by Greg Curtis
But it wasn’t truly her fault. The ship had lost power for reasons they still didn’t understand during its final approach. After the crash landing, which was apparently a miracle of piloting, she’d been wounded. She had had to walk for miles from her crashed craft with the blood loss, infection and shock creeping in, and had still got reasonably close to their base as she could with damaged instruments. She had very nearly made it too. Only a few more miles, before she'd finally collapsed. In the same situation he might not have done so well.
“I said I would give your people warning before I told anyone anything. And as long as your people mean what they say and keep to their word, I won't tell anyone anything. I meant what I said. And I won’t tell anyone if I don’t have to. I have no reason to tell and good reason not to. I keep my word.”
“You also said to friends you just army soldier. But human records show you Central Intelligence Agency. They pay your pension.”
‘Bugger!’, was his first thought. She was right, he had very carefully skated around that fact for the last three or four years. People changed when they knew someone was CIA, retired or otherwise. Army was fine, even FBI was okay, but CIA was something else. They tended to clam up, to treat agents with a degree of distrust. But then nobody trusted the agency. So he’d carefully never mentioned it and thought his secret safe. But the Leinian party’s business was studying human culture. Evidently they had been cracking databases as part of that, or else reading his bank records, or his mail. Either that or the local bank clerks had passed on his secret, and from the fact that the entire town seemed to know, he had to guess it was probably the latter. Alice from what he could gather, was a natural born spy.
The real question was how much further any of them had gone? The bank, the pensions office, military records, or even top-secret databases? How much had national security been compromised? How much more did they know about him? He was paid by the CIA, that was true, and had even been part of them for many years after he was seconded from the army. But that had been a long time ago. After that he had been seconded again by the Department of Defence. And not just the Department but Project Alpha within it. Either way he had to answer her.
“They’re both true. The army and the CIA have a long standing association, and I was seconded to them for many years. But if people knew I’m ex CIA they’d never talk to me again. They’d never trust me. So I hide it. But I still stand by what I told Alice and your leaders. I’m out of that world and I don’t want to get back in. Revealing your people’s presence on Earth would put me squarely back in it, so deep I’d never get out. Like Alice said, play nice and I won’t tell.” Yet quietly he was starting to become more anxious about the whole thing. Had she noticed?
“Until can trust, I follow. Now swim.” With that she indicated that he should carry on his way, and he knew there would be no more discussion. For at least a while he would have a tail. He gave up and carried on with his swim, letting the exercise organize his thoughts and calm his mind. By the time he reached the buoy he was at least calm, though he still had no idea what to do. The kilometre back didn’t give him any more clues, though at least he felt refreshed as usual.
Crawling out of the lake he heard her splashing and knew she was right behind him. She had been almost touching his feet the whole way. But then she could easily have blown past him. It was embarrassing, but she wasn’t even breathing hard. On the other hand she had a tail which she used to beat the water as she kicked, while her freestyle arm movements were like knives cutting cleanly into the lake. She was also far more buoyant than him. She didn’t so much swim in the lake as she did paddle from above. He turned around to find her mere feet behind him, wearing her normal clothes. Her fur was sleeked down like an otter’s, and there was something distinctly feral in her features. But with her hair slicked back for the first time he could see the shape of her face clearly.
Alice had been right, she looked distinctly Asian. And, ahh, rather well endowed. Voluptuous was a word that must have been created just to describe her. He had known she was a female the first time he’d seen her, but seeing her like that was a revelation. Maybe she stood five foot six high, about average for a woman, but there was nothing average about her other measurements. She was large where she wanted to be, with a narrow waist, nice hips and plenty of firm, well toned muscle. He tried not to stare and wasn’t completely successful. If the truth be known he wasn’t very successful at all.
“Now what?”
“Now exercise. Do everything as normal. I’m not here. Pretend.” Which was going to be difficult. Acting on her words he headed for the house, and was stopped immediately.
“Uh uh. Remove rubber suit, or get water in house. Do everything normal.” And before he could even think of what to say he felt hands at the clasp at the back of his neck, and the zip was being pulled down. He tried not to flinch, knowing all those claws were inches from his back. Instead he peeled himself out of the suit as he normally did, pegged it on the outside line and hosed it down. And all the time he was really trying to pretend he wasn’t vulnerable, stripped down to just his togs in front of her.
She stared at him intently, curious, and not in an academic way. If he had stared at her body, she in turn felt free to stare at his. Free to comment too.
