Kei took the point as they entered the rain forest and the three of them matched one another stride for stride in silence. High overhead, wind whispered through the leaves, laden with exotic scents that had no analogs in their homeland. Except for that and the sultriness of the air, Kei mused they might have been hunting in a wooded area back on Anktan, each reading the body language of the others, for once in perfect accord.
Visht had assumed the second position, backup to the Leader, while Skal, bleeding and chastened, brought up the rear. Yet that position was important, Kei thought, ducking a low-hanging limb, as were all the elements of any successful hunt. None of those selected could afford to be weak, and certainly none could be spared.
Occasionally, something slithered out of their path into the dark-green brush as they approached. At first, Kei had thought these to be small animals, but upon closer examination, the source usually turned out to be plants, either scurrying or creeping aside, another indication this was not home. His hackles rose. Very strange.
His com unit buzzed and he realized he'd thrust it into a pocket while they were up on the mountain, sitting vigil for Bey. His heart leaped. He stopped and dug it out, then keyed it on. "Black/on/black?"
"No, it's me, Montrose," a human voice answered. "I've heard from Blackeagle though. Is this Kei?"
"Yes." Kei's ears flattened. He had never much liked talking into these foolish mechanical devices. It felt too much like conversing with a piece of wood or rock for his taste.
"Where are you?"
"We're in the forest, following your trail," Kei said. He gestured at Visht and Skal to come closer and listen.
"Then you can't be far." Montrose hesitated. "Blackeagle and Corporal Jensen are pinned down by flek fire at the laka village. Can you hear anything from your position?"
Then the flek had already come back. Kei swiveled his ears and listened hard. The rain had eased, and, above the whisper of the wind, the susurration of leaf against leaf, it seemed he did hear a distant crackle. "Yes," he said, "but it's very faint."
"Move up and join us from the north," Montrose said. "Then we'll go in together and relieve Blackeagle."
Kei's lips wrinkled back in an automatic snarl. He was Leader! He would decide what was to be done!
But then he caught himself. They couldn't afford to settle matters of dominance now. Too much was at stake. Whoever was to be Leader, they were all Rangers and the Black/on/black was under attack. "Yes," he said shortly. "Give me your position."
"We're in a low marshy area by a pond at the far end of the village," Montrose said. "From here, we can see a ring of those big trees with the leathery leaves that glow at night rising up out of a clearing. We'll sit tight and wait for you. Naxk can't move that fast anyway, and neither can I. Just follow our trail."
Kei switched the com unit off. He could hear the sizzle of laser fire more clearly now. They had to hurry. "This way," he said to the other two and crashed through the undergrowth.
Kika sat on the rock, fur plastered to her body by the rain, staring out at the restless aquamarine ocean. It was always in motion, like something alive and stalking its prey. The white-frothed waves rolled in and in and in. She could hear them only faintly with her damaged ears, but the rhythm possessed an enormously soothing quality.
When the rain finally stopped, she raised her head to the thinning gray clouds, then stripped off the rest of the confining wet uniform and laid it aside. Yes, she thought as the first rays of the yellow sun broke through and warmed her soaked fur. The welcome heat tingled through her, down into the smallest spaces between, where she was ordinarily never warm. The glorious sensation built, fierce and exciting at the same time, as though a wondrous flame were being kindled within her core.
She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, let the sun pour down on her, panting excess heat away as it built up. There had been days, running between the House of one Line and the next to carry messages, when she could not avoid the sun's effect. Power had simmered along her nerves and through her muscles, until it seemed she would burst trying to contain it. But she had never mentioned it, never let anyone see the faintest manifestation of it again, after that first nearly fatal incident in her cubhood until that last fateful day.
Well-being surged through her now. She felt more whole than she had ever felt in her entire life. The pain of her bruises faded from her consciousness, her wrenched leg, the ache in her ears. She was drifting along in a river of molten sunshine—
Her com unit buzzed. Not now, she thought. Not when the sun was pouring down over her back and shoulders, filling her to the brim. The warmth was tingling, electric, driving out the lingering physical misery of the last few days.
