CHAPTER 1
I awoke to the sound of the vhitah settling for the evening. My schedule was at its normal timing - sleep during the day and night, only awake for the evening and dawn. Of course, "evening" and "dawn" here was equivalent to nearly four days on the planet humans fondly call Earth, a place I knew and cared nothing about; I could stay awake for a great deal of time.
I straightened my back-bent knees and stood to my full fifteen-foot height. I scratched at a spot behind my forward horn, then under a patch of my thick mane of smoke-gray, my long, straight talons combing the thick strands at the same time. I yawned, baring my two-to-four-inch-long teeth even as my neck cramped suddenly, as it tended to when I first awaken; a screeching whine escaped my throat even as I hurried to shut my mouth.
Behind me I felt a smooth snout at my right wing, preening it for me. Only one would be so forward so quickly after I'd awakened; I spun quickly, keeping my tail tight to my body to keep from injuring the one thing that meant more to me than anything but for what we had created between us. She laughed as I swept her close with my wings. "Vreren," I murmured deep in my throat, earning a pleasant chuckle. "A little early, aren't you?"
She moaned, shaking her head at me. "With Lingrii waking every few hours, how could any but the likes of you sleep?" She pressed her snout to mine, intertwining our forward horns and mid-horns for an intimate moment, then forced her way out of my wings. Her own were already preened and stretched, her mane, a pale pink that was almost white, already in order.
I never mated my Vreren for her beauty; her wingspan was not more than twenty feet, her odd-colored mane - from which, along with the genes from my mother's unusually bright green mane, came the recessive genes that led to most of our aatoju having their own unique mane-shades - rather unimpressive in anything but its color; her eyes were slightly oversized and a bland shade of pale green. But my Vreren gave her hearts to me, and mine belonged to her without question, after a long time when the two of us would not have looked twice at each other without regret - after all, she was a logical scientist; I was a pilot infamous for being unconditionally reckless. Strangely enough, it was her stability and steadfast ways that made me love her so dearly; it was her inability to predict what I would do in an instant that made me so "aggravatingly irresistible".
I didn't know a single pair who was happier than the two of us were.
Or, by then, six recently joined by a seventh.
Fyvwiu was of course waiting for me. Like Vreren, he had the terrible habit of being an early riser. "Good evening, Father," he said, his dry tone suggesting that he hadn't thought I'd be waking at all. Fyvwiu was a mystery to me; he had a monotony to him that put his mother's steadfastness to utter shame, but the same love of unplanned flight I had enjoyed even in the times when I had tried my hand at engineering. "Sleep well?"
"As well as I could, what with Lingrii." I sighed, then chuckled. "In spite of what your mother might ever say, I hear her too well. I just let Vreren handle her. You know how much that terrible aatojuik hates me."
Fyvwiu laughed. "Lingrii's exactly like Klindas was at her age," he said, then groaned at the memory. "Grahk, that was a misery I'm glad not to face now! Bad enough Sevelde." He groaned again. "dyu'Grahk, that girl is impossible!" He laughed. "They're all bad, Father. Why'd you have to go and have daughters at all?"
"You and Brenjuum aren't any better for my health," I told him, my
tone serious but my words anything but. "dyu'fel'Grahk to you all! I'll never get you figured out, and Sevelde will do everything in her power to make sure I never even attempt to understand her. Klindas is so shy her shadow makes her jump if she stays still too long, and Brenjuum...! You'd think he thought with his talons for lack of anything between his horns! And now, Lingrii refuses to sleep when any Bayetai in half their head and worth a mane and tailblade would, calling every last seentikret after her... it's a wonder Vreren and I stand any of you."
"It's a wonder you and Vreren stand each other, Jirrell," an amused voice spoke behind us. "Much less any of us brats of yours."
"Indeed," another voice spoke up, chuckling. I turned, grinning equally from the welcome voices and familiar, beloved scents. "A punctual pilot without common pride in common sense; a female trahdarhk and permanently apprentice mrwiheiu; an engineer and apprentice trahdarhk - to his sister - without any self-control; a skittish mrwiheiu who's so small it's a wonder the very air doesn't tear her apart; and a time-disoriented aatojuik, born of the most hopelessly insane pilot and incessantly stubborn rock-skull of a scientist this poor world has ever seen?"
"Good to see you too, old geezer." I rubbed my horn against Lydyiuh's with as much affection as I could muster, half-awake as I was and without a thing in my stomachs. I hadn't even given time to fully preen my wings yet. His companion, a young, barely mature, starkly beautiful female with a long mane of strangely dark lavender that made her look far too much older than she truly was (although her natural scowl didn't help make her look any younger) rubbed her snout to mine as she had ever since she was Lingrii's age. Sevelde and I had always been inseparable, since the day she first looked upon me and simply stared with oversized, infant's eyes that even after years of hard effort to reach harder goals had never lost their golden glow, tainted with only the faintest of green hues that seemed to swirl with a life of their own. Sevelde had her mother's slightly oversized eyes, but unlike Vreren, who was plain where Sevelde was stark, the look made her stunning. Unfortunately for young males - a great deal of which met her through her elder and younger brothers - her only passion was for the honor of being the only female trahdarhk in known history. Trahdarhk literally translates to "protectors of tradition" - simply put, the trahdarhk are a select elite in wing and eye-hand-tail coordination, strength, agility, and intelligence chosen to learn traditional but otherwise obsolete hand-to-hand and weaponry skills. In simple terms, shocktroops on a world in peace. Most of the time, they were simply called "traditional artists", their agile routines seen more as a dance than a defense. Sevelde was unusual in that most females are more interested in the present and future than the tradition-laden past. No one publicly spoke against her becoming trahdarhk, and none now spoke against her ability as one of the greatest: she put her natural edge in feminine agility and size to use against masculine strength.
I loved Sevelde dearly, so dearly that I never cared that she never once called me "Father".
"Managed to get him up so early, Fyvwiu?" she asked, grinning. "I'm
surprised you got cloud-head here up at all." She poked at my arm with one of her talons. "I don't see how you and Brenjuum and Klindas can sleep so much. There's not a doubt in my mind where that lazy brother of mine got
his talent for sleeping through morning exercises."
"Or where you got yours for starting them at unearthly hours," I
retorted. "You don't let the sun rise even a microsecond earlier than you."
