A Squeaky Little Mouse
*****
Eden
Velsharn
It was a strange irony to her. She had thought so much during her time floating in the tank and had desired only to get out, but as she walked once again through Eden, she needed more thinking time. Nighttime was good for that. The sky was full of stars.
Tempting though it was to blame this change in attitude on the drugs she had taken during her stay in the fluid, Liao refrained. This one was all her.
The Beijing had left a Triumph-class-cruiser-shaped hole in Eden. The settlement had built up around the ship, but it was back in orbit, and the central beacon holding the whole place together was missing. It had been the primary landmark, visible from almost anywhere, and with her ship gone, Liao quickly got lost.
Fortunately, that gave her the perfect opportunity to think through her problems.
The notion that they were walking into a trap had cooled things down anyway. All the captains agreed that was not an undertaking to rush into. They acknowledged that, collectively, Liao had promised the Iilan help—and she was not about to renege on that promise—but they needed a new plan. Simply arriving with missiles, gunships, and brave Marines, then hoping for the best, would not be sufficient.
So what would?
That question would not be answered right away. The Knight had been sent to scout the location covertly. Although Liao had recommended taking a pair of Broadswords for escort duty, James and de Lugo had pointed out that the Knight’s greatest strength was that it was a recently captured enemy vessel and could therefore, at least in theory, pass as a genuine Toralii Alliance vessel.
She wasn’t sure how long she had pondered that situation, running daydream-like scenarios over and over in her head, when an American man approached her, nervous and awkward. He had flat facial features and a short neck, with strange eyes that just didn’t sit right. He looked far away to her. Still, he seemed friendly.
“Captain Liao,” he said, his voice cracking. “My name is John. I have seen your picture on the news, back on Earth, lots of times. I am glad I found you. I was hoping to talk to you.”
She could sense some pain behind his eyes. Such things were not uncommon those days. The loss of Earth had hurt many. She presumed he had a limited grasp of the situation. Would this man deal with it better, or worse? “I have a moment,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Can I borrow your pistol?”
The question took her completely off guard, and she hesitated before answering. “N-No, John. I’m not allowed to give it away to anyone.” She reflexively lowered her arms, bringing her hands closer to her sidearm. “Why?”
“I need it,” he said, defeat in his voice. “I don’t think I’m much use here. I don’t want to be a burden to people.”
She did not need to ask any more questions. For a moment, her precise thoughts were difficult to articulate, but when words found their way to her lips, they came out with a quiet confidence she didn’t know she had. “Walk with me, John.”
He fell into step with her, moving surprisingly fast. She increased her pace to keep up.
“Do you know why we’re here?” she asked. “On this planet?”
“Yes. The Toralii destroyed everything. This is where we live now.”
“That’s right. I did mean, however, what our purpose is, being here.”
He seemed to consider the question. “Survive.”
Liao smiled a warm, genuine smile. “That’s the best answer I’ve ever heard, John. A lot of people here… they talk too much. They come up with smart-sounding answers like, ‘We’re here to sustain our collective consciousness’ or some other wankey bullshit. The reality is, we are all sacks of meat and DNA, and these sacks eventually die. So we’re here to rebuild our species on this new home.”
“I’m not sure how I can help with that.”
She thought for a moment. “Have you asked Mister Shepherd how you can help out around the settlement? It seems as though, despite all our progress, there’s a lot to do.”
“I’m afraid to talk to him.”
“Well,” she said, “I can have one of my crew talk to him if you would like.”
Just the mention of it seemed to bring a spark of hope, igniting the start of a smile on his face. “I would like that. A lot.”
They walked past the landing area. The Marines saluted her. She saluted back, and then turned away. She didn’t want attention tonight. “What sort of things can you do, John?”
John hesitated suddenly. “Nothing.”
“Oh, surely that’s not true.” Liao kept her tone light. “I’m sure there’s a lot of things you’re good at.”
“Um.” He intertwined his fingers and squeezed the front of his shirt. “I can make people laugh.”
