In this desolate place, the stink of the Fallen was almost reassuring.
“Please wait for the ready light, then enter,” the sphere told him, then floated back off into the maze of dead aircraft.
Nickolai walked up to the smaller door with the red light. When he stood a meter away, the red light changed to green. In his mind he briefly pictured himself crossing some irrevocable threshold, that by passing through this door he would no longer be able to turn back.
He wondered at himself. Why would he suddenly think he had choices now?
He ducked through the too-short doorway and walked into the hangar. He felt a tingle in his artificial arm and behind his eyes as he entered, similar but more intense than what he had felt when crossing the EM shielding of the dungeon where he had met Mr. Antonio.
The tap of his claws on the ferrocrete floor echoed in the vast space as he stepped inside. The hangar was windowless and ill lit, but his eyes focused everything into sharp relief almost instantaneously.
Dominating everything was the dark silhouette of a tach-ship. Little more than a featureless shadow, it loomed over the small gathering of humans by one of its downturned stub wings. The meeting area was defined by a cluster of folding chairs, bordered by the edges of a single spotlight shining down from the scaffolding above.
Nickolai walked slowly, noting the scents and positions of the human mercenaries as he approached. He saw three under the spotlight: two males and one female. That raised his level of caution because he smelled at least two females in the air here, and that meant there were others out of sight, probably inside the ship.
The three he could see had been talking among themselves, but they stopped as soon as they noticed him approaching. They turned toward him, and he could tell by their relaxed posture that they didn’t yet see him fully.
These are warriors? he wondered to himself. Unless they had his eyes, they had blinded themselves by sitting in the best-lit place in this hangar. Until they heard him approach, they had been paying more attention to each other than to the vast unprotected space surrounding them. Had he wished to kill them, Nickolai guessed he could finish off two of them before the third realized something was wrong.
“Holy shit,” the taller of the men whispered. Nickolai suspected that he wasn’t supposed to hear that.
Nickolai walked up to the fringes of the spotlight and stood facing the three humans. He was gratified not to smell the stink of fear around them.
The shorter man walked forward. He was squat and light-skinned, the top of his head barely reaching Nickolai’s sternum. The man thrust his hand out. “I’m Staff Sergeant John Fitzpatrick.”
The other man laughed and said, “You were Staff Sergeant, Fitz. You ain’t in the Marines anymore, geehead.”
Fitzpatrick’s hand hung between them for a few moments. Nickolai knew the human gesture the man was inviting, but Nickolai didn’t move his own hand. He could not bring himself to touch the flesh of the Fallen. Unclean he might be, but there were still limits.
When Fitzpatrick realized that he wasn’t going to shake hands, he closed his hand and hooked his thumb toward the other man behind him. “And that gentleman is Jusef Wahid—”
“Jusuf,” the other man snapped.
“Sorry, Jusuf Wahid.”
Wahid was tall for a human and had darker coloring and narrower eyes than ex-Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick turned and gestured toward the last human in evidence, the female. “And this is Julia Kugara.”
The female stepped forward and looked Nickolai up and down. He realized that she was even taller than Wahid. Where Wahid was thin and bony, Kugara was lithe and muscular. She was the first human he had ever seen who didn’t appear clumsy.
“So what do we call you?” she asked.
“My name is Nickolai Rajasthan.”
Nickolai had been living with the Fallen for over a year, but he had only been seeing them for a handful of days. Despite his new eyes, he was still blind to the meanings of facial expressions and body language. Judging by tone of voice and the scent cues that surrounded him, Wahid was the most nervous at his presence.
Fitzpatrick said, “I believe I saw you a few days ago, at the military exchange.”
“Perhaps you did.”
“Small world,” Wahid said. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”
Kugara snorted. “God, aren’t you a paranoid shit, Jusuf?” She looked Nickolai up and down, her face changing to an inscrutable human expression. “Not like Nickolai here can blend into a crowd at ProMex. Don’t mind him,” she addressed Nickolai. “Jusuf thinks everyone is a spy.”
Wahid snorted. “Everyone can benefit from a little professional paranoia.”
Nickolai growled a little in discomfort that he hoped the humans didn’t perceive. He glared at Wahid and asked, “Who exactly would I be spying for?”
The odor of fear gratified Nickolai as Wahid backed up a few steps and held up his hands between them. “I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything.”
Good, he doesn’t actually know anything, Nickolai thought.
“I was with the Occisis Marines for ten years before they cut me loose,” Fitzpatrick said. “What outfit were you with?”
“I was with no ‘outfit.’ ” Nickolai shook his head. “I served my clan, House Rajasthan.”
“What does that mean?” Wahid asked.
“It means he’s a member of the royal family on a planet that chooses their leaders based on their prowess at hand-to-hand combat.” Kugara turned to look at Wahid. “So don’t piss him off.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Wahid asked.
“My father came from Dakota,” Kugara said, “so don’t piss me off.”
Nickolai caught his breath. With all the information Mr. Antonio provided about the nature of Mosasa, his business, and the type of people he might hire, never was the possibility broached that someone from Dakota might be present.
Dakota.
Dakota was one of the original Seven Worlds, founded when the men of Earth decided that they would no longer live with their damned creations. Having stolen the mantle of God, the naked devil chose to cast his handiwork into exile. It was an exodus of all the sapient products of their genetic engineers.
But more than the chosen were exiled. The Fallen hadn’t only raised lesser creatures to become their warriors. They had twisted themselves, re-creating their own flesh into something that was not chosen and was not fallen. And those of once-human ancestry had settled on only one of the old Seven Worlds.
Dakota.
Nickolai could now see the subtle differences that marked Kugara as not quite human. Her scent was different—fainter and less offensive. Her motions were more fluid—quicker, stronger.
He had never met one of the Angels of Dakota. Of all those here, Kugara was closest to God, someone whose flesh bore the mark of God’s own creation without being marred by the sin of arrogance that damned the rest of the Fallen.
He might have said something, but someone chose that time to announce, “So has everyone been introduced?”
The new voice came from the shadowed perimeter of the hangar. A male voice, which was disconcerting since he had not smelled the speaker, still couldn’t smell him. Nickolai turned his head, and his eyes shifted spectrum until he saw the newcomer in the darkness. A hairless human form, as tall as Kugara and darker than Wahid. The man wore a gray coverall that covered most of his body. His most distinct feature was a massive tattoo of a fantastic creature drawn with luminescent dye; the neck of the beast emerged from the collar of the coverall, wrapped around the man’s neck, and curled around his left ear, leaving the profile of the beast’s face drawn across the side of his own.