"It's not allowed," she replied, her voice almost prim. I had to chuckle, just listening to my warrior-girl acting void-headed. "We have that understanding, and I would appreciate it if we didn't need to discuss it."
"Are Klindas and Brenjuum awake?" I asked her.
She snorted. "Oh, Brenjuum better be awake, or he can forget sleeping in the morning! As for Klindas...." She nodded upward. "There's her flock there. And there's no way they could have two that small with wings like that."
Lydyiuh looked upward, his gray-tan mane falling back over his wide shoulders, where his impressive forty-foot span lay folded in a cloak-like fashion over his shoulders, a garment of power and prestige not usual to find in someone so earthly as a medical scientist. He'd been a friend of my father when they were young; he had streaks of glass-like hairs showing in his mane that no one was ever quite willing to mention. He had a rather difficult mate I had never had the honor - or stupidity - to be in the presence of for more than a few moments at a time and therefore never bothered to remember her name; she and my father had had too many differences to stand each other, so she refused to have anything to do with me. "She could be asleep up there, and no one would know it," he chuckled. "Klindas is a natural mrwiheiu. The winds are the same to her as the ground beneath our feet."
"Better," Sevelde corrected. "That girl should never come down."
Fyvwiu's expression darkened. "I'd like to see you try telling Hraivret that."
I scowled. "You needn't worry about him, boy."
"Hardly," he replied, glancing at me. "He'd never think of her with you, me, Sevelde, Mother... and especially Brenjuum." He chuckled, the dark mood passing over him quickly. Fyvwiu always hated dwelling on dark thoughts, even though more often than not he was the one to speak them aloud. "It's almost sweet to see him claw the daylights out of any who think a single compliment Klindas' way."
"Sweet and wrong," I reminded him, doing my best to appear stern. "No better than when Sevelde was her age, Fyvwiu."
He cringed slightly at the memory, turning slightly violet in the face.
"I was never so vicious as that."
"You were so much worse that I had to knock the sense into you,
because no one else would," Sevelde told him in a flat tone, but she was smiling almost wickedly. Her eyes with their swirling green motes sparkled with excitement. "Come on, fool, we've got to make ourselves scarce. Lydyiuh and Jirrell need to discuss... it." Fyvwiu smiled in response and, stopping short, he spread his wings and leaped into the air. Sevelde uttered a short growl of annoyance and hurried to follow; with her standing as an apprentice mrwiheiu - although, as Lydyiuh had pointed out, her stopping her training in that kept her from being anything more than that - she caught him easily just before he reached the gust level and, grabbing his arms, threw him upward in midair, losing altitude herself but at the same time catching him in the gust level, where he tumbled until he was able to get his wings above him again. Whatever he might have said about the indignity was thankfully lost to the winds.
Lydyiuh smiled at me. "They never change, do they, dearest?" The word didn't truly mean "dearest" - it was - is - a term of affection without exact translation that Lydyiuh often used for me.
I laughed. "Only when you least want them to," I replied. Then I changed the subject to what Sevelde had so kindly given us privacy to speak of. "So what is the news?"
Lydyiuh grinned. "The good news is that you're head pilot. The bad news is, Vreren has to go, too."
"Vreren?" I echoed. I could not believe my immense fortune. "What? Why?" I snorted a little. "And why, tell me, is that so bad?"
He shrugged a little. "The Council chose those to go. Seventy-one, total. And Vreren makes the one that goes over seventy. The bad part," he said, grinning even more, "is that there are seventy-two going."
"Seventy-three," I interrupted him even though the thought that had come to me prevented me from truly listening in the first place. "Lydyiuh, there's no way we can leave Lingrii behind. She's too young, and without Vreren, no one will sleep within ac'Blar. If we cannot bring Lingrii, neither
of us are going."
"That's why there are seventy-two," he assured me patiently. "Truly, I didn't see why five of you got to go and poor Vreren had to be left behind. I noticed, however, that there were no botanists. So I placed her name on the list for it, and no one asked any questions until it got to Ernrida." Ernrida - that was the name I never could remember. Lydyiuh's mate, Ernrida, hadn't liked my father all that much. With him gone, it befell me to bear her animosity with a smile. For some reason, however, it ended with me; ever since Sevelde became trahdarhk she acted as if my brood was hers rather than Vreren's. "The bad news part of it is that the little seentifekeso has to keep twenty-three others awake for all hours."
"I think they can put up with it," I laughed. "After all, Sevelde is used to it, and she'll keep the trahdarhk in line; Fyvwiu and I are well enough with it and that leaves us without pilots worth enough to complain about it; Klindas gets along well enough with her, and won't stand a word said against her-"
"Reminds me of her brothers that way," Lydyiuh remarked dryly.
"And goodness knows if Brenjuum so much as hears a whisper of complaint we'll have him at somebody else's throat. But I meant that without seriousness, friend. After all, with all of you aboard, it will only be sixteen verses six and an aatojuik - seven, including myself. With Sevelde and Brenjuum as two of the seven... well, I don't think there's much you need to worry about."
"Can you believe it, Lydyiuh?" I asked him, looking up into the darkness-tinted sky. "The homeworld. At last." I pointed upward, where a dim star glowed in the constellation known as Urtai'dur - the closest translation is "short blade". It was a vaguely triangular constellation that always pointed toward the northern pole, and could always be seen in the northern hemisphere, even this close to the equator.
"It was so changed, they kept dismissing the planet as the wrong one." Lydyiuh, too, was without words to describe the sensation of knowing, after ions, that, at last.... home. "The records seem to show it more to the south-western skies. Besides, it was two moons short, the axis and orbit all off...."
"... and the whole time, one problem had caused the other," I finished. "Collision of an asteroid threw the entire planet out of alignment. Probably shed the moons."
"I don't need the specifics, boy," Lydyiuh chuckled. "Goodness knows I was there, too, when they explained the all of it."
"I just can't believe that it was found... now." I continued to stare at the dull, unextraordinary star that shown like so many, yet would now never be lost again. "In this lifetime of all lifetimes, at last... home."
"A little awe-struck, dearest?" he laughed.
"Aren't you?" I returned. "Can you believe that you're alive to see this day?"
"We're leaving just before nightfall's end," he said. "And no, it is too
difficult to believe for me to trust in it just yet." His tone turned dark. "My one worry is of the orba themselves. If we meet them. What will they think - if they're even there?"
