Overkill (34 page)

He realized that he could, by a small shift of his weight, smother them both to death. But he also realized that, regardless of the sense that made, he no longer wanted to.

He settled into the snow and, along with Kit, waited and hoped.

Ninety-five

I remembered that post-HTS shock felt like the Main Battle Tank of Hangovers, combined with lingering paralysis. But I didn’t remember that it smelled this bad.

I opened my eyes and saw that a tangled, brown rug covered me. Being a GI, I said what we usually do when confronted with the unknown, “What the fuck?”

It came out through my blubbery lips, “Uf ta fup?”

“Parker? Oh, God! Parker!”

I could barely feel Kit as she brought her face up alongside mine, and squinted into my eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Fupped. Fursty.”

Kit sobbed, and hugged me, which I presumed meant that I was off the hook for my outburst on the lifeboat deck about a million years earlier.

The enormous brown rug that was smothering us both moved and I realized that it was the grezzen, which accounted for the smell.

When the grezzen had backed off, and sat watching Kit and me, I saw that I was lying propped against the wrecked hull of the
Midway
, right where I had been the last thing I remembered.

Post-HTS leaves you immobile for maybe an hour, then you’re, as the medics say, ambulatory. Frostbitten, grumpy, and dehydrated maybe, but ambulatory. And so insanely thirsty that you think you have a mouth full of cotton balls.

Kit stepped away, then returned with an alloy bottle, from which she poured water onto a gauze pad, then moistened my lips with it.

“More.”

Kit laid her palm on my chest. “Slow. You’ll just puke it out. How’d you get down? Lifeboat?”

I blinked to clear my bleary eyes, then managed to turn my head side to side and look around. The snow to my left and right and to my front had been trampled and melted by eleven tons and six legs of grezzen. But all that I saw was packed snow.

I said, “Ares dack?”

Ninety-six

The grezzen watched as Kit knelt beside Parker. Her actions had reanimated Parker. That was something no grezzen could do for another. He supposed that, with the storm’s abatement, he should be planning how to proceed against Cutler. And against the two humans in front of him.

He reached out casually, as if he might find Cutler.

And he was shocked when he felt another intelligence, neither Jazen nor Kit, close by.

And then it began to rain.

Ninety-seven

“Paugh!” I spit out the soaked gauze that Kit held to my lips. The damned water tasted like kerosene. In fact, everything tasted, no, smelled, like kerosene. The stuff came cascading down out of the clearing sky like a waterfall, drenching Kit and the grezzen and me and pattering down into the snow all around us.

Trueborns bragged a lot about Earth weather. How convenient to never mention the kerosene storms.

Kit leapt up, then back, and stared up at the hull behind me through her snow goggles. “What the hell are you doing?”

I twisted around until I plopped on my back into the snow, just as the kerosene rain stopped.

Thirty feet up the hull it was breached, widely enough to drive a Kodiak through. On a girder that twisted out of the breach like a pulpit stood One-eyed Jack, leaning out above us and laughing his ass off. In one hand he held a dripping utility hose, like the one I had unreeled in the cargo bay, then used to wash puke and crap off the grezzen. In the other hand Jack held his cigarette lighter, its flame flickering in the newly-still air.

Kit drew a pistol from beneath her parka, and aimed it up at Jack two-handed. “Back off with that lighter, asshole!”

Jack called down to her, “Settle down, cutie. Any of you move, or you shoot me, I drop the lighter, and you all fry.”

Unfortunately, this all made sense to me. Because I had HSTd him, Jack had recovered while I was out. He had gone exploring inside the wreck. When he returned and saw that Kit and the grezzen had stolen his prize, Jack wanted me back. But he had learned that he couldn’t shoot a grezzen, and that he didn’t even want to get close to one. So he hooked up a hose and an auxiliary pump from the cargo bay to a kerosene bladder, then dragged the hose up to the hole in the hull that overlooked us. Then he made us all into human fire bombs, for which he could light the fuse any time he wanted to.

I tried to get up, and succeeded only in flopping onto my side in the snow.

