Heyoka raced back through the tunnel, knowing he had to get to Mitsu, but dreading the crystal chamber. If only he had brought his ear protectors, this would have been easier. As it was, the terrible shrill assaulted him as soon as he even neared the chamber. He slowed and clamped his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to protect them, wanting to roar with the pain. He'd known it would be bad, but remembering, and experiencing, were two altogether different things.
He edged into a universe of scintillating, pulsating, overwhelming blue, now laced with bursts of pink and green and purple. The crystals, at least two dozen strong, were irregularly spaced about the grid. They waxed and waned, the crest of each pulse so bright, his overstressed retinas could make out little in the relative dimness in between. He reeled against the white wall and tried to think. Obviously, whatever mechanism was activating the grid hadn't backed off one iota.
The chamber smelled of human and hrinn, as well as something else unidentifiable, but definitely not flek. That species had an acrid odor, unmistakable once encountered. Even human soldiers complained of their reek. He would have known at once if flek had been down here in the last few weeks, much less hours, and they had not. Mitsu must have had a flashback from Anktan.
He drew his laser pistol. His orders had been to preserve the grid intact for study, but that was before the flek had swept through Confederation defenses and headed this way. They could not afford to leave the crystals now. He fired a coherent beam of sizzling green light which struck the nearest pillar dead-on and then ricochetted back at him. Pain seared the tip of his right ear and combat reflexes took over. He found himself on the floor, head ringing. The pistol went sliding across the rock floor.
The crystals in the matrix back on Anktan had been fragile, fairy-tale constructions, but these, far older, must be solid enough to support a building. Breathing hard, he got his knees under him, then reached out and touched the glassy smoothness of the pillar he'd fired upon. The light's modulation slowed, as if in response to his touch, and a tone resonated so loudly inside his head that even his teeth vibrated with it. He jerked his hand away.
Over the many years these crystals had been growing, they must have become too dense to be destroyed by ordinary means. This job would require heavy ordnance, and they had brought none to this world.
He retrieved his sidearm, then ducked into the side passage that had to lead to the surface, following the scent of human and that strange unidentifiable one, which logic said must be laka, since Montrose had reported seeing them in the caverns too.
If Mitsu were headed back to camp, as she'd said, this would be the shortest path. He might meet her down here, but he knew from her voice, she wasn't coming back. She thought she'd seen a flek and she was no longer answering her com.
The passage ended finally in a steep climb over tumbled boulders to a newly excavated hole in the hillside. He had to climb to reach it and the scent of both human and laka was very strong here.
Outside, the night air was heady, filled with the green scent of unfamiliar plants and the distant salt of the sea. He examined the ground and found tracks. Mitsu's scent was scattered about here too. He tried his com. "Mitsu?
No answer. The wind sighed against his face. He tried again twice more, before giving up and trying another code. "Montrose?"
"Sarge, is that you?" a voice asked softly.
"It's me," he said. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," the voice said, "except Onopa and I have been shanghaied by locals. They don't seem angry, exactly, but I can't make out what they want."
"What about Jensen?"
"I don't know, Sarge. I heard shots a little while ago though."
Alien voices murmured in the background, rising and falling, as though they were arguing about something, although he knew better than to attribute human emotions to an alien species. "Can you give them the slip? We have orders to evacuate and the shuttle is going to lift in less than thirty minutes."
"Onopa's down, Sarge, groggy and confused with a knot on her head."
She needed a med, then. Damn! Heyoka fingered his singed ear and stifled a snarl. "Then make her comfortable, if they'll let you, and give me directions to your location."
"West, southwest of the tunnel opening, sir. Look for a green light. They have this tree that they turn on—sometimes, anyway. Not at the moment, though."
"A tree?"
"Yeah, I know it sounds weird."
If he went after them, there was no way he could be back in time to make the shuttle and that would put him in direct violation of orders. An incident like that could kill a career. No more advancement or funding for his hrinnti training program. But it was Mitsu out there, as well as Montrose and Onopa, all three under his command, his responsibility.
"Okay, I'm on my way," he told Montrose.
Mitsu could hear Montrose somewhere in the darkness, but not clearly enough to make out more than one word in five. He was still alive though. That was something. She checked her pistol. She didn't think she would be able to fire upon a flek, but they didn't know that. She might be able to pin them down long enough for their prisoners to escape.
"Montrose?" she shouted into the night, then scrambled to a new position twenty feet to the right behind a stand of spiky red-topped bushes.
"Jensen?" The voice came from about thirty yards to her left.
"How many flek are there?" Head down, she moved again, working her way closer. Several black outlines, too big to be human, moved with her in a parallel course and she wondered uneasily about flek night sight.
"These aren't flek," he called. "They're laka and unarmed. Don't fire upon them."
She dropped flat onto the warm damp ground, breathing hard. Montrose had seen combat; all the human recruits on this training exercise were seasoned troops. They should know a flek when they saw one. It was obvious the enemy had already started meddling with his mind. She felt sickened at the thought.