"What do you mean, if they're there?" I asked, astounded. "They were a peaceful, advanced, shape-shifting race. That's how we evolved so quickly, after all. How could you suggest they'd kill each other off?"
"A collision of that sort can lead to vast disaster, Jirrell," he said darkly. "And advancement didn't stop many of our ancestors from never seeing the light of morning of Firstday. And just because they were peaceful doesn't mean the rest of the universe is. Goodness knows it isn't, what with brain-sucking Yeerks and cannibal vacuum-mouthed Taxxons and meddling, single-minded Andalites and whatever-else there might be plaguing space out there. Besides, who's to say the records are right, we're wrong, and we're headed a billion miles out of our way for nothing?"
I shook my head, smiling faintly, almost oblivious of Lydyiuh's rhetorical question. Lydyiuh might be a brilliant doctor, but he has the same biases about other life as almost everyone has. I've always had a difficulty classifying anything in groups - only individuals matter, to me. Goodness knows, Bayetajin are as different as... well, Hraivret (a haughty, close- minded politician without a wit worth half his wingspan, much less his length of mane - who was unfortunately as much a shoe-in for this mission as Lydyiuh and I put together) and Lydyiuh (an open-minded, down-to-earth medical scientist with more than enough gifts to make even his forty-foot span and glass-streaking, nearly body-length mane seem paltry compared to his true worth). "I admit, the Taxxons are rather single-minded about food, and the Andalites are somewhat self-righteous, but they mean well enough. But 'Yeerks' are only myth. And there is no talking against the shek."
Lydyiuh dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. "The shek are different. They are robots, not flesh. And no, I'm not saying Bayetai are near perfect. But at least we're not out there killing each other."
"Feelings are somewhat inhibiting in that way," I agreed tonelessly. "Feelings" has a double-meaning for Bayetajin; on one talon, it means the same as it does for any other race - emotions, or hunches. But on another one, we all have "a Feeling" for those related most immediately to us - our parents, siblings, aatoju, and deva-noju, although some more sensitive Bayetajin also feel breeiv - cousins, nephews, and nieces, sometimes even their aatoju. But that is rare. These "Feelings" mean one thing - we know when they die. There is no medical explanation for feeling a family member's death, and no limit to the distance it can be felt over - at least, none that has been found. All that is known is that when a family member dies... there is pain. Mostly pain, not just emotionally but physically as well. One can't breathe, can't think past the pain, can't even stand. It's been known for weaker Bayetajin to die from Feelings - a rather unfair way to die, I think, what with the knowledge of a loved one dying just before one dies as well. Not a good way to start oblivion, but I suppose it doesn't matter there. "But everyone has their reasons for what may be," I ended the subject.
Lydyiuh shook his head at me. "Ah, you're ever-present 'To each their own' philosophy, pilot?"
"It hasn't failed me, that I remember," I replied with a careless grin, the one I was always told makes me look dashing. I don't know - I think it
made my face look lopsided and my eyes like slivers of crugraht.
Everyone but Vreren liked it, though - she always groaned when I grinned like that, and shook her head - so I used it a lot.
Lydyiuh shook his head and groaned, just as Vreren would have if it was she I was talking to. "You are hopeless, has anyone told you that?"
"Every time they call me by name," I said, being quite literal.
I didn't know then why my name meant "hopeless". Many thought it was for my habit of being spontaneous and individual, for setting precedents and not looking to the traditional past as a guide to living, as Bayetajin tend to do, but to the ever-changing present and always unpredictable future. It was especially unusual that a male would choose such a thing. They thought it was for the hopelessness of ever making me just another handsome - although I frown to admit that -, if somewhat sturdy, Bayetajin.
CHAPTER 2
Carrier vessels of the small fleet we kept - "we" being Bayetai and the few shek that populated this planet even before our ancestors came - all looked capable of flapping their wings. We only had a small fleet because all they were used for before this day I was living was to scout the atmosphere and moons for intruders that never came. They appear, in terms the human race - which I still was oblivious of - would understand, like a cross between a dragon and a paper airplane.
As I always did before boarding any vessel, I admired the beauty of it. The one I'd be flying was a carrier ship, as they were officially known as, but most called them warships because they are heavily armed. Long, backswept wings are the predominant trait, under which are tucked the main zero-space engines. Very aerodynamic and sleek for its more-often-than-not atmospheric flights, and impressive to just look at: a semi-triangular bridge forward on a tapered "neck" section rigged with at least three airlocks set on trigger switches to shut at the slightest hint of a breech; a somewhat tubular mid-section, and a Dracon shredder on a long "tail" that sweeps over the main section and bridge like a gigantic Andalite's tail. The "tail" is a piece of ingenuous technology the shek provided us with, and is actually four Dracon shredders layered one upon another, that if the one in function is blasted off or ruined - for it is very common in battle to aim at the weapons, just as much at the engines and the core - there are three back-ups, already primed and ready to take its place. The broken one will just fall away if it is damaged beyond use, and can be retrieved later if necessary. The main normal-space engines look very much like lesser wings, arching up and over to curl into an elliptical half-"circle", while the small, tunnel-space ones are farther forward and look like half-spheres, arranged in a semi-circle. It greatly resembles, without tunnel-space configurations and unusual Dracon shredder, a present-day Yeerk bladeship, but our carrier ships looked far more like dragons than battle axes, thanks to the curvature of the "wings". On board were some of the more common ships - small, two-person crafts that look like little more than quicksilver pods, with the same "melted-wing" type engines for normal-space as the larger ones and the wing-like main Z-space engines, but no "bowl" engines, being too small to equip for tunnel-space. I was as much an expert at both vessels, beaten in knowledge only by shek, who, unlike me, cannot forget. The key to it was that I had been a fully-trained engineer before I turned pilot. I know how every last system on those vessels works. I improved on them by tinkering on my own, and those changes that proved useful I filed for engineers-by-trade to implement as they wanted to. As far our intraplanetary civilization was concerned, I'm afraid I must admit to you that I was a hero. There are no wars on our planet - no religion, although prayer is heard of, but not to anything in particular except, perhaps, ancestors - no murder - no civilly-created chaos that has caused death. After evolving for ions with Feelings, we'd learned to get along, or pay the price by killing each other off entirely for vengeance.
