Part 11

Wipe Out

           Gentle licks on my neck from a soft tongue awoke me - odd how often I've been roused by Hrasi that way. I was on an inclined bed; maybe 20 degrees above parallel, under bright white lights. God, my head hurt. It felt like one of the city's trains had run over me, then backed up and run me over again. I felt like I'd been worked over by a 2x4, which was certainly possible, and my head… ugh.
           My eyes focused slowly, revealing light and fur. Using only peripheral vision I saw white fuzz moving back and forth to the rhythm of washing my neck was receiving. I could feel the cold, smooth steel of restraints on my hands and feet, but nothing on my neck. Without a second thought I twisted my head and bit fur. There was an ear! A beautiful, precious ear that Hrasi lavish so much care on. Then there was a squeal of an all too familiar voice.
           "Aaron, let go! Please! I'm trying to help you!" I ignored that for a moment, determined to chew her personal pride and joy away, but her pained yelps convinced me to have mercy. I let go and Naia pushed away, backing into my normal field of view. She was shaking with Hrasi sobs, but I had absolutely no sympathy for her.
           "Aaron," She mewled, and nothing more. At length she turned and ran to the side, out of sight, but returned with a high chair that put her directly where I could see her. Apparently it was so I could see her cry. "I tried," she finally managed.
           "Tried what? To betray me?" I scorned, making her curl up farther.
           "Tried to not betray you," she whispered. "I started acting suspiciously as soon as we entered the system, but you didn't notice. I disobeyed a clear directive and let you stay free the rest of that last night, let you see the exhibit about the memory wiping and taping. You found it interesting, but didn't see the link. I even told you to run away from me and you refused. I tried hard to keep you free."
           "Then why didn't you just tell me, you damned traitorous bitch!" Her eyes flicked away.
           "Conditioning. I'm programmed not to. I couldn't. It's the same reason why I can't help you now.
           "I'll be leaving soon and the interrogators will come in. I suggest you begin thinking of plausible lies. I know you've seen what happens to people who don't know anything." Ayo…
           "Let me go, then, or tell me what it is they want to hear. Naia, you can't do this to me!"
           "I have to." She closed her eyes and shook, ears back. "I'm sorry Aaron. At least you saved Maura's life."
           "What?"
           "If you hadn't shown up in the last few hours of our search I would've killed her and taken the ship here to expose the Yusuurans. Instead we found you and the other two had to have that ship. It saved her life. I guess that's something to feel good about."
           "Naia!" I yelled at her, fought hard with the metal cuffs around my wrists. They didn't budge one bit, but my struggling made Naia stared at me with a look somewhere between fascination and grief.
           "Don't bother," she murmured quietly, "you can't force them. Aaron, I can't promise that you'll survive interrogation, but if you do you won't be killed. I'll tape you with the same thing they used on me and we'll go back to the Yusuurans. Nobody has to die."
           "I'd rather you killed me." Naia winced. She slipped to her feet and walked to my table. Her glowing eyes would've watered if they were capable of it as she bent down low over my head. I sat there calmly and averted my face to the side. She hesitated - I could feel the slowing of motion - but then dropped down to brush cheeks with me. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I snarled.
           "Something dangerous and stupid: being affectionate," she whispered. "I'll keep Amara alive if you don't make it. I don't know what else to say…" I closed my eyes and tried not to think about biting her jugular. She brushed away and stood still. "…Surprised. Thought you'd attack me if I let you. Hoped you would, in some ways. You could've stopped me. It's hard to get around the conditioning, Aaron." I looked up at her and gazed hollowly.
           "Sorry to disappoint, but I'm trying to be one of the good guys." Naia turned away and walked to the opposite of the room where a door was inset to the wall. She stared at the handle for a minute, then pulled it open and walked through.
           "I'm sorry, Aaron," she announced to a gray room through the door. "I'll be back soon. There's a mission report that needs filing." With that she closed the door behind her, leaving me alone.
           Damn her! I couldn't believe I'd been duped. Even worse, interrogators? There had to be some way out, but I didn't see it. I was going to die. Dammit, to escape death so many times and then die in an unmarked room?
           That brought me an even less appealing thought. I had no idea where I was. Was I still in the city? Was I still on the planet? Hell, I didn't even have to be in the same system. Wouldn't it be funny if I broke my restraints only to 'escape' out an airlock…
          

---v---

           Nothing happened for five or ten minutes, but then the door swung open and some people who were decidedly not Naia entered. There were five of them: Two middle-aged males with dirty gold coats, an older chocolate-colored female, and two young tan-pelted women. All were dressed in the black leather that seemed ubiquitous among the Hrasi military services. The dark-pelted woman yawned as the rest seemed to take their places around me. One of each of the pairs stood on either side on me as she pulled a handheld computer from her belt and read something to herself.
           "Hrn, this is the right [ ]. It says she's, no, he's a pilot. Phf'auri, get the [ ] into him. It says we're [looking? / searching / interrogating?] for fleet movements, recent human activity, ship [ ], and general [information?]." The tan woman to my right produced a small container and withdrew a syringe. She tapped it and watched the straw-colored solution inside mix. They were all very dispassionate about it, but the syringe-bearing woman squeezed my arm and stuck me below the wrist.
           "Okay, it's in. by his [ ] and [ ] I'm [guessing?] we'll need at least two minutes," she said, withdrawing and replacing the syringe. She didn't even clean it, so who knew how many people's diseases she'd just given me. At least she was decent enough to pull a bandage from her pocket and wrap my arm before my blood covered the rest of the room. Dark pelt pulled up Naia's chair and sat down.
           "I'm tired already," she confessed to her colleagues, "these people never let us [ ] without working." The men snorted. "Alright, human. You're going to be interrogated now."
           I was about to give her some acid retort, but something stopped me. Ice forced through my veins and I shook uncontrollably. Sound and sight began to distort my vision, scaring the hell out of me. My body went crazy as I thrashed about. "Is he having an [allergic reaction?]?" the older woman's voice asked. It sounded like she was underwater. An equally broken voice answered.
           "No, this is rare in humans, but not [fatal?]." The edges in my vision sharpened painfully, then slowly leaked back into place. I was left coughing and rasping on the table, gasping for breath.
           "What did you do to me?" I hacked. The tan woman to my left jumped.
           "He can speak Hrasi!" The dark-pelted woman furrowed her brow at both of us.
           "Quiet." She turned to the drugging woman. "Is he under? That was only a few seconds." The woman shrugged and nodded.
           "He looks ready. Go ahead, Ruhri, I think it's alright." The older 'Ruhri' woman bobbed her head.
           "You heard me before, pilot," she continued. "We'll start with your name and rank." Before I could so much as think or react I responded.
           "Sykes, Aaron. Major." Then, in shock: "What did you do to me?!"
           "Quiet!" Ruhri yelled, then sighed and rubbed her forehead. "God, I hate it when they ask that. Just answer the questions. Now I want to know what your last posting was."
           "ICAS Sentinel. In command of an interceptor squadron," I added, trying to exert my will back over whatever the drug had been. It made me feel helpless; good thing I didn't know anything that important. A thought: I couldn't lie, but maybe I could direct the questions away from sensitive areas. Areas like where certain colonies were, or how the new prototype interceptors were expected to perform…
           "I see. Where is this ship now?"
