by Lea Linnett
“We can’t be seen there again so soon.”
Taz opened her mouth around what was probably a whole list of expletives, but cut herself short. “I’m not letting this chance slip by,” she growled, settling a petulant glare upon him. She hooked her hand in the transport’s door. “I’m going to find this fucker and sweat him and I won’t let you stop me.”
“Taz!” the pindar hissed but she was already climbing from the vehicle. “Get back in here!” He looked to Kamanek, his thin lips working as he weighed his options. Eventually he sighed, his words sounding like gruel passing through a sieve as he forced them out. “Go with her. Make sure she doesn’t get herself hurt.”
“You trust me?” Kamanek couldn’t help but ask, and the Lodestar scowled.
“No. But I know Mila hasn’t paid you yet, and if anything happens to Taz on your watch, you won’t be leaving this planet in one piece.”
Kamanek dipped his head. “You’re a good motivator, Rekel. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
Taz hadn’t gotten far, stomping back the way they’d come. He was caught again by the angry tension that lined her body, giving her sharp angles and a cutting aura unlike any other human he’d seen during his short time on CL-32. At times, she reminded him of his own species’ females—in presence, if not in body—who were raised alongside him in the military. He wasn’t sure that Taz would appreciate the comparison.
She paused now, noticing him trailing behind her. “Why are you following me? Actually, don’t answer that. Rekel sent you.”
Kamanek blinked. “Must be absolutely scintillating, holding conversations with yourself like that.”
“Better than having to talk to my present company.”
“Hey, I’m not here to stop you or anything. I’m just here to make sure nothing bad happens.”
“I don’t need your protection,” she spat, casting a dirty look over her shoulder and striding ahead. Kamanek held back a snicker and sped up to pull abreast of her.
Her attitude should have been a red flag, should have discouraged him from going near her like it was obviously designed to do, but he couldn’t help himself. Her constant irritation was like a warm and comfortable fire, crackling every so often to keep him on his toes. He liked it.
“Then don’t think of me as protection. Think of me as…” He paused, casting around for effect. “Your co-pilot.”
She looked at him dubiously. “My co-pilot?”
“I’m just here to support you in your endeavor. To back you up. You’re still in charge.”
“Uh-huh.” Taz’s eyes narrowed, but she slowed her pace somewhat.
From this side, Kamanek could see the three angry scars that lined her cheek, and he wanted to reach out and touch them. There was a story behind those marks which he desperately wanted to know, but his hopes of asking were dashed when she caught him looking and hid them beneath her hair.
She pulled a hood up over her head as they neared the brothel again, crouching in the mouth of an alleyway. Kamanek made sure to stay in the shadows behind her, lest his distinct figure give them away. From what he’d seen, there weren’t all that many levekk to be found in this part of New Chicago. They mostly lived under the giant, blue climate-control domes a few miles to the north, pretending they were back on Origin instead of on a developing colony.
He felt more at home on this side of the fence.
The sun was setting, and Kamanek marveled at how different a sunset could look between planets. On some, two suns would hover in the sky, on others the glowing ball would stain the ground blue, and on others still one sun would set only for another to start rising in its place, diffusing the light until there was only endless daylight.
But here, the view turned orange, then pink, until a deep purple crept across the sky like a human bruise.
He found himself watching the way the changing light reflected off Taz’s face when she wasn’t looking, highlighting new angles and facets that he hadn’t noticed before. And when the light failed, he listened to the scrape of her booted feet on the ground, the scratching of her fingers against rough fabric. She fidgeted more and more as they waited, and he was reminded viscerally of a firework burning down, the tense holding of a breath as one waited for it to explode.
He didn’t realize that he was holding his breath until Taz abruptly sat up, a shaft of neon light from the street illuminating her face, and he let it out in a rush. She was suddenly alert, like a sehela that had just caught sight of its prey, and he followed her gaze to the brothel. A cicarian (not the first one to pass by that night) was just turning into the shadowed alleyway running alongside it, no doubt heading for the back entrance.
