by Richard Fox
It had a face—a true face, like his—but one with pale, plain skin. Its body had the same proportions as Tyr females.
The demon on his back spoke and the female went into action, working controls on the container. Not a simple container, he realized, but a cage.
Quboth pressed his hands against the grimy deck and waited a heartbeat. When the pressure on his back eased, he scrambled forward. A hand gripped his ankle, but he kicked free and made for the female.
He had no plan, no idea for escape. He just knew he had to do something.
The female shrieked and ran away as he closed. He reached for her, but his hand stopped short when the demon behind him grabbed his shoulder, ripping the outer layers of his space suit. He whirled around and swung a hook punch into the demon’s jaw.
Pain exploded in his hand as knuckles broke against the impact. The demon’s head barely moved. It simply raised a finger and wagged it from side to side.
A punch caught him in the stomach and lifted his feet off the ground. Air blasted out of his lungs and fogged his visor. He crumpled to the ground and felt rough hands on him again. He was lifted up and pressed against what felt like the base of a wall. A shadow crossed over his visor and it popped off as the demon squeezed his helmet.
Cold, antiseptic air flooded over his face. He rolled to one side and into the glass side of the cage. He took a deep, stuttering breath as his diaphragm spasmed from the blow. The female demon came back, her fingers dancing over keys made of light that floated over the side of the cage.
He heard nothing but a dull moan from a small air vent.
She looked at him, then ran her fingers over her visor, tracing the solid dark parts of his ketafik. He noticed her eyes, a single pupil with blue surroundings.
The female’s head snapped to her left and she pointed wildly, a silent warning as she shouted.
Nixazar stood in the capsule, Quboth’s pistol gripped in one hand. The two demons were next to each other, between Quboth and Nixazar. Neither seemed concerned.
The muzzle flashed and one of the demons swayed slightly while the other stomped forward, unaffected by more hits from Nixazar. The demon grabbed Nixazar by the wrist and slammed him against the deck hard enough that Quboth felt the impact. The demon then raised a foot and crushed Nixazar’s helmet and the skull within.
“No!” Quboth crawled to the end of his coffin-like enclosure and beat against the glass.
The demon raised its foot and bits of violet brain matter fell off the heel. It tapped the boot against the side of his capsule to knock away more.
The cage walls went black, leaving him shut off from everything but his fear, his grief…and his screams.
****
“Zorig, you fucking idiot!” Solanus shouted, the volume from the speakers in her helmet stinging Yenin’s ears.
A biohazard warning flashed on the inside of her visor and Yenin’s world shrank down until all she could see was that bright-yellow icon.
“What? It’s just an indig,” the other Myrmidon said.
Yenin breathed faster. Her suit still read as contained, but if the icon went red, it meant that alien biological matter had breached her seals. According to her employment contract, any at-fault exposure to contagious substances meant a trip out the airlock or to the ash chamber.
“One we’re supposed to take alive for the sawbones.” Solanus stomped over to the dead Tyr and shook her head. “Why, Zorig? You too wired on the Red?”
Cisneros nudged her on the shoulder and Yenin snapped out of the moment.
“It shot me,” Zorig said, touching small silver splatters on his chest.
“A goddamn tickle.” Solanus slapped him upside his jester-faced helmet. “A mosquito fart against your armor.”
“Yeah, well, whoever’s in the head shed should’ve warned us the indigs were armed. Tripped my conditioning.” Zorig shrugged. “And so what? They want bio samples for immunity serum. This one’s still good.” He nudged the headless Tyr with his boot.
“Dump the body in the containment box and flash freeze it.” Solanus turned around and snapped fingers at Yenin. “You. Get the cleanup kit and scorch everything. Then do a total air flush and flood the compartment with antiseptic.”
“Aww,” said Zorig, grabbing the dead Tyr by the ankle and dragging him to the containment unit, leaving a trail of blood across the deck, “that shit makes my armor reek of bleach.”