“Really?” Liao was genuinely taken aback. “That’s impressive. I’m somewhat humourless, myself. Or so Summer tells me. Repeatedly.”
“Well, maybe you just try too hard not to hurt people.”
She didn’t quite understand but didn’t want to be rude. “How do you mean? I don’t like hurting people, as a rule.”
John looked down and away. “Because when anyone tells a joke, you have to make someone hurt. That’s just as simple as it gets.” Then he looked back at her, and for a moment, Liao could see real happiness there. “I don’t like making other people hurt, so I tell jokes about myself.”
“Surely there’s a way to tell jokes without hurting people,” said Liao.
John shook his head. “No. I mean, take this joke: Why do Germans love America?”
Captain Anderson would be better able to answer that one, but Liao couldn’t think of a good response. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why do Germans love Americans?”
“Well,” said John. Liao suspected his use of well was a verbal tic. “It’s because everyone hates America now instead of them.” He clapped his hands. “I’m still working on the punch line, but that’s basically what I’m going for.”
A reflection on predevastation global politics. She’d underestimated John. “That’s funny,” she said. Then the mirth faded a little. If only there was still an America. Or still a Germany.
“Well, only if you’re not American. Americans sometimes get angry when I tell that joke. Mostly, they laugh. Sometimes, they get mad.”
“If they’re laughing, they can’t be that mad.”
“Mostly, but I don’t like seeing even a few people get angry, so I mostly tell jokes about myself. Sure, it gets a bit depressing sometimes, but I don’t let an extra chromosome get me down.” He smiled at her. “That’s one of the jokes I tell.”
She laughed a little, touching her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Okay, that’s a good joke too.”
“Wanna hear more?”
She did. She wanted to just walk around Eden and hear jokes all night.
“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Before John could answer, in the distance, a flash of light like distant thunder stole the stars from the sky. A dull explosion was carried in by the wind. Both of them followed the sound to the mountain range, where an ominous glow grew on the other side.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said. Frowning, Liao touched her radio. “Liao to Beijing. I just heard an explosion on the other side of the mountain.”
Jiang’s voice returned through the device. “Captain, falling debris has impacted near the city, crashed beyond the tree line. One of the Madrid’s Broadswords has been dispatched to investigate. I could ask de Lugo, but inventory suggests it’s carrying a squad of Marines from the search-and-rescue effort. Our SAR Broadsword is already en route.”
Her throat tightened. “Keep me informed,” she said, leaving them to deal with that mess.
“Is everything okay?” asked John.
“Yes,” she said, glancing to the tip of the mountains, unable to shake the nagging feeling of worry that was worming its way inside her belly. “I think.”
“Do you need to go?”
She thought about it for a moment. Her first instinct was to run off to duty, but the more she thought about it, the more she just wanted to spend more time with John, listening to his stories, a world away from battles and death.
“Not right now,” she said. “I tell you what. Let’s keep walking. That way, you can tell me more of your jokes.”
“Okay,” said John, his eagerness returning. “In ancient Ireland, a woman spent ten years chasing after a leprechaun…”
They wandered north, away from the edge of the settlement and toward the mountains. Eden rested in a valley. The hillsides had been blasted clean during the orbital bombardment, waves of flames running up them. As they drew close, Liao could see fresh regrowth sprouting out of the thin black layer of charred remains. Plant life was returning from the ashes.
Somewhere, in that mess, was her arm, burned to nothing. It would not grow back. It was just ashes.
The night air seemed so distant. All she could smell was seared flesh.
Her scars burned, a phantom pain but no less real. It came as pins and needles over her upper body and the burned side of her face, a wave of pseudo-agony that forced the memories of the bombardment, raw and vivid, back into her mind.
She could feel the heat, see the flames, and hear the crackle of her own skin as it flaked off in charred, blackened lumps. It consumed her vision. She was no longer standing at the edge of a peaceful settlement that had not known war in months but the outskirts of Hell, the world burning around her.
The rational part of her brain told her she was just having a panic attack, a memory of trauma resurfacing, but its effects could not be dismissed easily. It flooded her body with fear and seized her lungs in an iron vice. The panic squeezed her whole body with pain.
