Free Bitter Waters by Wen Spencer Page A

something.
    â€œIt’s been nearly a hundred and fifty years since I gave up raising my son to fight the Ontongard,” Rennie said. “I’d rather not miss seeing my grandson grow up too.”
    Over two hundred years ago, an Ontongard ship entered Sol’s star system. If their invasion had gone as planned—following the same course as countless invasions prior—after a scout ship secured a landing site, the Ontongard would have landed en masse. Ukiah’s father, Prime, though had been a mutated rebel among the Ontongard ranks, physically like them, but mentally an individual. Prime sabotaged the mother ship so it crashed on Mars, and then, as part of the crew of the scout ship, sabotaged it too. Only one Ontongard survived, Hex.
    Hex, like all Ontongard, could grow himself by infecting humans with his alien genetics, spreading from the one body to countless others. Wounded and dying, Prime had no choice but to infect the first creatures he encountered, a wolf pack, and hope that one would survive to carry on his fight. Coyote was the only wolf that survived, and he went on to infecthumans with his wolf-tainted alien DNA, and thus the Pack came into being.
    Rennie had been born human in 1834. He was the first human to survive Coyote’s attempts to make a Get. He had abandoned his wife and infant son to carry on the war Prime started; the decision was based partially on the desperation level of their secret war, and partially on the desire to keep his all-too-human loved ones out of the cross fire. When the Pack found Ukiah, Prime’s long-lost child, they decided to view him as their son; they were, after all, extensions of Prime. The same logic that made Kittanning Ukiah’s son, also made the infant grandson to all of the Pack.
    Despite looking only in his late twenties, Rennie was full of grandfatherly pride as he held Kittanning. “What a big boy! Someone is impatient to grow up!”
    â€œThat makes two of us,” Ukiah thought.
    Catching Ukiah’s thought, Rennie laughed. “Like father, like son.” Then, because it suddenly struck Ukiah that his own impatience might be spurring Kittanning on, Rennie added, “It’s Pack blood, Cub. It doesn’t like being helpless. He’ll slow down once he’s up and running. Bear did.”
    As if summoned by his name, Rennie’s lieutenant, Bear Shadow, came around the corner pushing a cart. Unlike Rennie, who was in jeans and a muscle shirt, the Cheyenne warrior wore a full leather duster and smelled faintly of gunmetal. He had a hawk feather tied into his black braid and necklace of bear claws at his neck. “What did I do?”
    â€œGrew up fast after the Ontongard reduced you back to infancy with that bomb,” Rennie told Bear. “We gathered what we could find of him that wasn’t burnt to a crisp,” Rennie explained. “Getting the mice to merge wasn’t difficult, but they chose to form a bear cub. We had to work to get them to convert to Little Bear, and then he wasn’t happy until he was running on two legs, so he grew like crazy.”
    Kittanning was staring at Rennie with fascination. Ukiah wasn’t sure if it was just the novelty of being able to read the Pack leader’s surface thoughts or if Kittanning was fastening onto the idea of growing up quickly.
    â€œDon’t give Kitt any ideas.” Ukiah shook the cantaloupe atRennie. “It’s hard enough to explain my having a son, let alone why he’s suddenly a toddler.”
    Rennie laughed. “People expect babies to grow fast.”
    â€œNot that fast,” Ukiah growled at him and sniffed the cantaloupe. It seemed ripe enough. He added it to his cart. Bear, he noticed, had picked up yams, pineapples, sweet onions, red peppers, and was now looking at the mushrooms. “Are you actually buying food?”
    Normally the Pack ate at a long list of bars where they could get a decent meal and