Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

  The human captain said something in his squawking human tongue. “And if I refuse?” Jarrikk translated.

  Kitillikk fired an energy bolt into the empty chair at the sensor console, narrowly missing the young ensign, who stared down with wide white-rimmed eyes at the smoking ruin on which she had been sitting seconds before. “Then I start killing your crew. In any event, Captain, why should you refuse? I assume you want to escape from my ship as much as I do.”

  The captain growled something in reply, then turned and started giving orders. “Translate,” Kitillikk snapped at Jarrikk.

  “Captain Hall said it wasn’t your ship he wanted to escape,” Jarrikk said. “It was you.”

  Kitillikk showed her teeth. “That will not be easy.”

  The captain faced her again. “We’re ready,” Jarrikk said.

  Kitillikk kept grinning. “You think I’m a fool? Ukkarr, brace yourself.” She wrapped one arm around a nearby support and spread her wings. “Unless the three of you like bouncing around the walls . . .” she said to Jarrikk.

  He met her gaze for a moment, then led Kathryn Bircher to an empty chair, and, as she strapped herself in, braced himself as Kitillikk had, though he kept one hand on Bircher’s shoulder. The captain strapped himself into his own chair in the center of the room, but swung it around to look at Kitillikk instead of facing the sensor screens.

  “Now, Captain,” Kitillikk said. Bircher translated, and the captain barked an order.

  The boosters fired, unheard but felt as a deep vibration in the bones of the ship, and the Unity lifted away from the flagship. Tortured metal shrieked and the ship bucked and jerked as it ripped apart the docking tube. Three sensor screens flickered and went dark as their antennae fragmented; another console exploded in sparks and smoke as fractured conduits shorted out; then they were free. Bloodfeud dwindled rapidly in the surviving sensor screens, and made no attempt to fire on them or pursue. Nor did any other ship.

  Kitillikk released her hold on the brace. If she hadn’t gripped it, she knew she would have been full-length on the floor—precisely, she suspected, what the captain had hoped. Now she pointed the firelance at him again. “Now, Captain. About our course—”

  Something buzzed behind her. “Ukkarr?” she snapped.

  “Someone wants access to the bridge.” A pause as he presumably scanned security screens. “It’s the human Ornawka, Flight Leader.”

  “Ornawka? Here?” Kitillikk shifted her focus to Jarrikk. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

  “I did not know,” Jarrikk said. “I do not know how he could be here.”

  “Let him in,” Kitillikk said to Ukkarr. “But watch him.”

  “Yes, Flight Leader.”

  Jim? Here? How? Kathryn couldn’t believe Jarrikk had translated correctly. Why?

  I don’t know. Jarrikk seemed as bemused as she did. He must have stowed away . . .

  He had help, Kathryn thought. Of course he had help. Sympathizers. This is a human-crewed ship. A certain percentage—

  None of that matters, Jarrikk sent back. More important is why is he here, on the bridge?

  He hasn’t given up. Jim Ornawka never gives up.

  There he is.

  It was Jim, all right, looking calm and collected, though as always, his feelings were unreadable behind an empathic shield, a shield even stronger than before. Even in contact with Jarrikk, Kathryn could not penetrate it this time. She suspected they could if they made full Linkage—but after their experience with the guard . . . no. Not even Jim deserved that.

  “Kitillikk,” Jim said in Guildtalk. “It has been a long time.”

  “You have joined your friends to die?” Kitillikk said, spitting the Guildtalk words as though they left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “Me? Die? I don’t think so.” Jim looked over at Kathryn and Jarrikk. “Besides, I doubt they really consider me a friend anymore.” He smiled the smile that had once charmed Kathryn, but now seemed flat and lifeless. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Help me?” Kitillikk laughed the harsh S’sinn laugh. “You have never done anything that didn’t serve yourself. You hate all S’sinn.”

  “Exactly. And I told you so. That’s why you can trust me, Kitillikk. I’ve always told you the truth.” He came a little further forward, until Ukkarr’s firelance, pressed into his back, told him he’d gone far enough. “We can still salvage this situation, Kitillikk. But we have to get the human fleet to attack now, while there are still Hunterships adrift in confusion. Most of your fleet will escape intact. You’ll be able to rally your people around you, no matter what the High Priest says, if the humans have precipitated another war. They know you’re their best fleet commander.”

  “My people may yet rally around me,” Kitillikk said. “But I will not sacrifice a single Huntership to arrange it.”

