by Sara King
“I got a deal for ya,” Stuart said. “I can tell you where ta find more of ‘em.” He tilted his head toward his friends, amidst curses from the shifters. “Lots more.”
“Where?” Howlen sounded impatient.
“I got some conditions,” Stuart began. “First—”
“No,” Howlen interrupted.
Stuart frowned. “No what?”
“No conditions,” Howlen said. “I don’t make deals.”
“I just want fair treatment,” Stuart insisted. “How do I know you’ll give me what I deserve if I help you?”
“You’ll get what you deserve,” Howlen assured him.
Stuart did not like his tone. He said so.
“Well, truth is,” Howlen said, giving him a long, cold glare with eyes as unyielding as packed dirt, “I don’t like deserters.”
He’s serious, Stuart thought, panic beginning to trim the edges of his awareness. He fought to keep his tone level, knowing that he needed the colonel to let him out of his shell. If he didn’t, and they put Stuart through a more thorough scanner—which they would—all four of them were dead.
“A few hours ago you were beggin’ me to help you,” Stuart objected.
Howlen narrowed his eyes. “I never beg.” At that, he turned and left the room.
Stuart couldn’t believe it. His opportunity for escape had just walked right out the door like he’d offered shit-sandwiches and not the entire shifter mother-lode. He stared at the door for minutes, wondering if it was some sort of ploy to scare him into blurting out something important.
When Howlen didn’t come back, however, Stuart began to get that sinking feeling that maybe the colonel really was just as much of a hardass as he appeared. He had almost resigned himself to being discovered when hope flared anew with the arrival of a subordinate S.O. officer. The young woman was directing a group of soldiers that had come to ready the stasis shells for transport.
“We can help each other,” Stuart said when she paused near his shell.
She gave him a look of mingled suspicion and interest.
“I can tell you where to find more of ‘em,” Stuart said. “They’ve got a whole town on Penoi. I can tell you where it is.”
“Then tell me.” She glanced away to watch the crew wrestling with Paul’s shell.
Stuart scoffed, bringing her attention back to him. “Penoi’s huge. You think I could tell you right where it is without a map? All I know is it’s between some mountains and there’s a little fork in the river—”
“You turncoat piece of shit!” Ragnar interrupted. “You keep your damn mouth shut. We helped you back on Penoi. We gave you a place to live, food to eat, and this is how you repay us?! You have the conscience of a tapeworm.”
Stuart gave Ragnar a narrow look. Tapeworm, was he?
The woman glanced at Ragnar, scowling. “Shut him up.”
A corporal that had been removing the bolts holding Morgan’s stasis shell to the floor got up and thrust a taser into Ragnar’s neck, making him scream.
Stuart felt a little better as Ragnar’s head collapsed against the front of the shell. “So as I was saying,” he began, “They’re on this little river—”
“You’re just a parasite,” Paul spat. “You use people and cast them off once they’ve served your purpose. You’re just—”
“Him, too,” the woman said with an irritated gesture.
Stuart was still glaring at Paul long after the corporal had jolted him into unconsciousness.
“Well?” the officer demanded. “Where are the rest of them?”
Stuart tore his eyes away from Paul with some effort.
“You’re worried about the wrong species, dear,” the woman said, following his gaze. “Who cares what they think of you? They’re aliens.”
Stuart gave her a grim smile. “I’m going to need a map.”
The officer bit her lip. “The only map I can show you is programmed into the table in the war room. Just give me a description from here.”
“There were lots of trees, a river, and mountains,” Stuart offered.
The woman gave him a disgusted look. “What are you? A goddamn fortune-teller? That describes just about every place on Penoi.”
“I can’t give you the right place without a map,” Stuart protested.
“Give me something solid and I’ll give you a map. Otherwise, stop wasting my time.” The woman turned to go.
“Standing in the village, if you look up to the east, you can see a mountain that is shaped like old-fashioned gun-sights.”
Morgan’s head jerked in his stasis shell and he gave Stuart a long look.
