Authors: Sara King
The Human stared down at
the assassin’s weapon for several moments. “Aw what the hell,” he muttered,
and went back to drafting his tiny note, crossing things off as he went.
Curious, Jer’ait leaned
over to watch.
The Human wrote:
1) While on Kophat,
you will enter Congress into a new Age.
2) You will make
friends with a Huouyt assassin, and at his command, a Jreet heir shall remove
your still-beating heart from your chest and deliver it to strangers.
3) After a battle
the likes of which the universe has never seen, you shall have the cosmos’
greatest mind helpless under your boot, and your mercy shall unmake him.
4) And while you shall
die in a cave, shamed and surrounded by dragon-slaying innocents, your deeds
will crush the unbreakable, and your name will never be forgotten.
As Joe wrote, Jer’ait
found himself getting chills. He pulled his Ooreiki-patterned hands away from the
Human, feeling the first real pangs of fear. Once Joe was done writing, he
dropped the tranquilizer to the table and leaned back, staring at the page he
had written, looking like he’d been hit by a freighter.
“Someone gave you a
fourfold prophecy,” Jer’ait whispered.
The Human just stared at
the note. Then, without a word, he snatched up his coat, stood, and walked out
of the bar.
Very carefully, Jer’ait
pulled the Human’s slip of paper across the table to him. He read the four
parts again, cold chills wracking his spine. Then, softly, he said, “Watcher,
destroy this.”
“Of course,
Peacemaster,”
the Watcher obliged. The slip of paper vanished.
“And erase all records of
the last ten tics within a thirty rod span.”
“Already done,
Peacemaster.”
Jer’ait swallowed hard.
He turned to glance at where the Human had departed. His job—his
duty
—was
to detain his former groundmate and take him to the Sanctuary for questioning
and execution. Instead, he softly said, “And look out for him.”
“I will do all I can while
he is in my care,”
the Watcher said.
“But it is not on Koliinaat where
he will meet that end.”
“Where?” Jer’ait asked
softly.
The Watcher hesitated.
“Earth.”
#
Daviin ducked another
chair and, using his lower body as a whip, slammed a podium into his opponent’s
head, to the cheer of other Jreet. For some reason, halfway through the fight,
the Sentinels had shown up and had started to cheer for
him
. Not only
that, but they had actually left their charges to gather en masse, surrounding
the two of them in ruby, cream, and gray coils. Thousands of them. The
Regency had become a gladiatorial pit-ring, with what sounded like every Jreet
on Koliinaat in attendance.
“Give up, Voran,” Prazeil
slurred. “Tekless coward.” He ripped a canister of exotic gasses from inside
one of the Representative booths and haphazardly hurled it at Daviin hard
enough to explode. He missed his target by several rods, igniting the gasses
on the floor between them. The resulting blast flipped Daviin head-over-tail
into the Sentinel onlookers, who violently threw him back into the ring with
shouts of encouragement. The same explosion knocked Prazeil backwards into a
glass water-tank, which shattered under his weight, dousing him in whatever
native slurry the Watcher kept on hand for their sentient liquid-based
life-forms.
“Miserable…Ayhi,” Prazeil
managed. “Cold…” His tek-punctured body flopped uselessly, trying to right
himself.
Rravut
spilled from his open wounds in dribbles of red that
would kill lesser creatures on contact. “Come…fight…” His opponent groaned
and flipped onto his back, his massive cream-colored scales mottled with long
smears of blue. He flailed almost blindly, pinging directly at the floor like
a child.
Daviin recognized the
symptoms of
rravut
poisoning and slid in to finish it. When Daviin
grabbed him by the throat, Prazeil groaned and tried to yank his head away, but
was too weak. Daviin jerked him up, so that they were eye-to-eye. The Jreet
surrounding them went totally quiet.
“Know this,” Daviin said
into the silence. “You dishonored us.” When Prazeil again tried to pull away,
Daviin tugged him brutally back, ripping part of his ear-crest. Forcing him to
once again meet his eyes, Daviin said, “You took the oath of a Sentinel and you
disgraced it with lies and ambition. You will walk the ninety hells alone, and
no one will be there to meet you on the other side.” He heard his words picked
up and amplified by the Representative booths around him, broadcast to the
entire Regency, but he didn’t waver. Giving Prazeil a long, cold stare, Daviin
said, “Today, you get what you wanted all along. Today, you became a
politician. You are not Jreet.”