Kit, kerosene dripping off her parka’s cuffs, flexed her fingers on her pistol’s grip. But she kept it trained on Jack. “What the hell do you want?”

“Your boyfriend. I got no beef with you or your big pony. Just toss your gun out into the snow, and you can mount up and ride back the way you came.”

In the distance, I heard the whistle of approaching tilt wings.

Kit jerked her head in the direction of the engine sound. “Rescue, inbound. All I have to do is stand here. When those ships get here, you’re done.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so. This is a shipwreck. I can make you three part of an accidental secondary fire. Or you and the animal can leave.” He flicked his eyes to the approaching tilt wings, barely visible on the horizon.

Kit said, “Look, no matter what you do with me and Jazen, don’t hurt the animal. You have no idea how important he is.”

Jack threw back his head and laughed. “This is like a fuckin’ game show. If your boyfriend and your dog are hangin’ off a cliff, and you can only save one, which one would it be?”

It wouldn’t be Jack. I struggled again and got nowhere. This was my reward for saving an asshole’s life.

I twisted my head toward the tilt wings. They were too distant to matter.

Knowing Jack, it was all just a game. In a few more seconds, he would drop the lighter and kill us all, no matter which choice Kit made.

Ninety-eight

The grezzen felt the human named Jack and realized that he had no intention of letting either Kit or Jazen live. As for himself, it was likely that if he leapt aside suddenly, he could escape the flames. But Jazen was immobile. He would certainly die, and Kit almost as certainly. And in any event Jack intended to kill Jazen, then trade his body for food and things that humans valued.

It would be the pragmatic act of a grezzen to leap aside and save himself. But at some point in his journey the grezzen had become something else, at least something else in the way that he thought. Not a human, certainly. But no longer simply an arrogant, self-centered loner.

The grezzen’s mother would have given herself up for him, but for no other being in the world. Kit or Jazen or Halder or so many others of these peculiar little creatures would sacrifice themselves for another, even for the likes of him.

He could never return to the simplicity of the life he had left behind, even if he could return there physically. And somehow surviving for the purposes of killing Cutler, and of preserving a lie, for that is what the concealment of his race’s true nature truly was, no longer seemed necessary. He had grown to trust that humans like Kit would attend to Cutler and to the defense of grezzenkind. Not because Kit was a grezzen, obviously, and not because it would profit her. But because it was right.

There was really only one right thing left to do.

He gathered himself, imperceptibly, while he measured the distance between his forepaws and the upraised foreclaw of Jack that held the small fire.

Then he sprang.

Jack had barely time to widen his eyes before the grezzen swatted the flame from him. It skittered back inside the ship, away from Kit and Jazen.

In the same instant, the grezzen’s jaws closed on Jack’s torso. The man screamed as his rib cage snapped and his chest ruptured..

As the grezzen felt life drain from the man, he felt him wonder, “What the fuck?”

And then, as the grezzen came to rest within the hull of the
Midway,
the kerosene that soaked him from nose to tail burst into flame.

Ninety-nine

Six days after the tilt wings picked us up and medevaced us to a place called Fairbanks, I lay in a chaise on a beach, watching the warm sun rise out of a glass sea as blue as Kit’s eyes. I hadn’t noticed much more about the scenery, because I spent most of my time watching Kit.

She, in turn, spent most of our time together in something called a bikini, and looked magnificent. The rest of our time together she spent out of the bikini, and looked even better.

She came out from the house, sat in the sand alongside me, and handed me coffee. “How are the toes this morning?”

“Better every day. Ribs?”

She leaned across me, kissed my forehead, and I smelled flowers. She asked, “Did I complain last night?”

I smiled, sat up, sipped my coffee, then frowned.

The trouble with perfect worlds is that they’re surrounded by real ones. Kit’s parents’ winter place—she was in fact richer even than most Trueborns—actually had garden walls and security that kept the world, and in particular bounty hunters, out.

But I had decided that today I would get real. She only knew that Jack was some psychopathic jerk who had tried to kill me, and I let her keep thinking that. She didn’t know that he had every legal right in the world to do it. I would level with her. Then I would leave for Mousetrap and a new life.

