The Wilding

The word tasted vile upon the tongue. It was the kind of thing you wanted to spit out onto the streets, to watch passing feet mangle it into the dust like so much phlegm. The mere concept of it was abhorrent to Tathas, and the attendant thoughts . . . revolting.

He had left behind five transports, two starliners, and who knew how many planets and stations and shuttles now. It all ran together in his brain, so that he couldn’t pick out the details. He remembered that when he started this trip the ships had seemed cleaner, the people more human-looking, the planets better equipped. Now it was all just a featureless drone in his brain, so many tenths of travel amidst aliens who looked strange and smelled stranger and didn’t know rings about Braxin custom that he could hardly remember when it had started, and couldn’t imagine the end.

He was a child of the Central System, and never had he felt it so acutely. Hospitable, familiar Braxi with its flock of tame satellites: Aldous, which was little more than a suburb of Braxi—Zhene, with its sculpted airlocks and gravlocks and the mansions of the Holding’s elite—and the Citadel, shining like a small moon, even though its hordes of once-numerous Kaim’eri had passed into history like some enormous extinct beast. And the H’karet, of course, glinting in the night like a wayward star. How he had taken it all for granted! What he would not give up to go back there now!

The human types which dominated the Central System were a minority in these places, and strange living things that slithered or crawled or clacked their way through life took precedence instead. Half of the languages they spoke could not even be handled by his translator, as though the weirdness of the sounds was too much even for its mechanical circuits. Half the beds he slept in were not comfortable force fields, or even sterile material constructs, but surfaces whose aromas hinted at distant evolutions, in which two arms and two legs had been rejected as a workable model for intelligent beings. Several times he slept on the floor, preferring its neutral surface to that which would cradle his body but discomfort his senses.

Easy, Tathas, easy. Did not your ancestors eschew comfort, when it suited their purpose? Was not your tribe born in the hostile wastelands, where luxuries were few? More than one of them slept on the ground, I am sure, and that was without central heating and bedfields and a host of amenities you still take for granted.

It was little comfort on those first few nights, to remember such things. True, there were still those who enjoyed the outer trappings of barbarism, but that was a choice. To know that the Central Computer was off-limits to him now, that the cash in his pocket and the clothes on his back were all he owned in the world, and that after a set number of days had passed—whatever number the Braxaná decided was sufficient for him to reach one of the Borders—he would be outlawed in his own homeland. . . . That was not choice, that was infamy. Yet, what was the alternative?

Only death, K’teva assured him in dreams. Offering the words instead of herself, cold comfort in the place of warm lips. He reached for her and she danced away, eyes sad, sympathetic, tempting . . . all at once. God, how he ached for her!

Where was he going, anyway? Not to the War Border; he wasn’t that stupid. Though hostilities had ceased half a year ago—again—they could start up any day now, and that was nothing he wanted to be caught in the middle of. No, the Kesserit enjoyed war, but that was war waged with sword and muscle and the intoxicating rush of adrenaline . . . not this farce of a war fought in packaged space, where the only knowledge of victory came from moving lights on a starmap, and where death came too swift and clean to savor.

No, he had chosen another Border to approach. It was a more distant border, as space was measured from Braxi, and perhaps that was what appealed to him; a longer journey meant more time he could spend in the Holding, drinking in the last of his native culture. Then again, was this really his culture? This mishmash of races, where Braxi’s military might was little more than a fairy tale used to scare children into proper behavior, in a place where the light of B’Salos was so distant that the naked eye could not pick it out from among the inferior stars? One night he saw a group of Braxins in a bar, half a dozen of them, surrounded on all sides by Scattered Races whose forms had been molded by alien ecologies, flanked by those few true aliens who were permitted to share such a human space. We must all look alike to them. Tathas thought. In that strange, disconcerting moment, they even looked alike to him.

