Afterburn

by S. L. Viehl

  “I was tempted to let her do it,” Dair retorted.

  “Jadaira.” Onkar nudged her.

  “The ambassador was very specific about having you as detachment leader,” she told Burn. “I was just as surprised to witness her change of heart. But then, she’s a diplomat, accustomed to dealing with hotheaded idiots and making compromises. You should be grateful she’s so forgiving.”

  “I didn’t do anything that requires forgiving, Cousin. In fact, I . . .” Burn caught the quick fin gesture Onkar made and swallowed the rest of his protest. “Very well. I’ll play watchout.”

  “This Peace Summit is important.” Dair sounded tired now. “Our people are deeply involved in what will be discussed. The settlement of the Skartesh, aquatic territorial and resource management rights, even the very survival of the Ninra species, could be decided during these talks.”

  Burn could just imagine the endless hours of listening to the politicians drone. What frightened him was the thought of making another mistake. This time he might kill Liana and the other Ylydii. “All that has nothing to do with me.”

  She scowled. “You are no longer a podling whose chattering can be indulged and overlooked. Each word you speak, each action you take could influence those making these decisions. Their decisions in turn will affect millions of lives. It is your choice, cousin, but I think it is time you began conducting yourself like a responsible adult.”

  Burn didn’t care about his behavior. He needed to see Liana again, though, so he would take the duty assignment. He might not be allowed to speak with the ambassador’s daughter, but at least he could watch out for her. And he would not make any mistakes.

  “Very well. I’ll escort them, guard them, and listen to that harridan purge her gullet every two seconds. I won’t twitch a gillet the whole time. Whatever you say.” Burn glanced back at the treatment center. “Is there anything else she wants?” He wanted to be sure there was no more talk of gelding; deserved punishment or not, he happened to be very fond of his penis.

  “Besides biting the Ninrana ambassador in several vulnerable places and having her ship completely sterilized? Not at the moment, but I’m sure she’s preparing a new list.” Dair shook some of her gillets out of her face. “Security would like you to file a full report of what occurred on board the Ylydii ship. I’ll take a copy of it.” Dair’s expression changed and she pressed one of her hands against her belly. “Now I’d like to get wet, before I start purging again.”

  “Are you feeling ill?” Onkar curled one of his arms around her narrow, sloped shoulders.

  “I shouldn’t have watched the two of you playing chicken,” she told him as she leaned on him.

  “You are short of breath.” Onkar pressed his fin tips to her throat. “Your pulse is rapid.”

  “My heart has been fluttering all day,” Dair admitted. “I had better go and see Mom. That should make her happy; she’s been signaling me since sunsrise.”

  “Chief.” Shon entered the office when the head of colonial security was poring over evidence scans. “You needed to see me?”

  “We picked up a tiny amount of DNA off one of the derelicts that doesn’t match any member of the crew. We don’t believe it belongs to a courier, either.” Norash handed him a copy of the cell profile scan. “You’ll recognize the profile.”

  The cells that had been recovered gave no indication as to the species, gender, or age of the body from which they had been shed. “This changes things.”

  “I thought you might be intrigued.” Norash offered a disk. “Your new orders. I want you to find who this DNA belongs to, and bring them in for questioning.”

  Shon accepted his orders and tucked the chip in the vest pocket of his flightsuit. “How much resistance did Quadrant Intelligence give you about pulling me for this assignment?” he asked Chief Norash.

  “As much as they could without making direct threats to have me assigned to waste management for the remainder of my existence.” The Trytinorn came around the big console. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Strolling with a being Norash’s size required constant vigilance, so as not to stray under his massive feet, but Shon had an idea of why the security chief wanted to leave the building.

  Once they were outside, Shon asked, “Find some new furnishings in your office?”

