by S. E. Smith
Rigel busied himself sorting through his pack. “No.” His stomach rumbled, clearly missing the hot meal he should’ve been enjoying right now onboard Wisdom.
“I have kell wafers. Nutritious…and not unpleasant.”
“I’m fine.” He moved into the alley shadows and set out Maura’s feed bowl, emptying a packet of her kibble into it. The StarDog materialized and trotted over with a wag of her tail to happily scarf down her meal.
“Food! Good! Good food.”
Rigel watched her eat her fill, biting down on his lower lip to ignore the pangs in his stomach.
Sona’s look of sympathy only annoyed him. “You weren’t provided with adequate rations?”
“I was,” Rigel said with a grimace. “I finished off the last of them yesterday since I was slated to be aboard Wisdom by now.”
“I have plenty,” Sona offered.
It was kind of her—not a quality he’d ever seen in a member of the Rathskian subspecies—but he shook his head. “We’ll reach my contact before sundown.”
Sona pulled a sealed packet from a hidden pocket in her synth-leathers and opened it. She extracted a long rectangle of dried rations from the packet and parked the strip between her teeth. Rigel got a whiff of the beefy aroma and ground his molars.
Then she pulled out a second piece and offered it to him.
Rigel hesitated then accepted. “Thanks.” He scanned it discreetly with the sniffer in his wrist-unit before biting off a chunk. A rich taste like hardy stew filled his mouth and overwhelmed his senses.
“Oh, Hades,” he muttered around bites. “This is good. Really good.”
“Definitely a more filling meal than your pride,” she muttered under her breath.
Setting his teeth, Rigel did a quick scan of their surroundings, and dropped his head to check their digi-map location again. He hated being caught so unprepared and she’d seen right through him. Truth was, he’d banked everything on reaching Wisdom, and that had been a mistake. He’d had strategies go south enough times that he should’ve planned for all outcomes.
But nothing in his experience could’ve primed him for an encounter with this enigmatic warrior class she-Rathski. Sona challenged his preconceptions about her subspecies. He had to concede that perhaps they weren’t the vicious killing machines he’d always believed them to be. Maybe they did have souls beneath all those layers of ruthless aggression.
Still, what they were capable of was chilling. He’d seen the reports about what the Rathskians had done to the ruling Purmian monarchs. The royal family had been set on by a brigade of assassins, and they’d been savagely brutalized and burned alive. The once-great Purmian duchy had been figuratively beheaded by the slaying of the duke, duchess, and their sole heir. The Alliance then seized control of the planet and its rich borga ore mines, which served to fund their continued tyranny.
Fortunately, a loyal underground on Purmia saw to it that the Network also got a cut. Network ships often smuggled sizable shipments of borga off Purmia. It was what funded much of their extensive operations.
Rigel pulled his thoughts back to the present. This was hardly the time to be musing about past Rathskian affronts.
He checked his digi-map again, doing a quick time calculation in his head.
“We need to pick up the pace,” he said, standing to gather Maura’s bowl and shove it into his satchel.
Sona made no complaint, rising while she secured her food strips in the hidden pocket in her synth-leathers.
Rigel looked at his SpyDog. “Let’s go, pard.”
Maura gave him a hopeful look. “Belly rub?”
“Maybe later.”
The StarDog dropped her head and slunk along beside him, her long, bushy tail dragging in the dust behind her before vanishing against the cere-crete.
“She’s unhappy.”
“My fault. She’s a working animal and I’ve spoiled her.”
Sona’s eyebrows arched before she gave him a skeptical look. “All evidence to the contrary.”
Rigel inwardly bristled. “She’s not a lapdog.”
“She has feelings, Rigel. You could treat her with some respect.”
“I do.”
“By barking orders at her?” Sona shook her head and strode off down the hang alley ahead of him.
Okay, he had been short with his StarDog, but only as command reinforcement. His partner had picked a heck of a time to become temperamental.
“Keep a sharp eye out for Alliance.” At a scathing look from Sona, he clarified, “For enemy patrols.”
