by JC Hay
The loss and regret were replaced with icy concern almost immediately. “What’s wrong?” Could a civilian even go AWOL? The TJF had to have some penalty in place for breach of contract, or whatever it was called.
Dr. Lafrenz took a breath. “I don’t know anything for certain. I mean, he didn’t come out and say that he was going to break his assignment. It’s just, you know how when you work alongside someone, you learn their mannerisms?”
Chen raised her eyebrow and studied the doctor with disbelief.
“Right. Of course you do. Don’t be daft, Merla.” She facepalmed as though it would reboot the conversation. “He left a lot of things unsaid. He specifically wouldn’t answer when he was coming back. And the delay in his call was long. Longer than it should be for Farhope, which is where he said he was. Actually, he didn’t transmit video at all.”
Grenville was the communications expert, so he’d be the one who could calculate his potential location by how long the delay was. Then again, she didn’t need to calculate it. Chen knew exactly where he was. Where he had to be. “He’s on Khonsu. Not Farhope.”
Lafrenz thought about it, then agreed. “That makes sense. I think he has family there. Anyway. I don’t know whether I should have shared that with you, but it sounded like he was sorry about not being here to help your umbra wolf. He doesn’t really bond with his colleagues, you know. So that’s a compliment.”
It didn’t feel like a compliment. It felt like twisting the knife so it did extra damage. He didn’t trust her to be able to help with his family. He hadn’t even believed in her enough to admit his real plan. So much for the thought that this time might be different. Chen bit her tongue rather than curse him for a fool. Nujalik’s disappointment and sorrow twinged along the bond, like an aching tooth.
She glanced at the doctor. “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit with my wolf for a bit. Thanks for letting me know about Dr. Priddy.”
Dr. Lafrenz slipped out through the side door with a nod, leaving Chen alone with Nujalik and their shared thoughts.
Fifteen
Chen welcomed shipboard drill. It kept her muscles tired, and more importantly, forced her mind to be focused on something else. Staying sensitive to the wolfbond prevented her from thinking about Priddy going AWOL—or whatever the civilian equivalent was—and what he might be planning. He’d made it clear that it shouldn’t be any of her business in the first place.
It had been two days since she’d returned to the Hunting Cry, and it still gnawed at her that he’d kept his plans to himself. PT with her fireteam and workouts in the weight room were nice, but they didn’t occupy her brain the way a good round of capture-the-flag did.
Especially up against Fireteam Alpha and their wolves.
She crept around the crates that had been erected as makeshift barriers in the cargo hold, listening for the sound of boots on the deck. Up ahead of her, Nujalik was in a low crawl, her attention and eagerness like electricity coursing over Chen’s skin. The hold was quiet; it would be until someone pushed an advantage or made accidental contact. Between their wolfbonds and their extensive use of hand signals, most rangers could carry on entire conversations without speaking aloud.
Nujalik froze, her hackles rising. She’d clearly spotted someone else, either an opposing ranger or their wolf. Chen hoped for the former. If they’d found another wolf, that detection went both ways. Her hand stroked along her wolf’s spine, tugging her hips slightly. Nujalik took the hint and crept back rather than reveal their presence.
Chaos erupted behind her, as shouts and barks signaled that May had stumbled into someone from Alpha. Chen spun on her toe and charged toward the sound. May should have been just around the corner from her, acting as her cover. From what she remembered, Chen expected to catch May in an alley and help them without too much exposure. At least until Alpha’s other fighters arrived.
She rounded just in time to see Azat take May down hard with a lapel drag that turned into a leg sweep. May whuffed as their back slammed to the deck, and Azat leaned over them to grab their remaining two flags. May was out. Chen didn’t see Azat’s wolf but trusted Nujalik would keep the other animal at bay.
Chen planted herself, pulse already spiking at the idea of a little friendly grappling. Azat had better skills and reach, but only massed two-thirds of what Chen did. That almost made them even.
