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  They run along our chests, backs, limbs, and faces. They stand out and declare to all other Hurkz who we are, what family, tribe, and country we come from. Unless, like me, you had been stolen as a child, slaved, and ended up with the markings tattooed over in the same black as your skin.

  Then all you ended up with was a series of incredibly painful memories, bad ink, and the subtle glow of what you had lost. That tattooing ruined the glands, ruined the ability to hide. Which is why it was done in the first place. Which is part of why I needed to be put down, according to Hurkz law. I was tribeless. I was nothing.

  And sure, a case could be made for that. I was a cripple. I couldn’t camouflage myself, I couldn’t belong to any family on Hurkz, I couldn’t be a part of what I came from anymore, and that embarrassed them. It scared them.

  Of course, I thought with a grim smile creasing my wide face, what nature gives technology can replicate. I hit the wrist controls on my thinsuit. The suit was as black as my skin, and specially coated. Where my markings were ruined, the suit would serve. The shadows in the room were dark, but not black enough to hide me. The suit helped. It quickly changed to match the bulkhead behind me as best it could. It only took a few needles to do. I felt them prick my skin and snarled briefly. The jolts of pain remind me of tattoo needles, every time.

  I pressed back against the wall and stayed as still as possible. The suit was one of a kind, and it worked by taking the minimal secretions of my marking glands (what was left of them), enhancing the effects, and acting much like my skin would have.

  The bulkhead door was cracked open, leaving where I was obvious to anyone who’d seen me running down the hall. I stood there, as hidden as possible, and waited. I saw their shadows before I saw them, and I tried to press myself closer to the wall. My back itched. I fought down the urge to rub it against the molding.

  One of them entered the room and glanced around quickly. He didn’t see me. My luck was holding. He waved the others in and they started to search the room, closer. Much closer and I would be spotted. Instead of waiting around, I ducked back out the door and started to run, turning off the suit’s camo effect. Drained the batteries, anyway.

  I padded down the corridor, trying to be as quiet as possible. I hit the emergency ladder hatch and yanked it open, but the damn panel stuck, and it clanged as it tore free. I shoved myself into the ladder area and started down, knowing the chase was back on.

  This was getting me nowhere. I exited two levels down and started to move off along a corridor, but knew I was wasting time. Look, if I ran and kept running maybe I could reach my ship first. But the space dock I’d parked in was probably the same one they had used, so that wouldn’t buy me much time. No matter how much more trapped I felt in a station, I wouldn’t really be freer in my ship.

  No, running only prolonged dealing, as my father liked to remind me. Not that he knew about this - Mom either. I didn’t want to bother them with it, and I didn’t want them to step in and deal with it for me. I was an adult. So the running had to stop.

  I stood near the ladder and waited. Sure enough, they were coming down after me. I grabbed the ankles of the Hurkz Reclaimer furthest down and dragged him out of the ladder well. His face hit the floor, my boot hit his head. When he didn’t raise it I kicked him aside, hoping the other three would be just as easy.

  Nope. The next guy had thought to look down before he came into grabbing range. Must’ve looked down before that, even, smart one. He dropped, free-falling, into sight and grabbed at the ladder to stop himself, already firing. Sonics flashed out into the hall. I dove for some sort of cover, finding the unconscious Hurkz on the floor adequate. His body quivered as the sonics hit. I grabbed his blaster and fired back.

  Somehow, possibly since I hadn’t done anything but run until this point, they weren’t expecting that. He went down hard, catching the waveform full in the chest. Too bad he hadn’t gotten out of the ladder well first. I heard him bump into things on his way down. It was only another four or so levels until the bottom. I’m sure he landed fine.

  I fired again, this time into the metal tube that held the ladder. I wasn’t trying to hit anyone, I just thought it might rattle them. Sadly, station rules worked against me. They could carry limited weapons as agents of their government. I was a no one and so I was unarmed, also held to station standards. Hardly fair.

