by Chloe Garner
He laughed.
“It’s not about fragility, though there are some parasites on other planets that would make your sweat go cold. It’s mostly about hygiene. You’re not dangerous. You’re dirty.”
She watched the people on the streets around them. Most of them had all of the signs of good health, from the highest level of abstraction possible. Their skin was smooth, relatively unmarked in most cases, and supple, their hair or scales or feathers or other unidentified sources of texture were well-groomed and even, their eyes were alert, when they were controlled by dedicated muscle. It was a capital city, as close as she could figure, and they normally had higher levels of health and prosperity, as a rule, but she hadn’t seen any vagrants or any evidence of drug abuse or poverty.
“Does anyone fail here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Good afternoon,” someone behind them said in Gana. Jesse’s hand tightened, and Cassie turned to look. A man with deep orange skin obscured almost completely with gold scales stood behind them, hands through the fold of cloth that Cassie had seen a lot of the residents wearing around their necks in the place of a purse. It implied, best she could tell, a certain amount of native-ness, to be walking down the street with their hands hidden in the cloth like a monk’s sleeves.
“Hello,” she answered. He grinned, his teeth sharp across the front. Meat-eater. This wasn’t, itself, a cause for alarm. There were a lot of perfectly-civilized meat eaters in the universe. What bothered her was that Jesse still hadn’t turned around.
“Let’s take a walk,” the man said, her implant translating his words into English and her replies back into Gana.
“I’m afraid we’re not interested,” she said. Jesse’s hand tightened again as the man made a noise that, after a moment, her implant translated into laughter. Jesse took a breath, then slowly turned.
“Do you know who I am?” Jesse asked. The reptilian man wrinkled his nose and forehead. Cassie would have translated it as consideration, if his eyes hadn’t been so bored. He was watching the rest of the street, but without any tension in his body to indicate alertness.
“You look like someone with enough money to bother grabbing,” he said. Jesse nodded.
“You’re making a mistake, but I’m going to overlook that because you didn’t know. I understand this is your profession, and you have no interest in anything I have to say at this juncture, so you may as well lead on.”
“What?” Cassie hissed in English. Jesse squeezed her hand, comforting this time.
“Shows of fear will only amuse him,” he said. “As will defiance. Don’t worry.”
“We’re getting mugged?” she asked. Jesse looked back at the tall man with the geometric pattern of scales covering his head and torso.
“I know what you are,” he said as the man continued to regard the street carelessly. “We aren’t going to make the mistake of trying to fight back.”
A set of white eyelids dropped across his eyes and the man turned, made a strange coughing noise, and turned down an alley.
“What is he?” Cassie asked.
“He’s Gana,” Jesse answered. “One of the original ones. Strong, fast, and in this part of society, entirely lacking in empathy. Most of their cities have a few families like this that still reproduce at replacement rates, making a living off of the tourists and the outsiders.”
“No talking,” the man called back. Jesse looked at his back for a moment, narrowing his eyes, and for a moment Cassie thought he would defy him, then he shrugged and shook his head at Cassie. Not now. His grip on her hand was tight, but not afraid, and she took a moment evaluating what weapons she was carrying.
Jesse didn’t like it, but she carried a gun everywhere she went. She was a good shot and had trained for hundreds of hours with it, but she’d never actually shot anyone. She was willing to, if it came to it, but the fact that Jesse had gone along without a fight told her two things: that the Gana was a real threat, but that they were also not in any immediate danger. He’d been here before; she would let him take the lead until she got a better sense of what was going on. More pragmatically, she knew from her tactics training that odds were very low that the Gana they were following was the only one that was aware of what was going on. It was disadvantageous to react until she had a better count and awareness of any others that were involved, right up until she was in immediate danger.
Even knowing that, she wanted to shoot him.
Once in the center of the back of his head and twice in the center of his mass. There would be a bunch of important things wandering around in those regions, and one of them was certain to be fatal.
She lit the targets in her head, like she’d been trained, then tried to focus on their surroundings.
The dusty pathway sloped downward and a sheet of metal went over their heads around the same time that the path turned to cobblestone. She wanted to ask Jesse if they were in a sewer, but his strange obedience kept her quiet.
Now would be the time to do it. No good line of sight, here. Get loose, deal with the rest of his associates with at least a little surprise on their side. She reached for her gun and Jesse gave her a sharp tug and shook his head. It was a demand.
All of her training rebelled, but the contract she had signed put him as her commander on this side of a jump, and the rest of her discipline forced her to drop her hand. Jesse’s eyes were stern and he shook his head very slowly as the tunnel dimmed. They turned a corner into near complete darkness and Cassie stumbled. Jesse held her up, and she heard the dry, heaving noise that the creature made in laughter. Jesse tucked her arm through his, lifting her elbow so that she could put weight through her shoulder onto it. She kicked something and nearly fell again, but managed to hold on a bit more gracefully with Jesse’s help.
She was still defiant, a bit angry that Jesse had checked her, right up until the smell hit her.
Decay smells the same on every planet.