  “Recording drones, yesterday. I like a clean office; Intelligence should have considered that and embedded them in the walls. Instead they attached them where they believed I do not dust.” Norash paused by a communications dish, where the strong signal output would mask their conversation from any nearby or hovering surveillance devices. “Major, your orders were approved solely because quadrant wants to know what they’re dealing with here. That paranoia, however, will protect you only so long. Eventually Intel will find a replacement expert or consultant to send here, and yank you back to oKia.”

  Shon looked out over the horizon, to where the twin suns were setting. “I will not be returning to my homeworld. Not now, not ever.”

  “I thought not.” Approval gleamed in the Trytinorn’s small eyes. “I’ve never had much use for intelligence operatives, but you’ve done some remarkable work over the short term of your career. My people believe that a life lived with honor is reborn to its reward. If that is true, Major, I envy you your next existence.”

  Shon left Norash and went down to Main Transport. The ’Zangian planetary patrol had landed, and the pilots who had flown their patrol shift were coming in from the docks.

  One female pilot walked by herself, keeping slightly apart from the others, and bypassed the hangar where the relief shift waited to enter one of the engineering bays. Not knowing exactly why, Shon followed.

  He entered the bay to see that the lone ’Zangian female was Dair’s wing leader, Saree. Saree was talking to Verrig and gesturing back to her strafer, the Sandpearl. Verrig nodded a great deal and took notes as she spoke.

  Saree was the most demanding member of the pilots’ pod, Shon recalled, and always flew alone. The other pilots respected her, but her general demeanor was so aloof that few spent any time with her.

  Shon personally thought she was a spectacular pilot, but didn’t know a single thing about her other than her ability to handle a strafer in space. For a ’Zangian, Saree was remarkably unfriendly.

  If she is a ’Zangian, the part of his brain that Shon didn’t like very much tagged on.

  The ’Zangian pilot looked toward him and rapidly finished her conversation with Verrig before coming over to confront Shon. “Is there something you need, Major?”

  He needed more than the orders in his pocket, or the prospect of assuring that he would never return to oKia. Given the unique profile of the DNA recovered from the mercenary ship, he needed answers, and he needed them now. If he didn’t obtain them, everything he had done to preserve the peace in this system would be made a total, utter waste.

  “I’m going for a dive.” He kept his tone casual and nonthreatening. “I thought I’d see if you were interested in coming with me.”

  Saree clearly hadn’t been expecting such a request. “Why me?”

  “You’re not busy right now, are you?”

  “No. Why me?”

  He liked her tenacity. “I’ve always felt an affinity with you. You’re like me; you walk alone.”

  “You obviously haven’t been paying attention around the pilots’ pod,” she said, “or you’d know that my kind are never alone.”

  “Being alone and walking alone are two different things.”

  She inspected him. “This sharing a swim—it wouldn’t be some sort of prelude to a mating ritual among your kind, would it?”

  Shon laughed. It had been so long since he had done that; the sound came out harsh and dry. “No, Pilot. If I wanted to mate with you, I’d seize your neck in my teeth and throw you down on all fours. Or fins, to be more precise.”

  “How romantic.” She seemed amused now. “Very well, Major. I’ll swim with you.”

&nb
sp; Shon took her to the coast in his personal glidecar, which evidently pleased the ’Zangian female, from her vocal admiration of the interior.

  “I thought ’Zangians weren’t interested in such material things as glidecars and dwellings and so forth,” he said.

  “Generally we aren’t, but I like these private transports.” She touched the smooth upholstery with a careful fin. “They’re so efficient and they can move so fast when you want them to. They make being topside almost tolerable.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  She turned her attention to him. “If you need to confide something personal to me, it would be best to do it now. You can’t do much talking with a regulator in your snout, and once we’re downside, everyone will hear.”

  “Not a snout, a mouth. Or, at least, I had a mouth when I was oKiaf.” He felt the elongated lower half of his face. “Now I think this classifies as a muzzle.”

  “Different words for the same body part.” She shook her head. “You people are just strange.”