But I have always believed that this was actually a flaw, not a gift. Because my people have avoided all these things, when we meet races with them, most just dismiss them as savages. Since all races we've met are such, it is easy for everyone to dismiss all other races the same way. I think, sometimes, that it is simply our nature to despise other races. Only one race we have never met - but were going to, I was sure of it, even if Lydyiuh was too skeptical - is there no such dismissal: the orba. Our parent-race.
You see, we evolved from a shape-shifting race known only as the orba. From ancient texts and pictures they were thought to have been much like ourselves, but a third the size, with three horns, not four - that is to say, they had no small forward horn on the end of their snouts, and an actual horn rather than a ridge - and completely without blades - as the sharp, serrated ridges made of bone that protrude from our elbows and knees, as well as a long, heavy, solid bone at the end of our tails, like a sharpened club crossed with a gigantic sword, are called. Bayetai, unlike our ancestors, also have incredibly long, almost perfectly straight talons from our fingers and toes. Because they had overcome most diseases and had outlived their natural predators, the population grew so much that nearly half the population formed a mass exodus, traveling via tunnel-space to another planet in another solar system. However, their knowledge of the seemingly inhabitable planet was flawed - mostly through the unknown bioelectrical field of the planet that disrupted the molecular integrity of any who attempted to shapeshift, killed off most of the foodstuffs they brought with them, and rendered much of their technology useless. Nearly three-quarters of them died; two-thirds of those that died did so because many ships crash-landed, their systems shut down from the bioelectrical field. For the vastly different gravity they grew taller and thinner, their bones growing very hollow but more dense, and the lack of (useful) technology led to more primal adaptations, including the tail blade for protection against predators - actually, the tail blade began simply by merging the last few vertebrae of the tail, while the skin simply stopped growing there - and the other blades for harvesting food. These changes were helped along through careful use of the shifting ability, which was lost within only a few generations, thanks to the cursed field of the planet - our planet, the one we share with the shek. That is why the strongest Bayetajin derogative, seentikefso, is also the word for that field. We are Bayetai now - "Wanderers"; "Nomads", if translated very loosely. Either that, or "The Lost".
But now, astronomers had discovered, at long last, the location of our original planet, a search that has been fruitless for hundreds of generations. It had changed, too, just as we had - before it had been disregarded as a different world because the axis and orbit and rotation were off and it had two too few moons, and that there were too few planets in the system, but through mathematical calculations, it was discovered that the latter fact had led to all the rest; an asteroid had collided with the planet, throwing off all other orbits, causing two of the moons to collide and set a chain reaction on the planet itself, tilting it at a different angle and speeding its rotation even as the planet lost the capability to support life in any regions but a thin, impossibly deep ravine that split open at its equator.
So now, it was certain that the planet - a small, unassuming planet
that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere - was truly home, it was up to me, Jirrell, the best pilot and father of as close to a military leader as the Bayetai could claim, to lead a convoy to return, to see, at last, after so many eons..... the orba.
*
There were three vessels, each bearing twenty-four of the greatest minds, traditional warriors, pilots, and mrwiheiu. (Mrwiheiu, by the way, are 'wing-flyers' - those that show unusual (and sometimes, almost unnatural) talent at flying, not as pilots, but with their own wings. Klindas, being almost half the size of a normal Bayetajin her age but with wings of only slightly stunted span, was one of those with us, as I had no doubt she would be.) The trip was, surprisingly, only six days - a little under an Earthen month - by tunnel-space.
Tunnel-space, if you've never heard of it, is another knowledge salvaged mostly through the efforts of the shek. It is a complicated technology that involves "skimming" a ship through the border between space and time, like a flat-sided rock skipping over the barrier of air and water. Like rocks skipping over water, the slightest imperfection or wrong angle means falling under the surface, or, in the case of tunnel-space, "falling" back into z-space. Normal space is too dense for the transition to occur; one needs the pure emptiness of anti-space to reach tunnel-space.
But enough of that. I could go on for days if I continue. And, as I said, by traveling via tunnel-space, it only took six to reach.... home.
I personally thought we should meet our ancestors with dignity, but I had long ago been outvoted; when we broke the thicker atmosphere of our former homeworld, we set off explosions in the atmosphere, like fireworks; mrwiheiu tried aerial aerobatics, but found it difficult to fly at all. I piloted with a grimace on my face, muttering under my breath. "Stupidity, all of this," I swore. "Complete and utter stupidity. Haven't we any dignity as a race? Haven't we a shred of self-respect?"
Fyvwiu smiled briefly as he compensated for a particularly steep corkscrew maneuver I'd thrown the ship into. "After all we've lost, we'd better have something to show the ancestors," he answered my rhetoric. "Even if it is rather silly."
Still, it was good, flying with my elder son. True, it was more natural for me to fly without a co-pilot when I took off on my own craziness, but with the carriers it was always best to have a co-pilot. I could have handled it well enough on my own, but Fyvwiu deserved some time to prove his worthiness on this mission. And he was, more than I had originally thought he would, by keeping pace easily with my off-the-cuff performance in the thick air. It slowed the ship considerably, but it wasn't anything a little extra compensation had any trouble with.
Finally, at last, I heard Hraivret's usually unwelcome voice as he strode onto the bridge. "Without the damned field, sensors are almost useless," he told us, although we could tell quite easily from the steady stream of curses coming from the young Bayetajin who was stationed to monitor sensors. "We can tell, however, that a great deal of lifeforms are starting to congregate below. Prepare to land within a safe distance."
"At last," I said.
"Is there a problem, pilot?" Hraivret asked in that irritating way of his.
"Just my pride," I replied, shrugging my wings slightly. "Preparing to land and sending landing signal to other vessels. We'll be on the ground before you can find the airlock."
"Amusing, Jirrell," Hraivret said, not sounding amused at all.
"He tries," Fyvwiu offered.
CHAPTER 3
I stood behind Hraivret, with Fyvwiu to my left, so that we could accept whatever the orba wished to say of our flight. It had taken forever to find a place that the three ships could settle together; but we had found one, and now were getting ready to exit. Diplomatic to a fault when dealing on a short-term basis, Hraivret was an all-purpose person for beginning any discussion, then fading into the woodwork; that was why it was he who broke the tertiary airlock of the carrier while the other two vessels were under strict orders that absolutely no one was to disembark. The lack of the bioelectrical field foiled the inner-planetary sensors - after all, without a need to land on a planet other than our own, why grid the sensors to scan without compensating for the cursed field? - but the number of lifeforms outside, and the organized distribution of them, was encouraging. If Bayetai were adapted to sweat upon becoming agitated, I would have been sweating a great deal. My stomachs were upon themselves, I was so queasy with unease. I set my jaw and swallowed heavily. Only the look of utter terror on Fyvwiu's paled face eased my own terror within. What would the orba think of us? That was on my mind more than anything else. Here we were, the descendants of those they'd probably given up on ever seeing again. It never crossed my mind that they might have forgotten those that left generations upon generations ago. More to the point and obvious enough to me now, it also never occurred to me that we had ever made any mistake. All I cared about was: what would their reaction to us be?
