by Scott Rhine
Max disconnected the freeze cuffs. “You have my gratitude, comrade Grachov. If I ever deviate, I pray you are there to do so.”
“My oath as a Yellow Slash.” The Saurian placed a hand on his shoulder. “If I perish first, will you take the evidence of this kill to the Turtles and reinstate our honor?”
“My oath as a physician,” Max replied, his hand on the Saurian’s shoulder. “Now toss this sack of garbage in the alley while I plug his gun muzzle with mud.” The pistol looked like a standard sonic stunner, but the silver trim decorating the sides was excessive. The grip also looked thicker than normal. Is this an officer’s sidearm?
Grachov spit disdainfully as he hauled the Phib out of the van. “Their warriors were always sloppy about gun care. People will believe this. I finally learn how you think. You use preconceptions to kill.”
“Park around the corner and make certain I have privacy for my discussion.”
“You think there may be more to the egg-killing conspiracy?”
“Either way, he’s the last link we have and requires finesse. Reuben will record everything as evidence.”
In this case, Max wanted to let the victim decide his own fate. Up till now, all of the hits had been soldiers with known kills, not supply clerks. Non-sentients could only be terminated if they were murderers.
Max approached the criminal. Even with his legs bound, his teeth could decapitate a child. Max shook off the memory, wiped his prints off the weapon, and shoved it into its holster. Possession of this sidearm and public intoxication alone could get Tribbethwrop several days in jail. We’re beyond juries. Then he snapped a capsule under the Phib’s nose.
Max tried to visualize the being as a very fat man the color of cabbage with slit nostrils and no ears. The ascot around the gills helped to reduce the knee-jerk hatred. The paralysis would wear off slowly. Based on experience, the face thawed first and then the extremities.
The criminal blinked, focusing on Max. “Ugh. Brave man. Beat up poor Phib in toilet.” Tribbethwrop played for time by talking in his deep, resonant voice. “You pick on us because we lost the war.”
No, because your people started the war by killing millions of innocents. “I give you every chance, but you guys always revert to the stereotype. Your boss hired me. He knows you’ve been skimming big. He wants to make an example of you,” Max lied.
The Phib’s long, wax-bean fingers twitched and then froze. His speech assumed a more cultured air. “I’m already confined to this arid pest hole until my species returns to glory. What more can you do to me?”
I already did it. You’re just too stupid to realize. “What unit were you in?”
“I was a civilian, not a war criminal.”
“That’s not what your sidearm says,” Max accused.
“I stole it from a dead soldier as a souvenir.”
Max shook his head. “No. Officer pistols are biometrically locked. It would be useless to anyone else. Your ease with the common language and skill with finance tell me that you were a high-ranking officer who switched uniforms with a dead supply clerk to avoid prison.”
The pale-green hands moved toward hips as the Phib laughed. “You’re not going to kill me or put me in jail. You want something.”
“Why did you order the culling ceremony to be performed on other species?”
Laughter ceased. Tribbethwrop thrust out his chest and chin. “To show my people those races were weak, asking to be devoured. When we return in glory, all people will line up to kiss our feet.” The decision to reinstate sentient rights would be revisited in about five hundred years. The Turtles and Goats had already made their “no” votes clear. Such a return could take a while.
“Your political views gave your people no right to torture innocent kids—”
The Phib belched rudely. “The Goats aren’t as innocent as they claim.”
“Your military rank and views in favor of genocide have been recorded. The cops will be here in about three minutes, but your legs won’t work for another ten. I left you one bullet. If you’re smart, you’ll use it on yourself.” Max turned around, engaging the sonic baffles on his protective vest.
Tribbethwrop drew and tried to shoot Max in the back. The gun exploded with more force than anticipated, obliterating the Phib’s right hand. Berserker mode kicked in, but the Phib’s legs were still strapped together. The increased adrenaline and clotting inhibitor combined to cause the criminal to bleed out in seconds.
