Old Earth was an ugly planet as far as Talon was concerned. The hoverways that arced along the edges of the landing fields for ships looked worn and tired and the buildings, many of them ancient, all seemed to sag under the weight of gravity.

The air was thick with carbon and other emissions and the scent of rocket and ship fuel. They joined the scan in line behind a very boisterous group of earthlings that had been taking a holiday on a pleasure planet. Naturally, one of them had come back with some kind of venereal scum and had to be yanked out of line. The man protested viciously and screamed when the monitors pointed out that not only had he contacted venereal scum but that he was in need of emergency medical treatment.

He caused such a fracas that when Talon and Jessica reached the kiosk where documents would be scrutinized, the man behind the counter gave those documents only the briefest of glances before pointing them toward the health monitors.

The line for the monitors was also long. They stood waiting, neither of them speaking. The risk was great, and they knew it. Revants were unknown in the universe for the most part due to their near extinction and the fact that few of them traveled much or, when they did, they traveled disguised as those similar races.

They both checked out clean and whole and were waved through to the other side past the security and medical lines. Talon’s footsteps were light, but his heart was heavy. Jessica’s words kept ringing in his ears. Did she truly care so little for what he thought of her?

He had not expected her to love him just because she had come into his room and had sex with him. He had always found those who made it simply for love to be a little ridiculous in fact. But the truth was that it seemed that he was more emotionally invested in that than she had been. It also seemed as if he had managed to fall head over heels in love with a human woman who literally could not care less about him.

“I am a means to an end for her. My war is her war, and so we have become allies. That is the whole summation of what lays between us as far as she is concerned. She does not know, and she does not care, how I feel about her. Perhaps I should’ve told her. But what would that do? It might make her leave the ship sooner, and that is the last thing that I want.”

Talon was not used to feeling so many emotions over anyone.

Falling in love had never been high on his priority list. He had other things to do. His race lived many centuries, and he was already in his third, but every single one of those centuries had been marred by war, by slavery, and by his determination to build an empire so that he and his siblings could purchase that planet they now owned in order to start over and to save their race.

Jessica spoke softly. “We have to get into a public hover. They are all automated, and there are surveillance nodules everywhere. So there’s no chance that we won’t be seen at all. I think my disguise is strong enough, and yours as well, but we need to take as few chances as we can.”

He glanced over at her. She had spent an hour in her chamber after they had docked, using a tool to darken her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. She walked with her knees bent just a bit to give the impression that she was shorter than she was. She had also chosen very bright clothing that would draw the eye to them instead of to her face.

Aliens were as common on Old Earth as they were everywhere else. He had deliberately forged his papers to make himself seem like a member of a race whose body type and skin color were similar to his own, and he had shaved his beard and slicked his hair back with oil so that it looked very dark. It was not much of a disguise, but it might be enough for what they had to do at the moment, and it would have to do until he could find a way to disguise themselves even more fully.

“I am following you.”

Her head turned slightly, and she said, solemnly “Only for now.”

Only for now? He sighed inwardly but kept up his pace beside her. They came to a public transport hub and climbed aboard one of the small hovercrafts that perched at the curb. Once inside, Jessica slid credits into a slot and then used a screen to map in the coordinates that she wanted. She settled back into the seat, and the hovercraft lifted off from the curb and headed out over the city.

Talon looked down at the place. It came to him again that it was probably the least beautiful place he had ever been in and that he would not like to live there. Jessica said, “I used to think that this must be the biggest city in the entire universe.”

He leaned back in the seat. “I suppose you know better now.”

“I do.”

Regret hung in every single syllable of those words. He felt that regret, and what’s more, he heard something else in her voice as well, something he recognized because he had heard it in his own too often. It was the sound of somebody who was homesick and who had managed to glimpse a small bit of their homeland.

They sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Eventually, the hovercraft set them down in front of a massive building with a crumbling limestone and granite façade. They exited the hovercraft and Talon expected that they would go into the building, but instead, Jessica headed down the street without a word.

Talon fell into step behind her and then caught up. He opened his mouth to ask her where they were going but before he could her elbow brushed gently against his arm and she sent a pointed gaze in his direction. Then her eyes drifted upward just a bit to the right.

He let his eyes make a casual sweep of the terrain, and he quickly spotted the surveillance nodules located along the street. She waited until several large and noisy crafts were going over to lean into his body, “We must take the grates. I am warning you that this is very dangerous and to have your weapons drawn as soon as we enter.”

He whispered back, “You did not have to tell me that.”

