When he thought at all—the heat had a way of stealing in and smothering his brain—he thought of home. Not Earth. Earth was hell. Not even the living quarters the Fleet provided him when he was back on Jota. Home for Tagen was a ship. His own room—he was not a fourth-rank officer for nothing—near the stern, away from the relentless pulse and grinding of the nacelles. A ship, any ship, where it was dark and always cool, and he was surrounded by officers who thought and behaved just like him. Males with whom he could share some camaraderie. Females who would notice his rank and reputation, and make their overtures when the urge was on them to mate. A ship well-heeled with provisions, meat for the taking, iced ul by the bottle. A ship where there was no east.

After three days, the mountains fell again into forest, and Tagen descended its untrustworthy slopes (sometimes on foot, sometimes on his ass, and once, a good fifty meters on his damn face). The forest rose up and swallowed him again, this one thinner and even drier than before. The soil here was red, gritty and volcanic, and stained his talons the color of old blood. The trees were tall and branchless until they reached the sky; there, they grew arms bristling with needles, the same needles that carpeted the ground in slippery brown drifts. There were no more vines and thorns, but there were spiky bushes just shoulder-height, all to ready to slap and scratch at travelers.

The streams died out, but there was food, in the form of small hopping creatures in some abundance. They were tricky game. Unless he managed a head shot, the plasma bolt left nothing but a charred leg or two. Tagen considered himself a good shot to begin with, but three days of having his dinner depend on his aim made him a much better one in a very short span of time. The meat cooked up tough and tasteless, sustaining his physical needs while eroding his spirit.

He hated Earth. Never since reaching his majority had Tagen believed he hated anything or anyone. Hate was, in the words of that dour old soldier who had adopted him, nothing but the decay of discipline. It was pointless at the best of times, reckless at the worst. It was contrary to every fiber of his being. But no matter how much he may wish to be a better man, Tagen could not deny that he hated Earth.

How easy it would be to turn around right now, follow his locater back to his ship, and just go home. He could make out his report from the comfort of space. He could honestly say his investigations had turned up no sign of E’Var or the prison transport vessel. The prisoner had met his end in a mid-Gate termination and let that be an end to bad business.

That would work…right up until E’Var emerged from the abyss and this time, with his own Gate to Earth. And Tagen, lucky Tagen, would get to shoulder the sole responsibility for allowing him to slip through the fingers of the Fleet.

No. Best to stay. Thirty days was the Fleet standard for a fruitless investigation, and off records, sixty days was encouraged. Tagen didn’t have the supplies (nor Earth the resources, apparently) for such a lengthy search, but in five more days, if he had still found no water, no real food, and no trace of his prisoner, he’d return to his ship and wait in orbit around this miserable planet. He hated to do it that way, giving E’Var free reign to harvest humans, but at least he could not fail to see a ship as it left Earth. It would be an ugly confrontation, but prison transports had only minimal weapons. Even though he was confidant the cruiser he’d been given for this mission would prevail in a firefight, it remained a tactic of last resort.

Tagen was lost in these thoughts, unaware of how circular and locked they had become. It was no longer a debate but only a distraction from his body’s complaints. It was a dangerous frame of mind in any circumstances. Here, alone on Earth, it was a killing trap.

He walked right into the human’s camp without seeing it or them. Heat exhaustion and dehydration, so deep he no longer felt them, had ravaged his reflexes. The tree beside him had to explode before the world came back into focus.

Tagen looked around in dull surprise as bark blew out from the tree. He had heard the thunderous sound of it, but he could not immediately force his mind to make the connection.

Someone was shouting.

Tagen turned toward the noise and saw two humans, one larger than the other by a full head. Both were holding what looked to Tagen’s heat-thick mind a lot like ion rifles, only uglier.

For a moment, no one moved.

The larger human said something, too loudly and hurriedly for Tagen to decipher. In the same instant, it hefted the weapon it held, not aiming it at him, but wanting Tagen to see it all the same.

Tagen looked back at the camp. He saw a temporary shelter, another enigmatic groundcar, a portable table and chairs, and several containers crafted from brightly-colored polymers. One of these was open. Tagen could see water and what looked like ice. Actual ice.

Tagen’s mouth had no moisture. He tried to speak, produced only a dull croak and a rattling cough, and tried again. “Hola.”

The large human shouted again, shaking its head in short, sharp movements. The meaning was clear: Get out. Go away.

Tagen looked at the water again. There had to be a compromise here. With difficulty, he made his brain turn to N’Glish. “I mean you no harm,” he said.

He had killed the last human he’d said that to.

“I need water,” he went on, and pointed at the chest for good measure.

Both humans locked their eyes on his extended claw and went instantly berserk. The smaller one screamed and backpedaled. The larger raised its weapon and pointed it at Tagen’s heart.

Tagen’s brain was still stuffed with sand. His body acted without him. He pulled his plasma gun and fired. The bolt sheared through the barrel of the weapon; it took off the human’s hands and then its head. The body dropped forward and gravity, in an act of cosmic cruelty, caused it to somersault with dead man’s grace and land belly-up.

The shorter human staggered back, its face opening up in an expression of grief too awful to be ungenuine. It shrieked, just once, a despairing cry that did not seem to be, to Tagen’s ear, entirely wordless. The sound of it cut through Tagen’s trance-like exhaustion, but it only gave his killing hand a target.

Breath went out of the tail of the human’s scream. It started to look down, started to raise one hand to the gaping hole greedily opening in its chest. It crumpled. It fell.

A roar of pure horror ripped its way rustily from Tagen’s throat and he threw the gun his hand gripped into a tree hard enough to knock bark from it. He ran forward, but it was already over. It had been over from the first instant. The humans were dead.

Tagen bent over the body of the short human, rubbing handfuls of earth into the sizzling edges of char, trying unthinkingly and futilely to stop the progression of superheated plasma, to undo what he had done now for the third time. The water in the human’s camp was forgotten. The rifle-like weapon the humans had aimed at him were forgotten. In that awful moment, even E’Var and his mission were forgotten. He knew only what he had done.

He had murdered them.

*

They rested at the house for hours. They ate leftover chicken, rich and sweet with barbeque sauce, cold from the fridge. Raven drank almost a full gallon of milk and a pitcher of lemonade by herself. Kane just kept bringing her glasses and stood over her brooding while she forced it down her throat. She felt bloated and sick and awful.

Afterwards, he’d taken her to the sagging, smoke-pungent couch in the living room and sat with her under his arm in the dark. He was asleep in minutes. She sat awake and staring blindly. Every little creak and rustle the old house made seemed to her to be the slide of dead feet rising and coming for her.