She nodded to her squad leader. “Sorry I’m late.” And she was. Protecting the squad was her job, was why she’d pushed to take the rear position, but May had insisted they have it instead.
Azat charged forward. Chen dropped her center of gravity low, braced to absorb the hit, but he pivoted and went low to snag her ankle. She slapped at his arm. He pulled it away before she could get a grip. Damn. Bastard was fast. But all the Alphas were. They had a reputation, and Sergeant Marcel drove them hard to maintain it.
Chen and Azat closed again, and he tried the same feint that had worked against May. Chen was ready, shifting her weight to the other leg at the last second and lashing out at Azat’s exposed ankle. Suddenly a weight slammed into her other knee, buckling it and sending her to the deck. Azat’s wolf gave a quick yip of victory as it dashed out of the way, while Azat leapt in to snag Chen’s flags.
Two rangers out, and they hadn’t even put a dent in Azat’s flag count. Chen hoped Grenville and Inouye were faring better with their defensive role.
More importantly, where the hell was Nujalik?
She scooted up to lean against the crate next to May, who watched her with the slight curl of a grin on their lips. The rules dictated eliminated players had to stay in place, to prevent their teammates from knowing who was up and who was down. Given all the battlefield telemetry they had available, it wasn’t exactly realistic, but she supposed it was good to keep people in the habit of not relying on technology where basic knowledge would suffice. Lord knows her grandfather would have appreciated the sentiment.
That sent her thoughts back to the cabin, and by extension, to Javad. Chen pushed them away as best she could. He’d made his choice. She could live with it if he could.
Nujalik came around the corner at last, and her limp made Chen’s heart lurch with panic and fear. “What’s wrong, girl?” Chen whispered. “Where were you?” She reached out to guide her wolf close, but Nujalik skittered out of range.
“Is there a problem?” May’s voice was quiet with concern.
“Obviously. Look at her.” Chen winced at her tone. “I didn’t mean to snap.”
“Forgiven.” They tapped their wolf on the flank, and Pakhet crept closer to Nujalik, her approach slow and cautious.
Nujalik sniffed at the other wolf, eventually accepting her. She followed Pakhet back to where Chen and May waited and lay just outside of Chen’s reach. Worse, May couldn’t feel her through the wolfbond. It wasn’t an absence, like the phantom limb she’d heard Commander Penzak describe. Instead, she could tell her wolf was there, but there wasn’t anything being shared across the bond.
“What’s going on?” May’s hand touched her shoulder, offering support.
Chen kept her voice soft, so as not to disrupt the exercise still going on. “The bond’s there, but she’s not letting anything cross to me. It’s like throwing things into a black hole. Nothing’s coming back out.” On the far side of the cargo hold, she heard a triumphant shout from Grenville. Hopefully he’d taken down at least one of Alpha’s rangers. She turned to her wolf. “Is the pain that bad? You think you’re protecting me?”
Nujalik pushed herself closer, barely enough to allow Chen’s touch. Chen groomed her fingers into her wolf’s coat, smoothing it out and trying to project cool calm. “You know that’s not how this works. We’re a team. Let me help you carry the pain, like you would for me.”
Like she’d wanted to do for Javad, if only he’d listened.
If only she’d said it, explicitly.
In between strokes of her hand, Nujalik reopened her side of the bond. Chen could feel the pa
nic and pain, unfiltered by the wolf’s desire to shield her from it. She almost cried out in a combination of relief and the sudden agony that seared her nerves. Carefully, she wrapped her comfort around her wolf’s hurt, doing her best to help Nujalik bear the load.
“It’s okay, girl. We’ve got this. Together.” She stood and lifted Nujalik into her arms. “Permission to leave the field, Corporal?”
May rolled their eyes. “You know you have it, Ranger. Maybe Priddy and his team will have some ideas.”
Chen winced again, but it had nothing to do with her wolf’s pain. “About that. We need to talk.”
