Stanley’s shoulder ached. The Hrwang doctor at Hearst Castle could have been giving him sugar pills for all their effectiveness at pain relief.
He moaned for a while into his pillow.
He’d never really felt alone the way he felt alone now. Even on Beagle, he’d had Sherry when he needed her, reliable crew like Purcella, and could even count on Irina’s irascibility. Here, among the aliens, he had no one.
He realized the aliens were people, too, and couldn’t just snap their fingers and have some superior technology solve the world’s problems, but he expected them to be more capable than they were. They didn’t seem to be able to do anything about the disasters that had befallen Earth. People fought over food and territory and killed the aliens whenever they could, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
The Hrwang soldiers policed crimes when they could, and over a thousand criminals had been executed, but the problems were much deeper than a handful of people who got caught doing bad things. Everyone was doing bad things.
To make matters worse, even if farmers were left alone long enough to grow crops, the entire growing season had been damaged by the standing cloud coverage caused by the Hrwang meteor bombardment. That had been reckless. The aliens went too far.
But humans, his own humans, his own country, had made things worse by nuking their enemies into oblivion. Hadn’t the President, or at least someone, understood the consequences of that? Hadn’t they understood that nuclear fallout remained airborne and traveled around the world. It was devastating China now but soon would leave the mainland, cover what was left of Japan and Australia, then make its way across the Pacific to the Americas, following the prevailing winds. It was only a matter of time.
The President should have read Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.
And the aliens didn’t seem to be able to do anything about that, either.
If only Stanley had someone intelligent to talk to, someone he could bounce ideas off of, maybe they could come up with something. Maybe human intelligence and Hrwang technology could solve the problems the Earth faced.
He just needed someone.
The Lord Admiral’s girlfriend had seemed intelligent until she had lost the data drive he gave her. He’d been under the influence of medication at the time, but he knew he had given it to her. Since she wouldn’t own up to it, she must have lost it. She probably threw it away, not even knowing what it was. He should have held onto it. He’d never even had a chance to watch it.
He wondered how President Hollis, Acting President Hollis he reminded himself, was doing. Even though they’d been on opposite sides in the UN tower, he still sort of liked her. Like him, she’d been thrust into a position she hadn’t asked for and was handling it well. Like him, she’d risen to the occasion.
Thinking of her gave him confidence in himself. He could still use Hrwang technology to save the Earth. Somehow.
If only he had someone to talk to.
Eva jogged alone again. She’d expected the Lord Admiral to want to go running that day, but he hadn’t. In some ways, it was a relief that he seldom came along, but in other ways she wanted to make sure they were bonding properly. He had to trust her completely in order for her to get away with doing whatever she might have to do. Maybe he did already, but she didn’t want to test it. She sensed that the first mistake she made would be fatal.
She ran one of her usual routes. She’d figured out four routes that all crossed the spot where she and Juan had made their only exchange, but since that day no other message had been conveyed. She told herself to be patient. Juan, Mark, and the others must know that a single mistake on their part would probably be fatal for her also. They were just being cautious.
Her heart leapt when she saw a spray of white orchids leaning against a rock. She looked around anxiously but saw no one.
Then she heard a low growl.
She stopped immediately.
When she had moved to California as a freshman in high school, other kids had tried to torment her by telling her about coyotes that wandered the streets. She was smart enough not to believe them, but after looking it up online she knew that coyotes did wander the deserts around various communities. In some areas, lost cats often meant cats that had been taken by coyotes.
Coyotes rarely attacked humans and then only if provoked by hand feeding or disease.
Still, she wasn’t excited about encountering a coyote this far from the compound, in the darkening evening, and by herself.
“Get out of here,” she shouted, hoping that would scare it away. The growl turned to a whine and a white dog with black spots crawled out from behind the rock, dragging itself along the ground. When it saw her, it whined again.
A feral dog would be more dangerous than a coyote and Eva stamped her foot on the ground and shouted again at the dog. It lowered its head to the ground and whimpered.
Pathetic.
She watched it, not wanting to turn her back but also not wanting to be stuck in front of it forever. She took a few steps backwards.
The dog dragged itself on the ground toward her, looking like it was making obeisance.
She thought of the orchids, looking at the splay of flowers.
“Okay, who are you?”
The dog jumped up happily and ran to her. She tensed, but the dog put its front paws on her playfully. She looked and it was a he. He had a collar.
