Shoot the Humans First

by Becky Black

  I suddenly thought that I'd never found out what happened to their bodies. They'd probably been cremated, their ashes blown away on the soft Chia breezes. Well at least it had been somewhere beautiful, somewhere that looked a little like home. Their faces came to me one after another. Some of them I lingered on longer than the others. Jia laughing at the butterflies as they swarmed around us. Ilyan hiking happily in the sunshine, a blade of grass in his teeth, forgetting for a while about the burden of destiny that awaited him. That would have awaited him, if not for…

  I opened my eyes. My face was wet. I scrubbed my sleeve across it, drying the tears. Full darkness now. Time. I flipped down my visor and engaged night vision. The scene became clear as day. But I knew the men I had to get past had the same advantage.

  I approached the house, moving silently. Lights showed inside now. I could use that. One of the guards stopped at the front gate, adjusting his rifle. I stayed concealed in bushes across the road from him and found a stone on the ground. When he looked away from my general direction, I wound up and tossed the stone. It landed over the fence, between the guard and the house. He turned in that direction at once, bringing up his rifle. I saw his hand go up to his helmet and I knew he'd just engaged heat-seeking mode.

  While he had his back to me, I moved towards him, fast, willing myself invisible. He started to turn back, his hand once again at his helmet. I knew I had a half a second, barely that, as his visor switched back from heat seeking to night vision. I sprang, in that half second of blindness, and we fell down in a tangle of limbs. I thrust my knife in under his armpit, in the gap between plates of body armour, through his ribs, into his heart.

  I hated to do it. Poor bastard had just been doing his job. I made a silent apology. Sorry pal. Between me and the target. No option. He died without a sound and I twisted the knife a quarter turn and slid it out.

  Number four.

  The two assassins, the one I shot the day… the day the world ended. I shook myself. No time now for that sort of thinking. Had to stay focused. I heaved the body over the low wall, letting it fall into the cover of some bushes.

  The second guard came around the side of the house to see an infantryman standing there. Me of course, but he had no reason to think it wasn't his buddy. I tapped my helmet in the "broken comms" signal and he at once came towards me.

  I shot him with my pistol at two meters away. Couldn't miss. Pulse beam. Silent.

  Number five. And another silent apology.

  After I concealed his body with the other, I looked up at the house. No sign that anyone inside had heard anything amiss. I walked up to the door, my visor still down. Tesla would look before he answered the door. I knew that for sure. I wondered how paranoid he might have become. Did he sleep restlessly, worrying about me coming for him? Had anyone warned him I'd escaped? Did anyone know I'd escaped? I knocked and waited. After a few seconds, I heard movement inside. He'd be checking through the camera I saw mounted in the door. I did the broken comms tap again and after a second, the door opened.

  Tesla.

  The little bastard wore expensive silk clothes. The hand he rested on the door had immaculately manicured nails.

  "What do you want?" he asked, sounding irritated, then scared. "Is there trouble?"

  I barged the door suddenly with my shoulder. Yeah, there's trouble all right, you fucking weasel, you wasp, you... No! Stay in control. I slammed the door shut behind me.

  Tesla staggered back and lost his footing, his bare feet tangling with each other. He fell down to sprawl on the thick pile carpet.

  "How dare you? What do you want?"

  I slung the rifle over my shoulder on its strap and bent forward to take off my helmet, before straightening up, shaking out my hair, which did need a trim. I gave him a twisted smirk.

  "Hello, Tesla."

  He screamed. A full on shriek like the one he'd let out during the shelling back on Kitsnujitar. Perhaps he found me even scarier that that shelling. He had to know I was going to kill him.

  "No! No!" He scrambled away as I walked towards him. I didn't try to catch him yet. I could do that any time. For now I just enjoyed walking after him slowly as he tried to back away from me. He screamed for the guards a couple of times. That didn't do him any good of course. He crawled into a large, well-appointed living room and turned pleading, terrified eyes up to me.

  "Please, Jadeth, please! I'm sorry! I didn't know they were going to kill everyone I swear!"

  "Liar."

