Heyoka skidded to a stop in the crystal chamber as the pulsing of the light began to slow. There was no sign of Mitsu, but he'd encountered Skal lurking in the tunnel just short of the entrance. Their eyes had met, then the big black-and-white male had followed him in without a word, head lowered, glowering.
In the waning blue light, he saw hrinnti bodies scattered along the wall around the grid. The sound had already subsided to a bearable level. Fur bristled down his back; the peculiar flatness of death mingled with the lingering stink of flek hung in the air. Whatever had happened, he was too late. The flek seemed to have escaped, and Mitsu was nowhere to be seen.
Kika lay closest, her pale fur luminous in the fading light. She was groaning, both hands clasped over her head. Red-orange hrinnti blood stained the fur around her ears. He bent over and touched her shoulder. She flinched violently. "It's Blackeagle," he said in hrinnti, not sure she could hear him, then reached down and detached the med unit from her belt.
The versions carried by the hrinn were especially configured for hrinnti bodies, which metabolized drugs differently than humans. He applied it to the hollow between neck and shoulder where the fur thinned out a bit. It whirred, then the green treatment light flashed. "Where's Mitsu?" he asked. "Did you see her?"
Kika did not respond, so he motioned to Skal who was making no effort to help. "Check the other tunnel and see if she's down there."
He pulled a coldlantern off his belt and activated it before the crystals failed completely. On the far side of the chamber, Bey's honest dark-brown face gaped blankly at the ceiling. A terrible laser burn seared his chest and abdomen. His legs were limp and twisted at unnatural angles. Heyoka knew that vacant look well; he was dead. Ten feet away, within reach of one of the massive transport crystals, Kei sprawled on his back, tongue out, struggling to breathe in great, shuddering gasps.
He set the coldlantern on the floor and knelt beside Naxk. Like Bey, she'd taken a direct hit. Heyoka unhooked the med unit from her belt and set it against her neck. Naxk shuddered, then the tension melted from her body and he knew the med had dealt with her pain, at least for the moment.
They were unseasoned troops, he thought, and that factor was partially responsible for this utter failure, but worse than that, they had made contact with the flek without the voice of experience, without his supervision. If he had been here, he would have directed them to be cautious, use the pillars for cover, creep up on the enemy, but instead, they had reverted to a classic hrinnti assault, dashing in, depending on intimidation, pitting teeth and claws against a laser.
And what in the devil had happened to Mitsu? There was no sign of her dead or wounded body, thank goodness, but she should be here somewhere, unless she'd gone on through to the tunnel on the other side, or—
She'd transported with the flek.
He looked up. Skal hadn't moved. "I told you to check the tunnel!"
Skal scratched a patch of white fur on his shoulder and gazed brazenly into Heyoka's eyes. "If she's down there," he said, "she'll come back. If she's dead, there is nothing to do."
Heyoka leaped to his feet, his murderous other lusting for blood. His handclaws sprang free. "Rangers take care of their own! If you've learned nothing else over these past months, you should have at least learned that!"
Skal flicked a dismissive ear, but every line in his powerful body denoted belligerence. "The weak fall, the strong live to hunt another day."
Challenge. Heyoka understood the nature of the moment now. Skal had chosen this particular bit of chaos to make his move. "You think you smell a pattern here, don't you?" He strode over to Visht and bent down to check the big yellow male's pulse. He was still alive, his heartbeat strong. He'd taken a glancing laser bolt across the top of one shoulder and hit his head on the wall. Unclipping the medkit, Heyoka applied it to Visht's neck without looking up. His own pulse pounded. "You think this is undue/transformations or stealth/in/intent or something equally deep and meaningful."
The mention of the sacred patterns/in/progress galvanized Skal. He shook himself and snarled. His own particular musk, fraught with fight pheromones, flooded the chamber. Provocative scent molecules danced through Heyoka's head, setting into primal links, and he felt how his other longed to match teeth against teeth, claws against claws in the oldest and best of ways.
"There is a pattern here all right." He straightened, ears flattened to his skull. "It's called Chain of Command, but I don't have to name the damn thing to know the first time you come against me, I'll whip your sorry tail from one end of this planet to the other!"