Night was falling, changing the colors in new and interesting ways which Kamanek was still getting used to, but he thought that maybe the cicarian would look blue in direct sunlight.
He turned to Taz. “That our guy?”
“That’s our guy,” she whispered, nodding.
“You’re sure?”
She glared at him. “Of course I’m fuckin’ sure.”
He stifled a laugh as he watched the cicarian disappear out of sight. “Good,” he said. “Then all we need to do is wait for him to leave.”
6
Taz was unnerved by the levekk’s sudden silence. A stillness had settled over him, his breaths coming deeper and slower, and his gaze was set unwaveringly on the brothel as they waited. She should be pleased, she knew, and in a lot of ways she was pleased. Gone was the annoying distraction at her side that made every waking moment in his presence a test of her patience.
But on the other hand, the space beside her felt strangely empty. Like the idiot she’d just started getting used to had packed up and let a stranger move in.
She hated the tiny sigh of relief that escaped her when, after a while, Kamanek mumbled out of the corner of his mouth, “You sure you got the right guy?”
No.
“Of course I am,” she hissed.
“He’s been gone a while. Could be just a regular customer enjoying his… session.”
“Or he’s in there talking to Jonson about kidnapping more humans.” That thought alone kept her muscles taut and her eyes clear, ready for the moment he slunk out the door.
Kamanek said nothing, only nodded slowly and sank back into that unnerving quiet.
They stayed that way for another hour, until a skinny figure stepped from the brothel, making Taz’s heart rocket up into her throat. She thumped the levekk’s arm beside her on instinct, pointing, but he was already watching the figure. They both stood.
She studied the cicarian as they trailed him. Much to her equal surprise and anger, he didn’t seem drunk. She’d assumed one needed to be in order to stomach his line of work, and the fact he could do it stone cold sober was infuriating.
But that wasn’t all that made her pause. The cicarian’s gait as he moved down the street wasn’t that of a self-assured businessman or a cocky street rat. While he walked calmly, he kept to the shadows, and she could see the tension in the way he held himself, his back straight and his wings snicking nervously as he kept an eye on his surroundings.
Either he genuinely feared the neighborhood around him, or he knew he was being followed.
The look Kamanek gave her told her he agreed, and their steps turned cautious.
After trailing him for twenty minutes with no opportunity to grab him, Taz was beginning to grow antsy, but as her fingers tickled over the hilt of one of her knives she felt a nudge against her shoulder.
She only intended to glance at the levekk, unwilling to look away from their quarry for too long, but as always his gaze ensnared her. To her surprise, she understood easily the quick, practiced movements he made with his hands, so much so that she almost forgot to be annoyed when those hands told her to keep following the cicarian while he disappeared into the nearest alley.
Despite the rash of irritation, she followed his orders, her hand resting fully on her knife now. She didn’t dare take her e
yes off her prey, but even then she almost missed it when, a few minutes later, a large figure stepped out of the shadows up ahead and pulled the cicarian into an alleyway with barely a sound.
Taz’s heart thundered in her chest as she rushed forward to investigate.
The alley was dark, tucked out of view of the streetlights, and for a moment she thought they’d vanished. But then the shadowy image of Kamanek pressing the cicarian up against the wall resolved itself, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He had one hand over the alien’s mouth, and another at his segmented abdomen, pressing the wicked-looking claws of his right hand into the cicarian’s brittle skin.
Taz drew her knife and stepped up beside him, forcing as much iron into her voice as possible as she said, “Don’t make a sound. We just want to talk.”
The cicarian’s naturally large eyes looked like dinner plates, his wings making awful noises as they scraped across the stone wall at his back. His chest heaved with panic, but he stopped struggling, and Kamanek eased his hand away. To Taz’s relief, the cicarian didn’t scream, his lips clamping shut as he eyed the blade in her hand.
