He hadn't noticed the hum of the flitter or the disturbance it made in the air. He was so used to such things, it was more noticeable to him when they were not present than when they were.
The splash woke him immediately, however. No one had mentioned fish, but it was always possible. That lake could contain fish. Real, live ones, that wiggled and swam and made wonderful sport before you slapped them silly with a blow from a mighty paw and devoured the fresh fish flesh… ahhh.
But his waking eye didn't catch the silver gleam of a leaping lake denizen. It saw the flitter. And it saw the second item dropping into the lake from the flitter, which preceded the second, also nonfishy, splash.
There was indeed something fishy about all of this, although not of the delicious sort.
RK sat up, staring, his tail jerking.
In the basket with the kittens, Grimla opened both eyes wide.
(What is it?) she asked calmly, quietly, so as not to alarm the little ones.
(Don't look now, but I think it's your fearless leader, the Mulzar, and that clown from the Federation.)
The kittens mewed excitedly. They were more confident now that they knew they weren't being abandoned, and one after the other asked in small, squeaky, annoying voices, "New ma, what's a fearless?"
"New ma, what's a leader?"
"New ma, what's a Mulzar?"
"New ma, what's a clown?"
"New ma, what's a Federation?"
(I'll go with you,) Grimla said. All of the tiny mouths which had held her down were now open with questions and therefore unfastened from her person. She jumped out of the basket. (Whatever he's up to, it can hardly be worse than kittens. I'm too old for this.)
(You fought me for them,) RK reminded her.
(I thought you were going to hurt them,) she said. (Some toms do.)
(Me? Naah. It's just I never saw another cat that small before. I was curious. I am curious now.)
She rubbed her side against his as she joined him on the side of the balcony and they watched the flitter set down among the foliage on the far end of the lake. (Oh, I know better now. I can see you're an old softie. Are we going to stand around here all day or are we going to investigate? I'll have to return to feed the children again before long.) She sighed and walked back for a moment to give the nearest kitten a lick, then hopped off the balcony. (You coming?)
(As soon as I can. I'd better put this Temple 's so-called guardians and the two-leggeds on red alert.)
But as he turned to wake the other cats, he found himself hemmed in. Large, furry bodies slunk to the edge of the balcony and surrounded him, while behind them, from all ledges, balconies, door and window frames, the chrysoberyl eyes of hundreds of other guardians stared unblinkingly into the shadows.
(Acorna?) RK used his cat-to-humanoid telepathy, which here on Makahomia seemed to come not so much from his brain but up from the ground through his very paw pads. (We got trouble out here. Pass it on.)
(I know. I'm on my way.)
Miw-Sher sat up, wiping her eyes. She looked drowsily out over the canyon, then wiped her eyes again. "The lake!"
RK didn't need her to tell him about it. He could smell it already. The lips of every cat on the Temple were curled back over the scent glands, the hackles of each cat raised, the tails bushed. Even the kittens tried to see through their closed eyes and bristled instinctively, their individual baby hairs standing up on their uncoordinated little bodies.
The waters, so clear and clean just a moment before, were boiling and steaming with an acrid stench that was worse than the combined signatures of a hundred tom cats looking for love.
RK growled low in his throat and said to the other cats near him, (Okay, troops, here's what we do. We run down the beach and some of us jump up on the ledge back there and then we drop down onto them as they come out of the flitter over in those trees and demolish them.)
The nearest cat, this one a large sleek one with midnight stripes, said, (You do that. We'll do this.)
And he and every other Temple guardian emitted ear-splitting yowls that did to the auditory senses what the polluted lake did to the olfactory ones.
But as the great yowl started, a figure emerged from the foliage. Edu Kando! When he saw the cats and heard their yowl, he turned tail, but RK, Grimla, Pash, Haji, and Sher-Paw bounded after him, only to be outsprinted by the larger, longer-legged Temple cats who guarded Aridimi. With a mighty coordinated leap, they brought him down, screaming their battle cries and- shooting sparks?
But the cats on top of Kando began falling off, lying limp, and RK realized his enemy was shooting a laser pistol.
Grimla hung onto a foot with teeth and claws. Among the roil of cats was a huge one. Miw-Sher, changed to cat form, waded into the fray. The Mulzar, freeing himself from the first ten cats to attack his body, backed up a pace, then fired at her. She crumpled. Grimla abandoned her place shredding Kando's leg and jumped away from it, running to Miw-Sher. Kando fired again and Grimla lay smoking, a bare paw's length from her friend.
Then suddenly, behind them, the flitter rose jerkily from the foliage. Federation flitters were well armed. This one opened fire. Priests had joined the cats, but both quickly fell and dropped to the ground, and in some cases, into the roiling lake waters.
RK grew very still inside, very numb, and slunk from the body of one fallen comrade to the body of another while the carnage continued. When he was behind the Mulzar, but very close, he leaped up on the arm that held the gun, hung on to it with deep sinkings of his front claws while he bit and churned his back claws with all his might.
Kando's grip loosened and RK thought that one more kick would set the laser pistol free.
And then he felt a terrible crunching pain, as if his spine had broken, as Kando's other hand crashed down upon him, and sent him flying into the foliage.
As the pain of his injuries overcame him, he saw another huge cat, Tagoth, jumping over the fallen bodies. Acorna was just behind him, supporting the old priest.
RK called out to her, but not with his mind. In fact it was just a feeble little mew, but she heard him, and looked up. Touching the old man with her horn, she steadied him before she sprinted after Tagoth into the welter of bodies. She stopped first to bend over Miw-Sher.
The Mulzar, nursing his shredded arm where RK had nailed him, didn't bring the laser pistol up in time. Tagoth landed full on top of him, disarming him.
But the flitter barked again. As Miw-Sher sat up, Tagoth's arm raised and the flitter spiraled - slowly, it seemed to RK, down to the lake.
Tagoth lowered his arm. Miw-Sher tried to rise to her feet. Acorna, clutching her throat, fell over her.
No. That couldn't be right. Acorna would not fall.
But she did.
Acorna fell. And lay still.
No.
RK's world crashed from night blackness to a darkness far more profound.
"Captain Becker, do you read me now?" Mac's voice woke Becker from a fitful doze.
The com unit was live again!
"Mac, funny you should mention. I was going to call you as soon as I got the com unit back up. How did you fix it anyway?" He was genuinely curious, but remembering Mac's tendency toward long-winded explanations, he decided curiosity could wait. "Never mind. No tune now. I need to recalibrate the scanner to pick up someone on the ground and I need to do it now, without having to figure it out. Run through it with me."
"Yes, Captain, but…"
"I'd ask Acorna, but she has other fish to fry back at the Temple. Nadhari is somewhere out in the desert, hurt. I need to find her."
"I am distressed to hear that, Captain, but…"
"No ifs, ands, or buts about it, guy. Tell me how now before I miss her and she ends up dying."
"Very well, Captain," Mac said. He rattled off the computations and Becker entered them quickly, his concentration narrowing to just the screen. No sooner had he adjusted his instruments than he spotted something right about where he supposed Nadhari might have been ditched. "Stay tuned, Mac. I think I got her now."