Big Brother watched over the humans.

Big Sister watches over the Sarbacapuch.

Paranoia is a survival trait.

Three simple facts of life. The government is everywhere. It loves you. You are its child and it just has your best interest in mind. And only the paranoid know it…but they're crazy.

When Sini K’tatl’yan received the telegram that he was to be held physically responsible for the Council’s science fair projects after they came to Earth, he knew it was a bad omen. He knew he was headed right for a government conspiracy that years later people would be reading and speculating over “what really happened”.

Since the earliest Sini could remember, he had been fascinated by unexplained phenomena. Creatures that weren’t known to exist but still had been seen, shadow-beings sighted during séances, ghosts, mythical monsters from all corners of the universe…Big Sister.

It wasn’t that Sini felt the government had his lines tapped…at least he didn’t think they did until that creature moved in next door to him. It was just…he felt a little too much government could do a lot of damage. He felt the government’s job was leaving its people alone unless they needed it and making sure enemies of the empire didn’t get too close.

Still, he knew that governments need scapegoats. As long as they have someone to take the blame off them…they're happy! And so, when Sini read about their little science fair project, about who and what she really was, he knew it was going to come back and bite him in the backside.

The government had more or less told him to stand back and let her do her own thing while keeping an eye on her and making reports every so often. Then, if she failed or was assassinated or something, the sleeper the Council had was coming after him, and quite possibly his wives and the Hatchery.

After knowing her for a few weeks, Sini felt better. He thought she was wily enough to stay out of trouble…but nobody’s perfect, especially those who glory in their wiles. Whether she got distracted by her own greatness or had merely been caught off-guard at an inopportune time, as leaders were prone to do, he couldn’t be sure.

Either way, Sini’s clawed feet thudded, limping slightly, over the desert sands as he prayed he would make it to the next sand dune. His breath scratched at his lungs, pounding in his chest like a hammer. The naturalists had only recently restored this planet’s atmosphere to its former glory and he was unused to the smell and feel of purified air, having grown up in an underground cavern.

His frightened eyes scanned the desert, tuned to heat, looking for the person that had made the hunter become the hunted. He hoped the red glow associated with high bursts of adrenaline and other chemistry in the brain wasn’t alerting the hunter to Sini’s position. That would be bad.

Sini was Terran-born, born on the Earth outpost. Earth was his tribe, his hunting grounds. He knew more abut it than any other Sarbacapuch and most humans. He was gentler than the average Sarbacapuch, preferring to avoid needless fights, but being one knew how to defend himself if he had to.

He had to…he was just sorely outmatched. Tall for a Sarbie, he was also very thin. Not anorexically or unhealthily so, for a Sarbie, but lean and lithe. The person who was hunting him was almost as tall as a human and heavy and solid, physically as strong as a Sarbie…but bigger.

It had white fur and blue eyes, dark stripes lining its back. It had equal parts Sarbie and thylacine, bone-crushing jaws and powerful, jumping hind legs. Ryli L’thiir’non, the WarLady of Earth, had personally raised the creature from a test-tube pup into a fine-tuned killing machine. Not that she had intended to make him a killing machine.

The people who put the paper in the golem’s mouth did.

Sini flung himself onto the warm desert sands, watching his namesake, the Rising Desert Moon, creep up over the horizon. He was breathing hard, too scared and out of breath to control his breathing the way his Elders had shown him years ago. He was afraid for himself, for his wives, and the eggs in the Hatchery. He knew he was going to die that night and had settled to making his Peace while he could, blinking grit away from his oversized eyes.

He had been very young when he first escaped the Nameless City, seeking to explore the world above as any young kit would be. It was before he was thee years old, before he had Named himself, he knew, because he had seen the moon rising over the desert and it made such an impression on him, giant silver mother-sphere rising over a vast, open land without walls or doors, that he had named himself after her and had asked for a tattoo in her likeness on his wrist.

Tonight, as if mocking him, the moon and stars were shining brighter than they had ever been, free of the haze and fog the humans created with their dirty cars and filthy factories. He watched the sky and its bounty, praying and making his Peace.

