by Scott Moon
"I think you’re right, we should release Carter. But he needs an alibi. We play our cards well, maybe we can kind of have a half-assed double agent in Ortega's camp.”
"What do you have in mind, you big, strong, hairy man?”
"I think Leslie should handcuff our young security specialist to her bed and have her way with him. He’d basically have no choice but to be on our side after that.”
Dixie thought about it for a while. "I think Leslie will be good for the handcuffing part, at least. After that, we'll see."
***
Proletan remained in his corner reading this somewhat humorous law enforcement coursework. It seemed so basic and naïve. There were, however, a few things he'd forgotten that could be useful in the future. Procedural stuff, things that pointed to the psychology of the guardian sect. Every society had this group of men and women who thought they were standing up for what was right in protecting the weak.
He watched Sledge and Dixie talk. It was disappointing they had underestimated his hearing. Surely they should've known that as an interstellar assassin and super-spy turned enforcer, he would have better-than-average powers of observation.
The conversation was predictable and almost amusing. He felt bad for Carter. The man was getting the shaft from everyone, his employer and his adversaries both. But that wasn't what had his attention now.
He knew Dixie from the orphanage. Not everything he had told Sledge was true. He'd been taken at an early age and subjected to training that some people would consider torturous, but he had not been born into the life he currently led. Like many of his peers, he had been a throwaway child until someone recognized his innate talents.
He remembered Dixie. They had been children, and he'd been in love with her to the extent five-year-olds understood the emotion. It surprised him he wasn't upset by this new development. She hadn't recognized him. Probably because she hadn't really looked at him yet—or hadn’t really been looking at him all those years ago.
Turning away from their conversation, he immersed himself in the printouts of the online coursework. It seemed Thaddeus wasn't a notetaker. Mast, on the other hand, had done a spectacular job of making the documents interesting.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Where is Maximus Now?
Mast Jotham was worried. Maximus, the Glakridozian pig-dog they’d all come to love and cherish despite his bad attitude and morning flatulence, had been gone for hours. A month ago, this would have been normal, however, the animal had kept Mast or Thaddeus in sight after the incident with the hunter Zanerexourn Voidhunter.
“I haven’t seen him,” Thad said. “I thought I heard him howling last night, but by the time I woke up, everything was quiet again.”
“I dreamed of him running through the streets of Darklanding,” Mast said, knowing this would catch his friend’s attention. Ungloks only had nine dreams in their lives. Mast had spent one not so long ago during his vision quest into the shaft concealing the alien ship.
Thaddeus stopped what he was doing. "We better find him."
"That is very muchly what I am thinking as well. Should we go together or split up?"
"Let's split up."
Before long, Mast was striding through the streets of Darklanding looking for a pig-dog-thing in jeopardy. The Glakridozian had rid himself of the Heart Stone but maybe the poisons had already done their damage.
He searched throughout the day and into the evening. Hours passed slowly, and he worried about the animal.
A horrible sound split the night, grabbing Mast’s attention immediately. He called out, but Maximus did not respond. The animal was too far away and moving fast.
Mast called Sheriff Fry. "I have not found Maximus, but I hear him howling and running."
The reply was scratchy. There had been a lot of interference in the communication network. Thaddeus had said it was because too many ships were coming and going from the system, even though there was not much exotic ore to move.
"Can you tell if he's hunting? Because that would be great. I can stop worrying about him and stop fielding the complaints about our angry rodent problem.”
"Angry rodents are a problem?"
"People are losing their pets. They blame it on rats, or whatever rat-like creatures are here on Ungwilook. I've been meaning to talk to you about it," Thaddeus said. "I'm in the middle of something. Can't spend all my time looking for Maximus. Let me know as soon as you find him.”
"I will muchly do that," Mast said. He hurried toward the sounds of howling in the night.
***
Thaddeus stood from his small desk and walked to his window. His apartment was feeling more and more like an office. All he did was work. When he wasn't on patrol or breaking up fights, he was catching up on reports and filing requests for additional equipment and manpower. It reminded him of his days in Ground Forces.
He opened the window vent and listened for Maximus. After a few minutes, he heard the howl and recognized it immediately. "Get your hairy butt back here, pig-dog,” he muttered.
With renewed determination, he strode to his desk intent on closing out his paperwork for the day and rejoining the search. He scrolled through them to make sure nothing would come back and bite him if he put it off until tomorrow. At the bottom of the list, there were dozens of complaints from citizens of Darklanding. He was about to shut the computer down when he noticed similarities in the reports.
People complained of losing pets. They reported attacks by nightmare creatures, spider things with too many legs. He'd initially dismissed them because the details were never consistent. Some described the pests as palm-sized. Others claimed they were as big as a grown man.
"These have to be an exaggeration." He closed out the workstation and strapped on his blaster belt. It was time for another patrol in search of his missing Glakridozian friend.
***
Yakti-droon was a thousand bodies and one mind. Perhaps he was too ancient, maybe he was poisoned with evil thoughts, but he grew stronger night by night. A younger version of his race might have rushed headlong into slaughter, feasting until the prey fought back.
