CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Aiden

I rounded on Volgoch, fury bubbling in my veins. “And you didn’t think it was a bad idea to unleash an uncontrollable elite assassin on the galaxy?” Because that’s what Kade was. I’d seen it in the jungle with the Culrads. I’d seen it in the desert with the Geshtoch. And now I was seeing it in a courtroom full of innocent people, while he stood with a weapon in his hand that could kill every single person in this room in under a minute. “What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“If you want him to calm down, I suggest you remove the threat,” Volgoch said negligently.

“Henderson?” I snapped, my nerves frayed. “Can we secure the Nwandu and have them removed from the room?” That would be the quickest way to ensure nobody else died.

Before Henderson could reply, Kade spoke up. “They have highly advanced hand-to-hand combat skills,” he announced. “They’ll need to be restrained.”

“I’ll go round up some handcuffs,” Henderson said, heading for the door.

“Try manacles instead,” Kade advised him, not giving a shit that he was giving orders to a superior officer.

“In the meantime, nobody move,” Associate Nors spoke up. “This is clearly a delicate situation, and we’re all going to wait until it’s more under control before we start thrashing out the details. Everyone just take a deep breath and stay exactly where you are.”

Thankfully, her authoritative tone worked. Everyone stood still, glancing at each other nervously, until Henderson came back with a handful of police officers and the requested manacles. They worked quickly to secure the remaining Nwandu, then escorted them out of the room .

Once they were gone, I turned back to Kade. “Give me the gun,” I told him sternly. This time, he did. I handed it off to Kent, who hurried it from the room, presumably to be secured in the weapons lockup.

“Right,” Nors said, swiftly taking control of the situation. “I think we need to start getting a few answers. Jethrigol, would you send me that shipping manifest, please?”

“Certainly.” He tapped a few buttons on his comm, and then Nors’ comm beeped. She and the judges huddled around the bench, running a few analyses on the file and muttering amongst themselves. Finally, she stood up again. “It seems that you’re telling the truth. On this part, at least,” she said to Jethrigol. “It is a genuine shipping manifest. And it does, indeed, list Vendanu as Kade’s intended buyer.”

I put a gentle hand on Kade’s shoulder. He seemed perfectly relaxed, now that the Nwandu were gone, but I wanted to be sure. “Are you okay?” I asked him softly.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his tone almost dismissive. As if killing an interspecies ambassador was an everyday occurrence.

“We’ll still need to verify the authenticity of your other videos,” Nors said to Jethrigol, seeming somewhat at a loss for what to do next. “This is… disturbing news.”

“I have a whole lot of questions about this,” one of the judges piped up, looking unkempt and startled with her ruffled feathers. “The first one being, how the heck did you know this case was happening? How did you know we were negotiating with the Nwandu? And how did you get into the building?” Okay, so that was three questions, but all of them were going to need rapid answers if we were going to trust anything Jethrigol said.

Jethrigol bowed his head, and I got the impression he was attempting to look respectful. With facial expressions and body language so varied across different species, it could be hard to tell with the peoples we weren’t familiar with. “The same way anyone gets information they need that is not publically available; bribery,” he answered. Then he snorted, his respectful stance temporarily vanishing. “The same way the Eumadians got a handful of your own Parliamentary representatives to humour the absurdity of this case. Alliance laws have already created provisions for Vangravians who end up here. And yet you were debating whether or not this particular dimari was an animal or a person?” He laughed. “Bribery was also the way the Nwandu were able to sneak lethal weapons into a restricted courtroom. If you pay people enough money, they will let you do literally anything.”

The judge looked suitably disturbed by that news. “We’ll have to look into that,” she said, and I could imagine that whichever of the court’s security personnel had let the oversight happen were going to be in some incredibly deep shit .

And some of the Associates had let themselves be bribed into helping the Eumadians? Associate Nors looked like she wanted to kill someone, and I predicted that heads were going to roll when the truth of that clusterfuck came out. With an election coming up in six months, there would be a handful of Associates suddenly finding themselves out of a job – or possibly in jail, depending on how deep the rot went.

But then Jethrigol continued. “But on the issue of how we knew the Nwandu were here in the first place… Weeks ago, we intercepted a Nwandu Skullier traversing Alliance space. Ever since they attacked us, we’ve kept a close eye on their activities. So finding them loitering here was concerning. We caught up to their ship as it was approaching the Fol wormhole and tried to destroy it. Unfortunately, we were not successful. We only managed to disable it.”

