Lost In Translation

by Edward Willett

  And so he waited, and watched, a hundred heartbeats, and a hundred more, and a thousand after that, absolutely still, absolutely silent, until at last, as he had known they must, the murderers emerged.

  There were three of them, hideous, near-hairless four-limbed monsters, like wingless, bald S’sinn. Two were much larger than the other, whose face had the unformed look of a youngling. They wore brightly colored coverings like the S’sinn sometimes wore on holy days, and both carried black, evil-looking tubes with knobby handles: the murder weapons, Jarrikk thought. It was all he could do to keep from diving on them then and there and tearing out their ugly throats.

  The youngling seemed agitated about something, pulling on the upper limb of one of the adults, his voice shrill and painfully loud, but the adult pushed him away and said something in a deeper, harsher voice.

  As the youngling alien watched with wide eyes, the adults knelt beside Illissikk’s corpse. Then—Jarrikk’s claws dug deep into the branch—one of them drew out a glittering knife and began cutting at the dead youngling, skinning him as though he were a jarrbukk!

  Worse followed. One of the large aliens went into the forest and emerged moments later carrying something wrapped in giant leaves. With a flourish, he swept them aside, revealing Illissikk’s head. A branch or rock had ripped out his left eye, but his right remained, wide with his final terror.

  The aliens seemed to take forever going about their grisly business, but Jarrikk held down his impatience with the same cold calculation he had already applied to his revenge. There would be revenge, and soon enough, but first he must bear the tale back to the colony. First, Flight Leader Kitillikk must know. And then—

  —then it would be the aliens’ turn to feel the cut of knives and beams in their hairless, pale skins.

  At last the monsters finished, and disappeared into the forest again, leaving behind a pile of bloody meat indistinguishable from any dead beast. Illissikk had vanished as if he’d never existed, reduced to less than nothing by the aliens’ cold knives. They had moved on, no doubt to do the same to Kakkchiss and the others; and now at last Jarrikk moved, too, unfurling stiff wings and sweeping silently away into the gathering twilight, low to the treetops, where he knew he would be all but invisible.

  He would not allow himself grief; he clung to his need to report to the Flight Leader as he might have clung to a slim green branch in a thunderstorm, refusing room to the other black thoughts that tried to shoulder in to share it. Thirst and hunger soon joined the throng, but he refused them a place to land as well. Cold rage and the hope of hot revenge were all he needed to sustain himself this day.

  They’d been a half-day’s flight from the colony when the aliens attacked; deep night’s bitterly cold black wings covered the world when Jarrikk, with ever-slower wingbeats, finally began flapping wearily up toward the high mountain caves into which the S’sinn had withdrawn with the coming of the aliens. They had abandoned their airy tree-top structures with a prudence Jarrikk had thought foolish at the time. No longer. A dark shape slashed down to meet him, briefly silhouetted against the star-lit glimmer of snow-capped peaks before swinging into position wingtip-to-wingtip on his right. “Jarrikk?”

  “Ukkarr,” Jarrikk rasped, with barely enough breath to talk. “Must see—Flight Leader.”

  “So you shall, since the Flight Leader left standing orders to bring you younglings before her the instant you returned. Where are the others?”

  “Dead.”

  Ukkarr’s steady wingbeats stuttered. “Dead? How—”

  Jarrikk concentrated on keeping his own wings beating. His story was for the Flight Leader first, not for her lieutenant. Just a few more beats . . .

  Ukkarr didn’t ask again. Silent, he climbed with Jarrikk, guiding him away from the cave complex’s main entrance to a smaller, isolated cavern higher up the slope. “Wait here,” Ukkarr commanded, and plunged back into the night.

  Wings still at last, Jarrikk slumped in the cold dark, chest and back ablaze with pain. He pressed the backs of his hands hard against his eyes, then slowly massaged his wings’ muscles. Thank the Hunter of Worlds that Ukkarr had thought to bring him here first. He couldn’t face their brood mother—not yet. What if she had seen him and asked about the others? He couldn’t lie to her. And the bloodparents . . .