But then, he was not part of their society any more. It might even be said that he was more alien to those Braxins than the foul-smelling green creature who hurried past him in the bar that night, a beerbag clutched in its primary mandibles—

What now? He strode the length of the station with long, restless strides, angry at the fate which had sent him here, even angrier at himself for not having come up with some better plan than run away. All through his journey there had been a part of him that had never given in, never accepted this Braxaná travesty of justice. That part of him had firmly believed that he would come up with some idea that would save his own neck and his dignity; only now, standing on the furthermost station in the Holding, gazing out upon the unconquered Void, did he realize that wasn’t going to happen. And the realization made him furious.

Ar! He turned suddenly and struck at a nearby commodities conduit, hard enough to dent its surface. Humans and nonhumans alike paused in their passage and moved to give him wide berth. He almost hoped someone would call the station guards on him. He wanted something to fight, someone to vent his anger on . . . and if it was someone who wore a Braxin uniform, all the better.

Yes, when he succeeded in his Wilding. How likely was that, really? He could bring back a thousand women for the Braxaná to breed with, each of them the pinnacle of genetic perfection, and still those god-lovers could claim they were unfit for the Master Race and sentence him to death for failure. The only hope Tathas had of winning out by their rules was to find a female whose value was so blatantly obvious that they didn’t dare deny it . . . and short of kidnapping the Azean Empress or some such feat, he didn’t see any way that could be managed.

No, his return would have to be managed secretly, or by some other illegal method. The Wilding was merely a death sentence delayed. For now all that mattered was that he get to somewhere safe, where he could take the time to think without having to watch over his shoulder for enemies. But how, exactly, did one do that? Hire a transport? They would expect him to have some destination in mind. Bribe his way onto a merchanter? They’d know the Outlands well enough, having plied the free planets for their own purpose, but how much could a freelance be trusted? He’d heard enough stories of the traps set for unwary travelers that he knew just how easy it would be to wind up in the Void without a force field, for the sake of the few valuables he carried. How did you determine whom to trust, on a station where everyone looked equally disreputable?

At last he took a room in a dismal inn that jutted out from the main commercial ring. It cost him twice what it should have and looked as though it hadn’t been disinfected in ages, but that was just par for the course. Head cradled awkwardly on a fiber-filled pillow, he listened to the hum of a climate control system badly in need of repair and wondered just what in Ar’s name he was going to do next. Return? Rebel? Or find them the perfect woman for their stupid little custom? Right now all three options seemed equally untenable, and he fell into a troubled sleep counting the tenths that were left for him to remain in the Holding, before the might of the Braxaná reached out to crush him like an insect.

He had been on the station nearly two days when he first realized someone was following him. He couldn’t even say how he knew it. Maybe it was some primitive instinct which evolution had overlooked when it prepared humanity for the modern age, that still peered into shadowy corners and searched for predators. Or maybe it was just the normal paranoia of a man about to be hunted by the galaxy’s most deadly tribe, turned up so high in volume that the very passage of air through the tunnels of the station seemed to be whispering threats to him.

The twisting corridors of the station were a bad place to get ambushed. The structure had taken shape over the years in a piecemeal manner, new sections added or altered as station politics, bribery, and occasionally the strong-armed tactics of unwelcome guests dictated. The end result was a layout no man could anticipate, filled with so many twisting tunnels that trying to go from one point to another in a straight line was a lost cause, and running away from trouble was as likely to bring you circling back to it as it was to get you safely away. He’d tried to get hold of a map of the station when he first arrived, but if such a thing existed no one seemed to have a copy. Doubtless the black market traders who plied their business on the station preferred it that way.

Was this some normal business of the station, the kind of trouble that was unavoidable in a place so far from the centers of law and order? Or were the Braxaná coming after him already? Perhaps to spill his blood for daring to stay in one place longer than a night? Ar, he would almost welcome a real fight!

He walked quickly through the station, staying with crowds, looking for some kind of space that might let him flush his trackers out into the open. If more than one person was involved they would want to get him in a place where they could surround him, preferably without bystanders to witness the act. Moving too quickly and erratically for them to enact such a plan, he did his best to memorize the area he was moving through, looking for a tunnel or system of tunnels that would suit his purpose. At last he found it, outside a darkly lit bar in the primary docking ring whose main entrances were far too public for trouble. A back hallway exiting from the main room was the perfect setting for an ambush, little used and full of twisting turns that led only to dead-end storage shafts. He took care not to remain in it long enough to give them an opening, but walked through quickly, taking stock of its turns and dead-end storage alcoves, spotting the places where enemies might take cover.

