Alien Taste (21 page)

The man threw back his head and howled, a deep-chest wolf howl that lifted all of Rennie's hair on end. He had had an uncle that could do what the family thought was a good wolf howl. It frightened
all the children. It was a pale, thin thing compared to this—this sound of misery.

“I should be running with litter mates, aunts and uncles, cubs all around and underfoot. I should be running with my mate, watching her grow fat with our cubs. We would howl together and sleep in the sunshine, our bellies full, and our noses tucked under our tails. I shouldn't be here, running alone, hiding from evil among the dead of the petty brothers. I damn Prime for what he did to me, as you will damn me if you take my help.”

“Please,” Rennie whispered. “I beg you.”

The man moved forward on all fours, flowing over the dead horse until his face almost touched Rennie's. “Don't beg. Not for this. This is something to be feared. Say yes, and I'll curse you with my help. Say no, and I'll end your misery with your own weapon.”

“Yes, I want your help.”

The man crouched there, his gleaming dog-eyes bright, and finally he nodded. The man undid a canteen and held it to Rennie's lips, letting him drink all he could. Food followed, obviously stolen from the dead. When Rennie had eaten and drunk, the man pulled out a slender glass tube with a long needle at the end. He stripped off the coat, tied a tourniquet around his upper arm, and then slid the needle into his arm. The glass tube filled with blood. The man put the tube in his mouth, clenching it between his teeth as he untied the tourniquet from his own arm and tightened it around Rennie's.

“Make a fist,” the stranger commanded. After Rennie complied, the man sat still, looking down at the wounded soldier with unreadable eyes.

“I don't want to die.”

“Someday you might.”

“I'm only twenty-three. I want to live to see my son grow up. I want to live to see my grandchildren and their children. I want to live to see the next century. I don't want to die for a long long time.”

“If you survive tonight,” The needle slid home, “you won't.”

 

The one known as Prime knew he was going to die. The sled's engine screamed under full throttle, but still Hex gained. Somehow he had been discovered. During his childhood, his training, and the long space flight to this planet, he pretended to be part of the collective mind. He kept hidden that he could stand apart, could see the evil of his father's race, could hate it with a passion, and could conceive and carry out acts of sabotage.

Yet Hex now knew the truth. Prime couldn't remember how. All his recent memories had holes burned through them with the laser rifle. He had gotten away, but the sled's display showed that Hex would catch him soon. Any tactics he had were tattered, almost beyond even recalling them. What had he planned to do? Had he succeeded?

He remembered suddenly that he had helped to create a breeder, almost turned back, and then recalled that he left a bomb on the scout ship to kill the native female and the unborn child. Had it gone off? Had Hex stopped the bomb's countdown?

The only thing certain was he was going to die. He was unarmed and Hex had the laser rifle. He scanned the sled, hoping for any chance to prolong his battle. In a bin beside the seat was a delivery pistol and two score darts, needing only genetic material to make them complete. He nearly tossed them aside as useless. The laser rifle had twice the range. The damage from the darts was easily healed.

Then he stopped, stared at it, sick at the very idea even as he recognized it as his only hope.

He could inject random native life forms with his genetic materials. True they would most likely die than be converted, thus the whole need for a breeder. But if he could make just one Get, Hex could never track it down, not lost among the thousand other creatures in the area.

He had promised himself he'd never spawn himself onto another creature, destroy a viable life to proliferate his own. But if he died, who would stop Hex?

Hating himself, he filled the darts with his blood. He scanned for the natives that Hex had found to impregnate with the breeder, but his luck failed him. All he could find was a pack of four-legged predators, gathered around a kill. Hex was only minutes behind. They would have to do.

 

Coyote ran, ran howling. Death was in the air. It tore the air. It screamed like hawks. It stung like bees. It was death. Run. Run. Lay panting. Lick the wound. Death was all around. Sick here. Dying there. Death in his stomach, heaving up. The pack was dead. Mourn, mourn the pack!

 

Rennie reached out and touched Hellena and passed her the message of:
We can't all move in, or he'll sense us coming. Let me get close, nail him once good, and then you can move in to hold off the others.

She nodded and replied:
The sooner we finish, the happier I'll be. This slashing our own makes me feel like Ontongard.

Me too,
he admitted and broke the contact.

He stalked forward silently. He almost made it, but he'd gotten too focused, and the FBI agent's
sudden gasp caught him off guard. Instinctively he turned, aiming the shotgun, and pulling the trigger. Even as the shotgun went off, he swore at himself. She wasn't to be hurt if possible.

But the kid took the bullet. He had been moving even as Rennie aimed, and the blast caught him square in the chest. It tumbled him away and Rennie followed, working the next cartridge into the chamber. There! He had started the killing. Now to make it as quick and as painless as possible. The boy was on his hands and knees, possibly with broken ribs, gasping for breath. Rennie sensed the boy reading him, and saw the knowledge of the execution register in the kid's eyes.

Rennie aimed the shotgun again, hating himself. Since the kid had on a flak jacket, it was going to have to be a head shot, right into those eyes that looked like Hellena's, that smile that had flashed so easily just two minutes before.
To save Earth,
he told himself,
to save all the worlds beyond.

The partner was suddenly behind him, with a pistol pressed against Rennie's head. “Drop it! Drop it or I'll blow your brains out.”

But the kid knew they had come to kill him. It was plain to the Pack that he knew and that it terrified him, even as he begged his partner to back down. The boy raised dark eyes to Rennie, and mentally pleaded.
Don't tell him the truth. Let him believe me. Don't let him force you into killing him.

