Authors: Sara King
“Why?” Yua’nev
lowered the orange nutrient wafer back to the plate and waited.
Jer’ait glanced
at the Human’s sleeping form. He knew the Peacemaster would ask, but he had no
answers. Just a feeling. It was a tugging in his zora, an urge to kill the Human
right now, and deal with the repercussions later.
“Jer’ait,”
Yua’nev said, when he didn’t respond, “you kill him and we’d be risking
billions of lives.”
“You are making
a mistake if you don’t,” Jer’ait said. “Believe me in this. I would put my
reputation on it.”
For a long
moment, Yua’nev remained silent, and only static crossed over the feed as his
superior considered it. Eventually, Yua’nev said, “We have been given a rare
opportunity to pick our future, Jer’ait. And the future that I prefer does not
contain a Dhasha Vahlin carving out an empire within our boundaries.
Understand?”
Jer’ait smoothed
his features. “Perfectly.”
Moron.
“Good. I heard
he ran off. You brought him back?”
“In the process
now.”
“Don’t let them
see you do it. I want as little suspicion as possible concerning his
whereabouts the last two weeks.”
“Phoenix filed a
complaint that he was AWOL.”
“Her complaints
are nothing new,” Yua’nev said. “I’ll make sure her superiors ignore it.”
“But it’s her
team. She’s following us to Neskfaat and will be in charge of picking our
assignments for us. It would be best if I killed her before she can make
things difficult.”
“I doubt he’s
going to kill the Vahlin because it’s easy,” Yua’nev said, sounding amused.
“Very well.”
Frustrated, Jer’ait ended the transmission and glanced at the Human crumpled in
the seat of his
haauk.
“Merciful dead. What is it about you that makes
people stupid?”
The Human,
drooling against his seat, said nothing.
#
“If you’re my Second,”
Joe growled, “where’s our Battlemaster?”
“He’s coming.”
Be’shaar turned
to the door and began entering a code into the wall, each number preceded by a
distinct, toned beep. A personal access code. Then he stepped away and they
were locked in. Waiting for backup.
Joe sank into
the bunk in the corner of the room, ignoring the way the assassin was standing
guard by the door. His head hurt too much to notice anything other than his
immediate surroundings.
Somehow, under
the dark of night—and while Joe was unconscious—the Huouyt had snuck him back
into the military barracks, despite the fact he was missing an identifying
tag. Now, rubbing his throbbing skull as the aftereffects of the antidote hit
him like a sledgehammer, Joe could not help but feel rising irritation toward
the heavy-handedness of this creature that claimed to be his Second.
That, and a tiny
bit of apprehension. He hated Huouyt. Eeloir had given him a healthy
appreciation of why the slippery, psychotic ashsouls all needed to die. To
even
think
about working with one was making him ill.
“You didn’t need
to drug me,” Joe said. “I could’ve walked here.”
“You wouldn’t
have.” The Huouyt stepped back and leaned against the now-locked door to watch
him, crossing his arms over his chest in a perfect imitation of Human
irritation.
Joe lifted his
head to peer out from underneath his hand. “Are you really my Second?”
“I have that
dubious pleasure, yes.” The Huouyt continued to watch him over his crossed
arms.
“Why?”
“You hit me with
a stool.”
Joe sighed.
“You gonna stay in that pattern forever? If you’re my Second, I’d like to know
what you really look like.”
“You mean you’d
like for me to leave so you can escape again, and this time go into hiding with
me and my talents in mind.” The Huouyt gave him a flat look.
Joe waved his
hand at the industrial metal door. “My tag is busted, my head hurts too bad to
see straight, this place is on lockdown at this time of night, and you’ve got a
personal access code set on that door—I wouldn’t get far.”
“Yes you would.”
The Huouyt continued to watch him, tapping his fingers on his borrowed bicep.
Joe grinned,
despite himself. “I think I’m starting to like you.”
The Huouyt gave
him a long, utterly unamused look. “Let me make something clear to you,
Commander. You are due to depart for Neskfaat tomorrow at noon. I intend to
see you get on the ship as planned. No amount of cajoling, sweet-talking, or
bribing will convince me to do otherwise.”
Joe grimaced.
“I was serious.”