“Gun sights, eh?” the woman said, watching Morgan’s reaction. “I suppose I could set the computer to look for that.”
“Give me five minutes at a map and I can put my finger on it,” Stuart replied.
The woman cocked her head at him. “You realize that we will hold you until we prove your information is correct. Lying to us is not going to help you get out of here any faster.”
“But if I’m proved right, I get a reward, don’t I?” Stuart insisted. “I heard that there’s a bounty on shifters’ heads. A big one. That’s what that doctor was saying, anyway.”
“There’s bounties on colonists’ heads, too,” the woman replied. The suspicion, however, melted from her face. Humans, after all, were simple creatures.
…Simple creatures that thrived on the material and liked to annihilate everything that made them nervous.
To the blonde corporal that had relayed Stuart’s message earlier, the woman said, “Let this one out of stasis. Keep an eye on him until I get back with the Colonel.” At that, she turned and strode from the room.
The corporal gave Stuart a long look before unlocking the shell. The other soldiers stopped what they were doing and stood, waiting, their hands on their weapons.
As soon as the shell folded open around him, Stuart’s nerve-endings suddenly came back to life in a blaze of tingly fire. He cried out and fell to the floor, unable to move in the confusion. So this was why the woman wasn’t worried about him getting away. He should have remembered from the last time he was in one of these things. Unfortunately, it meant he would have to do the transfer sooner than he had planned.
Stuart stretched out his hand to the soldier that had released him, ignoring the blinding pain. “Give me a hand up?” he said, straining.
The soldier backed away, giving Stuart a suspicious look. Stuart’s heart sank. If Colonel Howlen came back before the transfer was complete, he was sure to know what was going on. After over a decade of training on Millennium, S.O. developed a sixth sense about that sort of thing.
A squat, redheaded man stepped up, pushing the standoffish corporal out of the way. Grinning, he caught Stuart’s hand in a firm grip that sent shockwaves of agony through his ultra-sensitive body. Stuart forced himself to smile.
“Don’t mind ‘em,” the man said easily. “They think colonists carry all sorts of viruses and parasites.”
In his stasis shell, Morgan laughed.
Stuart gave the shifter a cold glance before tightening his grip on the man’s hand.
“There you go,” the redhead encouraged, “now just push with your feet. Good. Now straighten up.”
Stuart carefully slid a node into place on his palm where it was clasped against the redhead’s. Once it was ready, he gave a mental apology, then delivered a constant, mild shock that coursed through the redhead’s body, stunning him. The redhead’s eyes went wide at the jolt, but he couldn’t yank his hand away. With his other hand, Stuart swung his arm like he was trying to steady himself and smacked it palm-first into the other man’s head.
Gods, he hated this part. They both tumbled to the floor, their hands still locked in a death-grip. Before the other soldiers could pull him off of their comrade, Stuart shifted so that his ear was positioned over the redhead’s ear. Then, gathering his strength, he slipped out of his old body and into a new one.
His surroundings changed with a sudden jolt. Light, along with horrible dryness, assailed his body from all sides. Since he had only the most basic sensory organs, Stuart could naturally only see fuzzy images, able to perceive nothing near as detailed and colorful as his previous host’s, and completely unable to hear. Blind and deaf, perceiving the world through a disorienting haze of cold, dryness, and uncomfortable vibrations, that all-too-familiar fear of being without a host began to sink its talons into his soul.
Had they seen him? Did they recognize the muscle spasms of his old host, now that Stuart had disconnected? Could they see the blood dribbling out of his last host’s ear? What if the redhead started to scream before he installed himself?
Spurred by panic, Stuart burrowed deeper into the ear canal, knowing that the initial shock he’d delivered to the redhead would only last a few more seconds before his new host began to scream. He couldn’t let that happen, not with a dozen soldiers watching. This was his only chance. If he mucked it up, he would be taken to some Utopian laboratory and left in a jar of formaldehyde. Or worse.
Of all the creatures that had run afoul of the human race, suzait were loved the least.
