By the time we reached the encampment, my companions glistened with sweat. A thin trickle ran down my back, excess from where my essie covered my back and filled my hair with organic coolant. With the wind blowing from behind, they had no reason to cover my face, so I alone had nothing dripping into my eyes.

The first of the natives saw me just as I saw her. She looked up at me, and I stared in amazement at how human she appeared. She stood only half a head taller than my Junior bodyguards, with dull brown hair falling in lank, sweaty locks to tangle with the fur covering her body. The strongest part of the resemblance lay in her face; if I cleaned her up and put her in uniform she might have passed for a particularly ugly Middie.

She broke the tableau first, calling out something in the native’s language. My essie helpfully recorded it phonetically and projected it across the bottom of my vision. “Pawp! Stanzhers jawns de jawns hayah!”

She even sounded human. I listened with my mind, trying to understand her, even as my essie started running pattern recognition and stress analysis on the girl and her words. Another voice, this one deeper and rough, called out from the direction of the encampment. I ignored the text, lost in the effort to connect to an alien mind. I connected to her emotions first; a tingle of fear, a rush of excitement, and a pang of envy, all so close to human I froze, trying to focus on the differences rather than the similarities.

A huge figure lumbered from the direction of the encampment. He glanced at the girl still gawping at us, then swiveled his tremendously ugly, scarred face toward me. “Hu dis jawns, gel?”

I split my attention between the pair. The new arrival stared down at each of my companions in turn. He had at least a few inches on me, not to mention a build nearly as stocky as my First. Spiky irritation radiated from him, rapidly replaced by the first alien emotion I’d felt since trying to connect; something akin to hunger, but markedly different. I let a smile of relief bend my lips into a curve; for a moment I’d worried we’d somehow stumbled onto a lost colony of humans in our mad race to escape from the ‘Sects.

Translation protocol completed. Realtime translation online.

I blinked at my essie’s self-satisfied purr, and muttered my reply before I thought about what the pair in front of me might think. “There’s no way you could work up a translation protocol that fast with that little data.”

“What are you talkin’ about, girl?” The ogre’s gravelly grunts made sense now, but I still didn’t understand how my essie had figured out a translation protocol so quickly.

They’re speaking a drifted, corrupted form of English. Obviously.

I blinked at that. If the translation worked, I had no idea what it meant. If it didn’t, my essie had failed me in the most spectacular way at the worst possible time. “Excuse me, but I need to speak with your leader as soon as possible.”

His ugly brow furrowed. Movement behind him drew my eye; three other females peered out from behind trees, each one uglier and fatter than the next. “Old Jahm ain’t got no leader, girl. Old Jahm a king in his own house. I got me four wifes. None of ‘em give me strong babies though.”

Old Jahm squinted down at my bodyguards, then to Card where she stood to my left and behind me. “Now I got me two more, and you clean enough you give me babies that live. You come along, and Old Jahm see nothin’ out here eat you.”

I just stared, shocked into immobility by the sheer audacity of what the thing in front of me had just spouted. Before I could formulate anything approaching a reply, he moved toward me. His stench preceded him by a good ten feet, distracting me from his words for a crucial half-second. “I gonna kill you boys, can’t have they growin’ big enough to steal my wifes.” He bared jagged, asymmetrical teeth in what might charitably be called a smile. “I make it quick, and I let you bury them proper, though.”

He reached for Vince. My bodyguard glanced at me for confirmation, but I still stood stunned by the native’s gall. A moment before the big thug laid hands on him, Vince slid into action. He slipped around Jahm’s grasping hand, his own hands each gripping one thick finger and twisting, throwing his entire body behind the move. An audible crack filled the woods. Roaring in pain, Jahm swung his arm in a broad backhand. Vince lost his grip at the end of the swing, writhing in midair to bounce off the trunk of the tree Jahm had thrown him toward.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The patriarch took one lumbering step forward before the heel of Tony’s hand hammered into his ear. He staggered, shaking his head violently from side to side, drops of blood splattering across the ground.

“Little coward bastard! Hold still!” Jahm whirled to face Tony, but my guard danced backward as fast as he’d lunged.

Strike after strike, I watched as two Imperial Marine Close Combat Specialists with a combined total of over three hundred years’ experience broke Jahm piece by piece. Neither of them weighed as much as one of his legs, but they danced in and out of his reach, neither attacking unless the other had his attention.

