Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  I slipped the handheld Zeron unit off my belt. The Scythian trace was strong now‌—‌we were definitely in the right place. Then a second trace ghosted onto the screen. I cursed to myself. I’d forgotten to run a diagnostic on the Zeron to deal with that ghosting gremlin. I felt Gunny’s eyes burning a hole in the side of my helmet.

  “Problem, Noog?”

  “No, Gunny. Just checking to make sure the target is still here.”

  She squinted at me. I braced for the inevitable follow-up question, but we were interrupted by Avalon returning to the courtyard.

  I’d never seen a Scythian without his battle armor before. During indoc, we were taught how their warriors took hormones that induced the growth of chitin-based armor all over their bodies. The pictures they showed us were terrifying: seven-foot tall monsters covered with shiny brown scales that could stop an ordinary projectile round. They showed us pictures of dead Scythians who had personalized their armor with glyphs carved into the shell and weapons embedded in the growth. I suppose we were told this armor plating was a temporary state, but there were no pictures of a non-warrior Scythian in the briefing.

  The alien was about my height and had striking translucent brown eyes that swept over Gunny and me with an intensity that bespoke intelligence. His skin had a leathery quality to it, sort of like an old football, and a pale scar ran down the right side of his head bisecting one of his earholes. He stepped out from behind Avalon and met Gunny’s gaze without hesitation.

  “I am K-Tor.” He had a translator implant embedded in his left jawline which gave his voice a mechanical quality.

  “I don’t care,” Gunny replied. “I’m here to take you away.”

  “You are here to‌—‌” the translator glitched and a snatch of his whirring chirpy language sneaked in. “Kill me,” he finished.

  If Gunny had stared at me like that, I’d already be dead.

  “I have,” the alien continued in a halting mechanical voice. “Sanctuary. Here.”

  “There is no sanctuary for killers. Our people are at war.” Gunny bit off the words in the air like a snapping dog.

  Avalon stepped between them. She pressed her hand against K-Tor’s broad leathery chest and whispered up to him in what sounded like Scythian. I shot a look at Gunny, but she was still locked in a staring contest with the alien. K-Tor stepped back and Avalon turned to Gunny with a patient smile.

  “You have your answer, Madeline.” The use of her first name shocked Gunny into blinking. Avalon’s smile widened. “This being is under the protection of The Society. He means you no harm and we are as far from inhabited space as we can be. I suggest you leave us in peace.”

  I’d never actually seen Gunny back down before, but it happened. She smiled‌—‌an actual smile, not her normal curled lip snarl‌—‌and extended her hand to Avalon. “Maybe you’re right, ma’am.”

  “Peace be upon you, Madeline.”

  * * *

  Gunny didn’t say anything until we were back in low orbit. She just stared out the viewport at the brown and green planet surface.

  “No,” she said after three orbits of silence.

  Hercules and I exchanged glances. “No, what?” he said.

  “We’re here to do a job and we’re not leaving until it’s finished.”

  “But they’re a religious group,” I said. “What about collateral damage?”

  Gunny iced me with a glare. “You just mind your sensors and make sure that thing doesn’t try to make a run for it, Noog. I’ll handle the rest.”

  I retreated to my workstation to set up a watch on the Scythian. K-Tor, I reminded myself. It was strange for me. I’d never met a Scythian before and now I’d seen one in the flesh, without his battle armor even. And he looked... human. That was ridiculous, of course. Scythians had a completely different genetic structure than us, didn’t reproduce the way we did, and lived in asexual communes‌—‌when they weren’t trying to destroy the human race. They were able to grow armor, for Christ’s sake. We had nothing in common with these aliens.

  Still, I had a hard time getting K-Tor’s image out of my head.

  The Zeron chirped as it locked onto the Scythian life sign. A second alien trace ghosted next to the first, then disappeared. I muttered an oath and punched up a calibration sequence. I wanted my sensors working perfectly for whatever Gunny was planning.

