Tagen took the loaded dermisprayer the scientist offered him and turned it over in his hands. “What is it?”

“A mild sedative we’ve developed while working with the recovered slaves. It makes them very compliant for about half a day. It won’t hurt them,” he added when Tagen frowned. “But it will make them sick if they try to move around too much too soon. You have enough for five doses there, and that’s more than you should ever need. Do you have any questions?”

“Yes.” Tagen placed the dermisprayer into the pack, then shut and sealed it. He stood up. “Where is my ship?”

*

The sun had not yet reached its zenith before Kane realized he was going into Heat.

The thought stopped him dead in his tracks, and he stared in mute disbelief up at Earth’s sky, as though he could accuse the yellow star to its face. Heat. Full-blown Heat. He could feel the itching starting up already. Heat.

“Fuck,” Kane growled, not entirely unaware of the hideous irony in that particular epithet. He yanked the chemist’s pack from his shoulder and took a swift inventory of its contents. Hormone extracts, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals for making Vahst. Anti-toxins, anti-virals, antibiotics, dermal restoratives and nanozymes in case of disease or injury. One, and only one, protein boost. Three doses of Ti, a stimulant powerful enough to keep Kane awake and moving for forty of Earth’s hours, and which he had absolutely no intention of taking. No suppressants. Nothing that could even be made into a suppressant.

Kane ground the heel of one hand against his forehead, snarling at empty space. No suppressants. Son of a So-Quaal. No, strike that. No true son of a So-Quaal would ever go anywhere without full laboratory facilities.

In that instant, Kane was genuinely sorry he’d simply shot Bota Isk out the airlock. He wanted the tactile pleasure of ripping the fucker’s flesh off.

‘Take your time,’ Urak remarked in the back of Kane’s brain. ‘Sit around. Feel sorry for yourself. I’m sure the humans will take pity on your predicament and come here to harvest themselves.’

“They’d better,” Kane grunted.

‘You give up too easy, boy. You just ask yourself what’s harder, your will or your cock?’

Kane breathed low laughter and shook his head, still covering his eyes. “Easy for you to say, you’re dead.”

No answer.

Kane gave his pack a final irritated glare and then closed it up and shouldered it once more. Maybe he’d get lucky. It would be a few hours before Heat became unbearable, and in that time, it might grow cooler. He could handle Heat without suppressants for one day. Hell, he was an E’Var. He could handle it for two.

‘Don’t play tough with me, boy.’ And in the only prophetic streak that Kane would ever have, that part of him that spoke in Urak’s voice added, ‘You’re only tough if you can take it for twenty.’

Ha. Twenty days of Heat. Kane grinned at the voice, striding off through the woods with great confidence.

As if there could be such a thing.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Two

Jota. That was what Kane thought of as he walked. Jota. Not Earth, not the planet he walked on, but Jota, his homeworld. In the blistering heat of this endless day, the image of that world seemed to shimmer in his mind’s eye-brown and white whirled together, with pools of green ocean breaking its surface. Cool Jota.

Ridiculous, really. Kane had been to Earth more often than he’d been to Jota. It was laughable to think of it as his ‘home’, but now he did. In particular, he thought that Jota’s Heat-season lasted, on average, nine days. In all of recorded history, the worst had been only twelve.

It must be the same here. It must be. He had only to endure for…

How many more days? He’d lost count already. He thought he’d been here three days, but maybe it was only two. It was hard to remember how many nights had passed, and the days just kind of melted together.

The long.

Hot.

Days.

He thought he might be losing his mind.

‘You haven’t lost anything yet but your sense of humor,’ Uraktus growled good-naturedly from the fathoms of Kane’s Heat-dulled brain. ‘Focus up, boy! I raised you better than this!’

Without expression, Kane raised his hand and slapped his own face hard enough to briefly grey his vision. Urak’s voice went silent. He was pricked almost at once with remorse. Urak’s voice…Kane’s memory was the only place he would ever hear it again. He shouldn’t be so quick to shut it up.

Focus, the voice had said, and so Kane made an effort. He pulled his gaze into the here and now and really looked at his surroundings for the first time since the day had grown hot.

At first, he saw only Earth. Earth’s trees, Earth’s soil, Earth’s sky (with its stinking open furnace of a sun). Just…Earth.

But then, with an ugly jolt, Kane realized that the only reason he could see Earth’s soil beneath his feet instead of the needley carpet of tree debris that covered the rest of the ground was because he was walking on a path. Had been, in fact, for some time. He looked again, with renewed clarity, and saw that between the brown trunks and green branches of Earth’s forest, he could see colors that had no business out in the wild. Bright red, bright blue, and crisp polar white—colors of human making.

Kane’s nostrils flared as he pulled in a lungful of air and tasted the wood-smoke that he had been stupidly breathing all this time.

Patience.

He didn’t need some ghost-mutter to tell him that, but Kane couldn’t quite make himself obey. Patience would be best, it would be, but Kane was parched, hungry, and in agony of Heat. The human encampment didn’t look too big, which meant the humans in it would be few and easily dealt with, and there would be food and water and, all the gods of this great universe will it, a female.

Humans were among the universe’s most useful commodity. They were strong and resilient enough to make good laborers, yet small and weak enough to be easily controlled. They caught every damned disease that blew their way, but their bodies could be repaired practically by a whisper and a whim. They were short-lived, but they bred like a virus and the children learned faster than the adults. They got cold too fast, hot too fast, hungry every few hours, but their amazing little bodies could adapt to any imaginable climate or condition. You could work them, train them, sell them, cultivate poisons or medicines from their bodies, and, as old Uraktus had been fond of adding, you could eat them and fuck them, if you were desperate.

Kane was desperate. Not enough to eat one, not yet, but he was easily desperate enough to fuck one. He couldn’t go on like this, anyway. He didn’t know if it was possible to die of Heat, but he was sure that if you could, he was close.

Kane made a token effort at stealth as he ran to the human encampment, but as soon as he stood beside the smoldering fire pit, even that little restraint fell away. He recognized most of these things—the groundcar, the shelter, a table, some chairs—and once his eyes fell on the blue crate-like object beside the table, he fell on it with a roar of relief. He ripped the lightweight lid away and plunged both hands into water thick with ice.

He hadn’t realized just how dehydrated he’d become until that first palmful of water poured frozen into his mouth. Kane could actually feel his skin soaking up the moisture as he drank, could feel strength returning to his body and clarity to his brain. He drank until his gut cramped and his fingers had turned red with cold. Then he poured a few handfuls of ice over his chest and shoulders and rubbed it in with near-delirium.