           "I don't know." That was technically true, because it might not have followed the flight pattern.
           "Don't play games," the man to the left hissed. The one to the right pursed his lips.
           "The major is [ ] the truth. I think he has a guess. How about it?" My chest heaved as I tried to stay silent. It took constant pressure on my jaws literally to keep my mouth shut. Pain and a wash of fear crept over me, slowly loosening my tongue. With a cough I sagged and conceded.
           "Gi 876. It should be re-supplying at the orbital station there. Should be, not will be."
           "That's far inside human territory," Ruhri noted, "How were you captured there?"
           "I was not with them. My wing was sent on a mission."
           "To do what?"
           "Protect a transport."
           "Where?" She demanded. Damn, this was insane! I was failing miserably, and now I'd tell them where to find people to kill. I stared with blind hatred at the group and remained silent. "Maybe he needs a [booster?]," Ruhri hissed. The medic shook her head and set her ears back.
           "It won't help. I suggest [conventional?] methods." The dark Ruhri smiled grimly.
           "You heard her," the woman growled to me, "Want to talk?"
           "Fuck you," I growled back through clenched teeth. I didn't have the Hrasi rumble in my paltry imitation, but she noticed and her eyes went to slits.
           "Hold him down," She ordered, and both men grabbed my by the arms. "Careful of the bandages," Ruhri added, "I only want to hurt him [intentionally?]." Gee, thanks. That made me feel better. Ruhri leaned forward and punched me in the stomach. "Now, where was that transport going?"
           "I said go to hell," I gasped. Yes, I was winded, but that was not why I gasped. The pain in my forehead and chest was excruciating. How'd they come up with a drug that punishes lying? God, I hoped there was still a repair nanobot or two left in my body. Ruhri punched me in the gut again.
           "Tell us the ship's destination. We'll hurt you, major, make you wish you were dead." That was almost funny.
           "Too late for that, Hrasi." The woman on the left shifted uncomfortably.
           "Ruhri, stop. You're encouraging [ ] [ ] in him. He'll become [resistant? / desensitized?] to all that violence." Yes, right, listen to the woman, I mentally pleaded. There was a salty, basic taste in my mouth, and my abdomen hurt like hell. There hadn't been any fractures… yet. My rescuer turned to her counterpart the medic. "Disorient him," she advised.
           The 'medic' opened up her medical kit and removed a quarter-inch piece of paper held between her clawtips. She hesitated.
           "Ruhri?" The lead interrogator nodded and the drugger caught my head in her free hand. She didn't have much of a grip, but it was enough to pry open my mouth and lower in the paper. What was this? I couldn't struggle for fear of losing a cheek, so I lay there uncomfortably and shook as it went in. Their little paper touched my tongue and I tried to spit it out, but that didn't work: just rubbed it up against my cheek. The medical smiled. "I have him. Let's try again."
           Above me the medic grinned toothily and growled. Then Ruhri moved and her body blurred. The Hrasi's furs all began growing outward, twisting and blurring. Each of them growled at me hissing. I could smell their yowling, taste it. All the senses blurred, the Hrasi were yowling, one of them hit me, and the pain was deafening. Something in my body gave, another thing ripped, and blood gurgled in my throat.
           "Help!" I cried, shaking. The Hrasi didn't understand; they shook me and hissed. The dark one became furious, hissing at me and beating, ripping. I screamed and yelped, making the others hold me down. "Stop!" I yelled, and was battered. The lights were drowning me. I choked for air, but there wasn't anything in my lungs but blood.
          

---v---

           I woke with an involuntary cough. Something halfway between phlegm and blood was dribbling from my mouth. The party was gone, the door shut across the room. My whole abdomen was numb. I raised my head up to look down at it and winced. There weren't just slashes: I didn't have any skin left, and could plainly see three ribs. Some plain cotton bandages wrapped over the large wound there, but it was obviously too little, too late. I coughed and let my head off to the side. I didn't want to die.
           What a horrible trip that'd been. Oh, the signs were there: blurring of the senses, peaking of fear emotions. There was an Earth drug that did that; I'd forgotten its name. I wished I had some plasm or some coagulant. An anesthetic would've been welcome in lieu of those, even. It hurt so much… Did Ayo feel like that before she died?
           "I'm back." I flicked my eyes up from the gory sight that was my midsection to watch the door open. I knew the visitor by her voice, brimming with distaste and shame, but I still wanted to make absolutely sure. It was important to see Naia standing there in her black uniform, ears down, staring at me in shock, disgust, and misery. If there was any way that just maybe it was someone else, that'd I'd been betrayed by someone else, that she was still my ally and that she'd come and save me... Just lots of useless wishful thinking.
           "Oh god, Aaron. They went really rough on you. Didn't tell them a thing, did you?" I shook my head slowly, feeling pain in my neck. "I'm sorry. I didn't want this to happen. I brought that tape." She held up a single black cassette the size of my fist. "A new Aaron, guaranteed. They won't hurt you afterward. We can be friends again." Damned short-sighted bitch. I coughed blood, then spoke hoarsely.
           "You really think that? You just erase me and it'll all be okay? We won't be friends, Naia. All that'll happen is that Amara, Maura, and Jaurn will become our enemies. Just more pain and suffering, that's all you'll create." I stared at her imploringly. "You know you're making a mistake, right? Like killing the slave, this is wrong. The good guys don't do this stuff, Naia. It's a fairly easy way to recognize when you're on the wrong side. You know that, right?" Naia looked at me with torn emotions.
           "I know. I've already chosen my side. I chose it when they taped me with the counter-agent conditioning. It's too late for me to change sides again."
           "It's never too late. I've changed sides, and I've been in the military at least as long as you." Naia sighed, shaking her head.
           "Well, you can change sides one last time, then. You and I both know it has to end like this. If it's any consolation, I'll have you redo my conditioning as soon as I'm done with you. You've made my heart ache. I'll have to replace its armor. This'll only be the second time." What? In the back of my mind a little signal went off that said 'we almost got through to her! Maybe we can finish the job before she kills us!'
           "What were you like before you got indoctrinated?" I asked, making a direct appeal to whatever was left of her conscience. "Would I have liked you? Would we have been friends?" Naia shrugged.
           "I don't know, Aaron. I wasn't lying about my childhood, so I suppose I was whatever kind of person those experiences produced. I guess that if I was wiped and conditioned in the first place I must have really been a malcontent. We might have liked eachother. Who knows?" She moved to undo my chains. "It doesn't matter." Naia helped me up, hissing at the cheap bandage jobs over the gaping wounds in my chest. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that, even if you are the enemy."
           She disappeared behind me and returned with a real medical kit. There was plasm, wonderful plasm in a gray metal can scrawled with writing. "I'm really sorry," she murmured, "just lay down. I'll help you." I groaned as she removed the half-assed bandages and then sighed as she sprayed cool plasm all over my stomach, smearing and packing it down before wrapping it up correctly. As a final act of peacemaking she pushed three tablets into my mouth. "Painkillers," she explained. "I hope they'll help."
