Page 28 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)
Zeke
“A re you sure?” Henderson asked, a deep frown ruffling his shaggy eyebrows as I reported in with him late that afternoon.
“Well, not entirely, no,” I replied, reminding myself to be polite. After a full day of dealing with the Ranzors’ overly blunt manner of speaking, switching back into diplomatic mode was taking some effort. “That’s why I thought I should ask for your advice. It’s a pragmatic solution, especially given the protestors this afternoon. I don’t want to leave the Halagals undefended all night. There’s always the possibility of some random idiot deciding to make trouble in the dark. And the Ranzors have been very good at following directions all day. They make their presence felt, but they’ve never crossed the line into actual violence. Not so far, at least,” I added, with wry optimism. “But aside from that, I’m kind of scared of how Goroz would take it if I said no. If I say that we don’t trust him to guard the camp during the night, that could seriously damage any good will between not just him and me, but the Alliance and the Ranzors as a whole. I don’t entirely understand their hierarchy, but Goroz seems to have been appointed the leader of the Ranzor contingent here on Rendol 4.”
More Ranzor ships carrying wounded Halagals had continued arriving all day, though thankfully, none of them had landed in our park. And Goroz seemed to be keeping tabs on all the ships, able to provide up-to-date stats on how many ships had come and gone, and how many patients each ship had delivered. The same situation was happening in the other major cities around Rendol 4, and now, it wasn’t just Ranzors showing up with wounded, but Polvron ships as well.
“And to be honest, sir, I don’t think we have the numbers to be able to have our own staff acting as night guards. You’ve already said the city’s in chaos and everyone’s stretched thin.”
Aside from this park, there were twelve other parks across the city that had been taken over by refugees, along with the official refugee sites the military had set up, and Henderson was still scrambling to get them all organised. Medical services across the city were overtaxed, sanitation was becoming a problem at some of the camps, and the locals were struggling to put enough food deliveries together to feed everyone. Reports of the Nwandu’s invasion of Hazharu were all over the news channels now, and while there were a few inevitable detractors, most of the city’s population was agreeing with the Alliance’s decision to take in refugees. We were all very much aware that, but for a few timely decisions and a marked degree of pure luck, we could have ended up in the exact same situation the Halagals were in now.
“The larger problem,” Henderson said, “is not so much whether I believe the Ranzors are going to do anything wrong. Even if things run perfectly, there’s still the potential for accusations of dereliction of duty. We’ve had conflicts with the Ranzors before, we have no treaty with them, we have vastly different cultures, and leaving aside their efforts to help in this war, we have no experience working alongside them.”
“But perhaps that’s the thing,” I said, trying to take a mental step back and look at this objectively. “We can’t just leave aside their involvement in the war. Their ships are exponentially faster than ours. Their weapons are far more effective. And by bringing injured civilians here, they’ve displayed a solid degree of compassion, for all that we’re still having a number of cultural misunderstandings. I’m not saying that that means we should let them do whatever they want. Like you’ve said, there are certain downsides to this idea. But I suppose the real question is whether letting them guard the park would do less damage than asking them if they would kindly please fuck off.”
On the holographic screen, Henderson tugged on his fur and shook his head. “I hate it when we’re backed into a corner of doing damage control, rather than sound decision making.”
“No arguing with you there, sir,” I said. “But my team’s exhausted, and the Ranzors apparently need far less sleep than any of us do.”
“Fucking hell,” Henderson muttered. “Faster ships, better technology, greatly advanced fighting skills, and now they don’t need much sleep? If these bastards ever decided to take over the galaxy, there would be very little standing in their way.”
It was a grim assessment, but a realistic one. “All the more reason to get on their good side now,” I pointed out.
Henderson sighed. “All right. I’ll try to put a positive spin on it, rather than just saying we didn’t have enough soldiers to do it ourselves. Let them handle guard duty for the night, and the rest of you, make sure you get a decent amount of rest. This crisis isn’t going anywhere, and we could be looking at weeks, or months, of needing to organise these refugees.”
“Have we heard much from the Culrads?” I couldn’t help asking. They were the reason why we’d been spared the wrath of the Nwandu, and they’d set themselves up as a sort of galactic watchdog, monitoring the devilish species to get the jump on them if – or rather when – they started causing trouble.
“They’re in the thick of the fighting,” Henderson replied. “According to them, the easiest way to win a war with the Nwandu is to do it quickly. The less time they have to get things rolling, the fewer mind-slaves they end up with to fight on their side. So the Culrads are throwing everything they have at Hazharu. Whether or not we end up with a political partnership with them will likely depend on how fast we can get our own ships there. We’ve spent a few billion credits on buying passage through the Foregnian wormhole, which would mean cutting three days off the journey to Hazharu. We can only hope that that’s fast enough to be of some real help out there.”