Sixteen
This was dumb. Javad rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried again to talk himself out of what he’d planned. If it could even be called a plan; hinging everything on a hoped-for connection gave him at best a fifty percent chance of success. Probably closer to thirty, if he was being honest. Still, as his mother always said, a bad plan was better than no plan at all.
He crouched behind a boulder and surveyed the small park where the mercenaries had agreed to meet. Like a lot of the parks around New Abydos, it was designed in a “pre-terraformed” style—about as natural as any manicured park, but designed to invoke the rugged, rocky landscape that had welcomed the first colonists. Outside the domes of the old city, the sulfur-rich soil tinged the air with the tang of brimstone; the smell was part of Khonsu. Even though he never thought about it when he’d been on the Hunting Cry, or even when he’d been at school on Farhope, Javad realized that he missed that acrid bite in his nostrils.
Compared to the forest around Chen’s cabin, there were fewer places to hide. That didn’t mean he wasn’t imagining an ambush waiting behind each crop of rocks and scrub. The blackmailers—kidnappers now, technically—had agreed to the location readily enough. In hindsight, that should have worried him.
He’d arrived an hour before the scheduled meet. That was what they did on the holovids, right? The hero showed up early and checked the area to make sure it wasn’t a double-cross. Or they caught the villains planning something dastardly and avoided disaster. Or something. He took a deep breath. Now that he was on site, he wasn’t entirely sure what that would look like, or what he’d be able to do to avert trouble.
In the end, Javad supposed, it didn’t matter. As long as his sister got out safe. His family could be reunited. Except for himself, obviously. Regardless of what he’d told his parents, he was the expendable one in the equation. This was his fault. His pride and his stupidity had put his family in danger. If keeping them safe meant sacrifice on his part? It was a small price to pay.
It was a moment of clarity, understanding how Chen felt about her position as a ranger. That the sacrifices she made were acceptable because it kept her people safe.
Kept her family safe.
He hadn’t expected how much he’d miss the crew on the Hunting Cry. Not just Cignetti, Lafrenz, and the other medical staff, but all of them. Akomi and her roommate. The rangers. The hum of his parents’ restaurant was every bit as loud and chaotic as the ship could be at times, but the ship’s energy had purpose. Direction. And he’d left without telling them goodbye. Merla suspected, he was certain of that. Their last omni call had been filled with questions that hadn’t been voiced aloud. Neither one of them wanted to give those answers.
He wondered what Chen would think of his plan. Scratch that. He knew exactly what her opinion would be. She’d think he was a fool, in over his head. In another timeline, he hoped alternate him made better choices instead of being ruled by selfishness. Not telling her more let him avoid a difficult conversation. Let him ignore the idea that she cared about his being reckless. Or why he cared about the idea of her caring.
Why he wanted her to care about him.
Instead he’d treated Chen like he had every other part of his life that he didn’t want to examine. He’d glossed over the parts he didn’t like to look at and acted like the rest didn’t hurt him. Easier than exposing himself to an uncomfortable truth or an even larger pain. That he avoided the same kinds of discomfort he’d regularly inflicted on others in the interest of some misguided desire to uncover things was an irony not lost on him.
At least he was perfectly willing to pick at his scars in private, when he could control the depth and level of injury.
There was motion at the edge of the park, and he leaned out of his hiding space to see a woman in fashionable clothes leading a gold and black goanna on a leash. The four-eyed reptiles were indigenous to Khonsu, one of the apex predators when humanity had arrived. They were also clever, hardy, and easy to domesticate, which made them a popular, if not exactly cuddly, pet. Especially given how expensive actual dogs and cats could be. He’d seen a lot of goanna during his degree work, and familiarity made him scan the animal’s posture for any sign of the spine issues they could suffer if they grew too fast. He wondered if the woman kept her home dry enough; the lizards were prone to respiratory infections if the humidity got too high.
Something heavy and metallic tapped against the back of his skull, and he’d spent enough time on a military vessel to recognize the click of a safety being disengaged. As Javad slowly put his hands behind his head, a gruff, masculine voice said, “Looking for something, Doctor?”