The link buzzed again, and she realized with a start that she could hear it, not faintly, as though muffled with layers of cloth, but clear and sharp. She put a wondering hand to her ear, then picked up the soggy uniform pants and extracted the com unit button from their pocket. "Yes?"
"Kika? Blackeagle and Jensen are under attack in the laka village." It was Montrose's husky voice.
Her ears pricked and she stared back over her shoulder at the trees. "On my way!"
"We've moved from the camp by the stream into the forest," Montrose said. "Let me give you directions to our current position and we'll rendezvous."
"There is no need," she said, bundling the wet clothing underneath one arm. "Unless you flew, I will find you."
There was great consternation on the seaward side of the compound, so Second Breeder circled around and approached from the opposite direction, using first the vine corral, then the shellfruit arbor to screen his path. The mottled-green vines shifted restlessly as he passed, but no one else seemed to pay him any heed at all.
As he entered the concentric circles of thatched nests, bolts of the alien's marvelous green fire sizzled through the air. He heard cries of pain, saw gleaners and builders dashing back and forth without the sense to take cover.
Someone was attacking! How delightful! He still had the alien's deadly stick and wondered if perhaps it would allow him to attack too. Rising from the deepest recesses of his mind, he had fleeting images of other battles, they were called, other wars. This was evidently what breeders had been allowed to do in earlier times, not merely sit about the compound, complacently eating and growing, waiting for that final day when they would finally be allowed to fertilize a selection of viable egg sacs. They were supposed to fire weapons, kill enemies, rend heads from bodies! Long buried concepts and words flooded into his consciousness and he felt armed and ready for anything.
He quivered as he edged forward, straining to see the source of the brief flashes of electric green fire. White chitin glimmered in the sun. It was the others, he realized, the ones who had long ago made the crystal forest in the cave. By their scent, they were all male, like himself, but so forceful, so potent. He could not wait to tell his fellow breeders back at the ruins about this!
Then he thought of his mission—to capture a translator, so that they could speak through her to their gleaner and complete their plans for a new colony. What a perfect time to steal one. The compound was in complete disorder. The coordinators hadn't reached consensus evidently, so the other castes were milling without direction. The keepers kept trying to herd the young males back into the nests, but their charges were resisting and he was certain, in the midst of this disorder, no one would pay much attention to yet another stray breeder.
Second slipped through hysterical knots of sanitizers and cultivators, keeping his gaze down, affecting to be frightened. He wasn't afraid though; he was stimulated. This was exhilarating, wondrous. He'd never felt so utterly present and involved in his entire life.
The translators were busy directing the colony's evacuation in the absence of coordinator instructions, and he could find none who were alone. The weapons fire was fiercest towards the compound's center, so he worked his way in that direction, using nest walls for cover, avoiding the line of fire. He gripped his weapon stick with great care, considered adding his contribution to the melee, but, as exciting as that would have been, it would also have drawn attention, and he was not ready for that yet.
The furred alien, who had shown itself back at the ceremonial arena to be quite good at combat, had taken to the moss-covered ground and was now crawling toward the nearest circle of nests. With that move, the angle of the cross fire which had it pinned down was much less efficient. Second Breeder caught himself watching the tactics of the two forces with admiration, when he should have been working toward his objective.
The other alien, the smaller one with only a bit of dark fur on its head, had gone to ground too and was heading in the opposite direction. Something long and metallic caught the sunlight and glinted in its hand. The two of them were going to flank the enemy, Second realized with delight.
Beneath the leaf shadow of a tall luminary lay a single translator, head back, eyes closed, gasping with the effort to breathe. She was an odd shade of pale green and the plate on her side was damaged. He looked closer; his fellow breeders had cracked that carapace only the day before! Second regarded the injury with a fond sense of recognition.
