This was it, Mitsu told herself, as she dodged from tree to tree in the village. One screaming laka went down after another and the air was choked with black, roiling smoke as the rows of huts caught fire. A laser bolt sang past her cheek. She dropped without thinking and felt the heat trail expand above her like a deadly flower.
This was all her fault. She had convinced the flek to bring her back here just to save her own worthless hide. Why hadn't she found some way to destroy that damned transfer grid when she'd had the chance? Maybe she was still suffering from the aftereffects of the conditioning, like everyone thought. Why else was she pulling such stupid grunt-level stunts?
And where was Heyoka? She tucked her head, eased belly-down along the rain-saturated ground, but saw no sign of him anywhere. She wiped a hand over her face and felt the cool smear of mud left behind. Then, on the perimeter of the village, the firing slowed to a crawl and stopped. She hazarded another glance. Two charred laka lay ahead of her, their carapaces still smoking and blocking part of her view. Beyond them, three downed flek sprawled, their red eyes staring up sightlessly at the sky.
But she hadn't taken them out, and Heyoka, who'd also lost his rifle at some point, certainly couldn't have done in three at once either. The laka, then? She turned her head and gazed back across the village. The natives had coalesced into a frazzled rainbow knot down at the far end and were staring in this direction with frightened pink eyes, no more help in a fight than a herd of stupid cows.
She risked getting up to her hands and knees. Her head throbbed, but the knife felt good in her hand, like a trusted old friend who would not let her down. The village thrummed with dread and she sat back on her heels. Where were they? At least twenty more flek warriors were out there somewhere. Why had they stopped firing? It could just be a trap, to lure her and Heyoka out of cover so they could be picked off.
Warily, she regained her feet and gazed around, still damnably dizzy. Maybe Heyoka was injured, or even . . . dead. No. She would find him. It was just going to take some time.
Unseen silk brushed her face, and then, between one blink and the next, Heyoka's seven-foot frame appeared on his knees, head bowed, tongue lolling, panting as though he'd just completed a twenty-mile quick march.
"Are you all right?" She sheathed her knife, then took his arm.
"I could ask—the same about—you." His breath was coming in shuddering gasps. He closed his black eyes, shivering as though he were in the depths of winter.
"Never mind that," she said, trying to lever him onto his feet. "I only counted three flek down. Let's get under cover before the rest find their nerve and swing this way."
"Oh, they'll be back," he said. "I took out as many as I could, before I lost blueshift, but it wasn't nearly enough."
"You blueshifted?" she said, then grunted as he lurched onto his feet and she took his full weight. The throb in her head intensified and bright specks of red and gold danced before her eyes. She blinked hard. "I didn't think you could do that anymore."
"Neither did I," he said. "Guess we both screwed up."
"That was almost funny," she said. "You go on like this and you'll have your own stand-up routine in some space station bar."
"Don't be insulting." He pushed away from her and straightened. "Did the laka get out okay?"
"No, they're having some kind of convention," she said, "over there on the far side of the village."
"Idiots! Why didn't they just scatter into the forest?" Heyoka shook his head. "They have to know this island inside out. They could have dispersed and run rings around the flek."
"Because they are flek," she said. "Or at least they speak flek. The warriors who came back with me through the grid were deathly afraid of them, kept calling them `the perverted ones.' I told you that before. Why don't you believe me?"
"Because it doesn't make sense," he said grimly. "That knock on the head cross-circuited your brain. You just think they're speaking flek."
"Come on, then," she said. "I'll show you." She set off toward the milling laka. Heyoka made a grab for her arm, but she slipped out of reach.
The laka ignored her as she approached. One of the more hulking specimens was sorting them into groups. What had seemed like chaos a moment ago had become purposeful orchestration. She stopped before a small lavender one who was standing apart, speaking to another of approximately the same size. It still sounded like flek-speak to her, though oddly accented. Her skin crawled. For all the superficial differences in body structure and the oddball pastel coloration, these creatures were flek. It was obvious. "Why didn't you run away?" she asked it in High-Flek.
The two of them stared at her. Then the closest craned its neck as though seeing her for the first time. "You address me, a lowly breeder?" it said finally.
"Why not? You speak the language of the Makers," she said, while Heyoka looked on in amazement.
