Bone Rider (12 page)

Young stopped at the head of the table and stared at the assembly from under his green beret.

“Sit down,” he told them quietly. Sometimes, sotto voce menace got much better results than outright yelling. He pulled out a chair for himself and plunked down unceremoniously, wordlessly declaring that this was not going to go strictly by military protocol. “All right, give me the rundown,” he ordered, loosening his tie with one hand. “I’m not here to assign blame. I want this thing captured. So spare me the bull, gimme the facts.”

It was Lt. Dr. Butler who moved first. Young wasn’t surprised. The woman was an African-American female officer with a doctorate in neurology and a shitload of publications and commendations under her belt. It was still a rare combination, which meant she wasn’t someone he’d want to underestimate. She sat at Hampton’s right and pushed a folder across the table. Young slapped a hand down to stop its slide and leafed through it. It was an updated version of the report he’d read on the plane, thick with pictures and hastily added notes. He’d dive into it in detail later, but right now he wanted a quick-and-dirty outline, no frills. He’d always been better at taking in information by watching and listening, preferred lectures to books; reading took longer and generally left him feeling as if something was missing.

“Layman’s terms,” he requested, and to her credit, that’s how she told it.

“I want you to understand that none of these findings are double-checked yet, sir,” she began, staring at him with cool, dark eyes. “Under the circumstances, we had to work fast, so we weren’t able to do this completely by the book. Some of it is guesswork. Educated guesses, but guesses nonetheless.”

Young didn’t even twitch. He was heading SOCOM, the Special Operations Command, for Christ’s sake. He was more than used to people who thought outside the box. It was a requirement for Special Forces soldiers to be creative—there was a reason their field was called
unconventional warfare
, after all.

“Duly noted.”

Thus reassured, Butler relaxed a little. “We’ve done a full autopsy on two of the bodies,” she said, gesturing at the folder in front of him, “and a partial on the third. As far as we were able to determine, given the overall bad condition of the cadavers, we’re looking at five beings instead of three as we assumed.”

Not good, that, but Young had come prepared for bad news, so he merely nodded.

“Two of the bodies,” Butler continued smoothly, “are saturated with an unknown metal compound. Most of it close to the surface, reinforcing the epidermis, the skin, from the outside and inside, but there is also a very thin coating around organs and bones.” She tipped her head at the doctor seated midway between her and Young. “With Dr. Weston’s permission, this was where we consulted Captain Brennan, who was leading the units that made first contact and observed the creatures in combat.”

Young had listened to the recordings of those debriefings and fully intended to talk to Brennan himself as soon as he had a better idea about what questions to ask. “So did you come to any conclusion about what we’re dealing with here?”

“Yes, actually.” Butler smiled for the first time, a miniscule curling of her lips that eased some of the severity of her face, betrayed a little of her excitement. “It seems very much possible these are in fact extraterrestrial beings. Also, we believe the metal parts of the bodies to be some sort of highly developed armor system with rudimentary weapons capacities.”

“Rudimentary?” According to the reports, the three aliens who’d engaged the troops had damn near annihilated their opponents.

“No projectile or energy weapons,” Butler specified. “Various forms of edged weapons only. The way Captain Brennan described it, the metal
flexed
. It expanded and retracted as necessary, adapting to the external threats, but it did not separate.”

“Except for when Captain Brennan and his men hit it with antitank missiles,” Young said dryly.

Butler cleared her throat, shook her head. “To be precise… no, sir. Not even then. They held. They died and their hosts died, but they kept it together. We think they tried to absorb the energy of the explosion, maybe process it somehow, but it was simply too much.”

Well, as long as they were dead. Young frowned.

“They
are
dead, right? They’re not going to get up off their slabs and kill their way topside?”

“Dead as can be,” Butler confirmed. “No regeneration at all. We’ve stored the parts separately, just in case, and we did full body scans and autopsies on the victims. All of them.” She grimaced delicately. “We’ve seen the movies too, sir. Believe me, we’re taking every precaution.”

Sore point there.

“Yeah,” Young growled, leaning forward in his chair the better to glare at them all, “that’s why there’s an alien creature out there right now, whereabouts unknown. So how does anything you told me so far help catch the fucker?”

