Clean Sweep

Chapter Fifteen

The inside of the shop was neat, its wares arranged under glass, along the counter, and on the walls with military precision. Knives in wooden display stands, curved crescent weapons, metal canisters of unknown purpose, leather harnesses and belts, boots, jewelry, boxes filled with dark orange powder, vials with turquoise liquid... Stepping into this place was like walking into another world.

"Gorvar!" the older werewolf growled.

An enormous blue-green animal padded through the other door. The creature's head, even with massive ears and a thick dark mane, came up to my chest. The lines of its head and the long body said wolf, but the difference between an Earth wolf and this creature was like the difference between a puppy and the leader of a pack. On our world, it would be the king of all wolves.

"Go watch the cart," the werewolf said.

The wolf padded out the door.

The older werewolf took a glass cup filled with small round spheres, each about the size of a walnut, from the counter, plucked one out, and held it between his index finger and thumb. "Know what these are?" he said to Sean.

"No."

"Cluster bombs."

The werewolf gently placed the sphere back in the glass, looked at the cup, and hurled the contents at Sean.

Time stopped.

My chest began to rise as my lungs sucked in air in panic.

The shiny glass spheres flew through the air.

Sean moved, a blur slicing through the room like a knife.

Some invisible omnipotent being pressed Play on the remote. I exhaled and blinked. Sean's left hand held the spheres. His right pressed a knife to the older werewolf's throat.

The older man raised his hand slowly and checked his wrist. Blue symbols glowed under his skin.

"Point six seconds. You are the real thing." He grinned, baring white teeth. "The real thing."

"I think you might be crazy," Sean said.

"You have no idea how amazing it is that you're alive. Sorry about the scare. They're not armed. No detonators. I just had to know." The werewolf took a sphere from Sean's hand and tossed it on the ground. It rolled harmlessly on the floorboards. "I sell them as souvenirs. Own a piece of tech from the dead planet. The tools of our own destruction available for twenty credits each to the discerning shopper."

He smiled and took a slow step back. Sean let him go and dropped the knife back onto the counter. I hadn't even seen him pick it up.

The older werewolf crossed the shop, slid open a panel in the wall, and took out a glass pitcher filled with dark purple liquid.

"Go ahead, look around. This is as close as you'll come to Auul. Like it or not, this was the planet that breathed life into your parents. Your heritage."

Sean slid the spheres back into the cup and turned, scanning the surroundings. He looked like a man who'd just found out his much-admired ancestor was a serial killer and was now standing in his tomb, unsure how he felt about it.

"Name is Wilmos Gerwar, 7-7-12," the older werewolf said, adding three ornate glasses to the pitcher. "Seventh Pack, Seventh Wolf, Twelfth Fang. Gerwar stands for Medic."

"No last name?" I asked.

"No. Used to be more complicated than that. Used to be you had a tribe and would list your ancestors for four generations after your name. But when the war started, it was decided that short was best. Besides, it didn't matter much who you were anymore. People died so fast it only mattered what you did. I was the thirty-second Gerwar in my Fang. It was a long war."

Wilmos took the glasses and the pitcher to a small table and invited me to sit. I slid onto the padded bench. Beast curled by my feet. Wilmos filled the glasses and pushed one toward Sean.

"No thanks," Sean said.

Wilmos took a swallow from his glass. "This is Auul tea. I know a former Boom-Boom—that would be heavy-artillery gunner—who owns land in Kentucky. He's got five acres of this stuff. Exports it to a half dozen dealers, what few of us are left in the Galaxy. I wouldn't poison you. And I would never poison an innkeeper." He held the glass out to me. "We all need a refuge once in a while."

I took a sip. The tea tasted tart and refreshing and strangely alien. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but there was a hint of something not quite Earth-like about the flavor.

Sean took the third chair and tasted the tea. I couldn't tell by his face if he liked it or hated it. His gaze kept going to a spot in the corner. There, under the blue glow of a small force field, lay a suit of armor. Dark gray, almost black, it looked like a chainmail made of small, sharp scales, if chainmail could be thin like silk. On the shoulders, the scales flared into the plates. The faint image of a maned wolf marked the chest, somehow formed by the lines of the interlocking scales. It looked like a suit of armor, but it couldn't possibly be one—it was too thin.

"I'm fourth generation," Wilmos said. "My parents were werewolves and their parents and theirs were also. When I was young, I never thought I'd have to serve. We had beaten Mraar. I was looking toward a peaceful future. I was a nanosurgeon. Then the Raoo of Mraar reconstructed the ossai and made the Sun Horde. Damn cats. Our secret weapon was no longer secret and we knew the end was coming. It would be long and bloody, but it was inevitable. Most people turned to work on the gates. I was working on those who would keep the gates open."