Skal's coal-black eyes blinked. "Hrinn do not have tails."
Heyoka's claws retracted a bit. Gods, that was funny, almost worthy of a human. Hrinn did not possess a laugh reflex, but he felt an almost human response to that non sequitur way down deep, in his most secret places where his human upbringing had insured he would never be fully hrinnti.
His violent other fumed, but the moment had been defused and he could think clearly enough to choose his plan of action now. He didn't have to tear Skal's throat out, not today, anyway.
"You don't deserve a tail," he said and gestured at Naxk. "Take her outside to Onopa, then come back and help Visht. I don't want anyone left in here in case the grid activates again."
Skal glared at him with hot black eyes that knew nothing of humor or military niceties, and most certainly nothing of mercy. He glowered back, willing himself to remain cool and not let Skal provoke him into a pointless fight. They were so few, they couldn't afford to lose anyone else. As it was, Bey's death was a terrible blow to their tiny force. Somehow with only five hrinn and two humans, most of them injured, he had to hold this gate against the flek.
Finally, Skal dropped his eyes. "I will take Visht."
"No," Heyoka said, looping Kika's limp arm over his shoulder. "Take Naxk. She's the worst injured."
"But she is female!" The wrinkle of the other's nose said he was insulted at the very thought.
"You noticed," Heyoka said. "Very good. I wasn't sure you could tell the difference."
"Males do not touch females out of season!"
"Don't worry," Heyoka said. "She's in no shape to make advances."
Skal snarled, snatched up Naxk's unresponsive form, and disappeared into the dark tunnel that led back to the surface.
Heyoka struggled to pick up Kika. Unlike diminutive Naxk, Kika was a mature, rangy female, almost as tall as himself, and he was very tired. Her nostrils flared and she stirred against his chest. "Don't struggle," he said. "I'm going to take you back to the surface."
She murmured something unintelligible that trailed off after the first few words. He shifted her weight to his shoulder and set out through the dark tunnel after Skal, leaving the coldlantern behind for the rest of the survivors. His mind raced ahead, trying to plan, salvage some sort of opportunity out of what seemed to be nothing but disaster. And, once he'd gotten his personnel to safety, he had to figure out what the devil had become of Mitsu.
He had a sinking feeling he already knew.
"Purpose for being in this restricted place?" the tech-drone repeated. It crept forward to peer around the crystal pillar at Mitsu, then scuttled back to pick up its discarded laser stick. It brandished the weapon at her. "Surrender, Despised Agent of the Enemy!"
Her face blazed hotter than the blood-orange sun beating down through the haze. She thumbed the sonic blade off, slid it back into the sheath in her boot, then slowly stood. She should have killed the tech while she had the chance, then taken out as many flek as possible before she died.
With only a sodding knife? some incredulous part of her brain asked. She would never have gotten within reach. Though this was just a tech, she had seen it fire at the hrinn back in the cave without hesitation. The situation had gone beyond knives and stealth. She had to think of something else.
A memory surfaced. The white room. A lesson, one of many imparted there. Her fingers twitched, then beat out a flekish song for Safe Arrival. She lacked the chitin necessary to make the beats resonate as they ought, but, despite the length of time since she'd learned it, got the rhythm right. Rhythm was all important, she knew, to the songful flek.
The tech-drone raised its own hands and joined in, accompanying her song through to the end. Its clicks sounded clearly and she was taken back for a heart-wrenching second to Anktan, the lowly flek worker assigned to instruct her, the sense of accomplishment when she had mastered the complex and alien rhythms, the white room . . . always and forever would she be imprisoned in that white room . . .
The flek cocked its head, fixed her with scarlet eyes. "Purpose for being here?"
She blanched. "To report," she said in High-Flek, her mouth very dry. It was so hot, so damn hot, and her throat was already raw from the sulphur fumes. All the knowledge of the flek and their ways she had been force-fed bubbled up through her subconscious, white-hot and dangerous, an unknown sea where she could lose herself forever. She had to stare out over the flek's back, not focus on its alien face, or she knew she would scream.
"Designation?"