  "I swear, I thought they would just capture them and--"

  "Tell that to Rish. Oh, you can't can you? You stuck a knife in his belly and left him to bleed to death."

  "He wouldn't go away!" Tears streamed down Tesla's face now and he had pissed himself. I kept on walking, following him around as he backed away on the floor, wailing. "I asked him to leave me alone and he wouldn't go!"

  "So you killed him."

  "I had to!"

  "And now I have to kill you."

  He scrambled again, crawled fast behind a sofa, and crammed himself into a corner. I stopped in front of him.

  "No, Jadeth, please! " A note of desperate hope came into his voice. "I can give you money! They gave me a lot of money. You can have all of it. And this house. Everything! Please don't kill me."

  I took out my knife and let it glint in the light. He moaned with horror.

  "You are offering me money?" My voice was terrifyingly calm in the face of this final insult. "You actually think money will stop me wanting to avenge them?"

  "Jadeth, please," he sobbed. "I swear to you I didn't know they would kill everyone."

  "Why?" I asked, quietly. "Why betray Ilyan? The rest of us you didn't give a fuck about, fair enough. But Ilyan was your friend. So why?"

  "I couldn't take it any more!" he yelled, suddenly almost angry, perhaps seeing he had nothing to lose now. "He should have taken power. Made things happen the way he wanted. Not hiked around the wilderness preaching to grunts!" He looked scared again. "I mean soldiers. No offence."

  "None taken." I wanted to laugh at the insanity of it that he feared offending me with a word, when I had come here to cut out his heart. "And of course, if he'd taken power you'd have been right there by his side. Right there to pick up some more of that reflected glory. Like you had for the last ten years, right?"

  "It's not like that." He shook his head vehemently. "He got it wrong, that's all. And I had to do something. I had to stop him. Don't you see? His preaching made the prophecy more likely to come true! Gave the aliens ideas. And now it's happening! It's happening, Jadeth!"

  "And because of you he's not here to stop it."

  Enough chitchat. I'd had all kinds of plans to make it slow and painful. Plans to torture him using anything I could find around the house. Now I just wanted it over. I wanted him to be dead. I needed him to be dead, because every second he lived mocked their memory.

  I took out my pistol and walked closer to him. He sobbed pathetically now, grabbed at my boot, grovelled, begged.

  "Please no, Jadeth. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please."

  I couldn't stand that. I felt no pity in my heart, only disgust. I thought of the moment. That moment. I remembered Vimal dying because he put his own body between Ilyan and the guns. I remembered Jia trying to protect Ilyan the same way and him pushing her away to try to save her from dying the same way. I thought of Maiga ordering me to leave her to her fate and protect Ilyan.

  Heroes. The whimpering of the creature that had killed them sickened me. I could have gut shot him with a bullet and watched him die slow. But I needed it to end, needed his voice to stop.

  I switched the pistol to pulse burst. I pressed it to his sweating temple. I pulled the trigger.

  Number six.

  Chapter 28

  Everything went a bit grey and strange for a while then. My ears buzzed and I had to sit down. I staggered over to an armchair and flopped into it, head spinning. A moment later, I felt a tingle in my jaw, leaned
over the arm of the chair and threw up. Didn't have much to throw up. I'd not eaten properly for days, lived on water and coffee and ration bars. After that was over, I fell back in the chair, trembling and sweating.

  I don't know why I reacted like that. Maybe just relief that I'd got it done, dealt with him. I touched my face to find it wet again, with blood and tears. My mouth tasted vile. I wanted to go and clean up, but I couldn't stand up yet, I needed to wait till the room stopped spinning.

  Eventually I managed to stand and I took a couple of deep breaths. Now I had to start thinking straight again. I needed to search the house, see if I could find anything useful. Valuable if possible, to sell for ready cash.

  First I went into the kitchen and cleaned my hands and face in the sink. I drank three glasses of water in quick succession, washing the taste of bile out of my mouth. After that I made a cup of tea. A good strong brew always put a man back on his feet.

  I wandered around the house, sipping the mug of scalding hot tea. Not really searching yet, just exploring. Checking out the luxury that Tesla had sold our lives for.