  Alone, no longer able to concentrate solely on the act of flying, the magnitude of what had happened threatened to overwhelm him. He folded his wings flat against his back and crouched on the cold stone floor. Wind whispered across the opening to the cavern, a soft, keening sound like a youngling just taken from its bloodmother, before the brood mother came to nurse and comfort it: but this night, Jarrikk knew, no comfort would come at all.

  Flight Leader Kitillikk rested on a shikk outside her dwelling caves, overlooking the large central chamber that had served as their Flock Hall since the arrival of the aliens on Kikks’sarr drove them underground. Blood-red and smoky from a thousand torches and fires, it seemed a primeval place, like the legendary hot, hollow center of the home world of S’sinndikk, where the Hunter of Worlds was said to dwell when not soaring through the universe on space-black, star-studded wings.

  Or so the priest who had just left her had described it, but Kitillikk was of a more prosaic turn of mind. To her, it looked like a prison—a prison they had been forced into by the alien invaders. Her lips drew back in an involuntary snarl. The priest had all but ordered her to attack and drive the aliens back into space—had almost accused her of cowardice. But the priest didn’t have to answer to Supreme Flight Leader Akkanndikk back on S’sinndikk, who had given unequivocal orders: no attack unless attacked. To strike first would contradict the First Principles of the Commonwealth.

  Kitillikk had her own opinions about the Commonwealth, opinions she intended to one day make S’sinn policy, when she became Supreme Flight Leader. But achieving that goal meant first succeeding at her current task of leading the colonization of Kikks’sarr, and that meant following orders. No attack unless attacked.

  Just give her an excuse, though . . .

  Ukkarr soared across the cavern and settled beside her. “Excuse my intrusion, Flight Leader, but you asked to be informed immediately upon the return of the youngflight that sneaked away to spy on the aliens.”

  The youngflight that thought it had sneaked away. Kitillikk had known all about the younglings’ “secret mission”—she’d have had Ukkarr’s head if she hadn’t—but had chosen to let them go. She could use whatever information they brought back, however garbled the report. “They’re back, then.”

  “Only one of them, Flight Leader. Jarrikk. He says the others are dead.”

  Kitillikk turned and stared at him, then grinned savagely, showing all her teeth. “At last!”

  Ukkarr led her to the cave where he had wisely stashed the youngling out of sight. Jarrikk slumped motionless inside, so that for a moment she thought him dead, too; but he jerked up when they entered, and unfurled his wings in salute. Kitillikk motioned him to relax. He folded his wings, but every other muscle in his sleek young body remained tense.

  Ukkarr drew a lightstick out of the Hunter’s pouch he always carried and cracked it against the floor. A cold blue light filled the cave and illuminated the snowflakes beginning to fall outside its mouth. “Tell me what happened, Jarrikk,” Kitillikk said.

  The youngling told her, his voice high and strained, but admirably under control, considering what had happened. She remembered her own youngflight; they had lived for each other, would have died for each other. Had she lost her sisters as he had lost his brothers . . . he has strength, she thought. Great strength.

  When he finished his story, she turned to Ukkarr. The aliens had given her her opportunity; even the Supreme Flight Leader could not fault her now, and her name would echo in every Flight of the S’sinn after this. “Summon and arm the Hunters.”

  “Yes, Flight Leader!” Ukkarr spread and snapped his wings in salute, then leaped into the snowy night
.

  Kitillikk looked back at the youngling. “Can you tell your story again, Jarrikk? Can you tell it to the Hunters?”

  “I can. I will.”

  “Then come with me.”

  A thousand beats later, she stood overlooking the Flock Hall once more, Jarrikk beside her. More than a hundred Hunters now filled the red-lit space, clinging to every possible roost, and this night the arms they bore weren’t the knives and spears and bows they used on game, but slim black S’sinn-high rods: firelances. The weapons of war, not the hunt. “Tell them,” Kitillikk ordered Jarrikk.

