mean the hrinn aren't prisoners. I can't imagine a flek allowing them to chase after local game."
Her body sagged and she leaned against the dark-green tree, eyes closed.
"They're okay," he said, "and not too far ahead. We'll catch up soon."
"Do they still have that flek with them?" she asked.
The stink was unmistakable. "Yes."
"I don't understand," she said. "Why don't they just kill the damn thing? There's no point in interrogating it. Flek never talk when they're captured, no matter what you do to them, and they couldn't understand it anyway, even if it would talk. Why are they hauling it along with them?"
"You can ask them in a few minutes," he said. "They can't be much ahead of us now."
Mitsu pushed off from the tree and fell in behind him, her steps dogged and her face determined. He had seen that same ragged look on men and women who had been out for days under constant fire, he thought. She was running on raw nerve.
When they reached the recently excavated cavern entrance, Aliki Onopa appeared from behind a stand of bushes and waved. "Over here, Sergeant!"
They found Montrose stretched out on the ground, his leg laser-burned and his dark face ashen. He opened his eyes at the sound of their voices, but did not seem to see them.
"Do you have any meds?" Onopa asked. "I've already exhausted my kit and his too."
Mitsu pulled the standard medkit off her belt and handed over the thin black rectangle. Onopa knelt and applied it to the feverish skin on Montrose's upper arm. The unit whirred into action and she sat back, shaking her head. Loose black hair tumbled around her face. "I don't know why he isn't already dead from shock."
"Why didn't you answer your com?" he said, checking Montrose's pulse. It was thready and fast.
Her eyes darted to her pocket. "Oh," she said. "I shut them both off when we were hiding. I didn't want the flek to hear it."
"So what happened?" Heyoka said. Mitsu retreated to the cavern entrance and peered down inside, too wired to stand still, and that made him even more nervous.
"Evidently a group of flek came through the grid," she said. "They caught us up by the base camp and took down Montrose, but then let us go. I think they wanted us to lead them to the rest of the Rangers on this world."
"They couldn't know it was just a training exercise," he said. "They probably figured we had a real base."
"When the hrinn caught up with us, the flek attacked, and all of them were killed except the one who must be the leader. At least, it's biggest, though not near the size of a full warrior-drone." She glanced over at the tunnel entrance and Mitsu. "Unlike even the warrior-drones, it's armored somehow and nothing touches it, not laser rifles or claws or blades. We were distracted for a moment and it got away again. The hrinn tracked it here and went in after it. I said I'd stay out here with Montrose. I—" She stopped and stared down at her clenched hands. "I didn't want him to die alone."
Heyoka nodded.
"What about the grid?" he said. "How are they going to get past the noise?"
"I don't think they were even considering that," she said. "They just wanted to bring down that damn flek before it went back through the grid and reported our presence."
"We'll go after them," he said, "then come back for you once the situation is resolved."
Onopa nodded. "When Montrose—if he doesn't need me anymore, I'll join you."
He left her half of his remaining foodpaks, then trotted over to Mitsu and took her by the arm. She looked up sharply from the cave's entrance. "I want your promise you won't kill any more laka," he said.
She blinked at him and jerked away. Her face was white with strain. "They were flek, goddammit. They were all flek! I wouldn't hurt a civilian!"
This wasn't going to work, he realized. "Give me the rifle then."
With a practiced move, she drew the sonic blade with her left hand and thumbed it on. She was as proficient with the left as the right, and he had good cause to know it. "You think I'm still working for them!"
"No," he said and spread his empty hands out. "But there were laka down there before and I don't want any more mistakes."
"I'll show you!" she said. "I'll kill that damn flek myself and bring back the body!"
He made a grab for her, but his fingers closed on empty air. She ducked, whirled, and scrambled into the entrance. He followed, but had to navigate the loose dirt and rocks inside and she was much more agile. If only he could have blueshifted, he would have been upon her before she had time to react.
Sure, as his adoptive father, Ben Blackeagle, used to say, and if wishes were rifles, the Oglala would never have lost their land.
By the time he made it inside, Mitsu was gone. He set out after her.
Kei blueshifted and surged ahead of his huntmates to enter the crystal chamber well before them. He hadn't drawn power; indeed, as far as he knew, there were no thermal pools on this world where one could do so, making blueshift a risky move. He could easily deplete his energies and pass out, but they had to stop the nit-eaten thing. According to the stories he'd heard, once the flek knew the Confederation held this world, warrior-drones would flood through the grid by the thousands.
The cave did not appear the telltale blue of blueshift in the dark, but as soon as he entered the primary transport chamber, he recognized the blueness that stained everything so that the garish pinks and greens of before were washed away and the blue was twice as intense. The sound was not nearly as bad, though, in blueshift, becoming attenuated, slowed down, lowered, more of a thunderous rumbling than a bone-shattering shrill.
