Mitsu stared. The grid's wail echoed in the constricted space, already waning. The air had a flat, almost brackish taste, as though somehow depleted by the transfer. "There is no way to go through the grid now," she told the laka. "The tech has already transferred."
"This young breeder comes of tech stock," Fourth Translator said, indicating the smaller laka dashing from column to column like a mad scientist. "The knowledge of how to operate this device is coded into his cells. He must only be stimulated in order to remember."
So, like flek, each laka was born with body-memories. Then perhaps it was possible. Mitsu felt sick at the thought of walking that stark, flek-infested world again. Her hands knotted together. "You have never been there," she said, fighting to keep her voice level, "so you do not know how many thousands of Makers wait on the other side of that grid. Whatever you did there, however much you sang, it would never be enough, not even if all the laka on Oleaaka transferred with you."
The pale-green laka limped forward. The dark-green bruise beneath her cracked carapace had spread. "I am Ninth Translator," she said. "As you can see, I am broken, but before I die, I wish to sing down the madness."
"But you do not necessarily have to die. We have—" Mitsu broke off, unable to find a word in her flek vocabulary that meant doctor, healer, nurse, or anything comparable. "We have castes who mend broken bodies." She had to resort to a term meant for the repair of machines rather than living tissue. "There is much we may be able to do for you."
"Broken is broken," Ninth Translator said. She seemed quite unperturbed. "One equally able will be hatched in my place to serve the colony, but I wish to spend my last breath singing on that other, terrible world where all they know is violence and destruction."
Heyoka and the rest of the squad listened, unable to translate for themselves, while the young laka drone dashed around the grid, stroking first this crystal pillar, then that. With every touch, the sound altered, became less chaotic.
Mitsu turned to Heyoka and translated.
His ears drooped with doubt. "You've been there. Can you find your way around, if we could get back? Could we find the two who transferred in time to prevent them from reporting?"
"Maybe," she said. "But they have a good head start, and don't forget how toxic the atmosphere is there. I passed out after a couple of hours and could barely breathe by the time I persuaded them to bring me back."
"Then we would have to finish quickly, if we were to have any chance at all," he said.
"Of course," she said, "the laka are really flek, though they've obviously altered themselves genetically to adapt to Oleaaka. It's possible they may be much more tolerant of flekish conditions."
Montrose shook his head and limped closer. Lines of strain creased his face. "How can we be sure this laka can operate the grid? It's never done it before. For all we know, our atoms could wind up scattered across the galaxy."
"That's true." Heyoka's brow furrowed. "So I'm only accepting volunteers."
Mitsu closed her eyes, trembling, fighting not to give herself away. Inside, she was screaming—she couldn't go back there, straight into the arms of the flek yet again. It was a miracle she'd escaped the last time with her mind intact.
But they couldn't just hide here on Oleaaka, waiting for the enemy to return in the thousands either. She pictured cowering in the hills, trying to pick them off as they came through the grid, and shuddered. Perhaps it would be better to take the fight to them and use the advantage of surprise. That was certainly one tactic they would never expect.
"I'll go," she heard herself say and opened her eyes. The blue lights flickered over their grim faces as though they were all drowning.
"As will I!" Every hair on his body bristling, Kei glared at the rest of the squad as though someone meant to deny him.
"And I," Kika and Visht said together, then glanced at each other.
"I've come this far," Onopa said. Her broad face was determined beneath smudges of mud. "You're not leaving me behind now."
Skal edged forward and stood behind the human woman's shoulder, his eyes downcast, making his commitment understood.
Montrose gazed around, clearly in pain. The meds were wearing off, Mitsu thought. He was nearly out on his feet. "Me too, then," he said.
"Look," Heyoka said quietly, bending close, "you have a gimpy leg and it makes perfect sense for you to stay. If we don't come back, someone has to report to HQ."
"Then it will have to be someone else." A muscle jumped beneath Montrose's glazed eye. "Write them a message or paint a picture on the damned wall. If the rest of the squad is going, I am too."