“That was you?” I blurted out. I clearly remembered Henderson’s report on the Nwandu ship being shot down.

“Indeed it was,” Jethrigol replied. “The Alliance then assisted them in repairing their ship, which was when we started putting out serious feelers as to what they were doing here. We have a vested interest in disrupting their activities, no matter who they’re dealing with. But given Lieutenant Hill’s actions a few months ago…” He shrugged. “We decided to take a more personal interest in the matter.”

The judge shook out her feathers, not quite sure what to make of that. “Well, if your claims are true, then we owe you a debt of gratitude. If, however, you’re lying, then you’ve created an enormous problem for us.”

“ We created a problem?” Jethrigol asked in surprise. “It was Vendanu herself who brought unauthorised weapons into a peaceful court hearing. And she was the one who bought a dimari from the Eumadians. That much, at least, we have proved. To my knowledge, the Alliance tries to limit their dealings with species who engage with the slave trade. Even if we only ever manage to prove her purchase of Kade, then that by itself should cast significant doubt on any agreement you might have had with them. It’s the Nwandu who will be answering the sticky questions here, not you.”

Over at the side of the room, the Eumadians were muttering to each other. They seemed to reach some sort of agreement, and as one, began packing up their comm screens and putting on their jackets.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Nors asked them loudly, seeing them intending to leave.

Volgoch shrugged. “We are finished here. We’re going home.”

“But we haven’t reached an official verdict on the case,” one of the Solof lawyers objected. “Don’t you want to…”

Volgoch laughed. “Vendanu is dead. There’s no more point continuing any of this.”

“What the heck does she have to do with it?” the lawyer asked .

Volgoch looked at her as if she was stupid. But if she was, then so was I, because I had no more clue what was going on here than she did. “We don’t want Kade back,” he said slowly, as if explaining it to a particularly dull-witted child. “We never did. He’s bonded to Hill. So he’s completely useless to us.”

“Then why did you launch this case and spend so much time and energy trying to get him back?” Nors demanded.

Volgoch rolled his eyes. “Vendanu wanted him back. We offered to give her a different dimari. We have several who have been trained to a level close to Kade’s skills. But she was fixated on him. He was too attractive, apparently.” He said the words with a sneer, as if he found nothing even remotely attractive about Vangravians. “We tried to talk her out of it, but she paid us a very large sum of money to try and get him back.”

Now it was my turn to ask questions. “But if he was bonded to me, why did she want him anyway? He would have been no use to her.”

“You said you could reverse the bonding,” Nors chimed in. “Is that true?”

Volgoch scanned the room, then his shoulders sagged. He set down his comm screens, apparently realising that this was going to take a while. “Not really, no,” he began, but Jethrigol interrupted the conversation.

“Are you aware that it was the Nwandu who supplied the original neurological engineering technology to the Eumadians?” Jethrigol asked the legal team.

“Certainly not,” Nors said. “Or we wouldn’t have been negotiating with them. Is that true?” she asked Volgoch.

“It certainly is,” he replied, seeming unbothered by the idea of giving away trade secrets. “And Vendanu still had access to the original prototypes, along with various upgrades that the Nwandu have made over the years. They’ve made significant advances that allow them to placate their captives and use them for their own purposes. Of course, the downside of forcefully enslaving people with mind control technology is that after six months or so, their brains tend to… melt.”

There was a wave of muttering around the room, including plenty of curses and a few prayers to various deities. Nors spoke up. “So if the Nwandu invented the technology, then how are you so sure that Vendanu couldn’t have undone Kade’s bonding?”

Volgoch was losing interest in the conversation now, his tone reverting back to the cool disinterest of much of this case. “The Nwandu might have developed the technology. But we’re the ones who use it every day. That’s why we use so much positive reinforcement in our training. If you force someone to do something they hate, their brain will eventually destroy itself. We make the dimari love their jobs. We train them to do things they are naturally good at. And when we combine that with the Nwandu’s technology, they bond irreversibly with their masters, because we convince them that they love their masters. And love is one of those excruciatingly foolish things that makes people do and say all manner of things that make absolutely no sense. But what we’ve found, over and over again, is that you can’t reprogram love. It just… is.”

The expression on Nors’ face wasn’t entirely decipherable, but it looked like she’d tried to eat a mouthful of lemon. “So if you knew she couldn’t reprogram Kade, why would you bother going to all the trouble with this case?”

