by Sara King
Sam turned to look at her, blushed, swallowed, and dropped his hand. Probably because, Rat guessed, if he told all their criminal friends the truth of losing to her at ka-par, it would undermine what little ‘street cred’ he had left as leader of their merry band. Though the bungie-canvas ‘thong’ and ongoing caterwauling was already doing a bang-up job of that. “Goes with my eyes,” he muttered.
“I think I’ll take a bit more music with my dinner,” Rat told him, around her orange.
Glaring, Sam began to mumble, “Old MacDonald had a farm…”
“Sing!” Tyson shouted, slapping Sam on the naked ass with the flat of his blade. Though Tyson couldn’t know exactly why Sam did everything Rat told him to on Wednesday through Monday, he had certainly been the first to go with the flow.
Sam squealed and his appalling rendition rose several octaves. “And on this farm was a gay Viking slut…” Apparently pleased with the result, Tyson leaned back beside Rat and chewed on his apple, grinning.
“So how’d you do it?” Tyson finally asked, as the caterwauling continued.
“Do what?” Rat asked distractedly. She was currently trying to determine the best exercises to beef up Sam’s scrawny thighs.
“Win a bet like that,” he gestured at the cacophony with his knife, “with a guy like him.”
“Not a bet,” Rat replied absently. “A mental duel.” Squats. Definitely squats. Beginning Wednesday.
Tyson peered at her over the apple slice. “A mental duel. With the Tesla of the Congressional Era.”
“…Ee-ii-ee-ii-oooooh.”
“Yep,” Rat said.
“He brought you into camp on a leash,” Tyson insisted.
“It was Tuesday,” Rat replied. As opposed to Wednesday through Monday, which were her days.
The big man—he was obviously from a similar job description as Rat herself, though the computer geek with the gum fetish seemed none the wiser—gave her a sideways look and for a long time seemed to be puzzling out a complex problem. “He really snare you?” Tyson finally asked.
“Yep.” Rat stood up, sheathed her own knife, and tossed what was left of her orange on the tree-stump for someone else to scavenge. “That’s enough,” she told her ka-par slave. It wasn’t her place to divulge Sam’s secrets to his friends. Especially when he had so little time left to live. “Bedtime.”
“And on this far—” Sam’s ‘music’ cut off mid-word. “Thank you.” Of all the things she’d had him do since losing at ka-par, singing obviously bothered him the most. Rat decided she would have to remember that for the next time his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge got on her nerves. Nothing else seemed to even faze him.
Then she realized there would be no ‘next time’. She had to finish this. Tonight. Before she grew any more attached to the charming furg than she already had. Leaving him alive for two weeks had been a mistake, one that she was about to rectify.
“You’re both just butt-hurt ‘cause you can’t beat me at cards,” Sam accused the two of them, panting.
It had been a bit annoying, but Rat was actually in a bad mood from something else entirely…
Mekkval. She’d been procrastinating for weeks, now, but she had promised Mekkval she would kill this man.
This utterly adorkable, brilliant, eccentric, totally justly egotistical man. It pissed her off. Sam was obviously a self-made Huouyt hybrid—all Rat had to do was look at his downy, sometimes-wriggly white hair and his creepy electric eyes to know that—but Sam was special. Sam didn’t sleep like a normal person, usually catching three hours at a time, tops, so he spent a lot of time awake by himself at night. Whenever she found him spending his nights absently tinkering with something utterly incomprehensible to her by the fire as the rest of the group slept, then surprised them the next morning with some new gadget that, say, skittered ahead of the group scouting for the distinct chemical bouquet of his favorite gum, it became painfully clear to her that, within Sam’s twisted, kooky brain lay the salvation of the Human race.