  The presence of humans voluntarily shielding a Scythian was not something we’d seen before. At this point in the war, we were mostly hunting pairs or lone-wolf aliens. These holdouts were always hard-core fighters with nothing to lose. They knew we were coming in hot and they responded in kind. The battles were short, spectacular, and very, very messy. I’d only been on a handful of kill missions when we needed to separate humans from aliens. In those cases, I tracked the Scythian targets from a safe distance while Hercules and Gunny did the honors.

  “You’re going in with me and Herc,” Gunny said. I wasn’t surprised, but the news settled like a stone in my stomach all the same. I acknowledged the order and checked the status of the calibration. One Scythian trace, nice and sharp, glowed brightly on the screen.

  * * *

  We approached The Society compound on foot an hour before dawn. Mambo had parked the ship in a gully half a klick back, waiting for our call.

  The landscape was a mix of sand and sparse, waist-high scrub brush through which we moved at a fast trot toward our target. Sensors showed all six life forms stationary inside the compound, presumably sleeping. Gunny was not a complex person and neither was her plan: breach the compound, kill the alien, and beat feet. I was there to lead the assassins to the single target by the most direct route.

  Gunny was on point and she slowed as the walls of the compound grew out of the landscape. She let us catch up, her breath a slight rasp in the darkness. “Alright, Noog, tell me where our target is hiding.”

  Maybe it was the nervous energy of being on a kill mission, or maybe the nighttime run, but I was shaking. I detached the handheld sensor from my belt, but my armored gloves made my fingers feel like I was wearing metal sausages. The screen glowed and I saw the alien trace. Then a second one ghosted next to it.

  “Dammit!” I tapped the screen. Too hard. The device fumbled off my glove and fell in the dirt. I dropped to my knees below the brush line to find the sensor. It was right next to my foot. And only one alien trace was showing on the screen. I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached for it.

  Out of my peripheral vision, something moved in the dark. I yelped and scooted back, falling on my ass. The heads-up infrared display in my visor was clear, but I knew I had seen something move.

  Gunny dropped to all fours next to me, her visor sweeping across the pitch blackness. She must have come to the same conclusion about the IR as I had because she flipped on the light on top of her helmet.

  Imagine a scorpion the size of a dog. The creature’s exterior was the mottled color of the sand, but it had raised itself into what looked to me like a fighting stance. Behind the animal, a flurry of miniature scorpion copies swarmed. A violent hiss filled the air and a barbed tail waved over its head like a harpoon. The whole world seemed to slow down for me as the tail stabbed down. It glanced off the armor on my thigh, leaving a deep gouge in the matte-black composite.

  Gunny stepped in front of me. “Get him outta here, Herc!”

  I felt myself being lifted; I was above the brush line again and stars studded the sky overhead. Pulses of energy flashed under the canopy, then Gunny popped up and she was sprinting after us. “Move!” she yelled.

  I saw Gunny do a stutter-step and drop back into the brush. More flashes of pulsed energy, then she was up again and running toward us.

  We didn’t stop until we were into the cleared area outside the compound. Gunny and Hercules knelt, weapons raised, ready to blow away whatever came out of the brush.

  Nothing stirred.

  We stayed that way for a full five minutes. I was listening so hard I’m pretty sure
I stopped breathing.

  “Noog?”

  “Yeah, Gunny?”

  “Check to see if our alien friend heard all that racket.” I checked the sensor readout. None of the occupants of the compound had moved.

  “I think we’re good, Gunny.”

  She lowered her weapon and stood. “All right, gentlemen, let’s complete our mission.”

  Then she fell flat on her face.

  Hercules got to Gunny first and rolled her over. I snapped on my helmet light. Our squad leader’s eyes were wide open, the muscles of her face rigid. Her pupils did not respond to the light. Hercules ran his hands over the armor on her legs. “She must have been bitten by that thing,” he said. “Oh no.” He pulled his hand from behind her right knee and it came away dark with blood. That’s the one chink in a Marine’s armor‌—‌to allow us to kneel.

  The big man’s hands shook as he found the catch on Gunny’s armor. The swelling was so bad, I heard a sucking sound as he stripped the armor off her leg. It didn’t even look like a leg anymore, more like a giant flaccid worm with tendrils of dark veins running through it.

