by David Liss
The wind was almost deafening, and I had to struggle to keep my balance.
“How’d you manage that?” Steve demanded, shouting at top volume.
“No idea!” I shouted back. “I’m just glad it worked. Now, are you ready to do something stupid?”
“You don’t ever have to ask me that!” Steve looked over at the other shuttle, still flying next to ours. He took perhaps ten seconds to gauge speed and distance; then, without any windup, he propelled himself forward and leaped the ten-foot gap between the two vehicles. He slammed into the side of the shuttle chest-first, but the moment he made contact, he was already scrambling for something to grab on to. He quickly found some kind of handhold and pulled himself up to the shuttle’s roof.
Your turn! Smelly shouted.
Panic coursed through me like a sputtering electrical wire. I didn’t know how to leap from one moving shuttle to another. It’s not the sort of thing you practice in gym glass. How did I measure distance? How did I compensate for speed? I was still wondering these things when my feet started moving, my legs pumping. It was like my body knew what to do without my brain telling it. I leaped.
I was in the air, the wind blowing hard, pushing me up and back, away from the other shuttle, and for a terrifying moment I felt sure that I had misjudged the leap. I was going to fall to my death. Then I hit hard, bouncing off the metal, feeling myself splay out like a plastic bag full of garbage dropped from a roof. I started to slide, but Steve grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t blow it now, mate,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “That jump was brilliant. You sure you’re not still mucking about with the skill tree?”
“Just what nature gave me,” I said—plus, of course, Smelly working its magic, whatever exactly that was. One of these days, I was going to have to make it spell out exactly what it could and could not do for me. It seemed like, in moments of crisis, it always had a new surprise. But I could not worry about that now—and I was certainly not complaining.
The trapdoor on this shuttle was still open. I checked my data bracelet. We had just over three minutes remaining.
“No time for recon,” Steve said, reading my mind. “All we’ve got is surprise.”
I nodded.
Steve leaped down the trapdoor. I hoped he was going to distract whoever was down there, because I wasn’t anywhere near as agile as he was. I went over to the opening and sat, dangling my legs. I then let myself slip, using my hands to hold me up as my body lowered. When I’d gone as low as I could, with my head still outside the shuttle, I allowed myself to drop.
Here were the four armband-wearing peace officers who had left us on the rooftop. What a surprise! And, of course, Ardov. So, yeah. Five to two. Bad odds, though they were made slightly better by the fact that Steve had been kicking and punching with his lizard-fu in the few seconds he’d already had on board. Two of the peace officers, a bull head and a squid guy, were already slumped on the floor, their body positions suggesting that Steve had knocked their skulls together. I’d never wondered if you could render a squid alien unconscious with a head blow before. This trip was, in fact, turning out to be educational.
So that upgraded the odds to three to two, which would have made me feel better if one of the three had not been supersoldiered up with skill-tree hacking. I’d been that supersoldier in the past, and I knew that Ardov would be near impossible to stop.
As soon as I oriented myself, I saw Ardov backhanding Steve. Ish-hi are tough, and I’d seen Steve fight before—he was like a reptilian Terminator—but Ardov stopped him cold. Steve tried to pull his head back to avoid the blow, but Ardov seemed to anticipate the move. His furred hand made contact, sending Steve reeling hard into the shuttle wall.
I’d have leaped on Ardov from behind, but the two remaining peace officers were suddenly turning their attention to me. There was a short being with bright yellow scales and bulging eyes, like a big tree frog in uniform, and then a hulking, spiny giant, easily seven feet tall, that looked like Chewbacca’s porcupine cousin. They both looked angry and terrifying, but there was no way I wanted to fight a spiky behemoth. I turned to the other one.
“Let’s go, frog man,” I said with a bravado I did not feel.
Frog woman, Smelly said. She’s female. Also, her species naturally secretes a paralytic venom on her skin when agitated, so don’t let her touch you.
