Cosmosis

Interlude: Hunter

It had all gone so wrong.

Sendin watched as the Coalition group sped off as quickly as the snowy road would allow. She noticed Four visibly hesitate, reaching for his whistle. Her mind was firing on all cylinders, so it was trivially easy to track his own thought process.

He wanted to give chase, but he had immediate concerns to attend to. His uyakars .

Sendin caught the glance that Four made at her; he was checking to see if she intended to pursue.

She did not.

With their enemies departing, Four gave a whistle and the one visible uyakar loped over. Sendin recognized it as Gan, the largest.

“Sceppi.” Four breathed, looking around. Four frantically looked around before finding where the animal had fallen in the snow. It was mostly buried in snow where it had fallen, but Sceppi was staying on its side and breathing rapid shallow breaths.

Four knelt and pulled the uyakar from underneath the snow. The dark green vest it wore had two metal lumps stuck to one side of it: bullets. They had not penetrated the vest though. Once it was off, Sceppi should be fine.

The vest’s material, along with whatever swelling the slugs’ impact caused, was constrictive to limit blood loss. The straps to the vest were slow to come loose when Four pulled at them, but Sendin could tell he went as quickly as he could to get the vest off.

As soon as the vest was free of the uyakar’s torso, Sceppi’s breathing slowed and grew deeper. It picked itself up, standing unsteadily for a moment, before giving Four an affectionate lick.

There was still one more though.

“Where’s Tino?” Sendin asked.

“I put him on the alien, the…”

“The ‘I have no clue’?” Sendin suggested darkly.

“That.” Four agreed. “That was down the slope though. Sceppi jumped at the ones in the back of the truck and the whole thing went down the slope. Down here.”

Four didn’t backtrack on the road, instead electing to go down the steeper slope. A massive ditch was carved through the fresh slope on the hill, like a car had plowed right through it, just like Four said.

It was plainly obvious where the truck had stopped. The imprint in the snow was unmistakable and fresh tracks marked where the truck had been driven back on the road.

“The truck was empty. The alien was the only one with it. So I went after the gunshots instead, but it was only the Casti. I didn’t see the Warlock until it was driving the truck.” Four reported, trying to puzzle out what had happened.

He gave a whistle and shouted for his uyakar .

“Tino!”

No response.

“Foot prints, boots and uyakar .” Sendin said, finding two sets leading away from the truck toward the edge of the road.

Four blew on his whistle again and signaled Sceppi and Gan to search the area.

They followed them a few dozen feet into the sparse woods next to the road. A messy scene met them. Rough trails cut through the snowfall where bodies had forced their way through. They crisscrossed the small section of mountain, some even going straight down the slope like there’s been a fall.

“It led Tino away from the truck…” Four guessed, “Because the Warlock must have still been there, hidden.”

Four’s voice was scolding. He was already preparing himself for the worst. His hounds were tough little things. If they weren’t responding to his signals, it was bad news.

Sendin didn’t say anything. She was already mad enough at her own mistakes; she didn’t have the standing to examine his.

Sceppi let out a bark, and started pawing at the snow. Sendin and Four started making their way over and the uyakar suddenly lay down on all fours, pointing its snout at something buried in the snow. Sendin saw dark purple bloodstains she’d missed from a distance.

Four’s pace quickened and he reached the spot first, raking through the snow with his arms to uncover the body of his last uyakar .

Tino was dead, a gaping scorched hole blew open half its throat.

Four bit back an anguished shout. His two surviving uyakar stayed next to him, motionless.

It was too short of a vigil, but she let him take the moment.

Sendin had made a mistake, and it had cost Four one of his companions. It might have cost more than that.

“We’ll get even.” Sendin said quietly, “But we need to find Two and Three.”

Four nodded, composing himself. He scooped up Tino’s body and they started back toward the truck.

“The radio.” Four said, gesturing for Sendin to take it from him.

She grabbed it and thumbed the button, “Two, respond.”

Nothing came over the channel.

“He went out of contact late last night.” Four said, “He had positive contact though. He was following them toward a molybdenum mine.”

“They abandoned their vehicle?” Sendin asked, perplexed. They had been in a truck when she’d seen them moments before. They’d originally been reported to be travelling in a different model.

“Two saw an opportunity to sabotage it. They left it by the road for a few minutes to stop at one of the empty villagettes.”

