Pariah

by W. Michael Gear

  He definitely had their attention now.

  “That’s insurance. Just in case any of your misguided friends try something foolish, like what they’d call a rescue. Oh, and please don’t try to fiddle with it, even if you could get loose from your chairs. The slightest vibration could set it off. And, well, as the sign by the mine gate says, ‘Caution! Explosives! Safety First.’”

  He turned, seeing where Allison watched from the doorway.

  As he locked the door behind him and headed for his office, she asked, “What if someone sneezes in there? Jars the table?”

  “It’s safe. It only goes off if I send the signal.”

  “And what if someone outside tries something?”

  “Well, for the sake of those people in there, we’d better hope they don’t.”

  70

  Kylee watched from the relative safety of the other side of the table. For a girl who’d lived her life entirely among family at Mundo Base, it had come as a surprise when Mark Talbot appeared out of the forest. Then she had suffered her injury and the subsequent flight to Port Authority. Drugged as she’d been, she had never really absorbed the full impact of being around strangers.

  Afterward, back at Mundo, the shuttle had come and Rocket had been murdered. Another shuttle had come, filling her world with unknown people she never really got to meet, and certainly didn’t trust.

  Corporate Mine had terrified her with its hundreds of foreign humans. She’d felt lost and bewildered. Now she was trapped at Rork Springs Base with more strangers.

  Shig, she instinctively liked. Yvette was another story. The woman came across as cold and aloof, acting as if Kylee didn’t exist. Trish had tried to be friendly, obviously cared for Talina, but Kylee remembered that Trish had backed the mob that wanted to kill Rocket back in Port Authority. Part of Kylee figured that Trish being shot was a form of divine retribution.

  And then there was Dortmund Short Mind. The waste of skin. If that was the kind of person Solar System was all about, she wanted no part of it. How could anyone that old be that much of a fuckup?

  “We’ve got compression on the wound and the leg splinted,” Yvette said into the radio. “The femur’s definitely broken.”

  “How much blood?” Raya’s voice came from the speaker.

  “It’s still leaking.”

  “But not gushing?”

  “No. It’s slowly spreading on the bandage.”

  “Then the femoral artery is intact. Did the bullet go through the inside or outside of the thigh?”

  “Kind of looks like straight through to me.” Yvette pursed her lips.

  “You gave her the drugs?”

  “We did. Just like the directions on the medical kit instructed.”

  “Good. That’s got her on a pain protocol. She shouldn’t go into shock, but keep her hydrated. If she won’t drink on her own, set up the IV. Then keep her immobilized, and get her here.”

  “That,” Yvette said woodenly, “is a problem. We’ve got two aircars and no one to fly them. Looks like the rain’s breaking up. Is there any chance that Step can fly out?”

  “Yvette, we’ve got our own problems here. Step’s not answering com. No one is. Benteen’s making a mess of things.”

  “What about the shuttle? Can Manny pilot it out here? Pick up Tal and Trish?”

  “I don’t know, Yvette. Things are pretty dicey here. Kalico might be another option. She’s here. I don’t know what her role is, but she’s in the middle of this. I’ll just have to see. In the meantime, you’ve got my instructions. Keep Trish stable. We’ll have someone out there as soon as we can.”

  “Okay, but hurry, this is—”

  “Hey, I gotta go! Shit’s hitting the fan.”

  “What do you mean?”

  No response.

  “Raya? Do you copy? What’s going on?”

  Silence.

  Kylee watched the woman sigh, replace the mic, and stare vacantly at the radio.

  Dortmund sat hunched almost double in one of the chairs, his face cradled in his hands, looking broken. Several times, Kylee had seen him sobbing.

  Shig stepped into the room, turned, and locked the front door behind him. “Well, want the baddest news first? Or just the bad news?”

  “What’s the baddest?” Yvette asked.

  “Quetzals are coming. Two of them. They’re flashing all kinds of colors. Making no secret of their arrival.”