"Spy-Drone 87650," she said, the classification she had received from the flek on Anktan. Her hands were sweating. Her stomach cramped. All-Father, she couldn't do this. She felt twisted inside out; she couldn't go back in her mind, remember what she had been and thought and done during those terrible days. Why not just attack it and be finished with this whole miserable screw-up?
"You were assigned to the world linked to this grid?" Its off-balance posture communicated disbelief.
Don't look at its eyes, she told herself. Don't think about what it really is. "Yes."
It sat back on its haunches and processed what she had said. It was only a tech-drone, not qualified to make important decisions concerning anything but its assigned grid. She was gambling that it had little specific knowledge beyond crystals and mechanisms and adjustments.
Over on the city side of the rise, a thin white line of flek emerged from a low building on the outskirts, too small for her to make out their type. She felt an additional stab of panic.
"That world has lain fallow for many units," the tech-drone said. "You were in residence during the entire time period?"
"Yes," she said, speculating that an ordinary drone would know nothing of human biology or potential life-span. "This body is quite durable, though I shall be gratified to leave it behind."
"We have no facilities for xeno-information processing." Its first-hands hesitated and it looked forlorn. "This world, though very beautifully rendered, has been classified as Failed and supports only a single garrison. Due to certain environmental irregularities, optimum parameters could not be maintained. No breeding has been carried out here for over two hundred units. It shall be necessary for you to travel to at least a tertiary nexus."
"I see." She did not, however, have the slightest idea what it was talking about. "I will—have to go back, then, to the abandoned world, to pick up some—information I left behind. After that, I can go to the tertiary nexus."
The flek marching from the city complex started up the transfer grid's rise, single file. She could see now that they were small, less than knee-high, and of two distinct types. The first she had encountered before, back at the transfer grid on Anktan, although she had never been told their function. They had long, delicate arms, completely out of proportion with their dwarfed height, and double-jointed fingers on all four hands.
The second type were even stranger, possessing only vestigial eyes and bizarre raised pads that spread like blisters across the palms of their forehands. She shuddered.
"Further access will require input of a Decider," the tech said placidly, and stood aside for the arriving workers.
"I have to return now," Mitsu said, her heart racing. "The inhabitants there cannot be trusted to leave my information cache intact and I have gathered news of the Enemy."
The flek was thoughtful. "I am sure the Deciders will be interested in your findings. They have always been reluctant to part with that particular world. The Makers came close to crafting something very beautiful there."
"You must send me back now!" Mitsu insisted.
The small workers sorted themselves out, the nearly blind ones positioning themselves well back and waiting, while the others each embraced a different crystalline pillar. Soft pinks and blues and greens sprang into life at their touch. A faint hum became audible.
"This grid must be retuned," the tech said. It passed among the smaller flek, adjusting the lie of a finger on this pillar, the bend of a hand on the next. "Units of untended growth skewed the harmonics of the abandoned grid and have in turn skewed this one to a lesser degree. Transfer grids of this old design must be constantly recalibrated. The one you came through no longer accesses anywhere but here."
"How—long before it is ready?" Mitsu was trembling.
"These tuners are quite adept," it said. "They were bred especially for this outdated grid's specifications. They will signal when the matrix is primed." It settled back to wait, forelimbs crossed, hands resting on its chest.
Mitsu was familiar with that position. Once, on Anktan, it had meant her captors would leave her alone for a while. The tech had gone dormant, a state not quite the same as sleep, as a human would recognize it, since it could go on indefinitely, but the tech would not stir again until needed.
So, now what was she supposed to do? Deciders were much cannier than drones and techs, and doubtless knew enough of the Enemy to recognize her sham for what it was. She couldn't risk running into one of them. Whatever happened, she had to avoid the flek city.
After the furred aliens had ferried the last of their dead and wounded out of the cave, Second Breeder coaxed his four fellow breeders out of the rear tunnel, where they had concealed themselves, back into the spacious main chamber.
The acrid taste of the blue light lingered in the air. Subtly different from the scent of the light which had killed their fellows at the ceremonial grounds, it conjured images in Second's mind, dimly seen shapes that were almost like memories.
The crystal trees stood in the center, growing from the floor in a pattern which did mimic the mark on Tenth's back. Thick and glassy, they only flickered now, just the palest imitations of their colorful magnificence a short time before. They were still humming, but so softly, the sound was barely audible, even to their keen laka ears. Before, when they had been in full soaring voice, Second Breeder had wondered if it were possible to die of joy.