Her mouth twisted to one side, but she didn’t comment. Rigel gestured for her to turn down a hangar alley ahead and she set off at a rapid pace.
He verified their course on his wrist-unit again. Still a few more hangar sectors to go to reach the transport. They needed to be there before nightfall, or all bets were off. If his contact thought he’d been captured or compromised, he wouldn’t wait. Rigel didn’t relish the march in the hot Bannan sun, but he couldn’t risk missing his ride. Maybe that comfortable berth he’d been craving would be waiting for him.
He glanced up just in time to avoid a collision with Sona’s back when she stopped dead in her tracks.
His quick proximity sweep locked on an Ithian patrol down the alley ahead.
Instinctively, he gripped Sona’s hand and pulled her into concealment behind a stacked cargo pallet.
“Ithian Alliance Intelligence,” she warned, tugging her hand out of his grip.
“I saw.”
The patrol of tall, lanky Ithians was easily identified by the dual bars on their armbands. IAI were ruthless. Unrelenting. Brutal. Their presence on Banna was sobering. It had always been a neutral planet, but the Alliance blockade and incident with Wisdom had brought them to the surface in droves.
As well as their Rathskian allies.
Rigel cast a covert glance at Sona.
The troop milling in the alley ahead seemed to go on alert and headed away at a brisk trot.
“Isn’t that our path to your contact?”
“Yeah. Something’s riled them up. There’s a chance he’s been compromised.”
“I can handle compromising situations.” She moved as fast as a serpent strike, drawing her laze-pistol from the pocket in his fatigues.
“Drop it!” Rigel commanded in a harsh whisper.
“I’ll holster mine if you’ll holster yours.”
Rigel traded scowls with her. He hadn’t made a conscious decision to draw; it had been sheer reflex. Instinct. Muscle memory.
But here he stood, once again, face-to-face with an unknown warrior-class Rathskian at point blank range. With a troop of IAI still in shouting distance.
Maura uncloaked and bounced several times on the cere-crete, making hissing noises deep in her chest. “No, no, no! No hurt Sona. No hurt Rigel.”
His words came as flat and calm as sheet ice. “Surrender your weapon.”
Her eyes sparked with defiance. “You saw that patrol. Until we reach the transport, we should both be armed.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“If we’re spotted, they’ll be many. We are two. Our only chance will be to fight as a team.”
And then you toast me in midst of the firefight? “No deal.”
“Rigel, you need to trust me.”
Maura chattered. “Trust Sona. Good Sona!”
“I trust my instincts.”
“Your prejudices toward me are leading you to bad decisions. We can’t afford that.”
“Then I’ll err on the side of caution.”
“Yes, because no Rathskian could possibly be working for the Network.”
“That has crossed my mind.”
She considered his words, her mouth pressed into a tight line. “Judge me as I am, not as you believe me to be. See with more than just your eyes.”
“If you hand over your laze-pistol, that will show me a lot.”
“It will also reduce our effectiveness by hal
f.”
“You need to trust me to handle the situation.”
“I don’t doubt your skills. But I know my own.”
Rigel lowered his chin, and his tone with it. “If you intend to board that transport with me, you need to follow my orders.”
Maura stood up on her hind legs and scratched at Sona’s arm, as if she were trying to talk sense into the Rathski. “Trust Rigel. Rigel, good.”
“She can’t hear you.”
Sona blinked. Wet her lips. Blinked again. Her keen black eyes grew shadowed as she considered his words. Weighed her decision. Calculated the outcome. If she was what he believed her to be, she wouldn’t relent.
But she might fire, and he was ready for that. She wouldn’t survive her mistake.
Sona drew a deep breath and pushed it out through her teeth. Then she released the grip, offering him the weapon on her open palm.
“I trust you,” she said.
Rigel wasn’t prepared for the rip current of heat that stirred his blood. The sweet tang of victory at her unexpected compliance, yes, but also something more primitive. A part of him that wanted to read more into her words than were spoken.