Did the boy know that he was truly speaking to them? Was this a ploy? To what end, except to save the man's life? He asked nothing for himself, seemed to expect nothing for himself. Rennie stood staring down at the kid, unsure if the boy was as noble as he seemed, or if he was only very skillful at manipulation.

The pistol to Rennie's head dropped, and a moment later they had the partner stripped and neutralized. The kid was still on the ground, his breathing coming easier now, but the subsonic messages of terror still vibrated up and down the Pack's spine. Rennie could hear the Pack's confusion.
This is the monster? This cub? This has to be one of our lost Get, not the monster.

Bear, of course, pushed the issue to a head. “He's the one, isn't he?”

How am I to know?
he snapped at Bear then shrugged. The smell of blood was coming from the kid. Rennie got him up, the flak jacket open, and wet his fingertips in the kid's blood.

Testing blood from an Ontongard was like sticking a thistle into your mouth. Pack blood tasted like piss and vinegar, bearable, but it bristled and complained at being sampled. Rennie expected something worse than a thistle. A monster should taste nasty. The sharpness of the Pack was in the kid's blood, but it was mellowed, blended, softened. Unlike the jagged broken jumble of DNA that was the Pack's signature, the kid's DNA was a seamless work of art. Human and alien interlocked perfectly. There was no doubt; he was made by an ovipositor.

“He's the one.”

Rennie licked the blood from his lips, remembering suddenly the raven-haired girl that was the kid's mother. It explained the boy's good looks and dark eyes regarding Rennie with the same fear as the boy's mother.
Have we focused so much on the father that we missed the influence of the mother?

Rennie tasted again the perfect blend of human and alien, and checked the boy's maturity. While not a man, the kid was past puberty, a teenager, able to breed, probably able for countless years. If he was
the breeding monster they thought of him as, where were the children? All the files and records claimed he was just barely legal age, an upstanding citizen with no rape charges, no paternity suits, no garnered wages to support an unwed mother, no wife, no charges on his credit card to even indicate a girlfriend. How could he be the monster unstoppable breeder if he didn't even have sex?

Coyote had found Rennie dying on the battlefield. Coyote had made him an undying slave, who could be controlled like a puppet on its master's whim. Coyote had sent him out to kill a monster, and he had gone willing. But if Rennie wanted to keep hold of his sliver of humanity, he couldn't do this.

 

Prime stood in the doorway, eyeing the machine that was contained in the room, that took up the room, was the room. He wished he could just smash it.

Just one! Just one of the hated father race born on this machine could take over this world. All of its seed would be viable. It would spread itself into the native livestock, reproducing hundreds and thousands of times a year. Within its life span it would replace everything that lived. Slower by far than the invasion force Prime had already stopped, but inevitable.

But he couldn't—

—blackness, lost memories—

Prime was running. He had the key programmed and he merely had to hit the row's master lock as he went. Over his link he could hear the countdown for the launch of the scout ship: 88, 89. He slotted the key, waited for the confirm, jerked out the key and ran to the next master lock: 90, 91. He had to get them all: 92. He tripped, almost fell and caught
himself on the #1 sleeping unit. The Ontongard inside lay waiting for its wakeup call on the new world. Prime glanced down the row, stretching into dimness. Eight more. He—

—blackness, lost memories—

—he finished the security hack. Turning, he took the impregnation tip out of stasis. Hex's genetic sample floated inside. He slotted the tip into the disposal and flushed it clean. Hurriedly, he flipped it over, jabbed the extractor into his arm vein, wincing at the sharp pain. Once the tip was full, he quickly replaced it into stasis and backtracked through the security hack. He'd have a minute to clear the room, and then security would be reestablished, his visit neatly deleted.

It was a horrible waste of time. He probably would be finished before Hex found a suitable life form, captured an intact female, and brought her back to the scout ship. Even if he wasn't, there would be many chances to kill Hex's fetus before it was born. But he had to plan for the worst case. If things went wrong, a child might be born and let loose on the world. So he used his own mutated genetic material. If everything went wrong, then maybe the child would be a rebel like his father.

But Prime doubted it. The Ovipositor would probably weed out his mutation, reverting his child to what he would have been—one of them. Back on the bridge, he—

—blackness, lost memories—

“—look at what they were defending themselves with.” Hex hooted with laughter, holding out short wooden shafts with tips of stone. “I couldn't get the setting right on the stunner and killed most of them, and the rest were male. I got only one female, but that's all we need for now.”

The female seemed small, light-boned, motionless, like a bird killed on the wing. Her hair was long and black, glossy under the ship's lights. Her eyes were half open, exposing an exotic eye of white outer ring and a center nearly as black as Prime's. In proportion and shape, she was not much different than his mother's race. Perhaps this was why he found her weirdly beautiful.

So this will be the mother of my child,
he thought then caught himself. He must not let his guard slip around Hex. One stray thought, caught and noticed by Hex, would spell the doom to—

—blackness, lost memories—

Hex swung the Ovipositor over the struggling female. “Stun her again or I won't be able to do the insert.”

Prime raised the stunner, thought about upping the power to “accidentally” kill the woman, then realized he still needed Hex busy with this.
I'm so sorry, little female.

There was a crack and flare of the stunner and the woman went limp. Hex nodded, guiding the needle end of the Ovipositor over her bare stomach—

 

Ukiah bolted upward with a shout. He was in his bed, not in his bathroom. It was daylight out. He found himself clutching his stomach, unable to erase the image of the long needle out of his mind. It was memory, a memory, he chanted, of a time long ago. He looked about the room, trying to fill his vision center with something else. The braided rug on the floor. The coffee can on his nightstand. Max standing at the foot of the bed, looking angry and worried in equal parts.