___
I T WAS WEIRD HAVING the house all to himself again, after getting used to Sarah and her alien beau being around 24/7. Gary hardly knew what to do with himself.
He didn't want to work on the ship without Rei—and anyway, he had a feeling they were running up against the limits of what they could do with the tools they had. He'd machined new parts to replace as many as possible of the damaged ones, but some of those materials were things he'd never seen before, didn't even know what they were.
He thought Rei was coming around to the same decision Gary had reached awhile back, that they couldn't fix the ship using what they had to work with.
Gary wasn't sure how he felt about that. He liked the alien kid, and more importantly, the kid made Sarah happy. The poor girl hadn't given half a thought to her own happiness in longer than Gary wanted to think about. Rei made her happier than Gary had seen her in years.
But he had to think about her future, and what kind of future was there for her with a guy who could never go out in public except once a year, who they had to keep hidden all the time? Gary didn't mind—hell, he'd do anything if it meant keeping his little girl happy—but it didn't seem like much of a life for either of them.
Still, Sarah was an adult, and if being with Rei made her light up like it did, who was he to judge?
And it was awfully quiet with both of them gone.
He drifted around the house after they left, did some dishes, put out the bowl of candy in case any kids came by (they didn't get many trick-or-treaters, but a few of the neighbors had little ones and at least one of them usually stopped in). He'd finished machining the bracket for Rei's ship and checked to make sure it fit. He felt like he should take the opportunity to work on one of his own projects, but everything seemed dull compared to fixing an alien spaceship.
He was idly channel-surfing, looking for something better than game shows and old movies he'd already seen, when there was a brisk knock on the front door—not the kitchen door, which meant city folks, not neighbors. Gary levered himself off the couch, grabbed one walking stick (didn't really need both in the house) and limped over to answer it.
It had grown dark outside, a mist settling around the yard lights. A woman stood on the porch under the light bulb that he'd left on for trick-or-treaters. She was a few years older than Sarah, with thick dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a badge held up where he could see it.
"Gary Metzger?"
"Yes, ma'am. And you are?" He kept the door cracked halfway where he could shut it fast if he needed to. There was a dark sedan parked behind her in the driveway, and a man leaning on it. Looked like just the two of them.
"Agent Anita Pradhan, Homeland Security. Do you have a few minutes, sir?"
"My show's about to come on," Gary hedged.
"This will only take a moment. I need to ask you some questions. May I come in?"
"What's this about? Am I in some kind of trouble?" He tried to sound baffled, playing "dumb farmer from the sticks" as hard as he could. The more this city lady underestimated him, the better.
"You're not in trouble, sir. We're just asking some routine questions. May I come in?"
He was strongly tempted to tell her "no." She couldn't force her way in without a warrant, not legally, at least. But he also didn't want to send up any flags that would make her take a closer look. Didn't want to give her a reason to go get that warrant and come back. At least Sarah and Rei were out.
"Yeah, guess that'd be all right," he said.
He held the door for her. She glanced back at her partner, but didn't invite him along. Gary took a quick glance around the living room, just to make sure there was nothing incriminating in sight, but the nice thing about Rei not really coming with much in the way of luggage was that he didn't leave a lot lying around.
"Coffee?"
"Sure," Agent Pradhan said. "Thanks."
She looked around with sharp eyes. Gary kept his own eyes roaming and alert as he limped through the living room to the kitchen, looking in particular for any telltale signs that the house was occupied by more than two people. Nothing stood out. The dishes were washed and in their rack, thanks to his earlier cleaning spree. He dumped the dregs of the old coffee and measured out a scoop for a new pot.
"Just have a seat. This won't take but a minute." He glanced over his shoulder and noticed that she was still standing. "So what's all this about?"
"A few routine questions, that's all. We think a fugitive may be in the area and we're asking around to see if anyone's seen anything suspicious. Have you seen any signs of an unfamiliar person in the area? Items missing, someone sleeping in an outbuilding, perhaps?"
"Nope. Nothing like that. This is a quiet town, ma'am." He wondered if it'd be suspicious to ask his own questions in return, decided it would look even odder not to. "Is this to do with all that business going on over at the lake?"
"I'm afraid I can't comment on that, Mr. Metzger."