  “It was going to eat her,” Dortmund murmured under his breath, refusing to look up.

  True, it had. Kylee had seen the whole thing. She’d been at the window. None of the adults had heard her warning shout through the thick glass. She’d seen Trish fall at the first shot. And one of the last ones might have hit the quetzal. The thing had jerked, as if from an impact.

  Shig ignored the worthless professor, saying, “But what may be the baddest news is that I count twelve bullet holes in Trish’s aircar. Most are in the side, but one is through the instrument panel. I don’t know if the controls are damaged or if the power pack took a hit.”

  “Oh, fine,” Yvette said woodenly. Then she gave Shig an update on her talk with Raya.

  “No rescue? PA is in an uproar?” Shig’s brown face turned thoughtful. He walked over to where they had Trish laid out on the couch, a splint on her bullet-smashed and bandaged leg.

  “I was trying to save her,” Dortmund whispered hollowly.

  “Trish’s pistol holds fifteen rounds. That’s one in Trish’s leg, twelve in the aircar, which means that you might have put two into the quetzal.” He smiled humorlessly. “Assuming they didn’t just whizz harmlessly past.”

  Dortmund remained hunched in the chair, his head still buried in his hands.

  “Waste of skin,” Kylee repeated. From her vantage in the window, Dortmund had shot just about everything. She’d watched the quetzal freeze in its lunge for Trish, change color from crimson to yellow and black patterns of panic. It was turning to run even as Dortmund ran out of bullets.

  And now other quetzals were coming?

  Kylee climbed up to look out the window. The two approaching quetzals were most of the way up the slope from the valley bottom off to the west. If there were any good news, it might have been that instead of a burning crimson color, the quetzals were violet, mauve, and orange, the paler shade that indicated mild curiosity. The collars were down, and the patterns along their hides weren’t communicating more than a casual conversation.

  She turned. “These aren’t the same quetzals that clod-brain, here, shot at.”

  Dortmund’s pained voice insisted, “It had its mouth open, reaching over the car. Officer Monagan never saw it. The thing was hidden behind the car.”

  Shig ignored the man, walked over to the window to look, and asked Kylee, “How do you know?”

  “None of these quetzals are panicked. See the light curiosity colors? How they’re walking? If one of them was the one that was going to eat Trish, and got scared off, the colors would be intense, excited. He wouldn’t be this calm.”

  “You’re sure of this?” Shig fingered his chin as he stared out at the approaching quetzals.

  “Well, duh.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Don’t you know anything about quetzals? Two of them coming like this? Something’s going on.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I didn’t know quetzals traveled in packs. Thought they were solitary hunters.”

  “It’s a lineage,” Kylee told him. “Quetzals share territory with their relatives.” She thought about it. “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t?” Shig, to her surprise, was hanging on every word.

  “That a quetzal would hide behind the aircar, camouflaged, and try to eat Trish. Then, after being scared off, these two would just come strolling up the hill to see what’s happening.”

  “They
heard the shots?”

  “Could be. Quetzals are curious. But if they’d seen what happened to the first one, they’d be wary.”

  Kylee chewed her lip, thinking it through. “Okay, time to guess here. Doesn’t make sense that the one that was going to eat Trish would have talked to these two. They’d be upset, too. The local quetzals haven’t made a single hostile move. They’ve been curious. Trying to figure out what we want. Following the pattern Talina started on the first day. Even with shit-for-brains, here.” Kylee indicated the professor. “The quetzal that approached him? It tried to talk and ended up sharing blood. They know we’re not here to kill them. They’re still trying to figure out why.”

  “Sounds like a whole lot of guessing, kid,” Yvette said warily as she stepped to the rifle rack at the door and pulled Trish’s rifle from the cradle. Then she stepped to the window across the way to watch the approaching quetzals.

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Yeah, shoot these two dead from the safety of the dome, skin them, and start processing the meat,” Yvette told her in return.

