Adverse Effects

by Alicia Nordwell

  “Do not react as if anything is wrong.”

  Yaseke started to jerk his head away to look at me, and I grabbed the back of his neck.

  “Shhh,” I hummed. “Just wait.”

  Witani watched us with a frown. I scraped some leaves off a fallen tree behind Chip, the thick spongy vegetation half-shriveled and withered. “You should sit.” I held out my hand and helped her ease onto the makeshift seat. She felt nervous but not panicked. I held my free hand up to my lips and stayed bent in front of her after she settled onto the wet log. “Chip was watching us. You, me. Buphet.”

  Her eyes widened. I narrowed my eyes. She nodded.

  “You said you’ve never been here before. I’m concerned the guards aren’t back yet.”

  She gasped. I made a quick, sharp motion with my hand to silence her.

  “Maybe we went in the wrong direction. We’ll have to backtrack and try again. You said you weren’t sure, right?”

  “Yes.” Witani’s hum was quiet, but she understood what I was doing now. She nodded at me, just once. “There was a fork back in the path. That might have been the correct direction.”

  Yaseke sighed loudly. “The young need a bit of a personal break, before we move on to look again.”

  I glanced at him. He knew what I was doing too. I knew he’d understand.

  “Pira would be glad for a female to help her. It’s a little awkward with us, you know.”

  Witani forced a smile. “Of course. Give me just another few breaths to rest. There was a likely place, a little ways back.”

  “I’ll go get the young.” Yaseke ran his hand across my back as he walked away, squeezing my shoulder. I wished I could pull him close, but I needed to keep my hands free.

  It was too quiet.

  Witani stretched her legs in and out, dragging her heels through the leaves from the dead tree that littered the ground. She tapped at the log with her hand hidden behind her thigh. In the wet bark she’d drawn a long line, then a V. She traced her finger down the path to the V, then scraped in a sharp perpendicular line away.

  I pointed in the correct direction, then hummed. “Thank you for agreeing to help Pira. The first time she asked me, I thought I’d run screaming. This old soldier is not made for girly things.” I placed a subtle emphasis, a direct look at Witani, as I said run and soldier.

  “Well I’m not great at running, but luckily I’m made of stronger stuff than you. I’m not scared of one little female. I hope to have my own soon.” She ran her hand over her stomach.

  I got her message. Trusting her with my family was hard, the hardest thing I’d ever done, but she’d trusted me to keep hers safe first. “I’ll free up a guard to go with you guys. I’m sure there are creatures here no one wants to meet in the dark.”

  “Farther out, sure. The large creatures live farther to the south, nearer the ocean. The worst around here to meet are the sarkels. They live in the trees. Small creatures, but over half their length is mouth with sharp, jagged teeth. They eat carrion but will go after live prey if it’s bleeding enough. The scent attracts them. The scouts make a sharp pop and a whistle when they target prey, and the rest of the swarm is never far behind.”

  “Great.” I held out my hand and helped Witani to her feet. “Gotta love murderous swarms of deadly critters.”

  “At least their motivations are understandable.”

  Yaseke came back with Nicklaus and the young. Pira was tired and cranky. I squatted down next to Maerit. “I know you’ve been walking a long time. I just need you to be strong a little bit longer.”

  “But I’m tired.” He wiped his eyes.

  I pulled him into a hug, rubbing my hand down his slim back. “I know.” I leaned back and put my hand under his chin. “You can rest soon, okay?”

  He sniffled. “I wanna go home.”

  “Yeah, buddy, me too.” And we’d bar the doors so no one could come in. Or I’d take Yaseke up on that offer to run away for a while, taking the kids with us.

  Nicklaus came over to us. “How about a piggy-back ride?”

  Maerit frowned. “What?”

  I smiled. “He’s offering you a ride on his back so you don’t have to walk. Here, I’ll help you.”

  Nicklaus crouched down, and I gave Maerit a boost onto his back. He wrapped his arms around Nicklaus’ neck and his legs around his waist. Nicklaus grabbed his thighs. “There we go. Comfy?”