There was a ventilation shaft overhead at the midway point, with an opening he could fit through easily if the grill were not in place. Excellent. It took only a few hard blows to force the grill loose, and when he set it back in place he caught one of his own hairs behind it, barely showing. Just in case his trackers, coming through, saw its potential as well.

Heart pounding, he half expected a neural sweep to greet him as he entered the bar. But he’d been fast enough that no one following would have had time to cover him from both directions. Now that would change. He ordered a chilled glass of what seemed the most popular local brew and prepared to wait. It was faintly green and smelled of herbs that shouldn’t be in food or drink, but he smiled as he pretended to sip from it. Not setting anything to his lips now that another man had handled. If his experience as Viak’im had taught him anything, it was the efficacy of drugs.

Hunters. The word should have chilled him, but it did just the opposite. Hunters meant there was an enemy with a name, strategies to unwind. Flesh to hurt. He understood about hurting flesh. He wondered if his tracker did, if he had the least clue what kind of destructive energy was wound up inside Tathas right now, looking for some outlet. Any outlet. Absent gods help the man who set it off.

He had a long knife that he wore up his right sleeve, his weapon of choice. That was for the Viak’im in him, demanding blood from his enemies. He also had a neural stun he had picked up from the black market on H’serun, but that was just for backup; Ar alone knew where it came from or how reliable it would be.

He could feel the flush of excitement rising to his face as he scanned the patrons of the bar once, twice, and again. Not a large or particularly formidable-looking crowd. There was a group of freelancers over in the far corner, two women and a handful of men dressed in worn Void gear, gambling with piles of coins and trinkets from at least a dozen planets. A furred thing halfway across the room that might or might not be human was talking to a man Tathas assumed was a mercenary. He shifted in his seat so that he might keep a clear eye on that one. Four men at the far table were playing with holocards. One in the shadows was nursing a beer. Several more entered the room as he watched, a ragtag handful of men and women, mostly human, who scanned the room carefully before they chose a table in the darkest corner. Could it be them? He could feel his pulse race as he studied them carefully through the trickle of foam on his glass. There were six of them, and he was willing to bet that under the bits and pieces of Void gear they wore there was more than one weapon hidden. They didn’t have the air of mercenaries, but every single one of them looked capable. Even the women.

He felt a sudden tightening in his groin as he considered the possibility of fighting a woman. It was rare to find a female who was skilled in combat, especially one who could counter the physical advantages of a Braxin male in his prime, but these two looked capable enough. One of them wore a sleeveless vest that left her arms bare, and the muscles that rippled beneath the surface of her skin as she called for drinks were lean, tight, ready. There were markings on her skin, regular enough that they might be tattoos, but from where he was sitting he could not make out details. She was of the Scattered Races, surely, but not so close to the human mean that the scent of alien landscapes didn’t cling to her.

The room began to fill up. No doubt some workmen’s shift had just let off, and a portion of the station’s personnel were now making their way to the taverns and drugdens and fleshpits that they favored. If his trackers were smart enough they’d arrive with the crowd. They’d settle in and watch him here, long enough to see that he was staying in one place, and then see that their agents were covering the back exit, with all its strategic promise. Eventually they’d decide they needed some strategy to guarantee that when he made his exit it would be in that direction . . .

He forced himself to wait half a tenth before he got up from his lone seat, scattering a few sinias on the table for the sake of the one who had served him. He paused a moment in the shadows, studying the room’s other occupants with what he hoped was an appropriate air of caution. He had to seem as if the motion came from the natural caution of a man who was in the Holding’s disfavor, not his certain knowledge that death was close at hand. He could taste it now, and smell it, a premonition so strong that he knew his hunters were indeed in that very room. Others might have been afraid. He was elated.