She moved her hand carefully to the collar. A metal tag hung from it with the name ‘Jim’ scratched on it and a small, three petaled flower scratched below the name.
“I don’t have time for a dog,” she said, pushing Jim down. Strange name for a dog, she thought. The dog whimpered.
“Go on now. Get out of here.” She moved her hand almost like she was throwing a stick and Jim followed the motion but didn’t run off. Some dogs were dumb enough to think something had been thrown even if they couldn’t see the item. Jim at least passed that intelligence test.
“I’m heading back to the Castle. I don’t know what you’re going to do,” she said and turned away with a little trepidation, then set off running. Jim tagged along, keeping up effortlessly.
She stopped.
Jim stopped.
“Sit.”
Jim sat quite obediently and Eva was impressed. “Stay,” she added and started to back away. “Stay.”
Jim stayed.
When she got about twenty yards away she yelled, “Stay,” again, then turned and ran. Jim caught up easily.
“Stupid dog,” she muttered.
Not knowing what else to do, she ran back toward Hearst Castle, the dog bounding along beside her.
She thought about his name. She’d never heard of a dog named Jim. The symbol scratched on his tag seemed strange also. Three petals. Why not four or five?
Orchids, dummy. Orchids have three petals.
That meant Jim was meant for her for some reason.
Jim. Duh.
J for Juan, M for Mark. Jim for James. As in Bond. Or something like that. Those idiots. Poor dog. She wondered what his real name was.
“Okay, so you’re a spy dog. Hopefully you’re at least half as clever as Mark thinks he is.”
Jim ran happily alongside her. Trainers must have conditioned him to her smell from clothes or something left behind. She pictured someone holding up her old underwear in front of the dog’s nose. Poor thing.
She ran laughing with her new pet to the kitchen on the main level of Casa Grande. If she was going to have a pet spy dog, she would need to feed him.
“Dog food?” one of the kitchen staff cried. “Why would we have dog food?”
But another cook came out with a large bag over his shoulder. “Lucky you,” he said. “This came in our last food delivery. I was just going to pitch it tomorrow.”
He handed her a large bag of dog food and Jim wagged his tail happily, so much so that his entir
e backside wagged with the tail. Eva would have bet serious money that this bag was Jim’s brand. The Agency was all over this operation. She felt even better. Someone had a plan.
She took the bag and started to leave, but turned when she thought of a question.
“The aliens trust you all? Down here cooking all their food?”
The first staff member turned away and went back to what he was doing, but the second, the one who had given her the bag of dog food, answered.
“They make us try everything first. And they told us they’d flay us alive, all of us, if anyone tries to poison them, even just a little to make them sick. They were pretty serious. We believe them. Other than those threats, they treat us well.”
“Oh,” Eva said.
“But we didn’t stay because of that. We stayed to help protect Hearst Castle. It’s our duty.”
“You’re park rangers?”
He nodded. “And other grounds staff.”
“I’m Eva,” she said and reached her hand out under the bag of dog food on her shoulder.
“Noah,” he said and shook her hand gently, careful not to upset the balanced bag.
“I guess you survived the flood okay, then,” she said and chuckled.
“Not like I never heard that one before, Eve. Where’s Adam?”
“Eva, not Eve.”
He grinned.
“So what’s your story?” Noah asked.
Eva shook her head. “Maybe another day. Listen, though. Can you do me a favor?”
“Depends.”
“As much as I like keeping my girlish figure, I’m starving to death half the time. Could you go easy on some of the Hrwang spices? I can’t eat most of the food they serve me.”
“No promises, but I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” Eva smiled big. “I’ll see you later. And thanks for this,” she added, shrugging the bag of dog food higher up on her shoulder. Heading up from the kitchen, she contemplated how she was going to share the news of her new pet with the Lord Admiral.
“Absolutely not!” he bellowed. “We have pets similar to this on my planet. They’re filthy. They urinate and defecate everywhere.”
“I think he’s trained.”
“I never want to see him,” he said.
“Okay. But I’m taking him running with me. You usually never come anyway,” Eva replied. “I’ll keep him in my room the rest of the time.”
“And you’ll clean up after him. Don’t ask any of my men to do it for you.”
“Yes, Lord Admiral.” She gazed up at him. “Thank you.”
He looked away.
“The Lieutenant Grenadier has begun your self-defense training?” he asked, turning back to her.
“Yes, Lord Admiral.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“He’s a good teacher.”