He drained his glass and refilled it. "There were two dozen of us, geneticists, surgeons, medics. We bred the alphas from scratch. Anybody ever call you probira?"

"No," Sean said. His gaze darkened. "Maybe. Once."

"Before the war, Mraar's main export was cybernetics. You know what Auul's was? Poets." Wilmos laughed. "We were big on arts and humanities. It was all about family and proper education. Our civilization had produced thousands of books on how to properly rear your offspring so they would become 'beautiful souls.' If a child hadn't composed a heroic saga by age ten, the parents would take him to a specialist to have his head examined. Even in war, we'd win a victory and then spend twice as much energy writing songs about it. Moon-gazing and soul-searching was highly encouraged. When I was a little younger than you, I spent a year alone in the wild. Only took a small backpack with me. I felt like I was too soft and wanted to see if I could be hard. Almost like I needed to punish myself, you understand?

Sean nodded. I guess maybe he did. I'd never had an urge to live in the wilderness by myself, so he was on his own there.

"Your parents were conceived and brought to term in an artificial environment. What's the saying on Earth?" He glanced at me.

"Test-tube babies."

"Yes. That. We'd tried implanting embryos into volunteers, but the new modifications were simply too different. We had reengineered the ossai, and this new, improved alpha ossai conflicted with the ossai already inside the surrogate mothers. When we were lucky, the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. When we weren't, it killed the mother." He paused. "There were those who had serious doubts about the wisdom of growing babies outside the womb. They questioned their... humanity."

Sean's face turned hard. "What does probira mean?"

"Soulless," Wilmos said.

Ouch.

Sean nodded. "I thought as much."

So that's why the other werewolves shunned them. Made sense.

"They called us the monster makers. Parents of subhumans. There was a lot of discussion about whether it would be better to perish than to chance releasing something soulless into the universe. But in the end everyone agreed we needed alphas or none of us would make it. For all our grandstanding, we are a selfish lot. Nobody expected the alphas to survive. Or breed. I always had hope."

"Why?" Sean asked.

Wilmos leaned on the table. "I was with your parents' generation until they were five. I watched them smile for the first time. I helped them take their first steps. They were as real and alive as any normal children. A soul, if such a thing exists at all, doesn't filter into you at birth through your mother's umbilical cord. Souls come from the people who shape you as you grow. The alphas were children. My children. And I took care of them the best I could. All of us on the team did and all the while we knew we would be sending them to the slaughter. They would be the last line of defense. Bullet meat."

Wilmos shrugged and smiled. It looked forced. "As I said, we tend to brood. It was a long time ago. We all made sacrifices. You never told me who your parents were."

"You don't need to know that," Sean said.

"Good," Wilmos said. "No need to share secrets if you don't have to. That's a winning strategy. At least tell me what you do. What they do? Were they able to adjust? How did your childhood go?"

"Both of my parents joined the Earth's military," Sean said. "They did well and retired. My father is a lawyer. My mother helps him. They're almost never apart. They like books and violent computer games. They go fishing but don't catch anything. They just sit together with their fishing rods and talk. I didn't understand what they got out of it until much later, after I enlisted and realized it was their off mode. It used to drive me nuts when I was a kid. I thought they were boring. I had a normal childhood, or as normal as you can get being an Army brat and a werewolf. There were a few incidents because of turning, but nothing major. Lots of sports, lots of moving. My parents live simply, but I was a spoiled kid. I had all the cool toys and all the right clothes. I could've gone to college, but instead I enlisted. I didn't feel like I belonged where I was and I wanted to be on my own. Also, I was angry at my parents. Why, I don't even know. For providing me with a comfortable life, I suppose. I was going stir-crazy and felt entitled to some tragedy to be bummed out about, but I didn't have any."

"I know the feeling," Wimos said. He leaned forward, focused on Sean. "How long were you in? Was it hard? Why did you get out? Tell me."

"I did eight years, several small conflicts, and two wars. The Army was easy. Be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there and do as you're told. I was the fastest and the strongest. I killed people, sometimes at close range. I didn't love it, but I didn't lose much sleep over it either. It was a job and I was very good at it. I liked being in. It took the edge off and I felt normal. I got promoted quickly, E-5 in three years, E-6 in five. The Army provides you with a place to sleep, feeds you, outfits you. If you don't have a family and don't care about the latest car with the shiniest rims, there's not much opportunity to spend the money. I put away half my paycheck since day one and once a year I would go to places the Army didn't send me. I've been on six continents out of seven, and the seventh is a frozen wasteland. I kept looking for the place that felt right and none of them ever did. Two years into my E-6, they started pushing me to E-7, Sergeant First Class. It's almost always an admin job. E-6 was as high as I could go and still stay with the soldiers. I knew if they chained me to a desk, I'd go off the cliff."

