CHAPTER NINE

Aiden

“D o you have any idea how bad this makes us look?”

So much for Henderson having time to cool down. The colonel was pacing his office, while I stood at parade rest, eyes front, back stiff, doing my best to not move a single muscle. In contrast to Major Glech, Henderson was a Denzogal; a huge man who towered over me head and shoulders, and whose chest was probably twice as wide as my own. Standing my ground in the face of his anger took some doing. I could only be grateful that I was the only other person in the room for this dressing down. Kent had been sent off to get showered and changed before dinner, and Kade was waiting for me down the hall.

“You know perfectly well what the Alliance stance is on slavery,” he went on. “I know they make certain exceptions for the occasional civilian who adopts a dimari.” ‘Adopts’. It was a tidy word for a very messy situation. “But having one bonded to someone in the military sends an incredibly bad message. It’s our role to maintain peace and order in the solar system, not to go around flagrantly sidestepping the law whenever it suits us. What you should have done was inform the Honbasha base and they could have sent out a civilian to collect him. Let him be bonded to a regular nobody, not one of my lieutenants.”

So far, I’d been playing the good soldier for this lecture; shut up and keep my eyes glued to the back wall of Henderson’s office. But at that comment, my head snapped around to stare at him, and my mouth started running before my brain could think better of it. “You would have sent a civilian into Culrad-infested territory, where they could have been seriously injured or killed, to rescue an abandoned dimari ?”

Henderson opened his mouth to give me another telling off for my insolence… but then stopped, as he reviewed his own words. Apparently, even he realised how absurd that sounded .

I was in trouble, that much was clear. But perhaps I could throw a little humility into the mix to soften the blow? “Sir, I overlooked important information because I was distracted,” I admitted. “I will happily own my own mistake there. But the point I’m trying to make is that even if I had considered the situation more thoroughly, I’m fairly confident I would have ended up making the same decision. It would have been homicidal to just leave him there, and there were no other viable options for his rescue. And for what it’s worth, I also firmly believe that if he hadn’t been with me, I would have been killed by the Culrads back in the jungle. You read my report about their ambush?”

Henderson sighed, then combed his fingers through his shaggy fur. Silently, he wandered around to the other side of his desk and sat down heavily in his chair. “Combat specialist?” he said, scrolling through the report I’d sent him on his holographic screen. “I’ve never heard of a combat trained dimari before. Are you certain?”

At least he was a bit calmer now. “Based on what I’ve seen over the last four days, his skills would be on par with any of our Marines.” That got Henderson’s attention. His thick eyebrows rose, his deep brown eyes wide. “I can flick you a copy of his operations manual, if you’d like the details?”

“May as well,” he said, with a shrug. So I pulled the file up on my comm and sent it to him. He opened the first page, scanning Kade’s personal details, the contract, until he got to…

“One hundred and fifty thousand credits!?”

I winced. I’d forgotten that was in the file. “Apparently so, sir.”

“You could buy a whole house for less than that.”

“I was a little shocked myself, sir,” I admitted. Given that my annual salary was just over twenty thousand credits, Kade’s price was a truly ridiculous sum.

“And what are you going to do if the Eumadians come back and want you to pay for him?”

I shrugged. “So far, they’ve never made any attempt to retrieve abandoned cargo, be it dimari or anything else. I suppose I’m hoping they stick to the same pattern.”

Henderson scrolled down to the page detailing Kade’s combat training… but then shook his head and closed the file. “I’ll have a look at this tomorrow, when I’m thinking more clearly. All right, all right, you can keep him,” he conceded, before adding, “Not that we’d have much choice, anyway. But the timing is horrendous. I got a message this morning from the Rendol Parliament,” he went on, before I could ask what was wrong with the timing. “We were due to have a visit from an emissary of the Nwandu. Do you know about that? ”

I wracked my brain for the information. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. “Were they the ones who wanted the peace treaty involving the Wariu Belt?”

“No, that’s the Fentons. The Nwandu are considering joining the Alliance. They’ve got ethics that are a reasonable match to our own, and a ton of defensive technology that would solve a lot of our problems with our wormholes. They were supposed to arrive for a visit in a couple of days, but when they were approaching the Fol wormhole, they were attacked.”

“Attacked? By who? No one of ours, was it?” I asked, sitting up in alarm. “I mean, that is technically Alliance space, right?”

“It is, but it’s also on the fringe, so no, it wasn’t one of ours. But as far as a list of suspects goes, it could have been just about anyone. Thankfully, the Nwandu ship was only disabled, not destroyed. They were forced to land on Fol 6 for repairs. The Parliament’s having a hissy fit, and given their bad mood, I really don’t need to be explaining to them why a dimari is now bonded not just to one of my soldiers, but one of my officers .”

I managed to bite my tongue, having already laid out my reasons for my actions.

Henderson folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “The bigger question is going to be what do we do in two or three years’ time, when he kills himself and there’s a public outcry about the military failing to provide adequate care to their dependants. Regardless of the fact that every other dimari does the same thing sooner or later.”

“Perhaps this is overly optimistic, sir, but I’ve already started doing some research on what strategies other people have tried to keep them alive. If I can skip past all the failed options, then I’m hoping I might come up with something new while we’ve still got time. I’ve already had a couple of interesting ideas.”

He leaned forward, his expression softening. “You’re a good man, Hill. But do you think you’re the first person to think you can win this battle through bloody minded determination alone? Everything anybody can think of has been tried. Make him as comfortable as you can. Keep him happy for as long as you can. But you also need to start preparing yourself for his inevitable decline. There’s a base counsellor available if or when you need it.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Screw Henderson. Screw the journalists. Screw the well meaning Alliance owners who all thought they could be the ones to solve this fucking riddle. I was going to figure out how to keep Kade alive. And fuck anyone who thought otherwise.