Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

Hercules and Mambo exchanged glances. “The alien’s got a name now,” Hercules said in a mocking tone. “Maybe I’ll carve it into his forehead.”

“You swore, Hercules,” I said with more force than I intended. “Nobody touches K-Tor.” I wasn’t sure why I cared so much, but I did.

“You can’t make a deal with a Scythian‌—‌we’re at war, Noog,” Mambo said.

I felt my face getting hot. “I made the deal with Avalon, a human. You’re both Marines, and you will honor your word. Right?”

I realized too late that I was yelling at them. Not just yelling, but pacing up and down, waving my arms, delivering an all-in-their-personal-space dressing down worthy of Gunny. Hercules had a clenched jaw and Mambo dropped her sunglasses over her eyes.

“Right?” I repeated, still breathing hard and sweating even harder.

They both nodded. “Sure, Noog.” Mambo said.

“And my name is Tom,” I yelled back.

“Tom.” The voice was very faint, like someone was calling me from across a wide open field.

“Tom.” I startled awake, my head thrashing back and forth as I tried to remember where I was.

The familiar bulk of the Zeron console centered me. Back on the Fury , at my workstation. A puddle of drool had dried on the flat part of the console, and it felt like I had a keyboard imprinted on the side of my face.

“Tom, Madeline wants to see you,” Avalon said. I focused on her face. Her blue eyes still had that searching quality to them, but she was smiling.

“Gunny’s awake?”

“And asking for you. I’ve already taken the other two in to see her.” Her gaze lingered on the Zeron screen and I stood up to distract her. I’d spent most of the day preparing a data package we could send off to UEF Command about Avalon’s... condition. She looked at the screen and started laughing. “Looks like you’ve been sleepwriting.”

I followed her gaze. I had indeed fallen asleep on the keyboard. The screen was full of gibberish. Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll fix it later. Let’s go see Gunny.”

The sun was low and red on the horizon; I’d slept for hours. I had a sudden pang of indecision. Maybe I should have sent off the message to UEF, but this was the kind of thing that Gunny needed to know, especially since we’d agreed to let the alien‌—‌K-Tor‌—‌live. Maybe they’d want him as a specimen. And the baby, too. The political dimensions of this whole situation hurt my head. I needed Gunny to take it off my hands.

Mambo and Hercules were nowhere to be seen as Avalon led me through the compound to the medlab. Gunny was sitting up in bed. Her gray bob was a mess of finger-combed tangles, but she had color in her cheeks and she was alive. I smiled. “Gunny.”

“Corporal,” she said, a chill in her tone. My smile died and I instinctively came to attention. “I understand you made an agreement with this woman regarding my medical care.”

Avalon started for the door. “Maybe I’ll leave you two alone‌—‌”

“Stay, ma’am. I want to thank you for saving my life.”

“K-Tor is the real doctor,” Avalon said. “I’m more of a scientist, really. Geneticist by training.”

“Gunny,” I said, trying to put some urgency in my tone without alarming Avalon, “I need to speak with you.”

“Here’s the real doctor now,” Avalon said. K-Tor made some whirring sound behind me‌—‌probably a greeting‌—‌and I heard the slap of his bare feet on the tile.

Gunny’s eyes shifted over my shoulder. Her hand disappeared under the covers and reappeared holding a slim pistol. Mambo called it her “lady gun,” a five round old-school projectile weapon. Gunny fired right past me, so close I could feel the heat from the muzzle against my forearm. Again and again she fired until the weapon was empty. The shattering sound of the discharges deadened my hearing to a low hum.

I spun around. K-Tor was sprawled on the tile, leaking black blood everywhere, his bare torso stitched with five angry wounds. Avalon was on her knees, her mouth open in a scream, but all I could hear was the humming sound. A hand grabbed my collar, dragging me down until I was nose to nose with Gunny. Her sour breath washed over me and her growl barely penetrated my damaged hearing.

“Mission complete.”

In hindsight, I suppose Mambo and Hercules didn’t break their word to me. They didn’t pull the trigger that killed the alien.

K-Tor. His name was K-Tor, I reminded myself again.

Sure, Mambo gave Gunny the weapon, and Gunny never actually promised anything, so technically everyone had a clean conscience.

But I don’t live in a world of technicalities. I live in a world of actualities.

I could have rationalized what happened by saying that even if Gunny had died, the UEF would have sent another Eraser Unit to hunt the alien down. That’s probably true also.

It was dark when we left the planet’s surface. Mambo pushed the Gs harder than normal as we climbed like she couldn’t wait to get rid of the place. I wondered if she felt guilty about what had happened. I know I did.

However I turned it over in my head, I came back to the same place: I promised to keep K-Tor alive, and K-Tor was dead. That’s on me.

We paused in high orbit so Mambo could do her flight plan calcs to take us to the rendezvous point. Hercules was already asleep. Gunny was watching me.

“Had to be done, Tom,” she said.

I didn’t react to the fact that she’d used my actual name. Instead, the only thing I could think about was Avalon’s soundless scream.

“Course laid in, Gunny,” Mambo called out. “Our uplink is hot if you want to transmit now.”

“Tom,” Gunny said again.

Avalon’s scream was just on the edge of my hearing now, overpowering the hiss of the electronics around me and Hercules’ gentle snoring. At least she was still alive, I told myself. That was something.

“Corporal!” Gunny’s voice cut through the images in my head.

“Sorry, Gunny. What was that?”

“Do you have our Kill Report ready to transmit?”

“Just finishing it now, Gunny.” The Kill Report was a simple form. How many aliens killed, what planet, time and date. There was a space for amplifying details but no one ever used it. All anyone cared about was the body count. I loaded it into the transmit queue.

My message about Avalon and cross-species genetics was there already, complete with Zeron data files.

I deleted it.

“Kill Report ready to transmit, Gunny.”

Where did this story come from?

Honestly, it was my wife’s idea. Christine has eye rolled over my sci-fi obsession through more than a quarter-century of marriage, but she still reads every story I write‌—‌regardless of genre‌—‌and I love her for it. But at the oddest times, she’ll blurt out an idea and say, “You should write a story about that .” (I believe “The Epsilon Directive” idea came out of an episode of Vice .) When those moments strike, I just write the ideas down and let them cook for a while.

As for the writing part, I love taking tried and true sci-fi tropes and giving them a little twist to add some fun to the story. And really, isn’t everything better with a surprise ending?

How does this story fit with other things you’ve written?

I write sci-fi under my own name and modern-day thrillers with a career naval intelligence officer and friend, JR Olson. He does the plotting and I do the writing for novels with names like Weapons of Mass Deception , about nuclear terrorism, and Jihadi Apprentice , about homegrown radicalism.