Sendin nodded, “Two, be advised, Four and I are en route. If Three is with you, stay together, and try and be visible from the road. Respond quickly if you can.”

She turned back to Four, “What was his last contact?”

“It was late, after sundown.” Four said, “He was harassing the alien and one of the Casti on foot. He separated them into two groups, but he lost track of the Warlock and the other Casti. He…”

Four trailed off. Sendin’s instincts told her he was reticent to share a detail… because it reflected badly on Two?

“Spit it out.” Sendin said, climbing into the vehicle. She’d technically hijacked it from a Casti trying to venture out in the morning through the fresh snow.

Four opened the car’s hatch to let his uyakars jump inside, and he placed Tino’s body in the middle seat.

“He seemed… paranoid.” Four said, “He was convinced the alien could see him somehow through his camouflage. He said it reminded him of y…”

Four trailed off again.

“The alien reminded him of me.” Sendin guessed, “Because I could always tell where you were.”

Four nodded.

Sendin felt like someone had put a spike between her ribs.

Everything had gone so wrong.

·····

They drove backward, retracing the Coalition team’s tracks.

“You kept up with them on foot?” Sendin asked incredulously.

“They were going pretty slow because of the roads. I got to cut some corners too.” Four said.

They reached the longitudinal highway again and went south.

It had probably taken Two an hour to drive the distance. But the roads had been clear for him. It took Sendin and Four more than two and a half hours to reach the point where the tracks turned off the highway.

Sendin consulted the map she’d memorized. The tracks led toward a mineshaft complex sunken into the mountain itself.

But the spot Two had been sent to watch was further south still.

“They came from here.” Sendin said, nodding toward the road leading up the valley toward the mine.

“But if Two was harassing them on foot, he probably left his vehicle further south.” Four said. The part of Sendin that wasn’t seething with herself, noted that Four wasn’t hesitating to share his opinions.

“But I sent Three south to try and meet up with Two.” Sendin said. “He would have gone south on foot, and he would have come across the car where Two left it.”

“And he would have found the Coalition group’s car where it was sabotaged.” Four added.

“Three would have known they were on foot, and knowing that, he would have figured out they were headed toward the mineshaft.” Sendin said, steering the Casti vehicle to go up the valley toward the same facility.

But at that exact moment, the radio crackled to life.

“—come in. Two responding, come in.” The voice was weak and hoarse.

Sendin snatched the radio, “Report, where are you?”

“I—” Two let out a bad series of coughs, interrupting himself, “—I am currently pinned to a log stuck on a river. I think I’ve been unconscious for a few hours.”

“I’m with Four.” Sendin said, “Do you have Three’s status? I sent him your direction to reinforce you yesterday evening.”

“N-negative, boss.” Two croaked. “Haven’t seen him.”

“Acknowledged.” Sendin replied, “Can you keep your signal on? We’ll triangulate and come get you.”

“Acknowledged, boss.” Two said. “I’m hanging in here.”

Four indicated that he had something to ask, and Sendin handed him the radio.

“Two, it’s Four. Good to hear from you.” Four said.

“Likewise.” Two said, “Sorry about losing contact, I passed out: I’m not sure how much blood I’ve lost.”

“What happened?”

“That alien scrape I saw?” Two said. “Played me for a sucker.”

“I’ve met it.” Four said. “It, or the Warlock, killed Tino.”

“It caught me with a bright-blinder before one of its Casti friends shot me with a damper-bolt.” Two said.

Sendin saw Four’s face go slack upon hearing what weapon the Casti had been firing at them. They could be fatal as bullets alone, but ordinary bullets didn’t suppress an Adept’s ability to create and sustain their constructs.

“You haven’t been able to free yourself.” Sendin confirmed. If Two had been caught by a damper, then he wouldn’t have been able to make more than few grams. That was assuming the bolt hadn’t just annihilated his body outright.

“The bolt got me in the forearm and it’s actually what’s got me stuck here. I can't pull it loose from the log without cracking the bolt.”

Ah, that was the rub.

“Are you visible from the road?” Sendin asked.

“I should be, yes.” Two said, “I can see it, at least. Probably pretty hard to see me back.”

“That won’t be a problem.” Sendin said, “Keep the radio on and signal when you can see us on the road.”

“Acknowledged.” Two said.

