“If everything goes smoothly?” Nikko said with a groan. “When has that ever happened?”
Davlin turned to Orli. “I need your backpack.”
She reluctantly shrugged the straps off her shoulders. “My synthesizer strips?”
“I need them to save us all. Now the rest of you, go!” Davlin didn’t stay to talk. Grabbing Orli’s pack, he ran along the tunnels, following electrical conduits toward the central systems that had been installed more than a year ago by the EDF watchdogs. According to the tiny monitor lights and substation boxes, the power was still running, at least intermittently. The bugs had cannibalized some components from the barracks, but disregarded other pieces.
More Klikiss scuttled through the corridors; some of them had missing limbs or cracked shells from the battles outside. The air smelled of dust and bitter insect juices. If the main clash was indeed over, the victorious Llaro breedex would hunt down the last of the invaders, and eventually Davlin’s presence would intrude upon the hive mind’s awareness.
Then the bugs would intercept him.
Through a small window opening, he glanced outside. At the trapezoidal frame of the new transportal, the Llaro hive’s strongest warriors tore apart four of the invading domates. The tiger-striped monsters squirmed and struggled, but were utterly overwhelmed. They fought, and they died.
Davlin didn’t care which side won. Either way, he had very little time.
The EDF’s old control and communications center was a small alcove closed off with a chain-link gate. Davlin easily cut through the links and was relieved to see that the Klikiss had ignored this small intrusion into their ancient city. It simply hadn’t mattered to them.
He dropped Orli’s ragged pack on the hard stone floor. By now the others should have gotten outside. He counted on that. If they didn’t make it away swiftly, the Klikiss would turn on them. Davlin pulled out Orli’s synthesizer strips and unrolled them on the stone floor. Still functional.
He activated the tiny power source, hooked up the leads, and ripped open a cover plate on the intercom system to attach the wires. A few random notes whistled into the air, but none of the Klikiss seemed to notice. He worked by instinct. During his many missions as a Hansa spy, he’d been forced to learn how every common system worked. If Margaret Colicos’s tiny music box had made enough of an impact to disturb the breedex, then Orli’s much more sophisticated music should have a similar effect. Davlin would give the bugs their fill of it. He prayed it would be enough.
He called up the library of tunes the girl had stored in the strips’ memory and set it to continuous repeat. Adjusting the volume to its maximum level, he began the Play cycle.
Startling melodies emerged from the intercom speakers mounted at intervals throughout the ancient alien tunnels. A Klikiss worker scuttled down the passageway toward him, but as soon as the music began, the creature turned, as if stunned and disoriented.
The synthesizer continued to play, the melody building, the notes captivating the Klikiss. Listening via all its minions throughout the subhive, the breedex should be reeling.
Davlin slipped back out through the chain-link gate, closed it, and sprinted away. It was time to find another way out of here.
132 ADAR ZAN’NH
Zan’nh left behind emergency crews on each of Tal O’nh’s five empty ships to effect necessary repairs and fly the much-needed battleships back to Ildira. In the meantime, the Adar needed to leave immediately. While Ridek’h and the blinded tal were taken to medical kithmen aboard his flagship, Zan’nh gave instructions for his warliners to fly to Ildira at maximum speed.
When they arrived, they found the faeros already there.
A dozen fireballs crowded the sky above the Prism Palace, swirling over the crystalline towers, setting the fountains and mirrors alight. One of the Palace’s minarets had collapsed into a glassy, melted blob. Orange flares shining through the faceted walls suggested that a desperate battle was going on inside.
On the elliptical hill at the center of the seven converging streams, pilgrims scrambled to find shelter from the firestorm. Unable to escape, each one turned into a living torch.
Zan’nh and everyone aboard the warliners could feel the resonating horror. Previously, when the mad Designate had taken his victims, he had excised them from the thism web before destroying them. Now, though, he let his conquest of Ildira pound through the thism like loud drumbeats, so that every person in the Empire was aware of what he was doing. Somewhere, Mage-Imperator Jora’h must feel the unbearable agony.
