CHAPTER THREE

Aiden

H e was a combat specialist. Fuck me sideways, he was like a finely tuned robotic assassin, or some shit. I’d never seen anyone move like that in my entire life. And the way he’d changed colour, plunging into the deepest black I’d ever seen, was like watching one of those CGI horror movies the Derelians kept making. I was suddenly thoroughly grateful he was on my side.

I trudged through the jungle, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to get my head around whatever the fuck Kade actually was. I was going to have to read that damn operations manual at the first available opportunity.

Unfortunately, given the shit show that was our current mission, the first opportunity was likely to be when we were safely back at the base in a couple of days’ time.

“How many weapons do you have on you?” I asked, glancing back over my shoulder.

“Eight,” came the entirely matter-of-fact reply. “Mostly knives, but also a knuckleduster and a length of chain.”

“Huh. Good to know,” I said, for lack of a better reply. What the fuck was I supposed to do with a dimari who was a combat specialist? All of the dimari I’d heard about were more like domestic servants, trained to cook meals and wash clothes, meek and unassuming.

Then again, what the Alliance knew about the dimari was seriously lacking, given the fact that all of the ones that arrived on Rendol 4 ended up committing suicide within a couple of years of bonding to their masters.

And that was why I was so on edge, every time I apparently did something that Kade wasn’t expecting. He’d been uncomfortable when I’d asked how he’d changed his colour. He’d been almost offended when I’d bungled the fact that I hadn’t known about his combat skills – as much as a dimari would ever allow themselves to express such an arrogant emotion as offence. When I’d asked him to call me Aiden, he’d damn near had a heart attack. If he figured out that, far from being his intended master, I was an ignorant noob who knew almost nothing about him, he’d probably sink into a pit of despair within a couple of short weeks.

But as much as I hated the slave trade that I’d inadvertently become a part of, all of my anger was focused on the Eumadians; the bastards who enslaved the Vangravians and brainwashed them into lives of servitude. I actually felt a great deal of compassion for the dimari themselves. It must be terrifying, being shipped off to an unknown planet where you didn’t know anyone, to become completely dependent on another person. A person who might treat you with kindness and respect, or who might be a complete asshole and make your life a misery.

I didn’t want to make Kade’s life miserable. But based on the horrifyingly high death rates among his kind, it was clear that humans – or any other Alliance species, for that matter – were woefully ill equipped to be good masters.

And case in point, dragging him through two gunfights and three days of jungle survival was about as bad an opening to our relationship as I could imagine. Fuck.

Well, at least he seemed physically fit enough for the journey. I’d long ago learned not to judge other species based solely on their physical appearance. The yellow and black Wasops – what Revier had been – were small and slight, generally no more than five feet tall, but they were easily twice as strong as a human. The Sedgegeds, on the other hand, had long claws on their hands which looked fearsome, but were entirely ornamental. They were hinged, so that if a Sedgeged actually tried to stab anyone, the claws would just bend backwards, rendering them completely harmless.

But so far, at least, Kade was easily keeping pace with me, and the brief battle he’d had with the Culrads hadn’t winded him in the slightest. So I was going with the assumption that he was at least as hardy as a human, and most probably a little better.

I glanced back at him again – under the guise of making sure he was keeping up – and honestly, if I hadn’t known what species he was, I would have easily mistaken him for a human. His skin – or rather, scales – were a little darker than my skin, but a fairly close match. He had short, black hair, shaved almost to the scalp down the sides, with a bushier section on top. Kind of like a fauxhawk, I supposed. His ears were pointed, and a little larger than a human’s, and they twitched constantly, as he tracked the sounds in the forest around us. The only major difference between us were his eyes. They were blue, but such a pale and vivid shade of blue, it was like staring into the depths of a glacier. They were stunningly beautiful .