  “You’re as dumb as Dr. Short Mind, here.”

  “You want me to give you a little lesson in how to talk to your elders?” Yvette asked from her window.

  “It’s all right,” Shig soothed. To Kylee he asked, “If they’re only curious, why did that quetzal attack this morning?”

  “He’s not local,” Kylee said, feeling the sureness of it. “It’s hard to tell sometimes with quetzals. I mean, I don’t really know these guys yet, but I don’t think I’ve seen the one that tried to get Trish this morning. I think he’s new. It was in the way he patterned his colors. It was a statement of satisfaction mixed with triumph.”

  “Meaning what?” Yvette asked.

  “Meaning he’s not from here.”

  “He was an interloper? Just traveling through?”

  Kylee considered, remembered the time Rocket had warned her and the family not to go into the forests around Mundo. All he’d said was, “Bad quetzals. Gone soon.”

  “What if that time back at Mundo, that was another bunch of quetzals invading Flash’s territory?” she wondered, talking to herself. “Lineages in competition? Some sort of territorial dispute?”

  “Why attack Trish if it was just passing through?” Shig asked. “It hid behind the aircar, knowing that someone would come. That quetzal knew exactly what it was doing.”

  “Yeah, almost like it was trying to make trouble, huh?” Kylee glanced at Yvette who’d hunkered down behind the window with the rifle. “Eat a human, and you can bet the humans will take it out on the local quetzals.”

  Shig looked worried. “Are they really that smart?”

  Kylee pointed. “She’s ready to kill quetzals. You tell me who’s smart in this equation.”

  “I lost too many friends to those murderous beasts.” Yvette glared out at the closing quetzals. “If you ask me, the only good quetzal’s a dead quetzal.”

  “You’re one of the ones I’ll destroy in the end,” Kylee promised. “You’d have shot Rocket dead, too, wouldn’t you?”

  “In a minute, kid. And nothing I’ve seen this morning has caused me to reassess. Ask Trish.”

  Kylee studied the woman, filling every fiber of her memory with what Yvette Dushane looked like. She wanted to be sure that when she finally went to Port Authority, she’d be able to recognize her, no matter what.

  “Meanwhile, what do we do about these two?” Shig asked, pointing to the quetzals who had stopped on the far side of the aircars and were now bent, inhaling the scent where the rogue quetzal had been hiding. A riot of colors and patterns ran down their sides as they recognized the intrusion.

  “I say shoot them dead,” Yvette called, raising the rifle and unlocking the window. All it would take was a push to swing it open, and she could shoot.

  The woman was staring intently out the window. Shig, too, was glued to the sight. Dortmund, of course, could have cared less.

  Since no one was looking, Kylee slipped to the door. Before anyone could stop her, she’d unlatched the lock, thrown it wide open, and was running. As she did she flapped her arms, yelling, “Run! Run! They’ll kill you!”

  71

  With Tompzen and Michegan hot on her heels, Kalico cursed her way up the tavern stairs, burst out the door, and headed for the admin dome at a run. People were shouting, “Quetzal!” at the top of their lungs as they streamed out of Inga’s. For Kalico’s part, she had to get to the admin dome, find the siren, and alert the whole of Port Authority and the surroundings.

  Rain was pattering down, light fading as the clouds thickened overhead. Perfect fucking quetzal weather.

  “People, what have you got?” she demanded of her com.

  “I’ve got marines on every gate, Supervisor,” Abu Sassi’s voice came through. “The whole damn town was unguarded.”

  “Any word on that blood at the north gate?”

  “No, ma’am. Just blood. Some scuffed tracks . . . oh, and a pile of torn clothes, but they weren’t bloody.”

  Torn clothes. Kalico bit off a curse, her memory going back to the first time she’d seen a quetzal kill. The damn beasts ripped clothes off the way a human peeled a banana.

  She charged in the admin doorway, pulling her sidearm. “If Benteen so much as reaches for his shoulder holster, shoot him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tompzen said, taking point.