The two aliens drew most of the incoming fire, and by watching the patterns carefully, Second was able to advance step by step, always keeping to cover, once even using the smoking carcass of a scout. It was so exciting, he had all he could do to make himself stop, once he'd reached his goal.
The translator did not open her eyes as he approached, not even when he hunkered down beside her, watching the surrounding trees and the deadly rain of green fire. Smoke and the stench of burned bodies permeated the air. He leaned over and prodded her with his alien stick. "Get up!"
"No," she said wearily, still not opening her eyes, "do not attempt to move me. This position should prove safe enough."
"I don't care about `safe'!" Second Breeder reared back, swung the weapon and struck her injured side. Flecks of shattered green carapace flaked off in a very satisfactory fashion at the blow. She squalled with shock and pain.
"Get up!" he said.
Her eyes flew open and she shrank at the sight of him.
He loomed over her, relishing the sensation. "If you don't get up, I will strike you again!"
Her pink eyes swirled with fear. "I cannot!" she said hoarsely. "I am injured and will die, if I move!"
"I think you can," he said. "And I don't care if you die."
She trembled. "Where do you want me to go?"
"Away from here," he said, "so we breeders can start our own colony."
"But, this is our colony." Her head swiveled as she gazed around at the familiar surroundings, the luminaries, the circular rows of nests, the carefully tended berry arbors and shellfruit patches, the vine corral. "There is no other."
"Now there will be." He gave her first-arm a savage jerk and her jaws gaped at his daring. "This one no longer suits us."
She nervously eyed his weapon. "But breeders have the best food, the softest, quietest nests. You do no work and are served by all. One entire caste devotes their lives to your welfare. What more could you want?"
"We don't know yet," he said, "but we are going to find out. Get up, or I will hurt you again!" He found himself hoping she would refuse just so he could strike her one more time.
Evidently reading his intention, she shuddered and managed to lurch to her feet.
The firing seemed to have shifted away from this end of the village for the moment. He calculated the best escape route. "This way!" He pulled her roughly by the arm toward the far end of the compound.
"I don't understand," she whispered, more to herself than him, as they wove through the abandoned dwellings. "What could you want out there on your own? What could you do?"
He did not answer. He was too busy thinking about all the delicious possibilities this experience had opened up in his mind. More deeply buried body-memories were surfacing with every breath.
He wasn't sure what they wanted in the end, but they would begin by taking whatever, and whomever, they wished.
Green death blazed through the air in a wide arc from the east. Heyoka recognized the standard star firing pattern; he'd encountered it a thousand times on other worlds, other battlefields. But in those distant places, the flek had been pitted against seasoned soldiers. Here, there were only himself and Mitsu, both unarmed, except for knives, and the clueless laka who were being cut down in droves.
The smell of scorched flesh and burning thatched walls was overpowering. He kept his head down and crawled across the moss, seeking better cover. Mitsu had dived in the other direction, properly dividing the flek fire just as she had been trained, strange behavior for one who had just been through the flek mill again and had to be thoroughly brainwashed.
According to Montrose, the rest of the squad was rallying at his current location in the forest. Though some of them were injured, most still had laser rifles, but it would take time for them to arrive. By then, it would probably be too late, for him and Mitsu, and for the village. He had to take action now, but he needed a weapon. For the hundredth time that day, he cursed himself for being careless enough to lose his.
A laser bolt caught another helpless laka and it went down a few feet from him, screaming and clawing at its burned shoulder. He flinched, remembering what it was like to take the full brunt of a flek bolt. He had been wounded in a battle on Enjas Two last year, taking a serious burn to the knee and leg. He'd endured months of rehabilitation afterward, and even that had proved insufficient until he'd received a unique restorative treatment from his own species.
He used the screeching laka for cover and hitched on his elbows until he reached the nearest hut. It was a conical structure, made entirely of thatching bound to limber posts set in the ground. He parted the aromatic hay and scanned the interior. Circular pits had been dug into the floor and filled with cream-colored down of some sort. Knots of fresh herbs hung from the ceiling and scented the air with a dry tang. It was soothing and cool and quite useless for protection. He pushed through and stood up in the dimness.
