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I smell the settlement before we arrive. It smells like death. I pretend not to notice it. I have to keep up the appearance of innocence. I thought I’d blown it when I killed the cat so it would not kill Kail. For a second, it was as though he saw all the way to the core of me.
We crest a ridge and there it is, laid out before us. The remnants of Colony Alpha. There is nothing left of the place besides the burned-out bones of structures that once stood proud, sheltering human colonists from the elements of an alien world.
I turn to Kail, misery pooling in my stomach. I knew this was how it all had to end, but I hoped in some secret corner of my being that there was another possible outcome.
“What happened?”
The words feel mechanical even as they fall out of my mouth. It is so obvious what happened. This place has been ransacked and destroyed by a savage. Kail himself moved through this place with spear and flame, rendering the high technology of my people completely impotent. He has studied our ways, finding methods to undermine our technologies. He rendered the soldiers entirely helpless with stick, stone, and fire. I feel a certain amount of admiration, as well as a sick realization that absolutely everything I was briefed about Kail was true.
Kail
“What happened?” I grind the words out. “Soldiers from this colony wiped out my entire family. So I returned and I brought the same destruction to them that they had brought to me.”
“Oh no.”
What an understatement that is, even gasped in horror, her hands clasped to her mouth.
“You did this all yourself? Nobody else?”
“There was nobody left to do it besides me. I am the last of my people. My line will die with me. First your species brought plague, then they brought war. I swear, as long as I draw breath, I will eradicate every single one of your kind. You call us savages. I call you animals. I am not solitary of my choosing. I am solitary because your people wiped out every one of mine, and because I returned the favor.”
“Are you going to kill me?” The question comes quivering out of her mouth.
“I should. It would be right.”
Tarni takes a deep, shuddering breath and closes her eyes.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
I cannot keep the surprise and incredulity out of my voice.
“I have owed my life to you since you saved me from the mantid. I have been dependent on you all this time. For shelter, for security, for protection. If you decide to end me, I can ask only that you do it swiftly. Anything else is too much to ask.”
I snarl, not because I intend to hurt her, but because I know I could never hurt her. She doesn’t know or understand that. She throws herself on my mercy with the very real possibility of meeting her end, and she does it with grace and dignity.
She squeezes her eyes shut at the sound. She doesn’t want to see me kill her.
“Open your eyes,” I order. “I have no intention of hurting you.”
“You don’t?”
“My honor demands it, but my heart will not allow it. You said it yourself. You depend on me. To destroy a dependent is far less honorable than killing an enemy. You are helpless.”
A very strange look passes over her features. She straightens her shoulders and looks at me with a new expression. One less innocent. One more determined.
“If I wasn’t helpless? Would you kill me then?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if it turned out that I had been sent to track down an alien who had slaughtered Alpha Colony… and that I’d ingratiated myself to him, and allowed myself to be hurt and humiliated, so he might feel compelled to save me? So I could elicit a confession and bring him to justice?”
The emotional space between us opens up and the void we have been walking the border of swallows me whole.
I was so caught up in my own feelings of possible revenge, it never occurred to me that Tarni might have a motive just as ulterior as my own.
I feel in this moment the very same way I felt the second I felt the shadow of the cat pass over me. I have been in the presence of an apex predator, and I have been absolutely unaware. My life ticks away once more in a matter of seconds.