"Course not. Sorry I asked." He fitted the coffeepot back onto its base. "You talk to the Mullers yet? Heard they had a homeless fella sleeping in their barn a few weeks back."
"I'll look into it," Agent Pradhan said in a polite way that suggested it had already been looked into. "Thank you for the tip. Have you seen anything yourself, heard anything perhaps? Odd lights in the pasture, tracks, animals acting strange?"
"Nope, nothin' like ... that."
As he turned away from the coffeepot, his eye fell on the mounting bracket he had been working on earlier. He'd left both it and the original sitting on the counter.
Which wasn't really a problem by itself. The replacement was just a piece of aluminum he'd milled into the right shape, and while the original was made of some glossy metal he didn't recognize, there was nothing about it to set off warning lights. It just looked like an engine part. He had 'em everywhere. He'd had to pick a rebuilt carburetor out of the candy bowl earlier in the evening so he didn't accidentally hand it to some unsuspecting eight-year-old.
No, the problem was that he'd needed to make sure the part fit, so he'd brought in the doodlyhickey it attached to, a little glass tubey thing with a spill of what looked like flexible fiber-optic cables coming off in all directions. And the whole thing was all put together on the countertop.
It still didn't look that weird, he told himself. Not to someone who didn't know much about electronics. Girl was a townie. She'd probably never taken apart her car's engine or rewired a fuse box. What was she gonna guess?
Nothin', as long as he didn't keep staring at it. Agent Pradhan clearly wasn't an idiot, and when his gaze had dropped to the object on the counter, hers had gone to it as if pulled along by magnets.
"Coffee's gonna be a minute," he said, moving quickly to open a cabinet for mugs—and put his body between her and the incriminating object on the counter. "Cream and sugar, ma'am?"
"Cream, no sugar." Agent Pradhan moved in smoothly, and Gary gave way, because he couldn't block her without making a big deal about it. She reached for the object on the countertop. "This is very interesting-looking. Do you mind if I ask what it is?"
"Step-down capacitors from the starter motor on a '78 Lister diesel generator," Gary said promptly, without pausing to plan or think. All he knew was, a hesitation would've been worse. Baffle them with bullshit, as one of his high school friends used to say, back in the days when they used to sneak cigarettes and cans of beer, and lie to the adults about it.
The problem with bullshit was that it did smell. If she knew much about engines, he'd just made her even more suspicious.
But there was no reaction. Either she didn't know enough to recognize that what he'd just described wasn't an actual thing, or she had the world's best poker face. "Interesting," she remarked, and put it back down. "You're good with your hands, I take it."
"Something breaks on the farm, you fix it. And since it's useful to be able to, I like taking engines apart to figure out how they work." He grinned at her and reached for the coffeepot, which had finished percolating. "Hey, you want to hear about the hydro project I got goin' at an old ruin of a gristmill on the edge of the place? If it wasn't dark out there, I'd walk you over and show you. Gonna convert that thing to power this whole farm, maybe sell some power back to the utility company, even."
"It sounds fascinating," Pradhan said politely. "Perhaps later."
"You come back anytime you want to see it. Now, you said cream—?" He started to turn toward the fridge, and froze with a suddenness that he couldn't possibly disguise this time at the sight of light out the back window. Light shining from the cracks and windows in the barn, and a light about the size of a flashlight beam bouncing toward the house.
And Gary realized he was the biggest fuckin' idiot in the county.
Here he'd been worrying about Pradhan, and he'd just assumed the other agent would stay with the car.
There was a polite tap on the back door. Gary moved to open it, but Pradhan got there first. Her partner came in, flashlight in one hand, and in the other ...
Gary recognized it immediately. It was Sarah's old telescope, tucked under the other agent's arm, the one she'd lost out at the lake.
"You should go have a look in the barn," the male agent said quietly to Pradhan.
"You need a warrant for that," Gary said tightly. He never should've let them in. He should've turned them away, suspicion be damned. It would have taken them time to come back with a warrant. They could have moved the ship somewhere else, hidden it under a tarp at least ...
"Interesting that you assume we don't already have one," the male agent said. He set the telescope on the table with a clunk. "Recognize this?"
"Couldn't say," Gary said, heart beating fast, because he'd just noticed the neat row of letters scratched along the telescope's body in his daughter's handwriting.
