Metal Wolf

by Lauren Esker

  Maybe they aren't here for me.

  Sure, they just happen to be on Earth for some other reason, and with a whole planet to choose from, they're here in Sarah's city? Yeah, right.

  At last a twist of the path hid the Galateans from view. Rei moved swiftly then, leading Sarah across a nearly empty parking field and onto the street. He'd hoped to mingle with the locals to obscure their visibility, but it was growing later in the evening and the crowds had begun to thin out. Most of the people who were still abroad seemed to be inside the restaurants and drinking establishments they passed.

  "Can they track you?" Sarah whispered.

  "If they could, I think they'd already be on top of us."

  "Do you have a plan?"

  "Get back to your vehicle. Get out of here." He paused and looked around. Despite his normally keen sense of direction, all these streets looked alike in the dark.

  "This way," Sarah said, tugging on his hand.

  Staying together, he told himself, was a mistake, putting Sarah at risk for no reason. He wasn't going to leave her alone in the city with Galateans around, but once they got back to the truck, he needed to convince her to leave without him. She'd be safer on her own.

  ... except no, she wouldn't, because his pod was in her barn. Even if the Galateans didn't have a way of tracking it directly, they had much better scanning technology than the locals, and they would find it sooner or later.

  He and Sarah came around a corner, and he recognized the open-air parking courtyard where she'd left the truck. When she'd parked there earlier, it had been crowded with rows of vehicles in the big paved space. Now her truck was one of the few that remained.

  Sarah made a startled sound when he gripped her wrist, pulling her to a stop against the side of the nearest building.

  "What's wrong?" she whispered. "You don't think they found the truck, do you?"

  "I don't know, but there's no sense taking chances." He nodded to her costume. "Take off your wings and wig so you can move swiftly. We don't want delays when we get to your vehicle."

  "Yes, of course." She stripped off the costume, bundled it up, and barely hesitated before leaving it at the base of the wall. Rei abandoned his spear and fake ears along with it. The ears he'd thought about leaving on, in the hope of confusing the Galateans, but if they saw him the game was probably up anyway.

  He scanned the street. There were a few Earth pedestrians around, each glimpse of movement giving him a sharp jolt of adrenaline before he identified them as not-a-threat and relegated them to the back of his mind. He wished he could use his cuffs to scan the area, but he didn't dare. It was Galatean technology meant for slaves to wear; the odds were good that they'd be able to detect a set of cuffs using an active scanning frequency. He'd never had to use Galatean tech against Galateans before.

  "Let's go," he told Sarah softly, and they began to walk swiftly toward the truck. Sarah slipped her hand back into his, and Rei squeezed her fingers. It was good to know exactly where she was, by both touch and sight.

  As they reached the edge of the vehicle parking area, angling toward the entrance, Sarah looked back and gasped, "Rei!"

  Rei looked over his shoulder. He took in the scene in an instant: the damp street gleaming under the lights of the street lamps, the buildings glittering with their own lights, and in the middle of all of that, a hulking figure that had just come around the corner after them, ears pricked forward in its thick mane.

  They are tracking us! was his first thought, tinged around the edges with panic, but then he took in the Galatean's companion, a hulking shape on all fours, head lowered to the pavement and tail curled around its hindquarters. It sniffed at the wall where they'd been hiding. It was a striped feline, bigger than Rei's wolf, and wore no collar or harness. Gold gleamed at its ankles.

  One of them was a shifter.

  They were tracking by smell.

  He'd only ever heard rumors of shifters among the Galateans; he'd never seen one. His sept-sister, Haiva, had worn her cat traits openly on her human body, as most Galateans did. But he'd heard that some of them could shift fully into a big cat shape, and there was the living proof in front of him.

  They hadn't been seen yet, but the parking area was brightly lit. It was only a matter of time.

  "Keep walking," Rei told Sarah between his teeth, pulling her with him. "Stop looking back at them. We cannot behave differently from the others."

  "But—" she began, and then her voice rose to a cry of alarm: "Rei!"

