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'The prisoner is to be secured unharmed at all costs. Repeat: at ALL costs. You are authorized to use all necessary force. Failure to comply is not an option.'
The order dins through the headsets, over and over again, as we climb aboard the shuttle to be taken down to the surface.
I don't think I've ever been so excited. I glance aside at my fellow MACOs and see my anticipation mirrored on every face.
The Empire has been after this guy for years. Nobody knows what he's done, but it must have been something really bad. They want him, and they want him alive. We know the orders are straight from the top.
The reward for success would be more money than I've ever seen in a lifetime. The reward for failure would be ... well, the captain who took the briefing just said brusquely that we'd better not even think about it if we ever want to sleep again.
"Bet you the bastard tries to off himself," mutters Delaney beside me as we settle down on the benches.
"He'd better not fuckin' try." I hoist my phase rifle and think about what I could do with all that money. Even with a share of it.
Sergeant d'Argentine comes in last, and spreads a hard glance around us. "The people who matter know we're closing in," he says. "The word just came down. Whoever makes the catch gets to hand the prisoner over in person."
Eyes go round with awe. Surreptitiously, a few tongues swipe across teeth. I've got real good hearing, so I catch Delaney's soft, eager whine through her locked jaws.
I can't explain how good it feels when a whole team of the Dispossessed get sent on a mission together. There's a freedom, a ... a sense of belonging. We don't have to act, we don't have to hide. We interact naturally, joyously.
The orders allow this, even encourage it. Monitors are switched off during our relaxation periods, a privilege no other unit gets. We play-fight, we wrestle and tumble and have the rough fun of any wolf pack. If the females allow it, we mate them, horny and unselfconscious. D'Argentine is the alpha, so he gets the most, but a few nights ago Delaney let me at her and it felt so damned good...
Sometimes, if a lower-ranking male is submissive and indicates willingness, the other males couple with him. I haven't done that yet, but I've watched it and been tempted. One of the days, I will.
Remembered horniness floods my system with more adrenaline. I want to hunt. I want to kill.
No killing! My top lip wrinkles with reluctant acceptance. That's the order, and there must be obedience. That is Pack.
Still, there's going to be hunting, and that's always good.
He's run for a long time.
Finally, though, he's run out of luck. His escape vehicle is fast, but it's old, and he's just a millisecond too slow getting it off the windswept, crumbling runway. A strafing pass by one of the attack drones takes out one of its turbo-motors just as it powers up for launch, and next minute the little arrow-shaped ship's slewing sideways as the motor's power dies and what should have been a smooth acceleration turns into a vicious, irretrievable spin.
A targeted blast of concentrated electromagnetic radiation fries his computers as soon as the craft shudders to a halt, preventing any thought of the pilot activating an auto-destruct. It'll even have taken out his phase pistol if he's carrying one. The only thing it wouldn't touch would be an old-fashioned projectile weapon, but the drones' scans suggest there isn't one on board.
It probably didn't do him a whole lot of good either, on a cellular level, but we've medics standing by to treat any accidental damage. Judging by the state-of-the-art facilities on the Sirius, which is waiting in orbit to collect him when he's taken, they sure as hell don't mean him to be in anything less than A1 condition when he's finally handed over.
They've hunted him here, across half a damned sector, system by system. On the very few occasions when fear didn't work fast enough, bribery did. Money talks, in the Empire.
And this is where he's finally been run to ground, in this half-ruined, rundown station on a barren plain under the red light of a dying sun. There's not even much atmosphere left, if there was ever much to begin with; a couple of hundred meters up from ground level and you'd be gasping for oxygen. Even on the station, walking fast is an effort in the thin air. We have oxygen tanks strapped to our backs, so that we've masks to use if we need to.
The personnel manning the drones didn't dare open deterrent fire as he left the wrecked craft – too much danger of an accidental hit. The cameras watch him run for the buildings, and the thermal scanners track him inside. We watch the feeds hungrily as the shuttle dips towards the runway. It's almost too easy; where's the fun if we know exactly where the prey's hiding?