I forced my mind away from the problem of how to care for him and back onto monitoring our surroundings. Kade’s hearing was apparently significantly better than my own, but that didn’t mean I could delegate the task of keeping track of any would-be attackers. This was supposed to have been a routine reconnaissance mission, albeit with the ever-present threat of the Geshtoch, but with my two teammates dead, I could not afford to get sloppy.

Finally, after another hour and a half of the slow, trudging half-walk, half-climb, the hulking shape of the Eumadians’ damaged ship came into view. It was a dull grey colour, long and wide, and it had carved an impressive groove into the hillside, taking out dozens of trees before finally coming to a stop halfway down the slope. The hulking mass of the ship loomed above us… but then a more careful inspection revealed that it wasn’t nearly so big as it seemed. The near wall of the ship was more or less intact, but the other side had been ripped completely away, and a few glimpses through the roof showed tattered struts and frayed metal sheeting. There wouldn’t be much left inside worth salvaging, but we might get lucky and find some electrical equipment or medical supplies that were worth having. Rendol 4 tried to be as self sufficient as possible, but on a planet that was only partially terraformed, shortages of various things were inevitable.

I stopped, gesturing for Kade to get down, as I lowered one knee to the ground. With the Culrads wandering the jungle looking for lost cargo, caution was vital. I pulled up the radio on my comm. “Kent, you there? Over.”

There was no reply, and then three gunshots sounded from further up the hillside. “Fuck,” I swore, grabbing my rifle off my shoulder. Then I glanced at Kade. “Do you know how to fire a gun?”

“Yes, Master,” he replied, without hesitation.

Perhaps it was crazy to be giving my pistol to a man who I’d only met a couple of hours ago, purely on his say so that he knew what to do with it, but having seen his skills with the other group of Culrads, I was inclined to believe him when he said he could handle a gun. I drew the pistol from its holster at my hip and handed it to him. “The safety’s on,” I advised him. “And three of my guys are up there, so don’t shoot anything that’s not a Culrad.”

“Yes, Master,” he said, already moving stealthily up towards the ship. I followed, feeling a little embarrassed about the way I shimmied and slipped, while he was as sure-footed as a cat on a garden fence.

Halfway there, my radio crackled. “Kent here. We’re pinned down outside the ship. Three Culrads inside. Where are you? Over.”

“On my way up the hill, with the Vangravian. Can you show me your location? Over. ”

Up on the hillside, I spotted the flicker of metal reflecting sunlight. They were sheltered behind a shattered chunk of the ship that had cleaved off on its journey down the hill. “Got it. Over,” I told Kent.

“We could use the backup,” Kent said, sounding a little more stressed than was typical for the seasoned soldier. “Kent out.”

A few more shots echoed out over the hillside, but they sounded more like warning shots than actual attempts to kill someone. “Did you see that flash up there?” I asked Kade.

“Yes, Master.”

“That’s where we’re going. Be careful,” I added, shooting him a serious look. “I’ve lost two friends today already. I don’t want to lose a third.”

“Yes, Master.” Fuck, didn’t he ever say anything else? If that was the extent of our conversation, we were going to have a very boring life together.

The scramble up the hillside took longer than I would have liked. But when we arrived at the other team’s hiding place, they were all still there, dirty, but uninjured. “Sir,” I said to Kent, though we were technically the same rank. Kent was a Denzogal, eight feet tall and covered in short, mottled brown fur. In my teenage years, I’d been amused to learn that human mythology contained a creature called a sasquatch, and the Denzogals largely fitted the description. They’d been the species to initiate the Alliance, and the first to colonise this region of space, hence the official title of our political agreement being the Denzogal Alliance.

Kent looked uncomfortable as he tried to squish his large frame behind the available cover. I nodded to Vosh and Nichols, the two other soldiers in his team. “Good to see you,” Kent said, glancing around the barrier towards the ship, then reloading his rifle. “They’ve been holed up in there for a good half an hour. We can’t get them to come out, and they won’t let us in.” He spared a glance Kade’s way. “Hey,” he said, by way of greeting.

“This is Kade,” I introduced him. “He’s a combat specialist.”

