Lost In Translation (32 page)

Pikkiro backed up from the door and sliced open its lock with a single quick bolt from his firelance. Then he pushed the door open, folded his wings tightly and dashed through. His lance fired again almost at once as he plunged out of sight.

Jim followed him, then Ukkaddikk, Jarrikk, Kathryn, and finally Dr. Chung, whose fear Kathryn sensed clearly—not that it was any greater than her own. Kathryn could see only Jarrikk's scarred wings as they dashed down the circling stairs, passing the decapitated body of a S'sinn and, several steps later, his still smoldering head. Kathryn swallowed hard and kept moving.

More flashing red firelance bolts silhouetted Jarrikk, then the more sustained white light of a beamer ray. Kathryn sensed four strangers ahead of them, three terrified and angry, and one barely even conscious; then a S'sinn screamed and she sensed only two terrified and angry strangers—and then Jarrikk reached the bottom of the stairs and leaped to one side as the beam from a firelance lashed the wall above his head. Kathryn flung herself on the cold stone floor. Dr. Chung, she noted briefly, had wisely decided to hang back in the stairwell.

Jarrikk had crawled behind an overturned shikk; she followed him. The guards were barricaded behind a table; behind them, chained to another shikk, hung a female S'sinn: Supreme Flight Leader Akkanndikk, Kathryn supposed. A dead S'sinn lay near her.

Jim lay behind another overturned shikk to their right; Pikkiro and Ukkaddikk had ducked into the archway of a corridor leading off to their left. Pikkiro shouted something; Jarrikk touched Kathryn's arm, and suddenly they were Linked.

There is a difference between legend and reality.
Jarrikk tensed.
He says—now!

Kathryn intended to leap up, beamer blazing, but in the aftermath of telepathic contact her muscles refused to respond for just a moment, and in that moment, empathy still heightened by her contact with Jarrikk, she sensed for only the second time something beneath the surface of Jim's empathic block, something that confused, then frightened, then enraged her; and when she did leap up, she didn't face the overturned table, she faced Jim, and ran across the chamber floor through the strobe-like flicker of the firelances, jumping toward him, hitting his outstretched arm just as he fired his beamer—

—so that the ray slashed only across the stone beside the Supreme Flight Leader and didn't rip through her hearts as he intended.

Kathryn crashed to the floor, stunned and breathless. Dimly she sensed that the guards behind the table had died, that Ukkaddikk had been wounded, but more strongly than anything else she sensed Jim's pure hatred for all aliens, his feelings for once naked and unshielded, as he lifted his beamer again—and this time aimed it at her.

 

Jarrikk, too, sensed Ornawka clearly, and his hand tightened on his firelance. But Ornawka's beamer snapped up from Kathryn to Jarrikk, then back down to Kathryn, then suddenly he turned and ran toward the archway where Pikkiro and Ukkaddikk had taken shelter—except Ukkaddikk lay smoldering in his own blood, wounded and unconscious, and Pikkiro the non-empath, oblivious to all that had been going on, was checking the guards to make sure they were dead.

Jarrikk whipped up his lance and fired a single bolt after Ornawka, but it only scored the ceiling of the tunnel above and behind the human's head just before he ran out of sight. Pikkiro spun from his examination of the Supreme Flight Leader, firelance snapping up. “What . . . ?”

“Ornawka was the human who attempted to assassinate the Supreme Flight Leader,” Jarrikk snarled. “He just tried again.”

Kathryn got to her feet, breathing hard and feeling her ribs gingerly. “Doctor Chung,” she shouted up the stairs, “Ukkaddikk is hurt!” No reply. Kathryn started toward the stairs as Jarrikk crossed to the older Translator. “Doctor Chung?”

A flash of light—and Dr. Chung's scorched body came tumbling down the stairs. Kathryn screamed, then turned and ran toward Jarrikk as more S'sinn burst into the room. The first fell to Pikkiro's beam, but the second's firelance cut Pikkiro almost in half. Jarrikk gave a despairing look at Ukkaddikk, then grabbed Kathryn's hand and almost dragged her along the corridor after Jim.

