— 4 —

Fixion’s amber sky was barren of clouds, always. Even during the day, the tiny lights of other asteroids in the Belt were strung like a necklace overhead.

Dark spots speckled Rader’s sandy brown armor, some camouflage, some just stains. Leaving the Jaxxan squad he had just killed, the Deathguard dodged across the landscape. Cover was easy to find on the torn-up terrain of canyons, craters, and angled trenches.

He noticed fighting in the distance and chose to head toward a collapsed Jaxxan watchtower. The Earth League operation had moved on, but if the roaches returned to begin repairs, maybe he could charge in among them. The Werewolf Trigger remained quiescent, but he didn’t need it.

So far, all of his components functioned well. His brain moved the replacement parts in tandem with what remained of his body, but the breakdown could come at any time: a failed neural interface, a mechanical fault in the cyborg parts, or a collapse of life-support maintenance. The Earth League had drilled the duty into him: his commanding officers and comrades expected him to do everything in his power to defeat the Jaxxans.

He had accepted the terms in the med center: the extent of his injuries already categorized him as terminal, and he could either become a cyborg or be disconnected. In exchange for his new superhuman abilities he pledged to take on a solo mission that would not end until his final breath. His friend Cody had had no such opportunity.

Rader pushed on, alone, for as long as he might have left.

He dodged from one huge boulder to another, closing the distance to the damaged watchtower. He climbed an outcropping of rock above a steep gully, a crack in the shattered landscape from an ancient meteor impact. He stopped short, staring at the single Jaxxan that had taken cover in the gully below.

The alien was bent over a burnt human form—an Earth League soldier who had been charred by the backwash of an energy-web. Moving sharp-angled hands, the Jaxxan busily touched, inspected, prodded the soldier, who let out a groan of pain. The alien plucked a vial from a small open kit on the ground.

During basic training, Rader had heard of the awful things the roaches did to human bodies. He brought up his laser rifle and prepared to fire.

The alien looked at him with polished black eyes. He held a vial in long fingers, tilted it, and turned back to his work on the burned soldier.

With a jolt, Rader realized the open package on the ground was a standard-issue Earth League med kit. The Jaxxan was tending the wounded man. The alien fumbled with the kit, swiveled his head back to Rader. “Assistance. Help me understand.”

Roaches moved in groups, fought together, crowded in their trenches and hives; they were rarely encountered singly. This one would be easy prey. He kept the laser rifle pointed toward the alien, but did not fire.

The Jaxxan put a gauze pack down, inspected a different bottle. “How do I revive him?” He spoke in short, clipped syllables.

Confused, Rader slid down the side of the gully, still keeping his rifle ready. The injured man stirred, and Rader saw how horribly burned he was. He croaked with a voice he had rarely used since being turned loose as a Deathguard. “What are you doing?”

“No time.” The alien chose a stim pack from the kit. “This one, I believe.” He pressed it against the dying soldier.

Rader jabbed the laser rifle forward. “Stop!”

The alien continued his quick and efficient movements, either not intimidated by the Deathguard, or driven by other priorities. “I need to wake him before he dies.” Although the Jaxxan’s hard lips did not allow him to pronounce certain sounds correctly, Rader couldn’t believe how well the Jaxxan spoke English.

His response should have been clear; he wasn’t supposed to wonder. Why hadn’t he killed the Jaxxan on first sight? Why hadn’t the enemy tried to kill him?

And why was the alien trying so hard to revive a dying soldier?

The soldier’s uniform identified him as a recon scout, a member of a small team sent to assess the aftermath of the earlier military operation. A moan escaped the man’s blackened lips, and his eyes flickered open in terror and pain for an instant before he finally died.

The Jaxxan sat back on the ground, folding his long legs. He made a satisfied sound, then raised his face to the Deathguard. “Now you will kill me?”

