“For fuck’s sake, Gav,” Tarley muttered, running his fingers down the row of tubes directly across from Arow. “Told you to put it—ah.” Even to Arow’s superior hearing, the rest was muttered so low it might as well have been gibberish. He made a note to find out who Gav was, given that previous hunts had turned up no regular accomplices for Tarley. For a Human, Tarley spent an extraordinary amount of time alone.
As Tarley moved to the table, canister in hand, Arow stalked to the other side, sitting comfortably balanced on the corner, tail hanging and twitching idly. He studied Tarley closely while the man glared down at the programming table and saw no modifications or enhancements. He was Human, a plain, unremarkable, and apparently smarter than the average Human.
Smarter indeed—it only took Tarley a few minutes to tweak the programming in the manner he wanted, and Arow followed enough of it to go still, ears to tail. The nanos would recognize and analyze biological markers for a wide span of species, and were set to identify and code what they found at the genetic level.
As Tarley completed the program, Arow’s eyes fixed on the pulse in the man’s neck. Covered by a very thin layer of easily parted skin, and just within claw range, it fluttered with whatever base emotion the Human felt.
He had hunted across the stars and had stalked the halls outside his prey’s den. But here, in such easy reach, the satisfaction bloomed, of holding a life balanced to his choices, and his leg muscles tensed to knock that balance over to its natural conclusion.
But he could not. While this fragile Human might have many reasons to program nanos secretly, Arow could not ignore the fact that Sisk’s body, DNA unscrambled, might be in his den. Worse, if ‘Gav’ were a living ally rather than some sort of interface, uncorrupted Depik DNA could be out in the universe for the first time since they had chosen to leave Khatash’s jungled surface.
The man would die, and soon. But first...Arow leapt lightly down off the table, as soundless as he was invisible. Tarley tucked the tube into his work bag, toggled a button near the door, and Arow again felt that faint sense of motion. When the door opened, the hallway looked exactly the same as it had on the way in, but the smell was different. At least two other Humans had moved through while they’d been inside, but as there was no one to be seen. Arow filed their scents away.
As they retraced their path to the suite, Arow reached into his small pack, slipping open the internal lock of a securely fastened container in one of the pack’s many nested pockets. He removed two marbles of material, caressing them a bit before re-locking the container and refastening the pack. His lips lifted over his teeth. The look was not as banal as a Human smile, but something clearly pleased and predatory in the expression lifted it from a simple grimace.
Tarley reached his door and began the unlocking procedure—Arow didn’t pay attention. Neither of them would need to unlock this door ever again.
The door opened, and Arow moved fluidly, spinning the lighter of the clever little balls between the Human’s feet while he was in midstep, matching the man’s pace to keep it out of view as long as possible once it left the hunter’s hand.
It worked. Tarley’s vision was as terrible as any of his species, and as he crossed the border and the door started to slide closed, several things happened at once.
A scanner beeped, which Tarley’s body language indicated was normal, and the discreet marble vented gas into the entryway, ensuring no matter how advanced the scanner was, it would notice nothing but Tarley. Ensuring against even the most improbable was key.
Arow slid into the quarters, the tip of his tail just clearing the door as it slid into its frame.
Placing the second ball in the corner of the frame, Arow straightened suddenly. His nose caught the very faintest of scents, faded and thin, ragged but there. Sisk. He almost made a disgusted noise. And no matter how seamless his quintessence field was, sound would certainly carry outside it.
The first room of the den was small, defensible, and sealable. The faintest lines in either side wall showed two compartments for weapons or other countermeasure equipment. Tarley entered a code, scanned his eyes, breathed at another port, and ran his skin scan. Arow took a moment to be amused. So many precautions, and no hope of keeping Arow out, or of keeping its resident Human safe.
His tail flicked, insolently dismissing the layers of alleged security, and he swept through the next door so closely behind Tarley, the man should have felt his movement. Humans’ ability to sense other creatures’ fields was beyond vestigial, and for a bare moment Arow considered weaving through the man’s legs just to disconcert him.
