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

The alien was about my height and had striking translucent brown eyes that swept over Gunny and me with an intensity that bespoke intelligence. His skin had a leathery quality to it, sort of like an old football, and a pale scar ran down the right side of his head bisecting one of his earholes. He stepped out from behind Avalon and met Gunny’s gaze without hesitation.

“I am K-Tor.” He had a translator implant embedded in his left jawline which gave his voice a mechanical quality.

“I don’t care,” Gunny replied. “I’m here to take you away.”

“You are here to‌—‌” the translator glitched and a snatch of his whirring chirpy language sneaked in. “Kill me,” he finished.

If Gunny had stared at me like that, I’d already be dead.

“I have,” the alien continued in a halting mechanical voice. “Sanctuary. Here.”

“There is no sanctuary for killers. Our people are at war.” Gunny bit off the words in the air like a snapping dog.

Avalon stepped between them. She pressed her hand against K-Tor’s broad leathery chest and whispered up to him in what sounded like Scythian. I shot a look at Gunny, but she was still locked in a staring contest with the alien. K-Tor stepped back and Avalon turned to Gunny with a patient smile.

“You have your answer, Madeline.” The use of her first name shocked Gunny into blinking. Avalon’s smile widened. “This being is under the protection of The Society. He means you no harm and we are as far from inhabited space as we can be. I suggest you leave us in peace.”

I’d never actually seen Gunny back down before, but it happened. She smiled‌—‌an actual smile, not her normal curled lip snarl‌—‌and extended her hand to Avalon. “Maybe you’re right, ma’am.”

“Peace be upon you, Madeline.”

Gunny didn’t say anything until we were back in low orbit. She just stared out the viewport at the brown and green planet surface.

“No,” she said after three orbits of silence.

Hercules and I exchanged glances. “No, what?” he said.

“We’re here to do a job and we’re not leaving until it’s finished.”

“But they’re a religious group,” I said. “What about collateral damage?”

Gunny iced me with a glare. “You just mind your sensors and make sure that thing doesn’t try to make a run for it, Noog. I’ll handle the rest.”

I retreated to my workstation to set up a watch on the Scythian. K-Tor, I reminded myself. It was strange for me. I’d never met a Scythian before and now I’d seen one in the flesh, without his battle armor even. And he looked... human. That was ridiculous, of course. Scythians had a completely different genetic structure than us, didn’t reproduce the way we did, and lived in asexual communes‌—‌when they weren’t trying to destroy the human race. They were able to grow armor, for Christ’s sake. We had nothing in common with these aliens.

Still, I had a hard time getting K-Tor’s image out of my head.

The Zeron chirped as it locked onto the Scythian life sign. A second alien trace ghosted next to the first, then disappeared. I muttered an oath and punched up a calibration sequence. I wanted my sensors working perfectly for whatever Gunny was planning.

The presence of humans voluntarily shielding a Scythian was not something we’d seen before. At this point in the war, we were mostly hunting pairs or lone-wolf aliens. These holdouts were always hard-core fighters with nothing to lose. They knew we were coming in hot and they responded in kind. The battles were short, spectacular, and very, very messy. I’d only been on a handful of kill missions when we needed to separate humans from aliens. In those cases, I tracked the Scythian targets from a safe distance while Hercules and Gunny did the honors.

“You’re going in with me and Herc,” Gunny said. I wasn’t surprised, but the news settled like a stone in my stomach all the same. I acknowledged the order and checked the status of the calibration. One Scythian trace, nice and sharp, glowed brightly on the screen.

We approached The Society compound on foot an hour before dawn. Mambo had parked the ship in a gully half a klick back, waiting for our call.

The landscape was a mix of sand and sparse, waist-high scrub brush through which we moved at a fast trot toward our target. Sensors showed all six life forms stationary inside the compound, presumably sleeping. Gunny was not a complex person and neither was her plan: breach the compound, kill the alien, and beat feet. I was there to lead the assassins to the single target by the most direct route.

Gunny was on point and she slowed as the walls of the compound grew out of the landscape. She let us catch up, her breath a slight rasp in the darkness. “Alright, Noog, tell me where our target is hiding.”

Maybe it was the nervous energy of being on a kill mission, or maybe the nighttime run, but I was shaking. I detached the handheld sensor from my belt, but my armored gloves made my fingers feel like I was wearing metal sausages. The screen glowed and I saw the alien trace. Then a second one ghosted next to it.

“Dammit!” I tapped the screen. Too hard. The device fumbled off my glove and fell in the dirt. I dropped to my knees below the brush line to find the sensor. It was right next to my foot. And only one alien trace was showing on the screen. I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached for it.

Out of my peripheral vision, something moved in the dark. I yelped and scooted back, falling on my ass. The heads-up infrared display in my visor was clear, but I knew I had seen something move.

Gunny dropped to all fours next to me, her visor sweeping across the pitch blackness. She must have come to the same conclusion about the IR as I had because she flipped on the light on top of her helmet.

Imagine a scorpion the size of dog. The creature’s exterior was the mottled color of the sand, but it had raised itself into what looked to me like a fighting stance. Behind the animal, a flurry of miniature scorpion copies swarmed. A violent hiss filled the air and a barbed tail waved over its head like a harpoon. The whole world seemed to slow down for me as the tail stabbed down. It glanced off the armor on my thigh, leaving a deep gouge in the matte-black composite.

Gunny stepped in front of me. “Get him outta here, Herc!”

I felt myself being lifted; I was above the brush line again and stars studded the sky overhead. Pulses of energy flashed under the canopy, then Gunny popped up and she was sprinting after us. “Move!” she yelled.

I saw Gunny do a stutter-step and drop back into the brush. More flashes of pulsed energy, then she was up again and running toward us.

We didn’t stop until we were into the cleared area outside the compound. Gunny and Hercules knelt, weapons raised, ready to blow away whatever came out of the brush.

Nothing stirred.

We stayed that way for a full five minutes. I was listening so hard I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing.

“Noog?”

“Yeah, Gunny?”

“Check to see if our alien friend heard all that racket.” I checked the sensor readout. None of the occupants of the compound had moved.

“I think we’re good, Gunny.”

She lowered her weapon and stood. “All right, gentlemen, let’s complete our mission.”

Then she fell flat on her face.

Hercules got to Gunny first and rolled her over. I snapped on my helmet light. Our squad leader’s eyes were wide open, the muscles of her face rigid. Her pupils did not respond to the light. Hercules ran his hands over the armor on her legs. “She must have been bitten by that thing,” he said. “Oh no.” He pulled his hand from behind her right knee and it came away dark with blood. That’s the one chink in a Marine’s armor‌—‌to allow us to kneel.