“Good Sona! See, see?” Maura said in his head.
“Right.” Rigel secured her laze-pistol in his thigh pocket and double sealed the closure for safekeeping.
He willed himself to relax and clear his mind. “We need to get there before nightfall.”
“Understood.” She started off in the direction the patrol had traveled. To his surprise, Maura climbed Sona’s synth-leathers and made herself at home on the Rathski’s shoulder.
“Color up,” Rigel reminded her.
Maura’s background-blending hair follicles rippled from cere-crete gray to the ebony black of the Rathskian’s synth-leathers. Like the fabled Cheshire cat, she all but disappeared, except for the brief flicker when she brushed a StarDog kiss to Sona’s cheek.
The Rathskian gave a soft, controlled chuckle, and Rigel looked her way in surprise. He couldn’t recall a Rathskian ever expressing anything but pure, hard-line animosity before. He’d never guessed they were capable of laughter.
Her words echoed in his mind. Judge me as I am, not as you believe me to be. See with more than just your eyes.
Chapter Five
It was dusk by the time they approached bay 5126. Rigel motioned Sona into an empty hang positioned on a diagonal to his target. They put their backs to the far wall that was now in deep shadow, providing a view of the alley and hang fronts ahead without exposing their position.
Alliance patrols hadn’t been thick in this sector, but they’d run across—and evaded—several since midday. Everything seemed quiet here, and that set Rigel’s teeth on edge. If their contact had been compromised, walking into an ambush inside the hang wasn’t the way to find out.
“Come here, girl,” Rigel whispered, lifting his invisible partner from Sona’s shoulder. “Time to work.”
He settled Maura on the ground beside him where she briefly materialized in her golden coat before her fur again tinted to match the cere-crete.
“She’s trained to do reconnaissance?”
“Yes,” Rigel answered. Maura was trained to do considerably more, but Sona didn’t need to know the full array of his SpyDog’s skillsets.
“Color.” Rigel ran his hand over Maura’s silky coat, feeling her tremble in anticipation of his next command. “Go see.”
“Scout. Assess. Report back.”
The little SpyDog was off, a bit of kicked-up dust here, a scattering of small pebbles there marking her progress as she dashed to the hang. To an untrained eye, her scampering would look like the effects of the stiff breeze. Rigel just made out Maura’s outline as she sidled up to the outer wall of the target hang, and her coat flashed from cere-crete gray to medium blue, vanishing against the surface. From this distance, he could no longer track her movements. He’d have to wait for her report.
A man stepped out from the interior of the hang and scanned the alley. Rigel froze. Beside him, Sona stopped breathing. The guy was tall and fair—LaGuardian? Rigel’s hackles rose. Ithian? It was impossible to tell with the distance and poor light.
With deliberate intent, the man reached up to brush his hand quickly from shoulder to elbow—the Network signal for “all clear.”
But was he their contact? Or an informed decoy meant to draw them in?
“The all-clear signal?” Sona questioned.
“No go,” Rigel cautioned. “Wait for Maura.”
Sona nodded, her eyes narrowing as she studied the man at the hangar. “What if he sees her?”
“He won’t.”
“Do you have a description of your contact?”
Rigel ground his teeth. “No.” His alert system was strictly a receiver—a backup comm that would break down into water molecules and random atoms if he was compromised. Until he reached his contact’s vessel, he had no means of two-way communication with leadership.
“Maura sees.”
“Tell me.”
“Bad men,” she communicated, along with a flash visual of the decoy captain and a squad of six waiting inside the hang. Not a full complement. Odd. Maybe they’d split into smaller detachments.
“It’s a setup,” he informed Sona in a low whisper.
She didn’t seem surprised.
Maura sent him another image. This time of a gagged man bound with shipping straps to a flight couch onboard the vessel. “Good man.”
His contact was still alive, and apparently not being guarded. That, too, seemed off. But it also meant the odds were tipping in their favor—even more so if he armed Sona.
“Good,” Maura chimed in. “Good Sona! Good!”