For the moment, he believed these flek were just harmless laka. Soon he would think he was a flek himself. It was so easy for them to turn a person's mind inside out. So damn easy. She pressed her cheek to the dirt, breathed in the rich, earthy scent, trying to stop shaking. Sweat soaked through the back of her shirt, rolled down her temples.
"Corporal?" Montrose called. "The sergeant called and said the shuttle is lifting soon. We have orders to report back to camp on the double!"
Something rustled in the darkness a scant ten feet away. She tightened her fingers on the laser pistol. She could turn it upon herself, if nothing else. Nobody was ever going to pick her mind apart again, then put it back together cross-eyed. She might not be able to burn them all into ashes, as they deserved, but she could at least die human.
A tree in the center of the clearing blazed into light again, a great green brightness against the night sky. Dazzled, she reeled back and covered her eyes with one hand as the dark forms rushed her. She got off a single shot and the green beam pierced the night. A voice screamed, not the least bit human, then something pinned her arms.
Flek! her mind screamed and she fought like a cornered hrinn, but the iron grip did not give and she could find no purchase to wedge her way out. She had the impression of smooth chitin, punched-in-looking faces. Her heart raced so that she could not distinguish between the beats. She would not be taken! Not again! Never again! She went on fighting as the implacable hold tightened and tightened, until, unable to breathe, she passed out.
Bey went through the camp and assigned the hrinn, male and female, to load ordnance and sealed packets of foodstuffs on the shuttle. They would leave the unwieldy com for last. He still found it strange to work with unrelated females. Back in the secret mountain hold of Levv, both sexes had lived and toiled together, but that had been a social aberration, born of necessity. After the great battle down on the plains, when the honor of Levv had been restored, most of the surviving Levv males had applied for membership in traditional males' houses.
Kei and Bey and five other Levv males, however, had elected to follow the Black/on/black into the Confederation armed forces instead. There, they were expected to work with both hrinnti males and females, as well as humans. It had been a difficult adjustment.
He found Naxk, her gear already stowed in her pack, taking down tents. She was sturdy and sleek, her ears large, and her fur tawny with marvelous black points. Bey had practiced hand-to-hand combat with her enough to admit she fought well, but she was a cull, after all, and therefore inherently inferior.
"Leave the tents to me," he said gruffly. "You take care of the foodstuffs."
She bristled. "You are not Squad Leader."
He raised his muzzle, let his unbound mane show to its best advantage. The Rangers had insisted he crop it, upon enlisting, but it was already growing back out. "Kei has gone after the Black/on/black and Skal is not here, so for the moment I am biggest."
Her handclaws sprang free. "The Black/on/black says size does not matter. You are not my superior!"
His hackles raised and a fierce joy surged through him. After all this playing at war, it was wonderful to have someone confront him, almost like being on Anktan again. "I am Leader now!"
Her ears were flattened, her claws fully extended. She was shedding anger-scent so thickly, it was all he could do not to strike her.
"The Black/on/black has forbidden this," she said and her throat was tight with fury. "We are not to waste our strength fighting one another, otherwise how will we ever defeat the flek?"
"What flek?" He gestured at the mountains and snarled contemptuously. "Have you seen any flek on this soft, pretty world? I see only humans babbling about flek, dashing about, playing at younglings' hunting games. There have been no flek here until now, and we are supposed to close our eyes and just run away at the first hint of a fight!"
"Private Bey!"
The voice came from behind and Bey realized Major Dennehy had approached from downwind.
"Stand down, and that's an order!" The major had a pistol in his hand. Bey was experienced enough now to see that the safety was off. "There will be no fighting in the ranks."
Naxk turned her eyes aside in submission and retracted her claws.
Bey glanced angrily from her to the human. "We are warriors! We cannot go on like this, never drawing blood, never making a kill, not even to eat fresh meat!"
"I see," Dennehy said. He lowered the pistol, but did not put it back in the holster. "Well, I suspected you were not Ranger material from the first."
Naxk caught his eye. "But the Black/on/black—"
"Blackeagle was an aberration," he said. "A one-time happening born of unique circumstances. We won't see another like him, and it's too bad. We could use a whole regiment. And Blackeagle made a very strong case for the hrinn's inclusion in Confederation forces. I was willing to be proved wrong. However, when we get back to headquarters, my recommendation will be to terminate this project and return you people to your homes."
"This is my home!" Naxk's chest heaved with indignation. "You are my Line! I have no other!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Dennehy said. "We'll just send you to your own world. You can take up your normal way of life. Not everyone is cut out for the armed forces, but there's no shame in that."
But Bey understood the desperation in Naxk's black eyes and the cant of her ears. She was a cull. Kendd would not welcome her, if she returned, nor of course would any other Line. If she had remained on Anktan, she would have been a highly positioned servant, but now, after renouncing her Line, there would never be a place for her.
"I will not go!" Naxk spat. She was breathing hard and her eyes were shining dangerously. "I will stay here and fight the flek, as I was promised!" She snatched up her pack and weapon and prowled off into the darkness.
Dennehy stared after her, his mouth agape. The sparse iron-gray fur atop his head stirred in the breeze. He waved a hand. "Never mind," he said. "Blackeagle can deal with that one. We have to get the rest of you hrinn on the shuttle."
