by King, Sara
Once she was finished eating, she set the beacon on a log across from her and stared at it.
The moment she triggered the device, a Coalition retrieval team would come, find a fully-functioning soldier, a perfectly healthy operator, and know she had freaked out again. If they were feeling generous and decided to let her stay in her soldier, the number of years left on her enlistment would be put on pause as they worked the kinks out of her brain, just like last time.
But if she didn’t trigger it—especially if she didn’t trigger it—they would track her down by the lifeline chip lodged in her spine.
Hell, she realized, they might not even bother tracking her down. They might just save themselves the effort, bring up her chip ID on the base computer, and fry her brainstem…letting her rot in whatever ridiculous makeshift shelter she had cobbled together from sticky alien plant stems under some rain-soaked leaf-cluster.
Unwillingly, she started crying again.
“Damn,” a voice said. “I never would’ve believed Milar if I wasn’t seeing it myself.”
Tatiana gasped and spun.
A big man in dirty brown leather stood at the edge of the firelight behind her. He had curly auburn hair, a heavy spattering of freckles, and dimples. He was smiling.
He was also holding a Laserat pistol aimed at her chest.
“Cold night out,” he commented.
Tatiana froze, her eyes on the gun. “I’m Coalition,” she blurted.
He laughed and motioned with the barrel of the gun at the cracked soldier. “Obviously.” The hulking, stinking brute sniffed and wiped a dirty hand across his nose, leaving a trail of bacteria-ridden slime across his arm. He snorted, proceeded to noisily hack up a gob of phlegm, and expertly spat it into the slimy alien weeds before clearing his throat and swallowing.
Tatiana realized she had her face scrunched up in disgust.
“Got a cold,” the stranger said, by way of explanation. His expression lacked any sort of apology. “Coalition confiscated colonist vita-stores last year. We’ve been deficient in selenium, zinc, and potassium ever since.”
Realizing that not even her overactive imagination could drum up a mucousy, selenium-deficient, gun-toting, knuckle-dragging ape, Tatiana started to get a very bad feeling.
Still, she reminded herself, Fortune had the Yolk trade. The Coalition had so many personnel stationed on the planet that it would take a lobotomized nutjob to start a scuffle with government troops. Tentatively, eyes still fixed on the pistol, she said, “Then what do you think you’re doing?”
“Rebellin,” he said. He grinned. “Step away from the soldier, please.”
Tatiana glanced back at the egglike vault.
“Don’t,” the man warned. His Coalition New Common was clumsy, like it had been learned from a textbook.
Tatiana hesitated. It took long minutes to fully calibrate a soldier upon reentry. Even if she made it inside before he hit her, they could certainly pry her out again before she’d activated systems. She glanced at the beacon.
“It’d take them an hour to get here.” He started to swagger toward the fire. “Besides, I just wanna look.”
“Are you trying to start a war?” Tatiana demanded.
“Wouldn’t mind it,” he said. The colonist walked over to the soldier and tapped on the ultra-light armor plating.
“Get away from my soldier,” Tatiana blurted, every pore on her body suddenly constricting at the idea of the Coalition finding out she’d let a colonist this close to the weapon.
“Calm down, pumpkin,” he said, flashing her a charming grin. “I just want a quick peek.” Then, ignoring her complaints, he climbed up the side and poked his head into the captain’s chamber. The big, dirty colonist whistled. “Borden’s Balls, woman. This looks all sorts of uncomfortable.” He dipped a grease-stained finger in the bouyagel and held it up so she could see it oozing down his hand. He scrunched his face and wiped it on his pantleg.
I’m dead, Tatiana thought. The inner workings of the soldiers were highly classified, and letting a colonist inspect the inside would easily be considered treason. Scratch unkinking her brain. The Coalition would kill her.
Tatiana ran to the base of her soldier and slapped her hand against the sheeting near the stranger’s foot. Trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, she said, “Ha-ha, really funny. Colonist pulls one over on Coalition operator. Show us who’s boss. I get it. Now please get down. I don’t know what sort of macho games you’re playing, but the Coalition finds out you saw the inside, they’ll kill us both,” she said.