Yakti-droon was smarter because he was older. Thousands upon thousands of years older, in mind at least. He had existed within many bodies. It was the intellect that mattered. Once, or perhaps a hundred times, he had made the mistake of rushing into herds of victims to gorge himself and bathe in the bloodletting. But that always brought the guardians who knew how to fight and loved to kill Yakti-droon’s many bodies.
The Glakridozian howled in the night.
Yakti-droon crouched low to the ground, body trembling, his fifteen legs twitching in fear. He paused. He counted. It seemed that he’d had more legs once, maybe a hundred?
His hunger spiked. He needed to feast on blood and fear or his long life would become a pathetic damnation of hibernation. Never again would he submit to the long sleep that had taken him when the ship had been parked at the bottom of the Ungwilook shaft.
But first, he had to eliminate the Glakridozian. Once the vile creature was gone, the slaughter of Darklanding could begin.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Stood Up
Shaunte read the message twice, surprised Thad would beg off a dinner-meeting. As busy as they were, they’d had success combining business and pleasure. A one-hour business date could transition into a pleasant evening if they started in the right place—like the Red Door Restaurant or a scenic overlook of the dramatically-altered Transport Canyon.
Telling herself not to be annoyed, and admitting that she was worried about Maximus as well, she went back to work.
She put in long nights studying the information that pertained to Judy Ortega's proposition. Everything was legitimate. Her father's call had been upsetting, but not unexpected. What she wanted to know now was whether or not she could do this without Ortega and Interstellar Enterprises.
That had been her plan from the start, before the woman came into the picture with her enormous political clout and endless resources. Wh
at Shaunte had in mind was developing Ungwilook to its full potential. The back-to-back disasters at the SagCon mining operation had shown what over-reliance on a single income stream could do.
She’d apprenticed on a planet called Moreen Dale where a single-purpose operation made sense. The planet only had one resource worth claiming and an environment that was hostile to humans.
Darklanding was different. Humans could thrive here. The local culture was rich and diverse. There were problems, to be sure, but why shouldn't she maximize SagCon’s return on their investment in the system?
What she needed now was a better idea of Ortega. Was the woman an ally or an enemy? She didn't have enough information.
Her annoyance at Thaddeus's preoccupation with the pig-dog returned. All she wanted him to do was take a look at Ortega's base of operations in Darklanding. The woman had an entire block of apartments converted to her use. It would be well within the rights of the local sheriff to do an inspection for code compliance.
And Shaunte had detected several suspicious real estate transactions. At first, none seemed related, but now she believed Ortega was plotting to gather land near the edge of the Darklanding mesa. What was most interesting was that this particular area had once been designated as a secondary spaceport site. Many of the first surveyors thought it was a superior location to where the current spaceport was located.
Shaunte didn't need competition on that scale. If Judy Ortega didn't come clean that she was planning such a facility, then the deal was off and they were destined to become the bitterest of rivals.
But it still wasn't war. Her father acted like she could get herself killed, but this was just business.
***
Thaddeus stopped and looked back. Shadows moved. The first five times, he thought it could be his imagination, but now he knew he was being stalked by something inhuman. The way these things moved reminded him of the creatures at the bottom of the spirit quest shaft. Had they been living down there for all these centuries? How had they survived? Why would they climb to the surface now?
Each of these thoughts had merit and needed answers, but most of his attention was on his immediate environment. This area was dark, with streetlights that seemed to be working even less efficiently than usual.
Following his gut instinct, he crossed the street and positioned himself near the corner of a building he could use as cover if he were about to be in a firefight. The arachnoid things didn’t have weapons, but he thought they might rush him. If that happened, he would need barriers to slow them down while he laid down blaster fire, moved, and reloaded.
A cluster of shadows skittered across the intersection. Most were small—maybe a half-dozen dog-sized things and twenty or thirty resembling hairy peaches with multi-jointed legs and sharp mandibles. He didn’t know what color they were. Everything was a variation of black and grey in the dim light of the Darklanding industrial slum.
He radioed Mast. “Sheriff One for Deputy One.”
“Deputy One is receiving loud and muchly clear, good buddy.”
“I think the creatures you saw on your vision quest are in Darklanding,” Thad said.
"I am not thinking that is good. What is your location? I will be on my way with bubble gum so we can kick ass while we chew it.”
Thaddeus gave him the coordinates and a short description of the neighborhood. Mast knew Darklanding well, even the human areas.
"I still hear Maximus going after something. I think he's hunting these things," Thaddeus said. “And forget the bubble gum.” He put away his radio a heartbeat before the creatures rushed his position.
He swung up his blaster and fired the moment he had a sight picture. One, two, three times he stroked the trigger and sent alien-mutants backward. One of the smaller ones exploded into goo.
A pair of them dropped from a roof. He sprinted to a new position, aiming but holding his fire. The shot was too difficult on the move and at such a strange angle. He put his back to the wall, pulled a small back-up weapon from his boot, and fired both blasters as a trio of exceptionally large creatures clattered forward on what looked like hairy crab legs.
