Though it was quite late, the laka compound had never properly settled for the night. The great, towering barrier trees, which marked out the common area and held back the rain forest, were still open, the leaves unfurled, and there was a general air of anxiety. Luminaries had been stimulated so that light still flooded where there should have been only soothing darkness. Immature laka huddled here and there in small groups according to caste. The breeders' ill-advised rampage had required all adults to go out and search, and the keepers had not come back to dispatch the youngest to their nests.
Something stirred in the surrounding damp darkness of the rain forest. Heads swiveled, thinking perhaps the rebellious breeders had returned, then Third Gleaner emerged with a limp body and laid it sorrowfully on the grass. Everyone gathered round. It was one of the strangers-from-beyond, a "human." It lay, quiet and pale, making not a single sound, its energies apparently quite disrupted. All were horrified, cultivators, coordinators, translators, and scouts alike.
Ninth Translator-at-large, just returned from searching for the breeders down among the rocks by the sea, worked her way to the forefront of the crowd, especially dismayed. Beginnings were critical. All relationships were set with the utterance of the first few words, the first carefully thought-out gesture. This set of strangers-from-beyond had not yet come into the compound to establish essential harmonies, and this was a most inauspicious way to begin.
It had been some time since the last set had visited this world and, though she possessed body-memories of other occasions, she had never personally seen one of this species. She directed a callow young cultivator to stimulate a pair of nearby luminaries, then leaned forward to examine the still face by their shimmering green light.
The head was elegantly sculptured and covered with fine black filaments. Each strand was like polished onyx, she thought, like the bowl of the night sky itself when both moons had dipped below the horizon.
She turned back to Third Gleaner. "It is not dead?" she asked in the stilted gleaner syntax.
The gleaner hesitated, obviously distraught. "No," she said, "I felt it move, when I set it down."
"What is wrong with it then?" she said.
Third Gleaner turned her head aside and closed her eyes. "I held it too tightly," she said. "It was trying to escape and I did not know it was so fragile."
"You injured it?" Ninth Translator was incredulous. First the breeders, and now this. Laka society was experiencing critical discontinuities.
"I only meant to restrain it," Third Gleaner said. "I thought to bring the creature here so it could be dissuaded from running wild with the breeders like its companions."
Ninth sat back on her haunches. And so it always went, she thought, when a caste tried to perform outside its carefully proscribed parameters. They could have expected no less. It was, after all, the bred-in function of gleaners to gather things and bring them back to the compound, and so she had found this alien and brought it here. "Where did you come upon it?" she asked.
"In the ceremonial arena," the gleaner said, "near the tallest luminary." Her first-hands dithered about each other in a telltale dance of distress. "Sixth and Second Gleaner encountered the runaway breeders along with a pair of these creatures, but they were strangers-from-beyond-the-sky and we could not reason with them."
"And this one?" she prompted.
The small form stirred, then sat up, put a slender forearm to its head, looked about in what seemed like uncertainty.
"It was hiding in the dark, calling to its companions, one of which was apparently struggling to free itself. Perhaps it wished to leave the breeders, who have been so insolent tonight."
The small creature struggled onto its two feet, though it still appeared dazed. It was amazing how it could stand at all, since it lacked back-legs for balance. The very sight of its graceful form made Ninth Translator feel dull and stumpy. Imagine having such exquisite coordination.
"And where are the other two?" She folded her first-hands in a gesture of forbearance. It never did to rush gleaners. They were linear thinkers, always having to put one foot down solidly before moving the other three.
"They are still back at the ceremonial arena," Third Gleaner said. "Should we have brought them too?"
Ninth Translator shuddered. It was very bad form to impose one's will upon any other sentient, but most especially this species. They thought so differently and carried such terrible weapons. One never knew how they might take even the suggestion of violence. Harmony had to be established at all cost so that the two species could honor the sacred spark of consciousness that bound them as one. She would have quite properly sacrificed her own life, rather than distress them, but gleaners were too unimaginative to understand that.
This incident brought to mind the terrible stories of those days, so long ago, when the unharmonious ones had nearly destroyed both this world and the laka. The ancient records said they had actually struck down any who opposed them, had tampered with the atmosphere itself, instead of adjusting their own metabolisms to take advantage of the chemistries of this world.
The diminutive stranger edged closer to Ninth Translator, spoke in a quick, fluting voice. It seemed agitated and drew a weapon out of a cunning pocket fastened at its waist. Ninth Translator stood very still, not wishing to further alarm it.
"Are you quite undamaged?" she asked in her best approximation of its dialect based on body-memories.
It answered, but the sounds ran together. She concentrated, accessing the specialized areas of her brain meant for translation. With a few more exchanges, she would be able to speak some rudimentary phrases. "The gleaner did not mean you harm," she said. "Might you do her the honor of overlooking her transgression?"
It backed away, then turned and stumbled off into the night. Third Gleaner twitched.
"Do not go after it," Ninth Translator said.
The gleaner sat on her back-legs and picked at a molting patch on her carapace with quivering fingers. "You could not communicate with it?"
Ninth walked over to one of the luminaries and stroked its sensor knot so that it ceased to glow. "Not yet."
