Lost In Translation (27 page)

“We understand and obey,” said the priest, the traditional response of a lower priest to the command of a higher. Kitillikk rather thought she might adopt it in her court when she was Supreme Flight Leader.

Which she had better get busy arranging. “How can I get out without being seen? If I go back up the stairs—”

“There is another exit.” The lead priest showed her an arch into deeper darkness. “This passage slopes gradually up and emerges near the river in a place well-screened from view. Should you wish to visit your captive, you should enter that way.”

“My thanks,” Kitillikk said, and went out.

A hundred damp, slippery spans later, she emerged onto the muddy river bank, beneath an overhanging platform with a hole in its center . . . the Place of Flightless Sacrifice, she realized, and smiled, thinking of Jarrikk. Very soon she would be in a position to pay back a lot of old debts—including that one. Maybe she'd bring him back here and use the knife on him herself . . .

But for now, her business lay with the Supreme Flight. Splattering mud, she launched herself into the air.

Kathryn woke uncomfortably, all at once, to a harsh buzzing that brought her upright in bed, heart pounding. “Stand by for the captain,” said a disembodied voice.

“I'd rather go back to sleep,” Kathryn muttered, lying down again.

That, unfortunately, didn't appear to be an option: the door opened and Dr. Chung came in, her electronic notebook clasped protectively to her chest with folded arms and her lips pressed tightly together.

“Jarrikk?” Kathryn said anxiously, sitting up again, but even as she asked, she knew he was all right; she could tell by the—feel, she guessed was the word—of the tendril of his mind in hers. Something else, however, obviously
wasn't
all right.

“He's fine,” Dr. Chung said. “For the moment. I'm not sure about the rest of us.”

“What?”

“Listen.” Dr. Chung pointed to the speaker overhead.

As if cued by her finger, a new voice came over it. “This is Captain Hall. A situation has arisen that may threaten the security of this ship. These are the facts as we know them: shortly after dawn this morning, someone attempted to assassinate the Supreme Flight Leader of the S'sinn during a religious ceremony at the Temple. She hasn't been seen since.

“The attacker escaped, but there are literally thousands of witnesses, backed up by vidrecords, who swear that he was human.”

Kathryn gasped. Captain Hall carried inexorably on, his voice calm but tense. “The Supreme Flight met in emergency session almost immediately, and shortly thereafter announced that though still alive, the Supreme Flight Leader is grievously wounded and unable to carry out her duties. They claimed she has been sequestered in a secure place, then announced that, until she recovers—and there seems considerable doubt that she will—her duties will be assumed by Flight Leader Kitillikk.”

Kathryn gasped again. “Kitillikk!”

Dr. Chung stared at her. “You know this S'sinn?”

“Through Jarrikk's memories . . . shhh!”

“. . . not a universally acceptable choice, apparently. We have reports of fighting in the streets among unidentified factions. Communications, datalinks, and transportation are all under the control of armed Hunters. The Spaceport has been sealed. We were able to report to Commonwealth Central what has happened, but since then a scrambler field has been set up, blocking all off-planet communications. No S'sinn has contacted us directly since the assassination attempt, nor have we had any word from Translator Ursu, Translator Ornawka, Ambassador Matthews, or any of the other humans currently in the city.

“All we can do for the moment, ladies and gentlemen, is sit tight behind closed hatches. As a Commonwealth ship, we are theoretically inviolate—but whether the new leader adheres to that theory remains to be seen.

“I'll keep you posted as I learn more.”

The shipcom clicked off; Kathryn's feet hit the floor a second later. “I must see Jarrikk.”

“Kathryn—” Dr. Chung began.

“I feel fine. Perfectly healthy.” Still very tired, actually, some of the good a week's rest had done undone by the stress of her meeting with Jarrikk the day before, but Dr. Chung didn't need to know that. “This is an emergency, Doctor.”

“I'd stop you if I didn't know you'd pull ‘Translator business' on me again,” Chung grumbled. She flipped open her notebook, unclipped the stylus from its side, and scribbled something with unnecessary force. “Very well. You're released. Go wherever you like, do whatever you want.”

“Thank you.” Kathryn was halfway to the door before she looked down at her flimsy hospital gown, stopped, and turned sheepishly back to Dr. Chung. “Uh . . . maybe I should start with clothes.”

As Kathryn strode down the corridor toward Jarrikk's room a few minutes later, wearing her freshly pressed Translator's uniform, with a jacket over the sleeveless top, she sensed the tendril from Jarrikk's mind growing stronger.
So distance matters,
she thought.
Ukkaddikk will be interested to hear that—if we ever decide to tell him.

By the time she reached Jarrikk's door she could even sense that he still slept, and she hesitated for a long moment before deciding it was more important to tell him what had happened than to let him rest. He was still S'sinn, after all, and it was his leader who had almost been killed—and he also had a long personal history with her successor, Kitillikk.

Somehow, Kathryn doubted he would be pleased at the news of his old Flight Leader's promotion.

Jarrikk woke swiftly, all at once, as she entered, and at the same moment his presence in her mind quadrupled in strength, so suddenly she gasped and staggered back a little. It wasn't telepathy—that seemed to require touch—but it was far stronger than any empathic bond she'd ever experienced or heard of outside of Translation.

She told him swiftly and succinctly what she had heard the captain say, and had to grab the back of the chair by his bed for support as his outrage and shock crashed through her. “Kitillikk is behind this,” he snarled.

“They said it was a human . . .”

“Then she arranged it.”

“But . . . from what I know from your memories about her, she hates humans. She would never align herself with one . . .”