Heyoka turned to Ninth Translator. "We'll all go," he told her, "but it has to be now, if we're to have any chance."
"Good," Ninth Translator said in Standard. "Stand there." She indicated the center of the grid, inside the irregularly spaced crystalline pillars.
They crowded together, laka and human and hrinn, as the little drone continued its dance between the pillars with what appeared to be joy. What was it like, Mitsu wondered, to be born for something, and never allowed to do it, not even to speak of it, your entire life? It was not surprising the breeders had run wild at the first hint of forbidden behaviors. The stress level of this society was very high. Even the slightest manifestation of aggressive behavior must awaken the outlawed inclinations written into their genes.
With each new adjustment, the grid's sound wrenched higher. Kika threw back her head in pain, held her ears with both hands. Kei snarled and knotted his fists. Heyoka paced, a difficult feat in that confined space. The vibrations doubled, doubled again. The coruscating blue light separated into purple and green and pink, brightened, flashed white.
Her eyes closed reflexively, but the light was so intense, she could see the chamber clearly through the flesh of her eyelids.
Between one breath and the next, cold swept through her body, penetrating to the marrow of her bones. The sound fell away, as though they'd been plunged into the still, frozen, blue heart of a glacier on some distant arctic world. She couldn't see Heyoka anymore, couldn't tell if she stood on her feet or her head. Directions swirled around her, traded orientation, then switched back again. Her head was whirling. Her stomach cramped.
Then, abruptly, they were elsewhere. She blinked at the appalling scene which had greeted her before, a barren yellow and brown landscape sloping downward in all directions. The white towers of the flek city stood in the middle distance and an overbright sun was rising in an incandescent mustard sky. The air assaulted her face, already too hot to breathe comfortably, thick with sulphur.
And downslope about thirty feet, two flek stood beside a pale-blue transport sphere, staring back up at them.
With a roar, Kei dashed out of the grid, but before he could reach the sphere, the laka surged behind him, singing. The strange notes shivered along his nerves, scraped as though trying to reshape something essential.
The two flek stood transfixed as the laka approached, singing, weaving something between them that almost had physical substance. Kei closed his eyes. He saw wild colors, dark, impenetrable blue mingled with moody rose and vibrant green, something altogether new, another way to think about the world, a new way to be.
But he did not want something new. He wanted only to follow the Black/on/black wherever this elusive something/in/motion took him, to drive the flek off every world they had stolen, to fight with all his strength until the despised enemy lay in bloody shreds beneath his claws. Without that, he was nothing.
He bowed his head and fought to hold on.
Kika brought her hands away from her ears. Blood stained her fur again, but not so much as before, as though the sun-fueled restoration had not only healed her body, but made her stronger. She could still hear too, though her left ear was less acute than her right.
The laka song twined around her, dissonant to hrinnti sensibilities, but clearly of great effect on the two laka. She composed herself to endure. When the time was right, the pattern arising here would make itself known.
Onopa watched the hrinn from the back of the group. It was obvious they found the song unpleasant, but either the less sensitive hearing of human ears protected them or human nervous systems did not mirror the flek's so closely. To her, it sounded a bit like the grandmothers singing in her home village, off-key and thready, but with great warmth and sincerity.
She slipped through the stationary hrinn and laka and headed, rifle at the ready, for the strange semi-transparent blue globe waiting just beyond the transfer grid. Were those two the same flek who had just fled Oleaaka? If so, they had to be stopped.
One of the laka, the pale-green one, reached out and laid a restraining first-hand on her arm as she passed. Stay, the hand told her more eloquently than words. Let what is going to happen be born.
She bowed her head and stood aside.
World-Architect 549 stood, one foot inside the travel sphere, the rest without, his mind ripped open. Body-memories were being awakened by this terrible song, ancient ones, far older than any he had ever experienced, memories of a time before his kind had become Makers.
They had lived on only one world, very similar to this one, the memories said, had in the end grown restless and gone exploring. The new worlds had called mutations into being, new castes who had given their species a militant focus, but in that quiet time before, they had been Singers and knew an entirely different purpose . . .