Rader’s eyes narrowed behind his darkened visor. “Why did you do that? Explain.” He kept the laser rifle trained on the roach’s chest.

The Jaxxan bowed his head, in what seemed to Rader an alien expression of guilt. Anthropomorphizing. Nothing more to it.

“My energy-web hit him from behind. I was afraid. He did not see me. He had no chance to know he was going to die.” He paused as if waiting for Rader to understand. “His soul did not have time to prepare for the departure of death. Had he died without awakening, his soul would have remained trapped within the body, forever. I would not wish such a fate upon even my enemy.”

Rader felt the hard rock against his armor as thoughts flashed through his mind. He also recalled the Jaxxan in the chrysalis chamber of the hatching asteroid, who had clung to the half-formed but dying alien as it slid out of the broken cocoon case. Look what you have done.

“How do you know our language?” He couldn’t imagine any of his squadmates trying to learn to speak Jaxxan.

“I studied.”

“Why?”

“Because you are interesting.” Rader didn’t know what to say to that. “Many Jaxxans study humans. We review your broadcasts, your culture. I am a scholar, teacher, imaginer.”

“Then what are you doing on the battlefield?”

“I was assigned to the System Holystal project. My interpretation of facets contradicted my superior’s, and so I was transferred here.”

Rader assessed the skeletal, buglike Jaxxan. He seemed scrawnier than most. “You don’t look trained to be a soldier.”

“Not trained. I was meant to die, in service.” The alien studied him with eyes like molten pools of ink. “Why did you not kill me, Deathguard?”

Both remained silent for a long moment in a strange standoff. A shooting star sliced across the sky, bright enough to be seen against Fixion’s amber daytime sky. “I don’t know.”

“You are confused, your emotions in turmoil. We are each supposed to kill the other, yet neither wants to.”

Rader stiffened. He had not moved the laser rifle. “I may kill you yet.”

“No. You will not.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can read it in you.” The Jaxxan cocked his head. “Did you not know we are empathic?”

“No.” Command had neglected to include that detail in their briefings.

The Jaxxan shook his head in disappointment. “What is your name, Deathguard?”

The question itself opened old wounds. A name signified he was somebody, an individual. A hero killed in action during the raid on the nesting asteroid. That name, that person was dead; his family had the certificate to prove it, even though Rader continued fighting for a brief period, like a mayfly in its final days.

“My name was Rader, before I was … Now, I’m just a Deathguard.” He sounded more gruff than he wanted to. He paused, wasn’t sure why he even asked the question. “And your name?”

The Jaxxan proceeded to make a series of unpronounceable clicks from his alien gullet. Rader knew he could never repeat the name and said with a hint of humor. “I’d better just call you Click.”

The alien seemed satisfied with that. “Rader, I must contemplate this turn of events. I was not prepared for such an occurrence. Please let me meditate.” Still holding his laser rifle like a toy soldier positioned in place, the Deathguard regarded his enemy. Click answered the unspoken question. “I am not afraid of you. You will not harm me.”

Rader was confused at such unwarranted trust, until he realized an empath could feel that Rader wasn’t going to harm him. But how could he be so sure about Click? Maybe this was just a ruse to get him to drop his guard.

“You will want to bury your comrade.” Click stood and moved away from the burned soldier. “That is the tradition.”

Rader had just left the group of Jaxxans in the trench after killing them.

He could put the recon scout in a shallow grave, although Fixion had no known scavengers or predators that would disturb the body. He’d send a locator signal for an Earth League pickup crew to retrieve the fallen soldier. But, depending on where the fighting lines were, there was no telling when or if they would come. Due to interstellar shipping costs, bodies were never returned to Earth.

Yes, the recon scout deserved to be buried.

But Rader didn’t know where he would go afterward. He had never let the question trouble him before. Days of running, fighting, killing tried to catch up with him, but internal mechanisms pumped stimulants into his body. He could rest here, but he could never sleep again—not after what they had done to him.