  I thought it through. Right about now, Dad would be going in after them, bringing the fight right to their faces. Mom would sneak around them and blow them back to where they came from. Neither option suited me.

  The only way to truly stop them was to kill them. I didn’t want to kill them, truth be told. Killing them would only make it harder to get off the station, and would also manage to ensure that the next Reclaimer team sent after me would have more guys with bigger guns. It seemed that running might be my only good call in this. After I disabled them, of course.

  I fired into the ladder tube again, springing into the opening after my shot. The two Reclaimers were holding onto the ladder tightly, weathering the blasts and preparing some sort of answering shot.

  They really didn’t expect me to come in after them. I fired twice, straight up, and wrapped my arms around the ladder tightly as the sonics reverberated back down the tube at me. Damn, I hate sonics.

  I think, right then, they hated the sonics more than I did. At least that’s what the looks on their faces told me as they started to fall past me. I knew that the drop wouldn’t actually kill them. A leg broken, maybe. A concussion, bruising, and a general feeling of “that wasn’t pleasant” could all result, but death? Doubtful.

  I jumped back out of the ladder well and took off again, toward the hanger area. I passed all sorts of people, being in a much more populated area of the station. They looked at me. Part of those looks was just annoyance at someone running past them, shoving them when needed. It wasn’t polite, and I resisted the urge to apologize as I went, saving my breath for the running.

  The other looks, though, those I had gotten used to. Correction: I had tried to get used to them. The looks that spoke of an alien in their midst. The mistrust, the distaste, those looks of mild horror. We all hit space at some point, but we don’t get past a base us-versus-them mentality all too often.

  I took the turns and level changes of the station as quickly as I could until, slapping the access plate hard, I entered the hanger area that held my ship. My ship hung there, held in place by a good-sized clamp, waiting. I saw the Hurkz Reclaimer transport a few docks down. Smart guys, they parked close to me. As I approached my ship, feeling home free, I sighed. Above my ship, the dock light flashed red. Which meant that my ship was in lockdown.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course they had contacted the station authorities and had my ship held. Why wouldn’t they? Pure amateur move on my part, but it wasn’t the first today. I was sloppy and I knew it. No time for berating myself, though. There would be time later, once I got my ship free.

  Dock locking didn’t prevent me from entering the ship and I hurried aboard, scrambling down the thin hallway that made up the center of the ship, until I got to the cockpit. I turned the atmo cleaners up high and leaned back as the air grew warm and thick with humidity. My goggles came off, letting my eyes relax in the wet air. I sighed deeply and considered my options. Grinning, I thumbed the communications array.

  “This is Reclaimer Squad Seventeen,” I said in my best Hurkz. I didn’t know too much of the language, but Mom insisted I learn it when I was kid. Wanted me to know where I came from and all that.

  “Repeat, please,” came the Station’s reply.

  Bingo. They didn’t speak Hurkz. Why would they, it was rare that a Hurkz ship would stop here and rarer still that they wouldn’t speak a more common tongue.

  “Repeat, please,” they said again.

  “Reclaimer Squad Seventeen, requesting dock freedom,” I said in Hurkz.

  “Docked ship T194-MURT, please reply in a common field language.”


  I laughed under my breath and let out a loud rumble. Directly into the mic. I followed it quickly, though. “Reclaimer Squad Seventeen, request this ship release, for compound,” I said in thick, halting English.

  “T194-MURT, this is Dock Captain Byrne, your ship is being held by...”

  “Know why! We are ones who did,” I shouted. “And now need ship. Let free. Authority Hurkz government.”

  “Dock release in seventy seconds, sir,” they replied. This was perfect. They were just dumb enough to think we all sounded the same, and my scenario seemed reasonable enough that they could be lazy. These guys sat in a room all day just telling people how to back up; they aimed at lazy whenever they could reasonably get away with it. They didn’t even think to ask for a pass code.

  The clamp holding my ship released and I eased out of the dock, slowly. No sudden moves and no one will notice what you’re doing. I backed the ship out and turned it, also slowly.