“She paid us a lot of money,” Volgoch said with a shrug. He eyed the lumpy remains of the Ambassador, still splattered on the floor. “Fortunately, she paid in advance.”

“What would have happened if she’d tried to unbond Kade?” I couldn’t help but ask. Did I even want to know?

“One of two things,” Volgoch said, picking up his equipment again and moving towards the door. He was clearly done with this conversation. “Either absolutely nothing – he would have remained bonded to you and hated every moment he was away from you – or she would have fried his brain and turned him into a very expensive ornament.”

“And it doesn’t bother you at all that your stupid games and greed for money could have destroyed a person’s entire life?”

Volgoch laughed. “Did you miss the bit where she paid us a lot of money?”

“What about this supposed deal to pay a fee for the use of our wormhole?” one of the Eumadians’ lawyers called, sounding a little desperate. Was he just trying to salvage anything he could from this shitshow, or did he genuinely not understand that the entire thing had been a farce?

Volgoch snorted. “Let me explain this to you in purely economic terms. We pay twenty thousand credits for a Vangravian baby. By the time they’re sold, they’ve paid for themselves three times over in manual labour and manufacturing output. We don’t just teach them things. We get them to work at the same time. Even if we just shot them in the head at that point, they would still be turning a profit. But we sell them, and ninety per cent of them reach their intended masters. The handful we lose are a negligible economic cost. Even if they cost as much as Kade did.” He turned a sardonic look Kade’s way, that one comment negating the value of two decades of intense training – and any consideration for Kade’s identity as a person. “Paying money to either maintain a wormhole, or to allow us to use yours, is entirely pointless. It would cost us more that way than just cutting our losses and abandoning the dimari.”

“Everything’s about money for you, isn’t it?” I muttered. But Volgoch heard me anyway .

“It is,” he said, with no shame whatsoever. “Which, in my mind, is a damn sight better than whatever emotional garbage you lot are nattering about all the time. Although I will say one thing,” he said, lowering his voice as he passed me. “I don’t quite know how you got Kade to disobey you today. It was a fancy trick, however you did it. But the fact remains that the bond is unbreakable. He is as much a slave to you now as he ever was. Just in case you were inclined to start believing your own lies.” He smirked, made a ‘humph’ sound, then brushed past me and headed for the door.

“I would think twice before using our wormhole again,” Nors called after him. “We won’t be disabling your ships anymore. We’ll be destroying them.”

Volgoch glanced back and shrugged. “Such is life,” he said simply. And then he was gone.

Everyone stood in stunned silence for a moment, trying to get their heads around what had just happened. The entire case was a farce. And if we hadn’t believed the Culrads’ stories about the Nwandu’s intentions, Volgoch’s admissions about Vendanu paying to get Kade back would have quite thoroughly eradicated any remaining belief we had in her good character.

“Oh, fuck my life,” one of the Eumadians’ lawyers said, and that broke the tension all around the room. Conversations sprung up everywhere, the lawyers and Associates discussing how to manage the media storm that this would create, the spectators – those of them that remained, at least – marvelling at the outrageous events of the day, and the military personnel muttering about whether we should let the Eumadians leave and who was to blame for the entire fiasco.

Personally, I just wanted all this to be over. I wanted to grab Kade, jump into the nearest taxi, and go home. My head was pounding and my chest ached. Kade’s disobedience at the winery hadn’t been a result of his attachment to me, but because he’d been programmed to save my life, no matter what. Bryce had been right all along; trying to turn him into an independent person was a lost cause. I’d just refused to see it.

“Fuck, man.” Bryce arrived at my side, pulling me into a tight hug. I hugged him back, at the same time as knowing it was Kade I really wanted to be hugging. “That was nuts. But Kade, my man,” he added, pulling back, then taking Kade’s hand and shaking it. “You seriously know how to kick some ass. Remind me never to piss you off.”

“That means he thinks you did well,” I told Kade, in response to his baffled look. In general, our translators were good at interpreting the nuances of slang and metaphors into culturally appropriate phrases. But every now and then, they missed a beat or two, and I suspected this was one of those times .