  “Don’t give me that. You were willing to kill your own Supreme Flight Leader—”

  “I will not waste the lives of Hunters. And I will not listen to you any longer. Ukkarr, put Ornawka with the others.”

  Ukkarr pushed Jim forward, toward the three steps that led to the lower level of the bridge. Jim’s right foot found empty space; he stumbled forward, fell—and then suddenly came rolling upright, something tiny and metallic in his hand that flashed once, twice—

  —and Ukkarr fell, his head neatly separating from his body and thumping down the steps to lie in a spreading pool of dark-red S’sinn blood on the bridge deck.

  Kitillikk’s lance swung around, but the thing in Jim’s hand flashed again, and half of her weapon vanished. Kitillikk flung the useless hilt aside and stood motionless, gaze fixed on Jim.

  Kathryn stared at Jim in horror, horror brought on not only by the violence but by the thought that she had once shared her bed and her self with this man she no longer recognized. A mixture of shock and disturbing satisfaction swirled around her from the others on the bridge, but Jim remained perfectly blank.

  He got slowly to his feet. “Very sensible,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you if I can avoid it; you’re my best bet for making sure this war goes ahead as planned. Some of those Hunterships hanging around out there must still be loyal to you. Broadcast to them now. Order them to stage a mock attack on the Unity. By now the Earth ships know we’ve broken free. The captain here will send us on a course toward the Earth Fleet, as if we’re trying to reach them. Your Hunterships will pursue. The Earth Fleet can’t help but attack them, and then—”

  “You’ve miscalculated,” Kitillikk said, and Kathryn felt the coldness in her mind like a bath of liquid helium. “You think that I am like you. But I am not. You are human, and I am S’sinn, and you have slain my friend. The Hunter will devour you and spew you out—but I die with honor!” And with that she launched herself over the railing.

  Jim’s weapon flashed, severing Kitillikk’s right arm and causing her wing to collapse, but momentum carried her into him. Her left arm gripped his neck and pulled him clear of the floor, feet twitching, surprise and terror on his face and finally, finally, flooding through the empathic blocks; and then her right foot came up and raked him from sternum to crotch, ripping through flesh and muscle, shattering ribs, spilling his viscera onto the floor of the bridge in a glistening, bloody heap. His legs jerked once more as his mind faded from Kathryn’s horrified perception; then Kitillikk dropped him, planted her bloody foot on his ruined chest, and screamed, a sound of pure defiance and rage that rose to the limit of Kathryn’s hearing and beyond.

  The sound ended. Kitillikk staggered and fell to her knees, propping herself up with her good wing. The blood that had pumped from the stump of her arm now only trickled. She fixed glazing eyes on Jarrikk. “A true S’sinn,” she gasped out in S’sinn, barely audibly, “dies with honor.”

  And then she collapsed across Jim’s shattered body.

  A stench like that of a slaughterhouse spread across the bridge, silent except for the quiet retching of the young ensign at the sensor panel.
Captain Hall, face white, rose from his chair and walked on legs not-quite-steady to Kathryn and Jarrikk. “Course, Translators?” he said.

  Kathryn looked up at him through the tears streaming down her face. “The Guildhall, Captain. Home.”

  “The Unity is on final landing approach,” a voice said in Karak’s ear.

  “About time,” Karak grumbled. He’d been waiting in his wetsuit for half a day; the Unity had somehow miscalculated her ETA. Probably it had taken them longer to deliver the bodies of Kitillikk and Ukkarr to the Bloodfeud than anticipated. There would have been questions to answer about that rendezvous before the Earth Fleet would have let them go, too . . .

  His feeding tentacles wriggled thoughtfully. There were a lot of questions he needed answered, as well. Translator Ornawka’s part in all this seemed clear, but what damage that would do to the Guild’s reputation remained to be seen. Fortunately they had a lot of good will to bank on in the Commonwealth right now, thanks to Kitillikk’s abortive attack on the Guildhall.

  He felt badly about Ornawka, all the same. With Earth authorities finally cooperating with the Commonwealth in tracking down the Humanity First ring-leaders, they’d uncovered the truth about Ornawka’s background. Like Kathryn, his entire family had been wiped out by the S’sinn—not during the war, but at its very start. He’d been on Kikks’sarr, in fact, part of the colony destroyed by Kitillikk in the initial confrontation. He and a handful of other children had escaped on board the colony shuttle, but when the ship stopped at the nearest human planet he had disappeared, only to be found by that passing Translator years later, living on the street. Those impenetrable shields must have been his idiosyncratic reaction to bondcut, and none of his Guild tutors had recognized the signs because humans were so new to the mix of races.