“Only if you tell,” he laughed, holstering his pistol. The stranger jumped down beside her, smiling. “Besides, you’re just an operator. Not the—” His eyes met her face and he froze.
This close, it felt he had roughly the same mass as a Coalition carrier, though he didn’t seem to be carrying any added fat. He was just…tall.
Realizing how tall, Tatiana quickly backed up. Then, growing uncomfortable under his prolonged stare, she said, “Uh…reconsidering?”
He said nothing. Just stared.
“Tell you what,” Tatiana said quickly, “You forget you saw me camped out like this and I’ll forget we had this conversation. Deal?”
The man cleared his throat. Looked to the side. Then his eyes fixed on her again and kept staring.
Tatiana began to scowl. With shorn hair and electrode nexuses jutting out all over her body, she knew she was ugly, but this was just plain rude. “Listen, knucker, nobody’s stupid enough to start a war with the Coalition, so just go the hell away and let me go fire up my bird.”
His voice cracked when he spoke. “Actually, I think you’re going to have to come with me.”
Tatiana stared at him. He didn’t retract his statement. She waited. Then, at his prolonged silence and his goofy, almost apologetic look, she threw back her head and laughed. After several moments, she snapped her head back down and jabbed a finger at him. “Not even a dumbass retard colonist prick like you would do something that stupid.”
He took his gun from his hip and pointed it at her.
Narrowing her eyes, Tatiana strode toward her soldier.
The man threw out an arm and snagged her, dragging her back against his chest. He was bigger than her—much bigger. Tatiana froze. At a hundred and fifty centimeters, she had been too short to be a Nephyr. Instead, they’d taken her high IQ and molded it around brain-signals and war games and top secret weaponry. Her instructors had always assumed that she would never need to face the enemy hand-to-hand, because the only way rebels were ever going to be able to open the belly and drag her out was if she gave the order to the soldier to open the hatch.
Now, outweighed by more than forty-five kilos and shorter by over thirty centimeters, she was suddenly very acutely aware of why she had not been chosen for the Nephyrs. She was short. Even for a girl.
And he was tall. Even for a guy.
The bastard would pay.
Tatiana tried to pry the thick, apelike arm from around her middle, but when it remained firmly in place, she blurted, “When the Coalition gets done with you, you’re going to be pissing out a bag on your hip.”
He laughed. “As long as they use plastic…I’m allergic to latex.”
Tatiana twisted around to face him and stuck a finger in his chest. “You’re committing a federal crime. Let go of me. Now.”
The effect wasn’t as terrifying as she would have hoped. She found the top of her head at approximately the same height as a nipple, peering up at the base of his chin, what seemed like kilometers of dirty leather jacket separating them.
He leaned back so he could grin at her as he said, “I don’t think so.”
Tatiana froze as he shifted, setting his gun out of her reach atop her soldier’s hydraulics. She tried not to feel the places where their bodies touched as he unhooked something from his belt. A knife? A gag? A garrote?
You are a Coalition fighter, a part of her ranted. You operate the most fearso
me machines in the word. Pull your goddamn head out of your ass and take charge.
She jabbed her finger back into his chest. “You have twenty seconds to tuck your tail between your legs and get the hell out of here before I call in the Nephyrs.”
“Uh-huh.” Still holding her pinned to his torso, he raised something to his mouth and said, “Milar, you really need to come look at this.”
Usually, even the whisper of Nephyrs was enough to make colonists jump with panic. This guy sounded like she had told him teddy bears were going to tickle him with feathers.
“You think this is funny?” Tatiana cried. “You think assaulting a Coalition operator is funny? You’re setting yourself up for execution, pal. A full correction. Nephyr-style.”
He peered down at her, grinning. “From what I saw, you’re pretty close to that yourself. What’d you have? Some sort of nervous breakdown in there? I heard Coalition don’t take too kindly to their operators going chickenshit on them.”
