Heat (4 page)

Tagen considered the matter, idly capturing a few images of the planet spinning below him (particularly of the synthetic glitter of what seemed to be very large cities in several places), and making records of some of the noise blasting across his audio channel. Let the Human Studies division sort it all out later. He only hoped it would be enough of a gesture to satisfy
vey
Venekus and his colleagues. The ion trail was his main concern now; he had no intention of turning this mission into a science-day field trip.

It could have been caused by a meteor, he knew, or be any falling chunk of rubble that decayed out of the orbiting mass of like wreckage, but (and he might as well admit the possibility), it could have been left in the wake of a stolen prison transport vessel.

Until now, Tagen had not really considered the possibility of E’Var’s survival. The prison ship had been a tremendously old one, and the Gates themselves were showing the evidence of time. Mid-Gate failures were becoming more common, much as the council might like to deny it. It was far easier to believe that E’Var had met with his well-deserved death in one fiery instant than to face the unpleasant prospect that a Fleet officer had, for whatever reason, aided him in his escape.

Looking at the dimly-etched ionic distortion, Tagen grimly realized that he was going to have to investigate Earth as though E’Var were really on it. Out of the hundreds of thousands of human life-forms walking around on Earth, Tagen was going to have to try and find one Jotan. On foot.

Damn it all, why had he ever joined the Fleet?

Oh yes. Because his father told him to. Well, as long as that was settled.

Tagen powered down for entry, tracking the faint smear of disrupted particles down through the layer of aurora and ozone, until it vanished under the sudden blast of Earth’s climate. He continued along the direction the trail had indicated, aiming for the surface and making his landing quick. It was broad daylight on this side of Earth, and even though the planet was not well-populated, that did not give him an open ticket to attract attention.

There was a vast forest below him, which in itself was significant. Most of Earth was covered with an eerie, blue ocean. That the ion trail seemed to lead to land was a coincidence that smacked heavily of deliberate steering. The forest was good cover for a predator like E’Var, too. It was spotted here and there with small outcroppings of human habitation, but not so much that one couldn’t travel undetected.

On foot, Tagen reminded himself sourly.

He found an empty place to touch down and then only sat there with the shift-shield on, invisible to the physical eye. He had never been alone in the field before and he hated the idea of leaving a Jotan vessel on an alien planet while he marched around the woods looking for a fugitive. From a purely mechanical standpoint, he knew it could be done. The ship’s power cells could support the prime computer systems and the shift-shield for up to five years, undisturbed. Provided his locator didn’t fail, or that he remembered where he parked if it did, Tagen had plenty of time in which to execute his investigation. There was nothing he could do but trust that no humans would come along and bump into it before he returned.

Hell, and that raised another problem. If E’Var was here, and if Tagen did take him into custody, how exactly was he supposed to find E’Var’s stolen ship and tow it back through the Gate to Jota? He couldn’t just leave the fool thing on Earth, if for no other reason than because it was Fleet property and they’d want it back. And there was no way Tagen’s star cruiser could drag a second ship up through Earth’s gravitational pull, even assuming that E’Var were amiable enough to simply tell him where it was. What did that leave? Well, he could blow it up. That would go over well back at Fleet Headquarters.

Ah, the glamorous life of a
sek’ta
. Just knowing that any decision he made would be the wrong one and everyone back home expected him to die anyway made his whole life worthwhile. He didn’t even need the extra sixty
crona
increase in pay. His work was its own reward.

Tagen strapped his pack to his waist, holstered his stunner and his plasma gun, took one last look around the ship’s interior, and then stepped out the airlock and onto an alien world.

He stopped right there, his hand still on the locking panel, and drew in a slow breath as though he could physically taste the temperature.

A cool planet, the Far-Reacher’s notes had said. Widely-divergent eco-systems, but generally quite cool.