Neither one of them could afford to spend any more energy on telepathy. They simply ran, sensing their pursuers racing after them, and finally burst out through an opening on the river bank—

—just as eight armed priests alighted above them in the Place of Flightless Sacrifice.

Kitillikk saw the High Priest off her flagship
Bloodfeud
with barely disguised impatience. The priests' silly blood-sprinkling ceremony had wasted several thousand beats, and it wouldn't surprise her if it had gummed up some vital piece of equipment, too. But if it made her Hunters fight more fiercely, she supposed she had to put up with it.

The moment the airlock door closed behind the High Priest and her entourage, Kitillikk spun and plunged into the gravity-shielded central shaft that provided zero-G access to all the decks of her huge, cylindrical ship, and flew up it toward the bridge. She alighted neatly on the access balcony, her claws digging deep into its padding to stop herself from bouncing away again, and, after a momentary pause while the computer identified her and activated the balcony's artificial gravity, the airtight door slid aside to admit her.

Ukkarr greeted her, rising from the Fleet Commander's shikk, which overlooked the sunken area where the bridge crew labored. “Final preparations have been completed on all but a handful of ships, and even those vessels are at least flight-ready,” he said. “The Fleet awaits your orders, Your Altitude.”

“Then I'd better give them, hadn't I?” Kitillikk slid onto the shikk that Ukkarr had vacated, slipped her hands into the control gloves, and lowered the helmet over her eyes. The virtual-reality command space encompassed her: she could see the location of any ship at a glance, zoom in on it for a closer look, even reach out with her hands and mold the Fleet into whatever formation she desired, the computer then translating that formation into detailed maneuvering orders for each ship. She savored the feeling of complete control for a moment, then said, “Computer. Voice-link, all vessels.”

“Voice-link activated,” the computer responded.

“This is Acting Supreme Flight Leader Kitillikk,” Kitillikk said, imagining her voice echoing through all the hundred ships of the Hunter's fleet. “Greetings, Hunters! We have received the blessings of the Hunter of Worlds. We have prepared ourselves, body and spirit. Our ships are ready, and we are ready. Now is the time. Now is the time to avenge Supreme Flight Leader Akkanndikk, to take back our stolen worlds, to redeem our honor, to release ourselves from the shackles of the Commonwealth and once more fly free. The time is now, brave Hunters! Captains, acknowledge!”

A tumultuous roar of voices came back as every ship's captain responded, their ships glowing blue in her display as they spoke. When the entire Fleet shone blue, Kitillikk said, “You have your orders. Execute!”

The mass of ships began to move.
The War of Independence,
Kitillikk thought with great satisfaction,
has begun.

She freed herself from the controls and glanced at a chronometer on one of the bridge panels as the
Bloodfeud
broke out of orbit with the rest of the Fleet. Ukkarr followed her glance. “The delay was insignificant, and the symbolism important,” he said.

“You misunderstand me,” Kitillikk replied, but she did not explain.

The War had indeed begun: the first shot, at that very moment, was being fired a thousand light years away.

Kitillikk's only regret was that she could not be there to see the humiliation of the Guild of Translators.

 

Karak once more climbed the steps to the council chamber, even more slowly than the last time. The watersuit had certainly grown no lighter, and neither had the news from S'sinndikk.
Unity
had been taken by Kitillikk's forces. Now an ominous silence wrapped the Guildship. No word on the fate of the Translators that had been aboard it.
No doubt Kitillikk is saving them for something special,
Karak thought bitterly.

Worse, the S'sinn fleet had launched. Even now it was on its way to its target, no longer a secret: Kikks' sarr. Where the last war had begun and ended. Already fighting had broken out there among the human and S'sinn colonists. Casualties were reported heavy on both sides, despite the lack of heavy armament, prohibited by the last treaty. Karak doubted there would be anything at all left of the planet in another few days: Kitillikk's Fleet and the Earth Fleet would arrive at the same time.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth did nothing. Fractured along a dozen internal faults, it waited only for the blow that would shatter it.