Grachov raced back to find Max piled against the wall like a sandbag. The blast had knocked the wind out of him. When Max recovered enough to speak, he gasped, “Take off leg restraints. Drop used narcotic vial. Look like robbery gone bad.”
“Squeeze the criminal.” This was meant to be a more violent and unpleasant reference to Saurian mating practices, where the male constricted the female until eggs emerged. “How are you doing?”
Max winced. “Landed wrong. Something … out of line. Frilling hurts.”
“I take you back to the hotel.”
“Finish. Yellow Slash are professionals.”
The Saurian completed the frame before carrying the agonized Max back to the van. As a medic, Max gave himself a shot to relax the muscles. As long as he didn’t move for the next day, everything should be okay.
Over the comms, Grachov signaled Reuben. “Mission complete. Send a backup copy of the final kill to our storage pod.”
Reuben replied, “Confirmed. So now that you have your lives back, what are you planning to do? I mean, babes are probably going to line up to breed with you.”
Max stared at the ceiling of the vehicle. Finding something to do in peacetime frightened him more than the Phibs. He hadn’t expected to survive his term of employment with the Turtles.
Grachov spoke for him again. “Tonight, we’ll drop and sanitize the van. Tomorrow, we’ll find the nearest world with a Turtle embassy to report our success. There I will throw a grand funeral for my brothers. What about you?”
“I’m thinking of giving that serving ewe with the cherries a big tip.”
****
Grachov walked Max up the back stairs of the hotel to the second-floor hallway. Max had to pause at the top to catch his breath. “Stairs bad.”
“Not as bad as that rabbit-death-scream music the kid listens to,” the burly, gray Saurian complained.
At first Max chuckled, remembering one tune called “Fat Bottom Girls” played at high volumes during mission prep. Then he raised a warning hand and backed against the outside window that capped the hallway. The suite was eerily silent. The kid always had something in the background: police and fire scanners, a pop-music net stream, and a dozen spy cams. In fact, they should be hearing echoes of their own voices right now through the system. Max cranked his defenses to high. The force field was strong enough for him to survive in vacuum for up to a minute. He pulled on his vibro gloves and then drew his dart gun.
Grachov moved to the opposite side of the door and drew a shotgun loaded with a variant of rock salt. The rounds were unpleasant to most species but fatal to Phibs. If the commander had subordinates, the last two phantom cosmonauts would clean up.
Max used his glove to sever the latch mechanism in silence. Grachov moved like an acrobat. The Saurian rolled through the crippled door, knocking a strange Human aside. Max shot the dazed Human witness in the back with a paralysis dart.
Max saw several muzzle flashes before his teammate swung the baseball bat. Grachov had blood on his muzzle, too—Human blood. Someone on the floor had a bloody leg to match.
Down the hall, a Human in an expensive suit poked its head out of Grachov’s bedroom, so Max petrified him with a neck shot. Max turned off the sound suppression. “More coming from behind. Abort.”
Automatic weapons fire filled his suite, stitching Grachov’s tail and arms with blood. Fortunately, his torso was covered by Turtle tech. The rest could be fixed in the regen tanks. His friend lashed out with the neural whip, and the gunman collapsed
. Grachov was staggering toward the exit when another Saurian jumped him.
Max knew his friend was dead, not by the blood or the weird angle of his neck, but by the DNA-obscuring jumpsuit that burst into flames. This gave him the moment of distraction he needed to escape.
Cranking his left vibro glove so high that his entire arm went numb, Max smashed against the window. He fell through the air until he hit the dumpster below. The force field had less to do with cushioning his fall than the discarded mattress leaning at an angle. He rolled off onto the grass.
Max propped against the hotel’s fused sandstone exterior, psyching himself up for the journey to the diplomatic shipping container. Nothing on the planet could breach that. A Saurian male voice spoke over his earbud. “You’ve cost me a great deal, Vampire.”
“You have the wrong person.”