"I speak the breeders' dialect," it said, "which is given only to us, the keepers, and translators. How is it that you, an alien, speak it too?"
"This is the language of the ones who attacked your . . . facility," she said, not having ever encountered a flek word for "home." "I learned it on another world."
"The forceful ones, yes," it said, and she thought a tinge of longing colored that statement. "They have come back."
"You have heard of them before?" She was aware that Heyoka hovered just behind her shoulder now.
"They do what they want," it said, "take anything they want, and it is rumored they are all male!" It turned its lavender face toward the other side of the village, where the flek had emerged from the forest. "I would like to see such creatures close-up just once before the Feast of Leavetaking."
A larger laka, its carapace a breathtaking blue that shaded to midnight along its joints, stepped between her and the smaller ones. It spoke to her sharply, but Mitsu could not understand. She answered in High-Flek. "I do not understand."
"Do not further agitate the breeders," it replied, switching to flek as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "We shall be days singing them down as it is."
"How is it that you speak the language of the Makers?" Mitsu asked.
The laka seemed to fold in upon itself and turned its head aside. "Do not name them so!"
"Why not?"
"They do not `make' anything," it said. "They destroy! Look at our compound, our poor builders and sanitizers. The shellfruit arbor is in ruins and half the vines have fled. We shall have to use gleaners to clean up the mess and they will find that very upsetting. The terrible ones `make' nothing except death and destruction!"
Heyoka took her shoulder and pulled her around. His black eyes bore into her. "Did you really understand any of that?"
"I told you before—they're speaking flek." Her heart raced. "They are flek."
He stared at the grouping and she could see the wheels rolling in his head as he tried to make sense of this bizarre set of facts.
She turned back to the laka. "The Makers were here, on Oleaaka, before, many units ago. They tried to change this world, but in the end they gave up and abandoned it. Do you know why?"
The laka started to speak, but the two smaller ones shoved past it and darted toward the forest. It flinched, then broke into a complex, atonal collection of sounds with rhythms that slid over each other, merging in piercing tones that scraped along her nerves.
Heyoka, who had much more sensitive hearing, sank to his knees and clamped his hands over his pinned-back ears. For her own part, she could not move. It was as though she were caught in a web of sound, both terrible and wonderful, that bound her to the spot.
The two who had called themselves "breeders" stood transfixed too, then returned slowly, step by step, to the heart of the village. Their posture was unwilling, their heads downcast. They had no choice, Mitsu realized.
When the song was over, she stood blinking in the sultry sunlight, trying to remember what she had been about to do before it started.
A few feet away, Heyoka muttered an expletive and lurched to his feet. She looked up. A line of dead-white flek stood at the edge of the village.
The laka hurriedly burst back into song.
Montrose breathed a sigh of relief when the three hrinn emerged from the forest. The black-coated one, Kei, was in the lead. The other two, yellow Visht and black-and-white Skal, trailed at his heels. This was new, he thought. That particular order obviously meant something had changed. Skal hadn't been with them before, and the other two certainly hadn't left for the mountain in that particular order. Hrinn never did anything like this casually.
Onopa's stocky form backed him up, stalwart and ready, as he lurched to his feet, heavily favoring his burned leg. "Kika should be here in a few minutes, then we'll head for the village and relieve Blackeagle and Jensen."
Kei regarded him with those enigmatic black eyes and the air between them crackled with the intensity of his gaze. Such a direct stare meant out-and-out defiance, Montrose remembered from Blackeagle's lectures on the psychology of hrinn. Don't ever hold such a stare, the sergeant had warned, unless you mean to back it up with your life.
The nape of his neck prickled. He was tempted to drop his own eyes and let Kei lead the mission but, dammit, this was critical. Blackeagle and Jensen were pinned down, maybe dying at this very moment, and he had more actual combat experience against the flek than anyone else here. Blackeagle had designated him in charge.
"I am Squad Leader, by Blackeagle's order," he said slowly. "You are my Second."
Kei snarled, soft and rattling beneath his breath, and his handclaws sprang free. He paced back and forth.