“And so am I.”
“Scratch that,”
Joe growled. “I don’t like you. You’re a real pain in the ass.”
“As are you,”
the Huouyt responded. “If you didn’t have the drinking habits of a Cu’it
slave, I don’t think I ever would’ve found you.”
Joe cocked his
head at Be’shaar, who was still leaning against the door, barricading it. “Was
that a compliment?”
The Huouyt
twitched, but only momentarily. “Why did you run, Commander?”
“Why didn’t you
tell them I ran?”
“I enjoy lying
to people.”
Joe laughed.
“Now that I believe. Was it the only reason?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“Perhaps.
You’ll never know.”
Joe dropped his
hand from his temple with a sigh. “Listen to me, Be’shaar. I know why you
saved my ass. It was a challenge. You wanted to bring back the legendary Joe
Dobbs so you could whip it out and throw it in my face whenever I got uppity as
your Prime. That’s fine. I deserve that much.” He stood up and stumbled
toward the Huouyt, his head on fire. “But if we’re going to work together, you
and I are going to have to come to an understanding. We’re going to have to
start trusting each other.”
The Huouyt
looked him up and down. Be’shaar’s voice was laden with disdain when he said,
“Huouyt trust no one.”
“Good.”
Joe rammed the
blade of his knife into the Huouyt’s lower leg and yanked up hard, severing the
large artery that led from the thigh to the heart in several places. The
Huouyt’s eyes flashed open wide and he began to collapse, forced to focus his
attention on mending his pattern before he bled to death.
Joe stepped over
the body of the assassin and punched in the sound combination he had heard the
Huouyt enter to lock them inside. The door slid open with a high-pitched beep,
then slid shut again when Joe activated it on the outside. Then he changed the
Huouyt’s passcode to a code of his choice and hit LOCK. He heard Be’shaar
struggle to reach the door just as the door made another high-pitched beeping
sound and sealed the Huouyt inside.
Joe opened the
intercom. “You all right?”
“No,” Be’shaar
said, panting. His voice sounded strained. “I’m bleeding bad.”
Joe laughed. “I
thought Huouyt were better liars than that.”
“I’m not lying.
The artery you cut was too large—there was too much internal pressure to stem
the flow of—”
“Can it.”
The Huouyt
waited in silence.
“Look,” Joe said,
“I know you aren’t here to be my Second. You’re some poor bastard Phoenix sent
to hunt me down so she could make an example out of me. That’s fine. I don’t
hold it against a soldier for doing his job.”
“Commander,
listen to me,” the Huouyt growled, dropping the act completely. “They’re not
trying to kill you, but they
will
hunt you down.”
“No they won’t,”
Joe laughed. “They don’t give a rat’s ass about some retired grounder Prime
who went AWOL. Not when they’ve got bigger fish to fry. I disappear, they’ll
let me go without a fuss and we both know it.”
“I’m your
Second,” the Huouyt snapped. “Look it up.”
Joe laughed.
“Nice try. I’d have to come back inside to do that.”
“Here, I’ll read
it to you.”
“Don’t bother.
You’re a Peacemaker, not my groundmate. I’d recognize your kind of nasty
anywhere. You were pretty convincing, though. I was actually picturing a
multi-species groundteam before you put me out. I gotta give you credit—you’re
good. Better than most Huouyt I’ve seen, that’s for sure. Hell, maybe you
did
have a little Va’ga training, who knows. Fact remains, you intend to take me
to Levren. I’ve got more important things to do than sit around answering
questions while one of your friends carves on me. Sorry.”
“I can help you
free your brother.”
Joe laughed.
“Would that be before or after I open this door and you drug me and stuff me on
a shuttle bound for Levren?”
“I’m not sending
you to Levren,” the Huouyt said. “You have my word.”
Joe snorted.
“The word of a Huouyt is ash to me.”
“Then you’re
truly one of the wisest people in the Army, Commander, but it makes it no less
true. I’m to fight with you on Neskfaat.”
Joe sighed,
almost believing him. “Sorry. I’m retired, Huouyt. The only reason they
called me up in the first place was because one of my old groundmates has a
small mind and a big grudge.”
“And which old
groundmate might that be, Commander?”