  “Mambo, this is Herc.” His voice was breaking. “Medevac now‌—‌”

  “Wait!” I said. “I have a better idea.” I bolted to the five-sided bell and started ringing it as hard as I could.

  * * *

  Avalon stood in a pale nightgown made translucent by the glare of Hercules’ helmet light behind her. She stared down at Gunny’s body, her eyes taking in the ghostly white flesh of the still swelling leg and our battle gear.

  “You were coming for K-Tor,” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “But, please... help her. You must know what kind of animal did this.”

  The other two couples from the compound huddled behind her. The alien was nowhere to be seen. “Why?” Avalon said, her tone flat and hard. “Why should I help you? You would have killed him‌—‌”

  “If you help her, I promise you nothing will happen to the alien,” I said. “You have my word.”

  “He has a name.”

  “K-Tor,” I said almost screaming it. “His name is K-Tor. Please, help her. Before it’s too late!”

  “What about him?” Avalon said, turning her glare on Hercules. “And the pilot? Do they agree to this?”

  Hercules looked at me from beneath his visor, his face a mask of indecision. Finally, he nodded. “There! He said yes. Now please help her!”

  Avalon’s eyes tracked from Gunny’s pale face to Hercules then back to me. She nodded. “Let’s get her inside.” Hercules started to kneel next to Gunny, but Avalon stopped him. “We’ll take it from here.” K-Tor appeared at her side as if she’d just conjured him up. He was bare to the waist, and his dark skin seemed to absorb rather than reflect light. He knelt next to Gunny and lifted her inert form while Avalon stabilized the injured leg. Gunny’s body was rigid in his arms. I wondered if we were too late.

  “You stay here and wait for Mambo,” I said to Hercules. “Tell her the deal. The Scythian lives.”

  “Gunny won’t like that deal, Noog.”

  “Yeah, well, if she lives, she can kick my ass.” I tried to sound like the man in charge, but I had no authority to cut a deal with the enemy under any circumstances. I ran after Gunny’s body rather than wait for Hercules to figure out I was in over my head.

  The medlab in the compound was modern, much better than I expected, and I was surprised to see K-Tor donning medical scrubs while Avalon started an IV in Gunny’s arm. She spoke to him in soft, whirring, chirpy sounds as she worked and he responded in kind.

  “Yes, I’ve learned his language,” she said when I raised a questioning eyebrow. “He tells me I have the vocabulary of a preschooler.” K-Tor cracked a smile.

  “He knows human anatomy? He’s a qualified doctor?”

  Avalon faced me, and I got another dose of her withering blue eyes. “We’re both doctors, both very well qualified to deal with a nasty sandshark sting.” She flicked her hand toward the doorway. “You can stand over there. Out of our way.”

  I stripped off my body armor and piled it in the corner, then leaned against the wall watching them work. K-Tor’s slender brown fingers gently probed Gunny’s leg as if searching for something. With his finger centered on a spot just above her knee, he held out his hand and Avalon dropped a laser scalpel in it. When he slashed across the white skin, a thick brown gel oozed out of the wound and a foul odor filled the room. He inserted a pair of forceps into the incision and cocked his head while he fished around. Finally, he clamped the forceps closed and jerked them out. A hooked thorn about the size of my pinky finger was trapped between the blades of the surgical instrument.

  The end of the thorn was wiggling like a worm on a hook.

  “The sandshark buries a live parasite in its victim,” the alien said in his mechanically translated voice. “We’re lucky it hasn’t multiplied yet.”

  I gulped.

  K-Tor and Avalon set to work draining the brown ooze from Gunny’s leg by cutting small incisions in the flesh and inserting drain lines. The laser scalpel flared and died, but both of them had their hands occupied. Avalon looked over her shoulder at me. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Noog‌—‌I mean, Tom.” I got to my feet.

  “Okay, Tom.” She nodded her head at the far side of the room. “Around the corner is a supply closet. We need another Type M power supply for the scalpel.”