And she had sworn to kill him. She’d given her oath. And she was going to do it tonight, before the terms of their ka-par duel dictated she would spend another day as his slave. Not that Sam made that part of the agreement particularly odious, but still… If he somehow figured out she was sent by the Dhasha Representative to kill him, Sam might simply tell her to hold still as he slit her throat, and she would be honor-bound by the laws of ka-par to comply. On Tuesday. Her previous two Tuesdays, Rat had been inwardly terrified the entire day that Sam would somehow piece together her purpose, and she wasn’t willing to endure another twenty-four hours of uncertainty and anxiety, the nagging worry that Sam would simply put a gun to her head and pull the trigger because, sometime over the course of the last week, he discovered her true mission.
Sam held out a rolled-up towel to her, startling her out of her morose thoughts.
“Massage?” Sam asked, face hopeful. At six-seven, carrying genetics of the psychopathic Huouyt, Sam still somehow managed to strike her as an excited puppy.
“I don’t feel like giving you a massage,” Rat said. It still bothered her to use her left hand in a way that drew attention to the missing ring finger—probably left over from spending too much time with the Dhasha. Missing body parts was a weakness, and showing weakness was asking to be killed.
Sam blinked at her in confusion. “I want to give you a massage.”
Rat immediately grew suspicious. Men, in her experience, didn’t offer such things without a damn good reason. “Why?”
He got a charmingly devilish grin and said, “Why, because it means I can get a beautiful woman naked in my bed.” At her snort, he waved a hand dismissively. “But if you’re going to be difficult, I’ll just wait three hours and three minutes.” That Sam always knew exactly what time it was—in any time-zone, Congie or otherwise, down to the nanotic, if necessary—was one of the many things that would have caused most people to put a plasma round through his forehead the first week of knowing him. Since the illogical timekeeping on this tiny planet made no sense to her, however, Rat actually found his constant reminders refreshing.
“I don’t think I’m up for a massage right now,” Rat said, throwing her gun over her shoulder. “Take the rest of the night off. I’m going to go do some scouting.” It hurt her to end it like this—she liked Sam—but it was something that needed to be done. Just another job. A mission. She’d killed thousands of Huouyt in her lifetime. This one would be no different.
Except… Sam wasn’t just a Huouyt. He was Human, too, and that was the problem. He was the most disturbingly sexy, undeniably unique, utterly brilliant Human that Rat had ever met. What she wanted to do was drag him back to the tent, take him up on that massage, and then make love to him until neither one of them could breathe.
But, as desk-driving Directors liked to say, in war, sacrifices had to be made.
Sam’s face fell, probably at the prospect of having her come back at dawn, after a good portion of his allotted time was already gone. “But Tuesday is coming…”
“I’ll be back in time,” Rat assured him, hoping he couldn’t read her lie. “I need to check the perimeter.”
Sam waved a dismissive hand. “We have minions for that.”
Rat met the plea in his eyes and fought the urge to stay anyway, surprised at how strong it was. After all, a massage did sound nice… Then reason took back over. She had duties to Mekkval, and she needed to get her head back on straight. It was the first rule of her trade—never get attached to the target. This was just another job, nothing more. Besides, this man had willingly made himself part Huouyt. That, in itself, was reason enough to blow his head off. That he was walking around with the knowledge of how to do it to others was even worse.
Trying to seem as casual and inconspicuous as possible, Rat said, “With those recent thefts in camp, we need someone we can trust patrolling out there.” She really didn’t want to tip off the supergenius-braniac-who-catches-Congies-with-snares tha
t she was about to kill him.
Sam gestured at Tyson. “Tyson, get out there. I’m giving my lady love a massage.”
Tyson heaved a sigh and started reaching for his gun.
“I’ll be back soon,” Rat said, moving away from the fire before Tyson had a chance to stand. “Couple hours, tops.” Then she was striding away from the heat of the flames, into the coolness of night. Behind her, Sam made a disappointed sound and she heard him drop back to his log beside the fire. Immediately, she felt bad for turning him down.
Don’t. He’s one of the ones you’re supposed to kill. He’s a target. Mekkval had given her a list, and Samuel Dobbs’s name was on it. His very existence was a liability to the Human race, and he had to disappear before those genes could spread.