“He’s an excellent teacher,” the Lord Admiral rejoined. “Practice what he teaches you.”
“I promise.”
The Lord Admiral looked down at Jim, then looked back up at Eva.
“If that creature will let you away for a while, I’d like you to spend the night in my room tonight.”
“He will. I’d like that, too.” She gave him the most loving look she could manage. He smiled at her and gave her a hug.
“You can keep your dog,” he whispered in her ear.
Eva got Jim back to her room. He jumped up on her, pushing his head against her hand. She dropped the bag of dog food onto the ground and he practically tackled her.
“Okay, okay,” she laughed. She petted his head and he angled it so she had to pet around his neck. “You like this? You’re like a big puppy.”
Jim made contented sounds when she rubbed and scratched his neck. When she moved down to rubbing his back, he backed away until she had to scratch his neck. He pushed back and forth a little, forcing Eva to rub around his collar.
“This collar bothering you? I guess it can’t be comfortable wearing one of these stupid things.”
She undid the collar and Jim immediately walked away and sat in a corner, leaving her holding the thing. She looked at him, surprised that he suddenly no longer wanted to be scratched. He’d wanted her to take his collar.
You really are trained, she thought, not wanting to say it aloud. She didn’t think anyone had bugged her room, but paranoia saves lives.
“Good boy,” she said to him. His head popped up and looked at her, then lay back down a little disappointed. He was well trained, but he liked the affection nonetheless.
Eva inspected the lime green collar. It looked like it was made from standard nylon webbing, like most collars. She felt around it carefully, inside and out. The collar seemed a little stiffer near the name tag.
She brought it to the bed and retrieved her knife from where she kept it hidden. She poked carefully in the material around where it felt stiffer. She didn’t want to tear the collar or break whatever was in there. As soon as she poked the knife into the material, Jim barked once. She looked up at him and he wagged his tail furiously, his entire back end wagging with it, like he had done earlier.
“You’re such a good boy,” she said to him, inflecting her voice. And a well trained spy dog, she added mentally. He was making sure she knew exactly how to find what he’d brought her.
She used the knife to dig the object out. The collar tore a little where she worked the point in, but it would still be serviceable and the tear would be on the inside, out of sight. She got the object out carefully and saw it was a voice activated microrecorder. She smiled. Someone had a plan. She was to record everything she’d learned and then drop it back off.
She doubled checked to see if there was a playback feature. Perhaps they’d left a message for her. But it was a one-way recorder. Record only, no rewind, no playback. Too small for such features, plus it required a special player. Even if the Hrwang caught her with it, they wouldn’t know how to play it back. It was one of the devices, among many, whose use she’d been trained in.
She hid it under her mattress, with her knife, and Jim jumped up and came over to her. His tail wagged and she hugged him and rubbed him down. He lay against her and she sat on the floor, holding her dog and rubbing his belly. It made her feel good. She had a friend.
She had food, but no bowl. And no way to get Jim water. She wondered what to do. She thought about foraging in the kitchen, but despite her freedom of movement, she didn’t wander around the building at night. She didn’t ever want to arouse suspicion.
She dug out her hidden toilet paper. By keeping it well hidden and well rationed, she still had a roll and a half left. She wasn’t sure what everyone else was doing when they did their business, but she wanted to use toilet paper. She went down the spiral staircase to her ornate personal bathroom. When she finished, she had an idea.
“Sorry this isn’t more formal,” she said to Jim. She poured some of the dog food out on the bathroom floor. She also left the lid up on the toilet. “I know. It’s a little gross. But dogs have been drinking from them since they were invented.” She closed him up in the bathroom. He seemed well trained, but if he had to go before she returned from her soiree with the Lord Admiral, it’d be easier to clean it up from the tile here than from the carpet upstairs in her bedroom.
“Good boy,” she whispered through the door and Jim barked softly back at her. She’d had a dog once before, but her mother had taken him with her when she left. Her father had never wanted one when they moved to California.
Maybe she’d just been lonely, but Jim filled a void she didn’t know she had.
She headed upstairs to find the flimsiest negligee she’d brought with her.
She awoke early, curled up in a sheet next to the Lord Admiral. A little gray light shone through the window. The Lord Admiral had tried to show her a sunset the evening before out that same w
indow in an attempt to be romantic, but it had been disappointing. Gray clouds extended all over the Earth and the sun never peeked through, never got under the clouds to shine light underneath them making them light up in brilliant colors. It had been a gray sunset and this morning was a gray sunrise.