Convince me
, he thought.
Show me what you’re made of
.

He needed to know their mettle, Butler’s in particular, because he was going to need them and he wanted to get an idea about who’d be reliable and who was apt to fold. This entire clusterfuck was as classified as it got and part of Young’s job was to weed out people who were better kept at the periphery of it. As it turned out, only Butler and Weston held his angry gaze, and it was Butler who answered his challenge.

“Well, for one thing, you’re not looking for the actual alien, General. You’re looking for an armor system.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“How do you figure that’ll help?” Young asked, letting up a little, because he was genuinely curious about her reasoning. “The thing was smart enough to play dead then fuck off when nobody was looking. Doesn’t sound like your average machine to me. For all we know it might be a different species of alien.”

“Maybe,” Butler acknowledged with a faint shrug. “We don’t know enough to disregard the possibility.”

Young’s eyes narrowed. There was something about her… she wasn’t merely reacting to his questions, she was headed somewhere specific.

“Get to the point, Lieutenant.”

“We believe the entity—whether it’s an alien species or a weapon—is not an independent life-form. There are indications that it is symbiotic in nature, in a kind of service-resource mutualism: the entity provides a top-notch internal and external defense system and the host in turn provides the biochemical environment the entity needs to survive. The metal mimics organic matter—specifically, its host’s individual markers—to avoid triggering the immune system, and it is evidently perfectly able to operate independently for a limited amount of time. But, and this is a big but, it cannot retain its cell wall integrity indefinitely outside of its host body. This is why the exposed metal elements we examined became porous. It
needs
a host. We don’t know for sure why it was the only one of the three that didn’t protect its original host to the end, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’ll need a new one.”

She must’ve noticed his skepticism, because she held up a hand to ward off interruptions. “Please, bear with me for a second, sir. See, we went with this assumption and took the liberty of following that line of thinking to its logical conclusion.” It was as close as she’d come to babbling so far, quick-talking to justify her decision to go with a hunch instead of verified data.

Young, not particularly concerned with proper procedure as long as the results were sound, briefly clenched his jaws in impatience. “The conclusion being?”

Butler smiled proudly. “We found a way to track it.”

R
ILEY
was having a much better time than he’d anticipated. He still wasn’t entirely happy with the notion of playing host to an alien armor system with a crush on Bruce Willis, but the combination of good food, cold beer, and someone interesting to talk to went a long way in mellowing his attitude. The two of them worked their way steadily through an order of nachos and a chicken enchilada, hot and spicy, apparently just the right thing to introduce an alien to Earth cuisine. McClane loved it. Riley had no idea how exactly his passenger was experiencing the food—he suspected something might be hooked into his taste buds—but it must’ve been spectacular, because the orgasmic moans and eager demands for more almost drowned out the sounds of the bar. Hell, they were enough to give Riley a hard-on, because,
damn
, the alien sure loved to eat. It was like listening to enthusiastic amateur porn.

“Man, stop it,” he muttered, blushing. “It’s food, not sex.”

Both good
, McClane declared happily, apparently more than willing to dive headfirst into the human experience.
Can we get more food? And more sex, later?

“You want me to explode or something?” Riley complained. “’Cause I gotta tell you, there are easier ways to kill a guy.” He wasn’t touching the offer for sex, no way, not with a ten-foot pole. One step at a time.

Food is energy
, McClane argued, nudging him into taking that final bite.
You need it, I need it. Don’t forget, you gotta eat for two now.
Riley almost dropped his fork at that, but some instinct (yeah, right) made him tighten his grip just in time.
Fuel the engine
, McClane corrected himself quickly, scrambling to erase the specter of pregnancy he’d evoked. Neither of them was quite over the egg thing yet.
Support your buddy. Stop thinking nasty thoughts!

That was the point when Riley shoved away the mostly empty plate and decided it was high time to move on to the boozing part of the evening. McClane was all too happy to go with that plan, though he ended up dutifully filtering the alcohol from Riley’s system and neutralizing it. Riley caught on to it eventually (four shots with beer chasers should’ve left
some
kind of dent in his sobriety), and put a stop to McClane’s activities. After that, it was smooth sailing.

