The Hero

Chapter 17

Dagger twitched and said, “Unh?”

Coming awake, he realized he’d slept for some hours. It was dawn again, the sky above him just purple. He felt much better, too. Now to nail that damned Darhel.

He crawled cautiously out of his ersatz shelter, and opened his suit to drain and dump. He pinched out a turd that was hard and sore, because he was dehydrated, but it took pressure off. It was so hard he could feel his ass slam shut as it dropped, but he hurt a hell of a lot less afterwards. That accomplished and dust wiped off his hands and face, he chewed some more of the moist leaves. They helped a bit, but real food was called for. Well, that would just have to wait. He’d taken care of the rest.

“Good morning, Tirdal!” he greeted, trying to sound even more cheerful than he was. He donned gear and brought up the sensors.

“Good morning, Dagger. Did you enjoy sleeping in?” Dammit, the Elf still didn’t sound distressed. What was he, a machine? No, not a machine. He was in about the same area, so he’d rested, too. Just an alien prick. Don’t credit him with any more than that.

“Very much, Tirdal,” he replied. It wouldn’t do to act bothered. “I thought the extra time would let you consider your position. Alone. Down there. Burdened with the box and a short-range weapon. Running out of time. Might be a good idea to negotiate a surrender, hmm?”

“You make good points, Dagger,” was the reply. “But I’m not sure we can trust each other at this juncture.”

“Sure we can, Tirdal,” he said. He’d thought this through. “You can tell when I’ve dropped my rifle… hell, I’ll even throw it down. You drop the punch gun as I come in range and you can tell I’m not armed. Then we both unload our pistols and hold them up to prove it. Then we can talk about the box.” While I stick a knife in your throat, asshole.

“That’s a good idea, Dagger,” Tirdal said, and Dagger smirked until he added, “but we should have done that three days ago. Your position has become clear and your ‘soul’ as you call it, is slimy and grotesque. Frankly, I’d rather attempt to negotiate with one of the predators. At least they are logical and have a defined goal I can understand.”

Forcing calm upon himself, Dagger replied, “That is unfortunate, Tirdal. In that case, I’ll have to kill you.” And you’re in a prime place for a shot.

“We knew that, Dagger, didn’t we?” Tirdal replied. He was still calm, damn him! “And I just might kill you first.”

The signal went dead.

All right, so he wanted to be that way. He was just about fifty meters north of where he’d been at dark yesterday. So, on a lower ledge, far enough back not to fall, settle in, set the rifle, and prepare to deliver God’s Vengeance upon the Darhel.

Tirdal knew what was to happen. They both did. He’d move, Dagger would shoot. From there, Dagger assumed he’d be killed; he assumed he’d avoid taking fire. This stalemate, as it was called in chess, was tiresome and he was about to break it, but to do that he had to expose himself to the fire first. There was nothing doing but to get it over with.

He shrugged back into his ruck, feeling the soreness and tightness across his shoulders. That was made worse every time he moved his head with the added mass of helmet. It would do for now, and he counted himself lucky. A couple of centimeters deeper and the shot would have shattered both shoulders. Dagger really was that good. He’d have to force Dagger to take a shot, and be ready. He’d need tal in his system to boost his Sense. He reached inside himself and released a little.

That wasn’t happening as quickly as he’d like. He might be starting to suffer from fatigue himself, his submind less easy to control. So he recalled the feel of the kill, the taste of meat from yesterday. That did it. He could feel the energy flow, and then his Sense came on, detected the nearby herds, then Dagger, and the rate increased, pushing him toward…

A steady, controlled level of tal, regulated by Jem discipline. It was a bit easier to control today, though that might be due to the familiar conditions. How he’d handle a new set of factors he didn’t know. But Dagger was there, so if he stepped out over here…

Dagger was drifting, drifting and was shooting now and Tirdal dropped forward and flat over a shelf of shale as the round cracked overhead and threw a mist of water up from the stream. Then he was up and moving and Dagger was there and angry and shooting now and Tirdal dropped sideways in case he’d anticipated the fall. He landed in a pile of sand as a rock erupted chips on the far bank. He stood and felt Dagger shoot at once and dug in his heels to change his momentum, then dropped as another crack presaged another cloud of mist.