It was only a few more minutes down the road when Sendin saw a half-frozen river rushing down the mountainside and under the highway through a culvert.

At the same moment, Two’s voice crackled over the radio again.

“I see you.” Two alerted them.

Sendin brought the car to a halt and peered up the mountain slope. Even in her mind, she couldn’t make out Two from the road, but it shouldn’t be too hard to work their way up and find him.

“You’re coming with me.” Sendin told Four. She wasn’t splitting up her squad again. That had been a mistake.

Four didn’t argue, but he did have his uyakar stay with the car.

The two Vorak were practically swimming up the mountainside. The snow was astonishingly deep. Four was less hindered than her. His limbs were longer, but seeing him move more easily than her up the slope made Sendin think she shouldn’t have spent so much time in her tent-blind.

Four could likely outmaneuver her in this environment.

After climbing high enough for their vehicle to be a small speck on the road at the bottom of the valley, Sendin paused. She focused on the turbulent image in her mind. By now, she should be close enough to… there. She picked out the familiar emanation that Two gave off.

Sendin and Four plowed through the deep snow, and caught sight of Two clinging to a log in the river.

Two had not been kidding. He was in rough shape. He was cut, and battered, one of his eyes swollen shut, and he had an arm bloodily pinned to the tree.

The log in question, scorched at one end, was jammed between two large rocks that jutted out of the riverbed, just a few feet short of a drop off in the river. It wasn’t quite a vertical drop, but the water rushed rapidly down the steep face of the mountain. Pinned as Two was, he would have been reduced to a dark bloody smear.

“You spent the whole night like this?” Four asked, shocked.

“Well, with the tree under me, I actually stayed dry. Still passed out though. I was pretty surprised when the radio woke me up.” Two confessed.

Willing energy to flow through and fill the practiced mold in her mind, Sendin created one of her blades. She carefully adjusted its cutting edge, and postured to toss it toward Two.

“You’re going to have to catch this. I don’t want to put any more weight on the log.”

Two rapidly shook his head, like he needed to wake up a bit more, before nodding and raising his free arm, ready to catch. “I’m ready. Throw it.”

Sendin tossed the blade so that it didn’t tumble through the air. Two snatched the handle with only a tiny reach. Even that small movement was still enough to make him wince where he pulled on the wound pinning him. The log itself shifted an inch too.

Two froze where he caught the curved sword, and everyone watched with bated breath to see if the log was about to tumble over the edge with Two still attached.

When several seconds passed, Two slowly brought the blade down and began pressing it into the wood where the glossy black bolt pinned his arm. Sendin’s blade wasn’t particularly sharp, but the exotic material dug into the wood regardless. The edge of the blade applied force non-intuitively. Sendin wasn’t used to regulating the blade’s effect from a distance; most of the time her weapons stayed in her hand. But this was a special circumstance.

Two carved out the chunk of tree the black bolt was embedded in, dropping the blade over the edge absentmindedly once his arm was free. Clutching the arm with the bolt still embedded, Two carefully picked himself up on the log.

There was only one chance at this, so Sendin and Four didn’t say anything as he positioned his feet to leap from the log.

How much would the bolt affect his augmentations? It didn’t seem to have fragmented, but that was no guarantee.

Two gave a powerful jump, knocking the tree free from where it was stuck. He landed on one of the large rocks the tree had been stuck on, almost falling into the water. But Four was in position to grab hold of his squadmate’s shoulder.

The tree tumbled down the steep river, snapping clean in two when the current dashed it against another boulder further down.

Two gave a relieved pant and collapsed onto the ground. The first danger was past. Now for the second.

“Let’s get that spike out of your arm.” Sendin said. The longer they left it in, the more likely its material was to leech into Two’s blood. “How much can you materialize right now?”

Two sat up and let Sendin take the injured limb. The menacing black bolt protruded several inches from both sides of his forearm.

“I’ve got a few kilograms. Pretty surprising, all things considered.” Two replied.

“The bolt hasn’t cracked?”

Two shook his head. “No. I was going to try and push it through—”

“No!” Sendin and Four both barked.

“I know! I know!” Two said defensively. “The barbs; I remembered them.”

“Now that the thing is free of the log, we can pull it, right?” Four asked.

“It’s going to hurt, but yes.” Sendin agreed, already shaping a new creation in her mind.

“Well, at least I’ll definitely be awake after this.” Two said, bracing himself.