           We hobbled together out the room and down the winding, enigmatic gray hall it opened into. I didn't balk at all, or even talk. There wasn't any point in talking to her or causing her trouble; it'd accomplish nothing. Instead I focused in on myself, trying to think. The pain in my chest nagged at me, trying to disrupt my thought processes. I did my best to remain unfazed. Naia carried me slowly, grunting and dragging me along. I'm not sure why, but in an odd way I was sorry she had to pull me; it must have been exhausting work.
           Naia was panting by the time we got to the door at the end of the hallway. She didn't complain, nor did I. Every foot we'd traveled meant another jolting step and another jab into my side, but bitching about it was pointless. We didn't have anything more to say each other. Silence hung through the halls. I can understand why a government would build a place like that. It was the sort of place where people disappear into and never return from. To be honest though, it wasn't very intimidating to me at the time.
           Naia set me against the wall and swung the door open. She dragged me through and shut the door behind us. I was left on the floor, staring up at the concrete ceiling. Concentrate on what you have to do, I thought, just keep concentrating. My breathing slowed to deep, long inhalations and exhalations. Painfully and carefully I got to my feet, wobbled, then staggered to the nearest thing I could lean on - a booth with restraints for feet, arms, and neck, all Hrasi-sized.
           "So this is where you wipe me," I said more than a bit resentfully, "this is where I die." Naia walked up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder.
           "This isn't where you die. This is where you're born. It's where I was born…" I swallowed, closed my eyes, and forced myself to ignore the pain in my gut one last time. One last try....
           "Then be born again," I whispered softly. I reached my arm back to grab Naia's hand and throw her forward with all my strength. With her smaller weight and lack of preparation she spun past me and smashed into the table. I picked her up and rolled her onto the booth, then forced the restraints onto her before she came out of the shock. I'd clamped down both arms and was going for her first leg before she recovered enough to resist.
           "What do you think you're doing?!" She yowled. Her free leg caught me a solid kick in the gut that sent me to the floor. "Let me go, Aaron! You're not going to walk out of here alive this way. You said yourself that conditioning isn't the answer." I took my time to upright myself. She'd reopened my wound…
           "I said conditioning me wasn't going to help. Conditioning you helps; it gives me an ally that I really need right now." I coughed blood into my hands. "Maybe you can bandage my wounds afterwards." A sharp pang sent me reeling; I staggered to lean against the booth, then hesitated. "You going to kick me again if I lean there?" I asked, coughing some more. Naia glared at me, but shook her head. I collapsed against the security booth in relief. Even Naia the traitor was halfway trustworthy. She wouldn't hurt me.
           "Aaron, trust me, you don't want to use that tape on me. It's meant for a human: it could kill a Hrasi. Besides, all of the tapes have loyalist deep-wiring preprogrammed into them. The closest to a friend you can condition me into is a counteragent or spy like what I was before I met you. I'll still end up betraying you. God, Aaron, don't. Please."
           "Are you recommending," I asked mirthfully, humor dampered only slightly by sharp pains and blood spattering from my lips, "That I just let you go?"
           "I would, but you wouldn't listen, would you? So why bother? Just don't tape me, Aaron. Please. Please…" She looked serious. I didn't want to kill her. Okay, so there'd be no tapes then. Well, if I couldn't replace her memories then maybe I could destroy them.
           "What happens if I tape you without putting a tape in?" I asked quietly. Naia was silent. I had something, then. "It won't program you into a loyal Hrasi citizen, will it? I wonder."
           "It won't program me into anything. You do the wipe, but not condition anything to replace what you've lost. A full wipe takes out everything except a person's earliest memories and basic lingual skills. Are you really willing to turn me into that, Aaron? Kill me?"
           "I don't want to, but I need somebody. You're the only person on this entire damn planet that I know. I need you. You can't imagine how scary this is. Screw tomorrow, Naia, I don't know how to get out of this building alive today. I want to be alive tomorrow, and I want to be me."
           "So do I!" Naia yowled at me, fighting against the restraints. I pushed off from the table where she lay, fearful for my life. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you," she muttered, "I haven't forgotten. Sorry about that." Naia waited for me to settle back down, allowing me to lean back within reach. "Aaron. Think realistically. You can barely read: how do you plan to perform a complex operation like this on me? You don't know the equipment, don't understand the process… you probably don't even know where the control panel is!" I looked around the room. The only panel with a slot for a tape was at the head of the booth, up against the wall.
           "That one," I rasped, nodding at it. Naia actually smiled.
           "Good guess. Doesn't mean that you can operate it." Her ears dipped in concern. "Come on, Aaron. Let me go. We'll re-tape eachother into counteragents and go find Amara. You'll live, I'll live, and she'll live, too: Amara trusts you even more than you trusted me."
           "That's exactly why I can't betray myself over to you. I'd rather take my chances with you, as much as I hate to say it. At worst I fry your brain and I die - that leaves nobody to stop Amara and the Yusuurans. She's good enough to replace me. I'm expendable." Naia's ears went back.
           "I guess I should be happy," she murmured quietly, "I've finally gotten you." She turned her head to stare at me eye-to-eye. "I betrayed you, so now you're going to kill me. One way or another I'll be dead in a few minutes, right? So who's going to stop me if I sell out?" She laughed tiredly. "I already told them about Amara and the Yusuurans. Those fools told me where to go if I didn't make it to them when we abandoned ship. The military is probably sending ships out right now." I froze. Shit. No…
           "You didn't." She looked at me in shame.
           "Sorry, Aaron. You can't just survive until tomorrow; you're going to have to get off-planet fast. Too bad you don't know where to find the Yusuurans. You need me for that."
           "Damn you! And no, I'm not letting you go. I'm not that stupid; I know you'll stab me in the back. You're insane if you think the 'reformed' routine is going to work on me. I'll find them on my own."
           "Our friends will all die if you do that. Even if you found them - eventually - you'd still be too late." Naia grinned. "Funny that I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, it looks like you can't do without me."
           "I'll do a partial memory wipe," I growled. Damn it, this was not supposed to happen.
           "Sure you will. That's even harder. What if you erase the wrong part?"
           "I can justify that risk pretty easily, seeing as if I don't do a partial you'll attack me the moment I let you go." I staggered over to the console. There were Hrasi glyphs in a neat matrix and several scan graphs beside them. "Hey, how do I operate this?"
           "Why should I tell you?" Naia asked.
           "Because otherwise I'll just punch in random buttons," I muttered.
           "No you won't." Damn it.
           "Because there's a tape here with the word 'slave' on it," I lied.
           "No there isn't." Okay, I couldn't think of anything else… better to just stay with that idea.
           "You want to risk that?" I asked, trying to sound convincing. There was silence.
           "Should be a manual in a slot at the bottom of the console," she gulped. I checked the bottom: there was one. I pulled it out. Great, I thought, it's in Hrasi. No big surprise there, but the manual was an inch-thick hardbound book, and my reading skills in Hrasi were rudimentary at best. "Confusing?" Naia asked, doubtfully hopeful it would be.
           "Hardly," I countered, lying through my teeth. "It's perfectly intuitive. I'll have it down in an hour."
           "There are patrols that come in here every hour or so."