Joe got a rush
of icy, skin-crawling goosebumps at the glacial feminine voice in the hall. Fists
tightening, he turned.
Maggie was
walking towards him, the silver eight-pointed star and four inner circles of a
Prime Overseer stark against her crisp black Congie uniform. Joe gave a
startled twitch as their eyes met. Dancing over her pupils and irises,
slow-moving orange flames flickered and twisted like twin glimpses into an
inferno.
Specialized
contacts, but unnerving nonetheless.
When she made no
move to call security forces, Joe cleared his throat. “I like what you did
with your eyes. Real sexy. Bet the Jreet eat that right up.”
Her unnatural
eyes scanned Joe’s body lazily. “Why are you not in uniform, Commander?”
“Be’shaar and I
were just chumming it up at the bar.”
“And your
Battlemaster?”
“Working out
some things with Supply.”
“Like what?”
“Like finding me
a cool set of contacts like yours.”
Maggie watched
him from behind her glowing flames, her face expressionless. “Come with me.”
“I’m a little
busy.”
“Now.”
Joe had to
withstand the urge to tell her to go hump a karwiq bulb, knowing that the
easiest way to get back out of the barracks did not include being locked in the
brig for the night. He followed her. They wound through the corridors of the
barracks, and after a moment, Joe realized they were entering the Overseers’
quarters.
“Shouldn’t you
have gotten me drunk before taking me home? It would be kinder.”
Maggie gave him
an irritated look and opened the door to her chambers. “There’s something you
need to know about Neskfaat.”
Joe gave the
security scanner on the door a wary glance. Untagged, it would go into
lockdown the moment it registered him. “Tell me here. I don’t plan on hanging
around.”
“Come inside.”
“I’d rather
not.”
“I’m not giving
you a choice.”
Joe glanced at
her Overseer’s star, gauged just how much trouble she could get him into if he
disobeyed, and reluctantly did as he was told.
Immediately, the
sensors recognized that Joe no longer carried a working chip and alarms in the
room began screeching. An artificial Ooreiki voice said,
“Unknown
intruder. No identifying tag. Containment steps taken. Please advise.”
All around Joe,
a blue-black field popped into being, giving him approximately six ninths in
any direction before it began cutting off body parts. Joe held as still as
possible as Maggie walked up and shut the door behind him, but made no move to
free him from the field.
“So,” Maggie
said, coming to stand back in front of him. “How did you lose your tag, Joe?”
At full height, she was only five digs, same height as the average Ooreiki.
Even stretching, her nose was at about the same height as Joe’s left nipple.
She was stretching now. It didn’t make much difference. Joe still towered
over her.
“I didn’t,” Joe
said. “I scrambled it.”
She laughed.
“Really? Why?”
“Because I spent
the last two weeks AWOL, drinking myself into a stupor in every bar I came
across.”
Maggie flashed
him an irritated look. “I’ll have someone replace your tag for you.”
“How about you
let me out of this containment field before I cut off an elbow,” Joe said
pleasantly.
“I want to make
sure I have your complete attention,” Maggie said, through a forced smile.
“Actually, it’s
the proximity of the energy field to my ass that’s got my complete attention.”
“The Dhasha Vahlin
is on Neskfaat, Joe.”
Joe yanked his
eyes away from the glowing blue-black containment field to stare at her. The
Huouyt had been telling the truth?
Maggie saw the
shock in his face and nodded. “The Vahlin exists. And Bagkhal took up arms
with him. Against Congress.”
Joe felt the
breath slip out of his lungs. “
Bagkhal
?”
His mentor. His
friend. The only decent Dhasha that Joe had ever known. The only one who had
looked at Joe and seen anything other than food. Joe had served under him as a
recruit on Kophat, then again as an Overseer on Eeloir. Joe would have given
his life for him.
Maggie seemed to
find his reaction amusing. “Bagkhal and a hundred and thirty-three other
princes. Each one with dozens of side-dens, thousands of followers, and
millions of Takki. They’re carving out a section of space as we speak.”
“Bagkhal
defected?
”
“Every Dhasha
within that sector defected. They’ve got a ban on all Dhasha travel in the
area, but some of them are still getting to Neskfaat anyway. Their numbers
increase with every day we wait.”