They ended up slouched comfortably in the corner of their booth, watching the roadhouse fill up and get loud, and slowly got nicely pickled. Riley allowed his thoughts to drift, didn’t bother to hide them from McClane. His passenger seemed happy to hang out with him and soak up his mental ramblings. He kept quiet for the most part, a warm, contented presence at the back of Riley’s awareness. Riley could actually feel him when he focused on it, the occasional tingle along his nerve endings, a whisper of a touch here and there, like a shirt felt and then unfelt.

It was oddly relaxing to sit and drink and get used to company again. It reminded Riley of sharing space with Misha, lazing on the couch wrapped up in each other with nowhere in particular to go and nothing to do. Riley missed that most of all, the undemanding closeness Misha had offered, the generous, unthinking tactility that sometimes turned sexual but mostly was simply about being together. Misha hadn’t been able to keep his hands off Riley, had always brushed against him, slipped an arm around Riley’s waist, rested his chin on Riley’s shoulder cheek to cheek so their breaths mingled. And Riley, who’d never been this intimate with anybody before, mostly because his personal space bubble was about twice the size of other people’s, had been surprised by how comfortable he was with it. It should’ve made his skin crawl, but instead he’d gotten to crave those little signs of affection, even more so because he had such a hard time initiating them. He hadn’t expected to have that again, not with anyone, least of all an alien who’d ambushed him and climbed into his body without permission.

Life or death situation
, McClane reminded him, almost too softly for Riley to pick up. He flexed along Riley’s back in a slow rhythm that felt a lot less disturbing than Riley would’ve imagined.
I am sorry, you know
.

Liar
, Riley thought back, but without rancor. Couldn’t fault someone for doing what needed doing in order to survive. When the chips were down, it was everyone for themselves; Riley knew that better than most. Friends, family… they were great, as long as things went smoothly. It was when the going got rough that you realized whom you could count on, and it was generally a pretty sobering tally. Getting close to people, allowing yourself to become vulnerable, carried more potential for hurt than riding a bucking bull. At least with the bull, if you managed a good ride, you got paid in the end. Relationships just fucked you up, then left you bleeding in the dust. Easier to go it alone.

That’s a depressing attitude
, McClane remarked, sounding a little taken aback by Riley’s philosophy. The kneading stopped briefly then picked up again along his shoulders, working on the tension that had crept into Riley’s muscles.

“Matter of experience,” Riley countered, absentmindedly watching the rodeo playing on the TV over the bar. “My family fell apart after my daddy’s death, didn’t want anything to do with me when they figured out I’m queer. Most guys I hooked up with were really only interested in getting in my pants; my first partner decided he preferred twinks after all, and the one guy who seriously rocked my world turned out to be a hit man for the Russian mob. Trust me; being on your own is safer.”

It was pretty simple, Riley had learned. As long as he was useful or unavailable, he was desired. The moment he stopped playing the game, he was discarded so fast his head spun. So far, the only one who’d broken pattern had been Misha, but, well. No rule without exception.

McClane was silent for a bit while he thought that over, never stopping his gentle ministrations.

Do you mind me much?
he asked finally, something in his tone that made Riley speculate that maybe the alien had, for the first time, tried to put himself in his host’s position… and not much liked the perspective.

Riley shrugged, on the right side of drunk to go for honesty. “Not as much as I should,” he admitted.

Just because he’d eventually accepted how the world worked didn’t mean he had to like it or that he didn’t feel lonely or didn’t want to cling to the fantasy sometimes. Man was a social animal, not built for isolation. Riley was no exception, and he was self-aware enough to know that, yes, he did feel the need to connect. He wanted someone to talk to when something was on his mind, to be able to let down his guard and trust someone to have his back while he rested, but he’d gotten kicked in the face too hard by people he’d loved too much. It had screwed him up to the point where he couldn’t let anyone close. Except Misha, who’d fought for the dubious privilege with an unbelievable tenacity; who’d turned out to be a killer and a liar, unsafe, untrustworthy. Maybe this was why Riley didn’t have more trouble tolerating McClane’s presence. He was damaged and starved for contact, so much so he was willing to share his body for a little friendly company.