“Captain,” said a faraway voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Are you all right? Captain?”
Act. She had to act. Her hands shook, violently at first, but less so as she forced air into her lungs and the spotty lightheadedness crept away. Air. Just focus on air.
“I’m fine,” she managed, even forcing a smile.
John’s eyes were wide, and his whole body trembled.
“It’s okay,” Liao said again. “Just a bad memory.”
“What kind of memory?”
With the lights of the city behind her, and the fiery trails of falling stars darting across the night sky, growing in intensity, Liao pointed toward the mountainside with her prosthetic hand. “That’s was where I was burned.”
“Oh,” said John. “That must have been frightening.”
“It was.” Liao turned her back to it. She couldn’t even look.
John’s eyes kept flicking over the blasted landscape, and he fidgeted again.
“Sorry,” Liao said, “did you want to go?”
“Yes,” said John. “It’s late. Sorry. I should go.”
“Okay,” said Liao. Her tone turned serious. “You know… you are a funny man, John, and you have a good heart. You know what this place needs? A little more fun, a little more laughter. Go see Mister Shepherd. Tell him that I sent you. I think…” she smiled. “I think we need a stage. Put it where the Beijing was—there’s a great amphitheatre-style hole in the ground there now. Make it a central place where people can go and be entertained. Theatre. Comedy. Dramas. We could even rig up a projector and show movies. It’ll be like old Earth.”
John seemed pleased. “You would do that for me?”
“No,” said Liao. “I want to be clear about this: it’s not a charity. You’re doing this, and you’re doing it for yourself and everyone else in Eden. Okay?”
“Okay,” said John.
“Thank you for the walk,” she said and turned her eyes away from the settlement, where the glow of the fire intensified. “I have work to do, John.”
“Okay,” he said again, and then without looking back, he left, walking at a blistering pace.
She hoped he would be okay, but first, work called. Liao touched her radio. “Beijing, report status of the SAR bird.”
Jiang answered swiftly. “Archangel is en route, as are Marines from the Madrid.”
“Have they got room for one more?”
Jiang paused, presumably relaying her question. “Yes, Captain.”
“Tell the Archangel to swing past and pick me up. Home in on my signal. I want to see this for myself.”
The Archangel descended like its namesake, floating through the air, blowing the ashes away from her in a dark storm that dirtied her uniform and forced her to squint. The smell of everything burned was blasted into her skin, and as she climbed the loading ramp into the steel bird’s insides, the stink followed her. She left dirty footprints on the steel, black powder falling off her with every step.
[“Good evening Captain,”] said Saara from one of the fold-down seats, her large paws folded neatly in her lap.
Liao hadn’t even noticed her sitting there. “Good evening. Coming along to inspect the falling star?”
[“Commander Iraj believes the debris may be an escape pod, based on Brigadier General Decker-Sheng’s recommendations.”]
“Decker-Sheng?” Liao frowned. She pulled a helmet off the rack and clipped it on and then offered Saara one but realised right away it would not fit. “How the hell is he involved in this at all?”
[“We have detected microtransmissions being sent from Velsharn, short bursts of signal hard to separate from static unless you know what to look for. As Decker-Sheng is something of an expert in Alliance communication methods, Commander Iraj made the decision to request his help.”]
That ate at her, bitter bile forming in her throat. Liao pulled down a seat of her own, locked it in place, and strapped in. “Yes, well, aren’t you an expert too?”
[“Captain, I was only a pilot. I have a base knowledge of many things, more than enough to serve as your chief engineer, but I am hardly a specialist in covert operations.”
Saara’s exact phrasing surprised her. “Covert operations?”
[“There are few justifications for microtransmissions because they are hard to transmit and equally hard to receive, so they are usually reserved for signals one does not want detected.”] Saara’s tail twitched beside her. [“There are few other benefits.”]
The ship started to move. Liao rested her chin in her hands, fiddling with her helmet strap with her metal fingers. “And you mentioned that the transmission location was hard to pinpoint?”
