"They're not singing." Mitsu's heart raced. She slid off the translator's back, but had to steady herself as the garish scene seemed to darken before her watering eyes. Minute colored spheres bobbed before the screens as though they had an appointment elsewhere and were impatient to be off.
Radiating disapproval, Kei paced back and forth, glaring at her with his hot, black eyes. He always made her uneasy, but he looked ready to tear her throat out at the moment.
Heyoka was watching her closely. "What did it say?"
"It still thinks I'm one of their activated spies." Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. It was so hot, so bloody hot. Her lungs strained, but the oxygen content seemed depleted. "The song isn't affecting them like the rest." She gazed back at the throng which had accompanied them here, unable to make sense of it. Every other flek in this city within hearing distance was caught in the laka's trap.
"If we're going to get at their communications equipment," Kei said, "we'll have to rush them."
"We won't get access that way," Onopa said. Her long black hair had come loose and her cheeks were flushed with the terrible heat.
She looks magnificent, Mitsu thought, so tall and competent. Onopa never faltered, never seemed at a loss for what to do. She had a sudden intuition that the flek would never have been able to make scrambled eggs out of her mind.
"If we charge in there," Onopa continued, "they'll destroy all the equipment. Flek in danger of capture always do that. They never leave anything useful behind for us to pick over."
True. Mitsu ground the heels of her trembling hands against her eyes until all she could see were orange blotches. She breathed deeply, trying to clear her head, but her lungs seemed to be on fire. "They think I brought you here just so they could kill you."
Kei raised his muzzle and his bared teeth glinted with the pinks and greens. "Did you?"
"No," she said, then broke off in a coughing fit. She closed her eyes, fought for control. "But we can use this." Each word had to scrape its way out of her aching throat. "If I pretend to go along with them, maybe I can get close enough to open a circuit and broadcast the song into the rest of the city."
Heyoka's ears flattened. "They'll kill you the minute they see what you're up to."
"I'm dead anyway," she said. "We all are, unless we can turn this city to our side."
"Do not trust her!" Kei prowled forward, claws at the ready. The hazy yellow light shimmered along their curving three-inch lengths. "She betrayed us before! She will do it again!"
Mitsu faced the angry hrinn. The terrible, bubbling cough waited in her chest like an angry hrinn, ready to spring out and take her down. "What I will do," she said carefully, "is whatever gets the job done, just like any other Ranger."
Heyoka shook himself. This was getting out of hand. "Be realistic," he said. "In your condition, you wouldn't get ten steps before you passed out. Stay here and translate for the laka. I'll take the squad in and secure the communications channels."
"You wouldn't know the right controls even if you did find them before the Deciders destroyed them," she said, so pale her skin was translucent. Her pupils had contracted to pinpoints and he had the impression she was looking through them all to another place, another set of faces altogether. "At least I know a little about flek consoles, which is more than any of you can say. Eldrich had me working on several, compiling information on Confederation forces, back on Anktan."
"No." He took her shoulders in his large hands and made her look at him. "It's a stupid idea."
"If you let her go, she will not open the channels!" Kei said. "Just like before, she is their creature and does not even know it. Once inside, she will betray us all, if she has not already done so!"
"I'm going," Mitsu said hoarsely, with what clearly was the dregs of her strength.
Inside the chamber, lights from the screens played over the Deciders' unreadable faces, green and pink and blue and purple. They were larger than any other flek he'd ever encountered, with solid, unwieldy bodies and oversized heads, feral red eyes. None were armed, but Heyoka knew every array of flek equipment was primed with a destruct mechanism. It would only take a second for them to trigger it. There was only one way to move fast enough to thwart the flek, and that wasn't an option for him. He would have to send Kei, who seemed as eager to kill Mitsu as the flek.
The hovering spheres suddenly rose in a single wave, swept out of the area altogether and dispersed. He swiped at one as it passed, and it burst, raining minute components.
All around him, the laka sang and the assembled flek sang with them, and further away, the sound of lasers sang a different, more deadly song, as Kika and Visht held off another warrior-drone attack, one level above this one. "All right," he said, in a voice that sounded nothing like his own. "Just figure out which console it is, then we'll provide cover, while you set the controls."
She nodded, as though she lacked the strength to speak, then released her hold on Fourth Translator and walked with all the assurance she could muster into the flek stronghold.
He had watched her back a thousand times in battle, and she had watched his. This was harder, he thought, than any of those. If he was wrong, if she had fallen victim to their tampering again, he might have to kill her himself this time. The fur bristled across his shoulders and he didn't know if he could do it.
Kei stiffened as she chittered at the Deciders. They did not respond. Mitsu cleared her throat and tried again. This time, one did answer.
Her face assumed unfamiliar curves, masklike, as it had been on that terrible day back on Anktan. Then she turned and slipped around the gaunt flek bodies.
Was Kei right after all, he found himself wondering. Was her conditioning taking hold again?
One of the Deciders uttered an unintelligible phrase, then, in a single motion, all five slumped to the floor, a tumbled pile of limbs and torsos and heads.
