The Hunt for Red Fluffy

by Angel Martinez

  "You're making yourself bait."

  Julian shrugged as he fastened up his synth-leather jacket with its armored lining and myriad pockets. "Not the first time. We lead them away. We keep them confused. And I cause as much trouble for them as I can. This is part of my job, Captain. Let me do my job." Let me keep you safe. Let me keep your love safe. Your friends. Your ship. Let the outsider take the risks.

  "And Nic?"

  "Will help me cause trouble."

  Shax's eyebrows drew down. "You've cleared this with Ness, of course."

  "I really don't think—"

  "About Nic."

  For a moment, Julian found himself in the uncomfortable position of having bad intelligence. "Leopold agreed. He said it was… Nic doesn't belong to Leopold, does he?"

  "Belong? Nic belongs to himself." Shax sighed as the rodent in question ran up to them with his camera gear strapped on. "Ness is his surrogate parent, more accurately."

  Their exit from Copernicus space had been uneventful, as had their landing in a clearing of sorts on this extraordinarily green planet. The vegetation had bent with their landing and had subsequently straightened after their passage to close them in a verdant, invisible-from-above canopy.

  Now it was time to move, to act, to stop reacting and steal their enemy's impetus.

  Julian sank to one knee to synch his wrist comm to Nic's camera. "I'm going, oh lovely prince, with or without the rat. Though he'd be a big help."

  "Damn it. You know it's hard to say no to you when you're on your knees," Shax muttered. "All right. Fine. If Nic's willing, go on then. Just…bring everyone back in one piece. You come back in one piece."

  "Oui, mon capitaine." Julian leaped to his feet, let out a pss-pss-pss to call Fluffy, and hit the controls to open the cargo hatch. He had to go quickly before Shax's concern made him all sentimental and squishy.

  "Wait. You're not taking your hover cycle?"

  With a laugh, Julian leaned over to plant a kiss on the end of Shax's nose. With Ness not in sight, he risked it. What a shame if he didn't claim something and then failed to come back. "In a jungle? That's just asking for disaster. No, Fluffy and I are both made for this kind of environment." He opened a pocket not filled with dangerous things and Nic scrambled inside. "Ms. Ivana? How long do you need?"

  "For everything to be close to safe and tidy?" The tartness in Ms. Ivana's voice made it clear. She would have preferred perfection. "Two days."

  "I'll buy you every moment I can. Don't wait up."

  "It's not as if I actually sleep, Julian, dear." Ms. Ivana tsked. "But I promise not to be in my curlers and slippers when you get back."

  Shax wrapped his arms around his giant kitty's neck. "Be good for Julian. Keep him safe."

  That made the backs of his eyes sting, curse them. Past time to get going. For her part, Fluffy's patience for snuggling was short. She meeped at Shax and shook herself until he let go, then bounded to Julian. With a jaunty salute, he jogged down the hold ramp and into the jungle…forest…whatever the proper word was for an ecosystem of woody stemmed giants and what appeared to be impassable undergrowth that nevertheless let one…pass.

  Certainly irony lurking in there somewhere.

  The skyscraping trees were of two types: one Julian thought of as a willow on growth hormones with long, sweeping leaves the length of battle cruisers, and the other more of a fern, if ferns had trunks twenty feet in diameter and waving fronds several hundred meters in the air. Underneath the high canopy, understories—several—thrived with more frondy things of various dimensions and profusions of flowering vines. A little tricky to navigate if one tried to move too quickly, but Julian soon had the hang of how to slide around and through the planet's vegetative denizens.

  But Fluffy? She slid through the forest like a native, silent despite her impressive mass. Not that Julian was afraid he would lose her, since he had one of his tracking channels tuned to her nanite passengers, but something in the arsenic-heavy leaves blocked infrared scans. He lost visual contact almost immediately.

  "Don't get too far ahead there, Miss."

  A soft mraa answered Julian, up ahead and to the right, and after that Fluffy offered little chuffs and growls to confirm her position as they sped along. Julian's goal was to put twenty kilometers between them and the Brimstone before the enemy broke atmosphere.