The Adar did not know how to fight an enemy like this. Tal O’nh’s warliners must have used whatever weapons they had available. When he went to consult the blind tal in the ship’s medical center, O’nh said in a haunted voice, “Our projectiles and explosives did nothing against them. Our warliner’s armor could not withstand the heat. They are flames. How do you hurt a flame?”
Zan’nh stretched his mind, searched his imagination, wishing that Adar Kori’nh—even Sullivan Gold or Tabitha Huck—could have been there to guide him and offer advice. But he realized that was merely an excuse. The faeros were attacking the Prism Palace! He could not spend days gathering ideas to devise a solution. He had to think of something himself.
“Prepare the water reservoirs. We may be able to quench the fire by using everything we have.”
His warliners flew at full speed toward the blazing ellipsoids and sprayed jets onto the faeros from their onboard water cisterns. Only a small retinue of the fireballs had come here to Ildira. Perhaps he could have some effect after all. . . .
Like a boiler explosion, great clouds of steam roiled into the air, the superheated mist curling in all directions. The faeros continued to dip and bob, torching people in the city, circling around the Prism Palace. Now that the Adar’s warliners had caught their attention, the flames grew brighter.
With a second run, Adar Zan’nh spilled water in the plaza in front of the Palace. When the cold water struck the superheated crystalline panels, they shattered. Hot flowing glass and metal congealed in odd shapes.
Two warliners concentrated their streams onto a single fireball, draining their tanks into the incandescent flames until the faeros dimmed and blackened, extinguished by the water.
Retaliating elementals surged up to collide with the Ildiran battleships. Zan’nh felt a resounding sympathetic pain as all of the crewmembers in the two warliners were incinerated, their soulfires absorbed into the faeros. Suddenly empty, without anyone manning the controls, the large Solar Navy vessels began a downward spiral, their engines on fire, their systems damaged. Both hulks crashed into the city.
The sky all around was pregnant with steam. A hot fog bank swathed the Adar’s warliner and the Prism Palace in a thick cloud, temporarily hiding them. The faeros would find them soon enough.
“Adar! I am receiving an urgent transmission from somewhere within the Prism Palace.”
“What is it?”
“Prime Designate Daro’h and several others. They are trying to escape. They need our help.”
133 NIKKO CHAN TYLAR
The area around the Klikiss city was strewn with giant insect carcasses. The buzzing and clacking sounds of the wild battles had now been subsumed by an eerie silence as the scouts and warriors dispatched the remaining members of the rival subhive. The smell nauseated Nikko.
As they ran past piles of the dead creatures, he pointed toward the giant new transportal. “Look, something else is coming through!”
Victorious Llaro Klikiss returned through the shimmering gateway, carrying their greatest prize—the captive breedex of the rival subhive. Nikko gaped at the horrific monstrosity, instinctively knowing what it was. He had never imagined something so disgusting. Orli shuddered. Margaret put a hand on her shoulder and pulled the girl along, leading them all. “Come! That will be our last big distraction!”
The eight Llaro domates, replenished in the recent fissioning, marched toward the captive breedex, ringed the
enemy hive mind, and began devouring it. The air itself seemed to thrum with unimaginable screams.
And music began to play over the old EDF loudspeakers.
The startling melody made all of the Klikiss reel in their tracks. Orli stopped, apparently as startled as the insect creatures. Tears sprang to her eyes. “That means Davlin made it!”
The effect was dramatic and instantaneous. Even the Klikiss on the battlefield wavered, though many were too far away to hear the notes. But what one Klikiss heard, the breedex heard, and disorientation spread among the rest of the subhive.
“That’s a hell of a diversion,” Tasia said. “And you can hum along with it, too.” She began to run toward the outskirts where the Klikiss had left their alien ground vehicles.
Nikko didn’t think he’d ever been so utterly exhausted in his life. The ground vehicle, basically a framework with rolling mesh wheels and an engine, would let them cover ground much faster than they could travel on foot.
Robb and Tasia bolted directly past six warriors who stood clicking in confusion and waving their claws in the air. Some of the insect creatures blundered into each other, as if drowning in the melody, while others searched for the source of the broadcast. “They don’t see us. Take advantage of it!”