I nodded, knowing that that was the best news we were likely to get for a while. “I’ll make sure the Ranzors know what’s expected of them overnight,” I promised him. “I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
Outside, I took a slow walk through the camp, checking in with a few of the more senior members of the Halagal community to make sure everyone had everything they needed for the night. There were now a couple of fire pits stationed around the camp – at safe distances from the tents, of course – and I was a little surprised to see that Borl, one of the Ranzors, was sitting next to one of them, with a group of Halagal children gathered around his feet. He was apparently telling a story, though I was too far away to hear what he was saying. It was such a very human scene, one that our own species had been engaging in ever since we’d first developed language, that I couldn’t help but stare at them, captivated by the odd combination of animation and tenderness in the huge warrior.
“Borl is a good man,” a gruff voice said from beside me. I didn’t jump, having heard Goroz approaching, but it was still an effort to stand my ground as he came right up beside me. He towered over me, head and shoulders, but he lowered his head so that it was beside my ear. “He was going to mate with a female called Nez, but when he lost his eye, she rejected him. So now he has no way to have pups of his own.”
“That’s unfortunate,” I said, not knowing nearly enough about Ranzor culture to be able to say anything more insightful. But at the same time, my mind was reeling with the shocking revelation that Ranzors valued children – or pups, as Goroz had called them – for any purpose other than creating the next generation of warriors. If Borl’s behaviour was anything to go by, they actively enjoyed spending time with them. “Do your females fight as well?” I asked Goroz.
“They do,” he said. “As fiercely as any of our males.”
I considered my next words, wondering if the idea that had occurred to me would be appropriate in their culture or not. The problem was, pre-emptively apologising for it, on the off-chance that it wasn’t suitable, would just piss Goroz off. The Ranzor people said what they thought, and didn’t apologise unless they were genuinely mistaken about factual information. They would never apologise for their opinions. In the end, I decided to just go with it. At the very least, I might learn something about their culture. “Would it not be possible for Borl to find another female? One who had also been injured, perhaps?”
Goroz’s gaze swung across to stare at me. He was silent for such a long time that I wondered if he’d even heard me. Then, finally, he spoke. “That is actually a very good idea,” he said slowly. “Ranzor pairings are typically arranged when the pups are still young. Then, once both pups have grown up and proved their worth in battle, they are then allowed to mate. But… if a different female had also proven her worth, and been injured in the process, I don’t see that it would be a bad thing to let them mate with each other.”
I didn’t dare to comment any further. A culture of arranged marriages, rites of passage and needing societal permission to do the equivalent of getting married was foreign enough for me to be certain that I wasn’t qualified to give Goroz any further advice. But at least I’d planted the idea in his head.
“What of your own mating to the Vangravian?” Goroz asked me, and the question was so unexpected that I actually squeaked in surprise.
“My what? No, we’re not… We’re not married.”
Goroz made a low, rumbling noise in his chest, which my translator helpfully described as ‘sound of amusement’. “He watches over you like a mother watching her pups. He throws himself into danger to protect you. And you watch him just as fiercely,” he added. I flushed, realising that my gaze had, indeed, swung directly over to where Dax was delivering a new stack of wood to one of the fires. One of the young Halagal males came to offer his help, which Dax graciously accepted. “He touches you,” Goroz added. “Perhaps I am misreading your culture, but none of your other soldiers touch you like that; his hand on your shoulder; you stroking his hair. Or is it that you are not permitted to mate with him? Has he not proved himself worthy yet?”
A thousand different thoughts ran through my head. It was oddly reassuring that Goroz blithely assumed I had earned the necessary worthiness myself. I felt baffled at the notion that their entire society ran on the back of its members having to go into battle to prove themselves. And then I felt a sudden, desperate concern about what the rest of my team thought about my relationship with Dax. Aiden had been very insistent that having an intimate relationship with a dimari was necessary to maintain their mental health. But the vast majority of Alliance society still held the view that sleeping with someone who couldn’t truly consent constituted sexual abuse. If our affection for each other was this obvious, then I was about to get stuck between the two conflicting sets of values.
Then again, Dax was far more opinionated than the average dimari, so perhaps his forthright behaviour might be able to convince people that he was a willing participant in our relationship?
“Have I offended you?” Goroz asked, suddenly seeming awkward about it. “Humans have different customs from Ranzors. Perhaps what I said was not appropriate?” I’d learned a great deal about Ranzor culture throughout the day, but it seemed that Goroz had learned just as much about mine, and was putting in an effort to conform with at least the more obvious of our social standards.
“No,” I said honestly. “Not offended, no. It’s just that we haven’t made any kind of public statement about it. I hadn’t realised it was so obvious.”
“You should ask your commanding officer for permission to mate him,” Goroz decided firmly. “He would make a good match for you. Unless you want pups of your own,” he amended his own idea.
“No, I don’t,” I said quickly, not caring whether that was appropriate or not. I’d largely been sitting on the fence about the issue before Ixralia, and now, there was no way my mental health would tolerate trying to raise a child.
“Then he is a good match,” Goroz repeated, staring down at me expectantly.
I nodded, sorely wanting to end this conversation. “I’ll give it some thought,” I told him. Thankfully, he was willing to let that be the end of it.