by Sara King
“Huouyt of my profession do not allow themselves to go under another’s knife. Not for any reason. I will do without.”
The Human’s face darkened. “Flea, Galek, Scarab, go get some dinner.”
The Ooreiki and the Grekkon were happy to oblige. The Baga was more reluctant, giving Jer’ait a curious look before the Prime’s scowl sent him hurrying out after the other two.
Joe went to the door and shut it. When he turned, he crossed his arms and said, “Why?”
Jer’ait watched the Human a moment, considering whether to reply. “The gasses and medicines they use. In training, Va’gans are overexposed to every substance that could be used against us in the field to give us a greater resistance. Therefore, Va’ga-trained Huouyt do not allow another to introduce foreign chemicals into their bodies.”
“So it’s a pride thing.”
Jer’ait almost left right there, but he forced himself to endure the conversation, if only for the sake of his mission. “No. That same resistance makes it extremely hard to put us into any sort of chemical-induced state without giving us a lethal overdose. It’s a very effective safeguard against enemy interrogation. Ooreiki doctors may be able to accurately estimate the capacities of their other victims, but I guarantee you they cannot estimate mine.”
“A medical patient is hardly a victim.”
“Anyone allowing an intoxicating substance to enter their bodies is a victim.”
The Human’s face wrinkled. “That’s an interesting way to look at it.”
“It is the basis of our training,” Jer’ait said.
“You’re no good to us without a chip, Be’shaar.”
Jer’ait felt his irritation rising. “Even in groups, Huouyt work alone. My PlanOps teams would usually go out by ourselves and meet afterwards in a certain place to discuss what we had learned. If it would make you feel better, we could take a look at the maps of the tunnels and choose six meeting times and places. I will be there—you can count on it.”
The Human gave him a flat look. “You’re not going down there without a way to communicate with us.”
“PlanOps signs are universal amongst all its member species,” Jer’ait said calmly. “I could leave them behind for you to find.”
“When you were with other Huouyt, on your old PlanOps groundteam, what would you do when one of you got injured?”
Jer’ait said nothing. He watched the Human closely, wondering why he continued to push the matter when most would have long since stood down and agreed to his compromise.
“Because I know for a fact you did not allow each other to bleed to death.”
“Why do you push it, Human?”
“Why?” The Human snorted. “You just said it yourself. PlanOps uses universal signs. Yesterday I chatted with an Ooreiki Prime who told me those signs haven’t changed in six millennia. As soon as I found that out, I almost ashing crapped myself. All we’d need would be one Takki down there who’d been trained to read signs and we’d all be toast.”
Jer’ait studied the Human. Sober, he almost seemed intelligent. “There is very little chance anyone has ever trained Takki in PlanOps protocol.”
“You want to bet your life on that, Huouyt?” the Human demanded. “They told me this Dhasha Vahlin is over a thousand turns old. That’s an awful long time to pick up PlanOps symbols, even if he wasn’t in the military, which I’m pretty burning sure he was.”
“Why’s that?”
The Human gave him a long look, then stalked over to the table and switched on the satellite map. “Mark. Neskfaat. Random. Fifteen ground units.” The map that appeared showed several areas cleared of vegetation surrounding the black pits of a collapsed den entrance.
“See anything?” the Human asked, watching his face.
Jer’ait didn’t. He peered closer, however, not about to allow a Human to best him at something as basic to his trade as observational skills.
His eyes caught on the darkened patch in the forest and he frowned. “Mark. Remove foliage.”
The screen shifted, leaving only the black pits on three-dimensional brown terrain.
Every hill, every high point of land, had a pit. Open pits. The area around the pits on the hills, however, were not cleared in the typical Dhasha manner. They were completely hidden by trees. Jer’ait could even see the rainbow smudges of several Dhasha sitting in the entrances to the tunnels, waiting. The entrances themselves wove an octagonal pattern across the surface of the planet, the sight of which made Jer’ait’s breja tremble in waves across his skin.
“That is unnatural,” Jer’ait whispered.