“Who is Milar?” she managed, her throat stiff with fury.
“Milar’s my brother,” he said.
“Who are you?”
His amber-brown eyes were teasing. “I’m Patrick.”
She squirmed, but the arm across her backbone might have been iron. Exhausting herself, she poked him again. “You’re making a mistake, Patrick. Operators are the most highly-trained federal employees out there. The moment I don’t show up for debriefing, they’ll come looking for me. They find out you kidnapped me and you’ll be executed for—”
“They won’t find me,” he interrupted. “Or you, either.”
Tatiana froze, unnerved by his sheer confidence. “If you kill me—”
“You’ll do what?”
Silence hung between them as he grinned down at her. Tatiana became acutely aware of how their bodies were touching—and where. If she were back in her barracks room, boredly flipping through teaser mags, she would’ve paid to see him naked.
He’s a hunk, she thought, unable to stop herself, And you haven’t gotten laid in two years.
“I’ll haunt you,” she blurted. “I’ll haunt your bathroom and scare the crap out of you every time you try to take a dump.”
A smile began to play at the corners of his lips. “We’re not going to kill you. We’re going to take you to see Wideman Joe.”
He really was going to kidnap her.
No. This time she began to struggle, and in earnest. She kicked out at his shin and, at the same time, bit down hard on his arm. He cursed…
…but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he grabbed her hands, pulled them behind her back, and cinched them in place with some sort of cold, sharp metal banding.
“Ow, alien spawn, those hurt, what the hell, you bastard!” She kicked him again and started running for her soldier.
“Hold up!” He caught her by the waist, his big fingers brushing the sensitive waste nodes a hands-width under her breasts. “Just calm down. We’ll take them off once we get you safely on the ship.”
They’re going to take me away from my soldier. She was so dead. “No, dammit!” Tatiana kicked and twisted in his grip, wrenching her wrists until the cold metal sliced into the skin and she felt blood dripping down her fingers. Damn but the bastard put them on tight.
“Hey, easy.” Big hands grasped her wrists and kept them from twisting behind her. “You’ve never been in these before, have you? Nephyrs use them on rebels. They tighten with pressure. They’ll literally cut your hands off if you struggle too much.”
Tatiana screamed her frustration, but stopped moving. Instead she stamped her foot and started cursing his name, his family, his heritage, his village, his Sign…
From the woods, someone laughed. A man entered the ring of firelight, and for a moment, Tatiana was so shocked she could only gape. Either both Patrick and Milar were robots made in the same factory, or they had shared the same womb, at the same time. Milar had the same laugh lines as Patrick, the same broad shoulders, the same metallic red-brown curls—even their chiseled jaws shared the same reddish I-Shave-When-I-Feel-Like-It bristle.
Milar, however, had two scaled beasts tattooed up his neck, obscuring the skin of his throat. From what Tatiana could see, it was a small part of a much larger tattoo, the feet and tails of a red and a black dragon that climbed all the way to his ears and out to his fingertips. Further, his curly auburn hair was much longer than his brother’s, unfurled halfway down his back, tied back with a wide black leather strap. To top it off, he was wearing a black leather trench coat, black military-issue workboots, black pants, black shirt, and beetle-green, black-rimmed sunglasses. At night.
Tatiana came to the sad conclusion that the poor, unwitting fool had probably been gene-spliced with a peacock.
“Looks like you caught yourself a feisty little Shrieker, Pat. What did you wan—” Upon drawing close, Milar’s words cut off with a stare. He yanked his glasses off, revealing startled golden-brown eyes.
“Oh hell,” was all he could manage, staring at her. Unlike Patrick’s rough colonial speech, Milar’s Coalition New Common was almost flawless.
“Then you see it?” Patrick demanded.
“Yeah.” It sounded like a croak. “Merciful Aanaho. We’re not ready.”
“Well we better get ready, wouldn’t ya say?” Patrick demanded.