But that was too petty to be enjoyable, especially once Arow took in the rooms—room, really—beyond the second door. The floor between levels had been removed, and while the hint of outlines in the floor indicated barriers could be brought up if and when needed to form rooms, currently everything was open. The far wall was a giant screen, currently broken into three different pictures. One showed an empty hall, the one they’d recently left, one showed five columns of numbers and symbols, and the last showed a skeletal structure.
Every bit of fur on Arow’s back rippled. The moment the door closed behind them, Tarley’s attention fixed on a Depik skeleton, marked with notations and questions. The Human pulled out a small pad and jotted something down, which instantly appeared much larger on the wall across the room.
Bones then, Arow considered, the words a snarl in his head. His claws flexed, and he nearly pounced. Instead, breathing through his mouth, he forced himself to complete his survey of the room. There was a table against the curve of the wall to the left, under a venting hood that vanished into the slick matte silver of the wall. A row of tubes was lined in stacks atop a long cabinet, filled with liquids rather than nanos. Far to the right was a nest of sorts—a bed and chairs each piled with soft fabrics. As Arow took it in, Tarley swiped a code on his pad that brought the walls up to separate the sleeping area.
He swiped again, and the faintest humming sound answered.
Arow froze, not by choice. Something was holding him rigid, even his chest was unable to rise or fall for breath.
“You can drop the shield, or you can suffocate and I’ll find you once you’re unconscious,” Tarley said, suddenly cheerful and at ease.
Arow had not reached his age by accident. As thirty seconds passed without his disabling the trigger, the small marble he’d left in the door exploded.
The explosion didn’t blow the second door fully in, but the metal bowed visibly, and the noise and repercussion came tearing through. The force knocked something loose, and the paralyzing hold disappeared.
“He’s outside!” Tarley muttered, rushing over to a control panel, looking suddenly nervous.
Freed, Arow moved purposefully. The hum had originated from the other side of the room. This Human had found machinery or an invention to use the quintessence that allowed hunters to move invisibly through the world against him. Clearly without fully understanding it, as the Human had called it a ‘shield,’ as though hunters carried something electronic that hid them.
Or worse, perhaps he did understand something of the hunters’ secrets, which Arow could never allow to stand. The Human had been as good as dead before, but now there was more than the satisfaction of a job well done at the idea of ending him. Now, Arow knew, he would kill like a kita on an early hunt—blood and pain and extended play to enjoy the suffering of the prey. But first, he ripped the cabinet open, the weak points of the cabinet door’s hinges tearing to give him a large piece that he could use as a projectile. While Tarley was still turning, Arow crouched, twisted, and threw the thin metal door toward Tarley’s soft, unprotected midsection. Arow’s claws tore through everything revealed by the missing door. There was no room for curiosity about any of the inner workings. It had held him; that meant more than enough for its destruction.
One arm still buried in the guts of the machinery, he reached back with the other and unholstered a small gun from his
work belt, firing behind him without looking, and heard the small ‘woof’ of breath from Tarley as the dart found its mark. There was a louder thump, as the man crumpled the rest of the way to the ground, and Arow vented all his too-high emotions on the wiring, destroying everything so thoroughly no one would be able to imagine its original purpose.
Minutes passed. There had been more frustration in Arow’s actions than Tarley alone had earned, the Human’s actions and Dirrys’s face, were she to confirm the extent of Sisk’s failure, combining to destroy the deadly calm he would need. Eventually, he pulled a hunter’s calm over himself, and stepped back. He was not satiated—hardly that, with this bloodless machine kill—but he was clear of mind and emotion again. He’d need to pull every one of Tarley’s files, send a clever virus to hunt any tendrils of data that might have been sent, and ensure Gav’s identity, but everything he’d learned indicated that Tarley was a paranoid and solitary creature, with no conspirators in the galaxy waiting for information.