“That's what makes it so perfect. No one will suspect that Kitillikk would use a human. But she would. She'd use and do anything to become Supreme Flight Leader.”

“And now she is,” Kathryn said slowly.

“Exactly.”

“Then the next step . . .”

“War.” His bitterness made his words burn like acid in her mind. “She'll ruin everything we accomplished. She'll already be gathering the Hunterships, calling her old friend Lakkassikk to mobilize the attack troops.”

Kathryn took that in. “Then—then what will happen to us? We're trapped here!”

“She'll need all her Hunters to quell any budding rebellions—but the moment she has any to spare, we'll be next on her list.”

“They can't get in . . . can they?”

“This is nothing but a glorified yacht. It's not a warship. They can get in.”

The speaker overhead crackled to life again. “This is Captain Hall,” said the familiar voice, now drawn as tight as a bow string. “Our outside cameras show armed S'sinn Hunters moving onto the Spaceport landing field.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I'm afraid we're surrounded.”

 

Jarrikk heard the captain's voice, but didn't understand it. What he did understand was the sudden surge of fear in Kathryn. “What is it?” he asked in Guildtalk.

“S'sinn Hunters surrounding us.” Kathryn looked at him. “Kitillikk?”

“Who else? She wants us, Kathryn.”

“Us, specifically, or humans in general?”

“Us. Specifically.”

“Why?”

“She may know by now how we salvaged the peace treaty. Even if she doesn't, she knows we were the ones Translating when the agreement was reached. We're visible symbols of the Commonwealth. Plus, simply by being alive, I'm a symbol of how S'sinn culture has been corrupted by contact with the Commonwealth—and you're a symbol of that corruption, having defiled my sacrifice to the Hunter.” He couldn't help the bitterness that seeped through him at that, though he no longer intended to finish the job at the first opportunity. Kathryn had given him an option and he had yet to consider it carefully. Yet if even he, the beneficiary of it, could feel anger at the human's arrogance in stopping a sacrifice to the Hunter of Worlds, how would more traditional S'sinn react?

By tearing any convenient human apart,
he thought—
and Kathryn would be the most convenient of all.
He reached out and took her hand, feeling her concern more strongly than ever and letting her feel his. He wouldn't put it past Kitillikk to try to pin the assassination attempt on her, instead of on whatever pathetic human traitor she had actually used. What better way to destroy sympathy for the Commonwealth than putting it out that a Translator had been the assassin, absurd though that was?

Kathryn had pulled her hand away again, and he realized he had almost dozed off. He looked at her with some alarm. How much of what he had just been thinking had traveled over the intangible link between them?

Enough, it seemed. She looked visibly scared for the first time—if he were reading her strange human face aright. But then the speaker crackled again, and this time Jarrikk understood two words perfectly: “Translator Bircher . . .”

“. . . report to the bridge. Translator Bircher, please report to the bridge.”

Kitillikk,
was her first thought.
Kitillikk has demanded they turn Jarrikk and me over to her, and . . .

. . . and what?
a derisive inner voice spoke up.
Do you really think the captain is just going to hand you over?

He's Guild. Not a Translator, but still part of the Guild. And the Guild has already sacrificed me once—or at least set me up so I would sacrifice myself.
She smoothed wrinkles out of her uniform.
Well, only one way to find out.
“Summoned to the bridge,” she told Jarrikk. “I'll be back.” She felt his concern and curiosity follow her as she went out.

Having already decided she knew why she was being summoned, she was totally unprepared when the door to the bridge slid aside to reveal Jim Ornawka.

He sat in one of the swinging crewchairs at an unmanned station, and looked like he'd crawled through a hundred miles of mud and barbed wire to get there. Brown water tinged with red dripped from the tattered black cloak he wore, dirt smudged his face, and one cheek bore a red, blistered streak. But he managed a smile when he saw her. “Hello, Katy.”

She didn't smile back. There'd been only one thing she'd wanted to say to Jim Ornawka for days; she said it now. “You lied to Jarrikk. You told him I didn't want to see him. He almost died because of you.”

“I'm sorry,” Jim said, but empathically he was as blank to her as ever. “I only did it to protect you—and honor Jarrikk. I knew he wouldn't thank you for interfering with his Sacrifice. You think too much like a human for your own good, Katy. The S'sinn may be a lot like us, at least compared to races like the Swampworlders, but they're not
human.
”

Kathryn said nothing. The captain, who had come up behind Jim while they were talking (and while the other half-dozen crew on the bridge very carefully didn't look at them), cleared his throat. “Translator Ornawka made it through the blockade around the Spaceport. He says he can take you out the same way.”

“Take us out?” Kathryn stared at him. “Why would we want to leave the ship?”

“It's not safe,” Jim said. “It's only a matter of time before they move in and take it. And with all due respect to the captain and crew of the
Unity,
they're not what Kitillikk really wants. She wants Translators. She's announced that it was a Translator who tried to kill the Supreme Flight Leader.”

It was so much like the fears she had read from Jarrikk while he held her hand that it startled Kathryn. “Then what about Annette Ursu? She's in the Great Hall with Matthews—”

Jim didn't say anything, but the captain cleared his throat and, sensing his grimness, she knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Translator Ursu and Ambassador Matthews are dead. We presume the others in the diplomatic mission are dead, too, although some may have escaped to other Commonwealth embassies.”

“Matthews and Annette were torn apart by a so-called ‘mob,' ” Jim said. “Kitillikk's doing, of course. I'm sorry, Katy.”