She gagged and turned her face into Jesse’s shoulder, her instincts turning to flight for the first time. There was something wrong here, and she couldn’t defend herself or anyone else in the darkness. The man laughed and they kept on.
Things skittered in front of her, scraping noises and hisses, and more than once, Jesse traded her sides. She wondered if he could see, or if he had some other insight about what was happening.
The feeling of being squeezed had just about reached her breaking point, and she was ready to shoot blindly and make a break for it when a door scraped open and firelight spilled out into the hallway. Thousands of things scattered back from the light and Cassie took a step forward just to be further away from them.
She needed a tactical squad.
Someone who was far enough back to cover them as they advanced, and three at the front, far enough apart to not present a single target, but close enough to not get separated. Move slow, be certain each step.
Instead, she was standing in a reeking hallway with a stranger and a lizard, almost completely un-armed. Everything Jesse said about keeping themselves apart aside, they would have fought and fallen back long before this point. Things went wrong, sure, but no one stood and looked a foreign-terrestrial in the eye when he made threats. They shot, they got out, and they burnt the planet.
“After you,” the lizard-man said. Jesse kept Cassie’s arm tight against him as they walked past into the sooty room. The wall of death-smell was almost more than she could bear. Cassie’s head snapped back and she looked back at the hallway, calculating. Jesse locked her arm tighter.
“You reek of adrenaline,” he whispered. “Relax.”
She glared at him, anger better than fear, and scanned the room.
There were four more of the Gana there, lounging in furniture made from animal pelts. Two more came in behind them before the one who had led them down pulled the door closed behind him. There was a sound of heavy mechanisms settling into place and Cassie set her jaw. She was an air force officer and a trained agent. Even i
f she no longer met the physical requirements, they were going to find her hard to kill.
Because she understood with certainty now that that was what was going to happen. Unidentifiable corpses lay scattered around the edges of the room, all of them black in the oily firelight. One of the Gana had been sitting next to one of them, picking at it, when they entered. Twelve shots in her gun and a pocket knife. She couldn’t spare three shots apiece. She would have to identify the kill shot on the first one and spare ammo for the rest. She hoped Jesse could take care of himself long enough.
Scientist. Fabulous.
Jesse patted her hand and dropped her arm, giving her a warning look with his eyes before he went to sit in a chair.
“So you got us here,” he said. “Now what?”
“Now you turn over your accounts,” the one who had approached them said. He had a slightly slimmer figure than most of the rest of them, and a coloring that was middling compared to the others. All of them were gold, but they ranged in pigment and patterning. She couldn’t identify the other individuals as they moved, but she kept track of the one who had taken them. He was the one she was going to learn the kill shot on, if she got to choose.
“Why do you think we have any?” Jesse asked.
“We know where you’re staying,” another one of them said. “We know you have to have money to stay there.”
They were milling, several of them getting close enough to Cassie to sniff her. She moved closer to Jesse, picking an order for targets.
“Well, she’s going to be useless. She hasn’t got any data at all, as I’m sure you noticed.”
“Means she’s meat,” the original one said. There was a growling consensus.
“Have to pay your way out,” another muttered.
“You really have developed some bad habits,” Jesse said. “Used to be, you would have known who I was and let me keep walking.” One of them growled and bared his teeth at Jesse, and Jesse looked up, unconcerned. “Not only that, your people don’t need anything. You’ve only turned into carnivores because you got bored. You know I can’t enable that.”
“Little man’s got a death wish,” someone taunted. The group hit an equilibrium that Cassie decided was good enough. She drew and shot, head shot, chest shot, chest shot, then swung her gun, looking for a new target even as she watched the Gana who had taken them to see which shot killed him.
“Oh, for the love of everything,” Jesse said as the Gana surged at them. “Wait!”
The weight of the command was enough that Cassie didn’t pull the trigger and the Gana hesitated. Jesse stood and took the gun away from her and went back to his seat. There was a rough tension for a moment, then the Gana went back to milling. Cassie watched the one she had shot as he shook himself, the bullet holes closing. He spat the bullets out of his mouth one after the next into his hand and threw them at her.
“Disrespect,” he roared.
“Oh, please,” Jesse said. “She shot you. That’s only disrespectful if she knew it wouldn’t kill you.”
There was a murmur of consensus and Cassie stood, stunned, as the majority of the Gana went back to what they had been doing. Just the one who had taken them and another two, presumably the two who had followed them down, pulled up chairs facing Jesse.
“She’s still meat,” the first said.
“If I buy my way out of here and leave her, you’re welcome to do whatever you want with her, but I’ve been very clear from the beginning; that isn’t going to happen.”
“Then you’re meat, too.”
Jesse sighed.
“You need to learn how to listen. You don’t know who I am.”
“Think we don’t hear that all the time?” one of the silent ones asked. Jesse’s head snapped to look at this individual.
“Of course, but they’re referring to their influence and their power. I have none of that,” Jesse said. “What I have is a mind that easily surpasses the entire room and a desire to not die.” He paused, wincing an eye. “Or be robbed.”