  “So are you. Everyone is strange to each other, even when we serve in the same military.”

  Saree looked perplexed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’re a fighter pilot, Lieutenant. You’ve been trained to operate some of the most sophisticated equipment in the League, specifically to track, disable, and destroy the enemy. Yet despite your training, you never fire your weapons to kill unless it’s absolutely necessary.” He glanced sideways. “I find that a little strange.”

  She shifted on the seat. “Wasting power and ammunition is inefficient. It can also get you killed.”

  “That’s not the only reason you conserve fire.”

  “No.” She stared out at the approaching cliffs. “Life is fleeting. I never wished to hasten it along to its end.”

  “Then why become a fighter pilot?”

  “I joined the SEALs to protect my homeworld. I wasn’t looking for a fight.” She made a fin gesture he didn’t understand. “I may not be the best-loved among my people, Major, but I love them with all that I am.”

  She sounded sincere enough to make him uncomfortable. Still, Shon pressed her. “If the pod asked you to do something that required you to kill—kill something innocent, for example—and you knew that if you didn’t, some of them would die, what would you choose to do?”

  “I would make the choice for the greater good, which would likely mean I’d kill the innocent.” She moved her body in a ’Zangian version of a shrug. “War often forces us to make such unpleasant choices. You know that.”

  He nodded. It was the sort of answer he had expected from a member of the coastal pod. That and a DNA screen should clear Saree from his list.

  “I did not agree with this war,” Saree continued, startling him. “I am a territorial creature, and I understand why the Hsktskt feel the need to defend their space.”

  “Their space?”

  “The League came into Hsktskt-claimed territories and established colonies without asking permission,” she said. “Then came the decision to outlaw slavery, something the Hsktskt have practiced and profited from for millennia. I do not believe the Faction was consulted about that, either.”

  “That’s called liberation, Lieutenant.”

  “If you’re League, Major. If you’re Hsktskt, you call it invasion.”

  He brought the glidecar to a stop and stared at her. “Are you telling me that you feel sympathetic toward the lizards?”

  “I do not like the Hsktskt. I do not agree with their practices. It does not change the fact that we started this war, not them. The Hsktskt had to fight or the League would have destroyed their territories, their trade, perhaps even their civilization.” She gestured toward him. “Were you in their place, what would you do?”

  “I’d know what I was doing was wrong.” Shon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Just whose side are you on?”

  “I side with the League, obviously. But I understand the Hsktskt better.”

  “Your people eventually would have been enslaved or obliterated by the Hsktskt,” Shon pointed out. “Under the League, you continue to enjoy your freedom.”

  “Is that what you call this?” Saree seemed amused now. “The League established a colony here—without consulting us—and made great changes to our world. Teresa and others like her told us that we must learn to be more like they are. They have educated and even alterformed us to be more like them. There was nothing wrong with what we were.”

  “You have profited from the relationship.”

  “Have we? I do not see how. At this time we are told that we must provide a home for the Skartesh, and water for the Ninrana, and placate the Ylydii. All because the League thinks these things are right. There is no talk of what will be done for the ’Zangians.”

  “You don’t need anything.”

  “True. Had we been left alone, we would still need nothing from you. We would not be involved in your disputes and your wars. We would have the life we once enjoyed, before humanoids came here. That is freedom, Major. What the League offers is nothing more than a benevolent and intrusive dictatorship.”

  Shon felt like shaking her until her teeth rattled. “With your attitude, I’m surprised anyone lets you have a ship.”

  “I fight for the League, and my people. I kill beings who are in my eyes innocent of any transgression, and by doing so serve the greater good. I do not have to like it, or even understand it, to do it well. Perhaps I am more suited to being League than Hsktskt.” She looked out at the cliffs. “Are you certain that you still wish to dive with me?”

  “Considering that I’m nothing but a puppet of a dictatorship, I could ask you the same question,” Shon said.