  They'd managed a little better than that when the thunder of a ship on hard decel finally broke the forest's peace. Julian veered north, toward a promising valley that would be ideal for landing for them, and for a bit of harrying for him. Casting about for the best place to go to ground, he realized he'd lost the cat again. Oh, she was in the immediate vicinity, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly where.

  "Miss Fluffy? You can't go after the ship on your own. Your demon prince would never forgive me."

  An extended prrrrrrrrrruh came from directly overhead, and Julian tipped his head back to find two glowing red eyes staring down at him.

  "And what are you doing up there?"

  Meep.

  "You know that's a terribly undignified sound for such a fearsome cat, don't you?"

  Meep.

  "All right, I'm coming."

  The giant willow Fluffy had climbed into proved easy to summit, though Julian was grateful for armored gloves as he grabbed for handholds on the shockingly spiky bark. Fluffy had found a spot near the crown where branches had twisted together into a kind of platform, the perfect spot from which to peer out through the leaves into the valley below.

  "Clever, clever kitty." Julian activated the scope on his helmet to better observe the landing craft. "I see why demons take you hunting."

  Tail twitching in lazy swipes, Fluffy purred her approval.

  The cutter settled, oh so predictably, in the convenient valley with its convenient water source. Julian drew his rifle from the holster on his back, popped up the scope, and watched the show as cooling metal pinged and settled. Inside, he imagined the crew were scrambling to pinpoint the Brimstone and failing miserably. Right on schedule, a hatch opened, and black-armored figures swarmed out, firearms waving this way and that as they secured the perimeter. After a fashion, at least.

  "Overconfidence, the friend of every sniper," Julian murmured as he tracked one goon headed for the trees.

  Mrrrep?

  "Not yet, pretty. We don't want to give away our position quite so soon. Patience…patience…"

  Though he understood her impatience. He tracked the goons individually as they took positions around the cutter. So easy, it would be so easy to pick them off, but this wasn't about surgical assassination. It was about buying time, seeding confusion.

  He waited until the scouting goon, wandering the forest alone for whatever moronic reason, picked up Fluffy's nanite signal and turned toward them. He moved toward their tree, raised his faceplate to recheck his readings, and Julian shot him. Neat and quick. The body hardly made a sound as it collapsed into the foliage.

  Once upon a time, there had been a terrible joy in success, and ISE found that perfectly normal in their assassins. Sociopathic killers, but properly channeled ones. Useful sociopaths, at least according to the ISE psychiatrists. Now, so many years later, Julian still did what had to be done. What he was good at, so stunningly, frighteningly good.

  There was satisfaction in a job completed, but the arc lightning of joy was gone.

  Beside him, Fluffy kneaded the branches with a little growl.

  "You can have the next one." Julian patted her shoulder. "Promise."

  That seemed to settle her, and she tracked the remaining goons with avid interest, tail waving. Cats were, by human standards, sociopaths too, and hellcats would have to be the pinnacle of sociopathicness. Sociopathicity? Whatever the word, her presence was oddly calming. Julian generally hated assignments in tandem with anyone else, but she exuded competence. For once, he was enjoying not working alone.

  When a second goon left the landing field, probably because the first hadn't re
ported in, Fluffy descended the trunk headfirst. Effortlessly. Soundlessly. Oh, to be a cat. This goon proceeded with more care, weapon sweeping back and forth in one hand, scanner checking for life signs in the other. Moving from cover to cover. Julian almost admired the professionalism. It kept the goon safe—until it didn't.

  Fluffy didn't even break cover. One moment the goon was standing, the next, he wasn't. She pulled him down and dispatched him so swiftly that he didn't even have time for a scream. Just one muffled sound of shock, and there was one fewer Duomo employee in the universe.

  Efficient.

  For a moment or two, Julian considered simply sending her off to take out the rest of the guards, but that would raise the alarm too quickly. The goal was to buy time here, and if a plea for assistance went out, Duomo drop vessels might overrun the little planet. They'd find the Brimstone simply by being too numerous. Federico wasn't one of the galaxy's largest players, but he was a formidable one—a born spacer with no ties to any gravity well, his own moveable empire his greatest asset.