“Just wondering when you would show up.” He stood and turned. The mercenary was dressed in adaptive camouflage, not nearly as effective as an umbra wolf’s coat, but still topnotch and obviously expensive. A pair of hard, slate-grey eyes watched him above a mask that covered the lower half of the person’s face. “I don’t suppose you’re the welcoming party.”
The mercenary snorted. “Not really.” He tapped his wrist and muttered something into what Javad assumed was a microphone built into the mask, then nodded at the response. “Since we’re both here early, I don’t suppose you’re willing to accompany me now rather than waiting.”
The woman with the goanna passed close to where they stood, and the mercenary held his pistol down, out of her field of vision. Javad had no doubt the man would be able to have it back on target and fire before he could run or wrestle it away, so he leaned against the boulder and tried to pretend his heart wasn’t jack-hammering in his throat. “If my sister goes free. That was the deal.”
“No. The deal was you would get us a wolf. I don’t see one lapping at your heels, Doc. That bodes ill for your sister.”
“I’d say that’s the point.” He took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t bring it with me. What would keep you from double-crossing me?”
“Because of you, my CO’s got one soldier who’s not coming home again. You’ve broken every rule that’s been laid out for you. If anyone here’s going to pull a double-cross, I’d put my money on you. No wolf, no deal.”
It was a fair assessment, and one Javad hadn’t been expecting. He had an empty bag to bargain with, and one chance to get his sister free. “I can get you an umbra wolf. But it’s not just about getting one, is it? You want to keep it alive.”
The soldier shifted his weight, studying him. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning that as animals go, they are finicky to an extreme. The stories about how badass they are? Only true to an extent. Mostly they get popularized to distract people from the truth. Overlooking the difficulty in keeping parasite infection under control, their dietary requirements are complex, and they have to receive regular medications to control species-wide respiratory shortcomings.” Javad hoped the lie was believable, or at least that the mercenary wasn’t well-enough trained to recognize the conflicts in the story. “Keeping the damn things healthy is a constant struggle. One the TJF has literally decades of experience with. Even if I were to turn a wolf over to you immediately, I find it hard to believe that you’d be able to maintain its health long enough to be of any use to you. Or even to sell it to a third party.”
“I’m still not certain what you’re driving at. You don’t have a wolf?” The mercenary reached for his wrist to open the communication.
“I d
idn’t say that. I said there’s no point in turning one over to you until you’re ready to care for it. Unless you just happen to have a skilled TJF veterinarian in your crew. One who’s been certified to work on umbra wolves...” He paused, and when the mercenary didn’t answer, Javad continued, “Yeah. I thought not.”
“Wait here.” The mercenary took three steps back and tapped his wrist, though Javad noticed the heavy pistol never tracked too far from pointing at him. The barrel was a gravity well; his eyes fell into its depths again and again, until it became impossible to look anywhere else. The next few minutes were key to his plan. He had to be able to swap out for his sister. Anything after that...well, his mother always said hope wasn’t a strategy. So, he’d have to count on luck.
The mercenary came back. “Fine. You’re coming with us. But your sister’s not going anywhere. And before you think about betraying us a second time, you should remember, we already know where find the rest of your family.”
Javad’s chest hurt. “Your issue is with me, not her. Just let her go.”
“I don’t call the shots.” The mercenary shrugged, his tone indifferent. “Boss says she’s staying until we have a wolf. As for you, I want you to go to the edge of the park. A white delivery van will pull up. You’ll get in without incident.” He waved the tip of his pistol briefly in the direction he wanted Javad to go.
Javad walked. It was all he had left.
CHEN HELD THE DOOR with her foot as May followed her into their shared quarters. She laid Nujalik on her bed then sat on the mattress next to her wolf. This shouldn’t be as hard as it felt. May, patient as they were, stayed silent as they sat in the chair for the room’s small desk. They knew Chen would say what needed to be said in time.
Pakhet jumped up on May’s bed and curled up on their pillow, careful to keep one eye open in case any treats should appear.