“That is smart. The whole planet’s like that. If the Vahlin isn’t intimately aware of battle tactics—our battle tactics, I’m a purple-pelted Takki.”
“Our grounders are going to get slaughtered.” Jer’ait glanced up, studying the Human. “Did you see this or were you briefed?”
The Human gave him a flat look. “It may be hard to imagine, but I do have the mental capacity to notice a pattern. Every visible deep den entrance on Neskfaat is on low ground. Every hidden entrance is on high ground. On every other Dhasha planet I’ve ever seen, the entrances are wherever the hell the Dhasha happened to sit down.”
The Human was telling the truth. That he had caught this… Jer’ait began to wonder if indeed the prophecy was true. “Did you tell headquarters of this?”
“Do I look stupid to you? Space Corps is out there now, bombing the hell out of them.”
Jer’ait glanced back at the maps. For a long time, he said nothing, merely scanned the honeycomb pattern of Dhasha tunnels industrious Takki had dug within half a turn. “We would never have these problems if we could simply find a way to destroy the Takki.”
“No,” the Human said. “They’d find someone else. Ooreiki. Ueshi. Huouyt. Humans. About the only ones who wouldn’t bow to them would be the Jreet.”
Jer’ait glanced back at the Human, instinctively ready to object, but gave a tired nod instead and recited, “Under a Dhasha’s claws, even a boulder crumbles. We can’t all be Jreet.”
“Thank God.” The Human let out his breath slowly.
Reluctantly, Jer’ait said, “We have a companion stand watch.”
The Human twitched, frowning.
Softly, Jer’ait continued, “Throughout the procedure, he observes and makes sure the doctors only use the chemicals that we have prescribed for ourselves before we go under. Should the doctor make a mistake, should he use the wrong chemicals or dosage, the companion is sworn to slay all who participated, right down to the lowliest assistant.”
“How often does that happen?”
Jer’ait glanced up, scanning his face. “Often. Huouyt have a weakness to chemicals. Our constitutions are never constant, as with other species. One day, a dose might not be enough to achieve the desired effect, whereas on another day, half that dose would kill us. Even our self-prescriptions are mostly guesswork.”
The Human grunted. “I always wondered why they never let us drug enemy Huouyt. Thought it was a stupid bureaucratic thing.”
“It’s so that you don’t kill them.” Jer’ait left out the fact that, as an Eleventh Hjai with his particular…idiosyncrasy…there were plenty of parties out there who would try to take advantage of his helplessness.
The Human watched him for some time. Finally, he said, “I think I can help you.”
Jer’ait snorted. “I did not tell you the story so you could make false offers, Human. I’d expect you to kill everyone involved and I can tell if you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not offering to kill anyone. To hell with that. I’m offering to set you up so you can drug yourself. Then I’ll stay and make sure no one adds to the mix. Hell, I’ll order some damned robots, let you program them yourself, if that would make you feel better.”
Jer’ait frowned at Joe. “You can do that?”
He tapped the eight-pointed star on his chest. “Sometimes rank’s got a few perks. I get the feeling if I took
a dump in the middle of the mess-hall, they’d laminate it.”
Jer’ait peered at the Human for a moment before saying, “Why have you never moved past Prime?”
“Ask Phoenix.” The Human’s voice held uncontained bitterness.
I did, Jer’ait thought. And what she said made no sense. Curiously, Jer’ait said, “What does she have against you?”
“I don’t know.”
Jer’ait was taken aback by the sincerity in the Human’s voice. “You mean you have no idea?”
The Human gave him a sharp look. “Do you?”
“There are rumors…” Jer’ait said quickly, cursing himself for once again allowing the Human to get the upper hand.
To his relief, Joe didn’t follow up on his statement. He sighed, instead.
“Mag never bothered to tell me…just every promotion board I was ever nominated to stand before.” Joe shook his head. “She was too young when we lost our groundmates on Kophat. It’s the only reason I can come up with that makes any sense.”
Jer’ait looked back at the map. “Arrange the operation. I’ll get the chip.”