Kade smiled demurely. “Thank you,” he said. He looked tired. From the altercation with the Nwandu? Or the news that he had been destined to have his brain fried by Vendanu? Or just from the stress of the whole case? I resolved to give him some time off, once Henderson cleared us from active duty. I’d take him for walks by the river, and buy us both ice cream – assuming Kade actually liked ice cream – and then spend hours taking him apart in bed. I’d ask him to cook dinner, and then heap copious praise on the result. I’d tell him to cuddle up next to me on the sofa and spend hours stroking his hair, while we watched some cheesy movie about star-crossed lovers finding true happiness. I would meet Kade where he was at, I resolved, and to hell with all the voices saying I was doing the wrong thing. Kade was a slave. And according to both him and the Eumadians, he was perfectly happy being a slave. All I needed to do to keep him that way was to reward him for it. Sex, praise and attention. That was a recipe I could learn to work with.

The next person to join our group was, surprisingly enough, Jethrigol, with Khelesh tagging along behind. “I’d have to review the video footage to be certain,” Jethrigol said with a sly smile. “But I think there’s a fair chance that Kade saved my life back there. Given the chance, Vendanu would have killed me. So I suppose I owe you another favour now.”

I snorted in disbelief. “You said at the start that letting Khelesh take that cargo saved hundreds of thousands of Culradish lives. If what you say about the Nwandu is true, then you’ve saved literally billions of our people. I don’t think you owe us anything.”

Jethrigol looked thoughtful for a moment. “Then maybe we can negotiate on a slightly different level. And I realise you’re not the authority I should be speaking to on this matter, but I thought I’d float the idea.” He glanced at Henderson meaningfully, and I braced myself for whatever he was about to say next. “What would you say to considering negotiations for the Culrads to join the Alliance? I’m not guaranteeing we’d even put in an application. I’d have to speak to our Council about that. But we like your ethics and you have a degree of compassion that few in the galaxy could match. I do think that makes you a little too na?ve at times, but we can work on that.”

“It’s a big question,” I said, knowing I was indeed the wrong person to be asking. “There would be a rigorous vetting process – on both sides, I’m sure. And the Parliament would likely be wary, given what just went down with the Nwandu. But if what you said today is true, then I’m sure the Parliament would be willing to discuss the idea with you. You seem to know plenty about the goings on in the local galactic sector. And apparently, that’s something we need more of.” I wasn’t above admitting that we’d screwed up big time with the Nwandu. How could they be enslaving entire species and we hadn’t known anything about it ?

“I do have one more question, though,” I said. Jethrigol seemed to be a font of information, and I wasn’t above exploiting it. “In that video you showed us, the Nwandu were enslaving Geshtoch. We know they’re fairly prolific, so maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. But we’ve got a serious problem with them here, and Vendanu had offered to help us round them up, so that they could, and I quote, ‘transport them back to their own planet’. The Nwandu would have just enslaved them, wouldn’t they?”

I’d expected a simple answer – a ‘yes’, or at worst, a ‘maybe’. But instead, Jethrigol tilted his head quizzically, his ears twitching in what I guessed was a Culradish version of a frown. “Why do you have a problem with the Geshtoch?” he asked. “Yes, they’re prolific and they’ve made their way to dozens of planets in the local sector. But almost every species has found a way to live peacefully with them. How is it that you’re having a serious problem?”

“We negotiated a treaty with them,” I explained. “But they keep breaking the terms of it. We’ve ended up at war, with them constantly encroaching on our territory and us constantly having to beat them back.”

Jethrigol stared at me for a long moment… and then he burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, you what?” he asked, when he gained a little control of himself. “You’ve negotiated a treaty with the Geshtoch ?”

“Why is that funny?” Henderson asked him.

Jethrigol grinned, as if we were playing a joke on him… and then he sobered, when he realised we were serious. “You can’t negotiate a treaty with the Geshtoch,” he said slowly. “Or at least, not if you expect them to adhere to it. The Geshtoch are not people. They’re animals.”

“Bullshit,” Bryce replied, an automatic reaction that any of us could have matched. “They speak in a coherent language. They wear clothes. They use advanced technology.”

Jethrigol nodded, now taking the conversation a whole lot more seriously. “They are skilled at using and maintaining highly complex machines. So they have a certain level of intelligence, yes. But what they lack is any concept of the long term consequences of their actions. They act impulsively. They are incapable of planning for the future. So any agreement with them meant to shape their future behaviour is doomed to fail.”

Bryce scowled at him. “A lack of foresight is not the same thing as being an animal.”