More screams filled the air outside. The laka didn't even seem to know they should hide or run away. Some of the largest were just standing there, staring at the flek with horrified pink eyes as though they couldn't conceive of what to do next.
Damnation! His ears flattened with rage. He had to do something, anything! He couldn't just hide in here until relief arrived. By then, the village would be reduced to a scorched ruin, the laka a pile of smoldering corpses, and Oleaaka overrun once again with flek.
He stalked around the hut, his empty hands clenched. Just one weapon, even a—
The supports for the hut jumped out of shadows at him, slender saplings bent into arches, long and supple and strong. He wrenched one out of the earth and tested its tensile strength. Not the best homemade weapon he'd ever seen, but something solid at least to wield against the flek.
He flattened himself against the wall and dug a hole in the thatching to peer out. Across the cleared circle of earth, a warrior-drone spotted him and fired at the hut. The thatch wall burst into flames. He jerked back, cursing as smoke curled through the air.
Snarling, he ducked back to the rear of the hut, but flek had already swept past and surrounded him. The smoke thickened and burned his nose. He was going to have to get out of here, surrounded or not, if he was to avoid being suffocated or burned alive.
He thought he heard his name; the voice sounded like Mitsu. He keyed his com unit to hers. "What's your position?"
"I made a break for it into the next ring of huts," she said. "I'm clear for the moment. How about you?"
"I thought you lost your com," he said suspiciously. "I didn't see it back in the forest."
"I put it in my boot. I didn't want the flek to find it."
A bright orange curl of flame appeared overhead and ate down through the roof. He could feel the heat on his ears.
"Where are you?" she said. "I'll come and bust you loose."
But could he trust her? He didn't know. She sounded like her old self, but the director at the research station had too, back on Anktan, and all the while he'd believed he was a flek transferred into human flesh, Maybe they'd been able to finish the job they'd started on Mitsu this time and she was just waiting for her chance to betray him and everyone else she knew.
The com unit crackled. "Furface, where the hell are you?"
He shut it off and shoved it back into his pocket. Better not to involve her, crazy or not. He'd make a break for it himself.
Edging toward the low doorway, he peered out again. No flek in sight. Perhaps they had moved on, counting on the fire to do him in.
Or just waiting to pick him off, once he bolted, the savage other inside his head suggested.
He'd go out trying, then. Damned if he was going to squat here in the shadows and wait for death. Gripping his makeshift staff, he darted out into the sunlight. The air was filled with the cries of injured laka and the acrid stink of the approaching flek.
Then he saw them, a pair of warrior-drones who had taken up positions at forty-five-degree angles to catch him in a cross fire. They had a dead center bead on him. It was too late to go back, too late for—
The first shot caught him on the upper arm. Reflexively, he twisted away from it and then watched, dumbfounded, as the electric-green bolt passed in its straight-line trajectory. His arm was singed, but not toasted. He stared down at his fur in amazement and realized it had gone blue. Everything was blue, the huts and the rocks, the ground, the laka and the flek. He'd fallen into blueshift.
The other flek's hand inched toward the firing stud. He studied the angle for a second, then sidestepped the bolt before it fired. The cold of blueshift drained at his limited reserves. It was almost silent, all sounds slowed down to the point of incomprehensibility.
Blueshift transformed the landscape and had a fascination all its own, beautiful and quite deadly as it spent his life. He shook himself. There was no telling how long he could hold this accelerated state, certainly nothing like the hours that had once been possible. He had to attack now, before he lost what little advantage he'd gained.
The flek seemed frozen in the dappled shade where they were just emerging from the trees. Laka had gathered at the far end of the village, instead of fleeing, as common sense would seem to dictate. He reached for the savage other he always carried within, bared his claws and raced toward his enemy.