Though, he considered, stretching comfortably before stalking toward the tangled lump of unconscious Human by the inner door, he hadn’t realized Tarley was quite as smart as he was, having created something that snagged a hunter’s quinessence. Humans were unpleasantly surprising, and along with the need to act on the data files, Arow very much needed to peel back the layers of this unlikely predator.
Binding his mark was easy enough, and maneuvering the larger animal to an appropriately flat surface would only have been tricky if he needed to preserve the casing. Surface damage meant nothing, given the situation, and so while the contusions were hardly elegant, they wouldn’t keep Tarley from answering questions, which was the only value left of this Human.
Arow considered administering a dosage of adrenaline to wake the man up, but busied himself exploring the large room instead. He pulled up interesting files on the wall screen, confirmed Gav as the name of a program with an easily interruptible routine, gathered the appropriate chemicals to scour all physical traces of Sisk, and compared an array of scalpels to his own claws. As Tarley’s breath began to stutter, he pushed over a chair and leaped atop it, so that the first thing the man focused his eyes on was the sharp, interested face of his assassin.
It might have been comical, the small, furred figure perched on a chair at the level of the supine body on the table. Might have, if not for the tangible weight of incipient violence. Might have, if not for the utterly calm, perfectly clear promise of a death just ahead, through a road of agony.
“There you are,” Arow said, pupils wide with pleasure, making the edges of his yellow eyes brilliant against his pupils. “I have been so looking forward to talking to you.” Gently, he pressed a vial of chemicals into the meat of the man’s leg. All torture would be purely for his own enjoyment, not to ensure the truth of the information. Pain, no matter how skillfully delivered, hardly ever worked for the latter. Drugs, however, were far more reliable in those species vulnerable to such things.
Tarley’s mouth moved, and he swallowed, but it took several breaths before he could speak. The Depik’s gaze and attention remained unwavering, the focus uncanny. “How—”
Arow sighed. “Don’t ask the boring questions, Human. I hold such high hopes for you; you have been full of surprises so far. I just might reconsider my opinion of your species, if you are able to keep it up.”
“What do you want?” Tarley managed after a moment, clearly beginning to understand how forfeit his life was.
Arow’s nose twitched, indicating a slightly better question, and he lifted his gaze pointedly to the wall screen. “Did I miss any safeguards?”
Tarley’s eyes helplessly followed, and though he made an effort to lie, he quickly realized the drugs in his system wouldn’t allow it. “No.” All his files and routing programs, displayed. Disabled. His research and careful programming as open and dissected as the first Depik to enter these quarters.
“Who else knows about your machine?”
Tarley tried being silent, until a pressure in his side resolved into mounting pain, shock setting in at the reality of something digging through his skin into his liver.
“No—no one.” The assassin’s posture hadn’t wavered, everything about the small face still radiating curiosity. Tarley knew, objectively, that Human organs were close to the surface, but to have it cast into such sharp relief, with a claw inserted so casually just under his lungs, was a horror he had never considered.
Satisfaction rolled off the Depik, a ripple moving down his sides as though each individual strand of shining brown fur was pleased. “And what have you learned, clever Human, with your machine?” he asked idly, as though he didn’t have part of his front paw inside his conversation partner.
“Invisibility...is innate. Genetic. Not an invention.”
“Surely you can do better.”
“Something...at the quantum level.”
“Why did you think you could hold me?” Dying or not, Tarley would not be allowed to know his machine worked. Let him pass into his last night thinking Sisk had been an anomaly, a lucky strike in the sort of hunt Tarley should have known to be well outside his skill level. Let him be broken, at every level, as he slid into death.
“Flood...the field. Just off the limit for my mass, the electric pulse freezes everything, holds past lung capacity. You don’t stay invisible when you pass out.”
