Lost In Translation Read Online Free

them to. The strong owed it to themselves and to the Flock to fly as hard and fast as they could. The weak must keep up the best they could, or silently turn back. Fly or die, the Hunters said. Fly or die.
    Jarrikk kept flying.
    When dawn broke, Jarrikk saw the alien camp ahead of him, marked by the glittering silver egg-shape of their ship, surprisingly small compared to the huge black sphere that had brought the S’sinn to Kik ks’sarr. A half-dozen tendrils of smoke twisted lazily skyward in the still morning air, proof that at least some of the aliens were watchful. Jarrikk dropped to treetop level, then below, swooping through green-pillared corridors with his wingtips brushing leaves. He looked for Hunters with every beat, but saw and heard nothing—right up to the moment when something swatted him from behind and sent him tumbling ungracefully to the ground. “Find a roost and stay there!” Ukkarr growled, then somehow disappeared into the forest again.
    More cautiously, Jarrikk worked his way from tree to tree until he had a clear view of the camp, which consisted of two prefabricated plastic shelters, a dozen brightly-colored tents—and a drying rack on which were stretched at least twenty pelts of various animals.
    Three of those pelts Jarrikk recognized very well indeed. He gripped the branch so tightly he felt it split in his claws.
    And then, with no audible signal at all, the Hunters dropped from the trees.
    Black as night against the bright green, blue, and yellow of the tents, they swept in a hundred-strong flock across the camp and back, firelances lacing the ground below with blood-red beams. Tents blossomed into orange flame that brought aliens naked and screaming into the light, hair ablaze, skin blackened, only to be cut in two by the next wave of Hunters. A half-dozen aliens close to the ship made it inside, including, Jarrikk saw with fury, the small one he had seen with the adults who killed his brothers, but others had time for only one startled look, time to open their mouths wide, before the beams found them and sliced them apart.
    Jarrikk saw one of the two aliens who had killed his brothers running for the illusory safety of the prefabricated buildings, before beams set the buildings alight even more spectacularly than the tents. He half-unfurled his wings, prey-sight focused on the base of the male’s stubby neck, ready to fly after him himself, promise or no promise, when a beam slashed at the alien’s legs and he went down, blood spurting from half-cauterized stumps that ended where his knees had been. The alien tried to crawl away, but the next beam touched his head, which exploded into red steam and bits of charred flesh and bone. His torso bizarrely crawled another half-length on its own before falling forward, limbs twitching once or twice and finally lying still. Jarrikk’s lip curled in an involuntarily snarl. He only wished he’d fired the lance himself.
    In two passes, the Hunters utterly destroyed the camp and every alien in it; but with an ear-hurting whine, the silver ship came to life, rising into the air, its lifters sending the smoke of the burning camp twisting and dancing across the carnage. One Hunter, more brave than wise, dove toward the ship, beam reaching out to caress the silvery skin, but that alloy was far tougher than the plastic of the prefabs or the fabric of the tents, and the lance didn’t even mark it. Other Hunters followed the first, but suddenly the ship’s whine turned to fang-rattling thunder, white flame exploded underneath it and it rocketed into the sky, vanishing in a matter of seconds. In its fiery wake, the Hunter who had first attacked it fluttered to the ground like a burning leaf.
    We won, Jarrikk thought fiercely. It’s over!
    Two days later, when the first S’sinn warships arrived and the fortification of Kikks’sarr began, he knew he’d been wrong.
    It wasn’t over at all.
    It was