And that white creature who had stood against all the off-worlders—it had looked like a real person, except for certain odd proportions of leg and arm, neck and head, along with its lack of tint and piercing red eyes. Second couldn't get over how attractive it had been, compact and yet graceful. It had been a drone like himself, but so competent, so functional. Obviously, it understood the crystal trees growing down here in the dark, what they were for and, best of all, how they could be persuaded to sing.
They arranged themselves in a half circle and let the last of the light play over their wondering faces. "Perhaps the stranger will come back," Second said. He had propped the firing stick, lost by the alien back in the ceremonial arena, against the wall. It was wider at one end than the other, and a mechanism of some sort was built into it.
"This can be our colony," Tenth said. He was large for a breeder, his carapace a mottled blue, except at his joints, which shaded to a sallow and disappointing white. "Then we could always have such exciting songs."
Sixteenth Breeder indicated doubtfulness with the cant of his head. "There is nothing to eat here," he said.
It was true the want of food was making itself very much known. Second was feeling decidedly slow-witted. "We must find a gleaner," he said, "and make her bring food down here."
"How will you make her?" Sixteenth said. "I have never yet heard a gleaner speak a single intelligible word."
Second mulled this over. "Then we must secure a translator too."
"Translators never listen to breeders," Tenth said. "They only tell you when to eat and where to sleep and all the things you should not do." He reached out and touched a wondering first-hand to the translucent length of the nearest crystal. Its hum modulated to a slightly higher register. He snatched his hand back and stared. "I could feel—that tree is not—right, not where it should be."
"Where else should it be, except here where it started?" Second said, testy with hunger. "Do you want it to sprout legs and walk outside?" He drummed both pairs of hands on his sides with impatience. Words hovered at the edge of being spoken, ideas glimmered just out of reach—forceful, brave, clever ideas, all of which, of course, were far beyond the capability of a mere breeder.
Tenth stroked the crystal tree again, longer this time and with all four hands. The light phased from pink to blue to purple to green, rippling faster. The hum changed pitch as he touched it high, then low. "That is somehow—better," he said finally. "I don't know why, but it feels more—complete."
"Bah! Playing with these glass trees is for hatchlings! At some point, the keepers will come and make us go back to the colony. That's what we should be thinking about." Second stalked to the edge of the chamber where he had left the alien's stick propped against the curving white wall.
"They won't come down here," Tenth said. "They say it's a bad place, that terrible things happened here and could happen again, if laka ever forget."
Second snatched the stick up, turned it over in his first-hands while his second-hands probed each swell and protuberance. The highly polished surface felt cool and sleek, welcoming to the touch. He thought again of the furred alien, how it had leaped upon the breeders, how in turn they had leaped upon it and then pinned the wretched beast to the ground.
That was what a breeder ought to be doing, taking real action, doing something beyond waiting for the opportunity to breed, an opportunity which might not ever come. A breeder should . . . at . . . tack. Attack. That was the word he had been seeking as a keeper seeks an errant hatchling. When someone attacked the colony, you should attack back!
How wonderful! It was as though the right word had opened up entire new vistas inside his head. He saw hints of other things one might do, other ways to live and found himself dancing with joy.
"What's the matter with you?" Tenth demanded.
"I understand!" Second could not be still. He spun around, flung out his arm and pointed the stick as the alien had. "I understand now what I am supposed to do! When something attacks the colony, I am supposed to attack back!"
"What does that mean?" Tenth sounded quite sullen.
Second's fingers played over the stick, pressing each knob in turn. One of them close to the wide end gave with a slight click. A tiny spot of green bloomed like an exotic flower. "It means that, when the off-worlders hurt us, we don't have to stand back and let them."
"Get in their way?" Tenth looked at Sixteenth, then back to Second. "We tried that. It didn't work."
"No," Second said. "We make them get out of our way!" His probing fingers touched the same lever as before, but this time, it yielded to pressure. Bright green fire splashed across the room. Sixteenth cried out, then collapsed, his off-shoulder a black smoking ruin.