One managed to get past the blaster bolts. He kicked it hard and sent it flying through the air. Unfortunately, the creature proved to be harder and heavier than he had anticipated, as his jammed toes and twisted knee demonstrated.
He reloaded as he sidestepped with a hitch in his stride, looking for more and listening for sounds on the rooftops. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and hear his own breathing.
The next cluster of alien monstrosities swarmed in from all sides, but they were smaller. He shot two or three and stomped on a few others. The moment he had room to maneuver, he made a tactical withdrawal at best speed.
The night went silent. He watched and listened, but no more of the spider-like creatures came. They weren't exactly spiders, or crabs, or any alien he’d ever seen. Their bodies were a chaotic mismatch of parts. It was like they had grown out of someone's nightmare and then been mangled by larger, more vicious members of their hive.
Pain burned in his left arm. One of them had bitten deep into his flesh. He didn’t have a med kit.
“Mast, I’ve been bitten by one of these things. Watch out for them. They swarm like ants,” Thad said into his radio.
“Ants are very small, Thaddeus. Not scary,” Mast said.
“I said they swarm like ants, not that they are ants! Meet me with a med kit and some antibiotics. Watch your six and bring Maximus if you can find him,” Thad said, jogging farther away from his recent confrontation.
“Yes, Sheriff. I will watch my six, and seven, and eight, if I must. Yes, that is what I will do.”
“And call Sledge. We’ll need his help.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“And let Shaunte know, she may need to call her father to get some TerroCom Soldiers en route.”
“Yes. Sheriff. Right away. Sheriff.”
Thad bit back his pain. “Is there a problem, Mast?”
“You are being muchly bossy.”
“I am the boss! And this hurts like hell!” Thad staggered toward a building, leaned on it, and slid to the ground. “I need to rest a minute. Damn, it’s like my blood turned to fire!”
“I will come to you very fastly,” Mast said, his radio voice cutting out as he seemed to be running.
“No. Meet me at the jail. I can crawl that far, I think. Sledge should still be there. He was going to sit on his parolees for a while to be sure they understood he was in charge.”
“Are you okay, Sheriff?”
“No, Mast, I’m not.”
***
Thad threw himself against the door of the Cornelius Vandersun Correctional Facility and Rehab Center, lost his grip on the handle, and slid downward. It opened, causing him to fall inward at Dixie’s feet.
“Well, color me amazed! It’s the sheriff and he’s drunk,” she said with a mischievous lilt in her voice.
“Deputy One to Sledge, come in,” the radio in the center office blared.
“Hold on, Mast. Something’s wrong with the sheriff,” Sledge said.
“Oh my God, he’s been bitten by something,” Dixie yelled.
Thad heard them, then felt strong hands dragging him to a desk. Not that desk, I just organized those reports…
Sledge brushed aside printouts, old books, and electronic tablets as he stretched Thad across the imitation wood surface. “Hope you have another coat and jumpsuit.” He pulled a knife from the back of his belt and slice through fabric until Thad was bare to the waist.
“Dixie, grab a med kit from that wall locker. Right there. It’s marked with a red and white cross,” Sledge said, gripping Thad’s upper arm almost hard enough to be a tourniquet. He reduced the blood flow to Thad’s heart.
Proletan stepped forward calmly, intercepting the med kit from Dixie and opening it. His movements were so efficient, he looked like he was moving slowly. “I have
better training for this than she does.”
Sledge nodded.
Thad watched as though he was a hundred meters away. None of it seemed real. He didn’t feel pain.
“Stay with us, Thad,” Sledge said as Proletan cleaned the wound. “My parolee has something to tell you.”
Thaddeus thought this was curious but not urgent. Nothing was urgent. A blanket of soft euphoria flowed through his veins. It was so much better than the burning fire he felt only moments ago.
"He keeps closing his eyes!" Dixie said.
"Don't do that, Thad," Sledge said.
Thaddeus heard what they said, but none of it seemed to matter. They wouldn't stop bumping him around. It irritated him that they wouldn't let him rest. None of them understood what it meant to be sheriff, to be responsible for the safety and well-being of so many people, and protect the company's assets.
He deserved sleep. Just a little nap to take the edge off.
“I know how to get his attention,” Proletan said, then leaned down and spoke in a flat, deadly voice. "Shaunte is in more danger than you understand."
Thaddeus forced his eyes open.
"Someone from Interstellar Enterprises contacted Dixie and sent her to seduce a man named Armand Soler. He'd been a recluse in hiding for many years, refusing to vote on several important issues that affected IE, SagCon, and other business entities," Proletan said. "She accomplished what many others had failed to do, entice him into the open."
"Good for her," Thad mumbled.
"And then I killed him. That was my contract.”
"What does that have to do with Dixie?" Thad asked.
"Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. But do you think Shaunte is doing business with honorable people? What would they do to her out in the middle of nowhere? Haven't you noticed the interference in your communications network? Doesn't it seem likely that Interstellar Enterprises is moving in to take over this operation?"