As quickly as he could, Stuart opened a passage and slid into the redhead’s brain, easing himself between the tissues to minimize damage. From there, he stretched his tentacles to envelop the sensory organs first.
Have to take control, he thought, his terror ratcheting up with every moment that passed. Have to hurry… The first images were fuzzy, but as he fine-tuned his connections, they became crisp with the wondrous clarity of human vision. He saw a ring of humans, staring down at him with concern.
Hurry, hurry… That soul-deep panic was worming its way through his mind, and it was all Stuart could do not to dive through the tissues, instead of winding around them, careful to leave them intact. He tried to go slowly, to spare them what he could. Gods, he tried…
Then he felt his host take in a lungful of air to scream and instincts won out. Shoving a tentacle the rest of the way through the brain, Stuart violently cut him off. He winced, knowing he had caused damage, and knowing that his host might actually have trouble speaking, once Stuart left, but also knowing there was no avoiding it. There could be no screaming. Screaming would bring the men with lab coats and bone saws.
As he made contact with more areas of the redhead’s brain and it became evident that the transfer had been successful, Stuart slowly began to lose the horrible, innate fear of being rejected by his host. Instead, the overwhelming guilt of taking yet another host against its will began to chip away at his soul in its place.
Again, Stuart’s conscience screamed. You did it again.
And with that, Stuart hated himself just a little more. He had sworn he wouldn’t do it again. Not until the last one grew too old to use. Yet here he was, at the first sign of danger, ruining yet another life so that his could remain. He felt so morally disgusting he wanted to die.
…But not bad enough to slip back out of his new host’s ear and onto the floor. That terror was even stronger than his own self-loathing, and he remained firmly ensconced in his host’s brain, knowing that, if everything from this point onward didn’t go exactly right, it wouldn’t matter that he’d yet again stained his morality for his own survival. One wrong move, one stray suspicion, and the temporary security he’d found in the redhead’s brain would be wrested from him by a sterilized titanium scalpel. Stuart twisted in fear even as he forced more of his host to respond to his commands.
As the soldiers gathered around him, looking worried, he took over motor function. He continued to stretch and reach, making connections, wresting away the last of the host’s autonomy. He felt the host’s last vestiges of fear and panic, now all tightly enclosed within the container that became the host’s brain.
Sorry, Stuart whispered, in anguish.
In reply, he got a spasm of terror from his host, a being now locked within his own mind, an observer in his own body. The host’s heart, already a jackhammer against his ribs, began to rip at the sides of his chest. Stuart felt the beginnings of muscular tearing, and knew he was going to have to take over autonomic functions, too.
So sorry, Stuart whimpered. With a new wave of self-loathing, he wrapped a tentacle around the medulla oblongata to complete his hold over the host, blotting out the last of the host’s connection to the rest of the world. Many centuries ago, Stuart had made the mistake of not taking this vital control center, and he had been stranded for days in a dead host once the host’s heart and lungs stopped from the shock he caused on entry. Taking away that last bit of control, however, felt like a violation of the worst kind.
Stuart felt the host’s despair, and again wanted to die.
Again, he was too much of a coward.
Oh, stop wingeing, Stuart’s logical side interjected. They would kill you on sight. Stomp on you like a cockroach, spread your brains across the floor as they squished you in. Besides, they killed the harra. They killed your family. Hell, you might be the only one left, for all you know. They deserve what they get.
Yet, deep down, he knew that the terrified redhead no more deserved him in his brain than Stuart deserved to be put in a jar of formaldehyde.
I’m sorry, he thought again.
In reply, his host mentally screamed himself hoarse.
Reluctantly, guilt hammering at his consciousness as he listened to the host’s mental screams, Stuart unhappily returned his attention to surviving the next ten minutes. With a tendril on the brainstem, Stuart forcibly calmed the redhead’s heart. The body responded to him sluggishly, like most human hosts. Unfortunately, without the harra, Stuart had no choice. Humans had, with great efficiency and with brutal force, made themselves the only alternative.
He made his host sit up, keeping his head tilted entry-side slightly up, to keep the blood that was welling inside the canal from running out and betraying his presence.