Startled, he approached, laser-stick at the ready. They looked—dead. Surely not, he told himself. It must be some sort of flekish trick to fool them into dropping their guard. In another minute, they would all leap up and attack.
Mitsu stared at him over the bodies. "They consider themselves and everyone else on this particular world hopelessly tainted by contact with the laka."
"So they just turned themselves off?" That made a gruesome sort of sense, he thought. They had preferred death to losing their identity as flek. "Open the channels!" he told her, scanning the consoles lining the walls underneath the screens.
"They're already open," she said, and he detected the thin edge of panic in her voice. "Their command to `cease being' went out all over the city."
"Then they're all—"
"Dead," she said, "all, but those singing with us already."
"She may be lying," Kei said. "Remember that. She may be saying exactly what they told her to say."
Heyoka ran a hand back over his flabbergasted ears. No wonder they weren't fighting with the kind of single-minded ferocity flek usually employed. They'd already given up and cut their losses.
From the southern edge of the city, a distant whump sounded. A segment of the outer ring of buildings quivered, then fell in upon itself in glittering shards.
The laka faltered, staring at each other. Another implosion shook the city; then off to the west, a tower toppled to the lower levels, crashing through a series of the broad walkways. The shattered pieces followed like so much confetti.
"Before they died, they rigged the city to destroy itself!" Heyoka said. "Is there any way to stop it?"
Mitsu stared at him with stricken, bewildered blue eyes. "I don't know," she said. "I can try."
"No!" Kei blocked her way. "She knew all along what they were going to do and stalled to keep us here!"
Another explosion shook the city. Console lights flickered. Mitsu attempted to circle Kei, but he seized her arm, letting his extended handclaws pierce her unprotected skin. Red human blood welled up and ran down her arm. She reeled back, trying to free herself. "You idiot, I may be able to turn it off!" she said. "They must have some way of reversing an accidental triggering!"
"Private Kei!" Heyoka put all the force of years of Ranger training into his voice. "Stand back and let the corporal through!"
Kei's feral black eyes met his in brazen Challenge. They stood locked in one another's gaze, neither willing to look away.
Heyoka snarled and the desire to fight burned through him. They were evenly matched, his other whispered. It would be good to finally give in and thrash that insolent arrogance within an inch of its life!
His whole body trembled with anticipation, but then he took a deep, shuddering breath and drew back from the edge. Not here, he commanded the other. Not now. Kei and I will settle this later.
With a sudden roar, Kei threw Mitsu away from him and turned his back. She staggered, caught herself against a bank of equipment, then regained her balance. She examined first one array, then another, and another. The explosions wracking the city were coming closer. The laka had stopped singing so that the sound of the wind whistling against the high walkways was evident. The wretched-smelling air was choked with smoke and fumes.
"Damn!" she whispered, gazing up at the screens as she flipped through the flek information stores. Flek squiggles danced across the surfaces, replacing themselves over and over again.
Heyoka leaned over her shoulder. "Tell me what to look for," he said, then a nearby explosion shook the room. Debris rained in from a shattered tower and he shielded her with his body.
"I don't know," she said and pulled away. "It could be anything, a routine hidden within the most uninteresting list or program. I just don't know." She looked up at him, exhaustion written in every line of her body.
"What about the techs," he asked, "and the architect? Would they know anything?"
"They might," she said, "but we're almost out of time. I don't think the small grid has blown yet; I haven't heard an explosion that far off, but it can't be long."
Helpless, he stalked over to the opposite screen, but he didn't read flek, had never had any reason to familiarize himself with the symbols. He didn't have the slightest idea of what to look for.
"Of course!" she said suddenly behind his back. "Why didn't I see it before?" He turned and saw her fingers fly over the controls. Symbols danced across all three screens. "I should have known!"
"What—" he was saying, but caught a flicker of movement where none should be. One of the supposedly dead Deciders emerged from the tangled pile of bodies with a laser-stick and took aim at Mitsu's head. Without thinking, he found himself in that chill silent blueness only hrinn could ever inhabit. So blue. So cold. Every vestige of warmth leeched out of his body in a single heartbeat, even as he leaped toward the flek.
His fingers reached, but already, he could feel himself losing blueshift, though he tried desperately to hang on. Kei entered his field of vision from the left, moving swiftly, while Mitsu and the flek and laka were only statues.
"The Decider!" he tried to tell him, but the words were only a croak. His throat was numb. His vision was tunneling down to a single point—Mitsu's rapt, exhausted face as she studied the symbols on the board above.
Never turn your back on an enemy, Heyoka thought, not even a dead one, a premise of basic training. When had he forgotten that?
Kei seized Mitsu around the waist and—
Sound and color assaulted Heyoka. He lay on the floor, his nose pressed painfully into the slick whiteness. His limbs felt boneless as he fought to get to his feet. Mitsu was cursing weakly, struggling to free herself from Kei's grip.
"Let go, you rag-ear!" she cried and he found himself surprised she could think clearly enough to use such a particularly hrinnti insult at a moment like this. "I'm saving our sodding lives, whether you believe it or not!"