Rat walked faster, seeking the refuge of darkness. Once she got out of sight of the fire, she swung wide, taking an indirect path to a good sniping hill on the other side of camp that she had noticed the day before. As she circled the camp, Sam’s words haunted her. My lady love… He almost said it as if he believed it. Which…burned. He had no idea her true purpose here. He had no clue that she was using him, that the only reason he was still alive was because there was the strong possibility that he could lead her to the other experiments.
…and that he was so damned cute in that damned crocheted Minion hat, neon pink industrial strength ‘thong,’ and combat boots, that she’d been unable to bring herself to do it last Monday. And, truth be told, she didn’t want to do it, but Mekkval was a true prince, a warrior whose heart spoke for the greater good, who was willing to do the less palatable things that other species shirked from in order to uphold universal peace.
But Rat was stranded on a planet that wouldn’t see another Congressional ship for six hundred and sixty-six turns. More than a hundred Human lifetimes. If she didn’t kill Sam, Mekkval would never know…
Rat stumbled when she realized she was considering letting Sam live—walking away—because he was cute. Maybe that was his goal. Maybe that’s why he called her his ‘lady love.’ Huouyt were psychopathic liars at heart. Maybe he was manipulating her.
But he’s not a Huouyt, she reminded herself. Not even close.
…but he wasn’t Human, either. Sam’s self-experimentation had taken Humanity’s greatest mind and turned him into something else entirely. Something dangerous. Something she had to execute before he could pass on his mutations and infect the Human race. The logic was sound. Mekkval’s reasoning was sound. If she didn’t kill him, he was going to change Humanity.
But Sam was harmless. Sure, he let people eat each other and blasphemed regularly, but she had watched him closely this last week. He really was just a big goofball with an abnormally functional brain. Surely Mekkval would never find out if she left him live.
Let him live?!? part of her screamed. She had given her lord her oath!
Rat groaned and stopped beside a tree to slam a fist into her forehead. No. She could not let Sam live. She had to kill him. She was even then witnessing the genetic bottlenecking of a society. Streets that had once teemed with vehicles were now utterly empty and abandoned; burgeoning metropolises with bustling spaceports had been suddenly reduced to timid bird and insect sounds. Humanity was facing one of the smallest genetic pools it had seen in thousands of years, the deaths of all but the very strongest within just a few weeks. Bagan Regency analysts had predicted that only one out of two hundred Humans would survive the first three rotations. By the end of the first turn, the population would hit pre Bronze-Age lows, then surge even lower, if the kreenit didn’t wipe Humans out altogether. As ancestral hunters of Dhasha, there was always that possibility…
Yet, if Rat let Sam live, she knew, deep down, that the crazy, utterly brilliant bastard would survive the apocalypse unscathed. That meant he would have ample opportunity to spread his genes. That meant that other Humans, his children, would grow and multiply and the Human genome would shift and mutate into something else entirely. Something…alien.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Rat settled down on a ridge overlooking the camp opposite her exit point and settled into a firing position. She brought the scope to her eye and found Sam hunched over by the fire, dejectedly picking lint from his towel.
She owed it to Mekkval to pull the trigger. Remembering her lord sitting in his own filth, replaying the death of his nephew Keval, Rat felt an aching in her chest. Keval had not been given a warrior’s death. He had been given a public execution by…freaks. Genetically engineered vaghi that weren’t even Human, killing a whole regiment of Dhasha as if they had been swatting ants. The Dhasha empire had shuddered from the blow. Humans—weaklings—had done what Jreet and an entire Corps of PlanOps couldn’t. Dhasha princes everywhere had clamored for blood; many for Mekkval’s, for allowing Earth to get away with a Sacred Turn instead of a planet-obliterating ekhta.
Now it was Mekkval’s duty to make sure every trace of those genetics were scoured from the Human gene pool, to restore the balance that had been lost with those neat rows of twitching Dhasha corpses, filling up the live feeds all over the known universe as government news reporters babbled on about the ‘terrifying new species’ and ‘the cowering Dhasha commanders’ and ‘the possible shift in power’.