[“Yes. As they are so brief—and difficult to detect—sourcing them can be difficult as their direction of transmission is obfuscated. The best way is triangulation, but at least four points must be actively listening in three-dimensional space, and with frequency rotation, this can be avoided. We were lucky that the Beijing detected them at all, let alone three others.”]
“So it could be a Toralii escape pod,” she said, “or it could be a transmission from within the fleet.”
The question seemed to surprise Saara. [“It is possible,”] she conceded.
Very possible. It had to be Decker-Sheng. Liao knew—somehow just knew—that he was behind it. He was the communication specialist and shared the same blood as Gaulung. She could practically smell his fingerprints all over this: sending covert signals to the Toralii, working his way into Iraj’s trust, being named Sheng.
If the Toralii had another mole aboard her ship, she would deal with it—differently than Gaulung Sheng, hopefully. Shooting a man had caused a lot of problems for her, and she knew that kind of thing was excusable only once.
The ship whined, Saara stared at her curiously, and Liao sat in silence, digesting the information and trying, largely in vain, to ignore the itching on her shoulder, which seemed to go away only when she thought about how she might use that information and the ways in which the Toralii would pay.
Eventually, a crack appeared around the edges of the loading ramp, and it lowered.
[“Are you all right, Captain?”] asked Saara as the large Toralii stood, eyes on the outside.
“Just being pensive,” she said, unstrapping herself and adjusting her helmet.
Saara studied her with her yellow eyes, a prolonged stare that Liao knew well. [“You believe there is a spy amongst the fleet.”]
“Correct,” she said, seeing no reason to lie to Saara, whom she trusted.
[“I would ask, then, that you keep this information to yourself. There are Toralii on Eden—including myself—and Kel-Voran and other visitors. Currently, your species and your allies are united in common purpose. Little would be gained from seeding mistrust amongst your allies.”]
“I agree,” said Liao. The noise from the ship’s engines died down, and in the distance, she heard another landing. “Don’t worry. I learnt from Sheng. If there’s a mole aboard, this time, I’m going to investigate properly.”
The memory of Sheng’s mistreatment seemed to disquiet her Toralii friend. [“I am pleased to hear this.”]
Liao beckoned toward the ramp. “Let’s go.”
They did not have to go far. The Archangel let them loose and then took off, hovering a few hundred metres above, its ventral turret following ahead of them.
The Broadsword from the Madrid discharged a dozen Marines, amongst them, Liao noted, a Kel-Voran. The waist-high reptilian was bristling with weapons. Without counting, Liao could see almost a dozen: plasma weapons, grenades, long tubes that glowed ominously at both ends. At his hip were a pair of double-edged blades, sheathed in leather or hide that was also edged.
Yanmei Cheung, the head of the Beijing’s Marine detachment, greeted her with a warm smile. “Evening, Captain.”
“Hanging out on the Madrid now?” she asked, curious.
“Actually, yes,” Cheung said. “A cross-training initiative. When the call came in, we were just a few hundred clicks south. Figured we might as well make it a live-fire exercise.”
Liao noticed Hanna Keller amongst the Marines who disembarked and saw how she smiled at the back of Cheung’s head. It was the kind of smile that she had seen on Rowe when she looked at Iraj. Suddenly, Liao didn’t believe that Cheung’s decision was entirely pragmatic.
Those crazy kids.
Trying to avoid staring, Liao’s eyes roamed until they fell upon the Kel-Voran. He was sniffing around the area, growling eagerly like a barely restrained animal. Liao slid up to Cheung and lowered her voice so only she could hear. “I can’t believe all of those are training rounds. Is he expecting to fight a war here?”
“Honestly,” said Cheung, “he basically is. He’s got a name although I can’t pronounce it for the life of me, so everyone calls him Stumpy. Strangely, he prefers that. Getting a nickname is kind of a point of honour or something. The guy doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s about death, death, killing, more death. He’s useful to have but not that good at following orders.”
“That’s a problem.”
“We’ll see,” said Cheung. “He’s certainly got the skills we need.”