  No, best for the two of them simply to keep moving. Julian climbed down with considerably more effort than Fluffy had demonstrated and joined her by her kill.

  "Fluffy, sweetie, don't eat the poor thing."

  Using one paw, Fluffy daintily cleaned the blood off her face and whiskers. Mrrrrr.

  "Of course it's your kill, but I'm not sure Prince Shax would approve of you eating humans. From a hygienic stance, especially. You've no idea where that's been."

  She huffed and left her kill, pacing Julian as he took them southwest. Keep moving. Keep them confused. Keep ahead of them and everything would be fine. They were looking for a ship with a cat in it, and they obviously had no clue about how to look for a de-shipped cat.

  Chapter Five

  "You let him do what?" Ness fought against the storm rising around his heart. His wings had already snapped out to their full extension, quivering, and he couldn't relax enough to pull them back in.

  Shax had his arms crossed, chin coming up in defiance. "He asked to borrow Nic, and Nic agreed. I don't think it's at all outrageous."

  "They're out there being tracked! Without backup!"

  Ness had gone to the weapons locker to start handing out everyone's preferred firearms. They were in a precarious situation, stuck on the ground while repairs went forward, and he wanted every crew member armed. When he'd opened the locker, he'd found Julian's rifle and hand weapons missing.

  "I consider Fluffy rather more than adequate backup." Shax had the nerve to grin.

  "DO NOT TAKE THAT FACETIOUS TONE WITH ME, YOUR HIGHNESS!"

  Shax stumbled back, all the color drained from his face, and Ness turned away quickly. He knew his eyes must have been glowing, and he hadn't meant to use the Voice. The sincere, unfeigned terror in Shax's face nearly had Ness in tears.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't… I'm sorry I got so angry. But sometimes the things you do frustrate me terribly. Just so irresponsible."

  "It was the best plan," Shax replied softly, his voice edging nearer. "And Julian is more than capable of looking after them."

  He thinks I'm angry because he let Julian take Nic and Fluffy. Oh, Shax. "But you didn't ask me. You didn't even let me know. The Brimstone has two actual trained fighters aboard, only two, and I'm one of them."

  "Ness…sweetheart…"

  "Either you begin to trust what I've become, or you stop this fiction of giving me a job on the ship's manifest that you think I can't do. And Julian. Julian's not twenty any longer or whatever age he was when you met. If something goes wrong out there, on an undocumented world I might add, do you think a cat or a small rodent will fetch him help in time?" Ness didn't wait for an answer. His back still turned, he shrugged into his coat, carefully working his feathers through the wing holes, strapped on his pulse rifle, and strode for the cargo ramp. "I'll be back when I can bring them all back with me."

  "Ness!"

  Now he turned as the cargo ramp lowered. "I'll be back, love. Don't worry. I'm still angry, but that doesn't change anything." At the bottom of the ramp, he relented, strode back up, and planted a fierce kiss on Shax's mouth. "I love you. Even when I'm shouting."

  With little wisps of steam curling around his horns, Shax only nodded mutely. When Ness reached the bottom of the ramp a second time, he managed half a smile as Shax croaked out, "I love you, too. Especially when you get bossy."

  The bit of heat Ness took with him into the forest was definitely not anger anymore. As soon as he was out of sight, he adjusted his achingly bent erection. Then he turned for one last look, gratified that the Brimstone vanished entirely when the cargo ramp closed again. Visually, she was erased with her shields up, and this strange arsenic jungle damped down her residual heat signature.

  Ness gave a sharp nod. Good. Unless someone got close enough to hear the repair work—and with Fluffy's tracking nanites miles away, this was unlikely—Brimstone was relatively safe. With advantages most of his crew mates didn't have, Ness took to the air, keeping carefully beneath the canopy to keep out of sight, flying a twisting path through the strange trees. The echoes of Earth trees were so strong that the differences were doubly jarring. A landscape too close to familiar made it that much more alien.