“Strong body. Bigger than others. Bigger shoulders, long muscles, but loose around middle, and scar on leg. It hurts you yes?” He nodded that indeed his bullet wound did hurt sometimes, the result of the doctors not being able to remove it all, and he tried not to recoil at the rest of her analysis. Flabby? He was not flabby! Sometimes he guessed, it was best to say nothing at all. He headed for the house trying not to let anything sag any more than it had to.
“Slow walk, slight limp, cannot fix?” He shook his head, knowing immediately what the next words out of her mouth would be.
“We can.” Exactly as in every text book. Whether she meant it that way or not it was a bribe. A way of eliciting his support, of compromising him. He shook his head again and marched off towards the gym, not wanting to even try to explain. It would only end in disagreement.
Sadly once in the gym he found things were going to run stormily anyway.
It began with the stretches, when he found for every stretch he could do, Cyrea could do two and twice as far. It didn’t help that she kept critiquing him, commenting on how inflexible he was. She even offered to help him train, and had her nose put out of joint when he told her he didn’t really want to be able to put his feet behind his head. He apologized immediately of course, but the damage was done. She took his words as a criticism; as a statement that her skills were worthless.
The weights of course were the complete opposite. He’d been a gym freak for years, ever since he’d realized how much it helped him with the combat. He could bench press easily five times as much as her, and the same was true of every other weight press or curl. It didn’t help when he innocently suggested that she start off on the lighter weights, and then when her pride refused to allow her to, he had had to jump in and rescue her from some of them. Of course she didn’t like that one tiny little bit. From the glare of her eyes he thought for a while she was going to chop him up into little pieces. But she held back and said nothing, at least that he could hear.
The aerobic machines were a nice balance, with them being reasonably well matched. He beat her on the rower and grinder, but she held him out on the air bike and decimated him on the stepper. Her wound had definitely recovered. It was a relatively peaceful half hour as they simply sweated their way through the aerobic part of the workout, each enjoying the closeness of the competition. They were, he realized, very similar in some respects. Alice, curse her busybody nature, was right.
But then came the strength moves. Chin ups, push ups and the like. He always ended on them. With all his blood flowing and his body warm, they were relatively comfortable. But not this day. They were another form of weights, and he easily won. Which meant that Cyrea got grumpy again.
It was the hand springs that were the final straw. He had just done his first set of ten, raising and lowering his entire body weight on a pair of parallel bars, when she insisted on giving it a try. By that time he had learned enough to know not to say anything. Instead he just helped her to the bars fixed high on the wall and waited.
It wasn’t a long wait. About five inches into her first dip, her arms folded as he’d expected and she suddenly found herself hanging from her arm pits. There was no way she could ever get out of the position and he foolishly told her so. He wasn’t sure what her reply was as it wasn’t in English, but he knew it wasn’t polite. From there it was all downhill.
Manners overcame common sense and he’d immediately grabbed her waist, trying to help her up from supporting her entire body on just her arm pits. He knew even as she stiffened at his touch that he’d made a mistake. It wasn’t just the unexpected familiarity, it was the sense of humiliation.
After making the further mistake of helping her down, a bad one, he should have let her fall, she ripped loose on him in her native tongue, to which he responded that most human women and even men couldn’t have performed the routine either. Not without a lot of practice. It was true, and he’d even thought it tactful, but Cyrea wasn’t about to accept any such thing.
She started by calling him a bully and a beast, with no brain and no decency. She should have shot him the first day when she’d had the chance. Instead she’d been too trusting and let him overpower her with his brute strength, and then pin her like a beast in the field. There was something in that last that really seemed to have riled her. Apparently she was still smarting about it.
He should have held back, have bitten his tongue, but he couldn’t. Something in him just ran wild, and he let it all loose. He called her an ungrateful savage, who’d invaded his home, and then after he’d gone to the trouble of tending to her wounds, she had tried to kill him. From there it was an ever steeper downhill slide as they traded insults like stamps.
They scowled and spat at one another like alley cats for some time, until David realizing it wasn’t going to get any better and decided to leave. He’d done enough weights for one day. Unfortunately Cyrea wasn’t finished.
In the lounge, heading for the kitchen he felt her hand on his shoulder, and heard her cry out in her alien tongue. He acted on instinct, long since primed by the tension he’d been through, and grabbed her hand and flipped her. At least he later reflected, she landed on the rug. If she’d come down on the hard floor backside first he wasn’t sure she would ever have forgiven him.
As it was her response was immediate and violent. She leapt at him claws extended, and considering her furious speed it was a miracle he got out of her way at all. Instead her claws narrowly missed him, turning another t-shirt into ribbons.
