Before Heyoka had led them a dozen paces, the crackle of laser fire charged the air. Damnation! His savage other urged him to plunge ahead, but he brought the ragtag column to a halt and turned to Mitsu, trying to gauge the effect her proximity to the flek was having. If he had any doubts, he could send her back with the laka. She gazed up at him with clear blue eyes, or at least one clear blue eye; the other was still swollen almost shut. But he detected no trace of that lost wildness that had possessed her on Anktan.
She looks all right, he thought. And maybe she is. The next few minutes will tell. "Tell the laka to take cover."
She spoke to the five translators, who turned and scattered back down the hillside without protest. Heyoka swiveled his ears, trying to pinpoint enemy positions. After a moment, he was fairly certain they had approached from the south, seaward along the beach. The wind was out of the mountains for now, which would have hidden their scent.
He motioned for Mitsu and Onopa to circle around and back up to Kei. They nodded, scaled a tumble of boulders up the closest ravine and headed for higher ground to obtain a firing advantage. Onopa was nobody's fool, he thought, and she knew Mitsu's history. She would keep a close eye on her.
Heyoka dropped back down the slope to Montrose who was struggling to catch up. He was drenched in sweat and his hands shook with fatigue. "Stay here and guard the laka," he said. "Don't let the flek break past us and sweep back toward the village."
Montrose's dark face creased. Heyoka could see how badly he didn't want to be left out of this. His jaw tightened, but the younger man just saluted and limped toward cover, his bad leg supporting almost no weight now.
That left Kika, Visht, and Skal. The three hrinn followed Heyoka over the next rise, then flattened to the ground as they took in the scene before them. Kei was perched above the cavern entrance in full view, firing at anything that moved.
"Fall back!" Heyoka yelled to him. Kei's ears flicked, then he faded into the rocks.
The flek, ranged in their standard star figure, kept firing, though several peeled off and opened up on Heyoka's position. He took advantage of the cross-fire angle to take out one, then another, before they adjusted their firing cadence and forced him back.
Visht and Kika were shooting steadily from just a few paces behind him. The hillside's exposed black rocks afforded some cover, but not enough. They needed to improve their position. His com buzzed.
"It's me." Mitsu sounded out of breath. "Kei thinks two, maybe three flek made it into the cave before he drove the rest back."
Heyoka stiffened. "Damnation!" he muttered under his breath. "That tech's already in there, so they can transfer any time. It's not going to be enough to cut them off out here. We have to go in."
"Affirmative," she said. "That's the way I see it too. I'll go back up the hillside and enter the cave from above while you finish them off on this end."
His ears flattened. "Not by yourself, and that's an order!"
"I'll take Onopa with me," she said. "Even if the grid's fired up, once we get there, her ears can take it."
"We can all take it," he said grimly, "if we have to."
"See you inside," she said and clicked off.
He squinted along the ridge line. After a few seconds, two figures in stained tan fatigues scuttled up and over without taking a hit, though more than one laser bolt slagged rocks at their feet. He shook himself, then turned his attention to the problem at hand. There was no way around it. They had to get inside.
With blueshift, he might be able to get through the flek firing pattern, but he'd already pushed himself to the limit. The gnawing hunger was still with him and would be, until he found some decent food. Kika, being female, couldn't blueshift, and he didn't know how much reserve Visht or Skal had left.
Visht fired three rapid rounds, then bolted across to Heyoka's side. He was panting hard, but his eyes were thoughtful. "I think I finally have its name."
Heyoka ducked as flek fire, drawn by Visht's dash, intensified. The air swelled with heat trails and the acridness of expended charges. "The name of what?" he said.
"This pattern!" Visht's nostrils flared with excitement. "I've been listening for the Voice to speak ever since we arrived on this planet, but it never did and I thought perhaps this place was just too far from Anktan for it to ever make itself heard."
Heyoka stared, jaws slightly agape with surprise. During all the months of training, he'd never heard Visht put together that many words at one time.
"Then, just now, I realized we haven't ever taken the time to understand what's rising around us. We just keep blundering ahead, never thinking about the shape of events. That's why things have gone so badly."
Patterns again, those supposedly sacred somethings/in/motion that almost all hrinn worshipped. His ears flattened with aggravation. Superstitious nonsense. They didn't have time for this. Too much was riding on the outcome of this particular fire fight. "We'll talk about it later."
"It's still stars/over/stars," Visht said as though he hadn't spoken. His black eyes gleamed and there was a new animation in his face. "I don't know why I did not see that before. It began on Anktan with your birth, continued on Earth with your rescue and upbringing, then returned to Anktan for the great battle. Now it has reached out to include Oleaaka. It's too big for just one world, or two, or three. Who knows how much farther it will stretch?"