SARAH M. METZGER.
Because of course Sarah had been the sort of child who meticulously labeled her things.
***
They'd found him.
Ice rushed through Rei's veins, a sick cold spasm that choked him, closing off his airway and making him lightheaded. Spots danced in his vision.
"Are they Galateans?" Sarah whispered, and it was her voice, along with the innocence of her question, that shocked him enough to fight back the cold fist of panic closing around his lungs.
He couldn't let them get Sarah. Couldn't let them find out about the farm.
They weren't looking in his direction yet. He reached mentally for his cuffs, making sure they were on their lowest power-saving setting. Maybe some process running in the background had pinged a Galatean server and alerted them to his location. Maybe they'd just tracked the pod's incoming trajectory, spread out over the surrounding countryside, and gotten lucky.
They were making no attempt to hide, even when another Earth human walked quickly through the park bound on some unknown errand, which meant they, too, had figured out that a night when everyone went abroad in costume was a perfect night for aliens to walk openly on a hitherto uncontacted planet.
Or was it uncontacted? Perhaps Sarah's government had been in touch with the Galateans for years, unknown to most of their people.
None of that mattered now. The important thing was getting away without attracting their attention.
Far, far away.
"Be quiet, as quiet as you can," he whispered.
Sarah nodded. She didn't ask again. It seemed that she'd figured out the answer on her own.
Slowly and quietly, Rei began to retreat, staying in the shadows and trying to maintain a slow enough pace that Sarah, too, could be stealthy in darkness that her eyes couldn't penetrate. He could have gone much faster on his own, but he wasn't about to leave her alone, not with Galateans nearby.
He was still holding Sarah's hand. Her fingers felt very warm and steady on his own, and he realized his hand was shaking and tried to make it still.
"Good God," Sarah whispered. Rei looked up quickly, but the Galateans still weren't looking in their direction. An Earth human had just passed the Galatean pair, jogging slowly in a way that Rei had already seen a few of them doing since he and Sarah had been in the park; it seemed to be a common form of exercise on her planet. This human was male, a full head and a half shorter than the Galateans, barely coming up to their shoulders.
"Rei, you didn't tell me Galateans are huge."
He decided not to tell her those two were actually on the short side. The Galateans must have picked agents who could blend more easily with this world's humans ... which also suggested some familiarity with the local humans already.
How many were here? There must be a ship in orbit. Not a full-sized battle cruiser, surely, just to capture an escaped slave. It was probably a smaller ship, a barque or a chaser-class ship. Most likely a chaser; they were small, fast ships used for courier work and small, stealthy missions—like, say, recapturing an escaped slave without attracting too much attention.
A chaser would have a detachment of around six or eight soldiers. None of them were likely to be authorized to take extraordinary measures or possess heavy battle armor. They would be moving fast and light, trying to conceal their presence on this world and get off with a minimum of fuss.
Unfortunately, they would still be well trained, competent, and hard to bribe. A fellow slave soldier might be convinced to look the other way, but chaser crews were usually Galatean citizen soldiers who trained as a unit. For them, he was a mission. And part of the Galatean warrior ethic was pride in a mission well done.
Maybe they aren't here for me.
Sure, they just happen to be on Earth for some other reason, and with a whole planet to choose from, they're here in Sarah's city? Yeah, right.
At last a twist of the path hid the Galateans from view. Rei moved swiftly then, leading Sarah across a nearly empty parking field and onto the street. He'd hoped to mingle with the locals to obscure their visibility, but it was growing later in the evening and the crowds had begun to thin out. Most of the people who were still abroad seemed to be inside the restaurants and drinking establishments they passed.
"Can they track you?" Sarah whispered.
"If they could, I think they'd already be on top of us."
"Do you have a plan?"
"Get back to your vehicle. Get out of here." He paused and looked around. Despite his normally keen sense of direction, all these streets looked alike in the dark.
"This way," Sarah said, tugging on his hand.
Staying together, he told himself, was a mistake, putting Sarah at risk for no reason. He wasn't going to leave her alone in the city with Galateans around, but once they got back to the truck, he needed to convince her to leave without him. She'd be safer on her own.