"Weapons on stun," growls d'Argentine. Responding to the note in his voice, Delaney throws her head up and licks her mouth excitedly. The other wolves inhale audibly, just like I do, smelling her condition: she wants to mate. The proximity of prey thrills all of us, the women most of all.
Discipline prevents a free-for-all; there'd almost certainly be fighting. Later, there'll be sex. Because there's been no kill, there'll be lots of sex. Women will be provided, more than enough to go around.
Lust heats my stomach. Hunt. Kill. Mate.
...Not kill. I'm not the only one who moans at that realization. Some of the women will die. Maybe all of them.
They are not-Pack. They're slaves. They're dispensable.
Then, suddenly, just as the slight jolt of the craft around us tells us that we've landed on the tarmac, the winking green light vanishes off the tracker screen.
There's instant uproar. The first cry, of frustration with technology, merges into a rising howl of joyous realization. The prey's gone to ground – at a guess, there are tunnels under the station.
We will have a hunt!
D'Argentine glares around at us. His eyes are wild; we know that he feels exactly what we feel, but he's our alpha, he's in command, and he doesn't want any of us to be lost completely in the black joy of the chase and capture. His mouth works, and we grin ferally at his attempt to speak without snarling.
"No..." he sucks in air, and fights to get the word out, "...kill!"
We don't need words. We keen and cry and yammer, as the excitement moves us, but our rising yelps of eagerness are cut short as the lights on the exit door panel turn from red to green, indicating that the pack is about to be released. The faint hum of the door's servomotors is perfectly audible in the sudden tense and absolute silence.
Hot, dry, thin air flows in as the ramp extends and settles.
Our boot-soles are made of a special, hugely costly material that acts as the softest of cushions beneath us. It makes our footfalls practically silent, even when we're running. Our external uniforms are of black and gray silk, which makes no sound louder than a whisper as its surfaces rub together. Every moving part of our weapons is oiled, as are the blades of our knives so that they'll clear the scabbard with the softest and smoothest of hisses.
There's an open jar by the side of the hatch. As each hunter sets foot on the ramp, he or she dabs a thumb into it and quickly dabs our Pack Mark on the left cheek: the black paw-print for the wolves that we are. As we leave the ship, the front view-screens are blacked out. The pilots don't watch us leave, and they won't watch us come back. Nobody sees the Dispossessed who doesn't have to.
D'Argentine gestures silently. The sullen light of the sinking sun turns us into stealthily hurrying figures the color of drying blood.
There's more than one entrance to what probably used to be the terminal building. Obedient to d'Argentine's flicking fingers, we split up to cover each of them.
The doors probably opened and closed on automatic, but the motors must have seized years ago; the runners are caked solid with dust and debris, the dingy corridors beyond lit only by the occasional flickering glare of a malfunctioning information panel that tells anyone who's interested that the station is temporarily closed for repairs. More blown dust coats the floors underfoot and every available horizontal surface. The only noise comes from the circuits of a vending machine in a dark corner, where tiny bright flashes and snapping sounds tell of a current trying to arc across a broken cable. There are still items of merchandise inside, but the glass casing is broken and at a guess anything edible would have been stolen from it long ago.
We pass along the corridors like shadows. We have hand-scanners which we can activate if needed, but for us they're a last resort. Perhaps that's one of the things that makes us so terrible to not-Pack. They don't know – they don't understand…
Dupont's passing a door when she suddenly freezes. The tilt of her head says she hears. A subtlety of body language says it's not him, but there's something – something alive, something to hunt…
Four shadows move to the door, and slip inside while I and others keep watch. There's a little pause, then a sudden rush and a tiny shrill shriek as something dies. Harsh breathing and the hush of silk on silk signals the small, savage struggle for possession, then someone wins. The shadows slip out of the door again, half-seen smiles on their faces. Dupont gulps down the last remnant of a tail.
My impatient signal conveys the need to make up wasted time. D'Argentine will be moving in from the next entrance, Raj from the rear. Both of them are further away from where the signal was lost, or I wouldn't have spared us even this brief diversion. Even now, we should be considerably nearer to where he found what he hoped would be his salvation.