  Maerit nodded.

  “I wanna ride like that,” Pira said.

  “Okay, little one.” This was taking too long. I could practically feel the time running out. I picked her up, and she clung to my tziu’s back. I wrapped my arm around the back of his neck, then leaned our foreheads together. I couldn’t say good-bye to him, so I tried to think it.

  “Just a second.” I strode back into the light. It was a faint blue radiance from a few light sticks, but after the darkness of the surrounding jungle it might as well have been the light of the sun at midday. I blinked several times to clear the spots from my vision.

  One guard stood beside Buphet. The former asheksi was sitting on the muddy ground with his back to a tree. The rest of the guards stood facing out, watching the surrounding jungle. I tapped the nearest one on the shoulder.

  “I need you to keep an eye on the rest of the group. They’re going on a bathroom break. You can never be too careful of what might be lurking out there.” Witani would fill him in once they were far enough away. He nodded once.

  I took his spot, staring out in the jungle, scanning the darkness. I knew they were out there somewhere. Nothing moved in my area. Chip stared straight ahead. He’d moved his head to look up. I followed the line of his gaze but didn’t see anything in the canopy above us.

  The guards needed to be warned. I casually strolled around the camp, stopping by each one. I had to give their training credit. My whispered warning, “Don’t react, but be alert; we’re being tracked,” didn’t shake their control.

  “While we wait, I want to talk to him.” I yanked Buphet off the ground by one arm. “Go take my spot,” I told his guard. I marched Buphet off in the opposite direction the others went in. Using his own hate and fear against him hadn’t worked before. Old school was messier, but I didn’t want to feel his emotions again. It took everything I had to block them while I was touching him.

  I’d rather hear his screams. They already knew where we were. If they were coming for Buphet, then maybe this would hurry them along. I was tired of the games, tired of waiting.

  “Why didn’t the humans kill you?” I asked. “Don’t lie to me, either. You’ll regret it.”

  “They made me a deal but still needed my codes for the bio net,” Buphet muttered.

  “Bullshit.” I slammed him around into a tree.

  Buphet grunted. “What are you going to do? Use your tricks on me again, you freak? It won’t work.” He bared his teeth. The moonlight glinted on his fangs.

  “Nope.” I dug my hands into his wounded arm.

  Buphet cried out. I dug them in further. He screamed, “Fucking shipzu!”

  I got right in his face, snarling. “This is the least I’ll do to you if you don’t give me answers, real answers. Amplifying your fear might not work, but I know there’s shit you aren’t telling us.”

  “Like what?” His defiance was short-lived when I pulled a knife from behind my back. “What are you going to do with that? You can’t hurt me! The asheksi determine my fate, not you.”

  “Are they here?” I looked left and right deliberately. “Nope.” I grinned wickedly. “You don’t need anything but your throat to talk. I’ll make you wish I’d slit it, just to put you out of your misery, by the time I’m done.” I tapped the edge of the blade against his chin, then slid it down his neck to his chest.

  He scoffed.

  But I never bluffed. I dug the knife in.

  His scream vibrated painfully against my ears as I dragged my knife down his chest. Dark blood welled from the deep wound. I stopped just above th
e soft tissue of his stomach. His breath hiccupped in his chest when I stopped cutting him.

  “Talk.”

  He shook his head.

  “I could gut you, but I think I’ll leave that in case you need extra motivation to be totally truthful. But you only need one ear to hear me, don’t you?” I stuck the tip of my blade in just under his ear until it scraped bone.

  He screamed again.

  “Why are these humans here? I know they’ve separated from the general military. They have to be a different faction, or the doctors on the scientific ship would’ve known how to communicate with the Caeorleians. If they were here long enough to set up that compound, why didn’t they attack sooner? What do they want?”

  Buphet whimpered when I moved the knife. “Tell me or I carve out your ear like a bad spot on an apple.” The mention of food made my stomach roil, but I forced the urge to retch away. I had to get the information we needed, and Buphet was my only option. Chip might be the humans’ tool, but that’s all he was. He couldn’t speak to me, no matter what threats I used against him.