Thinking of the microrecorder and what she might say on it, she snuggled against the Lord Admiral until he woke up. He grinned at her, kissed her forehead, and got up to use his bathroom.
Eva waited.
He returned and jumped on the bed, attacking and tickling her.
The Lord Admiral dozed afterward, but Eva snuggled into him until he woke up a little.
“How bad are the casualties?” she asked.
“Hmm?” he mumbled, sounding a little confused.
“In the last staff meeting. You told the Ambassador that casualties are mounting. How bad is it for your men?”
“Not bad yet.” He told her about losing a few men to sniper fire and about the worst incident. A woman had strapped bombs to herself and blown herself up, killing three of his men and critically wounding two more. “Every loss is critical for us, though.”
“Why?”
“I can’t just replace my men when they are killed, can I? It took two and a half years to get them here. Not many, not even soldiers, are willing to give up five years of their life to go on a mission.”
“Five years?”
“Two and half years of sleep here, two and a half to return, plus the amount of time they would spend here.”
“How long will that be?” Eva asked cautiously, trying to sound as innocently curious as possible.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
She remained quiet for a few moments, as if she were letting that sink in.
“How many men did you bring with you?” she asked.
“My dear, that’s a military secret.”
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. You are just curious.” He sighed. “Sometimes I have too few and sometimes I have too many. Particularly when they need to be fed and watered.”
Jim.
She had to go take care of her dog.
She wondered how much more information she could get from the Lord Admiral, but he rolled over and said, “Now, no more talk until breakfast.”
“I have to go take care of Jim. My dog.”
He didn’t reply.
She got up, found her negligee and put it back on, then left his bedroom, running across the hallway to her own, not wanting to be seen by any of his soldiers. In her room, she changed into running clothes, trying to think of a place to put the microrecorder. Worried that it might be obvious somewhere on her clothes and not wanting to run with the tiny device in her underwear, she settled on the inseam of her right shoe, just under the insole. It wouldn’t be impacted much there by her running, nor would it dig into her skin. Dressed, she went down to the bathroom.
Jim lay on the floor, still.
“Wakey, wakey, doggy,” she said. Jim didn’t move.
“C’mon, puppy. Wake up.” She petted him with her hand. He felt wrong. Stiff.
“Oh no,” she cried. She tried to wake Jim, but couldn’t. It was clear. He was dead.
She ran crying to the Lord Admiral’s room.
“What’s the matter?” he asked when she burst through the door. He was up and dressed.
She went into his arms.
“Jim died last night.” She sobbed. She sobbed like she hadn’t done since her mother had left her and her father behind. Like she hadn’t since she discovered she’d been locked in the safe house. She couldn’t control her emotions, couldn’t make herself stop.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” the Lord Admiral said soothingly, holding on to her. He stroked her hair as she cried and she held him tightly. After she calmed down a little, he kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry. The poor animal must have been feral. It probably picked up a disease in the wild.”
Eva learned the Lord Admiral’s tell from those words. Every poker player had a ‘tell’, and discovering that tell, knowing when they were lying, was the key to winning every time. The way the Lord Admiral spoke, the slight smirk in the sound of his voice when he tried to explain away Jim’s death, gave him away. She’d know forever after that when he was lying to her, and he was lying to her now.
He’d ordered someone to kill Jim while she was in his room.
He’d killed her dog.
She could have killed him in that second. Guards would rush in, probably the Lieutenant Grenadier, and kill her. She would never escape the compound, but the Lord Admiral would be dead, punished for his crime. She debated it while he held her. Her crying stopped, pain and loss turning to anger.
How strong would he be? Could she really kill him barehanded? It’s all she wanted to do.
In that moment, she realized something, and knew she couldn’t sacrifice herself to kill him. Not yet. She had to get the microrecorder back to Juan.
She’d realized she knew how to defeat the Hrwang.
Eva carried Jim’s body and a shovel out to the trail she normally ran and found a spot under a tree with a view of the compound and beyond, out to the ocean. She would also see the spot when she ran every day.
She laid his body reverently on the ground and attacked the stubborn, rock hard California desert soil with the shovel. A second shovel joined hers, but she ignored the Lieutenant Grenadier wielding it.
Between the two of them, they succeeded in digging out a shallow grave. The packed dirt allowed them no deeper.