  Rei spun around just in time to see the humanform Galatean assume a combat stance, and flung up his arms just in time to shield them both. Green light flared in front of him, and the Galatean's attack splintered on the air. Rei felt the fine hairs lift on his arms as static electricity crackled around him. Glimmers of light chased each other down his arms and over his cuffs.

  He risked a glance to make sure Sarah was all right. She looked okay, but her eyes were enormous; she was frozen in place.

  "Get to the truck! I'll be right behind you!"

  Sarah snapped out of her paralysis and sprinted for the truck.

  With a low, rumbling snarl, the cat-shifted Galatean sprang forward, covering the distance between them in huge bounds. The other one fired off another energy attack. Rei dodged this one rather than depleting his shields. Blue-green light rippled over the vehicle next to him, which erupted in a piercing, wailing alarm.

  Apparently Earth vehicles had defensive capabilities? He hadn't realized that. Whatever the vehicle was gearing up to do, its noise had distracted the Galateans. Rei took advantage of that instant of distraction to dash after Sarah and then duck behind another vehicle as another attack glistened over its surface. This didn't produce a new alarm, but the other was still wailing.

  Some of the nearby Earth humans had sensibly taken cover. Others were holding up their communication devices, pointing them at the Galateans. Taking pictures? Preparing attacks of their own? It would do no good to shout at them; they couldn't understand him. Anyway, he doubted if the Galateans planned to injure the natives except in self-defense. They would be safe as long as they stayed out of the way.

  An engine revved nearby. He hoped it was Sarah's truck. He just had to get to it—

  With a tremendous thump and a snarl, the cat-shaped Galatean landed on top of the car, looming over Rei.

  His fur was rusty orange, barred with black. Green eyes shot with gold, not so different from a Polaran's, gleamed at Rei over a snarling muzzle.

  Rei brought up both hands and let him have it.

  The Galatean almost managed to deflect it, flinging up his forepaws in an automatic defensive maneuver, except that the move itself threw him off balance since he was currently a quadruped. He fell forward and Rei's attack tore through his face and neck, sliding off the shield that the Galatean had managed to bring up to protect part of his body—but not enough of it. He was dead before he hit the ground, stinking of burnt fur.

  Rookie mistake, Rei thought numbly. They were probably just as unused to their enemies having Galatean weapons as Rei was. That was likely the last time he'd manage to get in a lucky shot at an unshielded enemy.

  He closed his hands over the gold cuffs on the dead Galatean's paws. They resisted for a moment, but Rei poured mental energy into it, and the cuffs unlocked and came off in his hands. Gold ones were more powerful than silver. He could use the advantage.

  The truck skidded to a stop beside him with a screech of tires. "Get in!" Sarah yelled through the open window.

  Rei vaulted into the back. "Go!"

  He crouched in the truck bed and deflected another attack. This one bubbled the paint on the truck's side as it slid off his shields. The first attacks had been meant to stun; now the remaining Galatean was using lethal force. Rei didn't blame him.

  He didn't try to attack in return, just focused on shielding the truck as Sarah accelerated toward the swinging white-and-orange-striped bar blocking the exit to the street. She started to slow,
then punched up their speed instead and slammed into it. The bar broke with a snap. Momentum flung Rei off his feet in a bruising tumble against the side of the truck as she cornered sharply and roared off down the street.

  He sat up and looked back at the rapidly receding parking area. The alarm still wailed into the night. The Galatean was crouching over his dead crewmate; nearby humans had retreated into their vehicles. Then Sarah tore around a corner and Rei could no longer see them.

  He looked down at the dead man's gold cuffs in his hands. They felt hot against his palms. He could still smell the searing scent of burning fur. He'd killed before in battle, but always while armored, always from a distance. He'd never fried anything up close except training robots.

  But he hadn't even thought about it. Just fell back on his training, pushed the cuffs to full power and blew a hole in another living being.