Prazeil’s blue eyes
flickered toward the Jreet surrounding them, fear glinting in his watery blue eyes.
“A warrior’s death,” he whispered. “Please. I deserve an ovi,”
“No,” Daviin said, moving
his body under him, “you don’t.” He left his ovi where it was, secured in a
specially-made pouch within his tek-sheath, and started wrapping himself around
the Representative’s neck.
“
No!
” Prazeil
cried, beginning to thrash. Glass and alien liquid were flung across the
spectators as Prazeil tried to fight what was coming. He twisted, slamming
Daviin violently into the floor again and again until Daviin had too many coils
wrapped around his throat for him to lift his head.
Daviin listened grimly as
the Aezi started to choke, then held on tight as the larger Jreet’s length
started to twist and quiver as his air was cut off. He flailed and struggled
for several tics before he finally went still. Daviin continued to hold on, to
make sure the deed was done.
“Representative
Prazeil ga Aez is dead,”
the Watcher intoned.
“Daviin ga Vora, you have
earned a seat on the Tribunal and as a Representative of your species. Do you
accept?”
“Fuck the Tribunal
and
the Regency,” Daviin snapped, taking a lesson from Joe. “I’m a warrior, not
a fat vaghi cancer. I haven’t had a good keg of
lesthar
since they
froze my accounts on Jeelsiht. I go to get drunk.” Around him, the Jreet
screamed their approval and started ripping more chairs from the floor to throw
at him in celebration. Ducking his obligatory post-victory assault, he started
to uncoil himself from the Aezi.
The Watcher hesitated a
moment as blood-fevered Jreet began wrecking the Regency in their frenzied
copulations. Daviin shoved the Aezi body away and pulled himself out of the cold
pool of liquid from the destroyed Regency water-chamber.
Tentatively, the Watcher
offered,
“Representatives and their guests are given free unlimited kegs of lesthar
at happy hour in four hundred and sixteen different Koliinaati locations.”
Daviin, who had been
picking bloody glass from under his scales, hesitated. He cocked his head at
the booth that had spoken, then glanced at the thousands of Jreet around him.
Absolute silence fell in the Regency as celebrating Jreet froze, mid-sex,
watching him with sudden,
ovi
-sharp intensity.
#
Joe bought a yacht.
He didn’t really have
anything else to do with his money, since the Jreet’s oath of Representative
trumped his oath as a Sentinel, and food on Koliinaat was free. The Sentinels
had offered to replace Daviin with six of their best warriors, but the idea of
running around with
six
Jreet babysitting him had left Joe laughing in
the messenger’s face—and having to make another trip to a regen chamber because
of it.
Jer’ait, likewise, was
busy with official duties on Koliinaat and certainly wasn’t lacking for cash. Joe
never saw the Va’gan spend more than a few credits on food and drink, and he
had an odd feeling that Jer’ait would still have his billions five hundred turns
after Joe and the rest had blown theirs.
The only person Joe could
have really shared his money with was Flea, but Joe was still pissed with him for
trading sides on Koliinaat, and—perhaps justifiably—Flea had made a point of avoiding
Joe ever since. Last he’d heard, Flea was busy systematically crashing Huouyt
and Ooreiki spaceships that illegal immigrants had been forced to leave behind
on Bagan-owned planets, after his honorable Voran friend on the Tribunal had a
nice,
stimulating
talk with the Planetary Claims Board on his behalf.
So, in his last two weeks
of leave, alone and bored, Joe bought a yacht.
It wasn’t really fancy,
just a few dozen million’s worth, but it was big and had custom Human-patterned
seating and beds, so it wasn’t the scoop-shaped generic Ooreiki designs he was
used to. At first, he had thought that the Human objects would be a well-deserved
luxury, but the longer he used the chairs that seemed too flat, the mattress
that had no concave slope, the sinks that were too tall, the carpets that were
too soft, the more Joe wished he hadn’t wasted his money.