Without moving from the airlock, Tagen pulled his pack off and looked closely at the contents. A full medical pack,
vey
Venekus had promised, and thank the gods, he had delivered. There were eighteen suppressants in a pouch strapped right to the lid of the pack. Eighteen. Surely the same overcompensation that had inspired the scientist to pack five doses of a sedative Tagen should not, in all likelihood, need to use. But it was nice to see it all the same. Tagen chewed one and then took a swallow from his canteen to wash the bitter taste from his mouth.

He hit the lock at last, and shut the ship away from any curious eyes. The sound of the door locking into place was the last indelible cue. He was on duty. It was time to represent.

A plan. That was what the name of Pahnee was famed for, after all, meticulous planning. And, gods knew, if Tagen could devise a plan to enable him to locate E’Var somewhere on all this Earth, he would earn a little of that reputation instead of borrowing it from his father. So. A plan.

First, the facts. A straight course along the ion trail would put whatever had left it somewhere in the area of Tagen’s own ship, give or take thirty kilometers. A Jotan could comfortably cross overland at a speed of eight kilometers an hour. Kanetus E’Var had a lead of five Jotan days, which translated roughly into three of Earth’s.

And now the assumptions. Tagen would assume first that E’Var was, in fact, on Earth. That would make his mission here slightly more bearable. Secondly, he would assume that Kane was on foot, and perhaps expecting pursuit. He would assume Kane could travel for an even hundred kilometers a day, forgoing sleep in favor of distance. It would be an extraordinary feat considering the current temperature, but it was remotely possible and so it gave Tagen a solid outside number on which to pin his expectations. So, beginning within thirty kilometers of Tagen’s position, and making phenomenal use of his three-day head start, the prisoner could be anywhere in a search area of two thousand seventy-two square kilometers.

Hm. All right, step back and try again.

At the outside, E’Var could be six hundred and sixty kilometers away, and he was probably not wandering aimlessly. In Tagen’s experience, men in the wild had a tendency to follow the sun. If E’Var had landed at night, he might be traveling east, pursuing the rising star he had first seen. If he had come during the later day, he might be headed west.

Tagen scowled as he hunkered down to sketch his figures in Earth’s dry soil. He’d hated math when he was a boy and he hated it now, but despite his great childhood conviction that he would never need to learn how to solve his schoolwork in the real world, here he was: A ship leaves High Court on Jota Prime at two of the bells traveling nine hundred kilometers an hour. If he maintains his speed and pilots the most direct course, what time will it be on Earth when he lands at these coordinates?

He was getting a headache. Already. Gods.

So, all right. It would be the middle of Earth’s night. So. In all likelihood, E’Var was aimed east and Tagen was three Earth days behind him. He would have to manage better than one hundred kilometers a day in order to overtake the prisoner, and he would have to do it on foot, on an alien world, in temperatures in excess of one hundred degrees.

As he moved into the woods under the blistering eye of Earth’s sun, Tagen found himself hoping he really did find E’Var somewhere on this miserable planet.

He’d hate to think he was having all this fun for nothing.

*

Kane woke to the sound of incessant screaming. Even before his eyes had opened, he reared up and balled a fist to knock whoever the fuck was responsible silent if not completely senseless. The movement brought out a flare of agony all down his back. He snarled out a curse and carefully sat up.

Earth’s sun had really done a number on his bare skin. His arms were stinging, red and shiny, and if the pain was any indication, so was his back and his face. It wasn’t a serious burn, he knew, but it was going to get that way soon if he didn’t find a better way of traveling than on foot.

He was inside the human’s shelter. Flimsy as it was, it was still protection from the brutal sun. He could even remember, very dimly, dragging the female in here with him. And there she was, lying on her back beside him and staring straight up into space. She wasn’t screaming.

But something sure as fuck was. Short, hoarse, relentless screaming, each one a spike straight to Kane’s brain. He crawled to the mouth of the shelter and looked out, shading his eyes against the brilliance of mid-day.

There was a bird on top of the table. A big, black bird, and it was shrieking like all hell.

