Excerpt: Betrayer

They continued walking. After about half an hour, Asara stopped and faced him. “Corporal Graham? We need to speak about those who are after us. They will be coming tonight.” It was getting dark; he needed to know.

“How many and what kind of weapons do they have? How will they know where to find us?”

“At least a dozen. Their weapons will be neutralisers like those,” she said, pointing to the one he was holding. “They are effective at a great range when used skillfully. We will not even know they are around before they incapacitate us and recapture us.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to be smart about it, because I’m not going back to that place.”

“Oh, they won’t take us there,” Asara said, matter-of-factly. “They will take you to my overseer’s facility. It is... much farther away and we will be held there for several days before we will both be killed.”

Corporal Graham looked at her. “Damn, have a little optimism. You’re talking like we’re already captured.”

“I don’t see how we can avoid that course of events.”

“That’s because you’re not the soldier,” he said. “Now tell me about them. And especially how they can find us. Maybe we can make it harder for them or lead them in the wrong direction.”

“It will not be easy to fool them.”

He rolled his eyes. “How can they find us.”

“When I don’t report in this evening, they will know something is wrong. They will send scouts to the facility. It will not take them long to find out exactly what happened.”

“Even though we locked up the two guards?”

“Even though. They will be found and the guards will tell them what happened and that we left together.”

“Shit, I wish you’d have told me this before. I knew we should have killed them.”

Asara was shocked. She couldn’t imagine killing her own people in such a situation. Is he a complete madman?

He somehow noticed her reaction, even with her environment suit. “What, you don’t think so?”

“We are not accustomed to killing our own kind,” she said simply. “If you had killed them, I would not have gone with you.”

“You don’t kill your own... but they'd kill you simply for failure?”

“That’s different.”

“No, that’s fucked up, that’s what that is. You wouldn’t kill to defend yourself? To save your own life?”

Asara had no real answer to that. “I don’t kill,” she said.

“Well, you might want to learn if we’re going to survive this.”