Three tiny flek were cowering in the center of the grid, while his former captive, limping badly, stroked the crystals, touching one here, another there, using all four hands at once. Sometimes, one or two hands lingered in a long stroke, sometimes using only light, staccato flicks. The vibrations altered with each touch. Kei could tell that much even in blueshift. His vision wavered and he had a pang of sudden ravenous hunger. He couldn't hold this much longer. He ran to the flek, took hold of two of its spindly forearms and thrust it back against the wall.
The world snapped back to normality and the terrible keening of the crystals assaulted him like an electric shock. He snarled with pain and fought to keep his feet.
The flek struggled, bracing itself with all four legs, but could not break his grip. The three smaller flek swarmed over him. He had to release the larger one to peel them off and fling them one by one against the wall. They each hit with a satisfying crack and slid down to the floor to twitch. He turned back to the larger flek and thrust it away from the crystals, but his movements were slow, his coordination off. He should not have risked blueshift, he thought.
Then the two females staggered into the chamber. In the lead, Kika's jaws were agape, her black eyes glazed. She spotted him struggling with the flek, turned as though to attack, then went down as surely as if she'd been struck, pawing at her ears.
Naxk leaped over her, but the flek fired its laser stick with a free hand and she squalled with pain. The stench of burned fur mingled with the hated stink of flek.
Kei closed upon the flek again and held on with the grim certainty that, if he let go, he would be crisped in the next breath. The agonizing, teeth-grinding sound of the grid resonated inside his skull. The rippling lights increased in frequency, faster, faster, so that the modulations came one upon the next.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bey and Visht enter, running as though they had been paired all their lives. Quite properly, they then split up to attack the flek from opposite sides, so that it was forced to pick only one to fire upon. Its bolt caught Bey, the faster of the two, square in the chest, and Kei thought he would hear his huntmate's anguished shriek even after he himself was long past the Gates of Death.
Visht's massive shoulder knocked both the flek and Kei against the wall. Kei's skull struck hard. His claws loosened and his thoughts dissolved into white static . . .
. . . He could hear again before he could see. He was lying on the cavern floor, which was rock, unlike the wall, and very rough. His muzzle was jammed uncomfortably against something and one arm twisted painfully behind his back. The noise had incredibly risen yet another octave and his brain threatened to boil out through his ears. Deep within, he felt the familiar gnawing emptiness that blueshift drain created.
He knew by its familiar scent that the body lying on top of him was Bey, and that he was dead. Laser fire crackled again. The acrid aftermath filled the air along with the stench of scorched meat and hide. He heard Visht roar with pain.
Cold. He was savagely, thoroughly cold, as though an icy predator were eating him from the inside out. He blinked furiously, willing his dazed eyes to see, even one finger to move. He could not make sense of this. They were losing. There was only one flek left, not even a full-sized one at that, and six grown, Ranger-trained hrinn could not bring it down!
He smelled Skal as the Leader broached the chamber. Where had he been? Skal should have led the attack, for the honor of his position in the hunt, if not his gender, and yet he had allowed two females to precede him.
Kei struggled up onto his hands and knees, levered himself out from under Bey's corpse. His huntmate was still warm, the muscles limp. The familiar smell of his fur, the scent marker for Levv, their maternal Line, was strong. Kei realized that he might never smell that scent again.
The whiteness before his eyes contained small prickles of blue and green now. He pressed his palms to the smooth wall and felt his way up. The crystals wound on and on, a terrible, wrenching sound. He wanted to throw back his head and howl with pain.
Skal was strangely silent and he felt the flek brush past him unhindered. Why did the other not attack? "Skal?" Kei said, but could not hear his own voice above the shrill. "Tell me where it is and I will distract it while you attack!"
"Shut up, mush-for-brains!" Skal called. "I will say when we hunt and how, and I say the time is not now. Let the earless thing go back where it came from. What do we care?"
"No!" Kei felt his way along the wall in the direction of Skal's voice. "You can't let it escape! The Black/on/black has said it will bring back thousands—"
"The Black/on/black!" Skal said. "Who is Leader now? Do you see him here?"
The sound emanating from the crystals was so high, so shrill, the very cave itself vibrated. Soon the whole structure would come tumbling down and bury them all.
Kei heard feet scrape, smelled the lessening of Skal's scent. Was the other leaving?
Then he detected another scent, human—Mitsu. She came bursting into the chamber, yelling words that were unintelligible over the crystalline wail. Skal answered, then roared.
Kei rubbed desperately at his eyes. If only he could see!
The pink-green-blue sparkles intensified. He could almost make out shapes within them. He pressed his back to the wall and let it guide him toward the two mingled scents, hrinnti and human. The flek was behind him, moving about, busy.
