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Hesitantly, Serenity accepted the offering. She held the cup to her nose and sniffed it. It was odorless, like plain water. That didn’t mean anything. Then again, why would the nith throw her in a cage just to poison her?
And if itwaspoisoned, wouldn’t that be a blessing?
She lifted the cup to her lips and drank. Just a sip at first. But as the cool, clear fluid trickled down her parched throat, she couldn’t hold back, and she downed the rest of the cup in three chugging gulps.
“There, that’s better, right?”
Patrick’s patronizing voice brought Serenity’s anger back in full force. With an angry snarl, she threw the empty metal cup at the pasty young man, and he ducked away, raising one arm to shield himself from the attack.
“You bastard!” Serenity roared, her voice now restored by the water. “How could you do this?”
Patrick cowered on the far side of the enclosure.
“Serenity, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to betray you. I really didn’t, but…”
“It’s not me I’m pissed about, you rat! You sold out the entire tribe. With the maps you gave them, the nith are going to kill every human and ukkur back in the canyon, and it’s all your fucking fault.”
Patrick dropped his head in shame.
“Why?” Serenity asked. “Why did you do it? And don’t try to tell me some lie about smugglers. You knew that you were leading us to the nith all along. That’s why you had the translator devices ready. And it was obvious that you had spoken to the leader before.
Patrick nodded and raised his eyes to meet hers.
“You’re right. I lied before about the smugglers. I did know that the nith were waiting for us.”
“Why?”
The young man sighed and sat down with his back resting against the force field.
“I’m like you, Serenity. I hated living back there in the canyon. I mean, look at me. Do you think I fit in with those other men? You have no idea what kind of bullying I had to put up with back there.”
Serenity was about to interrupt and remind him that was no excuse for being a traitor, but she held off so she could hear his story.
“I would leave the canyon every chance I got,” Patrick went on. “I learned the underground tunnels pretty well, and I figured out that it was pretty easy to sneak one of the skriks out of the stables at night. I would go for rides outside of the canyon. You know, just to get away. But then one night I rode too far, and I got caught by a nith patrol. I thought I was done for, but they offered to let me live if I helped them.”
“So you sold out everyone else to save your own skin.”
“What else could I do?”
Serenity felt like telling him he could have faced his death like a man instead of betraying everyone else.
Then a sudden realization came to her.
“But you came back.” Her voice was low and accusing. “The nith let you go, let you return to the canyon, but you came back to them.”
Serenity was running the mental calculations in her mind. The young man could have simply led the nith back to the canyon where they could have made a frontal assault. But the aliens had not wanted to do that apparently. They must have realized the ukkur would give them too much of a fight, or else the ukkur could have retreated into the underground tunnels with the humans, tunnels that the ukkur knew far better than the nith. That’s why the nith had chosen to send Patrick back with that device, which he presumably used to map the nearby tunnel systems, giving the nith everything they needed to mount a sneak attack. With their escape routes cut off, the ukkur and humans would be forced out into the prairies where they would be at a severe disadvantage to the nith guns.
But there was just one part of the whole scheme that she didn’t understand. Why the hell had Patrick actually returned after being let go?
“Why?” Serenity pressed him. “Why did you come back? It doesn’t make any sense.”
She could see the young man’s lip quivering like he was going to cry.
“They…they promised to take me back to Earth. I lied about the smugglers, but the other part was true. The nith promised they would take me back to Earth, and they said they would let me take one person with me.”
After years working as a cop, Serenity had developed a talent for knowing when someone was bullshitting her. She picked up on the cues. The dilation of the pupils. The momentary reluctance to hold her gaze. The subtle downshift in intonation.
“You’re lying,” she growled.