Hraivret stepped through the airlock when it finally opened, in spite of the terrible glare that greeted us; the sun was so much brighter here! I shaded my eyes, before realizing that it'd look stupid of me to do so, so I weathered the pain in the back of my eyes until my third eyelid darkened enough for the pain to ease, and for my vision to clear.
Hraivret suddenly gave a loud cry, stepping back so that he nearly crashed into me. "Seentifesco!" he hissed, horrified. My eyes adjusted to the glare but I myself shocked at the sound of Hraivret swearing - as a rule, he didn't - I looked out.
And nearly swore myself.
They were half the height of a Bayetajin, and, though anything but fat, stocky to slender did not compare the difference between the build of the short creatures to a Bayetajin. But from there and the symmetrical likeness, any likeness to Bayetai - or orba - ceased. Many had only two horns, although some had three, but none even resembled the horns of an orba - they all raked forward like miniature tail blades, rather than backwards with a split at the end, and all were lined up in a row, every one of them the same length as the rest of them. Rather than five fingers and toes like orba were supposed to or three of each like Bayetai, they had four. Their skins were unnaturally dark, almost black. Spines raked from the end of their tails, which had no tailblades at all - just the various spikes. Their heads were bald of any resemblance to the manes that Bayetai have always felt so proud of - they appeared completely hairless, in fact - and showed no signs whatsoever of ever having wings. But most frightening were the blades they did have - long, hideous, singular blades raked from not only the elbows and knees, but wrists and ankles as well. Their talons were not worthy of being called stubs - short, curved things that looked very incapable of protecting the creatures from predators. They were a ragged-looking bunch, most scarred and nearly all of them dirty, as if they were in the middle of a battlefield. That was the most frightening thing about them - the scars. The evidence of violence. Violence that appeared to have been done to themselves, by themselves.
Most frightening, that is, after their eyes. Frightened, confused, half-blind....
And the look to them....
These... creatures.... were stupid.
Relatively speaking, to ourselves. Intelligent enough to be sentient, yes, but not nearly close to our level.
Fyvwiu leaned closer to me; he, too, was stricken at the sight of the things that surrounded the ship. "Where are the orba?" he whispered, his voice sounding as if he'd been physically hurt.
I didn't put into words how much I was at a loss as well. What were these... things?
Hraivret let out a moan, almost falling into my arms but catching himself. "The collision!" he breathed. Suddenly he threw a hand at the crowd of aliens, who backed away in surprise at the sudden movement. "This is all that remains of our ancestors!" he howled.
One of the three-horned ones, somewhat smaller than the average-size of the creatures, bobbed their head a bit. It took a tentative step forward, away from its kind, and toward the loading ramp. Hraivret backed farther into the ship as the rest of the creatures backed away as well, leaving the little, pathetic but dangerous-looking thing very much alone. "Speak, you?" it murmured. Its accent was as severe and feral as the creature looked, but that it was understandable at all was impossible. After so much time... their language was still recognizable to ours? Or was it the experimental translator the shek had implanted in my head that I heard?
Hraivret, however, wasn't interested in miracles, if there were any. He was interested in his own safety. He'd come to deal with far-advanced ancestors, not Neanderthal de-evolutional byproducts of an ancient disaster. "Get it away!" he squealed.
"Nahar!" I snapped at him. That word - the closest concept a human would understand of that word being, "Stop everything or I'll make you severely regret it!" - didn't seem to have been lost, or perhaps it was just the unmistakable tone of my voice; the aliens drew even farther back. The small, three-horned one stood its ground, though it was shaking, visibly frightened and perhaps too much so to run away. I pulled Hraivret bodily back into the ship, shoving him into Fyvwiu's arms, and stepped forward myself. The bravest of the aliens cocked its head a bit to the side, confused and no doubt frightened, considering I was even taller than Hraivret. Very noticeably taller. I swallowed, then said as slowly as I could, "My name is Jirrell. You are....?"
It cocked its head farther to the side, then straightened it and hit its unplated chest with one malformed fist. "I Sel Clemen!" it said. It bobbed its head, as it had before stepping forward, then added in a voice I could only describe as hesitant, "What, you?" It jabbed a short, muscular finger at me.
I smiled shakily, squinting my eyes and raising my eye ridges to soften my expression as much as I could. After five of my own, it was easy to see that talking to this creature was very much like speaking to a very young aatojuik who only understands perhaps twenty to fifty words, and speaks only ten. I pointed to myself, saying, "We are Bayetai." I pointed to it. "You?"
"Bayetai, you?" I nodded. It paused, then mimicked the nod. "Hork-Bajir," Sel Clemen said at last, spreading its arms wide, "we are."
"Hork-Bajir?" I looked up, startled, only to find myself, seeing, to my horror, the other two ships with their loading ramps down even though they'd had the strictest order to stay aboard and air-tight. Right then, the forty-eight Bayetai from the other two vessels were pouring out into the crowd of Hork-Bajir. A cry of what could only be alarm spread through the group of aliens faster than my people did, nearly drowning out the sound of the voice of Lydyiuh as he pondered their name. "Of course! 'Remainders'!" he translated the usage of the still-common - but mangled - language. Orakylblajra meant something of the nature of "those left behind". Trust Lydyiuh to understand something so... abused. "They are what became of the orba." He didn't sound very happy about being proven right. I didn't blame him.
A young engineer I didn't know snarled wordlessly, flaring out their small, fifteen-foot wingspan. The Hork-Bajir backed away, startled; Hraivret and I had come out into the open with our wings folded over our shoulders like capes, and suddenly one of us...
I was startled when I came upon an accurate description of what we must have looked like to the Hork-Bajir - elongated giants with too few digits and not enough blades and malformed tails, not to mention thick growths of hair at the top of our heads and horns that were all wrong and talons more like tree branches than claws. And now we had wings.