Joe was floating in the
pool of his yacht, boredly eying yet another newscast of the Baga destroying a
perfectly good Ooreiki freighter in a glorious ball of fire and twisted metal,
when it occurred to him that maybe his life would be more fulfilling with a
woman.
Joe thought about heading
back to the barracks early and having his pick of the women there, then
grimaced. That, he realized, was part of the problem. He
could
have
any Congie girl he crooked a finger at. They idolized him. Adored him. Had
pictures of him on their walls. Full color, with him twisted in a heroic pose,
regally holding a rifle, his combat boot on a Dhasha’s head.
Joe had no freakin’ idea
where they came from, but he wanted to slaughter whatever bastard had put them
together, as it had made it impossible to find a girl that wasn’t starry-eyed
with hero-worship, able to babble off the names of every battle he’d ever been
in better than Joe could.
He briefly thought about hitting
up the local bars on the off-chance he might find a civilian Human woman who
would be interested in dating a Congie, then sighed. The chances of that were
about as likely as surviving a spacewalk in his birthday suit.
Alone, bored to tears,
Joe began surfing the species-specific, English-speaking Congie section of the
local dating site with no real goal in mind. He was halfway through the first
day’s personal ads when he ran across one that made him do a double-take.
Maggie P. 53 turns in
service. Rank: Not Specified. Combat Experience: Not Specified. Height: 5’2”
Looking for: strong man, 6’2” or bigr. gud in bed, descent cock. had tired of
shity leys, lokin fer full-tyme relasionship. must be COngie…can’’t stand
sivilyan wimps… gotta hve the bawls to stand up to a gurl. i’m sexy,
intimadating, and self-relyant. real experyunced. I hve gud Rank, no i’m not
telin. u shyoot me pic and i shyoot u mine. Want some1 dominunt and Taek-charge.
welthy a big +
Joe sat there, staring at
the ad for several tics. He glanced at the Create Account option. Then he
closed his eyes and prayed to the Ooreiki ghosts for restraint.
Don’t do it,
he thought,
staring at the ceiling through closed eyelids.
Mothers’ ghosts, don’t drop
to her level. Just close the site and walk away.
When he opened his eyes
again, however, he couldn’t help but read the ad a second time. He thought
about every denied promotion, every overlooked kasja, every time he’d been
forced to add time to his enlistment to buy gear or eat properly, and one
question kept slamming through his mind, burning in his guts like a coal.
Why?
Why had she hated him so
much? After so many turns, why couldn’t she just let it go? Why did she lie
about him, sneer whenever she saw him, throw
darts
at his goddamn
picture? What had he done to her to deserve that? Why couldn’t she just
move
on
? Why did she hire private detectives to follow him, writing down every
discrepancy, every tiny violation? What was
wrong
with her?
So they had been the only
two survivors of their original groundteam on Kophat. So
what
?
Millions of recruits died in that war. They bombed every barracks on the
planet
.
So
what
if Joe hadn’t managed to keep them all alive? He still felt ashy
about it, but he had
moved on
.
And, in that moment, Joe
realized he needed to know. It wasn’t just a simple question, a yes/no answer
or a multiple choice he wanted her to fill out at her convenience. He needed
her to explain it to him, in person, so he could look in her eyes when she
revealed to him that cardinal sin, that appalling crime that had made him
worthy of so much loathing.
As soon as he realized
that, he knew there was no going back. He began filling out an account under
the name of Jimmy B. He put enough of his stats into his account to make it
interesting without being recognizable, then sent her a message that said:
I’m a traveling Human
merchant currently overseeing business in the Hev’asti textiles trade and I
noticed your profile. I was intrigued! I’m not a Congie, but I’m wealthy and
fit. I’m 6’4”, well-endowed, run my own inter-galactic shipping company, and
can hold my own in Huouyt trade negotiations, so I am pretty confident I can be
the strong personality you’re looking for. 53 turns! You certainly do have
experience. I’ve always been fascinated with Congie women and would love to
meet. If nothing else, dinner’s on me. How about tonight on my yacht? Say, 28:36?
Hub 36A, door 139. Access code 2736009.