Sendin pinched an awkward, but firm, grip on the half centimeter of bolt still protruding from the top of Two’s arm. With her other hand, she prepared an exotic bandage to wrap around the wound as soon as the bolt was clear.

As smoothly as she could, careful to not break off any microscopic pieces of the glossy black material inside the wound, she slid the bolt out of Two’s arm.

He bit down a painful yell, and the same moment the bloody bolt came free of his arm, Sendin wrapped the bandage she’d created around the wound. The bandage puffed and swelled almost immediately, pressurizing the wound and even flooding it with favorable meta-microbes. They would supplant the damaged cellular structure until Two’s own Adept powers had recovered enough to take over.

“In one piece?” Sendin asked.

Two nodded, getting to his feet.

“Let’s go then. Where’s Three?”

·····

Two rode in the front with a blanket wrapped around him. He was badly hypothermic, and his organ’s exotic cells hadn’t been functioning all night. But now that the damper was out of his arm, he should be returning to normal equilibrium within the hour.

Four was in the middle row of the car, next to Tino’s body.

“They made it to the mine, all four of them.” Two said. “They needed new transport, and that’s where they thought they would get it.”

“You actually got close enough to ruin their car?” Four asked.

“I got the brakes and the fuel line.” Two said. Sendin thought he might have been about to brag, but thought better of it when he remembered Four’s dead uyakar .

Sendin was surprised at how far up the valley this mineshaft was. Even with the map she’d memorized, she was unprepared for how isolated the facility was.

Their vehicle rolled up to the gate, lowered, and they stopped their vehicle inside the complex’s fence line.

Sendin thought this must have been one of the biggest surface operations she’d seen. Four buildings lay inside the reinforced fence, two of them housed the machinery and actual shafts, while the smallest was a domicile building, and the tallest was a security and administrative office.

“The security depot will have footage.” Sendin said, nodding at the tallest building, “Should be the top floor.”

Four gave his uyakars a whistle coupled with a hand motion, and they spread out in the facility yard.

All three of the Vorak stopped as they went up the floors of the office building.

Walls were scorched, a cabinet was upended, there were even bullet holes littering the walls.

A battle had been here.

They rushed upward, seeing more signs of struggle. Shattered glass, a door bent out of its frame.

Dull flickering security monitors were still rolling when they came into the room. The facility had more than twenty cameras throughout its buildings.

“Either of you decent with Casti computers?” Sendin asked.

Two stepped forward and worked on the surveillance.

Reviewing the footage would be faster than combing the place on foot. Sendin wanted to find Three immediately and the cameras could tell them where to look.

“Here.” Two said, turning one of the dials on the console. The footage on the screens played in rapid reverse. Nothing moving for hours while Two sped backwards through the footage.

They had to cycle through each camera, one by one to try and catch a glimpse of what happened.

“We don’t need to see the beginning.” Sendin said, “Just the end. Where did Three go?”

Two found a camera with a view of the gate, and sped back hours at a time, watching for when it was raised in reverse, which would be the time it had been lowered for anyone to drive away.

Two landed the camera on a Casti carrying a pistol, creeping up the stairs of the very building they now stood in.

A different screen showed Three in the room adjacent to the security office. He held a crossbow, ready to fire at the stairwell. Three descended lower in the building, he and the Casti stalking each other, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Sendin thought if they backed the footage up more, they would have seen more of the firefight.

“He couldn’t have been shot.” Four said. “We would have seen the blood on the way up here.”

Sendin said nothing, trying not to hope. If she didn’t hope for anything, she couldn’t be disappointed.

She’d found Four and Two, against the odds, and okay. Tino was a hard loss, but if it was the only one to die at the hands of the Coalition team, then Sendin would be able to live with this mistake.

The Vorak watched as their squadmate fought with the Casti, only to be distracted by something.

Three dashed back upstairs… only to miss the alien that had hid in the stairwell!

“Back.” Sendin barked. “When did it get there? How?”

Two tapped at the console’s buttons, reversing the footage a minute or so, and switched to the other camera on the top floor.

Three emerged from the room to go fight the Casti on the lower floors…

And half a minute later, the alien slunk out of the same room . It went to the other end of the stairwell, waited for Three to return, and then vaulted the railing to the stairwell and slipped to the lower floors with Three none the wiser.

“How did it get there?”