He shuddered. That had been another species altogether! They were Makers now. They roamed the universe and crafted the raw material of each world into something more lovely than the last.
Listen, the song whispered, it was/is you. Despite all that has happened, we are the same.
No! He was a Maker, a world-architect! It was his function to remake entire planets so that they were both beautiful and useful, equipped with aromatic loveliness and utilitarian chemistries. Makers fashioned their own worlds. They were shapers!
Shape yourself then, the song said. Remake yourself for each new world as we did. That is the real challenge. All else is foolish, vicious carnage.
And it washed over him, how once the Singers had found joy in remaking themselves, how the genes could be twitched, just so, certain traits could be selected, others suppressed. In that light, there could never be any failed worlds because Singers could live anywhere.
Remember, the song insisted. Open yourself and remember.
They had been part of their worlds then, in perfect accord with each unique chemistry, so every planet had been a neverending song and his kind, its Singers. Then, sometime afterward, the warrior caste had come into being. After that, they had set themselves against each new environment they found, bent it to their own specifications, so that it no longer sang at all and they were the violent Makers.
But he was a world-architect. He understood nothing else.
Understand yourself, the song said. Look inward and see. It has been done before and we had joy.
The Singers had been content. Body-memories bubbled up, faster and faster until he was immersed in that ancient time. Emotions he had never before experienced flashed through him like storms until he was spent.
All the fighting, warrior-drones pitted against all opposition, lives spent in taking whatever they wanted, wherever they found it, then defending their acquisitions against the enemies accumulated in the process. So much energy expended, so many worlds tuned to the same exacting, difficult-to-achieve design. A waste, as well as a bore.
Before the Makers, world-architects had been something else, his body-memories whispered. Something lovely and respected. They had . . .
He strained, the lost knowledge shimmering almost within his reach.
Sing with us, the song urged and he found himself swept along. He could not help but do so. If the song ended, he would never know what had once been.
The transfer-tech was singing too. They were all singing and the song was much richer for the new voices carefully woven through the spaces.
They certainly had stopped at least these two, Heyoka thought, but this whole world must be full of flek. Those in charge would figure out what was going on shortly, and then this position would be overrun with warrior-drones. Five laka couldn't sing them all down.
Mitsu doubled over in a coughing fit. Her face turned red and Montrose thumped her back. She shouldn't have come, he thought. She'd already had a full dose of this poisonous atmosphere in the last twenty-four hours and it was hotter than any world he'd ever set foot on before. He wanted to strip out of his fur and he could see the rest of the hrinn were already panting and limp-eared with the heat.
"Are you going to be all right?" he asked her, fighting to make himself heard above the singing.
"It doesn't matter," she said hoarsely and wiped the cough tears from her eyes with one hand. "Even if I won't, we have to go on."
She was right, of course. He wrenched his mind back to the problem at hand and studied the sprawling city of slick white buildings in the distance.
The Confederation attacked flek-held worlds with bombs and laser cannon from orbit, when tactics dictated, but never landed and fought hand-to-hand. It wasn't profitable and worlds such as this one were useless to humans, after flek had ruined the atmosphere.
As he watched, hundreds of colored spheres, similar to the one downslope, rose from the city and drifted toward the hilltop. His ears flattened. "Okay, people, they've figured out we're here," he said. "Find cover!"
The laka turned their serene faces to the city and continued to sing.
Heyoka took Mitsu's arm. "Tell them to take cover!"
"I did," she said.
"They'll come out of those pods firing," he said. "The laka will be cut to pieces before any of the flek hear the first note."
Mitsu stared at the approaching flek, then at the blue sphere a few feet away. "All-Father, that's right! The pod!" She ran to the transfer-tech, who was now singing too. It looked dazed and unwilling to turn its attention away from the song. Mitsu spoke to it angrily and it shook itself, as though just awakening.