Her lord had trusted her with his honor. It was up to Rat to avenge his family, to make things right. Though Mekkval could have sent half of Congress against this pitiful, barbaric little cesspool, though he could have utterly obliterated it with a word, he had sent only Rat. A scalpel rather than a planet-killer. He had sent his best, someone he trusted with something more important than his life, and it was up to her to finish the job. To heal the wound before it could fester and destroy the whole.
If she failed—if she let Sam live—and Congress found traces of alien genetics in the Human population when it came back after its Sacred Turn, the Regency would simply order the annihilation of all Human life and the Watcher would rebuild the species based on DNA information it had acquired over seventy-four turns of the Human drafts. To kill Sam now would be to save billions later.
Rat took a deep breath and brought her finger to touch the trigger. Over the last week, she had made her ka-par slave draw detailed maps to the nearest lab in the mountains south of them, give directions, schematics, and experiment specifics in detail, and if he was telling the truth about this lab’s location, she was relatively sure that it was the missing compound Mekkval sought. The cold truth of the matter was that she didn’t need Sam anymore. She had everything tucked neatly in her satchel, could walk away without looking back.
But she liked him. Through the scope, her eyes caught on that damn Minion hat he wore and she remembered the last time it had saved his life. Maybe that’s why he wore it. Maybe he was trying to look harmless. Maybe it was a façade.
Rat’s finger started to squeeze the trigger.
Sam reached up, grabbed the forehead of his beanie, and pulled it from his head. There was no mistaking the dejection in his gesture as he tossed it to the log beside him. Tyson must have asked him a question, then, because Sam sighed and said something, making an unhappy gesture at the darkness surrounding their campfire…
…directly at Rat.
Rat froze, wondering if the gesture had been an accident, or if Sam knew she had circled camp and had pointed to exactly where she was hiding. If he had, then he knew she was out there in a sniping position, debating whether to kill him. Rat’s finger automatically tightened for her shot, then she hesitated. But if he knew that, then why was he just sitting there, letting her take her shot?
#
“Oh, probably sitting out there on a hill somewhere, deciding whether or not to shoot me.” Slade sighed and dropped his chin into his hands. He had hoped an offer of a massage would have mollified her enough to delay the inevitable, but she had slipped off before he could throw a happy ending in there, too.
Tyson sat up and peered into the darkness where Rat had disappeared. “You think she’s going to
shoot us?”
“Not you. Me,” Slade said. “And she’ll have circled around somewhere. She’ll probably be over to the east. Better vantage point out there. Excellent cover.” He waved disgustedly at the darkness. “As if I can even see her in the dark.” He made a miserable sound.
Tyson paused in examining the darkness to frown at Slade. “You’re saying the Congie is going to kill you?”
“I’m saying she’s deciding,” Slade replied. He could feel the high-powered rifle even then sighting in on his temple. He snagged a half-chewed pack of gum from the milk-crate-and-plywood ‘table’ and popped a piece into his mouth, trying not to fidget.
“Why?” Tyson asked.
“Because I sing for shit,” Slade replied, around the gum. Already, the pounding headache that had been developing from the vibrations of singing was easing and he could start to concentrate again. Inevitably, he began to think about how to escape Death-By-Congie, and, realizing he was doing it, Slade immediately shut off that train of thought and concentrated on the average temperature of their campfire, instead.
Tyson gave him a really long look, then said, “Why would Rat want to shoot you?”
Slade sighed, deeply, and braced himself to explain intricate alien politics to a projectile-toting pleb. “Because Humans are on the bottom rung of the galactic hierarchy and our underbrained, slack-jawed, inbred scientists made some telepathic freaks that scared the utter bejesus crap out of the guys on the top. The experiments’ very existence now threatens Dhasha supremacy and significantly undermines their stranglehold on power. The Dhasha must have realized that an entire lab of those genetic experiments escaped the extermination squads Congress sent for them before Judgement, because their illustrious Representative Mekkval sent Rat here to kill off the survivors.”
“Oh,” Tyson said. To his credit, the big blond didn’t seem too surprised. He glanced at the darkness again. “And she thinks you’re one of them?”