“Fuck you, this is your fault.” Solanus pointed at Cisneros, saying, “Then you get a wrap around this hunk of junk.” She jerked a thumb at the capsule. “Director might want to sell this to a collector. You’ll get a micro percentage.”
Zorig shoved the corpse into a separate capsule from the living Tyr and Yenin sealed it up from her panel.
“Pilots, get us back to the Matsui.” Solanus walked toward the fore of the shuttle, and the other Myrmidon followed.
“Ugh, I can practically smell it.” Cisneros knelt down and opened a compartment. He handed Yenin a blow torch with a long nozzle and a spray bottle, then took out a roll of plastic wrap with silver flecks in it. “I’d offer to switch but…you heard her.”
Yenin felt like her feet were stuck in concrete, but she forced a step around the back of the containment unit and thumbed the activation switch on the scorcher. The alien’s blood was the wrong color. She’d gotten a decent enough look at the other one…and he hadn’t seemed too different, except for the skin coloring and eyes.
A white flame sparked at the end of the scorcher and she ran it over the smeared blood, tiny bits of grey matter and flecks of white in the milieu. The thump of fists and feet against the walls of the containment unit felt like they hit her in the chest.
“I hate my job,” she said, running the scorcher over more bloodstains.
Chapter 16
Daniel parked on the shoulder of a dirt road where twelve-foot-high stalks of ambary plants swayed in the mid-afternoon breeze. The crop stretched as far as he could see, the only break at a narrow path just ahead of where he stopped. A single rusted-out mailbox teetered atop a wooden post, hanging on by a lone nail.
He adjusted his Blooded uniform, a knee-length tunic with riding boots, adorned with little more than the basic training bands and ribbons that any of-age man of the warrior caste might have. This was by design; the fewer hints to his false persona, the fewer details he could mess up. A scroll went under one arm and he donned a wide-brim hat.
Noticing there was no name on the mailbox as he walked past it, he headed down the narrow road, the close rows of ambary forming a canyon that undulated with the breeze. At the end of the path was a small farmhouse, smoke rising from an outdoor oven.
Daniel stopped at the end of the path, careful not to step foot onto the gravel that made up a parking spot for an older-model truck and the base for a rusty piece of equipment. Doing so without permission of the home owner was asking for a shotgun blast in the face out in the countryside.
The sound of wood clacking against wood came from behind the house.
“By your leave!” Daniel called out. “By your leave with business from the King!”
The clacking stopped.
“Back here.”
Daniel gave the house a wide berth as he came around. A coop full of stubby lizard-birds hissed at him and the smell of feces-laden straw stung his nose.
He found a single Tyr behind the house, piles of cut ambary next to him in a wagon. He was shirtless, and the warrior caste markings ran black down his spine and across the bottom of his lower ribs. He had scars—a jagged one across his flank from shrapnel, two puckers on his chest and back from bullets. His hands and arms were a mishmash of silver and scar grey. He slammed down the top of a wooden tool, cut into interlocking wedges the length of a man’s leg, and crushed segments of ambary, cracking the woody exterior and exposing fibers within. He carried the fibers, wheat-colored strands in a mass like a horse’s tail, to a stand with thin spikes, slammed the fibers into the spikes, then drew the
m out with a puff of dust.
“You going to help or just gawp at me, young blood?” he asked as he wrung the strands through the spikes over and over again.
“General Fastal Svar’Kut,” Daniel said.
The man paused, then went back to work. “No, wrong guy. Piss off.”
“General Fastal, orders from the King.” Daniel held out the scroll.
“Fastal?” The Tyr tossed the fibers into a pile and sat on his back porch, sweat pouring from his body. “You think that guy would be out in these sticks, breaking ambary and getting paid by weight? He’s dead. Gods judge him well. You some sort of highborn new blood? Maybe your kin don’t like you much, sent you out here to mess with you, see if you’d get your ass beat by a farmer for snooping around his daughter, eh?”