He pushed away from the wall and his flailing hand brushed one of the crystal pillars. Energy surged through him as though he had touched a live wire in some human contraption. A note more piercing than any yet stood his hair on end. Air whooshed out of his chest and he fell to his knees, but in that split second, he had seen clearly. Skal's black-and-white form had retreated to the far side of the chamber, well back in the tunnel. Mitsu had her knife out and was hurling herself at the flek.
Then his vision went white again and he could make out only random sparkles zigzagging before him like excited molecules. The crystals ascended another agonizing note, then a green so intense, that even he could see it, flashed over into white—
He found himself on his back, head throbbing, tongue lolling. The smell of burned fur and ozone and flek filled the air as the noise spiralled down to a low, teeth-rattling hum.
The flek positioned itself in the middle of the crystalline matrix. Mitsu had just enough time to fling herself at it when the light went green, then a pure, incandescent white. The cavern twisted inside out. The air flashed colder than ice-melt and she was falling.
Her arms flailed for support which was no longer there. Her stomach cramped and up switched suddenly to down, then up again. The technician had triggered the transfer, she thought numbly. It was traveling home via the grid and she, with it, no doubt back to one of the numerous flek hellworlds they had crafted from lovely green jewels like Oleaaka.
Abruptly, she was elsewhere, facedown against a hot, slick surface. She inhaled reflexively, then fumbled at her shoulder for her rifle. Damn, it was gone, no doubt lying on the floor back in the cave. The air stank of sulphur, brass, synthetics, and a thousand other particularly flekish scents. Unbidden, memories surfaced like air bubbles from the bottom of a dank and noxious marsh. The flek breeding chambers had smelled like this on Anktan, and the chambers for growing the edible fungi that they consumed, and the white room.
She coughed, then coughed again. Her eyes burned. Tests had proven that mammals could survive for a number of days breathing the noisome mixture that fleks preferred, but in the end, they always died, and in the meantime, it was never pleasant.
A hazy, mustard-colored sky arched overhead like a poisonous dome. She was outside, on top of a rise with a partial view of the surrounding area. A large transfer grid lay several miles away, recognizable by its five irregular towers. It was not lit though, and she saw no other flek.
In the opposite direction spread the patchwork of a vast flek city: large, oddly shaped, white buildings without doors or windows, typical flekish design. They used porosity generators to pass through walls. She had worn one on her belt once.
Trembling, she scrambled to her knees and looked for the knife. Just seconds ago, it had been in her hand. It lay a few inches away, still activated and humming. She snatched it up and glanced around. Her heart was racing a million light-years a second as the noise generated by the matrix wound down into silence and she was left alone with the sound of the flek's breathing, soft and sibilant.
Though it had been seemingly stunned by the transport, the flek now began darting about, fussing with the crystals. She ducked behind a crystalline pillar. This set of power crystals was large too, but not nearly as massive as the one in the cave.
She should kill this flek before it reported to the hive, but first, if she had any hope of returning, she had to reset the grid. And to do that, she would have to question this technician.
In High-Flek.
The very thought made her sick. Cold sweat trickled down her back and her hand shook so badly she had to grasp the knife with both hands to keep from dropping it. Every time she talked to a flek, it meant accessing the part of her mind that had been duped into believing she was one of these creatures back on Anktan and that way skirted madness. It had taken months to dig her way out of what had happened in that white room. She could never give in to it again!
Heart pounding, she crab-walked off the grid's central platform. The flek made a few more adjustments, its four hands deft and sure. The strobing pinks and greens and blues flickered, faded, so that the only light left was what little filtered down through the yellow haze.
The flek touched a tiny crystal embedded in its right forewrist and the gem pulsed an intense pink. "Replacements required," it said. "Loss of all tuners, warriors, and investigative crew on Planet 873." It touched the gem a second time, and the light winked out.
Kill it! her mind insisted. As soon as it reports to its hivemates about what it found, warrior-drones will flood through here and exterminate everyone back on Oleaaka!
But she didn't want to die, and she most especially didn't want to die here, where the air reeked of flek and their concerns and the white room seemed so close. She wanted to live, and that surprised her.
If you're going to go back, she told herself, then you have to make it talk.
The flek scuttled forward, evidently drawn by the inadvertent scrape of her boot. "Designation?" it said in pure High-Flek.
All-Father blast it! Appropriate answers rose up in her mind and she shivered, despite the heat. She had spoken to the flek back on Oleaaka, but just a few words, skimming over the surface of all those horrific memories. She didn't want to dig deeper after working so hard to banish everything flek from her mind.
It edged closer, craning its spindly neck, seeking the source of the noise. It stepped into view and blinked at her. "Purpose for being in this restricted place?"