Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

"Tell him to hustle it up," Jenette yelled. "The evacuation is underway."

Hordes of humans, Ferals, and domestics were streaming down to the island's shore where they boarded rafts and paddleboards and anything else that could float. The ocean behind Jenette was black with vessels, many of them being towed by lines spider-webbing out from three of the remaining six colony skimmers (Colonel Halifax was in one of those machines, doing his best to oversee the chaotic retreat). Several thousand bipeds and quadrupeds were crammed onto the remains of a fire-skrag, its incendiary fuel having long since gone out. Two more skimmers towed that mass toward safety.

Evacuating humans looked back at the Burning Heart of Night full of apprehension. Feral expressions were torn between the beauty of the mighty Radiances and the horror of abandoning an island that many of them had lived upon, and nurtured, for their entire lives; many of the aliens had to be forcibly removed by their kindred.

Jenette stood with Arrou, Skutch, Liberty, and Grubb beside the sixth skimmer as the last straggling evacuees reached the shore.

Dr. Marsh and a cluster of med-techs and domestics carried a wailing Panya Hedren into the skimmer. The poor woman had chosen a most inopportune time to go into labor; the Enclave hospital would have been a much better place for her, if it wasn't for the fact that Bragg's mob had been left in control of the colony island, and they were very angry with Panya because she had helped Karr escape their clutches. Burke, Tengen, Rusty, and two young domestics, who Jenette had so recently assigned to the human couple, hurried into the skimmer behind Panya. All of them looked very concerned.

"Bigelow and Tlalok need to get their butts up here ASAP," Jenette's voice buzzed in Karr's helmet ten minutes later.

"Understood," Karr replied. He activated his suit's external speaker. "You two heard that?"

Bigelow nodded distractedly; his attention was fixated on an out of the way panel underneath the reactor.

Tlalok was glowering at Karr. "Do not die killing the False Radiance. Remember, the human Karr's life is already forfeit to Tlalok."

"I'll keep that in mind," Karr said, glumly wishing he could stop thinking about the depths of the well that gaped under his boots, and stop worrying about whether Dr. Bigelow's calculations were correct. If the sequential negation of null-fields did not actually shape the exploding reactor core energies as promised, Karr and Long Reach would be rendered down to their component molecules. It was a good thing he could not disconnect himself from the winch filaments without assistance, or he might have succumbed to the impulse to flee the reactor cavity gibbering idiotically with fear.

Dr. Bigelow paid no attention to the exchange between Karr and Tlalok. Even more fixated than before, he bent over, reached as far as he could under the curving reactor casing, and swiped a finger across the offending panel. It came away coated in sickly white ichor. Bigelow sniffed and recoiled from the awful aroma.

"Ugh. Whatever can this be?"

A heavy clunk sounded from behind the reactor, like a hatch falling open. Bigelow tensed, slowly straightening up and leaning as far as he could around the end of the reactor, but before he could determine what had made the noise, the gentle purple of the null-field began to pop and sputter.

The ghutzu cavity was abruptly bathed in searing white light.

Bigelow screamed and threw his arms over his eyes. Karr clenched his eyes tight against the painful brilliance. A split second later his helmet blacked out as the molecules in the transparent bubble automatically went opaque. Thick green afterimages filled Karr's vision in the resulting darkness.

"Who's screaming?" Jenette demanded on the comset. "What's happening?"

"Unknown null-field malfunction, blinding us," Karr said through gritted teeth. "Don't know what caused it? "

"Null foe! Null foe! Null foe!" shrieked a voice.

A heavy, screeching object plowed into Karr. Karr swung from the filaments that suspended him, caroming into and dislodging one of the legs of the tripod rig. For an awful instant, Karr thought he would plummet into the well shaft, entangled in filaments, but he and the heavy object crashed to one side of the hole, the plates of his kilnsuit locking up against the force of impact. Whatever had knocked Karr down then dislodged itself and took off on four legs. Karr tried to move, but he was thoroughly entangled in filaments and tripod legs.

In a series of gradual steps, Karr's helmet began to let light back in. It stopped when the intensity of light was just below the threshold of human discomfort.

The null-field was glowing like the surface of a star. Objects around it were hard for Karr to discern, ghosts in fog. A few feet out of Karr's reach, the timing device was overturned, its emergency shut-off knob depressed, its display no longer counting down. Tlalok stood stock still in the stark radiance, his snout raised at an awkward angle. Bigelow ... where was Bigelow? There! Squinting hard, Karr could just make out the large man, feeling his way around one end of the reactor, apparently trying to locate the source of the earlier noise and, presumably, regain control of the berserk null-field.

"Bigelow wait!" Karr yelled, trying to free himself. "There's something in here with us!"

The scientist froze apprehensively. "Something benevolent ...? "

"One of those in-human things from Coffin Island, I think? look out!"

A quadrupedal shape had appeared on the reactor above Bigelow. In a flash of motion, it crabbed down the casing, grabbed the large human, and, with an astonishing burst of strength, dragged Bigelow out of sight behind the end of the reactor.

Karr heard a brief scuffle.

Bigelow began to shriek.

And shriek and shriek and shriek.

Karr flailed around inside his kilnsuit, but the tangle of high-g filaments held him firmly incapacitated.

"Tlalok, help him!" Karr yelled.

"So beautiful, so beautiful..." the nearby alien moaned, paralyzed by the bright light.

Bigelow's shrieks rose in volume and pitch, becoming a white noise composed of pure, unrelenting agony.

Karr thrashed harder, fumbling with unwieldy kilnsuit gloves to untangle himself as seconds and then minutes elapsed, but still he could not aid the scientist.

Karr's comset blared with Jenette's frantic questions. "We're burning up out here! Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?"

Tlalok's island was within one kiloyard of the central column of fugueship fire; Jenette and the others in the skimmer were wrapped in silvery, heat-reflective blankets. One of the four smaller flame pillars had rotated into the path of the reactor-bearing island. Trees burst into flame on its leading shore, ignited by sheer, ambient heat. The flame pillar passed, missing by less than a quarter or a kiloyard. Swarms of embers and cinders spiraled along in its wake.

And all the while horrible screaming sounded from Jenette's comset.

"They're in trouble!" she yelled to the others. "We've got to help!"

"No way!" Liberty yelled back, grabbing Jenette before the impulsive Consul could jump out of the skimmer and start running back inland. "It's half a mile to the entrance of the mound alone! You'll never make it!"

Skutch backed Liberty up. "She's right. No human can run there and back before the reactor goes up!"

"We should scram, and fast!" Dr. Marsh yelled, taking a moment from tending Panya to put in her two cents.

Jenette and the Guards exchanged confused, anxious looks. No one wanted to abandon Karr or Bigelow or Tlalok. But no one knew what to do, either.

"Arrou will go," Arrou announced.

"No," Jenette said, suddenly wishing she had not made such a suggestion in the first place.