She left it in Cheung’s hands. “Right,” she said, raising her voice and addressing the Marines present. “Let’s find this debris.”
With no further ado, they left. Stumpy took the lead, sniffing eagerly, a pistol in one hand and a comically oversized sword in the other. He walked, stooped and bent, hunting eagerly. Liao and the others followed him into the gloom.
The ships had landed in a natural clearing with firm ground, but as they got further away from the landing site, the soil underfoot became mud. The smell rose to her nose, rotten and festering, thick with the scent of decay and mud. Liao’s boots slurped as she walked, and soon she was splattered up to her knees with muck.
“This sucks,” bitched one of the Spanish Marines. His accent reminded Liao of de Lugo. She and de Lugo slept together once… a long, long time before. James had taken the revelation with humour. She was lucky to have him, and that thought, odd though it might be as she stood surrounded by rotting vegetation and filth, made her smile.
[“Hardship breeds strength,”] said Stumpy, his attention focused on the ground. [“I smell metal. Flame. We are close.”]
Perhaps the Kel-Voran was simply smelling the burning from the orbital bombardment. Liao said nothing, trusting his judgment.
Stumpy lead them on a winding, meandering trail that seemed to double back on itself. He made no effort to avoid deeper parts of the bog, simply wading in up to his shoulders, holding his primary weapons above his reptilian head.
“What’s the point of bringing all those guns if he just lets them get fucked up?” whispered Cheung.
Liao assumed—or rather, kept assuring herself—that Stumpy knew what he was doing.
Then he stopped. [“Here,”] said Stumpy. He gestured down into the mud with his snout.
The Marines fanned out, with Cheung and Keller organising a defensive perimeter. Stumpy’s hand disappeared into the mud, and he lifted. A muddy object rose from the muck, long and thick.
Four other Marines helped lift. Liao reached out with her prosthetic, brushing the mud aside. Beneath was metal, smooth and black, the same material the Toralii cruisers were made from.
It was an escape pod, but not intact. A thin line ran up the side of the hull. The metal of the hull had expanded and contracted unevenly, and a thin web of cracks had sprung up over the surface. Water and mud had leaked in.
A trickle of mud ran from the crack, heated from being near the hot outside surface, and with it came a stink, detectable even over the background odor of the bog. Something within smelled terrible: seared flesh, thick with the scent of decay and mud.
“Don’t like your chances of interrogating him,” said Cheung.
Liao’s hand found a round button, and curious, she pushed it. The pod’s casing groaned as the bent, damaged metal tried to open, the mud on the edges vibrating slightly with the strain. And then, all at once, the trickle of mud became a sudden gush, exploding out from all edges, showering the Marines with goop.
“Sorry,” Liao said. The stench intensified. More and more mud flowed out of the pod, warmed from being near the outside surface; the muck flowed out, and the unlocking and opening sequence worked with a faint hum.
Inside was a Toralii corpse, gender unrecognisable. Its fur was roasted off, mouth locked in pained, silent scream. Each of its limbs was terribly curled, twisted and gnarled, as though trying to extinguish the heat of reentry. By his side was a sword, splashed with scorch marks.
“What a way to go,” said Cheung. “Burning alive, drowning in mud. Poor fucker.”
[“He died slowly.”]
“He?” asked Liao. “How can you tell?”
Stumpy glared at her as though she were stupid, his black reptile eyes glinting. [“This is a senior officer’s personal pod. The occupant’s name is written on the underside of the lid.”] He pointed. [“Warbringer Avaran.”]
Liao’s chest seized. Her gaze returned to the corpse. Avaran… the Toralii who had led the assault on Earth, who had taunted her, repeatedly, about killing her with the very sword within her grasp.
Now he was a ruined corpse, burned beyond recognition. He had died a horrible death, trapped in a metal box with tiny cracks in it, slowly filling with hellfire, hot enough to inspire agony but not hot enough to kill quickly.