Nikko followed the others toward the vehicles. The Klikiss had no security systems and would not have made starting or piloting the contraption difficult. The bugs did, however, have multiple limbs, and he wasn’t sure if one human with a single pair of hands could manipulate the controls.
Klikiss warriors lurched in front of them, caught up in the eerie melodies. Suddenly the music cut off. The loudspeakers inside the old city went dead.
“That means they killed Davlin!” Orli cried.
“Well, we know they killed the broadcast.” Tasia made a dash toward the nearest vehicle. “Now we’re in hard vacuum without a helmet.”
Like laser targeting systems, the Klikiss warriors swiveled their heads toward the escapees. The breedex looked directly through their eyes, seeing them. Seeing Margaret.
The old woman stepped forward defiantly, holding up the music box in her hand. A rush of unnatural clicking sounds came from Margaret’s throat as she tried to communicate. Then she wound up the metal device, and the familiar melody began tinkling out. “Run, all of you! Get to one of the vehicles.”
“Margaret, come with us,” DD wailed. Orli tugged on the little compy’s arm.
“You heard the lady!” Tasia shouted. “Run! I sure hope someone knows how to drive this Klikiss buggy.”
Margaret thrust the music box forward, letting the tune play for the monstrous creatures, for the breedex. The nearest warrior reached out a segmented forelimb and delicately, implacably, plucked the music box from Margaret’s hand. Two scouts came at her from either side and grasped her. She tried to struggle, but they picked her up. Without harming her, they carried her off as Klikiss warriors closed in on the rest of the escapees.
“Margaret!” Orli shouted. Nikko pulled her onward, stumbling toward the wheeled contraptions.
Three Klikiss warriors marched toward the alien vehicles as well, accompanied by a taller creature—one of the strange human-influenced hybrids. This one was the size of a domate. Its exoskeleton was pale, and its elongated body had powerful arms and ripping pincers.
Nikko hesitated, but Robb gave him a push from behind. “Quick, while they’re still disoriented.”
Tasia jumped into the open-framed vehicle, studied the controls and experimentally pulled levers to test their functions. Nothing seemed to work. “This could be the shortest escape ever.”
The three Klikiss warriors and the pale new-breed turned to focus on the intruders. Robb threw himself into the carriage beside Tasia, and he too began slapping at controls, trying to get the machine to move.
The warriors ringed them in, raising their sharp limbs. Nikko looked directly into the face of the whitish hybrid. The monster’s features were awful, yet eerily familiar. The plastic, changing expression behind the stiff faceplates seemed to mimic old memories, struggling to reconstruct the echo of a past existence.
With a jolt, Nikko saw in the creature’s visage a hint of his mother. It flickered through a sequence of unfamiliar faces, other Roamers and colonists. Then, as if the newbreed recognized him, the ghostly face of Marla Chan Tylar snapped back.
Orli jumped down beside Nikko, trying to pull him to the vehicle, and also noticed what looked like Marla Chan Tylar, the woman who had taken her in. Frozen, Nikko faced the creature, waiting for it to strike both of them down.
Instead, the grotesque hybrid turned on one of the Klikiss warriors, grabbed its horned crest, and twisted the carapace hard, uprooting the creature’s whole head. The startled warrior clicked and fluttered its wing casings, then slumped, twitching, to the ground.
The other two warriors, guided by a disoriented breedex, turned from the escapees and fell viciously upon the newbreed that had shockingly turned against them. The pale hybrid fought back, thrashing and chopping.
“Let’s go, dammit!” Tasia called.
Nikko stumbled backward and bumped into the vehicle but was unable to look away from the battle. Robb grabbed his arm and yelled in his ear. “We’re leaving.”
But the Klikiss ground vehicle wasn’t going anywhere. A grinding sound came from the gears. The car lurched and shuddered to a halt again.
The Marla-newbreed succeeded in killing a second warrior, while the third slashed at the pale flesh. Nikko couldn’t understand what was happening. When the domates “incorporated” genetic information from humans they devoured, did they retain some of the memories? Was an echo of his mother actually inside there?
Three more warriors arrived, driven by the breedex, and urgently joined the attack on the treacherous newbreed. The angry Klikiss surrounded the newbreed and tore it apart. Nikko groaned.