  Besides, the bastard in front of me deserved some pain. With the new block, or whatever it was I’d managed, I couldn’t feel his pain as more than a faint echo that was easily manageable.

  “Tell. Me. What. I. Want. To. Know.” I punctuated each word with a small flick of the knife across his stomach. Buphet’s scream ended in hiccupping sob.

  “They want the Collectors!” he screamed when I slid the knife back down the cut I’d already made. Blood oozed over the blade and stained my hand.

  “What does that have to do with you?”

  Buphet was shaking so hard I had to shove my forearm against his chest to keep him on his feet. I pulled the knife away from his ear but held it ready. He babbled, unable to speak fast enough. “Once, when I was young I encountered the Collectors off-planet. I never told anyone. They refuse to appear to humans, but the human leader, Tubinsfor, wants their knowledge of the galaxy. I promised if they gave me the planet I’d take them to the Collectors.”

  “Was Tubinsfor the general at the compound where we found you?” I slammed Buphet against the tree when he didn’t answer fast enough. “Was he?”

  “No!”

  I let Buphet go, and he crumpled to his knees. If he was the only one the general thought could lead him to the Collectors….

  Dropping to one knee, I grabbed Buphet by his hair. He moaned, shrinking away from me. I jerked his head back until the tendons in his neck stood out, and stared down at his face. “Is that why you had us taken off-planet? It is, isn’t it? You were seeking the Collectors, hoping since they’d found you once they’d want to find your family too. Like you’re something special.”

  I shoved him away from me, slamming the back of his head against the tree. “You conceited bastard. Your entire family… killed or enslaved in the hopes that they’d run across the Collectors at some point. How did you expect to find them if they did?”

  “Tags.”

  “You tagged us like animals?” If he’d tagged us, he knew the planet we’d landed on. “Does Tubinsfor know we found them?” Yaseke and I had both met the Collectors too.

  “I didn’t know.” His hum was so shrill my shypsoid bone vibrated unpleasantly. “Not until this very second.”

  So the planet we’d landed on, the current home of the Collectors, was still unknown to Buphet. “They had no interest in Yaseke or the young. They’d met you, learned what they wanted, and that was that. The leader didn’t even want to speak to Yaseke.” I got in his face, so close I could smell the bitter tang of the blood dripping down his neck. “So every single person’s life you destroyed was in vain.”

  He blinked, his mouth opening and shutting like a mute idiot.

  “What were you going to do when you had no one else? When you couldn’t follow through with your promise?” I stood up, leaving him on the ground. I paced in front of him. “What would they have done to you when they found out?”

  “This.” A green light pulsed across the clearing. It speared Buphet, sizzling a hole through his chest big enough for me to see through.

  I spun, my weapon up, but it was too late. I’d let myself get so damn fixated on the bastard, and the whys of what he’d done, that I’d forgotten the fucking humans were almost on us. The soft vegetation hid the sounds of their approach. Twin green beams were focused right on my body core.

  “Hello, Sergeant Pareano.”

  “I’m not a sergeant anymore.” I refused to accept my former rank. I was not a human soldier. I didn’t want to be ever again. The older man wore the uniform but no service patches. He had no branch insignia… just the bars of a general on his breast. “And you are?” I asked.

  “Someone you won’t be using your little tricks on. Look at the ground.”

  I tried to capture his gaze, but he wouldn’t look higher than my chin.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” One of the beams shifted and shot in the ground. I jumped back. “The next one goes through your knee. I don’t need you mobile.”

  Reluctantly, I dropped my gaze to his feet. My stomach twisted in rage and fear.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The human soldier chuckled. “I’m sure he told you my name.”

  “General Tubinsfor.”

  His smirk was damn near audible. “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “What do you want, General?” I already knew, but the guards would’ve heard the shot. They’d be even more cautious as they circled around behind Tubinsfor. He seemed like a cocky asshole; I could only hope he’d shown up alone, as the lack of soldiers indicated.