  His wrist comm pointed him toward Fluffy, still heading away from their landing site, though she seemed to be circling around a particular point. Not sure yet what that meant, Ness went carefully. Ms. Ivana had confirmed the enemy's landing but wasn't clear on exact coordinates, so the most obvious possibility was that they were skirting around the Duomo cutter.

  A bit of guilt niggled at him over misleading Shax. Not that it was a dangerous or hurtful sort of misleading, but Shax had believed him angry about a matter of injured pride. Ness just couldn't bring himself to say, No, I'm terribly worried about Julian. Some of that was his own guilt aggravating him, causing him to lash out. His—he had to say it in his head or brand himself a liar—attraction to Julian was something he couldn't consider. Unfaithful, disloyal, when his heart belonged wholly to Shax. Partly, though, it was Shax's own cavalier attitude toward Julian that rankled, especially since he still so often treated Ness like spun glass.

  Ness knew the why of that, of course. When Shax had found him, he had been frightened and hurt, sheltered and naïve. While Julian? It had been a younger Agent Parallax who had first met Shax, certainly, but Julian had already been a whole person then. The years had given him more experience, made him even more deadly, but not changed him in any essential way aside from the possibility of slowing reflexes. In Shax's eyes, Julian was supremely competent, while Ness still struggled with some of the galaxy's most fundamental realities.

  But… Julian was still human, with all the fragility of any mortal, and not even the infamous Agent Parallax's safety should be treated so lightly. The dark demon-of-sexual-jealousy part of Ness whispered still that he shouldn't care, that if something happened to Julian, it would be good riddance to a rival. The rest of Ness knew by now that demons couldn't deny their infernal natures but weren't required to be driven by them, either.

  At some point, the guilt over murdering Julian in his mind, several times in horribly bloody fashion, had settled into the surety that he never would, even when Julian's presence irritated him in irrational ways.

  And he's crew right now, and it's my job to keep the crew safe.

  The first mile or so was quiet, nearly silent, and Ness began to wonder if the planet had any life besides giant trees. Eventually, he started to spot the wildlife, though.

  Small creatures to tiny ones, nothing larger than his fist, and everything he spotted seemed to work on a theory of propeller locomotion. The largest ones that he came to think of as birds had single rotating…wings, Ness supposed. A set of four whirred above the animal's…head?… allowing it to move in any direction and hover in one spot. A smaller set Ness thought of as reptiles, since they were longer and more sinuous, with smooth, shining skin and propellers both back and front. The smal
lest ones he designated insects, the ones in a riot of bright colors and patterns who had two to possibly four close-set propellers that enabled them to zip about at blinding speeds.

  A scent of blood reached him from below, and Ness landed in one of the huge trees near the cutter, just for a quick check on the situation. Guards had taken up stations around the ship, but otherwise all was quiet for now. The blood smell came from the forest floor—lots of blood. With anxious thoughts spinning in his head, Ness dropped down, but the dismembered arm he found first wasn't Julian's. Too big. Wrong sort of body armor.

  The rest of the body… Ness turned away quickly. The claw marks were a sure sign that one was Fluffy's kill. The second body nearby was intact, the shot surgically precise. That was Julian's. All a little gruesome, but at least the blood didn't belong to anyone he knew.

  Keeping out of sight and out of range of the cutter's crew, Ness returned to the air to follow Fluffy's signal. Around…about…southwest of the cutter…back within range of it… Near the top of a tree just ahead, Ness spotted the end of a black-tipped tail as it flicked down and back again. He whistled a soft birdsong as he approached in case Julian hadn't seen him yet. Wouldn't do to be shot down by a startled assassin.

  Ness took a moment to navigate the snarl of branches and found Julian and Fluffy stretched out side by side on a platform of boughs, looking like two kids conspiring to do mischief. Julian had his rifle pointed toward the cutter's landing site, and Fluffy was snuggled right up against him, as if she were sharing the rifle's scope.

  "Hello there, Mr. Angelus. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

  All of Ness's eloquence deserted him in the face of that dazzling smile. "Backup. Yours."

  That got a blink, and Julian's charm faltered into puzzlement. "That's kind of you? Ah…have a seat?"