That counted as a useful tip. Now I got to choose between being impaled by the porcupine of doom or getting up close and personal with the death sweat of a lady frog. I did not have a lot of time to choose how I was going to go down swinging, though, because out of the corner of my eye I saw Ardov moving toward a slumped Steve.
I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon. It was a standard transport shuttle, just like the one we’d been on. The chairs were bolted down. There was no loose equipment that could be dangerous. Only stuff to keep you safe.
Like an inflatable raft.
As the peace officers moved toward me, I lunged into the nearest aisle and threw myself on the floor. I grabbed a sealed raft container from under one of the seats. I wished that, like Villainic, I’d taken the time to review the safety materials, because now I didn’t have time to read over the instructions, which came with those handy illustrations that are supposed to make everything clear but just end up confusing the process.
Tear open the stupid package and press the red button twice, you witless imbecile! Smelly helpfully offered.
The peace officers were nearly on top of me. The yellow frog woman was holding a PPB pistol, and I could see, as if in slow motion, that her long, slightly webbed fingers were curled around the trigger, ready to fire.
I dodged to the side so that the plus-size porcupine would be between the weapon and me. Then I pressed the red button twice and hurled the still compact raft at the two of them.
It inflated furiously, going from the size of a box of macaroni and cheese to the size of a canoe in about half a second. The raft couldn’t have been too heavy, but it was moving fast, propelled by the force of its own inflation. It slammed into the giant porcupine, and he staggered back, smacking Ms. Frog in the face with a spiny arm. She cried out in pain. His weapon went flying into the air. I leapt up and caught the weapon as the porcupine went down to the floor, the paralytic venom worked its paralytic magic. I checked the pistol, making sure it was on the stun setting, and fired off a quick blast, sending the last peace officer to the land of venomous and amphibious dreams—a place, incidentally, I hope never to visit.
I couldn’t say precisely for how many seconds I’d been distracted—it didn’t seem to me to have been that long—but I turned to find Steve about to take a punch in the face. Ardov had his elbow cocked back. I had no doubt that one of his augmented punches could put my lights out permanently; Steve was tougher than I was, but I didn’t have any interest in finding out just how much tougher. I fired a warning shot over Ardov’s head. Sparks exploded from the bulkhead, which got his attention. There’s nothing like weapons fire in an airborne vehicle to make everyone stop what they’re doing and reevaluate their priorities.
Ardov took a step away from Steve and had his hands in the air, but he was grinning, like this was all a big joke. “You can’t shoot me, Zeke. I have the codes to cancel the destruct sequence. How am I going to tell you what they are if I’m unconscious?”
“What if I shoot you and bring you over to that shuttle?”
“That would be a great plan,” Ardov said, “if you thought you could actually leap the distance between the two shuttles while carrying me. Also, I have sworn to serve the cause of peace, which means I would rather die than hand a victory to violent primitives like you.”
Time being short, I decided to ignore everything he said. “Steve and I are right here, Ardov, and that means anything that happens will happen with witnesses.”
“Not ideal,” he admitted, “but the Confederation will judge me by the standards of my species, not by how I have been enlighten
ed. They will never know that I am carrying out Junup’s orders.”
“Except I’ve been recording our conversation,” I told him, “so actually, they will kind of know, because, like a complete idiot, you just told us.”
I had not been recording our conversation. That would have required a whole lot of ingenious, maybe even prophetic, planning. You don’t go through life thinking, I’m about to have a life-threatening encounter. I should probably record it in case my enemy says something incriminating. The way Ardov was looking at me, I kind of got the feeling he was trying to work all this out on his own. And that was okay. I didn’t mind. Mostly because while we’d been talking, Tamret and Villainic had slipped down through the trapdoor. I had no idea why they had risked the leap over here—less of a risk when you’re a Rarel. For whatever reason, they’d decided to join us on the fun shuttle, and now here they were, standing directly behind Ardov, and Tamret had a PPB pistol in her hand.