“You okay, Pete?” The soldiers squatting beside him were looking at him anxiously, one steadying his host’s shoulder.
Two other men were restraining Stuart’s old body, which was showing only the most rudimentary signs of struggle. After being under Stuart’s control for almost forty years, his old host would probably take months to recover full use of his anatomy.
“Little blow to…head…” Stuart said, cringing at how slurred his words came out. Usually when he switched hosts, he planned a few quiet weeks in a secluded hotel to re-learn to use the new size and shape of his host’s tongue. Until he did, his words would sound as if he were perpetually drunk.
“He’s got a concussion. Get him to medical.”
A new horror enveloped Stuart at the sergeant’s command. If the medical technicians did a brain scan—which they would—the high metal concentrations of his natural body would stand out on their screens like a three-dimensional snowflake inside the man’s brain. The mere thought of that left him sick with terror.
“No,” he managed. “No, just need sleep.”
“Bullshit,” someone said. “You’re talking like you forgot how to use your tongue.”
Oh gods… Stuart thought, horrified by how close they had come. Scrabbling to regain control of the situation, he babbled, “I’m fine. Just a bump. Need a nap.” It came out sounding like, “Lyme thyne. Lusp a bump. Leed a thlap.”
“Come on, you,” one of his host’s comrades said, hefting his arm over a shoulder. Lifting Stuart’s host off the ground, he said, “Think of it this way… You just got some free R&R.”
Stuart couldn’t let them take him to medical. He knew this just as solidly as he knew he was rapidly running out of time.
“I said no,” Stuart growled, jerking his host out of the human’s grip. As the man gave him a startled frown, Stuart punched him as hard as he could.
The blow wasn’t very hard, considering his lack of control, but it made his point.
Their hands up, the other soldiers backed away from him. “Fine, man,” one of them said,
shaking his head. “But don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
“Warn him about what?”
Stuart stiffened at the sound of Colonel Howlen’s voice.
“Corporal Koff here fell and hit his head,” one of the soldiers said. “We wanted ta get ‘im ta medical, but he gone and punched me.”
But Colonel Howlen wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were fixed on Stuart’s old host, who was groaning and crawling ineffectually on the floor. Stuart had the sudden spasm of panic, knowing that the S.O. operative was about to catch him.
“Why is that man out of his stasis shell?” Howlen barked.
“Capt’in Burdough told us to—”
“Put him back,” the Colonel commanded. “She was mistaken.”
“Aye, sir.” Two men jumped to grab Stuart’s discarded host and shoved his limp body back into the stasis shell.
Howlen turned crisply to face the solders, looking all-business. “I want four men posted here at all times to make sure none of these prisoners get out again. No one opens those shells other than me or the Admiral, understand? Soon as we dock, I want the watch upped to eight men. No one enters this room without a voice scan.” At that, Howlen gave Stuart a passing glare and left the room, the fidgeting Captain trailing in his wake.
“Ain’t that the way of it,” one of the men muttered. “Officer screws up, we gotta take the extra shifts.”
“So who’s got first watch?” someone else demanded. “I ain’t gonna get but four hours of sleep as it is.”
“I don’t know,” another man said as he looked at Stuart, “But he ain’t gonna last no shift in here. He’s swayin’ around like he’s gonna fall over. Sure you don’t wanna go visit the Doc, Koff?”
Still a little stunned he’d survived the Colonel, Stuart numbly shook his head.
“Well, at least let us get ye back ter yer room,” Sergeant Griffin said. He grabbed Stuart by the shoulder and pushed him out the door. “I ain’t gonna be blamed for leavin’ ye injured. Bogg, Eldrich, grab two others from the barracks and take shift. Deeds, help me get this fool ter bed.”
A soldier steadied each of Stuart’s arms and ushered him into the hallway. Having no idea of the layout of the ship, Stuart anxiously let them lead him onward, praying they weren’t taking him to medical. As he waited with increasing trepidation, they led him down the hall, up a flight of stairs, and, finally, into a room with two bunks.