           "You have a gun," I replied with a dismissal, then made it a point to pull it from her pants and pocket it. "I'll shoot anyone that comes near me." I turned back to the manual and managed to find the section on partial wipes after a few minutes of awkward silence. I swore to find myself a Hrasi phonics course or something if I got away. "…It says 'kill the glyph in the group that matches the brain you wish to die'." Naia blinked at me, totally serene. She chose, thankfully, to speak in English.
           "I doubt that. More likely it says something like 'delete the element in the matrix that corresponds to the memory group you wish to eliminate'. You just can't read."
           "So how am I supposed figure out which element I need to delete?" She chuffed.
           "I think I have a vested interest in not telling you that." I was already reading the glyph / memory group descriptions, though. For another few minutes I sat and read them. Naia made the only sound, just breathing nervously. I, meanwhile, was totally focused on the manual; I thought that I'd found what I needed. There was an entry for a symbol that resembled crossed swords. Hunter-Glyph: basic memory groups. Killing (deleting?) the glyph is reserved for removing the most basic (programming?). Includes (person-thing?), likes (preferences?), and altered loyalty bases. Sounded good to me.
           "I found it," I announced.
           "Wonderful. Sure you don't want to let me go?" I ignored that, towering over the console and searching its huge, 3-D cube matrix for the hunter glyph. I moved my finger over it, then hesitated. I had a very bad feeling about what I was about to do.
           "Goodbye Naia." She closed her eyes.
           "You'd better be good to me. If you kill me, I'll never speak to you again." We both smiled. "Goodbye, Aaron." I hit the glyph and watched it disappear.
           Naia yowled sharply, once, then pulled against her restraints. I thought was glad it wasn't me there; it didn't look enjoyable. For about fifteen seconds Naia fought that way, then collapsed against the booth. I moved over concernedly.
           "Naia! You alright?" She wasn't moving. Damn it! I threw caution to the wind and undid her restraints, then shook her and patted her cheek. "Naia. Come on, you're still there, aren't you?" Slowly, her blue-green eyes opened and focused on me. "Naia?" She frowned in delirium.
           "Who are you?" My eyes went wide. I couldn't believe it…
           "I'm Aaron. I'm your friend. You remember where the Yusuurans are, right? Naia?"
           "Yusuurans? What are they? Am I Naia?" I stared at her for a minute, looking for a hint of jest in her expression. There wasn't one. I bowed my head and clenched my hands into fists.
           "Shit. No, damn it, I read it right! Why didn't it work? Hell, I don't believe this!" In a bout of rage I hit the table and Naia jerked away in fright, looking at me in raw terror.
           "Aa-ron?" I stared angrily at her, and she flattened against the table. "Aaron? Why am I in this thing?" And then some stray thought must have lodged in her newly emptied head, because she tensed up in abject terror. "Please don't hurt me. Please, please Aa-ron, don't hurt me!" She looked horrified. I sighed and shook my head.
           "Shit… No, Naia, I'm not going to hurt you. We're friends." Huh. I could tell her anything and she'd probably believe it. Didn't want another knight or slave. "Trust me, Naia. We're friends. I'll let you go." Naia stared at me and nodded softly. As I slipped her restraints back off she pulled herself up and tucked her legs against her chest, hugging them and resting her chin on her knees. Her eyes were dilated and her ears were down flat. She looked terrified.
           "Where are we? What is this place?" she whimpered. I extended a hand carefully and rested it on her shoulder. Bristling, she shifted, but didn't stop me. "I don't remember you. Leave me alone," she pleaded. She was shivering, but not from the cold.
           "Naia. Please, I'm your friend. Trust me. I need your help." With a soft, questioning meow she turned to me to look me in the eyes. "I'm hurt," I explained, languishing in self-pity, "Help me." A flick of the ears was her reply, then a glance to my wound and back to me.
           "I can't. I'm afraid. Besides, I don't know how to." The glint in her eyes shone with more fear than anything else. "I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me…" She was like a broken record. 'Help', 'don't hurt me', and 'I'm afraid' was all I heard. Like a child, I thought, then realized that she was one. Great…
           "We're friends, I tell you. I'd never harm you. There are other people that will, though. We need to escape, but I'm hurt. I need your help or we'll both die. Just help me walk." For a minute she watched me, totally frightened, then acquiesced, slipping to her feet and coming behind me.
           One arm went around my shoulder blades as she hugged me to her. Without much joy she nudged my arm around her neck in a similar manner. The relief as a good half of my weight shifted to her was unimaginable. I sighed. "Out that door and then down the hall. I'm not sure where we're going, but that's the only place I haven't been yet." She nodded and we starting trudging forward.
           "Whatever you say," she whispered.
           "Scared?" I asked, and she nodded. "Me too. I think we might be okay, though."
           "Might be?" she despaired. I looked down, watching our feet plunge forwards haphazardly.
           "Well, probably not, but I thought that 'might be' would raise your spirits." She snuffled, like dry crying.
           "This is all scary. Who are you? Why are we going to be hurt? And why me?"
           "Because there are bad people here," I sighed. How do you explain politics and civil wars to a child? Best to keep things simple, which was exactly what I did. "We're the good guys and they're not, okay? I'll explain everything when we're safe." If we were ever safe again, that was.
           Gray concrete made up everything there. Lots of low-grade concrete and bare wiring and fluorescent lighting. The gravity didn't feel quite like ship gravity, so chances were that we were still planet-bound. The planet-gravity was a bit disorienting, actually. On a ship internal rotation maintains uniform gravity so perfect that you can't feel yourself moving at all (except during conversion, but that opens up a can of worms so confusing that distorted gravity becomes by far the least of your problems). After enough of that, a spacer on a planet begins to feel the planet rotating as it careens madly through space. The best way to describe it to a planet-bounder is to compare it to the sensation of constantly falling forward and being sucked in. It was really starting to screw with my mind.
           Around curves and a very long walk was a single elevator door. Naia took us there and I touched the call button on the elevator door panel. It slid open unhesitatingly. "This is it," I told her, pushing out of her grip and stumbling alone into the car. She remained outside, but I beckoned her in. "Come on. You just can't carry me. We're probably going to have to fight our way out." She jumped in as the door closed, but was clearly agitated.
           "Fight? Aaron? I can't fight." I looked at her grimly, pulling her gun out, clicking the safety off, and snapping the first charge into the firing chamber.
           "Doesn't matter. I can."
          

---v---

           Metal grated on metal as the elevator whined upwards towards the first floor. In the corner a much-disheveled Naia was eyeing me doubtfully and with great trepidation. I hardly blamed her: I knew exactly how scared she was. It must have been on a whole different magnitude than any fear I'd ever known. Being dragged around by a crazy man with a gun would've set me on edge, but she was shaking in terror. The car slowed to a halt and I gave Naia a reassuring glance. She only shrunk back from me.
           As the door opened I stepped out, clutching my abdomen, and surveyed the scene before me. Hrasi were walking through the lobby unconcernedly. Guards stood at four posts - one in each corner - with two or three guards at each station. There were double doors opening into the bright lights outside and corridor immediately opposite to me. People went along with their business without so much as noticing me, but one of the guards across the room stared straight at me. His ears flattened out and he stepped back as though he'd been punched. Even as he breathed in to call out I leveled the gun on him.