Kent sent me a dubious look. “Is that why he’s holding your gun?”

Technically, having my side arm unsecured was a breach of regulations. “Yes, it is,” I replied blithely. “Have you thought about lobbing a grenade at them?”

“I thought about it,” Kent replied. “But the fact that they’re here suggests there’s something valuable inside, and a grenade would destroy whatever it is. I was hoping we might come up with another way to end this standoff.”

“Master,” Kade’s soft voice breathed into my ear. He was hunkered down in the dirt right beside me. “I can see the edge of one of the Culrad’s shoulders. If you would allow me to use your rifle, I could probably hit him. ”

Kent glared at me. “Are you fucking insane?” he hissed, and it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was talking to me or to Kade. But given that he was at least passingly familiar with the way dimari worked, I decided to assume he was talking to me. Since Kade was bonded to me, and we hadn’t yet established any clear order of rank, there was little chance he was going to listen to anything Kent said.

“Yes,” I replied, handing my rifle over to Kade and accepting the pistol in return. “But wait ‘til you see this.” Should it have surprised me that I had absolute faith that Kade could do what he said he could?

Kade flipped down the inbuilt stabiliser to rest it on the edge of the metal frame we were hiding behind and lined up the shot. His eyesight was apparently also on the list of things that were better on him than on me. His hands were rock steady, and his finger squeezed the trigger, the shot cracking through the silence. A startled yelp followed, and I caught a glimmer of movement as the Culrad who’d been hit jerked away from the doorway.

“You sure there are only three of them?” I asked Kent. He nodded.

“We have you outnumbered,” I announced loudly to the Culrads. They didn’t speak Alliance Common, but it was a solid bet that they, like the rest of us, had been fitted with translators.

A garbled reply was spat out of the ship’s entrance, and my own translator took only a second or two to identify the language. “Fuck you,” the Culrad had said, and the venomous reply came as no surprise.

“Is whatever’s in that ship worth dying for?” I asked. The Culrads still had the option to surrender, and the Alliance was pretty good about relocating prisoners to neutral planets outside of Alliance space.

The Culrad scoffed. “You don’t even know what it is, and you’re willing to die for it?”

“He has a point,” I muttered to Kent. “I mean, I know this is our mission, and all, but this is way past what Henderson would have had in mind when he sent us out here.”

“So we’re just supposed to walk away?” Nichols snapped, from Kent’s other side. He was the only other human on this mission, while Vosh was a Wasop, like Revier had been. Nichols, though, was young, still completing the last of his training in the Academy, and he had yet to learn when discretion became the better part of valour.

“So what are we going to tell Henderson?” Kent asked. “The Culrads said some rude words to us, so we let them walk away with our cargo?”

I sighed. Kent was a solid soldier, but this was one of the things I didn’t like about him. The Culrads hadn’t just said some rude words. They’d killed two of our men and had at least three solid attempts at killing more of us. And we still didn’t know what was inside that ship.

I glanced at Kade. “Any ideas? ”

“No, Master,” he said. “I have not been briefed sufficiently on this mission to be making suggestions as to how to complete it.”

It was a valid point and I didn’t blame him for his reluctance to voice an opinion. There was a good chance that whatever was in the ship could make valued improvements to our city; electrical components could be stripped down and repurposed, medical supplies could save lives, terraforming equipment could boost our efforts to stabilise the sometimes erratic climate on Rendol 4. But without knowing what the goods were, we couldn’t make an assessment on whether it might be worth risking our own lives to collect it.

The silence continued, both from our side of the fence, and theirs.

“Okay, so listen up,” I called to the Culrads, hoping they were inclined to be reasonable today. “I really want to go home in one piece at the end of today. And I’m pretty sure you want that too. So how about we split whatever this magical cargo is, and everyone walks away alive?”

“It belongs to us,” the Culrad called back. “The Eumadians stole it from us.”

“And now it’s sitting on our planet, cleanly within Alliance space,” I replied. “So I figure that makes at least half of it ours.”