  In the hall, I found a locked door. Naturally, I wanted to get that open. A blank panel was inset into the wall to the right of it. The panel had a button beside it, just begging to be pushed. I pushed it. Never been able to resist pushing buttons. The panel slid back revealing a screen and more buttons, these ones labelled. One was labelled 'on' so of course I pushed that.

  As I expected the screen came to life and showed a room, from a high angle, like a camera in the ceiling. Quite a nice room, carpeted and furnished, lit with soft lighting. And occupied. A woman sat on an armchair, her chin on her hand, her other hand holding a book in her lap. I could only see her from the side and she had long reddish brown hair that covered the side of her face.

  I glanced at the door beside the panel. The room must be behind that door, I supposed. I looked at the monitor screen again, at the room. I'd thought at first that it looked like a nice room, comfortable. Quite large, divided roughly into a sleeping area and a living area. But looking again I saw it had no windows. And it lay beyond a locked door. I'd called it a room, but another word would fit better. Cell.

  Tesla had a woman in a cell.

  I found the screen responded to touch and allowed me to move the camera and to zoom. I zoomed in on the woman. Perhaps the camera movement made a noise, because she looked up from her book and glared straight into the camera. I gasped and stepped back, dropping my mug of tea.

  Maiga.

  I'd heard her scream. I'd heard shots. I'd heard the scream cut off. I'd been certain she'd died. But there she sat, glowering, she thought, at Tesla.

  She'd been part of his price. He'd wanted her and he couldn't have her. He didn't betray us for money, or because he'd decided Ilyan had got it wrong, or even because he'd grown sick of hiking around alien planets. He sold us out so he could have Ilyan's woman.

  I recovered my wits and looked at the buttons on the panel. The label on one read: 'gas'. I didn't press that. I guessed what it did. Tesla couldn't overpower Maiga, a trained marine, and that glare suggested she didn't relish his company. He must gas her unconscious, and then go in and... I zoomed in on the large bed to see manacles attached to the headboard and footboard. I thought for a moment that I would throw up again.

  For the first time I regretted killing him quick. I should have made him suffer. I should have peeled his skin off one layer at a time with a blunt knife. I should have castrated the bastard. Or I should have kept him alive for her to do it.

  I looked again at the buttons and found one labelled "unlock". When I pressed that I heard the sound of bolts slamming back. I pulled the handle and had the door about half open when the handle was snatched out of my hand. Maiga hit me like a missile, slamming me back against the opposite wall. I hit the floor moaning and she landed on top of me, straddled my chest, one hand raised, and a fist clenched, ready to pound down into my face.

  Nice going, Jadeth, I chided myself. You thought that one through - not. I should have known she'd be waiting for any chance of escape.

  "Jadeth?" She gasped, sounding amazed, staring down at me, her hand still raised, frozen.

  "Yeah," I gasped, winded. "Get the hell off me!"

  She did, jumped up lightly to her bare feet, and offered me a hand up.

  "But... but he told me you were all dead. He told me... Jadeth, the others? Ilyan?"

  I felt like a monster when I had to dash the hope I saw dawn on her face. I shook my head.

  "I'm sorry, Maiga, he's dead. They're all dead."

  The hope drained away, leaving her pale and suddenly fragile looking. Then she frowned, fierce again.

  "Why are you alive?" she demanded, making it sound like an accusation.

  "They kept me alive, wanted me to denounce Ilyan. I escaped."

  "And came to rescue me?" She stared at me again.

  "No, I thought you were dead too. I came after Tesla." She winced at the sound of his name, and her face twisted briefly with disgust. Tesla hadn't bothered to mention her before I shot him. If I hadn't found her, if I'd left the house, she'd have died of starvation locked in her cosy cell.

  "Where is he?" she asked quietly, probably already guessed the answer.

  "Dead."

  She nodded, gave a small satisfied smile. "Thank you, Jadeth."

  "You're welcome."

  We stood in silence for a moment. Difficult to think of small talk at this moment. What the hell would we say?

  'So what have you been up to lately, Jadeth?'

  'Oh, getting tortured and abandoned to die. You?'

  'Oh, getting raped and abandoned to die too.'