Sean leaned back and took another swallow of tea. "I fought them on it as long as I could, and when I couldn't anymore, I finished out my time and got out. When I first got to my permanent-duty station, a buddy and I went in together on a restaurant. Nothing fancy, just a good solid lunch place that served Korean food. It had a good location and it did well. When I got out, it had two other locations and was turning into a small chain. My buddy bought me out. With what I put away and the buyout, I had about five years or so to figure out what I wanted to do. Thought about going private, but I'd worked with contractors before and I didn't like it. Something rubs me the wrong way about the soldier-for-hire gig. I'd been through Texas a few times, and I enjoyed it. So I picked a small town, bought a decent house, and tried being a civilian to see how long I would last. And then some alien piece of shit came into my territory and started killing dogs and people, so here we are."

That was the longest I've ever heard him speak. It must've been rough to keep looking and looking and never finding that right spot, that place that said home.

"Even a generation later, with all the opportunities in the world, still a soldier. The genetic programming held in the next generation." Wilmos studied him. "They didn't tell you about Auul?"

Sean shook his head.

Wilmos sighed. "I can't say I blame them."

He turned to me.

"Are those Anansi pearls in your cart?"

"Yes."

"What are you going up against?"

"A dahaka," I said. Why not? Maybe he knew something about it.

"A nasty breed. Need all the ammunition you can get."

He glanced at Sean. Sean was looking at the corner again, at the scale armor.

"Why don't you take a closer look?" Wilmos said.

Sean rose and walked over to the armor. "What is it?"

"Auroon Twelve. Stealth armor, made specifically for alphas."

"It looks..." I searched for the right word.

"Flimsy?" Wilmos nodded. "It's nano armor. Meant to fit under your skin. Once you put it on, it never comes off. Every alpha wore some version of it. They used to say you don't wear the armor, the armor wears you. It's designed to change with your body, any form, any shape. Ever seen your mother or your father show tattoos on their necks when they're upset?"

Sean nodded. "Sure."

"Then you know when the tattoos show, you're in trouble. It's an instinctual response. When you're angry or threatened, the armor expands to cover vulnerable areas. It's calling you, isn't it?"

"Yes," Sean said.

"Is it for sale?" I asked.

"No. But it can be had." Wilmos smiled at Sean. "If you want it, it's yours. I have no use for it. But sometime in the future I might call on you for a favor, alpha. That time may come never or tomorrow."

Sean thought about it.

"Take it," Wilmos said. "It's a good trade."

"No. It's a bad idea." I knew he would never take it. Not in a million years He didn't trust Wilmos and it was a sucker's deal...

Sean held out his hand. "You've got a deal."

Wilmos shook it. "Good. Take your shirt off. We'll get it fitted."

"Sean...," I said.

He looked at me. "I don't know why, but I have to have it. I can't stop myself."

"It's a built-in compulsion," Wilson said. "Don't worry. Once it's on, the feeling will pass."

"If it's a compulsion, it might not be a good idea," I told him.

"I know." Sean's eyes were open wide, his pupils so large that his irises looked completely black.

"It will be useful to you. I promise," Wilmos said. "You'll feel better."

He turned off the force field. Sean stepped forward, pulled off his shirt, and touched the shiny scales. The metal melted, wrapping around his fingers. Thin streaks of gray slid around his arm like metal snakes, over his shoulders, over his chest... The metal expanded, coating him, and broke apart into a thousand tiny metal dots. For a second nothing happened, then the dots moved as one, piercing Sean's skin.

He screamed, a guttural, brutal shout that turned into a roar.

His back arched, his shoulders gaining bulk. His flesh whipped around him in a furry whirlwind and a huge werewolf stood in Sean's place. I had forgotten how big he was.

Wilmos blinked. "That's one hell of a wetwork shape."

Werewolf-Sean growled, displaying huge teeth.

"Feel the armor move through you," Wilmos said. "Let it bond. It will make you stronger. You should feel some feedback right away, but the complete merger will take time. Give it twenty-four hours and it will be in your bones."

Sean turned. Armored plates formed under his skin on his chest, guarding his pectorals and the flat ridges of his stomach. The armor melted and the bulk of it shifted to his shoulders, forming pauldrons. His neck thickened. He snarled. The fur vanished, his body slimmed down in a blink, and human Sean was back. Swirls of dark blue-gray pigment crisscrossed his chest and stomach like tiger stripes. He looked down at himself. The pigment moved.

"That's it," Wilmos said. "Shape it."

The pigment melted and turned into a tribal design that covered most of Sean's torso. It wrapped around his ribs, flowed onto his back, and settled.

Sean exhaled.

"And now you're ready for battle. Good luck, soldier."