The Human actually gave him a surprised look. “I honestly wasn’t expecting you to say that.” He gave a huge, relieved sigh. The pressure of holding together his groundteam, Jer’ait decided, was beginning to show in the Human’s features. He actually wants us all to live, Jer’ait thought, more than a little stunned. What kind of alien cared about…aliens? “I’ll go get that started now.” Commander Zero turned to go.
“But Joe,” Jer’ait warned.
“Yeah?”
Jer’ait hesitated, considering again how much trust he was putting in this alien he was tasked to kill. An alien that was, in all ways, weaker than any Huouyt in existence. “Keep them—” he swallowed, his voice cracking with unexpected fear of what he intended to do. Jer’ait looked away and gathered his composure, fighting shame. Once he had collected himself, he tried to appear bored and said, “Just you and me in the room, understand?”
He felt the Human’s eyes sharpen in a way Jer’ait did not like. “It’s not about the drugs, is it?”
Jer’ait felt his breja ripple once before he reined them in. “Just us,” he said again. “Or your team will be down to four.” Let him take that however he would. Then, before the Human could ask anything else—or deduce any more about his state of struggle with the rest of Huouyt society, he left to gather the proper drugs.
#
Joe was watching the robotic arm inject the Huouyt with a third small dose of the chemical of his choice when a Ueshi in gray doctor’s garb overrode Joe’s lock and entered the room. Instantly, every tiny hair on Joe’s neck and arms stood on end.
“We’re almost finished,” Joe said, deliberately putting space between him and the Ueshi. “Shouldn’t be more than another ten tics, doc.”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” the Ueshi snapped. “I don’t know who you think you are. This is not accepted procedure. This operation is not registered. The medicines were not approved. You stole that chip, Commander. I tried to stall them, but you need to go down to security right now and explain what’s going on.”
Joe eyes only briefly passed over the Overseer circles before settling on the envelope he carried with him. “What’s that?”
“Medical records,” the Ueshi said, tightening his arm over the envelope ever-so-slightly. “Be’shaar is highly sensitive to several different drugs. Fatally so.”
“We know,” Joe said. “That’s why he’s dosing himself.”
The Ueshi seemed to relax a bit. “Go deal with the administrators. I knew Be’shaar from Eeloir. I’ll watch over him. He’d feel better to have me here when he wakes up than some alien he barely knows.” The Ueshi reached for Joe’s arm, gesturing towards the door, but Joe quickly pulled it out of reach and stepped back.
His eyes fell back to the envelope under the Ueshi’s arm. “Seems a little lumpy for a medical record. What else is in there?”
The Ueshi turned to Joe, for the first time taking his eyes off of where Jer’ait lay helpless on the table behind him. “You will leave now, Human. This matter does not concern you.” The anxiety was gone, replaced with cold threat.
Joe took another step backwards, towards where Jer’ait lay helpless, and braced himself. “Yeah, it does.”
The Ueshi’s blue eyes were startlingly empty as they fixed on Joe. “Be’shaar was my patient on Eeloir. I know his metabolism best. I’m here to watch over him.”
“Go ahead and watch,” Joe said. “I’m not moving from this table.”
A flash of amusement crossed the Ueshi’s blue face and it stepped toward Joe.
Joe brought his plasma pistol up and held it between them. “Get out. And quit the act. We both know you’re not Ueshi.”
Amusement vanished, replaced once more with an unreadable mask. “You would raise a gun to a superior officer?”
“I didn’t know Va’gans joined the army. Aside from Be’shaar, of course. But he’s a Peacemaker, so he doesn’t count.”
“You think I’m an assassin?” The Ueshi’s little blue-green face showed perfect surprise.
“Show me what’s in the envelope. Then we’ll decide.”
The Ueshi’s head-crest fluttered in annoyance. “I can have you thrown in the brig for impudence.”
“Then do it.”
The Ueshi and Joe locked gazes for several tics, watching each other in silence.
“Jer’ait’s almost awake,” Joe said. “I’m sure he’ll just love to see his old buddy from Eeloir.”