... except no, she wouldn't, because his pod was in her barn. Even if the Galateans didn't have a way of tracking it directly, they had much better scanning technology than the locals, and they would find it sooner or later.
He and Sarah came around a corner, and he recognized the open-air parking courtyard where she'd left the truck. When she'd parked there earlier, it had been crowded with rows of vehicles in the big paved space. Now her truck was one of the few that remained.
Sarah made a startled sound when he gripped her wrist, pulling her to a stop against the side of the nearest building.
"What's wrong?" she whispered. "You don't think they found the truck, do you?"
"I don't know, but there's no sense taking chances." He nodded to her costume. "Take off your wings and wig so you can move swiftly. We don't want delays when we get to your vehicle."
"Yes, of course." She stripped off the costume, bundled it up, and barely hesitated before leaving it at the base of the wall. Rei abandoned his spear and fake ears along with it. The ears he'd thought about leaving on, in the hope of confusing the Galateans, but if they saw him the game was probably up anyway.
He scanned the street. There were a few Earth pedestrians around, each glimpse of movement giving him a sharp jolt of adrenaline before he identified them as not-a-threat and relegated them to the back of his mind. He wished he could use his cuffs to scan the area, but he didn't dare. It was Galatean technology meant for slaves to wear; the odds were good that they'd be able to detect a set of cuffs using an active scanning frequency. He'd never had to use Galatean tech against Galateans before.
"Let's go," he told Sarah softly, and they began to walk swiftly toward the truck. Sarah slipped her hand back into his, and Rei squeezed her fingers. It was good to know exactly where she was, by both touch and sight.
As they reached the edge of the vehicle parking area, angling toward the entrance, Sarah looked back and gasped, "Rei!"
Rei looked over his shoulder. He took in the scene in an instant: the damp street gleaming under the lights of the street lamps, the buildings glittering with their own lights, and in the middle of all of that, a hulking figure that had just come around the corner after them, ears pricked forward in its thick mane.
They are tracking us! was his first thought, tinged around the edges with panic, but then he took in the Galatean's companion, a hulking shape on all fours, head lowered to the pavement and tail curled around its hindquarters. It sniffed at the wall where they'd been hiding. It was a striped feline, bigger than Rei's wolf, and wore no collar or harness. Gold gleamed at its ankles.
One of them was a shifter.
They were tracking by smell.
He'd only ever heard rumors of shifters among the Galateans; he'd never seen one. His sept-sister, Haiva, had worn her cat traits openly on her human body, as most Galateans did. But he'd heard that some of them could shift fully into a big cat shape, and there was the living proof in front of him.
They hadn't been seen yet, but the parking area was brightly lit. It was only a matter of time.
"Keep walking," Rei told Sarah between his teeth, pulling her with him. "Stop looking back at them. We cannot behave differently from the others."
"But—" she began, and then her voice rose to a cry of alarm: "Rei!"
Rei spun around just in time to see the humanform Galatean assume a combat stance, and flung up his arms just in time to shield them both. Green light flared in front of him, and the Galatean's attack splintered on the air. Rei felt the fine hairs lift on his arms as static electricity crackled around him. Glimmers of light chased each other down his arms and over his cuffs.
He risked a glance to make sure Sarah was all right. She looked okay, but her eyes were enormous; she was frozen in place.
"Get to the truck! I'll be right behind you!"
Sarah snapped out of her paralysis and sprinted for the truck.
With a low, rumbling snarl, the cat-shifted Galatean sprang forward, covering the distance between them in huge bounds. The other one fired off another energy attack. Rei dodged this one rather than depleting his shields. Blue-green light rippled over the vehicle next to him, which erupted in a piercing, wailing alarm.
Apparently Earth vehicles had defensive capabilities? He hadn't realized that. Whatever the vehicle was gearing up to do, its noise had distracted the Galateans. Rei took advantage of that instant of distraction to dash after Sarah and then duck behind another vehicle as another attack glistened over its surface. This didn't produce a new alarm, but the other was still wailing.
Some of the nearby Earth humans had sensibly taken cover. Others were holding up their communication devices, pointing them at the Galateans. Taking pictures? Preparing attacks of their own? It would do no good to shout at them; they couldn't understand him. Anyway, he doubted if the Galateans planned to injure the natives except in self-defense. They would be safe as long as they stayed out of the way.