  He repeated his story, his voice going hoarse by the end of it, and her hearts beat faster at the shrieking roar that answered his tale. Her claws gouged the stone beneath her feet. An alien flung from her roost into the cavern at that moment would not have reached the floor before being torn to bloody shreds. She wished she had one to try it with. “We waited, and hid, to see what kind of creatures these are,” she cried to the Hunters. “Now we know—they are murderers, savages, child-killers! Kikks’sarr is ours! Let us take it back!”

  The second, greater roar of the Hunters filled her with the wild, fiery elation she felt only when fighting or mating. She spread her wings and arms again for silence. “We know where they camp! We can be there by dawn. By the time the sun sets, let there be no aliens left alive on our planet!”

  This time the roar went on and on as the Hunters rose and swirled around and around the Flock Hall, then swooped out through the short tunnel leading to the surface and burst into the snow-filled sky. Kitillikk spread her wings to follow; but the youngling Jarrikk touched her wing and said, “Let me go with you!”

  Annoyed, anxious to join the flight, Kitillikk snapped, “You are not a Hunter,” and spread her wings again.

  But the youngling didn’t withdraw. “They were my brothers. They were my flightmates.” His voice grew hard and desperate. “I want—I have to see the creatures who killed them die. I have to.”

  Admirable. Kitillikk considered. “I cannot arm you.”

  “I know.”

  “It is a long flight. One you have already made twice.”

  “I know.”

  “We cannot wait for you.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  He’s tough, Kitillikk thought. Or thinks he is. Good. “Very well. But you are not to take part in the attack. You will only watch. Understood?”

  “Understood!” With his own shrill shriek of defiance and bloodjoy, the youngling spread his wings and flapped away.

  Kitillikk flew after him thoughtfully. It would be good to cultivate a young male with such loyalty and fire. A personal bodyguard and aide of unquestioned loyalty—all Flight Leaders needed such. The Supreme Flight Leader had two, black as night, the Left Wing and the Right Wing. Kitillikk had Ukkarr, of course, but a second would not go amiss. A fine-looking, strong young male.

  She grinned as she flew after Jarrikk. Oh, yes, he had to be male.

  Jarrikk hurled himself into the night on wings made strong by his thirst for revenge: but that thirst could only take him so far. Within a thousand beats his wings felt like lead and his lungs as full of fire as his blood had been, except this fire slowed him as much as the other had filled him with energy. He began to lag behind the Hunters. No one waited; he didn’t expect them to. The strong owed it to themselves and to the Flock to fly as hard and fast as they could. The weak must keep up the best they could, or silently turn back. Fly or die, the Hunters said. Fly or die.

  Jarrikk kept flying.

  When dawn broke, Jarrikk saw the alien camp ahead of him, marked by the glittering silver egg-shape of their ship, surprisingly small compared to the huge black sphere that had brought the S’sinn to Kik ks’sarr. A half-dozen tendrils of smoke twisted lazily skyward in the still morning air, proof that at least some of the aliens were watchful. Jarrikk dropped to treetop level, then below, swooping through green-pillared corridors with his wingtips brushing leaves. He looked for Hunters with every beat, but saw and heard nothing—right up to the moment when something swatted him from behind and sent him tumbling ungracefully to the ground. “Find a roost and stay there!” Ukkarr growled, then somehow disappeared into the forest again.

  More cautiously, Jarrikk worked his way from tree to tree until he had a clear view of the camp, which consisted of two prefabricated plastic shelters, a dozen brightly-colored tents—and a drying rack on which were stretched at least twenty pelts of various animals.

  Three of those pelts Jarrikk recognized very well indeed. He gripped the branch so tightly he felt it split in his claws.

  And then, with no audible signal at all, the Hunters dropped from the trees.

  Black as night against the bright green, blue, and yellow of the tents, they swept in a hundred-strong flock across the camp and back, firelances lacing the ground below with blood-red beams. Tents blossomed into orange flame that brought aliens naked and screaming into the light, hair ablaze, skin blackened, only to be cut in two by the next wave of Hunters. A half-dozen aliens close to the ship made it inside, including, Jarrikk saw with fury, the small one he had seen with the adults who killed his brothers, but others had time for only one startled look, time to open their mouths wide, before the beams found them and sliced them apart.