“This will save many of our people’s lives,” the man insisted.

“Right back at you, buddy. If it’ll save your people, it’ll save ours as well.”

A prolonged pause followed, while Nichols and Kent glared at me. Kade and Vosh waited patiently, their expressions neutral. “How do we know you aren’t just going to shoot us, the instant we agree to negotiate?” the Culrad asked.

Now, that was sounding more promising. The man had reasonable doubts, but he wasn’t giving me a flat no. “How about I give you a gesture of good faith,” I replied. Then, without waiting for any particular reply, I holstered my pistol and very, very slow, I stood up. I held my hands to the side, more a symbolic gesture than anything, since there were still four guns aimed at the Culrads. “Would you allow me to approach the ship?”

A pale head peeked into the doorway. The Culrads were an ugly species, by human standards; chalky white skin, completely hairless, and their hands were about twice the size of a human’s, making them seem gangly and disproportionate. They only had four fingers on each hand, rather than five.

“Hold your fire,” I instructed Kade, just to make sure he was on board with what was going on. I was pretty sure he was smart enough to understand the nuances of the situation, but given how little time I’d had to get to know him, I didn’t want to make any reckless assumptions.

“You may approach,” the Culrad replied, stepping partially into the doorway. “We can discuss this like civilised people. ”

I carefully stepped around our makeshift barrier, then had to fight for patience as I spent a good three or four minutes climbing over tangled vines and fallen trees to get up to the ship. “My name is Lieutenant Aiden Hill of the Alliance Military,” I introduced myself, looking up the steps at the man.

“I am Khelesh Ve Tishraga, owner of the cargo freighter Valholon.”

“And why do you believe you have a claim to this cargo?” I asked. “Your ship made an unauthorised jump through the Rendol wormhole, which lies within established Alliance space.”

“Our ship was attacked by this Eumadian cruiser when we were in the Xillo system. They disabled our engines and then stole a significant part of our cargo. By the time we caught up to them, they were preparing to jump into the Rendol system. We followed them purely to retrieve what was rightfully ours.”

“And can you prove that this cargo is yours?” I asked. Based on what I’d already seen out in the jungle, I had a pretty good idea that I knew the answer.

“We can,” Khelesh replied. Then he turned to stare down at where the rest of my team was waiting. “If we are to reach a civilised agreement, then the rest of your team should participate in the negotiation. We would not like anyone to change their minds after the fact.”

It was at once a reasonable request, and the potential set up for them to kill us all.

But they hadn’t shot me when I’d stood up, nor made any attempt to harm me while I’d been standing here, and if, as they said, the cargo had originally been theirs, then their attempt to get it back from the Eumadians made sense. The Eumadians, after all, were well known for taking whatever they thought they could get away with, purely in the interests of making a profit.

I could refuse, but then the negotiations would probably go south. But then again, putting my entire team in harm’s way was a fool’s move. “How about two of them come up,” I said. “The two who’ll remain behind are subordinates who have no authority over this decision anyway.”

Khelesh considered the compromise. “That would be acceptable,” he decided finally.

I activated the radio on my comm, not wanting to yell a whole bunch of instructions across the clearing. “Kade and Kent, could you two come up here, please? Vosh and Nichols, you stay where you are. Kent, I need you to verify the legitimate ownership of the cargo. Over.” Perhaps it was dictatorial of me to be calling Kade up as well, but his presence was part of a calculated bet. Yes, it was putting him at risk, but if the Culrads did decide to screw us over, he was the one most likely to be able to defend us.

And he was a slave who had no choice in the matter, my conscience reminded me. Despite all of my supposed morals about abhorring the slave trade, it seemed I wasn’t above using him as cannon fodder the instant a mission went sideways.

No, that wasn’t true, I argued with myself. If I genuinely thought he would be in danger, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. Kent was coming up as well, and since he and I were both lieutenants, we were the two ranking officers on this mission. Yes, there was a risk involved. But it was a calculated risk, with a realistic chance for a positive outcome. At least, that’s what I told myself.