This was the news he brought to the Council: and this was the news to which, once again, they would have no response. Like the rest of the Commonwealth, they waited helplessly for the end.

As Karak's watersuit-encased right locomotors fell on the last step of the staircase, the building shook so hard that he grabbed the railing for support with all his manipulators, then stood stock still.
Earthquake?
But Commonwealth Central had been deliberately built in a geologically stable area . . .

A deep gonging began, itself loud enough to shake the building. It took a moment for Karak to recognize the sound: the only other time he'd heard it had been during his investiture ceremony, when he had pledged that as Guildmaster he would defend the Guild against any and all enemies that might arise.

The Guildhall was under attack!

Galvanized by the realization, Karak hurried down the short corridor at the top of the stairs and pushed through the Guildheart doors to find the other Councilors—those with eyes, anyway—staring at him. “Computer—video!” he snapped, and the surface of the star-studded table opened up. A quartet of vidscreens lit as they rose into position. “The Guildhall is under attack. Show me!”

Instantly all of the screens filled with the same image: a gaping, smoking hole in a wall of one of the Guildhall's central towers. They'd chosen well, Karak thought grimly. The topmost part of that tower had been deserted for generations, but three levels near its base remained in use: the lowest housed the central computer, the highest communications, and sandwiched in between—the Guildheart.

No wonder the whole building had seemed to shake.

“Show me the intruders,” he commanded, and the screen flickered, revealing six shadowy figures flitting down the tower stairs—shadowy, but unmistakable: S'sinn.

Already the intruders were nearing the entrance to the communications room. “Voice-link to communications!” Karak cried, but too late: one S'sinn tossed something at the door, which burst inward in a camera-blinding flare of white light. Then the image switched to the inside, where a dozen Guild workers, Hasshingu-Issk, Orrisian, and human, knocked down by the concussion, were just picking themselves up when the S'sinn burst in among them.

Firelances flashed red, and the workers dropped, disemboweled, cut in half, or burning alive. Communications equipment exploded in flame and smoke.

The ceiling of the Guildheart shook. The Council itself would be next, then the computer and its irreplaceable records, and the Guild would die. That he would die, too, hardly even registered on Karak in that moment.

“Councilors!” he cried. “The Circle! Form the Circle!”

Whatever their personal fears at that moment, they were all masters of the Guild: the most powerful empaths in the Commonwealth. More than that, the most powerful
projective
empaths. They could not Link, but they could project an emotion, fine-tuning it by sensing the emotions being projected by their neighbors. As Guildmaster, Karak was the key, providing the core emotion for them to sense and duplicate, and the emotion he drew from them now was fear: utter, unnerving, heart-stopping terror.

It poured into him so strongly that he almost lost control of it, almost succumbed to it himself, but the knowledge of what would happen if he did enabled him to hold on, to channel the terror not into his central being, where it would destroy him, but through his own projective ability. He held it there, building and building in intensity, like water piling up behind a dam: then when he sensed the S'sinn terrorists outside, as the vidscreens showed one raising another grenade to hurl against the door; he released it all, pouring the full power of the Circle directly into the minds of the S'sinn.

They screamed, the sound so shrill and high that it filled the Guildheart even through the heavy doors. One dropped senseless, unconscious or dead; two others flung themselves at the stairs they had come down, ripping bloody strips of flesh from each other in their blind struggle to escape, two more fought madly in a paroxysm of violence, howling at the top of their lungs, and the last . . .

. . . the last one started shaking violently, and dropped the primed grenade.

The shaped charge, designed to explode inward through a yielding surface, instead blew downward against the solid stone of the floor, which directed all of its force, and a spray of needlelike stone shards, upward and outward.