“You live alone,” Daniel said. “The last King—gods judge him rightly—had your death faked after a series of assassinations following the Just War. Now King Menicus calls you back to duty.”
“Bronto shit.” The Tyr reached into a tin bucket filled with icy water and took out a glass bottle. He snapped off the cap with his bare hand and threw it into the coop. “Everyone knows Menicus loves peace. If I was Fastal, why would he want me?”
“Because the kingdom needs you.” Daniel offered the scroll to him and gave it a gentle shake.
The Tyr hesitated, then snatched it away. He pulled a ribbon jutting out from a thin slit and drew out parchment bearing handwritten orders, sealed with wax.
“Fort Bagad? For a hoax, you think you’d trick me into going all the way back to King’s Rest or—”
“That’s where the kingdom has the nuclear weapon stockpile,” Daniel said. “You’re to travel there as soon as possible and take command of the garrison. The safety of those weapons is your responsibility now, General Fastal.”
“So that’s where they went.” Fastal released the ribbon and the parchment snapped back into the scroll. “We going to war against the heretics?”
“I don’t…have all the details,” Daniel said. “But the security of those weapons is important to the King.”
“He brings me out of retirement to babysit a cave.” Fastal took a swig from the bottle then went to the coop and kicked the door open. “Out! Out, you little shits!”
The creatures hissed as they bolted out. They gathered in a flock at the edge of the ambary fields, then vanished into the rows.
“We study you at my clan’s crucible,” Daniel said. “What you did at the Battle of Vinta Gap was—”
“A mistake.” Fastal drank more. “I let a column of Slaver refugees slip through my lines and to ships that evacuated them to their home islands.”
“You broke their last army, letting the civilians—”
“They all died in the fires!” Fastal hurled the bottle at Daniel and it struck him in the shoulder, spraying him with beer. “If I’d stopped them, they would all be alive in a camp. They’d be Indentured now, but they’d still be alive. Did Menicus ever finish that painting? The one where I’m watching the mushroom clouds stitch death down the Slaver lands?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel rubbed his shoulder and brushed flecks of foam off his tunic.
“Sorry…sorry, young blood. I’ve had too much time to think about what happened. My livestock aren’t much for conversation.” Fastal pushed the bucket over, spilling icy water and bottles across the ground. “No use feeling sorry for myself, is there? The kingdom really needs me?”
“More than you know,” Daniel said.
“I still…still got a uniform inside. You my ride?”
“No, sir, for your safety, you can’t be seen traveling with me. Your truck can make the drive in one tank. Present the orders at the gate and the garrison commander will have you kitted out,” Daniel said.
“What clan are you? I can’t place your accent.” Fastal stood up and scratched the scar on his flank.
“Not one with your history. Their gaze upon you.” Daniel saluted by touching his fingertips to his brows, then left.
Chapter 17
Quboth lay on a slab in total darkness, the cold creeping through his space suit. His helmet lay on his chest, and he tapped against the jagged fragments of his visor.
The count kept time, an old military trick to combat boredom during long, dull periods. Just what had happened to him? Where was he? Who had taken him? There were no answers.
There was a snap and something grabbed him by both wrists and ankles. He struggled, but his limbs slammed into the slate. The box over him rose and bright lights pierced his eyelids.
“Calm down,” a voice said in Tyr, carrying an odd Linker accent.
Quboth cocked his head to one side.
A metal hand blocked the light, grabbed him by the forehead, and forced his head down. The lights mellowed, and he made out a metal skeleton with cameras for a face and a screen across the chest.
Quboth grunted and tried to fight, but the robot held him firm.
“I said calm down.” Hower’s voice sounded through the screen. “You’re Quboth, right? The first Tyr to break the sound barrier in a jet. I thought I recognized you.”
“What-what is this?” Quboth grunted as a metal band went over his forehead and tightened so hard that his ears pulsed with blood.