"Even if you're right, that doesn't do us any good," Heyoka said, marking an overbold flek before he took it down. The laser-stick flashed. The flek fell, rolled, then regained its feet and took cover. "I never understood stars/over/stars to begin with."
"That's because you're an integral part of it," Visht said. "Trying to perceive stars/over/stars would be like trying to see yourself. No one can see his own back." He gazed at Heyoka with that worshipful hrinnti intensity he always found so unnerving. "It's into your birth, your very blood. You are the pattern itself!"
"Great." Heyoka sighted in on another flek warrior-drone that had become too bold and dropped it in its tracks. Two more swarmed over it and dashed up the hill after Kei. It was a feint. Damn, he'd fallen for that one. He keyed his com unit. "Kei, get out of there!"
Only static answered.
"Reach inside and listen to what the energy tells you. Whatever you do will be right," Visht said confidently.
Heyoka groaned under his breath. What reality was Visht inhabiting? The truth was nothing he did these days was right, from requesting Mitsu for this so-called "training run" to challenging Skal up on the mountain. He'd broken at least a hundred regulations trying to integrate hrinn into the Rangers, trashed what was left of his career by refusing to evacuate, reopened a transfer grid that had lain dormant for untold years, and then incited at least a portion of the apparently peaceful laka to run amok.
With a sudden burst of fury, he lurched to his aching feet. He was tired of fighting like a human, civilized, precise, always following protocol. Maybe it was time to fight like a savage. His vicious other surged to the surface, already whispering suggestions. "We're going in," he said to Visht, Kika, and Skal. "Stay on my heels!"
He laid back his ears and fired as he ran, weaving back and forth. The three closest flek froze, trying to adjust to this foolhardy strategy; then he was upon them, too close for either side to bring weapons to bear. He raised his laser-stick and bludgeoned the closest. Kika and Visht swept past him and fell upon the next, moving as a perfectly coordinated pair as though they'd hunted together their entire lives.
The warrior-drone went down with a startled squall even as Heyoka leaped upon the next. A laser bolt caught the edge of his right hand as it took the flek in the shoulder. He glanced back; the flek were firing upon their own troops in an effort to take out the hrinn.
It had been a good gamble, but he'd lost. He'd never find cover in time—
The first notes pierced the air just as Kika finished off her prey. She glanced up, claws ivory with flek blood, then shuddered.
The laka were advancing up the hillside, flanked by Montrose. They were singing the same strange, shrill song that wrenched at Heyoka's nerves and set his teeth on edge. It was too high, too piercing, full of odd harmonics that made it difficult to breathe.
He covered his ears, trying not to let his nerveless fingers drop the laser-stick.
Kika threw back her head and roared with pain.
"Run!" he told her. "Get out of range!"
She staggered a few steps, then crumpled to the ground, gasping. Visht's lips were pulled back in a fierce growl, his black eyes narrowed. Every muscle in his big strong body stood out with strain.
Montrose limped forward, one painful step at a time, his rifle trained on the remaining flek, who were dotted around them like a forest of statues.
Heyoka wanted to tell him to finish them off while they were helpless, but the words wouldn't come. There was only the terrible music, winding around through his head, slipping into unsuspected nooks and crannies, making him see bizarre colors that weren't there, smell odors that had never existed.
But the laka could sing all day and it wouldn't resolve anything, he thought. Whenever they ran out of steam, as they must at some point, the flek would still be here. His Rangers had to get into that cave and stop the one inside from returning to whatever world lay on the other side of the transfer grid. In the meanwhile, Mitsu was in there with only Onopa for support.
Panting, he fought to take a step, just one step toward the yawning black entrance of the cave. His right leg responded stiffly somewhere in that distant country beneath him as though it were made of robotics and under someone else's control.
If he could take one step, then he could take another, he told himself. Move, dammit! He was trembling with exertion, but the left leg shuffled forward.
The flek warrior-drones were transfixed as he edged around them, hands still over his ears. Kika writhed on the ground, but he couldn't help her, could barely help himself. Visht was watching him with a fervent intensity he had seen only once before, back on Anktan, when he had been forced to kill a priest to satisfy the expectations of a primitive culture he could never fully understand. They had called for him then by the name of a ancient legend, and he'd known all the while he was a sham.
If Visht could make himself heard through all of this, he thought numbly, the yellow-furred hrinn would be shouting it too. Black/on/black! Black/on/black!