“Hey, Ardov,” she said.
Villainic’s eyes went wide. “It’s not appropriate to initiate conversation with a male who—”
That was as far as he got, because he was startled by the sound of Tamret firing the weapon at point-blank range, directly into Ardov’s back.
“I could have shot him if I wanted to!” I shouted. “We needed him conscious for the codes!”
Tamret sighed. She was crouched down by Ardov’s slumped form, doing something to him. “Nice job here,” she told me, “other than, you know, not being smart enough to finish it.” She was holding his wrist, I realized, and accessing a file on his data bracelet.
“Clever,” I said.
“No kidding.” She had a bunch of holographic text she was scrolling through, moving from one file to another rapidly. “Okay, got it.”
We all started to move, but she held up a staying hand. “No point in all of us risking the jump a second time. We’ll just fly both shuttles back to the compound.”
“I can’t let you go unaccompanied,” Villainic said.
Tamret took a deep breath. “But what if the codes aren’t right, and I can’t prevent the shuttle’s destruction?”
I knew her well enough to read her tone. She had no doubt the codes would work. She was totally messing with him.
It worked. Villainic’s eyes went wide. “Perhaps you’re correct.”
Steve was now standing, rubbing his head and looking a little groggy, but no more so than he might have after an afternoon of Ish-hi rugby or whatever. “Nice save, ducky,” he told her. “Need a lift?”
She nodded. Tamret turned to me, grinned as if to say she could still pretty much do anything, augments or not, and then gently placed a foot on one of Steve’s lowered hands. Like they were performing a circus act they’d practiced a million times, he lifted and she flew upward, catching the sides of the opening and then hauling herself up. I watched from the monitor as she made the leap to the other shuttle and vanished down the trapdoor.
A bunch of things were going through my mind. I was thinking about how I never, not in a million years, would have let Tamret go into danger while I stayed behind out of a desire to protect my own skin. I thought about how I should have insisted on going with her, not because I thought she would need to be kept safe, but because if I had, I would have had a few minutes alone with her, away from Villainic. And, finally, I was thinking about how the giant porcupine guy seemed to have recovered from his paralysis and was now standing behind Villainic, ready to bring his clasped hands down on his head.
I admit there was a moment of hesitation. I could deal with the porcupine before he clobbered Villainic, or after. It was hard to say which would be better, so why rush things? Still, I knew I had to live with myself, and if I allowed Villainic to be sucker-smacked by an angry guy with spines, I would probably feel bad about it later. I raised my pistol. In Villainic’s eyes I saw a moment of terror in which he wondered, perhaps, if I had chosen to assassinate him. Then I fired off a stunning blast, which sent the peace officer stumbling back, unconscious.
Villainic looked behind him, realizing what had happened. He looked at me as I lowered my pistol.
“You saved my life!”
“He saved you from a beat-down, mate,” Steve said. “And maybe a few puncture wounds. Plus, he clearly had to think twice before doing it. Best to have a little perspective.”
“That alien fiend was going to hurt me, and you stopped it,” Villainic said.
I waved my hand in the sort of think nothing of it, my good sir way that always feels like humble-bragging, no matter how many aliens you blast. The truth is, saving someone, even someone like Villainic, never stops being an ego-booster. And yeah, he did owe me one: Maybe he ought to send me a basket of fruit or something. I didn’t make a big deal about it, mostly, if I am going to be honest, because I thought it would make me look even cooler and tougher in his eyes. At some point I was going to be standing between him and Tamret. He had the advantages of age and height, not to mention strength and a hundred other things that came with being a Rarel, so I figured it couldn’t hurt if he were already a little intimidated by me.
We were interrupted by Alice’s voice coming over my bracelet. “You there, Zeke? Everything’s good on our end. Destruct has been canceled. We’re heading back to the compound.”
“Excellent. Tell Tamret she did great work.”