A Hork-Bajir let out a hiss. "Fhath!" it screeched. Four Hork-Bajir simply bolted, bounding away on their back-turned knees. The one next to the one who swore - the tone, no matter who used it, was unmistakable - leaped at the engineer.
CHAPTER 4
"They're attacking!" a pilot from another vessel yelled, baring his teeth in alarm. A doctor screamed, unfolded his nearly thirty-span wings, and tried to get above the group, to fly to safety, but the gravity was too heavy; he couldn't even lift off. He screamed again in blind panic.
"No!" I cried, but it was too late. I watched hopelessly as the uneasy understanding I'd achieved with Sel Clemen fell apart instantly; half the Hork-Bajir was running, the other half was charging, while the one called Sel Clemen looked trapped in between. Behind me, I heard Hraivret squeal in terror. Mrwiheiu from the other ships were taking off; soldiers of the traditional arts were jumping at the chance to put their previously useless talents with their talons and teeth to use; various engineers and scientists were scattering. I tried to reach out and grab Sel Clemen to pull it out of possible harm's way when I was pushed from behind by an eager trahdarhk. I bent over double, and the soldier leaped over my back, his talons barely missing my horns. Hraivret, blind with panic, ran out into the fray, others right after him. Before I had time to regain my sense of balance, seventy-one Bayetai were towering over fierce little Hork-Bajir that, it was obvious to see, outnumbered us near three to one, and, in spite of the patheticness of their claws, knew more than well enough how to use their arm- and leg-blades, even their tails, for defense and death. "No - stop!" I shouted, but my voice was lost in the chaos. I set my jaw in frustration. I was angered to suddenly see a familiar face seeming to enjoy himself. I leaped off the ramp to the ground, shoving Sel Clemen toward it and relative safety, and pushed another Hork-Bajir out of my way to grab the familiar person. "Brenjuum!" I snarled. He looked at me in shock, his surprise at the venom of my voice making him forget anything else. "What in the name of the orba do you think you're doing, boy?"
The Hork-Bajir I had shoved suddenly stood straight; I saw the upward movement from the corner of my eye. "What you do?" it asked, as if it had completely forgotten the battle that raged. "He yours! You attack us, not selves." I would not realize the insightfulness of that confused remark until much later.
Brenjuum stared, wide-eyed with guilt and surprise, at me, his face suddenly darkening. "Father!" he muttered.
"What do you think you're doing?" I demanded again, refusing to let him go.
"But - Wahldrek - they attacked-"
"They panicked," I hissed at my pale-maned third-born. "Which is exactly what you're doing! Snap out of it, boy!"
The Hork-Bajir I'd pushed shoved one of its own that went to lunge at me, which earned it a glare until it shouted, "Wrong!" and jabbed a finger at me. "Good. Not know."
The new Hork-Bajir stopped as well. "Not know? Not know what wrong?"
"Not know not hurt. Not know friend."
"Friend? Flying monster from Father Deep friend?"
"Father, he. Monster have no father but Father Deep. Not monster!"
The second one looked up at me, squinting. It rubbed the back of one hand against one of its two horns. "You, not monster of Father Deep? You Father?"
Things were quieting down. At the simple mention of "Father Deep" loud enough to be overheard, the battle fever was dying out. "Father Deep", then "Orba", echoed their way through the crowd. Stricken-looking Hork-Bajir were a strange contrast to the intermittent confused or panicked Bayetai sticking up from among them.
I shook my head, smiling, and let Brenjuum go. "No, we are not-"
"From Mother Sky!" a Hork-Bajir shouted. "Monsters like rain! Not of Father Deep! Monsters no fly!"
"Mother Sky no have monsters!" another called out.
"Not truth! Monsters of Father Deep, with wings!" a third screamed.
"Monsters no fly!" One near the first agreed loudly with their companion.
"Not monsters," Sel Clemen finished for me, resting a shy hand on my lower arm. When I didn't flinch or respond in any way, the hand remained. "No, then what?" It frowned, taking the hand away. "You big. Too big. No monster look as Hork-Bajir, but you too big for Hork-Bajir And wings - that wrong. And fur, like chadoo - that wrong." It waved its hand along its head, as if to soften down a non-existent mane. "And talon, wrong.." It poked a talon at my own. "And... tail. Wrong." It bared its teeth a little. "What, you?" it asked again, staring upward toward my face with its relatively useless eyes. "You not Hork-Bajir. You wrong. You of Mother Sky, or Father Deep, or... of Yeerk?"
"We... we were of orba," Brenjuum said. He looked up at me, and I nodded once: let him explain it. "Once, long ago. We're not of any of those things. We were of orba."
Another Hork-Bajir nodded in understanding. "Not monster," it echoed in its overly simplistic way. It slapped its chest, then nudged the Hork-Bajir next to it. "Monsters only of Father Deep. Not Yeerks - Yeerks only Gedd, and Hork-Bajir. Not monster-like non-monster." It nudged the Bayetajin to its other side, who looked down in a horrified shock that the creature would touch him. "What name have you, tall one?"
"Get away from me!" the Bayetajin snarled, stepping away from the Hork-Bajir and raising his tailblade in a defensive manner. Bayetai know enough to give each other room for their wings and tailblades, but not so for Hork-Bajir - they crowded close together, leaving only room for elbows, knees, and the like. That was why, when the Bayetajin bumped into two other Hork-Bajir, who growled in annoyance but made no move against him, the Bayetajin was startled, and whirled around to face the obstacles.
I barely saw it, but it was unmistakable what happened next; one moment the Hork-Bajir who had figured out the connection between our people was trying to explain it to its companion and a small, infantile Hork-Bajir, and the next it had no head. The quarters were much, much too close for Bayetai to move too quickly, especially with their tailblades raised half-way. For a Bayetajin, it would have meant a scar across the stomach plates, but for a Hork-Bajir... it meant no head.
The Hork-Bajir's companion screamed, as did the others around them. A handful of Hork-Bajir jumped at the inadvertent killer, snarling, many screaming "Yeerk!"; a Bayetajin beside him went to his defense. I tried to be heard, to be understood, but it was of no use; there was no stopping the chaos now. One of the Hork-Bajir's own was dead. I knew better than I cared to admit that if it had been a Bayetajin to fall, it would have been no different. The only hope was to get to safety until things sorted themselves out.