The other went rigid with grief. "But I wished to beg its forgiveness!"
"I asked for you, but I do not think it understood," Ninth Translator said, turning to the second luminary. "It will be necessary for you to live with the shame for now."
"But," Third Gleaner said disconsolately, "I cannot!"
"You do not have permission to remove yourself from the colony," Ninth said hastily and wished a more experienced head were present. She was not qualified to counsel a lower caste on such matters.
Third Gleaner folded in upon herself, hiding her face with all four hands in a gesture of misery. "I shall stay here and petition the coordinators for Leavetaking at first light."
Linear thinking again. Ninth Translator knew better than to say more. Gleaner logic had led to this blind conclusion and it would take a better translator than she to guide her out again.
Heyoka snarled as the shuttle trailed orange-red fire across the night sky; perhaps, he thought, the portent of what was to come. If the flek were on their way back to this world, the sky would soon be full of such comings and goings.
He sagged back on the rocks and shook his head. Now he was marooned here, as well as AWOL. Even if he made it back home at some point, his career as a Ranger was over. At least, with any luck, all of his hrinnti recruits and most of the humans were on that flight, stranding only Mitsu, Onopa, Montrose, and himself. Having grown up on Earth, he understood humans far better than hrinn. If he had to be stuck here, it was probably better this way.
At any rate, he had to catch up with the others before the flek made landfall on this world. Then the four of them could hide up in the green mountains, live off the land, perhaps even commit the odd moment of mayhem now and then against the flek. That at least would be of some service, unless, or until, they were caught.
The fiery afterimage of the shuttle's ascent still hung before his eyes when he caught another glow, low on the horizon, bright green, ghostly. The lighted "tree" Montrose had mentioned?
He risked a call on his com, but Montrose didn't respond this time. That didn't bode well. It was about five hours before local dawn and he felt the lack of sleep pulling upon him. He hadn't been on active duty since Enjas Two. No matter that he had worked out during training, it was hardly the same thing.
Rising, he shook himself, then sampled the breeze. As usual, it blew from the windward side of the island, carrying the rich scent of unfamiliar plants, rocks, the brininess of the sea, and . . .
His ears waggled. There was an unfamiliar element in the melange tonight, the same scent he'd encountered down in the cave, most likely the laka, since they were out and about. What had provoked that? he wondered. Traumatized by their near extinction, the peaceful laka normally went out of their way to avoid humans. Yet tonight, they had been downright aggressive.
Was it their intrusion on the crystals, or perhaps just the presence of the hrinn? They had encountered humans before, but they had never seen one of his kind.
He bent lower, scouting for human spore. The ground sloped down here, littered with black, volcanic rock and covered with vines and bushes. After a moment, he picked up Mitsu's scent amidst the sharp greenness of the vegetation. Another snarl escaped him. Damnation! She had come this way. He'd been hoping against hope she had obeyed orders and circled back to base camp. Then she would have made it off-world on that shuttle.
Her scent grew stronger, though he picked up almost nothing from Montrose and Onopa, as though they were being carried, so that their feet rarely touched the ground. Montrose had mentioned that Onopa was injured. Now that the shuttle was gone, there would be no med for her. He bristled. His fault. His responsibility. He should have foreseen this possibility. The laka had survived the flek, after all. It was altogether conceivable they weren't as mild mannered as they had led the Confederation to believe.
Mitsu's trail was leading to the blaze of green light, as Montrose had said. He realized that, if the laka had any sort of decent night sight at all, his tan uniform was going to be highly visible, so he stripped off his shirt and stashed it behind some rocks. His black fur would blend in with the night. He paused at a small mountain stream to drink deeply. The swift water was cool with a faint aftertaste of several minerals—iron, perhaps, and zinc. There was no point in worrying about local contaminants now. If he were going to react, he might as well get it over with. He doubted Dennehy had left them a five-year supply of water.
Mitsu's scent was very clear now. Once he got his hands on his partner, he was going to shake some sense into her. This had as much to do with her former recklessness coming back into play as what the flek had done to her. She was young, and the young thought they'd live forever.
The light radiated down from the center of a clearing ringed by a large grove. Unlike most of the rain forest, the trees here had leathery leaves that whispered against each other like mice brushing against a wall. His hackles rose. He caught a stronger trace of Montrose's scent, then Onopa's.
The grove itself smelled dark and earthy, wet. Perhaps there was a marsh within, or a bog. He circled, careful to remain downwind. Shapes moved, dark outlines silhouetted against the almost phosphorescent green radiance. The light seemed to be emanating from the leaves of a single tree so its outline was brilliant in the night.
One of the shadows turned just so and his reflexes screamed flek! for a heart-stopping instant, but the shapes did not reek as flek did and he forced himself to remain calm.
He strained his ears to pick up some scrap of human conversation. The few words he caught were laka and he could make nothing out.
Finally, he decided to risk a direct approach. He was armed, after all, and the laka had always tolerated the presence of Confederation forces in the past. Most likely, he just needed to sort out the misunderstanding that had resulted in the confinement of his personnel.