Then he was in the air. His hunter had picked him up and tossed his small, frail body into the air like a rag doll, effectively throwing Sini onto the next dune, landing painfully on his side and outstretched wing.

As pain exploded into his mind, instinct told him to figure out what was hurt where. Split pinions, shattered wingbones, ribs…maybe more. The list countered higher as he felt a massive blow to his back, almost breaking his lightweight, Sarbie bones and snapping several spines as he went flying again, kicked into the air by a massive, clawed leg.

Sini howled, grabbing at his back for his sword, but he couldn’t find it. He had forgotten that the beast had chased him out here, unarmed. Shaking, Sini tried to climb to his feet, trembling violently with pain, shock, and adrenaline. The beast grabbed the luscious, red feathers that hung down his back, jerking Sini’s head sharply until all he could see was stars, figuratively and literally.

“They told you to watch out for her!” the beast roared in Sini’s long ears, sending waves of electric pain through his sensitive eardrums.

“They told me to stay out of her way, too!” Sini answered, shaking with fear while tears running out of swollen, black eyes, irritated by sand.

The beast jerked back, pulling Sini downward. The only thing that kept his back from breaking was the fact that Sarbies are extremely flexible.

“You were to keep an eye on her! Make sure she didn’t get hurt!”

“I tried! I…I…”

Every fiber of Sini’s being argued with each other. Sense told him to beg for his life and the lives of his wives and Hatchery, but instinct and pride told him to take his death on his feet, so to speak, without fear. Pain wracked his body, shockwaves through broken bones and lacerations. Warm, wet fluid ran down his back, stinging the exposed nerve endings from broken spines.

“What about you?!” Sini challenged, adrenaline making him numb to the pain and injury he was in. “Weren’t you created to be her bodyguard?!”

To Sini’s surprise, the beast laughed, showing just how much like its mistress it was.

“I was created to watch over her, yes, and to destroy those who endanger her!”

Sini knew what that meant. It had been clearly explained in the letter he had received about her. Anyone he told about her was going to die by whatever method the beast or Council (was there that much of a difference?) thought up at the time, and then he was next. He knew that, because she had vanished in the first place, by some reason or another, it was all his fault, and he was going to pay for it with his blood.

The creature lifted Sini by his arms again, lifting him toward the desert moon and flinging him as far as it could reach. He landed crumpled, wings a limp, bloody mass, as blackness started to tint his vision. Sini wasn’t even seeing stars by this point. One ankle was starting to swell, probably broken, his ribs were a bizarre mix of numb and smashed.

The beast loomed over him, picking Sini up by his red feathers. Sini looked up at it, eyes barely open, barely focusing, barely conscious…

Being a Sarbacapuch, even though Sini was in so much pain his body had ceased to register, he refused to beg for mercy. It wasn’t fitting of a Sarbacapuch to show too much weakness, and begging for mercy was too much. Sini had known the fight was inevitable as soon as the beast, the Thylac, had come after him.

But there are more ways to earn your life than by begging for it.

“Don’t kill me,” Sini gasped, lungs heaving hard against jagged edges of broken ribs. None seemed punctured yet, but every breath burned like fire. His strong hearts beat so hard against his ribs that he could see the pulse and hear it in his ears.

“And why shouldn’t I?” the beast asked. The beast wasn’t stupid, but just wasn’t as cunning and tactful as his mistress. In any event, it didn’t like being a puppet, but it had to do the job that was set before it. Still, it knew when to listen and when to slice a throat.

“I can…I don’t know who took her,” Sini wheezed. The beast raised the tube of its rifle to his forehead, giving Sini a little more strength to continue, a little more time before blissful unconsciousness set in.

His eyes half open, staring blankly at the sky above, coughing up blood, battered, beaten, and swollen, but still trying to protect his wives and Hatchery, the Desert Moon Rising continued, “But I know who can find her.”

A/N:

Anyone guess who Sini’s talking about? And jeez…don’t tick off the Thylac!