           "He's got a -" he yelled, cut short by the rapport of a single bullet shot. The recoil was next to nothing, so I accidentally overcompensated and put the second bullet through his foot. While he dropped the other guards were slinging their rifles into their grips. I re-aimed and took down another Hrasi near him, staggering for cover somewhere. By then the rifles were beginning to click and charge all round me.
           "Naia, run! Hide!" She did as she was told and bolted in a flash of white off to my right. On both sides guards had armed weapons trained on me, but I practically fell forward, which kept me from harm when they started firing. I yelled a furious, primal scream, emptying another four shots into the guard battalion to my far right. Their bones splintered and fractured, spinning bits and pieces of gore out towards me. A soldier at the near right station broke the cover of the station desk and ran at me, firing on automatic. His aim went wild almost immediately.
           "Arathch, drop your gun!" he screamed. I pointed my gun barrel at him, pressed the trigger twice, and turned away as the parts of his head fell to the ground. The floor around my feet erupted in a hail of metal, then a single bullet grazed my leg. I turned to see three guards brandishing their arms and fired directly into them. They fell apart around eachother, riddled with holes.
           "Arathch, you traitor," another guard yelled at me from across the room as she fired, "you'll pay for your [perfidy?]!" Who was Arathch? Did they mean Aaron? I returned her fire, less concerned with words than weaponry. While the woman did try to duck, it only served to put the bullet through her throat instead of her heart. One more rose with his rifle in hand and I flattened him with a single shot. They were dropping like flies.
           The last guard behind the post across the room jumped up to take a shot and I put a bullet in her head. Her body flew backwards, rifle firing randomly into the ceiling as she fell.
           "Too late," I sneered, regaining a firing stance. Footsteps thundered from the hallway across the room, signaling reinforcements. I calmly pulled the used clip from my firearm, letting it fall to the floor and spill out its handfuls of empty casings. I reached in my back pocket for another clip, then belatedly realized there weren't any. Shit. Great timing, Aaron, I thought to myself. More guards were barreling down the hallway and I didn't have a clip.
           Smirking at myself inanely, I limped to the guard post left of me and knelt down below the desk there. One of the security guards lay crumpled in the corner; I picked through his uniform. The guard's rifle had that annoying embedded Hrasi trigger, which effectively prevents anyone without retractable claws from using it, but he had several additional ammo clips on his belt. They looked close enough to fit to Naia's gun, so I ripped one out and slipped it into my weapon. It slid in and clicked smoothly. Well, at least the Hrasi hadn't abandoned standards yet.
           "Aaron!" Naia hissed. She was in a fetal crouch under a table across the room, ears down, looking at me incredulously. "What are you doing? Shouldn't we be running?"
           "If I could run," I yelled back, "then sure. But I can barely walk. How am I supposed to run?"
           "Get up, Arathch," Someone yelled from the hallway, "we know you're there!" I narrowed my eyes, raised my gun backward above the desk, and fired off a few shots.
           "My name is Aaron!" I screamed. Damn, that was getting annoying. I rolled out from the side of the desk as automatic fire ripped up the wall above me and took aim at the lead of a trio of guards. The recoil from Naia's weapon shook my arm a bit - I wasn't ready for it - and threw my aim off, but that hardly stopped me. By the time the guards had figured out that their target had moved there was only one of them left, and I carved out the man's chest with metal slugs before he could change his line of fire.
           The trio hit the ground with wet slaps and suddenly there wasn't any noise but the air conditioning system. Pieces of stone fell from the walls where bullets had ricocheted across the room along with clouds of dust that choked the lobby with beige flakes. Hrasi were snarling and growling farther down the hallway, but they didn't come any nearer. Agonizingly I stood, clicked the pistol's safety back on, and wobbled uncertainly. I was going to slip.
           "You hurt?" Naia asked, rolling to her feet and sprinting to catch me before I fell. "Are you okay?" she asked fearfully. Warm, furry arms caught me around the waist, holding me tight.
           "Just not in any condition to be fighting," I grunted. Naia looked at me, then touched the bandage on my chest, making me groan in pain.
           "What an awful wound… what happened to you?" I gritted my teeth.
           "Torture happened to me. One of my friends betrayed me. Never mind that, though. We have to get out of her before more guards come." Speak of the devil: a single pair of footsteps came thundering down the hallway towards us. "Get down," I breathed. I pulled my gun, undid the safety again, and held it up to the opening of the doorway, waiting for whomever it was to emerge. A single black-uniformed guard ran out with rifle in hands, then spun in the air to land on his back with a slip of steel in his heart. "How many of these people are there? I've shot enough innocent people today to last me the rest of my life." Naia pushed me away and held me solely by the hand.
           "Let's go," she insisted, "I don't like this place. Everybody here wants to kill us."
           "Everybody on this planet wants to kill us. Everybody in this solar system wants to kill us, most likely. Help me walk, Naia. I don't think I can on my own." She nodded, putting her arm back around me. We hobbled out, impeded only by the dead bodies.
           Bright light blinded me; I threw my hands up over my eyes, wincing. There were still three flights of stairs down to the street. We probably needed to go down there, but after that I had absolutely no idea what to do. Naia pulled us down step by step all the way there.
           "Where do we go?" Naia asked, looking frantically back and forth among the glass towers of the city. Without waiting for an answer she pulled me to the right down a sidewalk. "Aaron, there are people watching us from up above!" she hissed. Her pace was much too fast, and my wound burned as I tried to keep from having my feet pulled out from under me.
           "Stop!" I sputtered, and she did just that, looking back worriedly. "You're going to kill me with that pace. Slow down…"
           "Where do we go now, Aaron? People can see us!" I heaved, looking at her darkly.
           "I don't know," I growled, "but I'm fairly sure that we can't outrun them. Now, if you want to kill me then by all means keep up the pace." She pursed her lips in a Hrasi apologetic.
           "I'm sorry, Aaron. Tell me what to do."
           "Better. Let's find a doctor. Take my gun and pretend you're my master."
           "Master?" She asked. I sighed and tugged her, starting us off again.
           "Pretend you own me. Pretend that I live only to serve you. People will believe that." She nodded with a scared look and reclaimed her hand weapon as we continued at a more manageable speed. "Don't worry, Naia," I whispered, "It'll be alright. We'll get out of here just fine." That was an outright lie, but what else was I to say? It wasn't as if I could just say 'oh, we're dead, yes, but we might as well go ahead and try anyway!' Instead I walked stiffly along with her. "Need a doctor," I grunted, feeling the painkillers beginning to wear off.
           "Doctor? How do we find one?" She asked. I coughed a bit, feeling sharp chest pain returning.
           "Okay. Alright. I want you to find a car on the street." She nodded and we limped together.
           Nobody was out on the streets. It was eerie, the emptiness. I leaned on Naia as our weights lurched forward. Young Naia was looking around in abject terror, just like a child lost without her parents in an unfamiliar city. Of all the things I didn't need, an ignorant teenaged Hrasi girl ranked fairly high. In the body of my friend and betrayer, no less.
           We traveled to the sidewalk's end and turned the corner unopposed. I could see all the way down the street to another steel monolith a few kilometers down. There wasn't a single car in the area. Hell, why'd they even bother to have roads? Maybe they'd evacuated so that they could take us down without civilian casualties.