  “Information. A new world with technology the likes of which the Central Council could only dream about.” He chuckled. “After all, information is power, right?”

  I shrugged. The general seemed far too cool and way too willing to talk, but I let him. We needed the time.

  “Who do you think told the collective governments of the Central Council that this planet was ripe for the taking with no intelligent indigenous life to worry about? Even after the war raged on and soldiers began dying, why didn’t the truth come out? Who’s hidden the fact there are space-going aliens beyond MC-214-XXV? I know you’ve heard of them since you got here. Every single step of the way has been planned and plotted to get what we need. There have been sacrifices made along the way, of course, but all for the cause. Hundreds of soldiers are dying as we take over the city, but who cares about a few soldiers anyway? They’re trained to follow orders and die.”

  Sweat dripped down my back. My stomach clenched, and I swallowed hard. It was hot, too hot. That was all.

  “Ahh, now you’re beginning to grasp it. You really hold such a dim view of your own species. Of course, you’re right to after all they put you through. I told the others you were the right choice,” General Tubinsfor said coldly. “The end of your military career was the final straw for you, or so you thought. Then the doors that shut in your face, the friends from your unit who refused contact, all the avenues of escape denied you… our doing. Every doctor, every guard, every experiment on that ship… planned. This was the purpose, my purpose, to bring you and your kind here to this planet so the bastards would take you in.”

  I couldn’t fathom the cold intellect and callous disregard this man so casually demonstrated. I shoved aside the pain of the last six years of my life along with the knowledge I suffered it all on his orders. Suppressing my desire to attack him took everything I had. I was practically boring a hole in his boots, I stared at them so hard. “You knew Buphet didn’t have the secret of where the Collectors were. Why bother with him, then? Was it for the tracking information?”

  Tubinsfor snorted. “Oh, we didn’t know he was lying, not at first. But a smart man doesn’t rely on one plan to reach his goal. There are plans and contingencies for many outcomes. This, however, is perfect. I didn’t need that filthy alien’s tracking device; all I need is you. You’ve been playing into our hands from t
he beginning, though there have been a few surprises. Such an intelligent race, these Caeorleians. That nano attack was brilliant.”

  He laughed. The harsh sound startled a flock of buzzing green insects the size of dinner plates.

  “Of course, that only helped further our cause. By now the military ships will have landed back on the Central planets. The only people who will be unaffected and able to travel in space will be ours. The Central Council is finished. We’ll never have to worry about them again.”

  And he planned to put a rogue branch of the military in charge, in its place. That was like trading the frying pan for the fire—the atrocities would only continue.

  Something flashed in the jungle behind Tubinsfor. I tensed, ready to jump to the side to avoid the general’s weapon. He was fast; he might get a shot off. I thought I was subtle, but the general picked up on my movement immediately.

  “Oh, looking for those guards you left in the clearing you hoped I didn’t know about?” He flicked two fingers on his left hand. The bodies of the two guards I’d left with Chip fell limp to the ground, thrown there by soldiers who remained standing at the ready, their weapons trained on me.

  I’d never be able to avoid the blasts from three soldiers.

  “Your only hope for rescue is gone. We’ve taken over the city by now, the only people out here to help you are dead, and there’s nothing you can do but be the soldier you are and follow orders. And if you think that you are above taking orders now… we’ll simply use that creature you’ve gotten so close to. Or those two little ones.”

  I saw red and snarled, baring my fangs.

  “Oh, you don’t like that idea, do you? You will give me the information I want. You’ll lead me to the Collectors like a good little soldier, because if you don’t, I’ll make you suffer enough that the past ten years of your life will seem like a picnic in comparison,” General Tubinsfor crowed. His breathing was hard and fast as he gloated in his triumph.

  “He’s not a soldier anymore.” My tziu stepped out of the jungle. Shots rang out in the clearing, the hum of the energy pulses vibrating my shypsoid. I jumped for Yaseke, knocking him to the ground.