Two checked one of the exterior cameras from the minutes previously, and sure enough, there the alien was, in the truck she had seen them driving earlier.

It jumped out of the truck and waded through the snow toward the building, but the angle was wrong… it wasn’t heading toward the door.

It left the camera’s view, and the next time any camera picked it up was when it followed Three out of the gate control room.

“It climbed up the outside.” Four breathed in disbelief.

“Suicide.” Sendin gaped. What else could you call it?

“It’s in line with what I saw of it.” Two said. “I chased it and the Casti for hours, and the freak kept pace the whole time. It’s like a machine.”

They continued watching the alien as it kept moving down through the building. It met the Casti on the third floor, and they didn’t attack each other.

But something disturbed the alien.

Sendin watched as the raggedly dressed alien snapped its head toward the stairs. It couldn’t see Three from where it stood, and yet it knew .

The sight confirmed what she already knew.

“It can sense him.” Sendin said. “Like I can.”

“I thought it might have been able to detect me somehow. It found me, even when I was perfectly still, mocked up as a boulder.” Two said.

“How do you mean? You think its hearing is that good?” Four asked.

Sendin shook her head. “Tactile cascading isn’t the only exotic senses Adepts can get. Heat-change, electroreception, those are the rare top shelf ones. But there’s some others, even rarer.”

“That let you sense people?”

“Adepts.” Sendin corrected, “I think it’s the same as me. It detects whatever mechanism Adepts regulate and influence their constructs with.”

“…Why?” Four asked.

“It reacted to my attack on them even faster than the Warlock did. It saw me first somehow. But my sense, it’s like there’s a compass that points an arrow at Adepts near me. But when I got near that thing, it felt like there was another arrow pointing back at me.”

Sendin shuddered, “My exotic sense reacted to its own. Somehow.”

They watched further as Three fired its crossbow at the alien. Simultaneously, one of Three’s foam traps blossomed outward and the Casti shoved the haggard alien out of the way.

The alien only froze for a second before diving inside the nearest room.

Three descended the stairs warily, crossbow at the ready. But he drew too close to the door. Sendin winced at the mistake. He’d been operating out in the wilderness for the past few weeks. Tactical procedure for structures with their doors wasn’t fresh in his head.

The alien ruthlessly took advantage of the fact, bashing the sliding door clear of its groove.

She was surprised when she saw that Three actually avoided the hit, taking a neat backstep out of the way. She hadn’t realized his reflexes were that good.

He must have suspected what the alien was up to. He misplayed it though. He got caught up with the momentum, and drew close when he didn’t need to.

Even if he avoided the door, the alien itself was far too close. It crashed into Three, striking him right between the eyes. They both fell over, tangled together in a clumsy way that belied the danger.

The alien kicked Three off itself and into the room. They both scrambled upright, when Two noticed something.

“It stripped his goggles. He’s about to be blinded.”

Two was right on both accounts. Sendin had barely registered that Three even had the goggles, much less lost them. They hadn’t been issued though, so Three must have created them himself.

But, without them, the alien thrust a hand out and blinding light flashed over the screen for a second.

The camera didn’t have a perfect angle on the room Three had been hurled into, but they could still see the lower halves of both figures.

A moment later, Three’s boots vanished upward. The alien walked out of the room alone, and saw that Three’s foam trap was dissipating.

“What happened?” Four puzzled.

“Three lost a handle on his upkeep.” Sendin said darkly. “Doesn’t happen unless you’re near your mass limit and the builds are spread out over a huge area… like if he was maintaining landmines for the road.”

Two ducked out of the security office and down the stairs to check the same room.

“It’s empty!” he called out, looking at the camera. “The glass is blown out…”

Sendin and Four both made their way to the same room, the abused door nearly torn off leaning against the adjacent wall.

The alien was strong. Three’s mistake was letting it get close.

“…oh no.” Two said as they entered the room. Two was poking his head out the window, looking down.

Sendin and Four followed suit and looked out the window.

Below this side of the building, there was a vehicle garage that hadn’t been visible from the gate. There was a two-foot hole punched right through the sheet metal roof.

The alien had thrown Three out the building.

Upon seeing the hole, all three of the Vorak rushed down the stairs, burst out of the building and found the vehicle garage behind the facility’s tallest building.