           "Aaron, there aren't any cars here," she hissed.
           "Keep going," I growled. We did, going at a miserable pace.
           After a few minutes I was lightheaded and there was a small buzz in my ear. In a few moments Naia came to an abrupt halt.
           "I can hear something coming this way," she breathed softly. I nodded: a car coming from up ahead. I looked at her and gave a twitch of the head.
           "Give me the gun and go stand in the street," I ordered, and got a bewildered look in response. "No, I won't let you get hurt. Just do it." Reluctantly she nodded, handing over the gun and abandoning me to step off the curb. I armed and took a wide stance to keep from falling down.
           Less than a minute later a car came rolling from the intersection immediately ahead of us. It turned our way - Naia's way, actually - then screeched to halt as the driver saw her. Naia jumped back as quickly as she could but tripped over her tail and fell into the street. Fortunately, the car stopped before it ran her over. I pulled the gun up and pointed it straight at the driver.
           "Get out!" I yelled. "Out, or I'll shoot you!" Inside two furry arms came up, the door opened, and a middle-aged man with a dark gray coat stepped out. He looked from Naia to me, then back again warily. "Keep your arms up!" I warned. He gulped and nodded. Naia got up off of the street while I held the gun on him and walked towards me.
           "Stop it Aaron," she chided. I slanted my eyes over to her questioning as she walked up to me and disarmed me. She looked over to the man. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "He's my slave. I own him." Clever girl… The man watched uncertainly, not moving. "I need a doctor," she explained innocently. The man blinked and nodded dumbly. "Good," Naia purred, "then let's go."
          

---v---

           Blood and flesh came away with the plasm. A grizzled woman with a bitter look and a permanent frown worked over me. Naia was sitting at the door watching the doctor operate. No, the vet, I reminded myself. I didn't rate enough for an actual doctor. At least she was licensed, even if she wasn't trusted enough to be let near 'actual people'. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she didn't believe in anesthetics.
           "Who did this?" she complained darkly. "It looks like it was done was by a child reading the [directions? / instructions?] on the can." I wasn't sure who she was asking, or if it was rhetorical.
           "Hurts," I mumbled. The doctor smirked.
           "Good. If it didn't you'd really have something to worry about." Another pull at the plasm and I grunted. She came away with almost a full handful of the stuff, coated in blood. Next she came at me with a razor blade in one of her latex-gloved hands. I struggled away and she rolled her eyes.
           "Ma'am, you'll have to hold your pet." Naia walked forward cautiously and took my hand. "No, I mean physically," she growled, "not for emotional [support?]." Naia's ears drooped at the reproach and she looked at me for orders. I shrugged, so she put her other hand on my chest with a feeble gesture. The doctor just shook her head silently.
           Cold steel flashed in the medic's hand, then down to my abdomen. I winced as sharp pains lanced through the mess in my gut. Naia watched with fascination, then suddenly turned away in disgust. I gnashed my teeth, clenching hard as I watched the vet remove strip after strip of plasm and skin. The pain was unimaginable.
           After a bit the chunks being excised became smaller, though the pain only increased. The vet batted her auburn ears and set down the scalpel, then: "This is how to do it properly," she said gruffly, indicating with a flick of the wrist that Naia should watch.
           "Shave your hands before you touch inside a person; you don't want to get your fur in there." She pulled back one of her gloves to show bare, dark red skin on the back on her hand. "Don't just [spray?] plasm. Remember that it functions as replacement flesh, not replacement body. If you just plasm everything like that again his organs will [fuse?] together."
           "What do you do?" Naia asked curiously. The vet pointed towards my stomach while she cut a length of gauze out from a roll.
           "You wrap each [layer?] so everything heals [independently?]." She produced her own bottle of plasm, but instead of directly applying it she coated one side of the gauze with it and lowered the bandage into me. I could feel fingers manipulating my entrails. I didn't mind too much; the wonderful cool feeling of numbness that spread wherever the doctor touched was enough. "Like that, do you?" she chuffed as I sighed relief. "Shouldn't be long now," she promised Naia.
           It was. Almost half an hour later she wrapped the final bandage layer (the sixteenth) to my torso. I'd become inured to the pain by then, but was distressed about our situation. No course in thinking on one's feet could've properly prepared me for what I was going through…
           The man had been coerced at gunpoint to take us to a section of town with ample medical facilities. Of them only emergency animal hospital was willing to do the work first, so there we were. Apathy and boredom were the rules among the staff; my case was taken only slightly faster than those of the other animals. At least the woman who'd taken me was competent, if somewhat lacking in bedside manner. I laughed for a minute. She was the warm & fuzzy type, though. All Hrasi were.
           "Going to pay?" the doctor asked Naia off-handedly. Poor Naia looked confused and I had to cut her off before she asked me what 'pay' meant.
           "Mistress Naia, it's in your back pocket." She slanted an ear to me and fished around in the black uniform that the old Naia had been wearing. Sure enough, there was a wallet there. Seeing the doctor's face light up, she proffered it forwards. The doctor took it, casually flipped it open, than watched Naia's reaction. When Naia stood and stared at her dumbly the doctor shook her head incredulously, picking out several hundred-credit vouchers. A good portion of what was in there - had Naia been embezzling? It didn't really matter all that much; there still more left than I'd thought we had in the first place.
           "That'll do," the doctor growled. "Is that it?"
           "Yes Ma'am," Naia purred. She received her wallet and returned it to her pocket. "Thank you." The doctor nodded and pointed to the door. As we walked out the doors Naia looked at me, ears forward. "Did I do well?" I gave her a sidelong look.
           "Thank god for small miracles." She hissed lowly, recognizing the mocking tone, but I'm confident that she never really understood me.
          

---v---

           Rain beat down on us we trudged up the hill to the freighter hangar. I did my best to stay under the trees and give Naia shelter under my large slave's cloak. The water was freezing, numbing; it would be hail if the weather got a few degrees colder.
           It was dark and cold by that time. We'd been on the move for hours: walking among the shadows of the city, evading people, and trying to get to the forest before we were noticed. The bright blue skies had gone dull blue, then gray, and finally black. About an hour later it started pouring and we just ran. There wasn't even light by the time we'd gotten to the base of the spaceport's mountain.
           "Aaron, I'm cold and wet," Naia complained, child-like in her whining tone. Well, not exactly child-like. She was, after all, a child again.
           "I know you're cold and wet. I can smell your wet fur: you stink."
           "It feels miserable. Isn't there something we can do?" For the fiftieth time I sighed.
           "We can hurry," I explained, "nothing more. It's not much farther, I promise." She moved closer, almost leaning on me, so I grabbed her tightly as we made our way upward.
           A lightning strike cracked, then chain lightning arced up and down on a faraway mountain peak. "Huh. We really ought to hurry, I guess. See that lightning?" I pointed out, relapsing to English for the unfamiliar word, "It always follows the path of least resistance. Resistance usually mean air, so it likes to hit higher objects more often, and metal especially." Naia moaned.
           "So we're going to a huge metal starship at the top of a mountain?" I shrugged.