“I’m sorry.” He shouted it at her in the hope she would accept his apology, but she wasn’t listening. She was furious. Instead she tried another whirling lunge claws extended and he simply reacted. Dodging the flying claws he caught her from behind and quickly looped his arms under her shoulders, then clasped his hands together behind her neck. In one second she was caught in a classic wrestling hold, arms held straight out from her body, and she knew it.
There were only two ways out of the hold, either up or down, and they both knew it. She tried down first, suddenly taking her feet off the ground and swinging her body as far forward and downward as she could. But he was braced for that, and held her firmly, even as he was trying to calm her down.
But when that didn’t work she went for the skywards approach leaping as high as she could and backwards into him, using him as a spring board. He’d been waiting for it.
Immediately he fell backwards with her, taking the spring out of her leap, and then did a take down. Falling backwards onto the carpet he dragged her down on top of him. It was a bruising impact, but nothing he couldn’t take on his shoulder blades. Her backside impacted on his pelvis, and her legs unavoidably straightened as he’d counted on. No sooner had her legs started falling back to the ground then he looped his own around them, crossing his ankles over her knees, until they too were locked.
From that point on he knew he had her, and she did too. She was spread-eagled like a scarecrow, pinned from underneath, totally unable to move her arms or legs. She was completely trapped. He took the opportunity to grab a few deep breaths while she struggled hopelessly against him.
“I’m sorry.” He just kept calling it quietly into her ear just in front of his mouth, until she finally stopped struggling and started listening. It took some time, as he expected. Whatever else Cyrea was, she was angry. But eventually she ran out of steam and her struggles diminished. He didn’t truly know whether that was actual tiredness or just a ploy to get him to ease up. He didn’t ease up. But she did start to listen.
“Why you sorry? You attack me, you beat me again. You not sorry, just bad liar.”
“No, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you. But I was mad. You were driving me crazy with your non-stop bickering. Then when you came up behind me, I didn’t hear you. When you caught me off guard, put your hand on my shoulder and screamed, I just reacted. I am very sorry. Truly.”
“That’s not reaction. You don’t just throw people around room and call instinct. Is an intention. You had to plan it.” She wasn’t buying a word of it, and he knew it.
“You’re wrong. For most people it’s not a reaction. For me it is just that, pure reflex. I’ve spent twenty years honing my skills. Practising every day. And I’ve used them in every possible way, and against every type of opponent. I’ve killed and maimed people in unarmed combat, and they were generally armed. The only way I could do that is to act and react without thinking. Twenty years of combat experience doesn’t let me think about things. I just react.”
“Huh! I spend nearly as long learning to fight, and while I kill no one that way, I still sent my share to doctor. I don’t do that by instinct, and neither you do.” He knew it was going to be a hard sell, but at least she was talking.
“Cyrea, you’re not army. You’re not special forces. I was trained specifically to kill people without thought. Thinking slows you down. I kill without question, and without hesitation. I can kill anyone in a heartbeat. Before I even knew who they were. Friend or foe, they would be dead. That very training has saved my life, many times over. And I am a survivor.” She listened to him, anger and distrust written in her rigid posture, and he knew it was going to be a long time before she calmed down.
“You don’t understand who or what I am. And that’s good. In my world you’d be a police officer, trained to defend yourself and your people, but always to use the minimum force needed to do the job. An honourable and decent profession. I’m not a police officer. I’m a soldier. A spy. An agent. Dishonourable and often savage. My training is in life and death. I kill people, and I do it well. Too well.”
“I was the man sent in to do the covert work. To go into foreign countries and do whatever had to be done. And I went in alone. I didn’t have back up, I didn’t obey laws, and I didn’t have anyone or anything to rely upon other than myself.”
“Think about it. In my work if I got caught I died. That was a given, but not before they tortured me. If I made a noise, I’d die. If I reacted even a millisecond too slow, I’d die. And if I didn’t take all of my opponents out, I’d die. Hesitation is death. That’s how I was trained. That’s how I live.”
“Pretty words.” She was at least listening, though she didn’t necessarily believe him.
“True words. Ugly but true. I am a survivor of things you would call barbaric.” Which from what little he did know of her people, would be an understatement. “And I only survived by killing others before they killed me. By doing things no decent human being should ever have to do.”
“You’ve never been imprisoned in a private concentration camp and forced to fight the other prisoners to the death for months on end. I don’t think you’ve been captured an
d tortured by the enemy, until the only weapons you have left are your body, your mind and your determination. I seriously doubt you’ve been blinded in a fire fight, and still had to kill or be killed by armed soldiers with only your hands. I have been in and survived every one of those nightmares, and I only succeeded because of the skill and speed of my reactions. Not only did I survive but I then went on to become even more deadly.”