“We’ll have to cover it with rocks or coyotes will dig him up,” Eva said aloud.
It took a while, but Jim finally lay buried under dirt and rock. Eva had pulled his name tag off his collar and she laid it on top of one of the rocks.
“I apologize,” the Lieutenant Grenadier said.
She looked up at him, saw the pain in his eyes, and knew that the Lord Admiral’s chief of security was also his chief of dirty work. The Lieutenant Grenadier had snuck into her room while she was with the Lord Admiral, at his orders she was sure, and had killed her dog.
She turned and walked away.
Eva stared at the overly ornate ceiling of her bedroom all night.
Aliens had attacked her world, had killed millions, had probably killed her parents, although she didn’t know that. They could be safe somewhere in their own locations. Regardless, she knew she’d probably never see them again.
Millions, maybe billions, had died.
Other humans had attacked her and her partner, causing her partner to lose his arm and forcing her to kill a boy.
All these things had happened, and none of them impacted her the way Jim’s death had. She hadn’t even had the dog twenty-four hours. How could she have bonded with him so quickly?
She pondered these things all night, swinging from overwhelming emotional reactions to clinical, analytical diagnosis, and back.
At first light, she decided she had been lonely. Like the proverbial woman who is alone in a crowd, Eva was lonely. She had no true friends. The Lord Admiral, the Lieutenant Grenadier, they were her enemies. The Ambassador was an unknown quantity and thus not to be trusted. Even Noah, from the kitchen staff, couldn’t be trusted. She couldn’t reveal anything to him.
The dog had been a ray of sunshine, an opportunity for hope and honest companionship.
She also decided she hated playing the role of a mole. She hated the lies and deception. She hated the constant acting, the constant poker face, the constant fear that she would make some trivial mistake and there would be no recovery. It would mean not only her death, but the loss of everything she had learned.
But she couldn’t get out of bed the next day to do anything about it.
She’d heard of depressed people lying in bed all day and had never understood it.
Pick yourself up. Get back up on that horse. Soar for the stars. All the self-help, positive thinking mumbo jumbo she could think of, she told herself.
Nothing mattered. She couldn’t get out of bed.
If Stanley, in his room in a different building in the compound that it’s developer and original owner had pretentiously labeled a castle, although in their defense its art collection did rival many famous European castles, if he had known what Eva was thinking and feeling, he would have empathized completely.
He didn’t want to get out of bed either, at least not until he had an idea, some solution for the problems the Earth faced. Hunger finally drove him to give up on that notion.
“My dear, it’s time,” the unpleasant voice of the Lord Admiral said from Eva’s door. “There is a time to mourn and a time for duty. Now is the time for your duty.”
Eva pulled a pillow over her head.
She felt him sit next to her on the bed and hands tugged at the pillow. She let it go.
“Oh my dear. You look frightful. When is the last time you showered?”
Three days, she thought. Three days since you murdered my dog. But she didn’t allow her face to betray her anger. She was too good for that.
“I apologize deeply. Animals must be dear to you.”
Shut up or I will put my fist through your face, she thought. She said nothing.
“Remember the black dress you wore on our first dinner? I need you to wear that dress this evening. It’s important.” The weight lifted off Eva’s bed. “You won’t disappoint me, will you?”
Why? Because you’ll murder me also?
She realized he might.
“I’ll be there,” she muttered.
“And please, do something attractive with your hair.”
Like make a garrote out of it and strangle you?
She heard the door shut and she buried her face into her pillow and screamed silently.
She acted as if all were forgotten. As if a trained spy dog named Jim had never existed. As if the kind, gentle commander with nothing more on his mind than aiding the poor deluded people of Earth wasn’t actually a murderous, contemptible megalomaniac.
Her hair was pretty, her makeup perfect, the dress perfect, the flat, black sandals she found matching it perfectly. The microrecorder carefully sewn into the hem of the dress’ halter top was also perfect.
She thought she was ready for anything.
Until she saw the packed hall the Lord Admiral led her into, the refectory that occupied the west wing of the first floor.
They walked up onto a small stage and a floodlight shone near them, illuminating them to the crowd in the room. Did the Hrwang understand the wolf whistles she heard?
The Lord Admiral probably had a good idea of the effect Eva would have on the crowd of humans, which is why he wanted her to wear her little, black dress. She smiled to the audience and there were cheers.
