Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [217]
With a jolt, Nikko saw in the creature's visage a hint of his mother. It flickered through a sequence of unfamiliar faces, other Roamers and colonists. Then, as if the newbreed recognized him, the ghostly face of Maria Chan Tylar snapped back.
Orli jumped down beside Nikko, trying to pull him to the vehicle, and also noticed what looked like Maria Chan Tylar, the woman who had taken her in. Frozen, Nikko faced the creature, waiting for it to strike both of them down.
Instead, the grotesque hybrid turned on one of the Klikiss warriors, grabbed its horned crest, and twisted the carapace hard, uprooting the creature's whole head. The startled warrior clicked and fluttered its wing casings, then slumped twitching to the ground.
The other two warriors, guided by a shocked breedex, turned from the escapees and fell viciously upon the newbreed that had turned against them. The pale hybrid fought back, thrashing and chopping.
'Let's go, dammit!' Tasia called.
Nikko stumbled backward and bumped into the vehicle but was unable to look away from the battle. Robb grabbed his arm and yelled in his ear. 'We're leaving.'
But the Klikiss ground vehicle wasn't going anywhere. A grinding sound came from the gears. The car lurched, and shuddered to a halt again.
The Marla-newbreed succeeded in killing a second warrior, while the third slashed at the pale flesh. Nikko couldn't understand what was happening. When the domates 'incorporated' genetic information from humans they devoured, did they retain some of the memories? Was an echo of his mother actually inside there?
Three more warriors arrived, driven by the breedex, and urgently joined the attack on the treacherous newbreed. The angry Klikiss surrounded the newbreed and tore it apart. Nikko groaned.
The engine began to make sounds, but Tasia still didn't know how to drive the thing. The Klikiss warriors advanced, covered with spatters of slime. Orli stepped away from the vehicle, to stand alone in front of them.
'What is she doing?' Robb shouted. 'Get aboard, kid!'
Orli began to sing a lilting melody in a clear but unpractised soprano. The melody was familiar to the Klikiss… but different. With all her heart, Orli sang 'Greensleeves'. The breedex had never heard the music like this before. The warriors froze, raising their jagged limbs, cocking their heads. Orli kept singing.
It was all the time Tasia needed. At last she got the strange vehicle moving.
Shaken by what he had seen, Nikko grabbed Orli's hand and yanked her into the open-framed vehicle as it started to roll away. As soon as the girl's singing stopped, the Klikiss lurched forward again, but by now the groundcar was jouncing swiftly across the terrain.
Nikko and Orli sat next to each other, both stunned in their own way. DD was silent, and Nikko wondered if a compy could be disturbed.
'Whatever we just saw - I don't ever want to see it again,' Nikko said.
One hundred and thirty-four
Davlin Lotze
When the music cut off far sooner than he had expected, Davlin knew he was in trouble. A burst of static gushed like blood before the loudspeakers fell completely silent. The disoriented bugs must have found the synthesizer strips and torn them apart.
He had hoped to make his way out of the alien city before that happened.
Davlin tried to slink along the darkened corridors, keeping to the walls to remain unobtrusive in the shadows, but he couldn't possibly hide. With their feelers the Klikiss could detect vibrations in the air, and might even be able to smell or taste his presence as if he'd left a painted line behind him. Once the breedex started looking for him he couldn't hide.
He began to run.
He had secretly kept one emergency flare grenade and a metal pipe from the small EDF equipment shack.