Kade moved first, stepping cautiously out of cover only moments after he’d heard my request. The rifle was still in his hands, and he seemed uninclined to put it away. He moved slowly but gracefully towards us, while Kent hung back, gesturing frantically about something, and presumably attempting to call Kade back. Then, when he saw that Kade was ignoring him, he slumped in defeat, then began the slow climb up to the ship, his big body not managing the journey anywhere near as gracefully as Kade had.

When Kent finally joined us, I explained the situation. “The Culrads claim that the Eumadians stole their cargo before they came through the wormhole and they are simply attempting to reclaim what is theirs. Khelesh, this is Lieutenant Zom Kent, and this is Kade.”

Khelesh nodded to Kent, but his gaze lingered on Kade; specifically on his ears and the pattern of his hair. “You are Vangravian,” he said, after a long moment.

“He is,” I confirmed, assuming that Kade himself wouldn’t respond to the statement.

Khelesh made a humming sound. “We saw the crate on our way up here. But he was not what we came for. Culrads do not trade with Eumadians.” Was that due to a general dislike of the Eumadians, or because of objections to their slave trade? As much as the statement piqued my curiosity, now was not the time for in-depth political discussions.

“Shall we take a look at this cargo?” I prompted him. The sooner we could get this resolved, the sooner we could get the fuck out of here and I could stop looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone was about to shoot me.

“Please, come this way,” Khelesh said, leading us into the patchy interior of the ship. We clambered over bent struts and skirted a section of the wall that looked about ready to collapse, until we came to a room that was still mostly intact. A hole in the roof allowed plenty of daylight inside, and I could see that there were eight sturdy crates strewn about the floor, each of them about one cubic metre in size.

Khelesh rubbed the dirt off the corner of the nearest one. “As you can see, these clearly bear the Culrad trade insignia. They were our legal property, until the Eumadians stole them. ”

I bent closer, taking a good look at the insignia. But the amount of dirt that had been rubbed into the design meant that a definitive answer eluded us. To solve that problem, I shrugged off my pack and pulled a water canteen out of it, then grabbed a sock I’d worn a couple of days ago. I wet the sock, then used it to scrub away at the dirt. Khelesh seemed to know what I was looking for, so he made no objections to my scrutiny.

Once the insignia was clean, I stepped back… and there was no longer any doubt in my mind that these were, indeed, Culradish crates. The metal plate that contained the insignia was made of interwoven platinum and copper, the two metals creating a chequered pattern that was the signature design of the Culrad Trade Association. The insignia itself was engraved into the metal with the precision of a computerised laser. It wasn’t unknown for certain unscrupulous species to go around changing the insignia on cargo crates, particularly at some of the less reputable trade stations that hovered in between claimed galactic territories. But that was the exact reason that the Culrads had defaulted to a design as expensive and complex as this one. It would have been impossible to replicate the insignia without a large amount of metalworking equipment and a laser engraver, neither of which were available in a backwater jungle like Rendol 4.

“Fair enough,” I conceded, once Kent had also taken a look at the insignia. “They were rightfully your crates. Now, may I ask what they contain that’s important enough to kill two of my team for them?” There was a clear reprimand in the words; a reminder to the Culrads that we, too, had reason to be pissed off about this endeavour, and that we had agreed to split the cargo, regardless of whose it had originally been.

Khelesh stepped forward, activating the release on the nearest crate. The lid popped up, and he opened the crate to reveal a solid block of glowing red stone, nearly as large as the crate itself. “Resenia stone,” he said, staring reverently at the crate. “Our colony on Pen 2 was hit by a meteor. It took out half a city. Two million people dead, plus millions more injured. They’ve been without power for weeks. This shipment was intended to be a lifeline to restore essential heating and medical systems, until they manage to get their solar generators back online.”