But the Black/on/black was just an ancient legend with a tiny grain of truth at its heart. He knew better than anyone that he wasn't part of any so-called sacred something/in/motion. He was just a soldier, trying to do his duty. Another step. If he could get inside the cave, that might lessen the song's impact.
Visht's words came back to him—"It's woven into your birth, your very blood."
If only that were true, he wouldn't make so damned many mistakes. Another step, he told himself. He was almost there. One more—step.
The cave's entrance was a dark hole in the hillside set on an angle to the ground, and enlarged by all the activity. He lunged at it, grasped the sides and pulled himself through. He fell down the rocks that led down to the floor. Inside it was cooler and noticeably quieter. The laka song could still be heard, but was not so overwhelming. He lay for a moment on the cavern floor, trying to collect himself, then lurched down the passage toward the grid.
He could hear its terrible squeal in the distance.
The second entrance turned out to be farther back up the mountain than Mitsu remembered. The wind blew steadily in their faces, making it harder to climb. Onopa followed on her heels, much taller and more wind-resistant, far too weary and out of breath to ask questions.
She couldn't find the cave, when they had finally climbed high enough. She rotated, examining the green-shrouded hills for familiar shapes. By her calculations, the abandoned base camp was about thirty minutes back to the east. She identified the outline of a stone cliff above, and a lightning-split tree about twenty feet away.
"It's around here somewhere," she told Onopa. "We can't be that far off."
Onopa shaded her eyes with one hand. Her face was splotchy with heat and exhaustion, her long black hair slick with sweat. "Think back," she said hoarsely. "You and Kei found the entrance first. What landmarks did you notice?"
Kei had been sitting on a huge boulder, cleaning his rifle, when she found him. They'd argued, then headed back to camp, going downhill all the way, so they'd been higher up. She squinted into the sun, then thought she spotted the flat-topped rock.
She let her eye follow the ravine downhill. She'd caught her heel on that variety of stupid slithering vine, which wouldn't stay put, and tripped, so she scoured the ground, looking for the same pattern of mottled green-and-white.
Then she saw it, a hole scarcely wider than a man's shoulders in the midst of a mat of the low-growing vines. They shuddered and slid aside at her approach. "Here!" she said, kneeling, and motioned to Onopa. The rope ladder was still in place. She thrust her flek laser-stick through a belt loop, so that it poked her in the ribs, and started down the rope.
"Be careful." Onopa hovered in the circle of sunlight and blue-green sky above. "They might have set guards."
The cool darkness was a relief after the sultry steambath above. Mitsu inhaled the drier air gratefully and stepped off onto the rock floor. "Okay!" she called back up to Onopa and held the ladder while the stocky woman followed.
She felt at her waist for her coldlantern. "Damn. I lost my light somewhere."
"I still have mine," Onopa said and switched it on.
The cavern looked undisturbed. Mitsu placed her palm on the rock wall and felt it vibrate under her hand. "The grid is already activated," she said. "They're getting ready to leave. Come on!"
Onopa jogged in front, playing the light over the uneven floor. Mitsu kept one hand on the wall, guiding herself as much by feel as by sight. If only they had some explosives, they could seal this gate off forever, but of course the major had left nothing of that sort behind. He'd expected them all to be on the shuttle when it left.
The vibration became apparent in the cavern floor beneath their feet, then the squeal of the grid itself. Mitsu was sweating as they followed the twists of the musty passageway. The laser-stick seemed ridiculously light in her hand. She longed for a decent human-made laser rifle. How long did the charge in one of these flek weapons last anyway? She had no idea.
"Douse the light," she whispered finally as they drew close enough to see rippling blue interspersed now with other colors, not a good sign.
Onopa clicked it off as Mitsu edged ahead, trying to glimpse how many flek were already in the chamber. It didn't sound as though anyone were firing, so either Heyoka hadn't made it yet, or it had taken them so long to find the entrance, the battle was already over.
In the center of the grid, the tech-drone was fine-tuning the crystalline matrix while three armed warrior-drones waited, covering the other entrance. Off to one side, the world-architect watched the tech with apparent patience. Its four hands danced over the crystals and with each touch the rippling lights accelerated. The grid must be almost ready.
She jerked back and pressed her shoulders to the wall. They would cut Heyoka and the rest of the squad down as they entered, and she couldn't warn him; coms didn't work down here.
"There's three, five, counting the tech and architect," she told Onopa. "They've set an ambush and are waiting for the squad. We have to take them out from this end."
Onopa nodded.
Mitsu thought for a moment. There was something she was forgetting . . . She cudgeled her brain. "Don't waste any shots on that tech. It's covered in some sort of protective sealant that works better than flek armor. All-Father help us if the rest ever start using it."