The one called Sel Clemen seemed to have come to the same
conclusion, but had no idea what to do about it. Turning to me, the odd, squat creature wore an expression that could only be described as grim. "Go," it breathed. "Only chance. Must go. No-monsters, no-Hork-Bajir must go."
My expression mirrored its own. I pushed Brenjuum behind me. "Find your brother and sisters," I snapped. "Get them aboard. Now!" Brenjuum hurried to obey. I then gripped Sel Clemen's arm. "I am sorry," I said, not knowing what else could be done.
The Hork-Bajir nodded sadly. "Know. Go." It gripped my arm as well. It was amazingly strong. "Go, too. Help. Fly among Mother Sky's flowers with no-Yeerks. Find Andalite. Get help."
With that, it bounded on board my vessel with a pair of Bayetai trying to retreat. One tried to remove the Hork-Bajir, but I waved them off. "Let them be!" I ordered them. Three Hork-Bajir leaped easily over my head onto the sides of the vessel, scrabbling for purchase, tearing at the skin. I leaped into the chaos, my eyes scanning around me in desperation. I completely ignored the various blades that cut into my thick skin. Where were they, where were they, where were....
"Jirrell! Father! Help me!"
The squeal could only be Klindas, my mrwiheiu daughter. But she was nowhere near me; I couldn't even catch a whiff of her scent. "Klindas!" I called out. A Hork-Bajir took a particularly vicious swipe at my neck, but at the same moment I tripped, and the creature came away with nothing more than a tuft of eight-foot-long gray hair. I twisted, trying to keep my balance, but all I ended up doing was smashing the side of my head against a rock, rather than breaking my jaw on it.
"Klindas!" a voice similar to my own echoed. I stood, dazed, but still
I saw out of the corner of my eye a flash of a familiar but unusually pale, brassy mane. A Hork-Bajir fell away from a young pink-maned female that was no taller than the average Hork-Bajir. With her wings folded as they were, I found myself without surprise that I had not been able to see Klindas; of us all, she was the best concealed among us. "Come on!"
I was relieved beyond words as I waved for them to come back to the vessel, in spite of the awful ache in my head. "Fyvwiu! Here!" I shouted as loudly as I could. I saw Vreren rush passed with Lingrii tucked beneath her chest, her sides shielded with her wings, as she ran for the ship bent half-way over to provide Lingrii the most protection possible. I saw Brenjuum trying to force his way into a particularly tight knot of Hork-Bajir with no success, when two of them fell away, and a nearly-grown female with a mane of an oddly dark lavender color burst out. She grabbed hold of her brother's hand and began rushing him toward the ship. I hurried to intercept them. "Good to see you're all right, Sevelde," I said, forcing a dry tone into my voice.
"They hadn't a chance against me," Sevelde replied grimly. "I'm not
the only female trahdarhk to die like this." She gritted her teeth as a Hork-Bajir gauged her arm, but did not return the favor. "I just hope we have a chance against them."
I could hardly come to terms with what was going on... Bayetai, being brought down by Hork-Bajir fighting like pack animals over an accident!
The three of us leapt over the body of a Bayetajin I didn't pause to identify. I could only imagine what was going on my world... when these deaths were felt.... would they be felt, over such a distance?
The Hork-Bajir had all quickly figured out that we were mostly trying to retreat, so they went after the ships with a renewed fury. The only word I heard from them now was the same one, over and over - the howling, hideous cry of "Yeerk! Yeerk!" I saw Sel Clemen on the boarding ramp of my ship, waving to any Hork-Bajir that would come. Three did. Another tried, but a Bayetajin grabbed it and tossed it back into the crowd as they leaped to safety, thinking only of themself.
Then, in front of me, a body I almost didn't see. It was small and bawling over the body of a Hork-Bajir who was trying desperately to hold the contents of its gut within itself. Looking up at the approaching trio of Bayetai with panicked eyes, the injured one hissed, swiping at me. The swift movement caused them to lose their grip, and entrails burst everywhere. The little one screamed in agony. The look on Sel Clemen's face needed no translation; I swept the aatojuik up in one arm without breaking my stride for but an instant. Using a convenient rock as a ramp, I ran up it and leaped into the air, spreading my wings. Sevelde, apprentice mrwiheiu, was right behind me; Brenjuum swiped at a Hork-Bajir, slicing off a limb, and knocked it down to get a clear path to the loading ramp.
My next realization stabbed into my soul, but I knew there was no choice. "Start the sub-engines!" I shouted at a Bayetajin in the doorway. I recognized her as a fellow pilot. She was missing an arm from the elbow down and had a terrible gash all the way down the right side of her face, the eye being only a smear rather than an orb; she bled everywhere, making everything by the entranceway slippery. I landed just before the loading ramp so I wouldn't fall.
She blinked her remaining eye. "But the others- the heat -"
I fought back the urge to scream in agony at my helplessness over the consequences. "Do it!"
"We can't-"
"Do it!" I shouted again. "Or we'll all die!"
The pilot staggered, shaking her head, then suddenly pitched forward
without a sound. Brenjuum raced aboard, Sevelde at his heels. I was having trouble with the aatojuik, but not the Hork-Bajir, not anymore; one look at the struggling juvenile and rage boiled in their half-blind eyes, but they backed away rather than attacked. For that I was grateful as I leaped onto the boarding ramp. Shutting my eyes against the empty ache that filled me, I kicked the dead, or at least mortally wounded, pilot off the ramp and punched the control to shut the door just as a shadow passed over us all, and the ship was rocked by the unmistakable pounding of shipboard weaponsfire.
Now things had gone from bad to worse.
Now, not only would I have to deal with what I had to do, not only were the Hork-Bajir taking my vessel apart by the seams. Now not only did I have to appear completely in control when I was on the edge of exhaustion from multiple lacerations and a mildly severe concussion. But now...
Now, someone was shooting at us.
CHAPTER 5
The door hissed, then shut with a dull thud. Now there was no turning back; I had just sentenced most of my people to death. The ship rocked again from the weapons of the vessel I had not seen.
Needless to say, I wasn't in the best of moods.
Blood was like a carpet for a bodylength in each direction from the doorway, as if the ship itself were bleeding. In a way, it was, considering what I'd seen the Hork-Bajir doing to it.