Parro Sageworthy was the number one crime lord on Vegas. A member of the Red Ridge Clan, his family had been closely allied with the Phib race. Sageworthy was an honorific. Max wasn’t certain whether it referred to the desert herb or a wise man. His simple first name meant this man was the head of his extended family. “Please. You don’t like mirrors or cameras, don’t age, and travel with the dead. The mirrors are how I found you.”
“Did your serving girl tell you all this, Mr. Sageworthy?” He could envision Reuben in the hotel suite bragging to some ewe to get laid. No frilling situational awareness.
“Call me Parro.” Saurian males called each other by first names before dueling to the death for mating rights.
Max winced. When had Reuben spilled? He had to assume that Parro’s agent had trailed Reuben to the shipping container, meaning it wasn’t safe either. “I recorded a confession from Tribbethwrop before he killed himself. He’d been stealing from you for some time. He was also the Phib field marshal responsible for the massacre on New Hawaii.”
After a pause, the Saurian voice said, “I had no idea. You extracted all that in such a short time and made it look like an accident. I was originally going to kill you for the coup, but I might have a use for a man with your skills.”
“Your weapons can’t touch me. I can walk away from this place like a ghost.”
“We’re both honorable men. I will exchange one simple job for the Goat—a life for a life. That’s fair. This way we both save face. Why don’t you come to my penthouse to negotiate? I grant you safe passage to the Alhambra Palace.”
Given Reuben’s lineage, Max had to agree to the deal. At the first opportunity, he was going to have to have a chat with the kid about his responsibilities to the Goat race.
On the way to the penthouse, Max stopped by a Spatial Delivery office. He sent a signed, one-word faster-than-light message to the Turtle embassy for ten thousand credits, “Finished.” Even if he died, his Yellow Slash comrades could still be reinstated.
Chapter 3 – Going Legit
The penthouse offered an expansive view of the city. The guard at the top frisked him and removed the obvious weapons. Max could still stop a heart with the meager charge remaining in his gloves, but only if the gangster let him get close enough. The butler led Max to the patio where the crime lord reclined in a solar-heated sand pit, the Saurian version of a hot tub. Soft jungle sounds emanated from recessed speakers. “Climb in,” Parro rumbled. His skin was flawless white with a blue tinge. Weighed down by the sand and lethargy of the heat, Saurians tended toward more civilized negotiations. “Your voice is higher than I imagined.”
Most people don’t picture tenors as effective killers, but Max’s voice came along with his bushman hunter genes. He decided that the heat might do his back injury some good, so he stripped down to his underwear. “If you knew I was here, why didn’t you stop me before I completed my contract?”
“You acted before my informant’s shift was even up. Incredible. That’s when I knew we could do business.”
“You ordered the murder of one of my men.”
Parro scrubbed an armpit with a handful of sand. “Technically, this man was never born, so there is no crime.”
“Technicalities mean nothing in a pool of blood.”
“But a Phib can be born sentient and have this right revoked? Somehow my colleague bleeds less than yours?”
“Fine. Blood for blood. Give me the Goat, and we’re quits.”
“You know, I’d like to go legit. I’m already 95 percent of the way there.”
“I support that.”
“I have one last task to perform before I can step into that life. Tribbethwrop had already agreed to carry out that assignment in exchange for assuming the reigns of my illegal empire. Because you killed the Phib early, you get to take that responsibility.”
Max draped a towel-sized pouch filled with hot sand over his shoulders. It could double as a weapon or blocking bar while he dressed. He didn’t think this man was going to take no for an answer. “Why would I do that?”
“Ethics. Vrilkesh, a bookkeeper, laundered money for my operation on a regular basis using the Phib stock market. All of his other clutchmates were famous star pilots and assault commanders. He did the same thing in the financial realm—brilliant. When the Phib worlds were granted as payment, we thought we lost everything in the market implosion. By the time we found evidence that he’d pulled out early, Vrilkesh had fled with a sizeable portion of my money.”
“You’ve lost face.”