The laser bolt went wide of her head, burning a long furrow into the screen, then Heyoka was upon the flek. It was limp in his grasp, before he could tear its head off, no doubt, dead this time for real. He tore its head off anyway, then threw the reeking skull into the corner. Flek blood spurted hot and ivory across his black fur and his own blood pounded in his ears. His legs gave way and he sagged against the wall.
Mitsu whirled and boxed Kei's ears to make him release her. His hands dropped away and she went back to the console, muttering to herself, fingers flying over the controls. Kei froze, his massive body poised, claws sprung free.
"No!" Heyoka saw the other in Kei's fierce black eyes. She had struck him, in the ears no less, a hrinn's most tender body part, given lawful Challenge, in hrinnti vernacular. He had every right to respond.
He recognized the struggle going on inside Kei's head. It was the same struggle he himself had endured every day of his life while walking among humans. Sometimes the vicious other was easily subdued; at others, barely restrained at all, but he had warred against his own for years. He knew he always would, until the day someone carried his lifeless body to the barren top of some mountain and left it there.
"I did it!" Mitsu threw her hands up. "At least, I think I did." Her expression sobered as she cocked her head, listening.
Heyoka listened too. One breath passed, two, three. No explosions. Anywhere.
"I think maybe you did, shortstuff," he said, still monitoring Kei.
"And you said I couldn't!" She turned to Kei in triumph, then doubled over in a fit of coughing.
"No," he said, rigid with restraint, "you are wrong. I said you wouldn't."
"Oh." A bright trickle of blood appeared at the corner of Mitsu's mouth. Her eyes fluttered as she fought to remain conscious. "That's—different." She slumped to her knees.
"Come on," Heyoka said. "We've got to get back to the transfer grid and get out of here. The humans won't last much longer in this soup and whatever she did to their destruct routines may not hold either."
Kei nodded, a strange bit of human body language when performed by his big frame. He stalked out of the alcove and gestured to the laka.
Heyoka watched him. No one, he thought, except himself, Kika, and Visht, probably had any idea that Kei had never in his entire life suffered such a deadly insult and allowed the perpetrator to live.
He picked Mitsu up and carried her back to Fourth Translator, who took the semiconscious human on her back again. She shuddered in his arms as she struggled to breathe, heartbreakingly fragile. They rounded up what was left of their invasion force and made their way back through the eerie empty city. Dead bodies lay scattered everywhere like broken toys and the explosions had made lace of the beautiful soaring walkways, rubble of the towers.
The flek who had sung with them followed bewilderedly, some wandering off, then seeking them again, when they realized they were alone. There was no one left to command them to turn themselves off, no one to explain they had lost this particular battle.
"What will we do about them?" Onopa asked Heyoka. "We can't take them all back with us."
"We'll ask the laka," he said. "They should know what to do with converted flek."
"Makers," she corrected.
They found Montrose close to ground level, hiding out behind a shattered column. His leg was broken in two places. He hadn't been able to climb back up, but had splinted it as best he could and waited to see if they survived.
"Oh, we survived," Heyoka said grimly, "after a fashion."
"You all look pretty damn lively to me!" he said. His voice was hoarse and cracked from the atmosphere and pain was evident in his dark face.
Visht took his arm and hoisted him up onto his one good leg without being told. Montrose rested his weight on the hrinn and together they picked their way through the debris and bodies.
Heyoka touched Mitsu's shoulder. She roused enough to open bleary, reddened eyes. "Make sure they bring both the transfer-grid-tech and the world-architect back with us," he said. "Then ask what they want to do about the rest of these flek—Makers—who sang with us."
Groggily, Mitsu relayed his message to Fourth Translator, who considered before answering.
"She says they must all come to Oleaaka. If they stay here, without their city, they will die from lack of purpose."
He shuddered at the thought of that many untamed flek running loose on the peaceful world at the other end of the grid. What if they reverted to their flekish personas, then refused to sing a second time? But it was the laka's world and, if that was what they wanted, he had no right to say no.
When they reached the grid, they found the single laka drone still joyfully tending the transfer crystals, running here and there, tuning each with reverence, its inherited knowledge almost fully restored.
"The humans should all go back in the first group," Heyoka said, and not surprisingly none of the three gave him any argument. Mitsu was nearly comatose and he directed Onopa to monitor her breathing. He put Ninth Translator in that group too, because the pale-green laka also was near death.
Kika stepped forward, her pale-gray fur yellowed with fumes. "Let me go with them," she said. "I might be able to help."
She had a new calmness about her that he recognized, but couldn't name. "They need a med," he said. "As soon as you go through, use the com up at the base camp to try and contact the Confederation. Someone may be in range by now."
"I will try," she said, "but I will also do what I can in my own small way."
Then he knew what he was seeing, the calm assurance of a fully trained Restorer, who possessed the power to address illness and injury. "As you did for Skal," he said.
"I have seen the shape of something big," she said, "which stretches between the stars themselves and binds us all together. In this something, there is even room for rogues like me who tried to be other than what they are and for a time wound up being nothing at all."
Looking into her serene eyes, Heyoka thought, whatever it was, he approved.