Less than half our number, but more than a quarter, was squeezed aboard, at my best estimate. No less than twenty, no more than fifty. It was hard to tell, with two dozen or more Hork-Bajir squeezed in every corner, distracting me. I put the aatojuik down, and it ran to a familiar-smelling figure. "Sel Clemen," I sighed as I tried to bully my way to the pilot's station. "How many are there?"
The Hork-Bajir looked around. "Know not," he said grimly. "But not good."
"No," I agreed.
"Jirrell!" Vreren rushed to my side; her almost white, pink-tinted mane was slick with blood that didn't appear to be her own, her arms and legs were covered in scratches of various degrees, and her wings were slit and shredded in countless places, but Lingrii, still held protectively in her arms, appeared unhurt. "I'm glad you're all right."
I rubbed my snout to hers briefly. "Do we have a crew here?"
"We've mostly trahdarhk," she said. She hugged Lingrii even closer. "Malashii, what are we going to do? We can't leave the others here."
"We can," I said darkly. I shoved even more viciously through the crowd toward my station. "Get those engines on!" I shouted. "They're dead, or as good as it," I told her as best I could, what with my soul and stomachs and throat rebelling at every opportunity. "Can't you feel someone firing on us? We have to get out of here!" As if to punctuate my words, the ship shuddered yet again.
"You wouldn't leave us behind," she snapped at me, teeth bared. "I saw you go after Sevelde and Brenjuum. I noticed that your family is here, Jirrell!"
"Not now, Vreren," I muttered darkly in reply. "We can grieve later." I nearly threw a two-horned Hork-Bajir sitting in the pilot's chair across the bridge. Fyvwiu, looking paler than he had any right to but composed in spite of his multiple lacerations, slipped easily into the empty co-pilot's seat. "All useless baggage off the bridge, now!" I snarled over the din. Sevelde hurried up beside me, eyes flashing at the news of my order of mass murder, but saw my own expression left no room for anything but helping to alternately usher and bully the Hork-Bajir off the bridge. "Get the medicals on the injuries," I muttered under my breath, not really caring if any heard me.
"You're making a mistake."
I glanced up to see Lydyiuh, his left arm looking broken and his right knee almost fountaining blood, left horn broken in half and gray-tan mane half ripped out of his skull, glaring down at me. I had never seen a more welcome sight; I will never be able to put into words how glad I was to see that he'd gotten aboard. "We can't leave those people behind," he said. "The other ships are useless. The Hork-Bajir tore the third ship apart. The second has been destroyed by our attackers."
"This one will be no better off if we don't get into the air," I snapped, knowing that any arguments I listened to would only change my mind, and I couldn't do that. No matter how badly it sat with me, no matter that this tragedy of errors would live with me forever - no matter how wrong this felt, I knew in my hearts as well as my head that there was absolutely no other way. "We can't wait for them," I said quietly, punching in the priming sequence. "I'm sorry, but if any of us are to get out of this alive, some are going to have to die."
"There has to be some other way!" Lydyiuh cried, then snapped his mouth shut as the engines came on with a tell-tale hum. The Hork-Bajir in the open corridor fell silent. Lydyiuh shuddered in horror, but said nothing. Suddenly he turned violently away, moving as far from me as he could without another word, his trail of blood mixing with that already shed. I didn't blame him.
I could barely stand the pain in my chest as I forced the vessel to lift off, in spite of damage the Hork-Bajir had done with their pitiful, but powerful, talons and hideous blades. I could barely force out of my mind the smell of charred meat that would not come through the air-tight seals of the carrier vessel - or, at least, what I hoped were still air-tight seals, considering the Hork-Bajir had managed to slice the "tail" completely off, leaving us without the ability to fire back on our attackers - and the silent cries of Bayetai and Hork-Bajir alike that were incinerated as my vessel lifted off, with what I would later know to be thirty-three Bayetai and forty-six Hork-Bajir, half of the latter which had run for cover, three-quarters of which were more than willing to kill the Bayetai.
And the aatojuik I'd saved? It hung onto Sel Clemen as if for dear life. Sel Clemen - a male, I later learned - looked drained. "My poor, poor Nia," he murmured, over and over, holding the aatojuik close. "My poor, poor Nia."
Thirty-three Bayetajin, battered and most badly injured: three doctors excluding Lydyiuh, three engineers, seven pilots of which only I and Fyvwiu were fully trained, fourteen trahdarhk - in fact, all but two of those who had come - and four scientists of various fields, plus my little Lingrii, totaling nineteen males, thirteen females, and one female aatojuik: forty-six Hork-Bajir, totaling fourteen males, twenty females, and twelve aatoju, six of each sex, none with any particular skills but getting in the way, although a few showed promise as aids to the few doctors we had, helping them where they could. Their stubby talons had more delicacy to them than they appeared to.
Never had a carrier vessel been so overcrowded or so crippled, much less with seventy-nine less compatible passengers, and lucky enough to actually escape whomever was attacking. We guessed that it was a Hork-Bajir vessel, protecting its people. (What fools we were.) Fortunately, we were able to ease things by sending out the pilots and any with any flight experience in the smaller, personal vessels, taking with them the worst injured. In that way, we lost all our medical crew, all the pilots but Fyvwiu and myself, who were needed to pilot the warship, four traditional artist, and seventeen Hork-Bajir in twelve smaller ships. That left only fifty-seven passengers on the still over-crowded vessel that reeked of the blood that covered the floor so completely there were few places left to step without it. The remaining twenty-one Bayetai and thirty-four Hork-Bajir were forced to watch as the smaller vessels went into Z-space while we were forced to crawl along, too heavily damaged to attempt Z-space and therefore unable to even approach tunnel-space. Although things were already looking rather dire, my normal optimism had died with those I'd killed in ordering the ship to lift off; though it appeared that nothing more could go wrong, I had no doubt there was more to come. However, I kept this to myself.
That was why I was one of the few without surprise that, a year later, still limping home and not even half way there, we were intercepted. There was no where to run; the ship was huge, looking like a giant, three-legged bug, and bristling with weapons where we were almost dead in space and what weapons we had left would have been useless against something of that magnitude.
Twenty-one Bayetai and thirty-four Hork-Bajir were captured by a race of simian-like creatures that disgusted us all equally, and giant centipedeal ones that disgusted us even more. The aliens all spoke in a language that made no sense to us Bayetai and our translators, but it seemed that the Hork-Bajir knew of these races.
Sel Clemen was especially venomous. "Yeerk!" he snarled.