Entranced by the brutal ballet, I didn’t notice the evil glint in Jahm’s eye or the cold calculation in a corner of his brain until he struck. As Del Rio jumped away, he lurched as if to follow, but threw himself backwards midway through the motion. Tang almost evaded the body block, but Jahm’s outstretched arm clotheslined him before he could escape. The sight of blood running from Tang’s split lip broke my paralysis before Jahm could do more than get a loose grip on Tang’s neck.

Iterative combat protocol initiated.

The world slowed and combat options filled the back of my brain. I rushed through syrupy air to grab Jahm by his wrist and yank him into the air. He pulled Tang with us until I bore down, Jahm’s heavy bones grinding together while his fingers twitched open. Something thumped lightly on my belly, but I paid it no attention until Tang landed, rolled, and bounced back to his feet. I turned back to Jahm, who hit me again in my gut. I pulled him close, almost gagging at the stench.

“Stop this now, or I will hurt you.”

He spat, the huge gobbet of blood and mucus hanging in the air sizzling where it hit my shield. “Old Jahm not afraid of pain, demon girl!”

He swung again, and I grabbed his other hand, squeezing it until both his hands twitched open. I twisted his arms, bringing him down to his knees as I settled to the ground. Turning my face from where he knelt I barked an order at Card. “Get me a blood sample from one of the others. Now.”

She moved toward the one we’d seen first, but the girl scampered away. Before she could get more than three or four steps, I reached out with my mind. Like I’d done with Guy and the Hullborer, I shoved her down. When she stumbled and fell, I let up; I wanted her docile, not dead.

Card reached the girl and pressed a medical scanner against her forearm. Jahm slammed his forehead against my sternum, his grunt of pain twisting into a low keening when I used his reflected momentum to pull his shoulders out of their sockets.

I couldn’t think about Card or Jahm; one thought kept echoing through my brain. Like I’d done with Guy and the Hullborer.

I’d never done that to a hullborer. That had been Doctor Andrews. Not me.

"Sir, are you okay?"

I looked down to see Jahm gnawing at my arm, one tooth already broken, another cracking as I watched. Tang looked up at me and smiled hopefully, wiping the blood from his already-healing mouth.

"Sir? You said something?"

"Oh. Nothing." It wasn't nothing, but I had no time to waste on an identity crisis right now. I had what might well be a crisis of global magnitude shaping up in front of me.

"Sorry, sir. I thought I heard you saying something about excellence. Must have misheard. What would you like us to do with them?" He waved one hand at the girls sheltering behind the nearby brush. When he gestured, they shrunk away, a few scampering further into the woods.

"Card. How's that sample coming along?"

"This... this can't be right, sir."

I waved my hand impatiently, kicking Jahm away from me with one foot. I had no time to be gentle; he landed a good twenty feet away, rolling to a stop against a tree. When Card opened up the remote connection on the med scanner, I scoured the available results.

Twice.

During my third review, my essie interrupted me.

Sample confirmed, human blood, unmodified, type o negative.

"Card. Tang. Del Rio. Back to the shuttle as fast as possible."

"But sir..."

"That's an order."

The girl, by her hormone levels still not out of puberty, crawled over to me without ever raising her eyes above the level of my foot. "Angel. Angel, please."

The others were already running. I looked down at the girl, wondering if I dared try to carry her with me, just to give someone in this hell a chance at a normal life. "What do you want?"

"Please, old Jahm didn't mean nothin' bad. Please. Don't leave him hurt? Heal him?"

I stared down at where she lay prostrate at my feet, hardly able to believe my ears. I pinged a question to my essie, their reply came back immediately.

We're not set up for boarding and capture. We could reconfigure, if you're willing to wait half an hour and facilitate fluid transfer?

I shuddered at that last thought. "No."

The girl at my feet began wailing. I couldn't stand it any longer. I sent a smothering wave of reassurance, quieting her while I walked over to where Jahm lay panting. Before he could react, I grabbed one arm, set a foot on his torso, and twisted his limb back into its proper position. He shrieked while I rolled him over and repeated the process with his other arm. I looked up to see the oldest of the 'wifes' peering out from behind a tree, her eyes wide.

"Can you make a splint?"

She jerked her head in a spastic nod.

"Splint his fingers when I'm done." With that, I grabbed each of his broken fingers in turn and pulled them straight, pushing his motor control down the whole time to keep him from ruining my work. Before I let go, I shoved him into a deep sleep.

I didn't have time or training to do anything about Jahm's murderous intent. Shoving him into a corner of my mind with his wives and my own identity issues, I turned and raced for my shuttle.