“Get ready for what?” Tatiana snapped, not liking the way the brute was staring at her. “Let go of me. Get my goddamn hands out of these things. They cut me.” She could feel blood dribbling off her index finger, and it was bringing up bile. “They cut me,” she said again, biting down panic.
Patrick ignored her. As did Milar.
Then, to her frustration, they switched to a rough colonial dialect she had never heard before. Automatically, Tatiana gave her soldier the order to translate it. Then she realized she wasn’t in her soldier. She cursed and fought back tears.
After a few minutes of hurried conversation, their eyes flickering to her, to her soldier, and to the half-completed Void Ring above, Milar suddenly switched back to flawless Coalition New Common. “Duck your head down,” he ordered. He drew a nasty-looking hunting knife from a sheath on his belt.
Tatiana froze when she realized he was talking to her. Duck her head down? Why would he want her to duck her head—
She froze. Oh no. Tatiana straightened as far as she could go and pressed her rigid spine against Patrick’s chest. “You stay away from me!”
Milar snorted and moved toward her.
She kicked him. Right in the crotch.
“Oh crap.” Patrick tugged her backwards away from Milar, who was crumpling on the ground, the big knife fisted in white knuckles, his red face straining with veins. The dragons on his neck bunched up, their scales glistening and pulsing ominously, like they were about to tug themselves free of his throat.
“I’m going to kill her,” Milar said, between clenched teeth. One hand on his crotch, he started to get to his feet.
“Dammit, Milar, she didn’t mean to—”
“She kicked me in the junk!” he roared.
Tatiana felt Patrick balk. “Well, yeah, she meant to do that. But she’s scared and—”
“Like hell I’m scared!” Tatiana snapped. “You two are so dead. You are assaulting a Coalition officer. Or are you two knuckers so high on testosterone that doesn’t that register to your puny colonist psyches?”
Milar glared at Patrick, then stepped in sideways and grabbed the top of Tatiana’s head with a big hand and wrenched it down.
Tatiana cried out as muscles pulled in her neck, but she twisted and struggled to keep out of his reach anyway. “Stop it, you simian bastard!”
“Easy,” Patrick said. “He’s just going to—”
“I know what he’s going to do!” Tatiana screamed. “And I’m going to kill him!” She started kicking her foot in Milar’s general direction.
Milar growled something under his breath. Still holding the top of her head, Milar ducked so that he was looki
ng up at her downturned face. He brought his knife up so that it was a centimeter from her right eye. Tatiana froze.
“Milar…” Patrick warned.
“See this, coaler?” Milar said to her, ignoring his brother. He twisted the hunting knife so that Tatiana got a rotating view of its blade, glittering in the firelight. Smiling at her, he growled, “This ain’t exactly the best equipment to work with, sweetheart, so unless you want me to chop off your damn head, I’d hold real still.”
“Maybe we should take her back to the ship to do it,” Patrick said. “We’ve got anesthetics.”
“And have them realize she left the crash site?” Milar snorted, still watching Tatiana. “No. We’ll do the little government shit right here. Help me hold her head.”
“No!” Tatiana screamed, trying to twist away again, but she simply didn’t have the strength to resist Patrick’s grip. They propped Tatiana’s head against the leg-hydraulics of her soldier and Patrick held her skull in place while Milar massaged the back of her neck with rough fingers.
“Got it,” Milar said, pinching a sensitive bit of flesh against her spine. “No sweat, right, coaler?”
“Screw you,” Tatiana muttered.
Milar gave a cruel laugh. “Maybe someday, sweetie.”
Tatiana cried out when she felt the knife lance the flesh between his fingers. “That’s got electrodes in my spine!” she babbled. “You pull it out, you’ll kill me.” She tried to struggle, but Patrick held her head utterly motionless against the soldier, her body firmly held in place with his bulk.
“Don’t move,” Patrick said softly.
Something metallic scraped in her neck. Then clicked.
Tatiana felt her guts roil as she felt a tugging sensation in her spine, like worms crawling through her flesh. She closed her eyes and shuddered. This can’t be happening.