The swarm of colored spheres was closing. Heyoka estimated their number at least three hundred, maybe more. Panting from the heat, he took cover behind one of the crystalline pillars and readied his flek laser-stick. The breath rasped in his straining lungs; it was like breathing heated goo. Maybe they could pick the attacking warrior-drones off as they charged up the hill. At least the Rangers had the advantage of a defensible position.
Lights blazed from the city, the familiar garish pinks and greens and purples that fleks always employed. More spheres rose and headed their way. The fur on his back bristled. They were going to be inundated.
Mitsu dragged the tech into the transport sphere and Heyoka readied himself. The first wave of spheres was landing just out of range. In a moment, they would sweep up the hillside in one of their standard flek firing formations. He glanced back at his troops. Human and hrinn alike, they had taken up defensive positions and were ready. He felt a surge of pride, even though no one back at Headquarters would ever know of this, human and hrinn working smoothly together, adding strength to strength, instead of squabbling over differences.
The laka seemed not to realize their danger. They stood exposed halfway down the hillside, shoulder to shoulder, and sang. The world-architect sang with them, its eyes closed in apparent flekish bliss. Mitsu and the tech were in the other sphere, out of sight. What was she up to? he wondered, then sighted in on the closest craft as it approached. "Make every shot count!" he called to the rest.
Flek warrior-drones emerged from their transports and he fired upon his target. The flek stumbled, then regained its balance and headed up the hill. Cursing, he fired again and it went down. Two shots for a kill. Not bloody good enough! he told himself. He had to do better! They all did!
One dropped to the left, Kika's kill, then two more to the right, Onopa and Visht, he thought. The rest of the flek emerged, one by one, from their transports, but except for the crackle of Ranger lasers, he heard no return fire. He looked closer.
The flek were landing and leaving their spheres, but they weren't firing. Instead, they were standing at the foot of the hill and—singing.
"Hold your fire!" he called even as Kei took out another warrior. They were surrounded by a veritable sea of gaunt white warrior-drones, all armed and armored, but focused on the laka, who were still patiently singing.
Mitsu emerged from the blue transport, holding onto the side for support and wheezing. Her bruised eye stood out livid against her bloodless skin. "I opened the com," she said with effort, "so they heard the song before they landed."
She was going to die, if they didn't get her off this forsaken world soon, he thought. "Make the transfer-tech take you back to Oleaaka," he said.
"Soon," she said. Her lips looked blue. "Listen, this is just the beginning. If we can broadcast the laka song to the whole city, this entire world could go down."
And if that happened, he told himself, the Confederation would come in, before the flek rallied to take it back, see for once intact flek technology, including a working grid, possibly even divine how to put such devices to their own advantage. This could turn the whole tide of the war.
A shiver ran through him at the thought. "What now?" he said.
"We have to go to the flek city," she said. "Just point me in the right direction."
Kei's ears drooped with frustration. He paced back and forth, his extended claws empty. The enemy, so long sought, was just standing there in scattered clumps on the hillside, caterwauling along with the irritating laka. As soon as this long-awaited battle had begun, it was over.
"Come on!" The Black/on/black beckoned to him. "We're going to the city."
His ears pricked. "There will be fighting?"
"We should meet plenty of resistance," the Black/on/black said. "I want you and Skal and Onopa to sweep ahead of the main group and clear the way for the laka. If they go down, we don't have a chance."
Kei glanced at Mitsu. She stood beside the transport, pale except for her cheeks, holding on to its edge with both hands. Her eyes looked dazed. He didn't like the thought of that one at his back, especially here, on a flek world. She could not be trusted.
"That's an order." The Black/on/black met his eyes with his own smoldering black gaze until Kei looked away. His pulse pounded and he wanted to Challenge, could taste the hot blood on his tongue, smell the fight pheromones dancing through the air.
But not here, not now. Perhaps one day there would come the right moment for him to pit his strength against the Black/on/black again, but for now, the flek were his enemy, no one else, and if the squad didn't hunt together on this day, they would certainly never hunt anywhere ever again.
With a roar, he charged, leading Skal and Onopa toward the gleaming white city.