An engine revved nearby. He hoped it was Sarah's truck. He just had to get to it—
With a tremendous thump and a snarl, the cat-shaped Galatean landed on top of the car, looming over Rei.
His fur was rusty orange, barred with black. Green eyes shot with gold, not so different from a Polaran's, gleamed at Rei over a snarling muzzle.
Rei brought up both hands and let him have it.
The Galatean almost managed to deflect it, flinging up his forepaws in an automatic defensive maneuver, except that the move itself threw him off balance since he was currently a quadruped. He fell forward and Rei's attack tore through his face and neck, sliding off the shield that the Galatean had managed to bring up to protect part of his body—but not enough of it. He was dead before he hit the ground, stinking of burnt fur.
Rookie mistake, Rei thought numbly. They were probably just as unused to their enemies having Galatean weapons as Rei was. That was likely the last time he'd manage to get in a lucky shot at an unshielded enemy.
He closed his hands over the gold cuffs on the dead Galatean's paws. They resisted for a moment, but Rei poured mental energy into it, and the cuffs unlocked and came off in his hands. Gold ones were more powerful than silver. He could use the advantage.
The truck skidded to a stop beside him with a screech of tires. "Get in!" Sarah yelled through the open window.
Rei vaulted into the back. "Go!"
He crouched in the truck bed and deflected another attack. This one bubbled the paint on the truck's side as it slid off his shields. The first attacks had been meant to stun; now the remaining Galatean was using lethal force. Rei didn't blame him.
He didn't try to attack in return, just focused on shielding the truck as Sarah accelerated toward the swinging white-and-orange-striped bar blocking the exit to the street. She started to slow, then punched up their speed instead and slammed into it. The bar broke with a snap. Momentum flung Rei off his feet in a bruising tumble against the side of the truck as she cornered sharply and roared off down the street.
He sat up and looked back at the rapidly receding parking area. The alarm still wailed into the night. The Galatean was crouching over his dead crewmate; nearby humans had retreated into their vehicles. Then Sarah tore around a corner and Rei could no longer see them.
He looked down at the dead man's gold cuffs in his hands. They felt hot against his palms. He could still smell the searing scent of burning fur. He'd killed before in battle, but always while armored, always from a distance. He'd never fried anything up close except training robots.
But he hadn't even thought about it. Just fell back on his training, pushed the cuffs to full power and blew a hole in another living being.
Another living being who was going to take you back to slavery. Best-case scenario, you go back to being a slave, with an extra ten or twenty years tacked on for desertion. More likely, knowing what you know about this planet, they'll execute you.
He checked to make sure the gold cuffs were fully powered down, then slipped them into his pocket to deal with later. Already he felt tingling throughout his body as his nanites worked to replace the charge that he'd used in the fight.
The truck jolted to an abrupt stop, lurching under him as one tire went up onto the pedestrian walkway beside the street. "Get in!" Sarah called out her window. "You're too conspicuous back there. It's not legal to ride in a truck bed and we really don't want cops."
"Cops?" Rei asked as he climbed into the passenger side.
"Yeah, hear the sirens? They'll be all over that city lot in a minute. I hope they didn't have cameras back there." Sarah swallowed. Her hands were shaking on the truck's guidance wheel, and the realization struck Rei that this child of a safe and war-free world might never have been in a fight before, or even seen one.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
"I'm fine." She swallowed again and pulled back onto the street. The truck wavered back and forth in its lane and then straightened out as she got control of herself. She glanced over at him, her face wan in the glow of the instrument panel. "How about you?"
"Unhurt." The stolen cuffs were still warm in his pocket, a reminder of what he'd done. In his initial escape, he hadn't hurt anyone. Now he'd killed a citizen. The likelihood they were going to even attempt to capture him alive had dropped to near zero.
But what else could he have done? They'd trained him as a killer. They had drilled him and drilled him in the training room to use lethal force in a fight. He'd almost instinctively fried Sarah when he first met her—might well have done so, if not for the cuffs being nonfunctional in the wake of Lyr's power surge. Nausea rolled in his stomach at the thought.
I will not be that, he thought, curling his hands into fists in his lap. I will not be the killer they made me.
But the Galateans might not give him a choice.