Every instinct in his body and brain was telling him that there was danger lurking very near. He could practically smell it.

They stepped into a building that bore a vast and colorful awning bearing the words Hotelier Honnist Toronto. Talon did not have time to register anything about the place because just as quickly as they had stepped into it, Jessica had him by the hand and stepping out of a small side door, one so hidden by a large plant that it was barely even noticeable.

They stood in a filthy alley. Garbage piled into the neatly marked receptacles sent a terrific and foul odor into the air. Jessica tilted her head right and left and then sighed, “They have not yet put surveillance nodules here. They’re too afraid if they do the good citizens of above will see what is right below them in the tunnels and then they will have to explain why they let such wealthy and privileged people live above such danger.”

He asked, “How do they not smell it?”

Her smile was bitter. “Oh, they live in the rarefied air, don’t you know? Besides, the terra rats are allergic to sunlight, and the houses don’t dump their trash here. Their trash goes out through a system of compo flushes that don’t have pipes that come down here. Instead, it lands on the trash crawlers, and it is dumped down here daily.”

Talon’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “So you are saying that they just built this place to be a dump site? Why do they not reuse their trash?”

Jessica gave him a steely smile. “That has never been something this planet has ever given a damn about.”

That annoyed him for some reason. Most planets had a system of reusing waste, using it to power their fuel stations, which in turn provided energy to ship and to dwellings and the like. Or they ground the organic and reused it in the ground, or they flash fired it into small chunks that could be then crushed and used as a base for other things, including dwelling building.

To just leave so much garbage lying around like this? It was not only disgusting, it was wasteful. He found himself wondering if Old Earth was even worth saving at all. It looked like a place where the Gorlites would feel right at home.

His gut tightened, and he paused as that thought hit home.

The Gorlites would feel right at home among all that trash and in those tunnels and…and had whoever had worked to give them that Planet known that all along? Had the Gorlites taking over Old Earth always been the end game?

It was highly possible, and not just possible either: it was probable.

Talon’s hands went to the weapons he had secreted away. Jessica also drew weapons. His eyes scanned the alley again. On one side it led back to the street; on the other, it led to a tall, smooth concrete wall, the kind of stone that had been outlawed on other planets many centuries ago due to its toxic properties.

Jessica moved toward a rusted grate that covered much of the ground by the concrete wall. His eyes went upward, assessing the sides of the building. The sides were also smooth and blank; no windows were present there.

He had a feeling that Jessica knew this place very well and had chosen it specifically because there were no windows that anyone could look down from and see them, and because the mass of people walking on the street just beyond didn’t seem to notice the crooked and narrow little alley long enough to bother looking down it.

Jessica went to the grate. She drew it upward, and it loosened a rusty screech that made his eyes go back to the street again, but the pedestrians still moved onward, oblivious to the two in the alley.

Jessica said, “Stay with me, Talon. Stay on the ropes. If you fall, I will lay down cover until you can get back on the ropes, and I hope you do the same for me.”

His shoulders tensed. What could possibly be down there? Whatever it was, the stench was unbearable! He could smell it wafting upward from the hole.

Jessica went in, and he followed her, one hand clapping to his nose and mouth to fight off a wave of sickness as the smell hit him full on. Jessica, her eyes streaming and her hand waving in front of her face, said, “I know. It is terrible. I wish there was another way, but this is the way we must go.”

Talon found his humor. “Whatever lies on the other side of this, Jessica, it better be good.”

She gave him a slanted smile. “It is. I promise.”

They stood on a shivering rope bridge. Talon’s eyes took a quick scan of the bridge, and his heart sank a little bit more. There was danger, and then there was stupidity. They were on a bridge made of rope that was clearly rotting away, and they were standing on that bridge in what looked to be an endless and vast cavern filled with mountains of refuse.

“What the hell is this place?”

“Hell about sums it up,” Jessica returned. “Come on. The faster we move, the faster we’ll be done here.”

She moved ahead of him, and he followed her. He was watching her, paying attention to every place she put her foot and steeling himself for the moment that he would have to reach out a hand and grab her as the rope bridge broke beneath her feet. He was so sure that bridge was going to break that he found himself plotting which mountain of garbage he could land the most softly in order not to fall to the floor so far below that was not littered with trash and would probably cause every bone in his body to break.

Time stood still again. Talon had been through a great deal of things in his lifetime: too many things. But nothing could have prepared him for that walk through garbage and waste.

And nothing absolutely nothing could have prepared him for the terra-rats.

