Tenacious

19

Kris watched on the screens in her day quarters as Jacques led the youngest man away from the group. Ostensibly, he was going to show the fellow how to set traps to capture a bunch of the foxlike things for a feast.

The fellow went eagerly.

Until he spotted Jack and his Marines.

Jacques had led the alien quite a bit away from the others, downstream and out of the woods along the edge of a grassy meadow. They’d set three string traps and were working on the fourth when the Marines stepped out of the woods ahead of them.

The young fellow took one look at the humans in military gear and bolted.

Jacques got a handful of his ratty uniform, but that was all he got. The man pulled away, leaving Jacques with nothing but fabric.

The naked anthropologist took off after his erstwhile friend with the Marines hot on his heels, but it was a short chase.

The young fellow raced straight for the stream—and threw himself headlong from the bank into a rocky stretch of water.

Jacques got to the bank and came to a halt. Jack wasn’t much behind him. Kris got the feed off Jack’s helmet camera.

“Oh my God,” Amanda prayed beside Kris.

All Kris could do was grit her teeth in frustration.

There, the bank was a good two meters high. The alien had thrown himself headfirst from it. Right at the rocks below.

Now he lay in the stream, his head smashed in, his blood and brains being laved by the water and carried downstream.

“I guess that didn’t go as well as we’d expected,” Jack said.

“Now what?” Jacques asked.

Kris let out a long sigh. She didn’t like what she was going to say next. She hated kidnappers. With Father and Mother, without a moment’s qualm, she’d stood there and watched as Eddy’s kidnappers swung at the end of their ropes. Hell, she’d killed kidnappers without so much as a second glance every time one of them made the mistake of crossing her path.

Kris gritted her teeth and said the words that made her a kidnapper.

“Jacques, go back to the group. Separate one of the mothers with a babe at her breast from them. Jack, set a trap. Sleepy dart the mother. Bring both of them up here.”

“Kris!” came from both men. Jack of all men would know how much of her soul this was costing Kris.

“You heard me. I am going to talk to one of these aliens. A mother with a babe at her breast is not going to kill herself. Bring one of them to me.”

“But sleepy dart her just in case,” Jack said.

“Yes.”

“And how do I do this?” Jacques said.

Kris did not need more talk. “We’ve watched the mothers go off into the bushes with you,” Kris snapped. “Do it again. Only this time, take her someplace where Jack’s got you covered. Then distract her. If you think you can get her to fall asleep after your fun and save Jack the fuss of having to sleepy dart her, all the better, but I want her up here tonight.”

“Kris Longknife,” Amanda said at Kris’s elbow. “You are a bastard.”

“I second the notion,” Jacques growled.

“I come from a long line of folks that only entered the church to bark and bite at the preacher’s heels. Tell me something about myself I don’t know,” Kris snapped. “Now, you’ve got your orders. Make it happen.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Jack said.

Amanda said nothing as she stormed out of Kris’s day quarters and slammed the door behind her.