  The three of them pounded down the hallway; one of the security guards gaped at them from where he stood before the conference room door, a rifle resting in his arms.

  At the radio room, Kalico slammed the door open, hurrying in. “Where the fuck is the siren?”

  “Try that one,” Tompzen said, pointing at a large red switch on the wall.

  Kalico flipped it, delighted to hear the blaring of the siren. She took a breath, picked up the mic, and keyed it. “Attention. We have three, repeat, three quetzals in Port Authority. Lock yourselves down. We think one person’s already dead. Repeat. Three quetzals in the compound.”

  “Halt!” Michegan barked outside the door. “Make so much as a move, and you’re blasted meat!”

  Kalico stepped to the door to see Benteen where he’d just emerged from her old office. The man’s hand was hovering in front of his chest, perfectly positioned to reach into his coat.

  Kalico told him, “Sure, with your implants, you could probably shoot me in the head before Michegan could blow you away. But she’s in armor, her weapon hot. You won’t live long enough to regret it.”

  “What the hell are you doing? What’s that siren?”

  People were banging on the door behind the now-terrified security guard down the hall at the conference room.

  “You miserable piece of work,” Kalico told him. “You’ve got three quetzals in the compound. Three!”

  “So? Hunt them down and shoot them,” Benteen said, a wary smile on his face. “They’re just animals, after all.”

  With a crash, the doors to the conference room burst, knocking the guard into the far wall. People came pouring out. Among them Kalico recognized Hanson, Tomashev, and Halston.

  “What the hell? Who set them free?” Benteen snapped, taking a half step forward.

  “Freeze!” Michegan barked again, keeping Benteen under the muzzle of her rifle.

  Meanwhile the hostages raced to the weapons locker and stripped out the rifles.

  “Got three quetzals in the compound!” Kalico shouted. “Be damned careful getting home!”

  “Roger that,” Mac Hanson called over his shoulder.

  Two Spot was the last to emerge, half stumbling down the hall, his hands in restraints.

  “Kalen,” she told her marine. “Cut Two Spot loose and get him on his radio.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pulled her pistol, flicked the safety off
, and leveled it on Benteen. The guy hadn’t shown so much as a flicker of emotion, but watched her the way a predator did its prey.

  “On Donovan,” she told him, “stupidity is a death sentence. Wonder how many are going to die because you’re stupid?”

  “How’s that?” Benteen asked casually.

  “You left the gates unguarded while your goons rounded up people.”

  “Hey!” the guard down the hall called. “We told him! We didn’t dare object, Supervisor. Not after he shot Hazen down like that. He said follow orders, so we did.”

  “I rest my case.” She let her finger caress the trigger, knowing how fast he was. “Dina, go put some cuffs on him. The scorpion’s run his course.”

  Allison Chomko, looking pale, stepped out of the scorpion’s office door.

  “Ali! Get back!” Kalico shouted.

  She had an image of the woman falling backward as Benteen made a flick of the fingers.

  The flash and detonation were stunning, blinding, deafening.

  Kalico stumbled back into the radio room, dazed, ears ringing. In the hallway, Dina Michegan’s rifle was barely audible through Kalico’s deafened hearing as the marine fired.

  “What the fuck?” Kalico cried, sinking to the floor, dropping her pistol to press hands to her pain-shot ears.

  Eyes clamped shut, she struggled through the afterimages of the flash.

  For the moment her entire existence consisted of agony.

  Then Michegan leaned over her, her helmet-amplified voice saying, “Benteen’s gone. Made it out the back way. Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” The ringing was beginning to abate. She grabbed up her pistol, let Michegan help her up. “This is going from bad to worse.”

  72

  I shot a woman.

  How could a human being feel this miserable? He’d made his deal with Satan, picked up a weapon and threatened another human being. He’d forced Trish Monagan out there. Distracted her. And then he’d shot her.