The engine began to make sounds, but Tasia still didn’t know how to drive the thing. The Klikiss warriors advanced, covered with spatters of slime. Orli stepped away from the vehicle to stand alone in front of them.
“What is she doing?” Robb shouted. “Get aboard, kid!”
Orli began to sing a lilting melody in a clear but unpracticed soprano. The melody was familiar to the Klikiss . . . but different. With all her heart, Orli sang “Greensleeves.” The breedex had never heard the music like this before. The warriors froze, raising their jagged limbs, cocking their heads. Orli kept singing.
It was all the time Tasia needed. At last she got the strange vehicle moving.
Shaken by what he had seen, Nikko grabbed Orli’s hand and yanked her into the open-framed vehicle as it started to roll away. As soon as the girl’s singing stopped, the Klikiss lurched forward again, but by now the groundcar was jouncing swiftly across the terrain.
Nikko and Orli sat next to each other, both stunned in their own way. DD was silent, and Nikko wondered if a compy could be disturbed.
“Whatever we just saw—I don’t ever want to see it again,” Nikko said.
134 DAVLIN LOTZE
When the music cut off far sooner than he had expected, Davlin knew he was in trouble. A burst of static gushed like blood before the loudspeakers fell completely silent. The disoriented bugs must have found the synthesizer strips and torn them apart.
He had hoped to make his way out of the alien city before that happened.
Davlin tried to slink along the darkened corridors, keeping to the walls to remain unobtrusive in the shadows, but he couldn’t possibly hide. With their feelers the Klikiss could detect vibrations in the air and might even be able to smell or taste his presence as if he’d left a painted line behind him. Once the breedex started looking for him, he couldn’t hide.
He began to run.
He had secretly kept one emergency flare grenade and a metal pipe from the small EDF equipment shack. Minimal weapons, but he didn’t feel comfortable without having something.
Reaching a small ventilation window a few inche
s wide, he scanned the grounds. Out on the battlefield, the Llaro domates were feeding on the carcasses of more dead Klikiss, incorporating genetics, acquiring the DNA songs of the defeated subhive for the next fissioning. The breedex would reproduce again, to expand its numbers and replace the warriors fallen in the recent battle.
Well beyond the domates, he saw a group of humans rolling away in a Klikiss groundcar. Davlin let out a held breath, feeling tension drain from his shoulders. Now he knew the others had escaped and was confident they could get to the Osquivel and fly away immediately after rescuing the rest of the survivors in the sandstone caves.
Seeing the others depart, Davlin also understood that he would never catch up with them. It was liberating, in a sense. That gave him the freedom to find his own way off of Llaro. He was, after all, a specialist in these sorts of things.
He decided that the transportal in the ancient hive city would be his ticket offworld. Any place had to be better than Llaro—provided he could find a planet that wasn’t already infested with Klikiss.
He made his way deeper into the old hive city. He knew where the transportal chamber was, since he had come through it with the Crenna colonists when they first arrived. But when he sprinted into the central cluster of the ruins, he saw an alarming number of insect workers and scouts in the tunnels. The transportal wall must be close, but he might have to fight his way through.
Two spiny warriors waved their segmented forelimbs, turning armored heads in his direction. Davlin immediately saw that the breedex would no longer ignore his presence.
He didn’t hesitate. He sprang forward, aiming perfectly, and thrust his metal pipe into the thorax of the nearest warrior. It clacked its pincers, hissed, and whistled as it fell over. The creature’s bulk was enough to wrench the pipe from Davlin’s grip. The second warrior slashed at him, and the serrated limb ripped across his shoulders and down his back. He felt the insect claw grate on bone.
Stunned, he staggered away and past the remaining Klikiss warrior. Even bleeding profusely, he put on a burst of speed. The insect raced after him into the tight passage, its horned carapace scraping the rough walls. Davlin’s legs felt cold and leaden, and he could hear the monstrous beetlelike creature right behind him. Fumbling, he withdrew the flare grenade but held off for just a moment. He turned a corner and staggered through an arched opening, at last finding the grotto where the trapezoidal stone window filled one wall.
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