There were no birds on Jota. Kane could remember a time when he’d thought that was a pity. One of Urak’s So-Quaal contacts kept a collection of birds, many of them from Earth, and as a young boy, Kane had been allowed to look at them while his father and the So-Quaal scientist talked. Some of them could even mimic speech. Over several of these visits, Kane had managed to teach one of them to say, “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” in So-Quaal. He still thought that was pretty funny and, despite the beating that it had resulted in once the So-Quaal found out about it and complained to his father, he thought Urak had, too.

Moving slowly so as not to spook the shrieker facing him now, Kane reached out and found a nice palm-sized stone. The bird saw him well enough, and even cocked its head to acknowledge him, but kept right on ripping the woods up with noise.

Kane bared his teeth in a hard smile and threw, his arm producing a shriek of its own as it cut through the air. The stone struck, shattering the bird’s breast, and it flopped over with a final cry, slapping its wings against the ground futilely until it died.

Kane grunted and lay back down beside his human. He was awake now and he supposed he should get up, but it was too damned hot to think about travel. Still, he had the female, and that was something. Heat would be on him again in an hour, but once he’d fucked it out of his system, it would probably be well on to evening and cool enough that it would not return until tomorrow. He could travel tonight and take the human with him.

Kane raised himself up on one elbow and looked his female over, thinking. If she could pilot the groundcar he saw outside, so much the better. Although he’d never had trouble finding humans in the woods when Urak had brought him here before, the blistering weather seemed to have driven them all away. If he was going to fill forty vials with Vahst, he needed to find some in greater numbers.

“Hi,” Kane said. It had been a while since he’d last spoken N’Glish, or any of the human languages for that matter, but he spoke it pretty well, and he knew that was the right word.

The female closed her eyes.

Ah well. He wasn’t keeping her for company’s sake.

Kane got up and went out of the shelter, picking up the dead bird and tossing it on top of the dead human male as he passed. He had left the cold-storage crate open, and he cursed himself for a fool because now all the ice was melted and there was grit and tree-needles in the water. Kane drank it anyway, relishing the way it sluiced down his throat and throughout his body. The crate’s actual contents, metal canisters containing human beverages, glinted enticingly at him but Kane ignored them. Previous experience told him they were likeliest to hold either toxic fermentations or concentrated sugar syrups. Water was what he needed now.

As an afterthought, Kane sucked up an extra mouthful and went back into the shelter. He knelt, turning the female to face him, and then put his mouth over hers and poured water into her. She dribbled most of it out, but swallowed at the end. That was a good sign.

“I need to eat,” Kane said, mostly to re-accustom himself to the language. “Where are you keeping your food?”

The human did not reply. She lay motionless, her eyes still shut against him. She hadn’t even wiped her mouth where she’d drooled.

She wasn’t sleeping, Kane was fairly sure of that. She was choosing to ignore him, escaping him the only way she could. He had a choice now. He could let her lie there and hide from him, or he could bring her out of it.

His first thought was to stand her up and give her a good slap. In his not-inconsiderable experience, humans responded best to pain. But as he ran his eyes over her bruised body, he realized that he appeared to have been pretty harsh with her. Heaping abuse on top of that might only push her further into her own mind. If he wanted to keep her, and if he expected her to do any groundcar-piloting in particular, it was time to show a little restraint.

Kane slipped his hands under her sides and pulled her up and onto his shoulder. She did not resist.

“I really don’t care what you do when I’m gone,” he told her as he took her out into the light. “But I need you here with me now. Behave yourself—”

Sudden warmth flowed down his chest and the smell of ammonia pierced the air. Kane gave the female a sour look, but she only stared slackly into space.

“Behave yourself,” he repeated darkly. “And you’ll live to see the back of me. Piss on me again—” He set her on the table and tried to slap the wet from his body. “—and I’ll carve you a new face to see me off by. Bitch,” he added in his own language, and stomped over to the cold-storage box to clean up.

There was no point in punishing her. She probably couldn’t help it. Probably. He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, at any rate. He needed to take care of her if she was going to get him through this rotten weather.