A decrepit map of the station hanging on one wall gives us valuable information. It tallies with the thermal scanner's story, and as we speed almost noiselessly up the corridor that long ago led to Baggage Reclaim – that's a good joke! – it's not long before we come across the access door to the maintenance passageways. It's locked, of course, but he'd never have gotten this far if he'd been the sort to be stopped by a standard lock. Del Rey could open it manually in less than two minutes if time wasn't an issue, but instead he whips out an instrument that has two steel jaws at one end that resemble those of a stag beetle. He closes these on the body of the lock and there's a brief flash before the components of the mechanism literally fall apart. It was strongly built, and I'd guess that even now it'd have stood up to being hit with a mallet; I wouldn't like to guess what kind of damage that gizmo could do to living tissue.
We ease the door open slowly, all of us inhaling carefully of the first wisps of stale air that eddy out. We don't have anything like the nasal capability of real canines, but most of us have undergone highly specific surgery to intensify the capability we were born with. We can smell far more than the average human can, and from the swirl of slightly unpleasant odors that comes from the passage I know that there's no-one waiting in ambush. What I can smell is the faint, acrid, thrilling trace of fear-sweat.
Others smell it too. There's a hungry stir. I growl low in my throat, reinforcing my authority, reinforcing the orders. No kill.
One by one we slip into the passageway, crouching low, finding any bar of deeper shadow that will help us disappear. The only lighting in here is the emergency illumination that lies in a cable at the foot of the left-hand wall, and even that's so crusted over that what should be a steady green glow is only just enough to show us the passage curving away into the depths of the station, with here and there gaps of deeper blackness to show where ladders lead up or down to other levels. The rat whom we pursue has found a refuge that offers ample hiding places; we will hunt. We will find them all.
We will hunt. We will find. We will chase. We will corner. We will–
Later, we will kill. We will eat.
Like ghosts, we flit along the passageway. At each side-access we pause, and listen, and smell. Murderous shadows slip away to become part of the darkness.
Joyously I imagine what it must be like to be him. Alone, in the darkness, with the end in sight. Fear metallic in my mouth; so afraid that I have bitten my own tongue. Maybe I have some kind of a weapon – a metal bar, perhaps – the cold weight of it is slippery in my palm. My belly is hollow with terror, my ears on the stretch for the first whisper of sound that says they have found me.
Death is coming.
In its time, it was a large station. There are many passageways. In one we meet the first of Raj's team, and exchange hungry, hostile glances. Everyone wants to be the one who claims the kill.
–No kill–
Later…
…and sex…
We separate again, flowing like a plague wind.
He's run fast and far. But he can't out-run the Dispossessed, and as I go to dart past what looks like an empty washroom I catch the sudden overwhelming stench of sweat-wet flesh.
He must have moved, or something gave way – we'd have picked that up far sooner if he'd been in the open. As it is, he's half wedged behind a broken piece of paneling, almost as if he's tried to dig his way into the rubble-packed earth behind it; maybe he managed to get just so far in and then it all went wrong, just at the worst moment – for him, but certainly not for us.
As I leap across the room, almost howling with delight, he realizes the game's up. He has a weapon – a piece of what looks like old piping, and as he half-falls out of his failed refuge he swings it wildly at me with the strength of utter desperation.
If he was good, he'd be dangerous. As it is, he's what I'd describe as a mildly talented amateur. I dive under the swing and take him around the waist, hurling him backwards to get the air thumped out of his lungs as he hits the wall. Half a dozen other shadows follow me in, swarming over him, grabbing, snarling, their teeth grazing across his flesh as they fight down the urge to bite and tear. Someone yelps as the piping connects, and then screams as in the frenzy she's identified as prey and attacked in good earnest. I don't know if she dies, and I don't care – my arms are around him, my jaws locked on the angle of his throat, and in the midst of the melee of squealing and pawing and biting I kick and snarl and elbow away the other contenders: my prize, my kill, mine!
MINE!