“That’s as close to Hell as I could imagine,” said Liao. She inhaled, breathing in the reeking bog, and steadied herself. “I guess I was wrong. A fall through the atmosphere will kill him. Warlord Avaran is mortal after all.”
[“He deserved such a fate,”] said Stumpy.
She wanted to say something pithy about all life being sacred but couldn’t bring herself to do it. “You’re right.”
Stumpy seemed mollified by that. [“As do all who oppose the Kel-Voran.”]
“Humans have a saying: war is hell.” She shook her head, weighing up her options. The pod could be interesting salvage, and the body would have to be disposed of. “I guess we should drag this thing out of here and give him a burial. It is tempting to leave him in the bog, though.” Liao flicked the mud off her fingers and then reached in for the sword.
Avaran’s trembling paw reached up and grasped her wrist.
Everyone stared in shock. The paw, burned almost to the bone, squeezed her wrist, and his mouth twitched as though he were trying to spit some dark curse at her from beyond the grave.
Melissa Liao the Kittenclawed, The Butcher of Kor’Vakkar, The Bringer of Terror, Slayer of Varsian the Immortal, Breaker of the Toralii Fleet… screamed like a little girl.
The Marines dropped the pod. It splattered in the mud and began to sink. Their hands went everywhere, some for weapons, some to keep the pod afloat.
Liao tore her hand away in a frenzy of tugging. Avaran, a ghoulish living corpse, mouthed at her, showing blackened teeth. She’d known Toralii could survive wounds no Human ever could, but that was beyond even her wildest imagination. Even Stumpy seemed shocked although it was possible he simply did not know which of his many weapons to draw.
“Captain Liao to Archangel,” she gasped into her radio. “Medical emergency, medical emergency. Land immediately and prepare to load a casualty.”
“Confirmed,” came the calm voice of Medola through the tiny speaker. “Landing. What’s the condition of the casualty, Captain?”
Liao’s heart beat so hard she feared it would jump out of her chest. Her eyes remained fixed on the terrible visage of Avaran, burned to a cinder but somehow still alive. “I could tell you, but you are not going to fucking believe it.”
The Broadsword ride to the Rubens was equal parts awkward and terribly awkward. Liao’s flesh hand would not stop trembling. The cargo hold smelt of burnt Toralii, mud, and sweaty Marines. The medics aboard Archangel had no idea how to treat Avaran. His vocal cords had been damaged, so he could only shoot them wicked looks as they debated just giving him a massive dose of morphine and giving him a release from his pain. In the end, though, he was rushed to the med-bay and loaded with all haste into the green tank Liao had hoped she would never lay eyes on again.
The Marines left, presumably to get drunk enough to forget what they had seen. Liao was left with Saeed, a host of nurses, and Avaran inside the green tank. His eyes were open, staring into nothing.
“How the hell is he still alive?” Saeed asked, his tone completely disbelieving.
“You’re the doctor.” Liao ran her hand through her muddy hair. “Jesus.”
“I’m a doctor for Humans. No patient of mine could survive that. Burns of that level are just not possible to heal, and yet he seems almost stable.”
Impossibilities on top of impossibilities. “Stable?”
“Make no mistake, he’s on the edge of death,” said Saeed. “But he isn’t getting worse.”
She considered. “Wake him up,” Liao said. “I have a question for this arsehole.”
“He’s actually already awake,” said Saeed. “I think. Honestly, at this point, I didn’t want to give him even a mild sedative. He had a modest amount of damage to his vocal tracts, but the fluid might have repaired some of that. He could even speak.”
In one of the battles against the Toralii, Liao had authorised the use of Lucifer’s Gas, a terrible incendiary agent. A postoperation report showed it was horrifyingly effective. The Toralii were more resilient than expected, probably because of their fur burning away before their flesh, so they didn’t even have time to go into shock. They died because the fire burned away all the oxygen. Their skin melted, their muscles melted, and they suffocated to death—not that they could have breathed anyway because their lungs were burned.
It seemed, to her, that only Avaran’s hate was keeping him anchored to the mortal coil.
“Given the frankly quite terrifying experience I’ve just had, I would believe that’s possible.” She stood, straightening her back. “Okay, put me through to him.”