  They’d been luckier with Kathryn, Karak thought. And with Jarrikk. Had he not put the two of them together, they might have gone the way of Ornawka. Certainly they’d both had reason for it . . .

  Not now, though. Now, they were something quite special. A matched team of Translators who did not need programming. Of course, they could only Translate between humans and S’sinn, but there would be a lot of that to be done in the next while. They would prove invaluable in the process of building a lasting peace—and, of course, in strengthening the reputation of the Guild.

  But he had to free them up for a research project, too. The Guild had to know just what they were capable of. Telepathy between themselves, obviously, but there had been hints . . . how had they escaped from the flagship, for instance? They said they’d convinced a guard to help them, but Karak wasn’t sure they were telling everything.

  A Translator cannot lie! he thought, and expelled a sigh-bubble. That was one myth they would have to work very hard indeed to rebuild in the Commonwealth.

  Thunder overhead, then the Unity settled neatly to the blackened surface of the spaceport. Karak climbed into the waiting groundcar, and sighed again as it rolled toward the Guildship and he saw the scars on its hull and the twisted wreckage of the Bloodfeud’s docking tunnel still clinging to its side like a cancerous growth. Just the external damage alone would cost a fortune to repair. The Great Swimmer only knew what the S’sinn had destroyed inside the Unity during their occupation of it.

  The hatch had opened by the time he reached the ship. There were Jarrikk and Kathryn, hand-in-hand. He got out of the groundcar and raised his manipulators in salute . . .

  There’s Karak, Kathryn telepathed. Are you sure about this?

  I’m sure, Jarrikk sent. Aren’t you?

  He’s not going to like it.

  He’s not going to have any choice.

  Our Oaths . . .

  We’ve been through that already. This is no different.

  I suppose not.

  Karak waited for them at the bottom of the ramp. Kathryn remembered how he had held her hand in his gloved manipulators when she first arrived on Commonwealth Central, a quiet, indrawn little girl, desperate for a family, for something to fill the horrible emptiness of bondcut.

  But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. And that hole—she squeezed Jarrikk’s hand—was filled.

  She and Jarrikk had decided, on the journey back to Commonwealth Central, that they could not allow the Guild to know about the power they had within themselves. They could not hide the low-level telepathy—they’d demonstrated it too often—but the other, the projective telepathy, and most especially the horrible possibilities of using their powers as a weapon, they would reveal to no one.

  The Guild meant well, Kathryn supposed. It had made the Commonwealth possible, and so far it had kept the peace. But there were always strains, and nothing lasted forever. Someday there would be a new Guildmaster. The power they had found—the power to make anybody believe anything you wanted them to, and worse, the power to drive sentients mad—they must keep to themselves, or someday someone like Kitillikk or Jim would find a war it could serve.

  As Jarrikk had said, they were still upholding their Oath to serve and preserve the Commonwealth. As they had broken the letter of the Oath once before to preserve its spirit, so they must do so again, but this time, it must be permanent.

  They would leave the Guild. They would take Jarrikk to Earth, for regeneration therapy, and then . . .

  Well, then, they had the whole galaxy to explore, and at least for the moment, at least in their small corner of it, it was at peace.

  Here was Karak.

  “Translators,” he greeted them.

  Kathryn cleared her throat. “Actually,” she said, “that’s what we want to talk to you about . . .”

  About the Author

  Edward Willett is the author of more than thirty books, including four young adult fantasy and science fiction novels, plus numerous nonfiction children’s books on topics ranging from the Iran-Iraq War to Ebola virus, to biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and Orson Scott Card. His young adult novel, Spirit Singer, won the Regina Book Award for best book by a Regina author at the 2002 Saskatchewan Book Awards. His short fiction has appeared in Trans Versions, On Spec, and Artemis, among other magazines. Ed is Web master and administrative assistant for SF Canada, www.sfcanada.ca. He writes a weekly science column for the Regina Leader Post and CBC Radio One in Saskatchewan, and is a professional actor and singer. He’s married to Margaret Anne Hodges, a telecommunications engineer, and has a daughter, Alice. His Web site is at www.edwardwillett.com, and he writes a blog, Hassenpfeffer, at edwardwillett.blogspot.com.