He walked to the rear exit without ever completely turning his back on the room. He doubted they would shoot him down in public, but it would be foolish to wager his life on that. He allowed himself one last sweeping glance of the room, which by now was filled almost to capacity. The casual glance of a man who thought that the dangers facing him would be simple and visible ones. It seemed to him that he heard the muffled beep of a shortcom, then. Maybe it was some other business, and not a signal to enemies waiting beyond the back corridor. Maybe his enemies weren’t there at all.

He passed quickly through the door itself, letting it shut behind him. As soon he was sure the patrons of the bar couldn’t see him he sprinted toward the overhead conduit. The hair was still in place, telling him that the one thing he had feared most—that his trackers would stake their ambush in the same place he meant to take refuge—had not occurred. He pushed the grill to one side and hoisted himself up through the narrow opening as quickly and as quietly as he could. He could feel the pulse pounding in his palms as he pulled himself into position. Then: the grill was back in place, and the only sound or motion in the corridor was the pounding of his own heart.

The door to the bar hissed open, then closed. Footsteps approached, measured and wary. More than one pair, from the sound of it. He held his breath as they came to where he lay hidden, hoping they would not think to look overhead for their quarry. If they suspected that he was on to them he might.

Then he heard whispered voices—a language he didn’t recognize—and shadows passed beneath the grill. Two of them. That was good. He could take two. It was a pair that he had seen in the bar, worn Void gear now parted to show the armor worn beneath. They both had neural stuns in hand, and it was clear from their stance that they intended to shoot the first thing in front of them that moved. Not military men, though. He could see that even from where he was. They lacked the stance, the readiness . . . the hardness. Amateurs: well-armed and determined, perhaps, but no more than that. They weren’t wearing bodyfields either, which could mean any number of things; he suspected in this case they didn’t want to be detected by station security. Good. All was good. . . .

Reflecting dryly that his standards of “good” had gone down in recent days, he waited until they were past and then quietly moved the grill aside. It was the work of moments to pull off his shoes and set them aside, then to lower himself down to the floor below. Silent. Must be silent. He listened for their whispered voices—yet another sign that this was not a trained military force—and then set off after them, keeping to shadows and dipping into side alcoves wherever possible.

They were human, which was good. He knew the human body well, knew how to slice that place in the neck where the blood ran hot on its way to the brain, so that death was almost immediate. That they were both wearing pieces of armor made the move a bit more complicated, but that kind of protection was designed to foil a frontal attack with standard weapons . . . not a man who came so close he could smell his enemy’s sweat, who could twist his blade down into the reinforced collar on an impact vest, ripping open the flesh beneath.

His attack was swift and silent, and he knew with certain instinct as the hot blood gushed out of his enemy that this one would not bother him again. The man tried to cry out in alarm, but with his airway gashed open all that he could manage was a gurgling sigh. Enough to alert the other, however. Tathas dropped into a low crouch, and as the second man swung around with his stun at chest level, he came up under the man’s firing arm and forced the shot to go wild. The impact sent them both slamming against the far wall, and Tathas could feel his weight knock the breath out of his opponent. His right hand grabbed at the arm that wielded the neural stun while his left slid up under the front edge of the man’s gorget to grasp the throat beneath. It was a close fit, but his fingers closed around a column of muscled flesh tightly enough to feel the other man’s blood pounding between his fingers.

The man drove a knee into his groin to dislodge him, but missed the target by inches; Tathas squeezed his neck hard, fingertips digging deep into pressure points as he got the grip he wanted. The man had pulled something out with his free hand, but that was all right; he wasn’t going to live long enough to use it. With a sudden exhalation of breath Tathas forced the man’s body one way and his head another. He could feel the vibration inside flesh as the vertebra snapped, and the hand that was holding the weapon swung down suddenly by its owner’s side like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Two down. There would be others. Tathas eased the body quickly to the ground and took the stun from its hand. No time to get identification from him, not if others had heard the conflict. He reached down to take whatever weapon the man had pulled out in his last moments . . . and saw that it was not a weapon at all, but some kind of remote locator, and its signal had been triggered. He grabbed up the first man’s weapon as quickly as he could and then sprinted down the corridor to the second place he had spotted in his reconnaissance, a shadowy storage alcove angled in such a way that people coming from the other direction wouldn’t see it until they were all but past it. He was barely in place when he heard footsteps coming. More than two sets, this time. Bless the absent gods, who was after him in such force? It wasn’t the Braxaná, he knew that now; their men would have put up a better fight.