With the push of a button, Saeed did so. Avaran’s eyes flickered, hearing the outside noise for the first time. His pupils searched as though almost blind.
“Good evening,” Liao said.
Avaran’s seared eyes narrowed. His voice was a smoky rasp, barely a whisper. [“L-Liao?”]
“Yes. It’s me.”
[“You have… restored me? For what purpose?”]
“Believe me, we really need the use of that thing, so I’d love for you to actually die and vacate it. Alas, you could expire at any moment, so I have to be brief.” She folded her arms. “I know about the Forerunner in our system.”
The Toralii Alliance used Forerunner probes to scout the locations of distant worlds. Unarmed and used strictly for reconnaissance, the devices would find stable orbits or perform flybys on celestial bodies of interest and jump away to report to their masters when their work was done.
She had no idea if there really was a Forerunner. Knowing the Toralii Alliance, however, it was a reasonable guess.
[“They are… hardly well hidden,”] Avaran said. [“At least, not… by our standards.”]
Liao made a mental note of that. “Or ours.”
[“I am in… pain. Why do you not… simply kill me?”]
“Because I need you for a little bit longer.” Liao took a deep breath. “Tell me what you know about the microtransmissions being sent from our world.”
[“Your… world?”] Avaran laughed, feebly, rough and wet. [“No. Charity from… the Telvan.”]
“Ours now,” said Liao.
Avaran’s dying face twisted into a gruesome smile. [“Not… for long. We have… a contact. In your people. In your… senior staff. He tells… us all. Arranges… deals.”]
Don’t immediately blame Decker-Sheng, she chanted in her mind, a mantra that largely failed to distract her train of thought.
[“Let… me die,”] said Avaran. [“I will… answer no more… questions.”]
“One more,” said Liao. “Then I promise, I’ll do it myself.”
Avaran’s corpse eyes burrowed into her. [“S-speak.”]
“You mentioned deals? Well, I got one for you.” Liao thought of Kkezi. She tapped on the medical console, enabling recording. “The Toralii Alliance has prisoners from Belthas IV. Marines of ours. We want them back. We have prisoners of our own—including your men. They all want to be free. My XO, Commander Iraj, believes that there can be lasting peace between our people in spite of what has happened. I’m not convinced. A prisoner exchange, however, benefits both of us and brings—at least temporarily, in some small measure—a reprieve to the bloodshed. Do you not agree?”
Avaran laughed, a death rattle. And continued to laugh. [“My people… will never agree to such a thing.”]
“As a Warbringer’s dying wish? I think they just might.”
He coughed wetly, and the inside of the mask was stained purple with Toralii blood. [“Just… shoot.”]
“I will,” she promised, “once you talk to the Forerunner and tell them I’m willing to negotiate.”
Avaran shrugged helplessly. [“Time… short. I will forestall the… inevitable back-and-forth argument… and simply agree. Tired.”]
Liao thought as quickly as she could. “The deal is: they send one ship. A scout ship only, the same class as the Knight. We send whatever we want. We give them one prisoner—they give us one. We go first. Proceed until there’s nothing left.” She mentally counted how many prisoners they had. “Let’s start with eight of ours. We’ll give them eight of theirs. Just say that.”
[“I, Warbringer Avaran… do endorse… this arrangement.”] Avaran smiled, a horrible leer distorted by his roasted lips, but somehow cold and indifferent. [“You are… being played… if you believe this will… work.”]
“I know.”
[“The last time… you were being played… and your whole world burned.”] He leaned forward in the tank. [“What will… you lose this time?”]
Liao shrugged. “That’s my concern.”
[“It… will be,”] said Avaran, his words carrying dark promise.
Liao entered a series of commands into the medical console and then touched a small grey button to execute. The pipes plugged into Avaran’s body vibrated as massive doses of painkillers flooded his body. She watched as the light finally died in his eyes, as the heart rate monitor finally flatlined and there was no more motion in the tank.
The only things left were his words, echoing in her mind.
It will be.