“Congratulations.” A smiley face appeared on the screen. “You’re the first Tyr to knowingly have contact with an alien race. Lot to take in, I get it. But you’re a smart man and you’ve likely figured this all out already. We want you to go back to your people, but your vitals are all over the place from stress, naturally.”
“You killed—you killed—”
“Hush. Nothing’s going to change that. It helps to know what’s about to happen to you. It should stop your heart from exploding out of fear. We need something from you, Quboth. Doesn’t require any effort. Just know that it’ll end after a bit of pain.”
“What do you want from me?” Quboth tried to control his breathing but began to hyperventilate.
“Blood. We need your blood,” Hower said.
The robot snapped up a hand and three needles popped out of the fingers.
Quboth screamed.
****
“Ms. Argent. I need you.” Zike’s voice woke Molly and she flew out of bed to a waiting set of clothes and her vanity station.
“Yes, Director, I can be at your location and presentable in six minutes. Is this an emergency?” She slipped a caffeine wafer into her mouth and the effects cancelled any notion of sleep within seconds.
“Six minutes.”
Molly rushed into Corporate-approved outfit number thirty-seven: a black knee-length skirt with matching jacket and white blouse that were tight over her midsection and hips. She leaned close to the vanity, and cameras within the glass adjusted the makeup pigments implanted in her skin to match Zike’s tastes. He was fond of a sun-kissed look and long lashes. As she stepped into high heels and picked up a data slate on her way out of her quarters, a small drone lifted off the table and kept pace a foot behind her left shoulder.
She arrived in Zike’s chambers exactly six minutes after he’d spoken his last words to her.
The director lounged in a high-backed, well-padded chair. He was shirtless, his statuesque figure something to behold, even in his relaxed state. IV lines ran from his elbows, armpits, and wrists into the floor beneath his seat, cycling out his blood. Thumb-sized drones flitted around his face and torso, repairing micro abrasions and other small imperfections.
A fiber-optic cable was plugged into a data port just behind his left ear.
Standing nearby was a holo of Hulegu. The Compliance officer’s long hair was unkempt, the pale red glow from his cyber-eye growing and waning as it tapped in to whatever feed the director was on.
“We’re off the record still.” Zike gently raised the fingers of one hand and Molly’s dictation drone floated into her palm and deactivated. “But get ready for a profit-and-loss report for the record.”
“Naturally, sir.”
Molly smiled.
“She one of the help with benefits?” Hulegu looked her over.
Anger grew in Molly’s chest. The Executive Assistant branch of Bahadur-Getty was renowned across human space for its professionalism and perfection of execution. For that brute to even insinuate that she was some manner of—
“Standard issue. I prefer competence over distraction,” Zike said.
“Bah. You can teach them to type. You can’t teach them to grow tits.” Hulegu winked at her.
Molly seethed, but this was an off-the-record conversation and she knew Corporate’s policy on such harassment from Compliance—chiefly that Compliance was immune to any such complaints during the course of their duties. She’d been warned about what precautions to take when the mercenaries were nearby.
“On the record.” Zike blinked one eye and holos appeared before Zike for Molly to see. “P&L assessment number six-epsilon. Indigenous population estimates were incorrect. Upwards of three billion are present. Compliance estimate?”
“Total elimination with available resources will take up to three hundred days,” Hulegu said. “I’ve requested to use larger-yield munitions on population centers, which will bring indigenous to near extinction within two hundred days. Sweep and clear of those that bed down in rural areas another twenty-one days.”
Molly recorded everything they said and pulled in the relevant data overlays. She paused for a moment…did they really mean extinction for the Tyr?
“Request denied as per client request,” Zike said. “No one wants to colonize a planet with a decade of nuclear winter ahead of it.”
“Or one burnt to a crisp, isn’t that right, Director?” Hulegu chuckled.
“Strike that from the record.” The corner of Zike’s right eye twitched. “Argent, insert the cost-benefit analysis of the extended elimination.” He touched a holo screen and tossed it to her. “Projections are beyond initial estimates.”