“Good,” she grunted, never having gotten the hang of soothing those in a panic. “What were you doing in the brothel?”
The cicarian blinked up at her, looking clueless. “I-I was…”
Kamanek jerked the alien, and Taz heard his claw scrape against the cicarian’s rough skin.
“What do you think I was doing?” he yelped, too loudly, and then added in a whisper. “It’s a brothel.”
“Don’t fuck us around, we know that’s not why you were there,” Taz spat. She moved in close, tapping the flat of her knife against his fragile collarbone. “We know about the humans. About the Silver Veil.”
Cara had once told her that she needed to learn to play her cards closer, that blurting out your advantage from the get-go was never a smart move. But it seemed to work in this case. The cicarian’s breaths quickened once again to a panicked tempo, the rarely-seen whites of his eyes peeking into view.
“I don’t know anything about that!”
Kamanek cuffed the smaller alien across the head with the heel of his hand, making him yelp. “Next time, it’ll be in your gut,” he promised, and the cicarian squeezed his eyes shut.
“I just pick ’em out!” he squawked, and if cicarians could sweat, Taz was sure it would be rolling down his face by now. “And help move ’em, sometimes.”
“And where do they go?” Taz asked, biting down a wave of disgust.
“Sek Vorek—the capital!”
“But where? Who’s your contact?”
The cicarian hesitated, the cogs in his brain almost audibly spinning. She leaned in, pressing the tip of the blade beneath his chin.
“Tell me.”
“Semar! His name is Semar.” The cicarian looked near tears—or whatever passed for tears with cicarians. And now that he’d started, his mouth wouldn’t stop. “Look for him in a place called the Keerisar. It’s a pleasure quarter!”
Hope sparked in Taz’s chest, and she couldn’t keep the grin from her face as she glanced at Kamanek. He looked pleased, an echo of the troublemaker she was used to shining through his more mercenary demeanor and threatening to steal her breath away. She cleared her throat, breaking eye contact.
“That’s better,” she said to the cicarian, and motioned for Kamanek to let him down.
He did so, patting the alien’s face with his clawed hand in silent warning. “See? That’s all we wanted.”
The cicarian looked from one to the other, still pressed flat against the wall. “That’s it? I can go?”
“Unless you’re planning on remembering our faces?” Kamanek added, growling low.
The cicarian’s eyes darted back down to the levekk’s claws, and he squeaked out a small, “No.”
“Then get moving!” Taz spat, and the cicarian bolted, leaving the pair in sudden silence.
“That went smoothly.”
Taz glanced cautiously back at the levekk, waiting for him to add something crude or disgusting, but he only cocked his head.
“Got what you were looking for?”
Her grin widened, a flame of excitement flickering within her as she sheathed her knife. “I couldn’t be happier,” she said. “That’s a solid lead to go off.”
She left the alley, checking around to make sure they weren’t being followed, either. Kamanek trailed behind, and while her body remained aware of his position, she felt a little less on edge in his presence. It was tough for her to admit, but he’d been helpful. It paid to have an alien that was almost a foot taller than you around when you needed to intimidate someone.
Taz glanced at him over her shoulder. “That was good. Back there. Just so you know.” Everything about this was good. These were the kinds of results she needed to prove herself to Mila. They’d discovered the beginnings of an entire network, a network that would have remained invisible without the two of them.
The levekk’s smile was back, his eyes narrowing mischievously. “If you’re happy, I’m happy. Feel free to use me anytime you like.”
She was riding high enough that the comment got nothing out of her but a roll of the eyes. “I think we’ve really got something here,” she said. “Mila’s going to be over-fucking-joyed.”
---
“What the hell were you thinking?!”
Taz didn’t reply, only pressed her lips together and glared at the ground.
“Rekel, your commanding officer, gave you a direct order to leave it alone, and you went anyway?”