“Welcome,” the Lord Admiral started. “Welcome to Hearst Castle.”
Eva expected some kind of cheering or applause for him, but the crowd turned subdued. Given the reaction to her entrance, the lack of response now surprised her.
Who were all these people? They weren’t wearing Hrwang military uniforms. They had to be human.
“Welcome, friends,” the Lord Admiral continued. Eva noticed the Ambassador up on the stage behind them. The Lord Admiral still held her hand while he spoke. “All of you are gathered here tonight in an historic moment.”
The Lord Admiral’s words sounded overly rehearsed.
Why had he said nothing about this to Eva before? He’d obviously been planning it for a while. Eva realized that although she was in the castle and had good access to the Lord Admiral, she hadn’t wormed her way into his inner circle. She’d attended daily staff meetings with the Ambassador, and all of those who must have been in the Lord Admiral’s inner circle were there. But a meeting like this, with a group of humans, had never been mentioned. This whole banquet had never been mentioned.
One of Eva’s suspicions was confirmed.
The daily staff meetings were a sham for the Ambassador’s benefit. She’d been right. The Hrwang weren’t nearly as helpless as they let on.
The Lord Admiral’s speech droned on about a new found friendship between two peoples. About being part of one and the same race of humans, all created alike in God’s image. How they should work together.
He never let go of Eva’s hand. She wanted to retreat to stand with the men on the back of the stage, the Ambassador and the Lieutenant Grenadier among them, but the Lord Admiral held her by his side.
She figured out why a few minutes later.
“I present to you my Lady,” he said and held her hand up in the air with his. “She came to me hungry, desperate to escape the ravages your war wrought on your people.” Eva practiced discerning his ‘tell’ while he lied to these people. She wanted to make sure he could never lie to her again.
“She has learned our ways. She coexists with our people. She’s even learned some of our language. Go ahead, my dear. Say something in Est.”
Eva had been focusing on every nuance of the Lord Admiral’s mannerisms, so his instruction caught her off guard. She smiled helplessly at the crowd and waved with her left hand.
“Hello. How is the weather today?” she said in Est, one of the first phrases that came to mind. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but it didn’t matter. The Hrwang in the room clapped for her.
“It can be done,” the Lord Admiral declared. “You can do it. You can integrate yourself into our society, into our military. You will be fed. You will be clothed. You will be a part of us and a part of our effort to save your world from itself. You can do it!” He roared the last sentence. The Hrwang in the room cheered him and some of the humans joined in the cheering, but nervously.
Eva understood now what the Lord Admiral was up to. She had to get word back to the Agency now, more than ever. She was grateful she’d been smart enough to turn on the microrecorder she’d sewn into the seam on the halter of her dress. The Director would understand her reasoning when she heard the Lord Admiral’s own words.
After showing her off, the Lord Admiral released her hand and she slunk back to stand with the others. The Ambassador eyed her enviously. What a fool.
The Lord Admiral’s speech went on and the crowd warmed up to him some. Then he declared that the feasting should begin. Tables were filled with Hrwang food, which the humans sampled tentatively. Eva tried to get a rough head count, estimating about a hundred present.
She got a plateful of food. Despite it being spiced too much for the other humans, the cooks had spiced it less than usual and she hoped she might enjoy it.
She never got to eat her meal.
An oddly familiar voice came up behind her as she scooped a mixture of yellowed potatoes and carrots onto her plate.
“I know you,” it said.
She turned and recognized the guard from the Utah border station. The one whose nose she’d smashed.
Shay.
“You’ve turned sides also, I see,” he said, smirking at her. “One minute I’m wandering in the desert with a small group, the next minute we find a flyer and now I’m here. Just like you. How did you sign up?”
She had to get him out of the room immediately. She had to get him away from the other Hrwang. He’d give her away in an instant. Instinctively, she knew if she tried to shut him up in front of others, he’d make a scene and everyone would find out what had happened at the border and discover that she was a trained agent. It didn’t matter that Shay didn’t know all the details. He would only have to reveal a little to arouse the Hrwang’s suspicions.
“Come with me,” she started saying, improvising as she sorted out actions and consequences in her mind. “We should talk. And I can show you around the castle, show you more about the Hrwang.” The words s
he said didn’t matter. She smiled, trying to keep talking to prevent him from saying anything that could be overheard, and wrapped her arms around his after setting her plate down on a serving table.
She led him across the floor, staying in the middle of the crowd.
