seemed a good chance to get a word in edgewise. “I’m a dolphin … cousin to humansss … I’ve been sssent with-th a message for Uriel the—”
The crowd suddenly erupted in a moan of emotion that made Kaa’s sound-sensitive jaw throb. He made out snatches of individual speech.
“Rockets!” one onlooker sighed in Anglic. “The sages made rockets!”
Another spoke GalSeven in tones of wonder. “One small enemy spaceship destroyed … and now the big one is targeted!”
Kaa blinked, transfixed by the villagers’ tension.
Rockets? Did I hear right? But—
Another cry escaped the crowd.
“They plummet!” someone cried. “They strike!”
Abruptly, the mountain-perched star paused its twinkling bulletin. All sound seemed to vanish with it. The hoons stood in dead silence. Even the oily water of the bay was hushed, lapping softly against the wharf.
The flashing resumed, and there came from the crowd a moan of shaken disappointment.
“It survives, exists. The mother battleship continues,” went the GalTwo mutter of a traeki, somewhere in the crowd.
“Our best effort has failed.
“And now comes punishment.”
Lark
THE MOMENT LARK PRAYED FOR NEVER CAME. THE walls did not shatter, torn by native-made warheads or screaming splinters of greatboo. Instead, the sound of detonations remained distant, then diminished. The floorthrobbing vibration of Jophur defense guns changed tenor now that the element of surprise was gone, from frantic to complacent, as if the incoming missiles Were mere nuisances.
Then silence fell. It was over.
He let go of the Egg fragment, and released Ling, as well. Lark pulled his knees in, wrapped both an is around them, and rocked miserably. He had never felt sc disappointed to be alive.
“Woorsh, that was close!” Ling exhaled, clearly savoring survival. Not that Lark blamed her. She might still nurse hopes of escape, or of being swapped in some Galactic prisoner exchange. All this might become just another episode in her memoirs. An episode, like me, he thought. The clever jungle boy she once met on Jijo.
His old friend Harullen might have seen a bright side to this failure. Now the angered Jophur might extinguish all sapient life on the planet, not only their g’Kek blood enemies. Wouldn’t that fit in with Lark’s beliefs? His heresy?
The Six Races don’t belong here, but neither do they deserve annihilation. I wanted us to do the right thing peacefully, honorably, and of our own accord. Without violence. All this burning of forests and valleys.
“Look!”
He glanced at Ling, who had stood up and was pointing at Ewasx. The ring stack still quaked, but one torus in the middle was undergoing full-scale convulsions. Throbbing indentations formed on opposite sides, distending its round shape.
Both men joined Ling, staring with unbelieving eyes as the dents deepened and spread into circular bulges, straining outward until a sheer membrane was all that restrained them. The Jophur’s basal legs started pumping and flexing.
The humans jumped back when Ewasx abruptly skittered across the floor, first toward the armored door, then away again, zigging and zagging three times before finally sagging back down, like a heap of flaccid tubes.
The middle ring continued to throb and swell.
“What is it doing?” Ling asked in awe.
Lark had to swallow before answering.
“It’s vlenning. Giving birth, you’d say. Traekis don’t do this often, ’cause it endangers the union of the stack. Mostly they bud embryos and let ’em grow in a mulch pile, on their own.”
Rann gaped. “Giving birth? Here?” Clearly, he knew more about killing Jophur than about the rest of their life cycle.
Lark realized — the catatonia of Ewasx was not caused simply by the surprise rocket attack. That shock had triggered a separate convulsion just waiting to happen.
Membranes started tearing. One of the new rings, almost the size of Lark’s head and colored a deep shade of purple, began writhing through. The other was smaller and crimson, emerging through a mucusy pustule, trailing streamers of rank, oily stuff. Both infant toruses slithered down the flanks of the parent stack, then across the metal floor, seeking shadows.
“Lark, you’d better have a look at this,” Ling said.
He could barely yank his gaze away from the nauseating, bewitching sight of the greasy newborns. Upon stumbling over to join Ling, he found her pointing downward.
“When it ran back and forth, a dura ago … it left this trail on the floor.”
So what? he thought. Lark saw smears, like grease stains on the metal plating. Traeki often do that.
Then he blinked, recognizing Anglic letters. One, two, three … four of them.
REWQ
“What the …?” Rann puzzled aloud.
Lark raised a hand to his forehead, where his rewq symbiont lay waiting for its next duty while supping lightly from his veins. At a touch, it swarmed over his eyes, recasting the colors in the room.
At once, everything changed. Till that moment, the still-quivering flanks of the Jophur had seemed a mottled jumble of distorted shades. But now, rows of letters could be seen, crisscrossing several older rings.
lark, the first series began one ring opens doors. use it. rejoin the six.…
A squeal of pain interrupted from Lark’s right, unlike any shouted by a mammal. He whirled, and cried, “Stop!”
Rann stood over one of the newly vlenned rings, his foot raised to stomp on it a second time. The small creature shook, bleeding waxy fluids from a rent along one flank.
“Why?” the Danik demanded. “You sooners signed our death warrants with that crude missile attack. We might as well get in some of our own.”
Ling confronted her former colleague hotly. “Fool! Hypocrite! You stopped Lark earlier, and now do this? Don’t you want to get out of here?”
She bent over the quivering ring and reached toward it nervously, tentatively.
Lark turned back toward the ring stack … the composite being that had somehow managed to become Asx again, in a strange, limited way. The letters were already fading as he read the second line.
Give other to Phwhoon-dau/Lester. he/you/they must
This time, the scream was human.
Ling! He spun around and rushed to her aid.
She held the little wounded torus in one hand while the other clawed over her shoulder at Rann. The male Danik throttled her from behind, his forearm around her throat, closing her windpipe, and possibly her arteries.
Rann heard Lark’s irate bellow and swiveled lightly, using Ling’s body as a shield while he kept choking her. Rann’s face was contorted with pleasure as Lark feinted right, then launched himself at the star warrior’s other side. There was no time for finesse as they all toppled together, a grappling mass of arms and legs.
It might have been an even match, if Ling hadn’t passed out. But when her body slumped, insensate. Lark had to face Rann’s trained fury alone. He managed to get a few blows in, but soon had his hands full just preventing the Rothen agent from striking a vital spot. Finally, in desperation, he threw his arms around Rann, seizing his broad torso in a wrestler’s embrace.
His opponent felt confident enough to spare some strength for taunts.
“Darwinist savage …” Rann jeered, close to Lark’s ear.
“… devolved ape …”