“They only attack you if they smell your fear. So I would suggest that you don’t be afraid of them.”

Talon’s eyebrows went up. He shot the feral, hissing and repulsive creatures scurrying up the mounds of garbage a black look. “Can they smell disgusted? I’m not afraid of them, but I sure am disgusted.”

Jessica walked faster. “I don’t know, but I do know that if you are the tiniest bit afraid of them, they will swarm you. All those that you see down there, those dozens, they’re just a small percentage of the ones that are here. Once several swarm, they all swarm. They eat their prey.”

Talon said, “Now I’m really disgusted.”

Jessica said, “I’ve learned to hold in my fear but only for so long. I hate them. I hate them so much, and I fear them too. I am terrified of them in fact, and if we don’t move faster and get away from them, I may give them cause to attack us.”

Talon’s eyes went from the rats to Jessica’s back. Her shoulders were up high, and her arms held close to her sides. Her weapons were clutched tightly in her hands, and she walked so fast that the bridge swung sickeningly below their feet.

Why was she so frightened of them? He understood that they could kill. But he had seen her face down far worse enemies without flinching.

They reached a tall steel ladder. Jessica went up it, climbing with agility and speed, and he followed her easily.

Jessica said, “I need some help opening this.”

The door was a sealed solid metal with old-fashioned spokes that had to be turned in order for the door to open. It was heavy, and the spokes were thick with rust that flaked off and dripped orange dust down onto their boots and the legs of their trousers.

Below them, the rats began to fight each other. The sounds of their snarling, bloodied battle sent shivers working up Jessica’s spine. Talon saw those shivers, saw the small quaking in her flesh, and he reached a hand out and laid it on her shoulders. “Take a deep breath. It’s fine.”

She looked at him and whispered, “I don’t want to breathe this air anymore.”

With those words, the door finally came open, revealing a long and wide tunnel that was thankfully clean and very well lit. It took both of them to close the door again and to turn the locking mechanism that would hold it shut against the rats and whatever else might be lurking down there in that garbage.

Their footsteps echoed on the heavy metal floor. That tunnel branched into a large open space from which ran a series of other tunnels. Jessica took one to the right, and he moved alongside her, his entire body on high alert.

They came to yet another door. There was a vast screen and monitor system beside it. Jessica pressed her palm into an identification bay and the door slid open with a pneumatic whine.

The handsome black-haired, blue-eyed man sitting behind a simple wooden desk that had nothing on it gave them a friendly smile, but there was nothing friendly about the mega blaster that he had leveled in their direction.

He spoke one word. “Jessica?”

Jessica cried out, “Yori! They didn’t find you after all!”

Yori stood. His body was impressively fit and strong below his plain coveralls. The blaster stayed level. “It seems the one that they tortured to try to find out who ran this operation never spoke on that subject. I owe you one for that, Jessica.”

Talon looked from him to Jessica. They obviously knew each other had been allies at one time, but had they been something more? The smile on Jessica’s face was beautiful.

Her next words made a small spiral of jealousy work its way through Talon’s body. “How could I ever betray you, of all people? You are the only one that I actually owed any loyalty at all to. I kept my silence even when some of the names that I should and could have named had already named me. Our palace, the one you and I built, they could never breach it.”

Palace? Talon surveyed the other man carefully. He had a palace? And one that he had built with Jessica? The jealousy grew, coalescing as he realized that she might have brought him to meet the human man who could not only aid them, but who might very well be the reason why she didn't care about him.

Yori said, “You came through the garbage tunnels.”

Jessica said, “You are still watching then.”

He nodded. “Of course I am. They are still sending those who live below to their deaths in those tunnels. I know firsthand how deadly those tunnels are, not that anyone will ever let me speak on the subject in a public forum.”

Talon said, “We need some assistance.”

He knew he was butting in and improbably breaking some kind of protocol, but the time was short. If the Gorlites truly were being given Old Earth and were on their way there now, they had to act fast.

Yori’s cold blue eyes turned to Talon’s face. “Why else would you be here? Nobody would brave those tunnels unless they truly needed me.”

Jessica said, “We have intel that leads us to believe that there are those within the Federation working to overthrow it. I personally could not care less about the Federation, but that same intel also claims that Old Earth is to be given over to the Gorlites, and fast.”

Talon expected the other man to show surprise or anger. He expected him to be shocked or startled. Instead, Yori startled both him and Jessica by saying, “Yes. It is true. The Gorlites will be arriving in a matter of two days.”