Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Not... flare, glare ... understand.

Peace, Jenette repeated. Stop fighting. No war. No dying.

The Ferals were more confused by her last comment. No dying? They began to growl.

No dying from humans? because of humans, Jenette added, quickly realizing that she had made some kind of mistake. No more fighting. No more Sacrament.

Again, there were confused looks. But the Ferals had picked up the word Sacrament. They barraged her with light-code questions.

Flare, flash, poppata, sparkle?

Sparkle (blue), sparkle (green)?

Jenette could not follow the rapid-fire light words, never mind answer, but at least it was a positive sign. If she could keep them talking and not attacking, she reasoned, then there was hope.

Shuffling broke out in the Feral ranks. Those on the shoreline parted as a large Khafra worked his way to the front. Powerful muscles bunched and stretched under tight packed glowbuds, those on one half of his body were pitch black and those on the other dazzling bright.

"That's the one that tried to kill me," Karr warned from behind the crawler.

Karr's enemy snarled to its brethren. Lies ... lies. Jenette caught a torrent of unfamiliar words and

angry flashing. Blank-one lies ... turn away!

Ferals began to avert their eyes from Jenette.

No! she begged. Listen, please! This one comes in peace!

The leader raked his mighty hind claws through ghutzu root. Blank-ones kill, he challenged.

Blank-ones ... twist truth. Heed Tlalok! Blank-ones make no Pact... kill mothers ... steal young. The leader glowed like an angry neon sign. The hatred was clear, and growing, infecting the Ferals around him.

Yes, Jenette began, but, but... the right words failed her, humans might change... humans might stop.

Never! raged the leader.

The Ferals crowded forward on the shore. Jenette was losing them.

"Thhssss." The leader hissed through his teeth, muscles coiling. Blank-ones never stop. Tlalok knows

... but Pact can stop blank-ones!

Stop ... blank-ones, the mass of Ferals flashed like angry embers. Stop blank-ones ... Stop blank-ones ...

Jenette knew the warning signs. She was no longer in control. Talking was over. And she had placed herself in a very vulnerable position. Suddenly she was afraid.

"Back away from the edge," Karr said in a low, forceful voice. He had stood up behind the crawler, Gattler raised obviously and threateningly into firing position. His right forefinger twitched and the multitool's barrels whirled. "Don't make any sudden moves. I'll cover you."

Jenette did as Karr said, stepping down on the deck and edging back toward him. She made it halfway before the Feral leader, suddenly hunched back, like a spring coiling to launch. The others mimicked him. "Get down!" Karr yelled.

Jenette half dove, half fell to the deck as a wave of Ferals sprang at her. A stream of brown liquid hissed over her head, striking the foremost Ferals. They tumbled back, sticking to their island and howling in frustration. But more and more Ferals pushed forward to leap? always in pairs. And in pairs, Karr hosed them with molecular glue, pair after pair, after pair. Beep, warned the Gattler; the adhesive cartridge was half empty. Karr kept firing, sweeping the stream of adhesive from side to side, and none of the Ferals made it on board.

Beep, beep, beep.

The brown stream stopped. Pfitzle.

Karr was out of adhesive. He switched the Gattler to antiseptic froth and foamed the shore, but the Ferals were beyond being stopped by stinging bubbles and a second wave of the aliens lunged forward.

"Back off!" Karr barked in the deepest voice he could muster. He had no more non-lethal options. He aimed the Gattler from side to side, trying to look as menacing as possible.

Pairs of Ferals sprung through the air at the heavy lifter, teeth cones splayed.

Karr's Pilot instincts kicked in. He snapped the selector knob. Chrome barrels spun, set for cutting beam, medium power, narrow distribution.

"Get into the cockpit," Karr yelled at Jenette as he pulled the trigger. "And stay down!"

An invisible beam stabbed out from the Gattler. Karr shot surgically, searing off extremities, trying to wound rather than kill, but his noble intentions backfired. Wounded Ferals fell screaming into silvery water and were torn apart by a feeding frenzy of shark-worms. Those on shore redoubled their efforts to board the lifter.

Karr selected a wide cutting beam dispersion as another wave of Ferals launched into the air. He pulled the trigger. The first to land on deck exploded into steaming vapor, but still the Ferals did not stop.

They leapt, unafraid of the danger, focused only on getting at their human enemies. Jenette scrambled on hands and knees, through a rain of flash-cooked remains, and into the cockpit as the slaughter accelerated. More and more Ferals made it across the water before the cutting beam got them.

Smoldering skeletons piled up on deck. Karr could not sweep the Gattler fast enough to incinerate them all. Each wave got further and further inboard before exploding into heated mist.

"Grab the steering yoke and pull up on the throttle!" Karr yelled at Jenette.

"Grab the what and pull the what?" Jenette yelled back. "I don't know how to work this thing!"

"Hold the center stick and pull up on the left hand lever!" Karr gasped out between shots.

Jenette looked around at the foreign controls, her hands tentatively hovering around the throttle lever and steering yoke.

"Now!" Karr yelled. "Do it!"

Jenette grabbed and yanked.

The lifter surged out of the water as if a bomb had detonated under its hull. It lunged up through the building cloud of crimson vapor to a height of twenty feet, but Jenette had trouble holding the controls steady and the vehicle faltered, lurching from side to side.

Ferals sprung from the shore to the platform, clawing over the sidewalls and scrambling across blood-slick decking. One jumped at Jenette, talons extended to slash her head off. Karr fired. Five hundred pounds of dead weight slammed the outside of the cockpit and tumbled down into ocean water.

"Get us higher!" Karr ordered.

Jenette manhandled the controls as best she could. "Fly," she exhorted the lifter through clenched teeth. "Fly, fly, fly!"

The heavy lifter rose erratically. Adrenaline pumping, Karr washed the Ferals on deck with the cutting beam. A last surviving Feral sprang at him. Karr held the trigger down as it charged and bowled into him.

By the time they both tumbled to the deck, most of the alien was missing.

The lifter labored to treetop level.

Karr pulled through the center of the smoking, spasming corpse and scrambled over to the orbiter's sidewall. Below, Ferals were doing everything in their power to get to the lifter, clawing on top of one another, even climbing and leaping from treetops in a vain attempt to get airborne.

Karr couldn't help but respect their uncompromising ferocity.

A different moving form caught his attention. Arrou was leaping from treetop to swaying treetop in an

effort to get closer to the flying platform.

"Wait, wait!" he called.

But the lifter was sliding sideways out to sea. Karr ran to the cockpit. "Shove over." Jenette squeezed aside. "Now give me the yoke." The lifter bucked once as Karr leaned in beside her to take the thrust lever, and then again as Jenette hopped out and he climbed in behind the yoke. Karr quickly stabilized the sideslip and banked back toward the ring-island.

"What are you doing?" Jenette suddenly asked.

Karr nodded to Arrou's tree. "Going back for him."

Jenette's nose crinkled, her thoughts in chaos. Her attempts to contact Ferals had failed disastrously, causing the very death and carnage she had sought to stop. She looked down at Arrou. Ferals were frothing at the mouth trying to get at the out-of-reach heavy lifter. But they ignored Arrou. Jenette made a decision. It wasn't how she had planned it? she had not planned it at all? and it added to her feeling of sickly distress, but Jenette suddenly knew what must be done.