He seemed bigger than Montrose remembered but, then, hrinn always had that effect on him when he came upon them unexpectedly. He'd never been able to decide whether they looked more like Terran wolves, bears, or jungle cats, probably an amalgamation of the most ferocious features of all three. "We don't have time to argue," he said. Sweat soaked the back of his uniform shirt. He was painfully aware he couldn't have taken a full-grown hrinn, hand-to-hand, even at the best of times, and, at the moment, he was not only crammed to the gills with pain killers from the medkit, but one-legged as well. "Blackeagle is depending on us. Come and sit down. We have to plan our attack."
Aliki Onopa watched, but didn't say anything, didn't even move. Naxk's feverish black eyes watched from where she lay on the ground. She was still too weak to do more than breathe, and walk for short distances, when it was required of her.
"There is a pattern/in/progress at work here," Kei said finally, then glanced aside at Skal. The black-and-white hrinn's nose wrinkled in what might have been a silent snarl and he looked quickly away. Kei turned his back and sat down beside Naxk. "I have been trying to smell it out, but I do not have its shape yet."
Patterns. Montrose nodded grimly. Religion again. Better not to get started on that subject. He'd be sure to stick his foot in his mouth.
The other two hrinn also took seats on the damp ground. Visht looked perfectly at ease, but Skal's ears kept twitching and bloody claw marks crisscrossed his neck, which made Montrose even more nervous. "As soon as Kika reaches our position," he said, dry-throated, "we'll head for the village. It's about five hundred yards to the northwest, near as I can figure. We heard laser fire earlier, but it's stopped now."
Kei's nose quivered as he sampled the air from several directions. "We should go on without Kika. She is traveling faster than our injured and will catch up."
And she would easily, Montrose realized. Kei was right. She could smell them out, just like the others had. He should have thought of that, but it was hard enough to think like a hrinn and plan for their special abilities under the best of circumstances, let alone under pressure. "You're right," he said. "Let's head out."
Without a word, Onopa took Naxk's arm and helped the tawny young female to rise. They had both tried to persuade her to remain here, when they made contact with the enemy at the village, but Naxk would not hear of it. "I would rather be dead," she'd said, "than lie here, safe, while my huntmates fall in my place!"
As for himself, Montrose had cut a staff from a nearby tree and could walk, or at least limp for now, as long as the medication in the medkit held out. He didn't like to think about the consequences of pushing himself like this that would surely come in the not-too-distant future, when the drugs wore off. But then, they might not even have a future, so he decided he would worry about it when, and if, it happened.
Water still dripped from the leaves, but the rain had stopped and shafts of green-tinted sunlight filtered down through the forest canopy. Tiny blue and gold avians burst into flight at their approach, screeching like out-of-tune violins. The dampness intensified all the smells so that Montrose was overwhelmed by the scent of leaf mold, wet wood, bruised leaves, and rich, black mud. Hrinn lived in an even more concentrated sea of odors like this all the time, he thought, and wondered what that would be like, to know the world around you so intimately through this other underused sense.
Kei and Skal stopped at almost the same instant, their ears pinned, their black eyes darting. Naxk stiffened and looked at Onopa. Visht continued a few more steps, then flinched back.
"What?" asked Montrose in a low voice.
"A noise," Kei said. His ears swiveled. "Very strange."
"Fighting?" he said.
"No," Kei said. "Something else, but definitely not natural."
Montrose forged on, trying to be as silent as the hrinn, but it was difficult. They made no sound, except for wounded Naxk, traveling like ghosts, despite their bulk. Since his leg was stiff and wouldn't bear his weight, he had all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. If he gave them away with his clumsiness, the reason would not matter.
The others fell into line behind him, then he signalled Kei. "Take the point," he whispered. "Don't let us walk into a trap."
The big black's eyes gleamed. He disappeared into the wall of foliage without disturbing a single leaf. Montrose limped after him, wondering how something so big could move like that.
Then he heard what the hrinn had already picked up: a wretched teeth-rattling racket that grew louder with each step. It vibrated along nerve and bone, built up painfully behind the eyes. He felt as though he were wading upstream against a stiff current.
Kei halted and they bunched behind him. Naxk was breathing hard, her head back, eyes half-lidded. Onopa looked grim and weary beneath Naxk's weight.