“There’s an amazing view from the floor one up.”
Shay started to get suspicious and Eva pulled his arm closer to her, pressing it against her bare skin on her side. He didn’t pull away and allowed himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter.
She babbled while she formed a plan, anything to keep him from speaking. He tried to interject something twice, but each time she hushed him, pulled him closer, and said they could talk more in a minute.
Her nearness, her dress which didn’t allow her to wear a bra, her enthusiastic tone of voice, and her smile overwhelmed the man. His confusion at her friendliness was replaced by his lust for her.
Eva felt superior.
Her plan could only end one way and depended on her understanding of the Hrwang military culture. If she were wrong...
She wasn’t going to be wrong.
She kept talking and plotting. She needed to get him away from the crowd, but not too far away. They entered an unoccupied foyer.
Out of sight of everyone else, she shoved him away immediately and he stumbled. She kicked him hard in the stomach, her sandal flying off with the kick.
“Stop recording,” she spoke to her dress, turning off the hidden microrecorder. She didn’t want anyone else to know what happened next.
She looked at her opponent. Confusion and anger played across his face, resolving into hatred. She had to make sure he didn’t run. She slapped his nose.
He immediately grabbed it, crying out in pain.
Eva must have broken it after he released her from the handcuffs, and it might be sore still. She could probably cripple the man with a well timed blow on his nose, but crippling him wasn’t her objective. He needed to become so angry that he acted stupid.
He lashed out at her, moving with a speed she never would have credited him with, his clumsy roundhouse blow catching the left side of her face and forcing her eye shut. It hurt, but she punched him inside his blow, connecting with his chest, an ineffectual strike and the opposite of what she had been trained to do. The angry man thought he had the upper hand and he grabbed her, thrusting her away. She fell.
He stopped and put his hands up, prepared for a fist fight. He wanted to keep his revenge a little honorable. That made Eva feel guilty for what she had to do next.
She stood slowly, like he’d really hurt her, and he waited. He wanted to punch it out with her, perhaps thinking he could break her nose like she’d broken his. He wasn’t thinking about consequences. His anger and lust made him stupid.
Eva made it worse.
She reached up behind her, grabbed the back of her dress halter top, and pulled it over her head.
Shay grunted at seeing her exposed, but then he became confused. Eva rushed him.
He reached out and grabbed her and Eva stepped in between his legs, using the outside of her right leg against the inside of his left to knock him off balance. Then she leaned backward and the helpless former guard fell on top of her, the stupid, wicked grin on his face revealing how much he enjoyed what was happening, falling on her chest.
She screamed, “Help,” in Est.
His stupid grin went away but he still couldn’t comprehend what was happening. He held her, but she held him, her fingers dug into the sleeves of his jacket, and when he tried to pull away, she held him closer and screamed for help again in the Lord Admiral’s native tongue.
He finally figured out that things did not look good and he put his hand on Eva’s mouth, his sweaty palms crushing her lips into her teeth, and he tried to pull away.
There were at least ten different things she could have done to him now to hurt him, to get him off her, but she did none of those, flailing her legs around helplessly instead, holding onto his sleeves to keep him from breaking away from her.
She turned her head toward the doorway, her mouth becoming free, and she screamed, “Help,” again as loud as she could. This time Shay reared back and struck her hard on the face, right where he’d struck her before, and Eva knew she’d have a bruise. She was almost grateful to her victim. It would preserve her cover.
“Help,” she screamed a fourth time and the door flew open, the Lieutenant Grenadier in it with a drawn weapon, the strange looking pistol the Hrwang soldiers often carried, and after seeing her partly undressed, flailing around under the human, his arm drawn back to strike her again, the Lieutenant didn’t hesitate.
The shot from the gun deafened Eva.
It knocked Shay sideways off of her. His head struck the floor hard, but it didn’t matter. He was already dead. His stupid, confused, lifeless, accusing eyes staring at Eva as he lay there.
“Are you okay?” the Lieutenant Grenadier asked, rushing to her side.
Eva sat up partially and grabbed the alien, holding him close, and crying into his uniform. Her tears real, born of fear and guilt and loss, her sobbing only slightly exaggerated.
More people were in the room and the Lieutenant barked commands in Est. A blanket was quickly wrapped around her, another thrown over the body of the dead Shay.
She noticed the Ambassador staring agape at her as two soldiers led her away to her room.
68