  Once I was clear of the dock, I shifted my ship over to the side and aligned it with the Hurkz ship, tail to tail. I backed it up nice and close, looking exactly like what I said I was, before I fired the main thrusters and took off. The wash from my engine melted, bent and otherwise screwed up their propulsion system but good. The Dock Command would see it as some sort of stupid flight accident.

  At least at first. By the time they knew better, I would be off and slipping through space. I accelerated hard and thought about how I intended to clean this mess up without letting Mom and Dad know about it.

  Chapter 4– Meanwhile

  THE SCOUT SHIPS SAT docked comfortably in place. The pilots sat around and bragged, telling tales about how they had grabbed up each specimen right from under the noses of the locals. They told stories, to each other and anyone else who would stop, heightening their skill and determination to phenomenal levels.

  They cheered and drank and drank and cheered. They celebrated and knew that they had earned the right. Thanks to them, the fleet could go on and their race could survive.

  Meanwhile, in other parts of the fleet, scientists carefully analyzed the data brought back. They dissected new specimens and ran tests. Though they didn’t boast, working long hours, each one of them planned their nights out for later dates when they could sit and quietly tell stories of their work. They, too, wanted to strut and impress. But first, like the pilots had, they needed to prove themselves, yet again.

  Another world, another set of data to pore over. They worked as quickly as the pilots. Efficiency could not be overrated. Time was against them, as ever. Still, they did their work and passed it on, with only one word stamped on the cover of their reports: Acceptable.

  The reports landed on the desks of generals and field leaders. They took the baton of information and ran with it. They were well trained, each one hiding their impatience at useless delays.

  The fleet moved on with purpose.

  ***

  The planet Tenzil sat fat, blue and green in space. It rotated on its own axis, as well as rotating around its primary star. Tenzil whipped through space, just like millions of other planets did.

  On its surface, life varied. Different landmasses held different cultures, each a strain of the other, and all looking quite similar to someone from the outside who simply didn’t know better.

  Without understanding the nuances of Tenzil’s life forms, one could easily mistake it for a planet conquered by one life form at the expense of all others. Taking it further, from space, the cultures - each of which considered itself unique - looked so close to each other that the differences became local color.

  Wars hadn’t broken out on Tenzil in centuries, though each faction still held itself up as the true and right one. They worked together under a green sky, pregnant with ghostlike algae that floated through the upper winds, giving the planet a hot, humid atmosphere.

  When the scout ships first came down onto Tenzil, the locals dismissed them. While familiar with space travel and life on other systems, the entire existence of aliens still seemed, to most, like the concern (or ramblings) of a select few. A few factions even resorted to blaming neighboring factions for making the whole thing up in an effort to destabilize global politics.

  Into that mindset the fleet descended. Tenzil, to its credit, caught on quickly but still scoffed a bit. How do you, they said, thinking themselves smart, invade an entire planet? It was a question posed by the fleet itself once. But then they remembered that they weren’t invading: they were harvesting, and that was a different game altogether.

  The attack ships screamed down into the planet’s atmosphere, sending whorls and eddies of algae spiraling out of control. They rushed down - no warning or preamble given. Then they opened fire.

  The ships could outfly anything on Tenzil, and they knew it. They targeted defense positions across multiple land masses for simultaneous destruction. Before Tenzil knew what hit it, the fleet had laid waste to their defenses. It didn’t take long after that.

  Mountains were leveled, simply to see how fast they would crumble. Natives were gathered up and dissenters shot. Cities were razed to the ground as quickly as fields were set on fire. No one bothered to contact any of the governments on Tenzil, no one offered surrender as an option or even announced an intent. They effortlessly came down from the blackness of space and opened fire on anything that seemed worth firing on.

  Some of the attack was distraction. Some designed to negate any force Tenzil could muster. The pilots grinned in their ships, opening throttles wide as their engines bit air, and let themselves enjoy their work. They knew, though, that their destruction wasn’t the point of the exercise. The harvesting was.