“I don’t see that you have a choice,” the same Gana said. Jesse smiled.
“Finally. You’re the clan leader.”
“If that matters to you.”
“None of the others could let us go. You’d eat them.”
“I would. But I’m not going to let you go.”
“I’m Palta,” Jesse said. “Son of Eno-Lath Bron.”
The room grew quiet. Jesse smiled.
“Unfortunately, having told you that, the offer on letting us go has expired.”
“Which offer would that be?” the main Gana asked, looking at the one who had taken them.
“The traditional captor-captee offer. Let us go and no one gets hurt.”
“What are you going to do? Shoot me again?” the one who had taken them asked. Jesse looked around.
“There’s no ventilation in here.”
“We absorb the smoke,” the leader said. “But you knew that.”
“Just making an observation,” Jesse said.
“Sounded like a threat,” one of the Gana said from across the room. Cassie thought he might have sounded unsure. Jesse was still looking up at the ceiling.
“That would be a fair guess,” he said, standing. The Gana tensed.
“That’s a fire built from the last scraps of your victims, if I remember the tradition right. And your goal is to always keep it burning?”
“Six-hundred years since it went out,” the leader said, looking over at one of the Gana against the far side of the room.
“And how long does it take to open that door?” Jesse asked.
“That sounds an awful lot like a threat,” the leader said, taking a step back as the Gana he had signaled approached with a blade the length of his arm.
Jesse turned to face this new threat, eyes dancing.
“If you think that’s going to be enough to kill me, your race has lost a lot of intelligence underground.”
“Not you,” the Gana said, continuing forward, “but she isn’t Palta.”
“Maybe not,” Jesse said, looking at Cassie, “but she’s squirrelier than she looks.”
He winked, then took a step toward the fire. Several of the Gana moved to stop him, but Cassie’s focus was on the would-be butcher. He brought the blade down in an overhead motion, and she slid to the side, grabbing his wrist and pulling, getting herself behind him and pulling him a fraction off balance. She kicked him and ducked as another of he Gana swung at her. Her training took over.
It was actually easier, knowing she couldn’t hurt them. There was no counter attack. Jesse was right that they were strong and fast, but her heart rate was as high as it got and her body was as prepared for flight as it could be. She was just a fraction faster. If they’d caught hold of her, it quickly became evident that they could manually crush her, but they were confused, unused to anything other than a frenzied escape attempt. Something about Jesse had unsettled them completely, and they couldn’t get organized to focus on either stopping Jesse or catching her. She ducked, rolled, kicked, and slipped away time after time from the distracted Gana, catching only a couple of glimpses of Jesse as she dodged.
She was covered in slime and grit and sweating freely when she noticed that the Gana’s responses were slowing. No longer were they just distracted; they were truly unfocused, becoming more and more dull-witted. She kicked at one of them as she pulled herself clear and he stumbled headfirst into a wall and slid to the floor.
Impact at the top of the head? A shot to the face should have done the same damage, but she turned, looking for another opportunity to try it. There was no one waiting there to grab at her. No one confronted her at all. Jesse was standing by the fire, frowning down at it.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Simple, strategic exploitation of allergy, chemical reaction, physiology, and lack of basic ventilation,” he answered.
“Sounds simple,” Cassie answered, hands shaking. He looked up.
“A
re you okay?”
“Um.”
“Are you injured?” he asked, paternal. It was calming. She shook her head. He gave her a sideways smile.
“You’re pretty ferocious, Cassie D.C.”
“Shut up.”
“Let’s go get you changed into clothes that aren’t quite so sticky,” he said, looking at the ceiling. “It’s going to get pretty gnarly in here pretty quickly.”
“Did you just say gnarly?” she asked as he approached the door.
“Wrong use?” he asked, squatting.
“No, just… I think my dad would have said that.”
“Interesting.”
She looked around the room. The Gana looked like they were deflating.
“What’s happening to them?”
“Energy conversion,” Jesse said, standing back up and continuing to inspect the door. “Their bodies are built to absorb it, but they have a genetic weakness that you can exploit to reverse the process. Quickly.” He went to the hinge side of the door and tipped his head sideways, running his fingers along the edge. “Come to think of it, they may be combustible.”
Cassie’s hands were shaking harder. It was an adrenaline response, one she couldn’t control, but she kept trying to use them to still each other anyway.
“That’s comforting,” she said. “Why would they have a genetic flaw that’s that fatal?” she asked. Jesse shook his head.
“Why do people die when they get stung by bees? It’s not like they were engineered that way.”
She shrugged. It made sense.
“So are we going to blow up, or are we going to get out of here?”
“Aha,” he said, peeling something off of his arm and putting it on the door. There was a series of screeching noises as metal moved over metal, then the door clicked open. Jesse swung the door wide, then peeled the piece back off the door and put it on his arm. He made a sweeping motion into the hallway.
“After you.”
“You could have gotten us killed,” she said, stabbing him in the chest with her index finger. She was clean, showered and changed into fresh clothes, and she’d gotten her spirit back.