There were three of them in this group, and they passed him at a run. Whispering thanks to his enemies for setting themselves up so nicely, he picked off the last with the neural stun, sending him hurtling to the ground. That the others didn’t notice him dropping out of the sprint only confirmed Tathas’ opinion of the whole crew. He moved out into the corridor then, pausing for only a moment to cut the fallen man’s throat. Time enough for prisoners later, when the odds were better; he couldn’t afford the risk that a half-charged stun might allow the man to come to his senses while his fellow marauders were still standing.

He came upon them just as they saw the bodies. One of them cursed loudly, something about a god-damned Shaka and how much he would like to kill the whole god-damned lot of them . . . the stun silenced him in mid-curse, and even as he watched the human features distort into a grimace of agony Tathas was moving forward to take down the last one. This man had better reflexes, and swung around fast enough to get off a respectable shot as the Viak’im charged him. Tathas could feel the hot brush of pain as the beam grazed his arm; close enough to make the muscles sting, not close enough to take them out of commission. Then Tathas was upon his enemy, momentum slamming him to the ground alongside his fallen comrades, and when the man screamed out curses of his own Tathas rammed the neural stun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The body seemed to convulse beneath him for a moment, and then went limp in a way mere unconsciousness did not provide for. Apparently taking the charge so close to the brain stem wasn’t something the human body was happy about doing.

That was all of them, then. He hoped. He grabbed up what weapons he could, hoping that the noise of the brief battle hadn’t alerted anyone outside the corridor that there was trouble. He wiped the blood off his left hand, onto an opponent’s vest, but enough blood had soaked into his shirt that he couldn’t take a chance on exiting through the bar. Surely there were police in this place who would notice. Surely, even in this place, someone would care. He turned around to go back the way the last three men had come—

Maybe the fact that it was a woman was what kept him from shooting as soon as he saw her. Maybe it was the fact that her hands were on her hips, a challenging stance perhaps but not one that seemed to presage direct assault. Maybe it was something in her eyes that made him realize, with a hunter’s sure instinct, she wasn’t part of the pack he had just taken down.

The man was somewhere in that century of mid-life when age is hard to judge. He was Braxin—or some distant ancestor had been Braxin—but he wore the clothes of other cultures and his face bore the ritual tattoos of the Kedoushin. He looked down at the three bodies on the floor and his nostrils flared, as if tasting the sour smell of death. Tathas realized suddenly that the last man he’d stunned had emptied his bowels as he died. Not something you notice when there are still people trying to kill you.

“Not bad,” he assessed. As if the bodies were a work of art whose brush-strokes he was appraising. “Kesh said you’d take all five. I bet her you’d at least lose a limb trying it.” When he spoke you could see that his teeth had been dyed as well, each one capped in crimson drops. “She’s a better judge of fighting men, it seems.”

The man’s mouth twitched; his expression hardened ever so slightly. “Freelance,” he said. “Always looking for new blood. Reports from Braxi hinted you might be worth watching. At least you can fight.” There was a sudden high-pitched noise in the distance, which Tathas felt more than he heard. “Apparently someone signaled security. In minutes they’ll be swarming all over the place. You have some way off this station?”

He drew in a deep breath. Who were these people anyway? They knew things he needed to know, that was clear. But there’d be no time to ask them here. That left only one alternative—and it was a risky one, in a place like this. By the Void, it was a risky one anywhere.

“They thought you were Shaka,” the woman offered. Her eyes were amber, disconcerting, and they glowed slightly in the corridor’s dimness, as if waiting for him to ask the obvious question: What in Ar’s name is a Shaka? But it wasn’t the time or place for questions now. They knew that. He knew that. It was all part of their game, to tempt him with hints of their knowledge. And gods bless them both, it was working.