  Another living being who was going to take you back to slavery. Best-case scenario, you go back to being a slave, with an extra ten or twenty years tacked on for desertion. More likely, knowing what you know about this planet, they'll execute you.

  He checked to make sure the gold cuffs were fully powered down, then slipped them into his pocket to deal with later. Already he felt tingling throughout his body as his nanites worked to replace the charge that he'd used in the fight.

  The truck jolted to an abrupt stop, lurching under him as one tire went up onto the pedestrian walkway beside the street. "Get in!" Sarah called out her window. "You're too conspicuous back there. It's not legal to ride in a truck bed and we really don't want cops."

  "Cops?" Rei asked as he climbed into the passenger side.

  "Yeah, hear the sirens? They'll be all over that city lot in a minute. I hope they didn't have cameras back there." Sarah swallowed. Her hands were shaking on the truck's guidance wheel, and the realization struck Rei that this child of a safe and war-free world might never have been in a fight before, or even seen one.

  "Are you all right?" he asked her.

  "I'm fine." She swallowed again and pulled back onto the street. The truck wavered back and forth in its lane and then straightened out as she got control of herself. She glanced over at him, her face wan in the glow of the instrument panel. "How about you?"

  "Unhurt." The stolen cuffs were still warm in his pocket, a reminder of what he'd done. In his initial escape, he hadn't hurt anyone. Now he'd killed a citizen. The likelihood they were going to even attempt to capture him alive had dropped to near zero.

  But what else could he have done? They'd trained him as a killer. They had drilled him and drilled him in the training room to use lethal force in a fight. He'd almost instinctively fried Sarah when he first met her—might well have done so, if not for the cuffs being nonfunctional in the wake of Lyr's power surge. Nausea rolled in his stomach at the thought.

  I will not be that, he thought, curling his hands into fists in his lap. I will not be the killer they made me.

  But the Galateans might not give him a choice.

  Sarah merged into the flow of vehicles on one of the fast roads she called highways, though they didn't seem much higher than the surrounding landscape. "Are they tracking us?" she asked anxiously. "Is it safe to go home? I don't know where to go, Rei."

  "They are not tracking us." He checked again to make sure his cuffs were powered down, just to be on the safe side. "They were following us by scent before. They won't be able to do that now."

  "Good. I don't want to lead them back to Dad."

  Rei hoped to the gods he didn't believe in that they hadn't already done that. "I need to get my battlepod away from your farm. And myself with it."

  "Rei, no. We're not going to abandon you to face this alone."

  Fear and worry flared into anger. "Did you see what happened back there? Do you understand the threat you're up against? These people have weapons you cannot comprehend. Your people have no defenses against them. One Galatean with a pair of these—" He held up his hand, fist clenched, to display the silver gleam at his wrist. "—could kill hundreds of your people and lay waste to a city block. One of their ships, firing from above, could turn one of your cities to slag. And we have no idea how many of them are here."

  "I think you underestimate humans," Sarah said, her voice flat. "We have guns. We have armies. We're not going to be that easy to invade."

  "Sarah, your people are not going to risk war with an intergalactic empire to protect a fugitive who unlawfully stole himself and fled. I've seen what you call guns. Your father showed me how they work. Your little metal projectiles would bounce off our shields, and then we would effortlessly kill the person holding the weapon, because they have no shields. Do you understand?"

  "We?" Sarah said. "We would kill—? You're not one of them."

  "I was raised and trained to be! Anyway, does that matter now?"

  "It matters! It matters a lot to me. We are not just handing you over—"

  "I'm not asking you to—"

  "—and we are not letting you run off into the night with a broken spaceship and—and two pieces of wrist jewelry to fight an intergalactic empire by yourself. You might have been alone all your life, Rei, but you're not alone now and I'm not going to let—I'm not going to—"

  The truck veered and Rei realized with a shock that she was crying so hard she could no longer see the road.

  "Sarah, please, be calm. Stop before you kill us."

  He put a cautious hand on the wheel above hers. Sarah allowed the truck to be guided to the wide road-edge, pulling off as other vehicles roared past theirs in the night.