Bey's ears twitched. This major intended to allow both the Black/on/black and Naxk to stay behind and confront the flek, but force the rest of them to return to Anktan and admit they had never been allowed anywhere near the war? His claws sprang free and he snarled.
"I don't like your attitude," Dennehy said. "Get hold of yourself, Private."
The wind ruffled Bey's mane. He was not well marked, being only an unexceptional brown/on/buff, nor, despite his size, was he a particularly renowned fighter among his own kind. He had hoped to remedy that through Ranger training. The Black/on/black was not bigger than other males, yet in the great battle down on the plains he had fought with a strength and purity that was already legend.
He pictured himself making application to a males' house, any of the males' houses along the Mish River Valley for that matter, and being chased away, perhaps even killed for his presumption. If he were not good enough to fight alongside a bunch of soft-skinned, dead-smelling humans, his own kind would reject him without a second thought.
"I will not go either," he said, and felt a fierce exultation at the decision. "I will stay and fight at the Black/on/black's side!"
"No one is staying, if I can help it!" Dennehy's face reddened. "It's bad enough we may have to rendezvous without a sizable portion of Blackeagle's squad, including Blackeagle himself. I'm not throwing away any additional lives!" He glanced at the silver-gray sweep of the shuttle just visible against the night sky a quarter of a mile away. "In fact, forget the packing and go strap yourself in on the shuttle. I'll collect the rest of the hrinn. We don't want to cut the deadline too close." He holstered the pistol and turned away.
Bey threw back his head and roared. "I will fight at the Black/on/black's side! We will drench our claws in our enemies' blood until they flee at the very sound of our names!"
Shocked, Dennehy gripped his pistol, but Bey reached for the power buried deep in his body and went into blueshift. The tents, the stubby human male before him, the gun, all became electric blue. Now Dennehy moved so slowly, it was child's play to reach out and snatch the weapon from his nearly motionless hands.
Then, with skill born of long practice, Bey dropped back into normal speed and snarled in the shorter human's face, though the telltale weariness brought on by blueshift without preparation already dragged at him.
Dennehy staggered back and stared at him with unbelieving eyes. Bey realized this particular human must never have seen a hrinn blueshift before.
"We will not flee this world when it is finally—finally—time to fight!" Bey said as Visht, Kika, and Skal, the three remaining hrinn in camp, sprinted up, eyes aglint at the thought of a good brawl. "This is what we were bred for, what we have trained for since we left Anktan. We would shred both duty and honor, if we ran away merely to preserve our hides, and a hrinn has nothing else of value."
"I'm—going to the shuttle now," Dennehy said. "If you have any sense, you will go with me so we can all live to fight another day."
Bey understood then that this human feared they would prevent him from leaving. "Go," he said. "We will not stop you."
"A dead hrinn brings no honor to his people." Dennehy wet his lips and glanced behind. "Even Blackeagle understands that."
"Does he?" Bey said. His blood sang with anticipation. "Then why isn't he here, preparing to flee with you like a frightened zzil?"
Visht snarled softly. "I weary of all this prattle," the big yellow/on/white said. "Where are the flek? When do we get to fight?"
"Soon," Bey said. "I think very soon."
The four of them watched as the major turned his back and started down the path to the waiting shuttle. They could smell the acridness of his fear on the breeze.
Kei tracked the Black/on/black back to the tunnel opening on the hillside. He squatted there as the vines shifted out of his path, bristling at the thought of entering that terrible chamber again, with the crystals wailing like a dako with its tail caught in the rocks. But that was where the Black/on/black had gone, so that was where he must follow.
The Black/on/black had spared Kei's life upon so many occasions there was almost a Sponsorship between them. Kei had never been Sponsored, but he had heard tales of how such relationships were forged and he thought this must be very close.
When they had first met, the Black/on/black himself had been under the prestigious Sponsorship of a leader of a highly ranked males' house. All the older males of Levv had been killed by the flek when Kei was still young, and of course at that point Levv had been outcast, despised. No reputable males' house would have accepted cublings born of that supposedly tainted Line, had they dared to apply.
As it was, they had dared nothing, except to hide in the mountains and keep the existence of the remnants of their persecuted Line a secret, until the Black/on/black had sniffed out the truth and restored their honor. Kei would never hide again, nor turn away from danger.
He descended the rope ladder into the darkness, then used his nose, rather than a coldlantern, to follow the Black/on/black. He ran one hand lightly over the stone to guide him. The teeth-gnashing wail of the crystalline matrix made itself felt long before he could detect the blue glow.
He pressed his shoulder to the wall and edged closer. The crystals' frequency climbed higher and higher, the pulsating flashes accelerated until they were a wave of blue highlighted with incandescent pinks and greens and purples. His head felt as though it would fly apart. His vision blurred and he realized he had to get out of here, but his legs wouldn't move. He tasted the flatness of blood on the back of his throat and it was hard to make his thoughts hunt together.
The wail ascended even higher. The light flashed a lambent green-white and then he could see nothing. There was a great inrush of hot, foul-smelling air. He fell to his knees, jaws agape, and pressed his hands uselessly to his ears.
Something—or someone—had arrived.