  No, I figured she wouldn't really want to talk about that with me.

  Eventually she spoke. "You look terrible."

  I rubbed my hand across my eyes. "Not slept much for a while. You look, well, great actually. Though kind of pale." She wore a tiny skimpy dress that I guessed Tesla had picked out for her. Her hair cascaded thickly down over her shoulders, nearly all the way down her back. "How'd your hair get so long?"

  "Implants," she said, with that look of disgust again. "He liked it this way."

  "Oh," I said. Silence again.

  "Do you know the prophecy is coming true?" I said after a while.

  "Yeah. He told me about the recall order," she said. "We should go home, do what we can. It's what Ilyan would have wanted."

  "Right now it's what High Command want."

  High Command, the ones who had him killed. Tesla betrayed us, but High Command betrayed the whole damn planet. Go home? Help them? Not in a million...

  I stopped and looked at Maiga for a long time. A tech. Smart as a whip. Get her on the intelligence networks and she can find any information you wanted.

  "Yes," I said. "Home. You're right. It's time to go home."

  ****

  I woke up nearly seven hours later, blinking at Maiga as she shook my shoulder. I'd slept heavily and if I'd dreamed I had no memory of it.

  "Wake up, Jadeth. We need to get out of here before the relief guard shows up."

  "Oh, yeah." I rubbed my eyes and glanced at the window to see it was still dark outside. I had slept on Tesla's bed, without bothering to take my boots off. Maiga hurried out of the room and after a moment I followed her, into the kitchen, where she dished up food onto a plate.

  "Eat up, quick."

  I sat and ate mechanically as she buzzed around. She'd put on some clothes that I suppose were Tesla's, a loose shirt and pants.

  "I've got the information," she said, as she tossed an empty pan carelessly into the sink. A crash told me it had broken a plate already lying in there. "All we need to get inside High Command."

  We. Yeah, I was going to have to tell her about that. I stopped with my fork part way to my mouth and stared as she took a big pair of scissors out of a drawer, walked over to a mirror on the wall and snipped off a big chunk of her long hair. It fell to scatter on the floor.

&nb
sp; "I've also transferred all of Tesla's money into accounts where we can get at it." She grimaced. "Much as I hate to touch the blood money, but..." She shrugged and cut off another strand of hair.

  Just implants, I reminded myself. And the way he liked it. I went on eating and poured some coffee. Maybe I'd wait till she put the scissors down before I explained about there not being a "we".

  "Jadeth," she said, still cutting her hair and staring intently into the mirror. "Why did you leave him alone that night?"

  I almost dropped my cup. Coffee sloshed onto the table.

  "You mean Ilyan?"

  "You know what I mean." She turned to look at me, the last long strand of hair still in her hand. I couldn't tell if she just wanted to know or if she wanted to accuse me, blame me. Well, hell, what did it matter now? I might as well tell her.

  "I was looking for you and him. Tesla. I thought you were," I looked away, ashamed. "You know, together."

  I really should have waited until she put the scissors down. I waited for the explosion, but it didn't come. After a while, I looked up at her. She looked thoughtful, as opposed to murderous.

  "I guess that's my own fault," she said quietly.

  I stared. Was she admitting that she and Tesla actually were...

  "Oh take that look off your face, you idiot," she snapped. "I just mean I should have put him off more forcefully." She dropped the last of her fake hair onto the floor. "You bloody men. Some of you just don't get the message." She grabbed my empty plate and tossed it at the sink, where it hit the taps and smashed. "If we run you over with a tank you think we're just playing hard to get."

  "Hey, I always took a hint," I protested, thinking of Jia.

  "Well, he didn't." She scowled in the direction of the living room and folded her arms. "I didn't want to make a fuss, about it. I didn't want to have to tell Ilyan his best friend was coming on to me. If I'd been more--"

  "No," I stood up, interrupted her. "It wouldn't have made a difference. Tesla did this. It's his fault, not yours."

  She looked at me, her arms still folded. After a moment, she nodded. "Or yours."

  I smiled at her, nodded too and felt grateful to her as we finally forgave each other.

  Chapter 29