“Someone made me look weak. That is a grave danger in my society. Now predators circle my children. Erase this shame, and protect my family. Think of the innocent lives you will save. I want to be an honest being, but I can’t survive without soldiers until Vrilkesh is hunted down.”
The name only told Max that the accountant had a father called Kesh. Like a rich or egotistical Roman Julius, who would name his daughter Julia and son Julian, Saurian gladiators liked to append their personal name to every child. Their race respected Alexander the Great, who had renamed each town he conquered Alexandria. “I wish I could be of some help.”
The Saurian smiled, never a good sign. He waved a hand, and a snippet of Reuben’s voice played over the speakers. “I can’t take any more. I can barely move after the last time. Please, not again.”
Once the jungle sounds returned, Parro said, “Vrilkesh was clever and hid on a low-tech world, where computers are useless, but he could live like a king. I hear you’re an excellent tracker, comfortable without technology. I’ve paid his last living clutchmate to fly you to the planet where Vrilkesh was sighted and confirm his brother’s identity.”
“I won’t murder a sentient.”
“I only ask that you find him, verify his location, and procure the last quarter of his tail,” Parro said casually. This was the equivalent of asking for a Human testicle. It wasn’t going to happen unless the target was dead.
“That’s sick.”
“His brother, Zrulkesh, needs the biometrics to transfer the stolen funds back to me. Your cut is 3 percent, a legitimate bounty for a known criminal. Add some bloody photos or credible rumors of a gruesome end in the media, and Zrulkesh is authorized to give you a lift to the nearest high-tech planet when the job is done.”
If I agree to that, Zrulkesh is likely to kill me, keeping the fee and mojo. “How do you know I’ll keep my end of the deal?”
“You’ll have nowhere to run. It’s a very long voyage, parsecs from anywhere civilized. Zrulkesh will watch you like a meal rat. Besides, the Goat said you never break your word. If I return your friend, will you find my enemy?”
“What’s the planet?”
“Eden.”
Where I was born and raised. Sometimes fate couldn’t be less subtle. “I’ll need to bring my shipping container on board for the supplies.”
“Agreed.”
The two placed hands to shoulders on the deal.
Max sighed. “Now, send for Reuben.”
“I’ll have him escorted to the shuttle launch rings.”
Chapter 4 – Family Secrets
Reuben la
y next to Max in the private shuttle with his seat reclined, moaning and sweating. Although the pilot had already signaled for them to strap in, Max asked his companion, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Huh? No. I’ll be fine once we’re back to the hotel.”
“No time for that. We’re heading straight to our next mission.”
The young Goat sat up. “No. There are … things I have to do.”
“We’re about to leave the planet.” The Fasten Harness sign came on. “All your gear is in the pod we’re carrying.” Max had secured it himself.
Forlorn, Reuben’s mouth dropped open. “I’ll never get to visit Tamarissa’s room.”
Max wanted to shake him. “She’s the one who set you up for kidnapping and torture.”
“Torture? She scored free tickets to a premium buffet. Do you know what that means? Everything kabobs, mustard greens, kale, and for dessert, she was going to show me how many layers that frilly skirt has.”
The shuttle engines revved.
“You still have no idea what was happening,” Max said.
“As Shakespeare would say, the black ram was tupping the white ewe, but you ruined it.”
Max covered his face with his hands as the bubble field kicked in and the shuttle floated to the center of the cradle. “I need a list of every ewe you’ve been intimate with here.”
“I guess you’re going to be disappointed,” Reuben said, crossing his arms in a pout.
“Tamarissa figured out you were a spy and sold you out to the mob.”
“No way.”
“I had to agree to hunt down a fugitive on the other side of the spiral arm to get you released. She didn’t start acting different in any way?”
“Now that you mention it, she did blindfold me. Oh gosh.” Reuben processed the new context for a few moments. “Why would you do that for me?”
“MI-23 authorized me as your mentor,” Max confided. “I have to report to them before we leave the planet.”
Reuben paled. “Why would Mnamnabonian Intelligence be interested in me?”