“Well he was making the wrong decision, so…”
“Would you please just listen?” Mila groaned. “For once?”
Taz looked up at that, her brow furrowing. “I listen.”
“Well, you’d make my life a hell of a lot easier if you decided to show it for a change,” Mila said, breathing a sigh. Her curly, dark hair bounced from side to side as she shook her head. “This can’t keep happening, all right? I can’t keep trusting you with jobs if you’re going to go off on your own like that every time. ”
“All right.”
“You get it, right? The Lodestars are a team. We work together. You’re not some one-woman army who can handle everything by herself.”
Taz gritted her teeth. “All right.”
“And I’m putting you back on probation.”
“What?!”
“Don’t argue. You know Cara would agree.”
Taz flinched, knowing her leader was right. Cara never went easy on her. “So, who are you going to send to Sek Vorek?” she asked, glancing sidelong at Kamanek, who was standing beside her and looking positively bored. Surely Mila wouldn’t trust him to go alone. Maybe she’d send Rekel with him?
“No one.”
She wrenched her gaze away from the levekk, her stomach hollowing out. “What?” When Mila didn’t reply, she found her voice rising in volume. “What do you mean ‘no one?’”
“I mean,” said Mila, her warm voice turning flinty, “that I’m not sending anybody.”
“But the lead.”
“We don’t have enough people, Taz!” The Lodestar leader threw up her hands. “Sek Vorek isn’t like New Chicago. We don’t have a presence there. All we can do right now is try to take out the operators here. We’ll start with the brothel you visited, and work on locating the other places next.”
“But that won’t stop anything,” Taz insisted. “They’ll just move and start over somewhere else.”
Mila sighed. “It’s all we can do for now. Maybe in a few months, when we’ve recruited more people, but not now.”
Taz turned instinctively, looking for backup, before remembering that Cara wasn’t here. Only Kamanek looked back, as Rekel stood in the corner with his eyes facing forward, and the levekk could do little more than shrug. She tossed her head. She didn’t want help from him anyway.
“I could go,” she tried. “I’ll find this contact and track him to wherever their base is. It woul
d be nothing to take in a team and sabotage them if we knew all that.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No, Taz.” Mila stepped forward to place a hand on her shoulder, her brown eyes softening. “Not this time.” She turned to Kamanek. “Thank you for your help today. I’ll brief you on your next job tomorrow afternoon. Everyone dismissed.”
Taz shrugged off the comforting hand as if it had burned her, storming from the room with her hand clenching the hilt of one of her knives to mask its shaking. Disappointment and frustration tore through her in equal measure, leaving behind a hollowness that she didn’t know what to do with.
How could Mila not understand what she was doing? How could she turn a blind eye when there were humans in Sek Vorek right now, abandoned, with no one left to help them? Hell, they could probably pick up plenty of new recruits just from them alone.
Taz knew what it was like to feel alone in the levekk’s system. She knew how hard the people they rescued would fight for them.
Her mind was teeming as she paced through the warehouse, ignoring the looks the other Lodestars gave her. Word traveled fast in the small rebel base, and she knew her renewed probation wouldn’t remain a secret for long. But she barely cared, more incensed by her leader’s lack of a backbone than anything else at that moment.
So, she pushed past them all, making a beeline for the alleyway that she’d laid claim to as her own.
It was cool outside, the first hints of dawn only just sliding over the rooftops and leaving the concrete-lined alley in darkness. But it was quiet. Out here, away from the bustle of the early-risers going about their day, she only had to listen to the dull hum of transport traffic overhead, the white noise of the Inner Districts. Plus, it had plenty of debris and abandoned trash for her to take her frustrations out on, and she was kicking her way through a pile of old plastic crates when Kamanek found her.
“You okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned, which only made her more furious.
“I. Am. Absolutely. Fine,” she groused, punctuating her words with some well-aimed blows on the trash. “Now, fuck off.”