Resenia stone was one of the more remarkable geological discoveries of the known galaxy. It was lightweight, but highly electrically conductive, and was even capable of acting as a battery to store power, if it was subjected to high enough pressure. Scientists had spent decades studying the crystalline structure of the rock, but to a certain extent, they were still unable to explain how it did what it did. And for a city that had been half destroyed, a block this size would have meant restoring power to close to a hundred thousand people. No wonder the Culrads had been willing to die for it.

“Three of the crates contain resenia stone,” Khelesh explained. “The rest of them contain medical supplies and food. You are welcome to keep those. But you must let us take the stone. Too many lives will be lost without it.”

Fuck. This mission had been screwed from the start, but somehow, the universe had just found a way to make me feel like an even bigger asshole. It was tempting to tell the Culrads to take the entire shipment, our deal be damned. But two things were stopping me. One was the fit that HQ would have, if they found out we’d given away such a vital prize. And with the mess I was going to be in explaining why I had a bonded slave following me around, I could hardly afford to do more to put myself in their bad books. But aside from that, there were also thousands of people on Rendol 4 who would benefit from the medical supplies here. I thoroughly sympathised with the plight of the Culrads’ colony, but were their lives necessarily more important than Alliance lives here in my own city?

“You know what?” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. “We said we would split the cargo, right? And by my calculation, that means that four of these crates are yours, not just three. So you should take this one, as well,” I said, pointing to one that had the galactic symbol for ‘medical aid’ stamped on the side. “And we’ll take the other four.” That left us with two crates of food and two of medical supplies. “How does that sound?” I was looking at Kent, rather than Khelesh, as I asked the question, and my well timed glare made him shut his mouth, rather than voicing the argument I could see brewing in his dour expression. He was going to argue that we should keep one of the resenia stone crates. And if he actually said that, I was going to punch him in the face. Even if I would break my hand in the process.

“That sounds… reasonable,” Kent conceded finally.

I turned back to Khelesh and found that he was watching me with a quizzical expression. He looked over the crates, and then back to me. “You are an intriguing man, Lieutenant Aiden Hill,” he said finally. “Perhaps we will do business again, at some point in the future.”

It was unlikely that we ever would. The Culrads in general kept to themselves, and were a little too thuggish for most Alliance dealings. “Best of luck for your colony,” I said. “You’re free to take your crates and leave. You have my word that we won’t follow you.”

“You have my gratitude,” he said simply. Then the three of them began dragging the crates away. They would have a heck of a time transporting them through the dense jungle, but that was their problem, not mine. They picked their way out of the crumbling ship, and I had the belated thought to radio through to Vosh and Nichols, telling them not to interfere with the departing Culrads. We’d explain the rest of the story to them later.

“I suppose we’d better get these wrapped up for a transporter to pick them up,” I said, already moving to drag some of the cargo mesh off the walls, where it had got tangled in the midst of the crash. We’d drag the crates outside, then wrap the mesh around them like a big fishing net and leave a locator beacon on top of the pile for the retrieval crew.

Once we were done, it was getting close to nightfall, and I looked around and sighed. I’d hoped to be at least part way home by the end of today, but we were going to have to find somewhere safe to spend the night, and the remaining solid walls of the crashed ship were too good an offering to pass up.

“Have a quick look around to see if there’s anything else here worth salvaging, then we’ll set up camp in the old crew quarters,” I instructed the team. I didn’t have a problem with taking the lead, regardless of the fact that Kent was technically equal to my rank. On paper, we might have looked the same, but he’d been a lieutenant for only two years, while I was poised to become a commander any day now. Three years of service as a regular grunt, plus five more as an officer gave me a clear win in the rank department, and all three of my Alliance comrades knew it.

“Good idea,” Kent said, but there was a sharp edge to his voice, despite his apparently amiable words. “We can collect some wood. Make a fire.” His eyes met mine. “And then we can talk about Kade, and what the fuck you think you were doing, handing out resenia stone to Culrads like it was solstice candy.”