That should do it, he thought. Dagger hated to miss more than just about anything else, would be easy to track with that storm of emotion roaring off him, and Tirdal could keep track as he decided how to execute his plan.

Then, only for a moment he could feel the human as if Dagger were he.

Dagger was pissed. Seriously pissed. He crushed another beetle on a rock before it could scuttle out of range and watched the rabbit-sized pseudoisopod writhe as he loped off. The damned Darhel had just dodged the bullets. Sure, it was vaguely possible, even with the high speeds of the “dumb” sniper rounds. But you had to know that a sniper had shot. That was the point of using a dumb round; it had no emissions to detect. You had to have an active system to detect it until it was too late.

But the goddamned sensat could feel him take the shot. The only way to stop that was to feel nothing when he killed the little shit. Which meant adopting a new shooting approach and, frankly, took all the fun out of it. What was the point if you couldn’t get the rush from the kill?

So, to kill the Darhel he had to feel nothing. But the point of killing was to feel something, wasn’t it? So what was the point of killing the Darhel? Oh, yeah. A billion credits.

So, this time, feel nothing. Not even excitement at getting a billion credits. Not until the box was in his hand. And the Darhel was dead. Feel nothing. That ought to be easy enough; it was his normal way of life.

The link severed as quickly as it had formed, tenuous threads of consciousness snapping away. That was Dagger’s mind then. It was crass, paranoid, full of a fear of failure and incompetence, of showing fear or doubt. Any emotion, any humanity, was weakness to Dagger.

Tirdal sucked on the pulp from his processor while he sorted out the thoughts. He couldn’t face killing something else in order to eat. His emotions were just too out of control and he was afraid he’d lose control the way he currently felt. Order was essential. Anarchy would lead to death, as it was leading to Dagger’s.

Growing up, he never could understand the tal addicts, the Darhel who did things to push the edge of lintatai. Now he could. The tal was the most heady drug available to the Darhel and it was manufactured in their own bodies. After the pain, which was brief, came the rush of pleasure, then the long duration of nothingness, followed by a sated calm. It was too easy to lose oneself in it, accomplish nothing and feel little while doing so, and feel good about what little there was.

Tal addiction still killed thousands, millions every year; no Darhel would bother to care for one that had succumbed to lintatai. Those who failed the test would wither away, dying of dehydration usually. It was harsh, but necessary. It had taken hundreds of millennia to force their evolution back to this point, where tal could be used even if at great risk. It might take hundreds more before the Darhel became what they had once been, before the Aldenata interfered with their heritage and corrupted their destiny. The strong must continue, the weak must not, if they were to be a whole race again.

But he knew his own control and its limits. It had fluctuated throughout the pursuit, the game if you will, and now if it were pushed he wasn’t sure he could hold back a full tal orgasm. Which would be death.

By the same token he was becoming more and more addicted to the tal himself. He had never experienced the range of emotions he was permitting himself. Even Dagger’s discordant emotions were a pleasing sensation. They were spice, a delicacy, against the palate of known pleasures.

For that matter it seemed to be part of his enhanced range. If he fully controlled the tal his ability to track the sniper decreased; it was only when he let some of the tal hormone trickle into his system that he could find his tracker.

He wasn’t sure he could get the glinak back in the box. When he was done with this mission there would be plenty to meditate about. And much to discuss with his master. Perhaps even with the masters of the Art themselves.

He took a deep breath and considered his situation. The pod would move in another two or three days. If he headed directly for the next Extraction Point, Dagger would set up along the way, moving to intercept as necessary. If he headed up into the hills there would be even more areas for the sniper to ambush him, and he’d be approaching the fire. Not good.