Jethrigol nodded, then he sighed. “And this is the problem we have with the Alliance. You’re too generous. You’re too compassionate. You see too much good in other people. The Geshtoch have a certain type of intelligence, but not of the right sort to be considered people. Not according to the Culrads, at least. So if you want my honest advice, the way you learn to live peacefully with them is to domesticate them, the same way you would any of your livestock. Speak gently to them and give them gifts of nice food. They’re particularly partial to bright colours, so give them vibrant clothes or blankets. Make friends with them, and then employ them to work for you. The Geshtoch are startlingly good at terraforming, by the way. I mean, that wouldn’t have escaped your notice, if they’ve been successful at making a home for themselves on Rendol 4. Your whole planet is still only forty per cent terraformed. And at least half of that must be thanks to the Geshtoch.”

“But… isn’t that just exploiting them?” I asked. “Making them work for us, in exchange for a few scraps of cloth?”

“You’re rewarding them for doing something they’re naturally good at,” Jethrigol said. “Isn’t that the same thing you do with your domestic animals? I’m not suggesting you make them suffer. Depriving them of food or water, or working them too hard would indeed be exploitation. But rewarding them for doing something they would have done anyway? I hardly see how that could create a moral dilemma.”

I glanced sideways at Kade. Jethrigol’s solution seemed remarkably simple. And it could be applied as easily to the dimari as to the Geshtoch; ask them to do something they wanted to do in the first place, and then reward them for it. I certainly didn’t believe that the dimari were animals. And we’d have to do a fair bit more investigation to decide whether the Geshtoch were animals or people. But as far as strategies went, it seemed like a fairly foolproof one. Perhaps the Alliance had been getting it wrong with both species.

“We’re going to take our leave now,” Jethrigol said, nodding to his team of soldiers. “But we’ll certainly be in touch. We and the Alliance do not agree on everything, but I believe there’s enough there to be worth exploring the possibilities. If nothing else, I would certainly like to see a peace treaty negotiated between our two peoples. And if we can arrange more? All well and good. Goodbye for now, Lieutenant Aiden Hill. It’s been a pleasure to finally be able to meet you.”

Jethrigol gathered his troops and exited the court room, and now that they, the Eumadians and the Nwandu had all left, the room was starting to look rather empty.

“Hill,” Henderson rumbled, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Go home,” he said. “You have the next four days off, at a minimum. I’ll have to thrash out a new roster, given that the Ambassador is… well… Given that she no longer requires a security team.” That was an understatement, if I’d ever heard one. “But I’ll try to make sure you have plenty of time off. You’ve been put through the wringer here, in a way you never should have been. So get your ass home and take it easy.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, never happier to be obeying an order. “You know where to find me if you need me.” I said my goodbyes to Bryce, Nors and a handful of other soldiers, then led Kade out of the courthouse. I used my comm to order a taxi, and a notification popped up saying that one would be there in about three minutes.

“I have to ask something,” I said to Kade, as we waited for the car to arrive. “The Culrads burst into the room with guns, but you didn’t move a muscle. Kent’s team and the Culrads were all threatening to shoot each other. You didn’t react. But Vendanu pulls a gun on Jethrigol, and suddenly that’s the catalyst for you to start turning people into meat soup? Why? Why her and not anyone else?” Kade was back in his brown colouration now, having reverted to that after the Nwandu had been escorted from the room. But his true nature was very clear in my mind. Kade was an assassin. He’d been designed to kill us; me, Bryce, Henderson… anyone who got in the Nwandu’s way. And if I was going to retain control of such a powerful weapon, I would need to understand it a damn sight better than I did right now.

Kade frowned, thinking about my question. “None of the others were a direct threat to you,” he said, after a few moments. “I recognised Khelesh when he came in with Jethrigol, and given your deal with him over the cargo, I didn’t anticipate him threatening you. Kent’s team wouldn’t have harmed their own military personnel. But Jethrigol was about to prove to the court that Vendanu was my intended master. What she wanted most of all was to get me back. Since you are my bonded master, you were the greatest barrier to her achieving that, so it made sense that you would be her next target, after Jethrigol. That was unacceptable.”

“So you decided you needed to take her out, no matter what?”

“I needed to protect my master,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That is the way I was designed.”

“And what about the thing Volgoch said about the dimari being convinced to love their masters? Do you love me?”

Kade opened his mouth to answer. But at that moment, the taxi pulled up, cutting off anything he might have been about to say. And given my own uncertainty about his answer, perhaps that was for the best.