  "I'm sorry," she mumbled, dashing at her eyes.

  "You have nothing to apologize for." He slid nearer to her on the seat and pulled her against him—easily, readily; when had it become so easy to touch her? His people touched each other often, another thing he'd nearly forgotten about his childhood. It had been so hard to learn to live among the more reserved Galateans. As his sept left or died, one by one, and the remaining ones grew ever more tense and fragile, he'd learned to restrain himself until he almost didn't miss it anymore.

  But Sarah unbuckled her restraint belt so she could throw her arms around him. She buried her head in his shoulder and pressed herself into him as if it was possible for two bodies to merge into one, and he held her back just as fiercely.

  "I'll keep you safe," he promised into her hair. "I'll keep you and your father safe."

  He had always been taught that soldiers, even slave soldiers, didn't learn to fight in order to kill. They learned to fight in order to protect. And that was what he meant to do. These people would not come to harm from helping him; he swore it.

  "Oh! Dad! We need to warn him." Sarah pulled away, scrubbing at her eyes. She blew her nose on a paper towel from a roll she dug out from under the seat and then got out her phone. Still pressed up against Rei, with one of his arms around her, she tapped symbols on the screen and held the phone to her ear. He could hear a buzzing sound and then a voice, too low to make out the words.

  Sarah frowned and tapped symbols again. She did this twice more before she put the phone back in her pocket and turned to Rei with worry on her tear-reddened face.

  "No answer. I tried his cell and the land line. He's not picking up on either."

  Rei didn't know what all of that meant, but it pointed to a likely possibility. "The farm might be compromised." He would not consider the possibility that Gary might be dead. He still felt it was more likely the Galateans would leave the natives unharmed, causing as little of a disturbance as possible.

  Sarah nodded. "I'll understand if you don't want to go back. We could stop somewhere along the road, get a motel room, maybe. I can leave you there and go back myself—"

  "Sarah." He gripped her hand tightly. "If you won't leave me, I won't leave you. We will go make sure your father is unharmed. I will not leave you to deal with this alone."

  Sarah blew out her breath and slid over to the driver's seat. "Okay. Let's go get Dad."

&n
bsp; "Together," he said.

  "Yes. Together."

  16

  ___

  T HE FEMALE AGENT, Pradhan, kept pacing and checking her phone.

  "Got somewhere to be?" Gary asked dryly from the couch. Neither of the two agents answered. He hadn't expected them to.

  They hadn't tried to tie him up or even arrest him. A guy could almost get annoyed at the way they'd instantly dismissed him as a threat, except he knew they were right. An old guy who walked with canes wasn't much to concern a couple of healthy young people. And they both had guns; he'd seen the bulge under the guy's jacket and had glimpsed Pradhan's when she'd frisked him and taken away his cell phone and stripped out the battery without a by-your-leave.

  They had also unplugged the land line, even turned off the porch light to keep trick-or-treaters away. No way to get a message to Sarah and Rei. No way to tell them they'd be waltzing right into a trap.

  He just hoped those two kids had a good time tonight, good enough to stay out all night. Get a hotel room in Eau Claire, don't even bother coming back 'til morning.

  Not that it'd be any safer in the morning, but maybe he would have thought of some way to warn them by then.

  Pradhan's phone buzzed with an incoming text. She glanced at it before tucking it into her pocket. "Incoming," she told her partner, who Gary had heard her address as Rhodes.

  "Hooray," Rhodes said, leaning forward in Gary's favorite armchair to unwrap another piece of chocolate from the candy bowl on the coffee table.

  Pradhan went to the window and looked out.

  "You call for backup?" Gary said. "Can't handle one crippled old man by yourselves?"

  He fell silent, looking up. There was a sound ... no, not a sound, more of a vibration. Similar to the deep vibrato of helicopter rotors as they flew over the house—the entire town of Sidonie had been getting used to that over the last week—but deeper, almost entirely beyond sound. It was more of a pressure, like the heaviness of air before a thunderstorm.