The Ueshi cast one more look at Jer’ait, then leveled his dead gaze back on Joe. “You’ve been marked.”
“Funny, I never felt a thing.”
“You will,” the Va’gan promised.
Then, in silence, the Huouyt turned and exited the room. Joe holstered his weapon reluctantly. He knew deep in his heart he should have shot the bastard.
“Joe?” Behind him, Jer’ait’s voice was groggy and disoriented.
Joe turned to him, catching him when the Huouyt tumbled off the bed. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” Jer’ait tried to stand, obviously not wanting Joe to see his weakness. He toppled forward again and Joe threw his arm over his shoulder to hold him up. “Need a few more tics?”
The Huouyt glanced at the door, then glanced at Joe, then nodded miserably. He almost seemed like a small child that had badly cut himself. He acted scared.
“You want me to wait outside, I can,” Joe said. “If you need some time alone.”
Jer’ait nodded silently, unable to meet Joe’s eyes.
Joe almost turned to go. Almost. Instead, he dropped into a squat, so that he and the Huouyt were eye-to-eye. “There’s no shame in it.”
The Huouyt’s head came up, his violet eye full of electricity. “There is.” Jer’ait’s speech was slurred and he turned away in humiliation.
“No,” Joe said. He reached out and touched Jer’ait’s arm. “You’re my groundmate. You can trust me.”
Jer’ait’s gaze fell to where Joe touched his downy, cilia-covered skin. Then he looked up at Joe. “Human, I could kill you in an instant, just as you are now. You’d be dead before you felt the prick. Knowing this, knowing the power I have over you, I cannot trust you. Simply because you cannot trust me.”
Joe did not remove his hand. “Listen to me. We’re gonna see each other in a lot of awkward situations. We’re gonna see each other battered and bloody, naked and crying. It’s what we do. I don’t like it, since I always thought Huouyt were evil bastards, but I’ve got to trust you. You’re gonna have my back in the tunnels.” He laughed. “Besides, Jer’ait. If you’d wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already.”
“Perhaps,” Jer’ait said softly. Then he stiffened, cocking his head at Joe.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “I know who you are.”
“The Jreet told you.”
“Who else?” Joe demanded. “He was trying to bribe me into tak
ing him back on the team.”
“I suppose it was too much to expect for his Sentinel skills not to—” Jer’ait cocked his head at Joe’s shirt. “What happened to your chest, Commander?”
Joe glanced down, then cursed inwardly. He’d left the collar open to cope with the heat inside the hospital room. “A few scratches from Daviin.”
The openness the Huouyt had showed him quickly slammed shut behind a look of steel. Joe knew in that moment that Jer’ait had pieced together what Daviin had done.
Sighing, he opened his shirt, displaying the scabby symbol Daviin had carved into his flesh. “The furg wanted to play with my blood.”
“He bound to you.” Jer’ait’s steely gaze melted again, replaced with simple shock. “As your Sentinel.”
“I didn’t know what he was doing until it was too late,” Joe offered.
“Is he here now?” Jer’ait gave the room a wary look.
“No, he’s outside in the hall somewhere, pacing like a nervous hen,” Joe replied. “He doesn’t like me being in here with you alone.”
Jer’ait’s look hardened again. “As well he shouldn’t.” The Huouyt began to stand.
Joe held him in place. “Is there something you want to tell me about mysterious Huouyt doctors visiting you while you’re out, Jer’ait?”
The Huouyt jerked around to stare at him, horror oozing from its defective eye. “You let him attend me?”
“Hell, no,” Joe said. “I convinced him to leave. Nicely. With a gun.”
“How?” Jer’ait snapped. “Did he touch you?”
“No. I’m not stupid.”
Jer’ait’s gaze sharpened. “Did he carry anything with him?”
“Yup. An envelope.”
Jer’ait’s breja rippled. “And you’re sure he never touched me?”
“There was a pissed off Congie with a plasma pistol standing between you and your enemies the whole time.” Joe squeezed his groundmate’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”
The Huouyt lowered his head, saying nothing.
“So who was he?” Joe demanded. “Something going on I need to know about?”