He stepped into the eerie green light and held up empty hands, though his rifle was slung on his shoulder and his pistol was still snug in its holster. "I won't hurt you," he said slowly. "I just want my people back."
Three of the closest laka froze.
"Sergeant Blackeagle!" Montrose called out of the darkness back inside the grove. "Over here!"
The three laka glanced over their shoulders, then blocked him shoulder to shoulder like a living wall. This felt wrong, Heyoka thought, like they were angry, like they had a reason for holding the humans.
"Is Corporal Jensen with you?" He forced his voice to remain calm.
"No," Montrose said. "Onopa is, though. We're all right."
He turned back to three laka. Even though these specimens were smaller than some holos he'd seen of the species, they were still impressive this close up. Four arms and four legs, sinuous necks, carapaces. Their pink eyes reflected green in this light. "I'm going to get my people," he said, hoping at least his manner would reassure. "Then we'll leave."
He edged around the three, but they darted back in front of him. Damnation. He stood in place and waited to see what they would do. After a moment, they began to wail in high-pitched voices that set his teeth on edge.
This was getting him nowhere. He was tired and worried and out of patience. "Okay, okay," he said, though he knew they might understand no more than the tone of his voice, if even that much. He turned away, gazed at the ground, as though he were leaving, and wandered in a large careful circle that gave him the angle to enter the grove.
When he thought the laka had relaxed their guard a bit, he lowered his head and sprinted toward where he had last heard Montrose's voice. This was where the ability to blueshift would have come in really handy, he thought regretfully.
The laka intercepted him before he'd gone twenty paces, much quicker than they looked. They lined up shoulder to shoulder again and blocked his path. With a snarl, he leaped on the closest. It went down with an agonized cry. His other surfaced and he had to force himself not to tear at the tender neck skin with teeth and claws.
It was not a flek! he told his violent other as he rolled away. This was not Anktan or Enjas Two or any of a dozen planets where he'd been in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. This was just a misguided laka. It only needed to be intimated.
He came up to his knees. The laka he'd attacked was still down a few feet away, keening, as though it were hurt. One of its forelegs was twisted at what looked to be an unnatural angle. The other two laka were frozen, then as one, they tackled Heyoka and knocked him to the ground.
His head hit hard and rang like a bell. Dazed, he fought with both tooth and claw now, drawing sour laka blood. In another moment, the rest joined in, and he was smothered by a veritable mountain of laka flesh.
The agonizing high-pitched wail of the transfer chamber continued to mount. Kei's teeth throbbed and he thought his ears would rupture. Blood trickled from his nose. If he didn't get away, he realized he might actually die in this stinking flek warren without ever striking a single blow. He dug his claws into the rock and pulled himself onto his feet, galled that the human major had been right. This was no place for hrinn.
If the Black/on/black had been caught in there, he was surely dead now, either in glorious battle, or because his body had been turned inside out by that unbearable noise. Kei wondered how many flek their leader had killed and what sort of tales might be told about this night.
None, he told himself angrily, if he didn't make it back to Anktan to tell the first. Choked by the nose-burning reek, he pulled himself along, step by step, back through the darkness toward the hole in the hillside and the rope ladder.
The agony lessened with each bend in the tunnel until he was able to think again, able to draw a breath without fighting for air. Then he heard oddly rhythmic footsteps behind. He pressed his back to the rock, drew the laser pistol, and waited.
A flek strode around the last turn, visible by the red patterns painted on its chitinous white body. It had evidently been treated with a luminous compound for just these circumstances. Kei raised his laser pistol and shot it point-blank as he had in so many simulations.
The beam bounced off and was absorbed by the cavern rock. A bubble of red-hot slag appeared overhead and Kei felt the heat on his muzzle. The flek raised its own weapon, a slim white tube, and fired. Kei was already moving as its arm came up, but even so the beam brushed his ribs as he ducked and the stink of his singed fur filled the stale air.
His head was whirling. He had forgotten about flekish armor, though he'd never heard it to be this effective. All the same, there should be vulnerable points, but he would have to aim more carefully. Stand and fight! his instincts insisted. This is the enemy and the time is now!
But the wisdom of the Black/on/black was strong in his memory. When the Black/on/black had first found the flek entrenched on a great plain on Anktan and known them for the enemy they were, he had traveled with Kei back across the mountains to assemble a hrinnti and human force that ultimately defeated the invaders. He had not thrown his life away in a valorous, but unwinnable battle against overwhelming odds, but smelled out a different pattern/in/progress, then used it to rid Anktan of flek forever.
Kei reached for the power that lay hidden in his body and blueshifted. The flek seemed to stand still as he snatched the tube from the flek's paw, then tried to use it himself. There were no visible controls though and he could not figure it out.
And there was the very real possibility that, even if he spent enough time to puzzle the workings out, the beam would bounce as harmlessly off the flek's coated hide as his own weapon had.
Maybe if he had studied harder back at the training base, paid more attention, he would know what to do now. He had been so certain though that all which was required to defeat flek was a laser pistol, claws, fangs, and an undauntable heart. Snarling, he whirled and fled back toward the rope ladder and the clean outside air.