Montrose peered ahead and saw a huge clearing with concentric rings of neat thatched huts: the laka village. It was surrounded on this side by at least twenty, perhaps more, flek warrior-drones. The sun glinted off their luminescent white bodies as they stood there, frozen, laser-sticks raised.
The squad could not possibly take so many head-on, he thought. Their only chance was to ambush them. He motioned to Onopa to ease Naxk to the ground. No matter what she said, she wasn't mobile enough for this.
She sagged, then braced her back against a tree. He bent down in the shade and spoke close to her ear. "Stay here and guard our flank. We're going to slip around and drive them back this way. Don't let any get past you."
She was panting too hard to speak, but her hands tightened around her rifle. Damn, she was game, he thought and squeezed her shoulder.
Then he jerked his head at the rest. "Let's flank the line to the left," he said softly, "then pick them off one at a time. We can take out six or seven before they realize what's happening. Stay spread out and maintain your position. Don't give them a decent target."
The hrinn melted again into the trees. He and Onopa were left to follow. His leg was aching again and he was dizzy. Rainbow auras surrounded the light, wherever it pierced the leaves, and he knew he was running on raw nerve.
"You go first," he told Onopa. "I'll follow."
"Maybe you should stay with Naxk," she said. Her cheek was smudged with mud and her wet black hair was plastered to her head. "Make the best use of what mobility you have."
She was probably right, he thought, but he couldn't do it. As long as he could still move under his own power, he had to be with the squad. This was his command.
"No," he said, "I'll take the last position, but I can keep up."
She nodded, then her tall sturdy form disappeared between a pair of saplings into the foliage hrinnti fashion. Not a leaf stirred and he couldn't hear her footsteps above the torturous racket coming from the village. He checked his rifle, disengaged the safety, then limped after her.
The flek waited, a line of white statues at the edge of the village. Heyoka gritted his teeth, willing the laka to stop that goddamned awful racket, so he could mount some defense, even if it was just to take cover. In its own way, this was almost as bad as the transport grid revved up to full power.
"Tell them—to—stop!" he gasped. A red mist obscured his vision. "Tell them—they're killing—us!"
Mitsu was pale, but fortunately not as incapacitated. Hands over her ears, she darted forward and shouted at the assembled laka. When they didn't respond, she beat her fist against the one which had spoken to her a few minutes ago. It stumbled back, faltered, blinked at her with surprised pink eyes, then stopped singing. The rest trailed off into silence.
Mitsu questioned it, then turned back to him. "They have to sing," she said shakily. "It's for the Makers, the flek, as we call them, to keep them from—something. I'm not sure what. Their accent is different and I don't know all the words."
He glanced up at the flek. They were raising their laser-sticks, taking aim—
A laser bolt burst out of the trees and cut down the fourth flek from the end. Two more in quick succession killed the next pair, then the flek responded with fire into the forest.
"Come on!" Heyoka seized Mitsu's arm and hustled her to dubious cover behind a hut. "It's the squad," he said. "They've re-formed and are coordinating an attack."
The laka were again milling in the line of fire as though they still had no idea of how much danger they were in. Several more died in the first seconds of fighting. "Tell them to take cover!" he said.
She poked her head around the hut long enough to relay the message. One of the laka broke off and joined them in their hiding place.
It spoke to Mitsu, its tone urgent. She shook her head. It repeated itself, gesturing at the fire fight.
"What's it saying?" he said.
"It wants us to break off this attack," she said. "They hate fighting and all forms of violence. They would rather die than be part of this."
"But the flek will kill them!" he said.
"They don't care." Her blue eyes were red-rimmed.
She had a dark, purpling bruise across one cheek and he was suddenly reminded that he had stolen her back from the flek just hours before. Prior to that, she had been their prisoner. Was she accurately interpreting what the laka were saying, or was she just rewriting the scenario to the flek's advantage? Maybe that laka had really been begging for them to defend the village.
"They can't sing them down with all this going on!" she said. "The flek will hear, though, if you just call the squad off for now."
The Mitsu he knew would fight to the death before surrendering, he thought. She would never give up, no matter how hopeless the odds, and she would never let someone else fight her battles. This had to be the flek talking.
Another warrior-drone went down, then he heard a harsh cry in the thick underbrush. One of his squad was hit. He couldn't stand it any longer. Claws bared, he launched himself at the flek's unprotected flank.