“Can you understand me?” He gathered his courage and continued. “There is no need for conflict between our races.” He waited; again no answer, but more bugs crowded toward the shuttle. The guards behind him muttered nervously. “If there has been any trespass, it was inadvertent. In the interest of cooperation between our races, we offer to withdraw from any former Klikiss worlds.”

The warrior insects raised their sharp limbs. The EDF soldiers unslung their weapons and held them defensively. Diente did not feel he was getting through to the Klikiss. “Please, this is an overture of peace.”

Without warning, large ground-based artillery tubes belched fire from the tops of hollow turrets in the hive city. Enormous energy projectiles rolled upward like solidified comets and slammed into the Manta that cruised low overhead.

“Stop!” Diente shouted.

“Holy shit!” Screaming in terror and fury, the twenty-eight guards opened fire on the nearby Klikiss, mowing them down.

Above them, the Manta was ripped open, its engines destroyed. Huge chunks of flaming debris fell out of the sky like meteors, before the hulk itself hurtled downward. It crashed into the outskirts of the hive city and erupted in a huge fireball that flattened half a kilometer of the insect structures. The Klikiss didn’t seem to care.

“There is no need for this!” Diente shouted into the translator. He glanced at the Klikiss translation device and came to the sick conclusion that the hive mind didn’t understand the very concept of peacemaking or negotiation. The Klikiss had no interest in coexisting with another species.

With continuous fire from their weapons, his guards massacred hundreds of bugs. But they were in a nest of millions.

Tears streamed down the Admiral’s face as Klikiss warriors marched forward. Diente doubted that Chairman Wenceslas would ever realize the extent of his folly here. At least, though, there would be no further reason to hold his family hostage.

He felt an odd sense of release, maybe even a feeling of relief, as the tension of these past months reached a culmination. He drew his sidearm and faced the oncoming insects. Yes, at least his family would be free.

53

Orli Covitz

At Osquivel, many storage domes, laboratory complexes, and admin centers were scarred and blasted from the recent EDF depredations. Busy Roamer workers flew about in construction pods rebuilding domes, sealing habitats, and linking damaged structures together.

On her way through the shipyard complexes to the new lab chamber Kotto Okiah had set up, Orli stumbled upon the Governess compy UR, whom she remembered from Llaro. UR had been courageous in defending the Llaro children from Klikiss attacks, losing her left arm to a vicious insect scout. Once the Llaro refugees had returned to Osquivel, Roamer engineers had not taken long to find a donor arm from a previously decommissioned compy. The colors of the polymer skin did not match — the new arm was blue and orange, in contrast to the more sedate indigo and gray of the Governess compy’s body — but UR seemed quite pleased with it.

The compy was surrounded by students ranging in age from five to nine. On the coated stone floor, she had spread a colorful mat divided into squares overprinted with a lush yet confusing pattern of writhing snakes — vipers, cobras, pythons — meshed with a spray of arrows that flew in various directions. The snakes and arrows connected squares on the game board. While UR gave calm advice on strategy, the children threw dice and moved their pieces.

“What are you doing?” Orli asked.

“I am teaching the children,” UR said.

“Looks like you’re playing a game.”

“I am teaching the children to play the game. It is an ancient Hindu game called Leela, or Snakes and Arrows, thousands of years old. The grid has seventy-two squares, each named for a state of being. When the player rolls, the die is guided by his or her karma. If the die takes you to a square with an arrow, you ascend to a higher plane. If you fall on a square with a serpent, you slide down.”

One boy shouted as he landed on a particularly good square.

“So. it has nothing to do with the Klikiss? Or the EDF?”

“Snakes and Arrows deals with all aspects of life in a metaphorical sense,” UR said. “Would you like to play, Orli Covitz?”

“Not right now.” The idea of the battered compy speaking of karma, states of being, and planes of existence was too unsettling for her. “I’m helping Kotto Okiah and Mr. Steinman. We’re working on ways to defend the Confederation against. well, against everything.”

In his new laboratory, Kotto activated one documentation screen after another. Mr. Steinman lifted a flat metal case of tools and slid it onto a chest-high shelf that was bracketed to the wall. “Sure, but who’s the real enemy? The EDF attacked Golgen and Osquivel. The faeros attacked Theroc. The Klikiss attacked Llaro. The Klikiss robots are still out there. Which one do we concentrate on?”

Kotto stared at a data projection, then blanked it. “Do I have to pick one in particular?”

Following him, Steinman activated the same screen and jotted down a file name. KR and GU circulated, cleaning, organizing, arranging the new lab; Orli had noticed that the clutter created by the two men kept the compies quite busy. DD was also there, eager to make himself useful.

Orli spoke up. “I pick the Klikiss. After Llaro — and Relleker — we need to stop the subhives from expanding.”

Kotto scratched his curly hair. “It would be easier to do that if I had a specimen to study. I don’t know enough about them.”

Orli pulled up a chair and folded her legs beneath her in a comfortable position. “Well, Mr. Steinman and I have some firsthand experience.”

“As do I,” DD said. “We have considerable data to share.”

Kotto brightened. “Then maybe I won’t be working in the dark, after all. Give me a starting point.”

Orli thought for a minute. “The Klikiss have songs and music. They communicate with intricate melodies as well as pheromones. When I played my synthesizer strips and bombarded the bugs with my songs, it seemed to shut down the thoughts of the hive mind.” She didn’t think the specific tune mattered, only that the music had to be different from anything they had heard before.

Kotto was already deep in thought. “I could develop a kind of random melody generator. Maybe if we played it at sufficient volume in the right place, we could paralyze the creatures.”

“There, we have a new project to sink our teeth into.” Steinman rubbed his hands together. “And the Klikiss annoy me even more than General Lanyan does.”

54

Deputy Chairman Eldred Cain