He thought he could hear movement now, the low hiss of station doors and the voices of others approaching. Security? He looked down at the bodies at his feet again. Station law didn’t care much about motive or style; dead was dead, and those who got caught breaking the laws were generally put out the airlock while they were still protesting their innocence. What was his defense going to be, anyway? The paranoid ramblings of a Braxin who wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place? He couldn’t even claim that his victims had shot first, much less offer up any proof that they were really after him. And of course if Security checked with the Central Computer they would find out that he had overstayed the Holding’s welcome already, which meant that Braxin law wouldn’t so much as stretch a glove if they killed him. . . .

They turned wordlessly and began to move down the corridor, loping with an easy stride that spoke of other battles, other flights. Tathas followed suit. He saw the man raise his cuff to his mouth and mutter into it, “I need misdirection, station west of Aurelio’s. Now.”

But the smoke that was carried to them by the ventilation system hinted otherwise, and it seemed to him that there were screams as well, echoing in the distance. He must have slowed down to listen, enough that the man shot at him, “Second thoughts? Want to stay behind?”

No more words. They sprinted towards one of the lesser bays, and the screams were soon left behind. Red light began to pulse in the corridors; he didn’t know enough about the local security code to know if that was good or bad, but his companions didn’t’ seem bothered by it. Once or twice the man spoke into his cuff again, and guided them down one turn or another, away from the main halls. Once Tathas could see a contingent of uniformed humans moving past them, down the very hall they’d been in minutes before. Whoever his strange guides were, they knew how to maneuver around station security.

Their ship was a small one, and its fuel lines were already retracted and ready to go. There were three humans there already, whom Tathas recognized from the bar. They were armed, and spread out in the docking bay in such a way as to be able to cover every inch of it while not being in the line of fire themselves. No amateurs here.

The other woman in the group stared at him with raw distaste; hardly a surprise. Probably the last thing she wanted was a Central Braxin on her ship. How strange that was, he thought. Back home he had been an outsider, dreaming of freedom from the established order. Now he was one of Them.

They made room for him to board with them, and he went. No need for any words to be said. Inherent in the silence was a practiced understanding of how to exit a station swiftly and safely . . . along with the implication that such things were often necessary. If they didn’t try to kill him as soon as they were away from the station, these people might be useful.

The first woman grabbed his arm as he passed into the ship, forcing him to face her. Maybe it was the ship’s dim lighting that made her eyes glow like jewels. Maybe it was the knowledge that she was now on her home turf and could say what she wanted.

“One thing before we go,” she warned him. “You pull any of that Braxin access-on-demand crap on one of us and I’ll kick your working parts so far up into your body you’ll be able to pleasure yourself without opening your mouth. That clear?”

He could feel his own eyes narrow in anger. Not here, not now. He forced himself so speak instead of striking her, though his Braxin soul screamed out its indignation. Too many enemies, too much danger. It was the first time a woman had dared to speak to him like that, but it probably wouldn’t be the last. How long would he survive if he lost control every time a woman challenged him?

Then the man who had brought them to the ship struck him on the shoulder; not an assault, but a warning. “Into the ship, now.” He reached for the woman as well, but she ducked his grasp and hissed softly, moving into the vessel on her own. “Time later for ground rules, both of you. We have more important things to worry about right now.”

Already alarms were flashing in the small bay, but his hosts did something to override the local control systems and they were able to launch despite that. All Tathas cared about now was getting off the ramshackle station and into the safety of the open Void. There’d be time for them to feel each other out—and ask questions—later.

Security skiffs came at them from the main ring, but not fast enough to surround them. Orders crackled over the longcom, but with no force to back them they were no more than mere words. Ignored. The few small ships in their way got out of their way quickly. Past the fifth orbit the small ship kicked into augmented drive . . . and then there was no more sign of station security, or any other official presence. Just darkness between them and the Void of Consciousness, devoid of any plan or purpose. And one small ship that hurtled toward the Border, carrying Tathas away from the Holding, and toward his destiny.