They checked their weapons, then nodded at each other, but before they could attack, the flek fired into the other passageway. The squad must be making their run.
"Now!" Mitsu yelled above the screech of the grid, skidded around the bend and threw herself to the floor just inside the chamber, firing at the warrior-drones.
Onopa followed, using the crystalline pillars for cover. Mitsu winged the drone on the far left, but then it whirled and fired back. She cursed under her breath. It required a direct hit to a vulnerable area to take out a flek. They not only wore body armor, but had the natural resistance of their chitinous bodies.
The screech from the grid wrenched into an octave higher and Mitsu felt waves of distortion sheeting off it. "Get out of there!" she told Onopa who was standing, one leg on the transfer pad, one leg off, but the other woman couldn't hear.
Desperate, she charged the flek and took a glancing bolt along the ribs. Her uniform protected her to some degree, but agony sizzled through her. She fell, rolled, and came up hunched over against the pain and shooting. The air crackled with laser fire, so acrid she could hardly breathe. Onopa ducked through the crystalline matrix, emerged on the other side and took down the warrior-drone on the far right.
The grid flashed a blue so bright, Mitsu could taste it, could feel it imprinted on her bones, stamped into her blood. She pressed back against the slick white wall, turned her head aside, held her breath. Her heart lurched into a sickening overdrive. Had Onopa gotten clear?
If not, half of her body was on its way to the flek.
Heyoka retreated at the first hint of flek laser fire. Kika, Kei, Skal, and Visht crowded up against him in the darkness. He felt their hot, eager breath on his neck; evidently they'd broken the song's hold too. "Wait until Mitsu and Onopa distract them, then we'll charge."
They could hear the grid's painful wail all too clearly from here, smell the reek of flek. Kika was already in distress from the sound, her ears being the most sensitive.
"Go back," he said. "You won't be any good to us if you go down again."
"I will not go down," she said grimly.
"You don't know that." His fingers checked the flek laser-stick, made sure he had the darn thing front forward.
"I do know," she said, and somehow, he believed her.
Kei edged around Heyoka, his ears pricked. "I can do it," he said. Fight pheromones were pouring off him. "Let me go first!"
"No, wait," Heyoka said. "Mitsu will get through and draw their fire."
The grid's racket cranked up another notch. Someone inside there was going to transfer soon. Then he heard human voices, increased discharge of weapons. "Now!" He made sure of the firing stud and charged into the transfer chamber.
Mitsu and Onopa had already dropped one drone, but two more were still firing and in the center of the room the grid had gone incandescent, the color sequence flashing by too fast to distinguish. Mitsu was pressed against the wall, her head turned away. Two forms stood inside the glow, glowing brighter and brighter until they disappeared.
Too late! Heyoka roared with frustration. They had gotten away. The two escapees would report back, the Flek would know this gate worked, and that this world was unprotected.
The grid's wail wound down as Visht and Kei threw themselves on one of the remaining drones, while Kika took out the other. Though their body armor and chitin were effective against laser fire to some degree, their neck joints were no proof against the strength of hrinnti muscles and claws.
Kika, so mild under other circumstances, tore the flek's head from its body, then stood over it, chest heaving. Kei and Visht made short work of the other, then wiped their gory claws on the stone.
"They're gone," Mitsu said. Her face was as pale as a newly risen moon. "I guess we could just wait for them here. Once they report, they'll be back."
Footsteps rustled in the outer passageway. Six laka, led by the pale-mauve form of Fourth Translator, entered into the chamber hesitantly. Montrose, his face set with pain, limped at their heels.
"Where are the rest of the flek?" Heyoka asked.
Montrose shook his head. "It was the damnedest thing. They laid down their weapons and started singing too. I guess they're still singing out there on the hillside, if no one has told them to stop."
"Well, it doesn't matter. It's too late anyway," Heyoka said. "Two of the ones in here escaped through the grid."
Fourth Translator's pink eyes blinked at him, then she consulted the other laka, including an unfamiliar light-green one that hadn't come with them from the village. After a moment's discussion, the group parted and made way for the newcomer, who was smaller. It stared at the grid, then rushed over and touched a crystalline pillar with one hand.
The grid sprang back into life, though the sound was wildly dissonant. Fourth Translator bent her neck and spoke to Mitsu, who listened gravely, before turning to Heyoka.
"She says they are not beyond our reach, as long as the grid is here. The laka wish to quit hiding and take an active part." Mitsu's eyes were wide. "They want to go to the flek world on the other end of this grid."