  “I’ve always liked you, Major. You sacrificed much to help protect the Skartesh. More than anyone knows, I suspect, and that is something that I do understand.” She nudged him. “Come on. I want to see if you can move underwater any better than before.”

  No one at K-2’s medical facility paid much attention to Liana. After her aborted attempt to speak with Burn, she was forced to remain inside another, shrouded, treatment room. As she waited for Carada’s negotiations to end, she was given a quick examination by a male aquatic physician and treated for minor hide abrasions.

  “If these become inflamed or painful, please report back for treatment,” Dr. mu Cheft told her. “I’ll start you on an antibiotic.”

  A medicine, she guessed. Her kind made use of some compounds to ease pain, but only after grievous injuries. Thanks to the clean, salty content of their waters, they rarely suffered infections.

  A humanoid female colony administrator interrupted the examination and asked permission to speak to her about Carada. The physician left them alone, and Ana Hansen explained her concerns.

  Liana wanted to shriek at the other woman; instead she gave her permission for what she wished to do. She rather doubted it would have any effect on Carada, but to refuse would seem suspicious.

  “Would you like to speak to one of our therapists?” Ana asked, very tentatively.

  I do not have this PMS, do I?

  “No, but it might help you with . . . other problems.”

  I have no problems. Liana turned her back on her. Please leave me now.

  The physician returned to complete the exam, and also insisted on scanning the contents of her stomach and blood before releasing her to rejoin Carada. By that time the ambassador had been treated, had settled matters with the organizers of the Peace Summit, and was preparing to return to their ship.

  Lady Liana. Fokrej, the male valet Carada had assigned to her, led her into the ambassador’s treatment tank. Slightly larger and thinner than Miglan, the valet had doubled as Liana’s chaperon since they left Ylyd. His face had a distinct, sour cast to it, and he was rarely pleased with anything. Your mother wishes you to accompany her in the transport.

  She deftly avoided the stunted veils he stretched out toward her. Fokrej liked touching her, especially when they
were alone. I thought you were killed along with the other members of the crew. She would have prayed for it, if she had believed in a higher power.

  When the intruders stormed our compartment, the ambassador risked her own life to shield me, Fokrej informed her as his gaze moved with an oily slyness over her body. If not for her gracious protection, I would almost certainly be dead.

  Oh, well. There’s always the next time we’re attacked. She swam past him.

  Carada was being adorned by Miglan with a new collection of ornaments, and barely glanced up as Liana presented herself. You took too long. Did they find something wrong with you?

  Liana could tell no difference in Carada, and assumed the furtive treatment had, as she had guessed, no effect on the big female. Not really. The doctor was concerned that the cuts from my bonds may become infected. He wishes me to return for treatment if they do so.

  They will not, the ambassador said. These ’Zangians have replaced the ship’s atmosphere. It is only a synthetic seawater, but it is clean and free of contaminants, and will serve until fresh replacement can be brought to us from Ylyd.

  We will not be able to wait long for the water, Liana said, and flinched as Fokrej came and draped one of his veils across her back in a familiar, friendly manner. Small barbs hidden within his veils bit deep into her hide.

  I know this, Carada said as she shrugged into a bifold cape that dangled polished shells across her wide upper torso. The fleet is en route here, and then we may proceed with the summit.

  Liana waited for her to explain herself. Fokrej was doing his best to provoke a response, as always, but she had learned that reacting to the tiny, furtive injuries he inflicted on her was exactly what he wanted. Pretending she felt nothing infuriated him, and he drove his barbs in deeper.

  Liana would have done anything to escape him—and would have bitten off one of her own veils to retaliate—but Carada was watching. Carada knew the valet enjoyed tormenting her. She also knew what Liana was willing to tolerate to accomplish their goals.

  You defied me in front of everyone today. Carada came forward, knocking Fokrej away and crowding Liana into a smaller adjoining space. It turned out to be the transport tank to the Ylydii ship. You will be punished for it.