Sarah merged into the flow of vehicles on one of the fast roads she called highways, though they didn't seem much higher than the surrounding landscape. "Are they tracking us?" she asked anxiously. "Is it safe to go home? I don't know where to go, Rei."
"They are not tracking us." He checked again to make sure his cuffs were powered down, just to be on the safe side. "They were following us by scent before. They won't be able to do that now."
"Good. I don't want to lead them back to Dad."
Rei hoped to the gods he didn't believe in that they hadn't already done that. "I need to get my battlepod away from your farm. And myself with it."
"Rei, no. We're not going to abandon you to face this alone."
Fear and worry flared into anger. "Did you see what happened back there? Do you understand the threat you're up against? These people have weapons you cannot comprehend. Your people have no defenses against them. One Galatean with a pair of these—" He held up his hand, fist clenched, to display the silver gleam at his wrist. "—could kill hundreds of your people and lay waste to a city block. One of their ships, firing from above, could turn one of your cities to slag. And we have no idea how many of them are here."
"I think you underestimate humans," Sarah said, her voice flat. "We have guns. We have armies. We're not going to be that easy to invade."
"Sarah, your people are not going to risk war with an intergalactic empire to protect a fugitive who unlawfully stole himself and fled. I've seen what you call guns. Your father showed me how they work. Your little metal projectiles would bounce off our shields, and then we would effortlessly kill the person holding the weapon, because they have no shields. Do you understand?"
"We?" Sarah said. "We would kill—? You're not one of them."
"I was raised and trained to be! Anyway, does that matter now?"
"It matters! It matters a lot to me. We are not just handing you over—"
"I'm not asking you to—"
"—and we are not letting you run off into the night with a broken spaceship and—and two pieces of wrist jewelry to fight an intergalactic empire by yourself. You might have been alone all your life, Rei, but you're not alone now and I'm not going to let—I'm not going to—"
The truck veered and Rei realized with a shock that she was crying so hard she could no longer see the road.
"Sarah, please, be calm. Stop before you kill us."
He put a cautious hand on the wheel above hers. Sarah allowed the truck to be guided to the wide road-edge, pulling off as other vehicles roared past theirs in the night.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, dashing at her eyes.
"You have nothing to apologize for." He slid nearer to her on the seat and pulled her against him—easily, readily; when had it become so easy to touch her? His people touched each other often, another thing he'd nearly forgotten about his childhood. It had been so hard to learn to live among the more reserved Galateans. As his sept left or died, one by one, and the remaining ones grew ever more tense and fragile, he'd learned to restrain himself until he almost didn't miss it anymore.
But Sarah unbuckled her restraint belt so she could throw her arms around him. She buried her head in his shoulder and pressed herself into him as if it was possible for two bodies to merge into one, and he held her back just as fiercely.
"I'll keep you safe," he promised into her hair. "I'll keep you and your father safe."
He had always been taught that soldiers, even slave soldiers, didn't learn to fight in order to kill. They learned to fight in order to protect. And that was what he meant to do. These people would not come to harm from helping him; he swore it.
"Oh! Dad! We need to warn him." Sarah pulled away, scrubbing at her eyes. She blew her nose on a paper towel from a roll she dug out from under the seat and then got out her phone. Still pressed up against Rei, with one of his arms around her, she tapped symbols on the screen and held the phone to her ear. He could hear a buzzing sound and then a voice, too low to make out the words.
Sarah frowned and tapped symbols again. She did this twice more before she put the phone back in her pocket and turned to Rei with worry on her tear-reddened face.
"No answer. I tried his cell and the land line. He's not picking up on either."
Rei didn't know what all of that meant, but it pointed to a likely possibility. "The farm might be compromised." He would not consider the possibility that Gary might be dead. He still felt it was more likely the Galateans would leave the natives unharmed, causing as little of a disturbance as possible.
Sarah nodded. "I'll understand if you don't want to go back. We could stop somewhere along the road, get a motel room, maybe. I can leave you there and go back myself—"
"Sarah." He gripped her hand tightly. "If you won't leave me, I won't leave you. We will go make sure your father is unharmed. I will not leave you to deal with this alone."
Sarah blew out her breath and slid over to the driver's seat. "Okay. Let's go get Dad."
"Together," he said.
"Yes. Together."