Maura had picked up on his doubt via their mental link and added her two cents. But his partner had made mistakes before—on very rare occasions—and if she was wrong this time, it would most likely be fatal to the mission, and most definitely to him and his SpyDog. If this went nuclear, he wouldn’t be taken alive. The Alliance had many imaginative and excruciating tortures meant to wring out secrets. He’d never be put in a position to betray the Network.
And he couldn’t let Sona be taken either.
“Sona friend!”
“Point taken, partner.”
He sent a series of images back to Maura and reached down to his thigh pocket to retrieve Sona’s laze-pistol. A look of gratitude flashed in her eyes when she accepted the offered weapon.
“Two against…?” she asked.
“Seven,” Rigel said. “But the odds will improve.” Rigel flattened to the ground, his attention locked on the hang as he waited for Maura’s signal. Sona’s gaze remained fixed on his profile.
“Explain.”
“Our contact is alive, but he’s bound and gagged. For the moment.”
She scowled but didn’t question, apparently puzzling it out in her head.
Yes. Maura could untie knots.
“Better odds,” she muttered, peering out through the darkening twilight. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and did a quick check of her weapon. “Rigel?”
“Yeah.”
“If things go wrong, don’t let them take me alive. I can’t be identified.”
Rigel swallowed hard. “Understood.” If this all went supernova, he’d have no choice, but her request for summary execution left a chill spreading through his gut.
The intel he was taking to Command involved extraordinary fleet deployments by the Alliance, along with evidence they were scouring the known galaxy to apprehend a single rogue Rathskian.
Gods of Gellen, could it be her?
She spoke again. “You’ll need to use this, too.” She held out a closed fist.
Rigel opened his hand and she dropped a small round sphere into his palm, flat-black and weighty.
Scorchbomb. She was dead serious about not being identified. Once armed, these devices detonated on impact, consuming anything or anyone in their immediate proximity in a blast that
incinerated flesh, bone, and even teeth. It took less than an eyeblink and left nothing to identify. Theoretically, it was painless, cremating a body so quickly there wasn’t time for the nerves to transmit pain. But no one who’d ever been scorchbombed could confirm that theory and the idea of incinerating Sona didn’t sit well with him.
Nor did the knowledge that she could’ve used one on him at any time to erase all evidence of his existence. And yet, she hadn’t.
But that still didn’t make her an ally.
“Good man ready.”
“Great job, Maura. Find cover. We’re moving.”
“Now,” Rigel whispered. He skirted behind a container fence, crossing to the outer bay wall in a low crouch. Sona stayed with him like a silent shadow.
Rigel looked her way, and she met his gaze, alert, prepared. He readied himself and signaled a silent countdown on his fingers.
He swung around the front of the entrance, locked on his targets, and opened fire. The hang erupted in the crackle of laze-pistol zings and deep-throated curses. Using the heavy steelonate support for cover, he got the drop on three of his foes before a fourth locked a bead on him.
Sona, on one knee beside him, picked the man off.
A fair-haired man with a badly bruised face bounded off the ship and planted an upper cut to the jaw of another, grabbing his weapon as he fell back and finishing him off.
The remaining two changed positions to take aim at his contact, but Sona and Rigel brought them down before they could fire.
The hangar went quiet.
Rigel straightened, eyeing the ship. Holy Hades! This wreckage was supposed to be his conveyance off planet? “You’re Garr?”
“Yeah,” the bruised man answered. “The little beastie that untied me belong to you?”
“She does.”
“You got a word for me?” he challenged.
Rigel holstered his weapon. “Tamuf.”
The captain’s mouth pinched. “Old code,” he grated, taking aim with his weapon. “You get one more try.”
Rigel froze. When had the flipping code changed?
Sona jumped in. “We’ve been on the run since Wisdom was scuttled. We didn’t get the update.”
Garr’s attention jumped to Sona before refocusing on Rigel. “My orders said one Network agent. Not two. Explain yourselves. Short version.”