           "Not much choice, I'm afraid. This is the spaceport: it's your species' fault that you decided to build your 'port out of metal on top of a mountain. We'll find a smaller ship with a conversion engine and hide out until the storm blows through, then lift off under cover of nightfall." She looked at me dubiously.
           Another ten minutes had us moving slowly up to the huge mountain complex. It was silent and oppressively dark. Naia whimpered.
           "Shouldn't someone be here? This feels wrong. We shouldn't go in right away, Aaron. Let's just wait here. I don't care so much about the rain…" We crouched down at the edge of the woods. I looked over to her and pressed her head against my shoulder.
           "Listen, stay here. I'll go on ahead," I whispered. Naia opened her mouth to protest, but I'd already gotten up and stepped out of the cover of the woods.
           I walked out into the clearing, looking all around. Doing so didn't help much: in such amazing lack of light you really can't see but maybe twenty feet ahead of you. I took a step forward, crouching down into a firing stance and listening carefully. There weren't any sounds except the brushing of the rain against the leaves on the ground. I sat, listening for a minute or two just to be sure. When I didn't hear anything I strode forward calmly.
           About halfway to the building there was a loud snap to my left. I spun around to be caught in a flash of blinding light. I stumbled back while squinting. The light was killing me: I couldn't look at its source. There was some movement in that general direction, then a Hrasi shout.
           "Sykes! On the ground now!" I turned that way, squinting almost to the point where I couldn't see anything "You heard me, Sykes! Throw the gun away and get on the ground!" I didn't move, infuriated by the Hrasi government's determination and frustrated by my own lack of sleep.
           "You shoot me, my friend in the woods shoots both of you," I yelled back, "So back off!"
           "You're cornered, Sykes, don't bother threatening!" Threaten? "Sykes! You're acting like a fool! Put your gun down!" The hell with that, I thought, bringing Naia's poor, overused handgun to bear in the general direction of the woman.
           "You're kidding, right?" I yelled. "The only thing keeping me alive is my gun."
           "That's not true!" A different female voice rang out from farther away. I recognized that voice - that woman we'd met the previous night! "I want you alive! You shot through the defense building like the guards there were sleeping. I want the [genes?] that let you do that for my [ ] program, the same way I want your brother Miles here for his [ ] mental [capacities?]. Put your gun down and I can promise you your life!" Brother? I searched for that person's figure among the glare so I could take her face off with a bullet. Arrogant bitch.
           "Do you think I want to live my life as a slave? I'd rather die! I won't help you kill innocent people!" Out of the light came a human with a gun in his hands. He had all the trappings of the Hrasi wealthy elite; a fine Hrasi cloak distorted his silhouette. Even from a distance I saw enough to make my blood run cold.
           The man had shocks of very pale blonde-bronze hair that hung about his face in wavy wisps. It was held in the back with a single plait, giving the appearance of a Hrasi mane. His features might have been slightly more chiseled and pronounced than mine, and he didn't have a single scar marring his face or arms, but otherwise we were identical. We had the same eyes, same height, the same build… the same hostile expression.
           "The Hrasi are the innocents, vermin! You're [feral?], untrained, dangerous. Stop thinking with your animal mind and try thinking like a civilized being! You've just killed dozens of people that we've known for years, but they'll still give you your life back. No [feral?] would afford us such [an offer?], so take them up on it!"
           "I don't care what you're offering," I said, "I have to leave. I'm a spacer; I can't stay on this planet. Now drop your guns, damn-" Glass cracked loudly above us to the right. Everyone stared up at the top of the spaceport building where a window was creaking and hissing above the sound of the rain.
           With a loud burst the window shattered and a furred lump span down, yowling, then a snap and crunch of bones accompanied the lump's impact to the ground. Two Hrasi untangled and launched into a heated melee. One of them, a small white girl in black breechs, kicked her golden counterpart to the ground. She then jumped to feet and looked to me.
           "Miles!" she yelled, "You can't trust us! The government is working against you! Raiira and Vher are government [agents?] hired to spy on you, not protect you! Their job is to keep you from learning the truth and turning [sympathetic?] to -" The other Hrasi cut her off, tackling the white-furred girl to the ground. I can honestly say that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. The whole affair was really rather befuddling, actually.
           The two Hrasi who'd just fallen from the building rolled in the mud, punching and slashing at eachother mercilessly. The smaller white one rolled atop her opponent and ripped across the other's throat with her canines. The golden woman on the bottom hooked her claws into albino's shoulder in turn, then pulled down to rip the girl's flesh.
           "STOP!" Naia cried from behind me. Great, just great. That was just about all I needed. She ran to me, pressing her dripping wet self up against my side. "Aaron," she pleaded, "make them stop! Please, I don't want anybody to die!"
           "Both of you stop it!" my double yelled. Both attacking Hrasi did stop, rolling off of one another and staggering back, clutching their bleeding chests. He turned to someone hidden in the light and traded a few words before looking over at the fighters. "Was that all, Kyaruin?" he asked calmly, as if ambivalent towards the woman's revelations. The white woman's tail thrashed in surprise and uncertainty.
           "You're being manipulated: Raiira told me so. They wouldn't be with you if the government wasn't worried you'd turn traitor! They're blinding you to anything that might sway you. Raiira was going to betray you: she wanted to run away with me! She tried to wipe my memory, Miles! Raiira and Vher don't love you; they don't care about you except as far as you earn their pay. You don't care either?"
           "That's not true," The basso woman who'd first called me out snarled, "I love him! I'd follow him wherever he decided to go." Love? Shit. What the hell had I just gotten into? "You don't know anything about me or why I'm here," she hissed. "And you, Raiira! I never should have trusted you. To think that I slept at your side, and then you doublecross Miles and me!" The golden woman hissed and backed away from us. My double, Miles, waved at the woman hidden in the light placatingly.
           "It's alright, Vher." I watched the man bow his head. "I know whose side I'm on." He called out hoarsely to the albino, who was sagging and clutching her bloody shoulder. "Kyaruin, come here. Just come here: I won't hurt you." The woman hobbled to him obediently. Paranoid, I tracked her with my firearm as she ambled across the brush towards my double and the light. "You shoot her and you're a dead man," Miles shouted. "She's an innocent." That pissed me off, and I looked at him to tell him so.
           "She's the one person who seems to be making any sense. I'd much rather shoot you, who sells out to the Hrasi. Who the hell are you, anyway?"
           "Miles Arathch, representative of the defense council. You might have known my mother, Rachel Sykes. I've always wondered what she was like, although I think she probably had me under… different circumstances. I don't want to shoot you, as much as you may want to kill me. Why don't you join us? I'd enjoy having a brother." The ass went far so as to walk slowly farther out of the light. "Going to shoot me, Sykes? I want to be your friend. I'll put away my weapon." I smiled humorlessly, re-tracking onto him. The way his gun was held, the fact that the clip wasn't properly seated… He didn't know what he was doing.