It appeared it was time for a Darhel to enter once again upon the hunt. There was a thrill to that knowledge, with a foreboding cloud hanging over it. This was no game. The fates of three races and hundreds of planets, perhaps the galaxy, would balance on what Tirdal San Rintai did next, and how well his mind could fight genetic programming.

The question was what to do with the box. He pondered that for a few moments. He looked around on the plain. Then he smiled. It was a very predatory and devious smile.

The Elf had been moving steadily towards the Blob site but now he’d turned back to the west, crossing the stream to do so. There was lots of clear savanna in that direction, large enough that it was on the map. What Tirdal thought he was doing there Dagger couldn’t decide. He moved north and west, down off the bluffs and the visual advantage they gave, aiming to cut the Darhel off. The Elf had headed across the stream and onto the savanna proper, all grass and shrubs, and probably intended to get well out of range and out of sight. But to get to the pickups he’d have to come back to the east and either north or south. Best to find a good spot on his probable route and wait for him. Dagger would lurk behind him until he turned, then take the hypotenuse to cut him off. If he started at an angle, Dagger would know which extraction point he intended to move toward, and could charge ahead, around the Elf, and be waiting for him. And if Tirdal took more than two more days, he’d have to head south anyway.

Perfect.

Dagger hunkered down in the grass to wait, nerves and sensors alert for any disturbance around him, and kept an eye on the box’s movement.

This was a technique that Tirdal had rarely practiced. Alonial, the Indowy adept, was the master of projection, but Tirdal had never shown much ability at it. Still, he seemed to be managing adequately. He couldn’t tell if the large browsers were seeing him as one of them, not at all, or simply as himself and were not afraid. Their primitive eyes didn’t move to indicate the direction they were viewing, and the waving antennae were equally reticent. They weren’t spooking, however, so something was right. It took only a trickle of tal to maintain the concentration for the illusion. Of course, that trickle was in addition to handling the stress on his twice-wounded body, and aiding his focus on Dagger, and…

The gargantuan insects were quiescent though, paying no attention to the strange biped in their midst. And everyone always said that thousand-klick-an-hour tape would stick to anything.

The “herd bull” was the size of a large bison or small elephant. To support that bulk with an exoskeleton required a material far stronger than chitin and the armored carapace of the bug was at least a hand span thick. It might be an impossible kill with a punch gun, depending on how the shell reacted to the blast. It would be difficult with the rounds Dagger carried. Not impossible perhaps. The antiarmor rounds might work. Antimatter would certainly work, though it might require blowing a deep crater with multiple rounds. But Tirdal wouldn’t need to kill it and wasn’t planning to.

He crouched for a moment then leapt up and over, free of the grass and with a clear, panoramic view. Even with his chameleon in effect, this was a dangerous time, and he’d have to work quickly lest Dagger see him and take a shot. That, and the insect might spook and toss him or dislodge him, possibly stampede or crush him.

He was atop it, sitting slightly astride as he swung his pack around and ripped open the top compartment flap. He heaved out the artifact, kept hold of the pack with one arm through it as it flopped down, and held the box still with his weight while he snagged the roll of tape with his left hand, reaching over his right and into the pack in a fashion that would impress an Earth acrobat.

It wasn’t an easy task, with only one hand and his lips to get the tape going, but he succeeded. The first piece held the box just still enough for him to get a second piece on, then a third. He was stretching out a fourth piece when he suddenly found himself flying through the air from a truly elephantine buck. The giant pill bug had all the agility of a terrestrial beetle but, luckily, had the reaction speed of a slug. Perhaps it had slower neural paths, or was less sensitive on its back, or just stupid. But the herd bull now had the Aldenata artifact strapped to its magnificently striped and armored back, with the tape still hanging from the last strap he’d been fastening. And Tirdal was free to hunt. He grinned again and angled through the herd, crossing the paths of the large beasts just behind them.