  Jarrikk saw one of the two aliens who had killed his brothers running for the illusory safety of the prefabricated buildings, before beams set the buildings alight even more spectacularly than the tents. He half-unfurled his wings, prey-sight focused on the base of the male’s stubby neck, ready to fly after him himself, promise or no promise, when a beam slashed at the alien’s legs and he went down, blood spurting from half-cauterized stumps that ended where his knees had been. The alien tried to crawl away, but the next beam touched his head, which exploded into red steam and bits of charred flesh and bone. His torso bizarrely crawled another half-length on its own before falling forward, limbs twitching once or twice and finally lying still. Jarrikk’s lip curled in an involuntarily snarl. He only wished he’d fired the lance himself.

  In two passes, the Hunters utterly destroyed the camp and every alien in it; but with an ear-hurting whine, the silver ship came to life, rising into the air, its lifters sending the smoke of the burning camp twisting and dancing across the carnage. One Hunter, more brave than wise, dove toward the ship, beam reaching out to caress the silvery skin, but that alloy was far tougher than the plastic of the prefabs or the fabric of the tents, and the lance didn’t even mark it. Other Hunters followed the first, but suddenly the ship’s whine turned to fang-rattling thunder, white flame exploded underneath it and it rocketed into the sky, vanishing in a matter of seconds. In its fiery wake, the Hunter who had first attacked it fluttered to the ground like a burning leaf.

  We won, Jarrikk thought fiercely. It’s over!

  Two days later, when the first S’sinn warships arrived and the fortification of Kikks’sarr began, he knew he’d been wrong.

  It wasn’t over at all.

  It was just beginning.

  Chapter 2

  Katy pushed the mashed potatoes on her plate up and up into a shape like Mount O’Bagnon, framed in the dining room window just across the table from her. Then she began picking up her peas one at a time and sticking them into the potato-mountain, pretending they were the dekla trees that covered Mount O’Bagnon, although they were entirely the wrong shape and not even close to the right color. She pretended really hard that they were the right shape and color, because pretending really hard helped her not to feel how worried and scared her parents were. When they were scared, she got scared, and she didn’t like being scared.

  Pretending really hard sometimes helped her not to hear them when they argued, either, but they were right there at the table with her and she couldn’t help it, even though she pretended Mount O’Bagnon suddenly turned into a volcano and all the dekla trees got covered in the thick brown lava she poured from the gravy pitcher.

  “I can’t believe you’re l
etting them go ahead with this carnival,” Mama said, her voice all tight and strange. “After the news from New Atlanta? My God, Mike, just before we left Earth the Sootangs said they were planning to move to New Atlanta. They could be dead!”

  “They could have been dead since the day we left Earth,” Daddy said. His voice stayed really calm and low, but it didn’t fool Katy; she could feel his worry just as strong as Mama’s. She decided the peas didn’t look anything like dekla trees and had to be punished. One by one, she started squashing them.

  “You know what I mean. Mike, we’re at war!”

  “Earth is at war. We’re a thousand light years from Earth. We’ve got nothing anyone would want.”

  “We don’t know what these monsters want. We don’t even know why they attacked the colony on Petra to begin with!”

  “They’re still intelligent creatures. They won’t attack a place just to be attacking. Luckystrike has no strategic value. We’re just a farming planet.”

  “What strategic value did New Atlanta have? They killed a quarter of the people in the colony, Mike! Over three thousand dead!”

  Daddy took a deep breath, and Katy could feel a little bit of anger inside all his worry. She squashed another pea, lining it up carefully under the middle two tines of her fork, then pressing down little by little until the green skin burst and the inside gushed out. It made her think of squashing the little green worms that kept trying to eat their garden, and she giggled, thinking how shocked Mama would be if she said that out loud. Daddy glanced at her. “That’s still no reason to cancel the carnival. You know how Katy’s been looking forward to it. Not having the carnival won’t make us any safer.”