“You’re on speaker,” Tamret shouted from the distance. “And, if we’re being honest, I suppose you helped a little.”
“You’re too generous. See you guys back at the horrible, oppressive, prisonlike base where we’re despised and treated like criminals.” I went over to the navigation console to begin reprogramming the shuttle to take us back.
“Oh, and Zeke,” Alice said. “Have fun with Villainic.” She closed the connection.
“I’d say you already are having fun with Villainic,” Steve observed.
I opened up the navigation systems, plugged in the coordinates for the compound, and figured I’d spend the rest of the trip relaxing and shooting any rogue peace officers who happen to regain consciousness. Villainic had other ideas, however.
He was still looking at me, and looking at the porcupine guy, and then back at me.
“You’re going to hurt your neck,” I told him.
Villainic came closer to me. His eyes were wide and kind of moist, and he looked like, well, a sad little kitten.
“Let’s not make too big a deal of this,” I told him. “It wasn’t anything special.”
“He’s right,” Steve said. “He likes shooting bad guys. Pretty much lives for that sort of thing.”
“It’s like a hobby with me.” I would have said more, but Villainic was pressing his hand to my face. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but it was hard enough for me to wish he would stop get his palm off my nostrils.
“I invoke the ritual of brotherhood,” Villainic said at a volume generally considered impolite when used in the confinement of a small transport shuttle. “I call upon [the first-tier deity of fraternal relations, ice fishing, and moderately risky recreational sports] to witness our bond.” In a stage whisper he said, “You need to put your hand to my face.”
“I kind of don’t want to touch you,” I said.
He picked up my hand and pressed it to his face. “Hear me, great deity!” he cried, loudly enough that only deaf deities could avoid listening. “I say, before you as witness, that this [monkey]-boy alien thing is now my brother!”
“You do share a resemblance,” Steve observed.
“Tamret didn’t have to touch Nayana’s face when they became sisters,” I protested, though my words were garbled by Villainic’s hand hair in my mouth.
“I’m following elevated-caste traditions,” Villainic said in a whisper. “Now that abbreviated low-caste nonsense.” Then to the shuttle’s ceiling he shouted, “This being is now my brother.” For emphasis he mashed his palm harder into my face. “He shall serve me in all things and, most of all, in cultivating a spirit of ob
edience in my wife-to-be.” Villainic removed his hand from my face, which was a great mercy, and gave my shoulders a squeeze. Then, with an air of great satisfaction, he threw himself into an empty seat and buckled himself in for the trip home.
Steve walked up to me and put a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “This also falls in the category of things that only happen to you.”
I let out a long sigh. “I was just thinking exactly that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
When we’d left the compound that afternoon, we’d had Ardov and four peace officers as escorts. We came back with all of them in various states of unconsciousness, injury, frog poisoning, and porcupine-quill impaling. We’d promised to get Junup off the hook, but we’d only succeeded in making him look more guilty. On the other hand, we’d avoided covering up mutiny and murder while simultaneously not giving up the guy who held the keys to our escape plan. We’d managed not to be assassinated. I’d gained an alien sibling, which I suppose you could put in the plus column if you were an optimist. We’d even come home with an extra shuttle. Anyone so inclined could spin this trip as more of a success than a failure, right?
Strangely, some beings were disinclined to see it that way. When we landed, we were greeted with peace officers who put us in plasma restraints. Junup, who also turned out to not be an optimist, demanded that we be marched to his office immediately.
On the way over, Colonel Rage fell in step with me. He leaned in toward me, not the easiest thing in the world when you have plasma restraints pinning your arms behind your back.
“Nice job today, son,” he said.
I shrugged. “I find not getting blown up to be a pretty good motivation.”
“It’s one of the best,” he agreed. Then he looked serious. “How’d you do that thing?”
“What thing?” I asked.
“You know what I’m talking about. That leap up to the trapdoor of the shuttle.”