  Two out of every three people on Tenzil found themselves being loaded aboard large transport ships and flown back to the body of the fleet. That third person in each statistical group only found themselves shot, crushed, burned or otherwise killed. If they had known what awaited the others, they might have even considered themselves the lucky ones.

  The ones who ended up on the transport ships were packed in like so much waste, crammed and shoved hard. They broke limbs and lost meager lunches when the acceleration hit, the transport ships lifting off toward the main fleet. At the other end they were dumped out onto wide floors, cold to the touch. Then they were herded and pushed, into processing plants. The sound of gears, the feel of searing heat, and the vibration of heavy machinery were the last things they remembered.

  Tenzil went dark within three days. The fleet stayed another two, cleaning up and ensuring they had gotten every life form worth getting into their processing plants. Satisfied, the fleet gave everyone two days off, knowing from their advance scouts that they could afford it.

  The fleet leaders also knew that such luxury would not always be the case. The deeper into the systems they went, the less time they would have. Word would spread, and they couldn’t stop it. They also couldn’t stop their trek or alter their path. They knew it as certainly as they knew that Tenzil’s unwilling sacrifice had ensured that the fleet would last a while longer.

  Before they left for good, they paused to give thanks to Tenzil for providing life for them. Solemnly, all forms of celebration ceased on order, and the entire fleet stopped to give thanks for their boon. Not one of them took it lightly.

  Hours after the thanks were given and the fleet had restarted, the advance scouts went off again, even as the longer-range scouts returned. The short-range scouts sought the next system, not even stopping to welcome the long-range scouts home. They launched and continued their trek across the galaxy. Soon enough, they reasoned, the time for celebration would come again.

  Chapter 5 - Jonah

  MY HAND RESTED lightly against the rough bark of a tree. I trailed fingers along the surface, letting the rough ridges implant their sense memory in my mind. I told myself I stopped here to feel that tree, to remember it. Not because I couldn’t run anymore.

  My right knee bitched at me, throbbing blindly. I had run a sprint into the woods, a few mil
es from the house, as part of my workout. Working off lunch, I told myself. Working off anger was the truth. I resented the hell out of being called. In the past I would’ve vented it, fought and railed against it. These days, I moved off into the woods and got my aggression out.

  Sometimes, though, my aggression got me instead. The sprint started fine, and I reveled in the force of my legs pumping under me. Then, as it did when pushed too hard, my knee buckled. I didn’t fall. I didn’t go down on one knee. I just limped, at speed, to a nearby tree.

  Which is where I stood. I wasn’t even winded. I drew a deep breath anyway, tasting the clean air, and then exhaled. I forced my lungs to deflate as much as possible, good spacer technique, and held myself there. No air, nothing for the body to work with. I held it, and then I held it some more. My chest started to burn, but my will was stronger than my flesh. I waited until I felt lightheaded, just the start of it, and then allowed myself to inhale again. Not deeply: normally.

  I had been out about three hours. Before I left, Shae and I talked for a while, quietly. We agreed that we would call Mills back and maybe work out some sort of advisory plan. We could suggest some people to replace us.

  My fingers worried at the bark unconsciously as I listed names in my head: Hendricks, Shaffer, Turk, Grayson, Tucker, Dansk, Glurt, Dugan, Po’Leen. All dead. All under my command at one time or another. Together we’d made the best insertion team anyone had seen.

  Each of them, after a time, got unlucky. Over the years they’d joined up, each one replacing another irreplaceable officer. Over the years, each had met the same fate. Fighting for something bigger than themselves, they’d fallen while under my command. Shae and I were the only ones left.

  It made me wary, some nights. I didn’t drag myself over coals for them - no nightmares of lost comrades for me - but I still felt their losses one by one. I counted them, on the bad nights, the way some men count sheep. Who was left, damn it all, to do this job? New kids, people I hadn’t met yet. It was that simple, and I forced smooth the rough edges of the truth that threatened to rankle.