Three was motionless on the ground, just a few feet from the door. Dark purple blood smeared the ground where he’d tried to crawl. More blood was pooling around his head. It oozed from his mouth.

Two and Four froze at the sight.

Sendin forced herself to move, dropping to Three’s side, letting her Adept senses spread through Three’s body. Her sense of touch cascaded through her subordinate’s torso, feeding her information about his body.

He wasn’t breathing. His heart wasn’t beating.

He was dead. For at least an hour, maybe two.

The problem was obvious. The fall had been brutal, as they often were for Vorak. Their home planet was more than eighty percent water. The landmass that did end up rising above the water level just didn’t have that much elevation.

Before First Contact with the Farnata, there hadn’t been any Vorak words for ‘mountain’.

Three’s impact had been especially bad though. He hadn’t been significantly slowed by the roof, only knocked into an even worse position to land as he fell. He’d caught his head on one of the mining haulers, before slamming into the concrete floor.

Four of his ribs had broken. Three had punctured into his lungs, but the fourth had gone deeper, piercing his trachea at the lowest point possible. The wound was so close to the point his windpipe split toward each lung; blood would have filled both lungs in seconds.

The fall hadn’t killed him. It had just pulverized his torso badly enough for him to drown in his own blood.

Sendin pulled her hands off Three’s body, unable to continue.

How had this gone so wrong?

·····

The next day, Sendin and her squad were formally recalled from their ‘mission’.

A Red Sails convoy rolled through the mountain, took their report on the Coalition team’s last known heading, and related orders for them.

They drove north to the Vorak controlled spaceport on the equator, after retrieving their original vehicle that Two had left where it first encountered them.

Three’s body was catalogued and the three surviving Vorak were ordered to report to Marshal-Adjutant Tox that afternoon.

The second in command of the entire Red Sails, which comprised more than half the Vorak military presence in the entire star system.

Sendin knew Tox.

They’d been cadets together once upon a time.

Her team’s orders, delivered by drone , had been signed by Tox.

The Marshall-Adjutant had debriefed Two and Four personally. And if Tox was on the planet, Sendin doubted there was anyone else who ranked highly enough to even debrief her on the fiasco that had just occurred.

Sendin walked into the office Tox had taken over, looked him in the beady little eyes, and demanded, “I want its head.”

Tox only spared her a single moment for a dry look and continued to fill out the paperwork in front of him.

“Endi, I need you to be professional right now.” Tox said, “This entire debacle keeps growing bigger with every minute and I need you to—”

Sendin grabbed the stack of paper he was scribbling on and hurled it against the wall. When he only minimally reacted to that, Sendin tore her claws through everything on the desk, throwing it to all corners of the room.

“My squad was doing a training mission.” She hissed, “And you give us orders with no verifiable data, sending us after the blighted Warlock herself, and you still managed to obfuscate just how much of a disaster you knew you were sending us into.”

“I read that swill you fed the ranking officers.” Sendin spat, “A modified Farnata? It had five fingers, Tox!”

“And right now, Endi, you and your two cadets are among the only ones that know that. And it is absolutely imperative that the real knowledge to be had here stays in as few hands as possible.”

“I had three cadets, Tox.” Sendin said, growing deathly quiet, “That alien hurled one out a window. He drowned in his own blood when the fall shattered his ribcage.”

“…I’m sorry.” Tox said reluctantly.

“I want his name.”

“We don’t know the alien’s name.” Tox confessed, “It wasn’t cooperative at all while we held it on Korbanok.”

“Not the alien!” hissed Sendin, “I want my Cadets’ names.”

Tox shook his head, “They’re prospective operatives Endi, you know their names are sealed—”

Sendin grabbed Tox’s throat and dragged his face into the desk. Just as quickly, Tox drew a pistol and pressed it into Sendin’s chin, but Sendin didn’t flinch. Instead she met his eyes intently.

“You’re going to waive their ‘prospective’ status, you’re going to put them in one of the specialist rotations, the elite tailored courses, you know the ones. You’re going to give me the names of my cadets who you sent into a hostile First Contact scenario without telling me or them .”

Her voice dropped to barely a whisper, “I sent those cadets into battle without arms or equipment, and I didn’t even know their real names.”

Sendin released his head from where she pinned it on the desk, adding one more demand.

“And then you’re going to put me on whatever team you’re sending after that alien. Because if I don’t get its head, I’ll settle for yours.”