           "You don't know how to use it anyway. That handgun would be much more effective if you took the safety off." I changed target yet again to aim straight for Miles' head. "Listen, bastard, just because some pervert Hrasi had a guy rape my mother does not make you my family," I spat. The more I picked up about this guy the less I liked him. "She never loved you, and if she saw you now she'd say it wasn't worth the pain it took to give birth to you. I'd rather see you dead so you wouldn't be disgracing my name, but I have the idea that your furry masters over there wouldn't be very appreciative." I smiled maniacally at him. "What you don't seem to understand is that I'm a spacer stranded out of his natural habitat. I can't be planet-bounded, and there are a lot of lives at stake that depend on whether or not I can get off the planet - Hrasi lives, if that means anything to you."
           "Yusuuran rebels, probably," Miles said, "but Hrasi nonetheless. If we let you go, though, you'll kill at least as many others." He sneered. "I don't give a damn about my biological mother, either. That feral was never my mother: My Hrasi matron was. Rachel Sykes was just a whore one clever Hrasi decided to breed with some other feral." Son of a bitch! Miles looked at me with a smirk as I moved in on him and lit into his face with my fist.
           "Stop!" Naia yelled at me, but I ignored her. I holstered my gun and threw myself into Miles. The pompous bastard turned out to also be a wimp. I shunted away his feeble punches, ignored the hits that got through, and slammed into him as hard I could. He pummeled me in my bandaged wound, but by his cries I think it hurt more when I broke in his ribcage. In less than thirty seconds I'd broken both of Miles' arms and a single leg without so much as breaking a sweat. In blind fury I used every pressure point and pain technique I knew, trying to mangle him as much as possible before I killed him. Naia was still yelling at me. "Aaron, Stop! Please, for me, stop it! Don't hurt him!"
           I stopped, not because Naia had asked me to but because the golden Hrasi had jumped to her feet and was making a run for it. The deep-voiced woman yelled in rage. I jumped to my feet, pulled my gun, and gave my double one last kick before turning to the spotlight. Three shots rang out and the golden woman's chest exploded.
           "No!" my brother screamed, but none of us on our feet seemed to care. I pulled my gun and opened fire at the woman behind the light, who responded in turn. We screamed at eachother, firing madly.
           Blood and mud and pain and rain rattled my senses as I fired. The shots sent clouds of mist and oily smoke into my face, yet I shot onward. With a spacer's vector sense I felt the bullets fly away, saw my target, and knew exactly where to put my next bullet, but I just couldn't do it. All of the craziness and weapons fire had turned my arm's muscles to so much jelly that I couldn't put my weapon where it needed to be. I tried hard, as did the other woman, but neither of us could quite get it.
           Nine or ten shots were traded between us, then I managed to catch the woman shooting at me somewhere in the chest. She cried out in pain, dropping her gun to the side as she fell. I trained on her chest and emptied another two or three shots into it, but my fool brother Miles forced himself up and tackled me down by the ankles. "I'll kill you, you bastard," he yelled, "I'll kill you!" Really, I thought. How interesting. I grabbed him by the throat with quick, efficient movements and punched him out, then threw him aside and rolled to my feet.
           "You want this stupid son of a bitch alive?" I yelled at the remaining Hrasi (the albino), "You drop your weapons and turn that damn floodlight off now!" Naia was lying on the ground, moaning. "Now!"
           "We'll turn it off," the albino shouted back, "Please, don't kill him! You can do whatever you want to, I don't care, just don't kill him!" She moved into the glare and then there were ripping sounds until the light beam flickered off. "Let me come and get him," the woman asked calmingly, "I won't attack you. I just want him." I blinked, eyes adjusting to the light, then pointed my gun at the white-furred woman. "Please," she heaved, breathless. Slowly I lowered my gun, then on a gut impulse threw it aside.
           "Get me a spaceship, get me off this damn planet, and you can have my traitor brother." She nodded, then looked back at the woman I'd felled. There were two other women next to her. One looked up at the albino and said something, throwing her something the size of a finger.
           I watched carefully as she walked towards us. The mud squelched under her feet as she approached. Her Miles lay in a ball, bleeding from the nose and mouth. She looked down at him as she came within reach of me, then touched her breast. It was still bleeding. There was a definite attachment there. Calmly, she looked up at me.
           "I don't know you, nor do I particularly care. I don't care why you're hurting Miles, either. He's my master, and if you let him live, mister Sykes, I'll get you your ship." I looked down at my sibling, not overly concerned with hiding my loathing.
           "Let's go get a ship, and your friends over there can deal with …Miles." She swallowed and nodded, then ran for the spaceport, waving for me to follow. "Hey, girl!" I yelled back at her. She skidded to a stop and turned around.
           "What is it?" She asked. While I picked Naia up off the ground I looked at her and frowned.
           "My name is Aaron. My Hrasi friends call me Ahrn. Not that we're friends. I mean, we don't have to be enemies, even though your master is my enemy… I mean, I don't want to have to fight you more than I need to…" Oh, good job Aaron, I thought to myself, very suave. She turned her head to its side and wrinkled her nose.
           "Ahrn, huh?" I nodded and we stared at one another. "…Let's go, Ahrn. The moment my master wakes up we stop being friends." I smiled.
           "I thought you'd understand." Naia groaned as I hoisted her, then pushed me away and followed her snow-white doppelganger. "That's Naia," I said, following her, "you have a name?"
           "Kyaruin," she responded, slowing for us to catch up with her. At the sight of closed doors she simply keyed them open. Naia ran past us to get inside.
           We were greeted by cold, still air and a cessation of the rain. Naia shivered in place, but only for a second or so; we didn't stop so she could dry off. There were glass staircases everywhere and advertisements for everything from slaves to grooming tools and weaponry. We walked up one of the staircases to the second floor, past a gaping hole in the observation deck window, and farther into the building's bowels.
           "Why would someone as reasonable as you care about someone like my brother?" I interjected into the silence. Kyaruin didn't respond immediately.
           "I was brought into his [household?] as a slave. He has so far treated me as more than a slave; he treats me like an equal. You don't know who he is, you can't learn that just by [assaulting?] him." I didn't dispute that, just followed her. At terminal 15 we stopped. Kyaruin pointed. "Will that do?"
           Across the terminal window I saw a medium-sized transport ship - maybe 50x75 meters. It looked like a wedge with a large engine pack in the rear and a bulbous wart in the middle where presumably the cargo bay was. From the closed terminal port an airlock extended into the ship's bowels. There weren't any visible weapons, but it did look inconspicuous enough to pass unquestioned through just about anywhere.
           "That'll do," I nodded. Silently Kyaruin produced a crystal key and ran it through a panel next to the airlock. It slid open silently. She gave the panel one last look, then pressed the key into my palm.
           "It's fueled and supplied. This key will let you [commandeer?] it. Now go. I never want to see you again. If I do I'll probably have to kill you," she said quietly. I fingered the key, making a fist around it.
           "I don't know where to go. My friends - the Yusuurans - are in trouble. If I can't warn them they'll all be…" I trailed off, watching her face twitch. "You wouldn't let them die, would you?" She was a long time in answering.
           "I believe S'jet station is notorious for its [outlaw? / rebel?] groups. You should find the location in your ship's navigational computer."
           "Thank you," Naia meeped softly. Kyaruin's eyes flickered from her to me to the ship. Then without so much as a goodbye she walked away, leaving us. Leaving me alone again. Dammit, sometimes I wish Amara had been a better shot when we first met.
          
           End Part 11