Before I could speak, she took both of my hands in hers and looked into my eyes. “Parker, I can’t go on like this. After we got to Fairbanks, the people I work for found something out about you.”

Crap. Orion always said it was better to admit a lie than be caught in one. “I should have told you.” I squeezed her hands. “Kit, please—”

Behind us I heard a tilt wing whistle, low and with the props at landing pitch.

We turned, visoring our hands up, as it shot over the house roof, hovered, and dropped onto the beach forty feet from us. The rear ramp flicked down, and a guy in civvies, machine pistol drawn, sprang down into the landing sandstorm.

Bounty hunter! I should have anticipated that the Trueborn variety would have expensive ways of getting over walls.

I jumped in front of Kit and knocked her flat on the beach while I knelt and scooped a fistful of sand. The first rule of hand to hand combat is get a weapon. And anything can be a weapon.

She spit out sand. “Parker! It’s just my boss.”

Actually, it was just her boss’s security detail.

I dropped the sand.

The tilt wing killed its engines, and when the sand stopped flying, avery old,wrinkled man floated down the rear ramp on a C-drive scooter, then slid across the sand to us. Kit stood, brushed off sand, then looked from him to me. “Howard, this is Jazen Parker.”

He stared at me through old-fashioned glasses for longer than he needed to. “Obviously.” He extended a bony hand, and I shook it. “You have no idea what a pleasure this is.”

Ten minutes later the three of us sat around a table on the house veranda sipping coffee while the breeze off the sea freshened.

Howard frowned. “The only lives lost in the
Midway
crash were the marine platoon and Ted Halder’s. That is miraculous. I knew Ted, so it will never be miraculous to me, and certainly not to the families of those marines. But it is miraculous nonetheless. Ted will be decorated posthumously, about which he wouldn’t care. The
Midway
’s duties will be assumed by a
Nimitz
class cruiser that will be rechristened HUS
Theodore Halder
. That would please Ted mightily.”

Kit said, “There was another casualty.”

Howard frowned. “Ah, yes. Jackson Aldecott Poge. Licensed Independent Fugitive Detention Agent. Survived the crash, but perished in the subsequent storm. Regrettable accident. Almost as regrettable as the indictment lodged yesterday against Bartram Cutler. I would describe the government’s relationship with Mr. Cutler as one of unfinished business. Your friend the grezzen certainly sees it that way.”

I said, “Mr. Hibble,”—Apparently Howard had a rank, but preferred not to use it—“What about the grezzen?”

“The vets in our shop are taking credit for his recovery. But I think we all knew from the start of treatment that it would’ve taken more than a few gallons of kerosene and a little singed fur to keep a grezzen down.” Howard Hibble unwrapped a nicotine lollipop and sucked it, then he said, “He appeared before an expedited ISPA hearing panel yesterday.”

I winced. “Did he do very well?”

Howard shrugged. “Every politician in Washington thinks they read minds. A witness who actually can will always do well.”

I asked, “Now what?”

“We’ve offered him a return ticket home on us. In more comfortable accommodations. Or in the alternative, a position with our organization. He’s mulling it over. Which brings me to the purpose of my visit—”

I leaned forward, and looked from Howard to Kit. “I gather you’ve found out that I’m—” I swallowed, “An Illegal.”

Howard said, “You mean because you were born on Yavet without a permit?”

I nodded. “That’s what an Illegal is.” Obviously.

Howard said, “Despicable law.”

“But it
is
the law. Even here.” I turned to Kit, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just—”

Howard raised his palm. “Yes, that’s what the Full Faith and credit Clause of the Human Union Charter says. The Charter also says that a child born to Trueborn parents is a Trueborn regardless of physical delivery venue. There isn’t, never has been, and never will be, a bounty on Trueborns.”

I straightened in my chair. “How nice for Trueborns. Not for the rest of us. You don’t understand. I have no idea who my parents are.”

Howard reached into his pocket, then slid a chip across the table to me. “But I do. Those are the results of a DNA match that was run from samples gathered when your frostbite was treated. Not that I need them. You look more like your father than he did at

your age.”

My jaw slackened and I shook my head. “No. That’s impossible.”