  I edged past them. The supply closet was next to a room with a thin curtain drawn across the opening. A soft light pulsed through the material.

  “Third shelf from the top,” Avalon called. I ran my finger along the edge of the shelf and found what I was looking for.

  “Got it,” I said, shutting the closet door. I angled my head so I could peek through the gap into the next room, then I pushed the curtain aside. A medical examination table dominated the center of the space. In the background, I could see a bank of monitors glowing. One flashed a message. I squinted to read the words: gene sequencing complete.

  “Tom!”

  I hustled back into the operating room with the power supply. Once they had drains inserted, they packed a heavy, green poultice around Gunny’s limb and wrapped it until she looked like she had a tree trunk for a leg. I rested my head against the wall, watching them work, wondering. I was no medical expert, but I knew I’d just seen a very high-end genetics lab and I was watching two very skilled doctors.

  The handheld sensor was hanging from my utility belt. I unclipped it and turned it on, holding it in my lap, dialing the sensor range down to the lowest and narrowest possible settings.

  Two signals showed on my screen. Two Scythian signals. Avalon walked to the side of Gunny’s bed, giving me a clear read on K-Tor. Strong signal. I angled the device toward Avalon.

  I got another Scythian signal. Not as strong as K-Tor’s, but an unambiguous alien signature.

  Impossible, I told myself. Every report that had ever been published said our species were genetically incompatible. Everyone said so. I gathered my body armor and stood up. The Zeron scanner clattered to the floor. Avalon picked it up. She stared at it for a long moment before handing it back to me. “Thank you for your help, Tom.” Her eyes sought mine, but I looked at the floor.

  “I‌—‌I need to go tell the others Gunny’s okay.” I could feel her gaze burning a hole between my shoulder blades as I hurried out.

  The sun was up, and early morning steam rose from the brush field where Gunny had been stung. I half ran past the five-sided bell and across the clearing to where Mambo had parked the Fury. She slapped a sleeping Hercules when she saw me running. “Is Gunny all right?” she asked.

  I slowed to a walk. “Yeah. I just... needed to get out of there.”

  Mambo flipped her sunglasses onto her forehead. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you just ate a turd.”

  I’d recorded the Zeron signals from the lab. My head was still reeling with what I thought I knew.
Someone had figured out gene compatibility between humans and Scythians? Not only that, but Avalon, a human woman, was carrying an alien baby? I was a draftee for God’s sake. This kind of stuff was way above my paygrade, and I wanted no part of it. I held out the scanner and started to speak but Hercules beat me to it.

  “Is the alien still in there?” he said. He hefted his rifle in his massive paw.

  I put the scanner back on my belt. “K-Tor’s in there, yeah.” Maybe I’d keep Avalon’s secret to myself. For now.

  Hercules and Mambo exchanged glances. “The alien’s got a name now,” Hercules said in a mocking tone. “Maybe I’ll carve it into his forehead.”

  “You swore, Hercules,” I said with more force than I intended. “Nobody touches K-Tor.” I wasn’t sure why I cared so much, but I did.

  “You can’t make a deal with a Scythian‌—‌we’re at war, Noog,” Mambo said.

  I felt my face getting hot. “I made the deal with Avalon, a human. You’re both Marines, and you will honor your word. Right?”

  I realized too late that I was yelling at them. Not just yelling, but pacing up and down, waving my arms, delivering an all-in-their-personal-space dressing down worthy of Gunny. Hercules had a clenched jaw and Mambo dropped her sunglasses over her eyes.

  “Right?” I repeated, still breathing hard and sweating even harder.

  They both nodded. “Sure, Noog.” Mambo said.

  “And my name is Tom,” I yelled back.

  * * *

  “Tom.” The voice was very faint, like someone was calling me from across a wide open field.

  “Tom.” I startled awake, my head thrashing back and forth as I tried to remember where I was.

  The familiar bulk of the Zeron console centered me. Back on the Fury, at my workstation. A puddle of drool had dried on the flat part of the console, and it felt like I had a keyboard imprinted on the side of my face.