Arow didn’t need to taunt him, not while gently stroking the Human’s liver. So he ignored the statement and carried on questioning. “And how did you know to have it ready—oh,” he withdrew the claw, realizing the answer as he began to ask the question aloud. A great deal of blood followed, and he used it to trace a pattern on Tarley’s bared, utterly vulnerable midsection. A layer or two of skin parted as well, but his claws were so sharp Tarley wouldn’t feel it for another handful of seconds. “Of course you knew a hunter was coming. You took out the contract on yourself.”
It wasn’t a question, but Tarley breathed, “Yes,” before the new pain kicked in, nerve endings raging at the sudden invasion.
“Trapping a hunter,” Arow mused, wondering if anyone in the history of contracting a Depik assassin had ever been so foolish as to consider aiming the universe’s best hunter at their own fragile life. “And you thought you could be so impossibly lucky twice? To what end?” He knew; of course he knew. But he would ask, to be sure, to know exactly how much pain he would take in payment.
“To learn how you do what you do. To study. And adapt.” Tarley visibly tried to stop talking, but couldn’t hold against the double onslaught of drugs and pain. “We can’t rely on the mecha, not forever.”
“Humans.” The claws bit deeper now, enough skin sliced so Arow could peel a sheet back, revealing (under the rising blood) the efficient, partly-modified organs Humans had clustered together in their midsection. Claws moved delicately through skin and muscle, and then the assassin jumped on top of Tarley, some paws settling in his abdomen, one reaching out just over his eye. Carving. Tarley was awake, and split open, and being sliced like meat. “So interested in everyone else. Do you even know how you work, truly?”
Now, finally, Tarley realized it wasn’t simply death coming for him. Not yet. Not for some time. He made a noise, bestial, useless.
“Let’s find out together, Human, how you’re made. Shall we?”
# # # # #
INKED by Mark Wandrey
The merc watched the artist at her work—he’d never seen such skill, such control, such…artistry in his life. The MinSha’s four upper limbs were interchangeable arms, each with multiple grasping digits and ‘wrists’ that rotated on incredible ball joints that imparted unparalleled dexterity. This particular MinSha, though, was fascinating in another way. Her chiton was a ghostly shade of green, not the blue of all the other MinSha he’d seen. Just when he thought he’d seen it all on Aurora Station.
Located in the heart of the Centaur region, Jesc arm, Aurora Station’s name was unpronounceable to Humans. As was often t
he way of his race, when this happened, they made up a name that was understandable to them. Sometimes that name stuck, sometimes it didn’t. Aurora Station circled a star with no planets—only a vast asteroid belt. A failed system, the scientists called it. The star, a brilliant blue-white O class star, blazed through the unusually dense asteroid field, creating multihued auroras that changed from minute to minute. Whoever built the station untold eons ago built the floor of the promenade on the gravity deck from clear material, which afforded a rotating view of those auroras. The name of the station, therefore, was a no-brainer. The Buma, who owned and operated it, were particularly proud of it for many reasons. The shrewd businesslike race didn’t care about the view…or the name.
The merc had just finished purchasing an interesting trinket for his girlfriend when he spotted the MinSha. A merc race, just like Humans, the MinSha were known for their brutal efficiency in matters of war, as well as a boundless sense of duty and honor. Though Aurora Station had a merc pit, it was a small one. The station was mostly known as a trade and commerce hub. The asteroid belt was also notorious for occasional strikes of red diamonds as well as a thousand other rare and volatile elements. It reminded him a little of an old Earth gold town.
He didn’t know why he turned from the course he’d been on to follow the MinSha, but he did. The alien wove through the dense crowd of other aliens with a practiced ease. Her pursuer was hard pressed to keep up, especially since Humans were rare in this part of the galaxy. Every few feet someone would stop to look curiously at the furless ape, further slowing him. At one point, he’d thought he’d lost his quarry. What kind of merc business was such an interesting MinSha involved with? He’d learned to be keen to these sorts of happenings in his business. Any edge could be the winning one.
The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8) Page 29
