Page 13 of The Commander

It was difficult to leave Kitten tucked into his bed. He’d secured her with rope, making sure she stayed where he left her, but that didn’t ease his mind for her safety or security. He used his quarters for sleeping, feeding, personal storage, washing, and nothing else. He’d survive most human weaponry, even if the house fell on him while he slept in his bed. His little human mate would not.

If she died, he died. They were joined now. But it was more than that. She’d fully shifted his entire world perspective and moved directly into its center in the space of hours. He connected with Kitten in a permanent binding. One that fucking rocked his world, as the humans said.

Having fallen asleep in his arms on the walk to his apartment, he left her there as comfortably as he could, rope included. Snug as a bug in a rug . Smug gladness filled him, finally understanding what humans meant when they said that.

Her present comfort didn’t negate his urgency to be back with her. She needed food, minor medical attention, and a tracker embedded where she couldn’t reach it. The last thing he wanted was to deal with whining puissant red hats with agendas.

48001 was one of the grunts outside the interrogation room, drooling down its chin when Bastian arrived to talk to Kitten. It watched Bastian kill its brother for trying to interfere, yet was still bold enough to interrupt Bastian’s mating, claiming it had very important information about Bastian’s new mate.

With Kitten secured in Corrections waiting for her interrogation, the clean up crew discovered something: an object carrying her scent.

Depending on what that information entailed, the red hat held its life in its hands. Not only had it been imprudent to walk within twenty feet of Bastian’s female, but it also dared to speak after Bastian delivered orders. Bastian never tolerated that level of insubordination in a grunt well.

Control sent a survey corps team to set up every base head. Whoever had led that team thought that using the school was a bright idea, despite the building’s decay, poor positioning, and lack of defense. They chose the place solely for its effect on human psychology, liking how their soldiers owned the halls where previous generations of vulnerable Earthlings were educated.

The school held Bastian’s office as well as the technical hub for the base. Humans attacking and breaking in would find nothing useful. All planet side technology was human made, with no Sarrian information except for basic management logs. Bastian also limited reordered information about prisoners, lest some humans get it in their heads to think they could rescue anyone he held in his cells.

48001 paced and twitched as it waited for Bastian outside the door with the placard “principal,” still pinned above the frame. The biometric security unlocked when Bastian’s hand met the knob. He opened it to motion the red hat inside.

The grunt bounced forward, nervous speed an indication of a young age. He was new batch , the most annoying type of soldier. Their gangly poor muscle control always made them look jumpy and over eager. They tended to be stupider than those who were older.

Great. Not an auspicious sign for an intelligent conversation.

Bastian’s office was the cleanest space in the building. Set up by the engineers under standard plans for a prime male of size, chair, desk, and a personal interface system fit his specifications.

He liked the off white paint they’d added. Easy on his eyes. Stark and clean behind the red hat’s dark fur and uniform.

The Sarrian duty soldier exercised a mindful attempt at preparing for its interview.

Its uniform looked fresh. No stains. A size too small.

Why was it so hard to make uniforms that fit? Machines on this planet could certainly be calibrated to suit all shapes and sizes. Every calculation came out wrong, producing shoddy work.

“Speak,” Bastian ordered as he sat back in the cow leather of the chair.

“Sir. There was sssomething found where the girl was caught.”

Bastian cut it off before it could waste time elaborating. “What?”

“What?” A red hat’s lips couldn’t pucker to replicate the human language well.

“Yes.” Bastian had to keep himself from hissing with impatience. “What was found?”

Its eyes bulged in a sign of distress, and it licked its lips. What was wrong with the thing? The young ones had issues, but never this bad, not unless they were afraid. Or guilty.

Bastian tilted his head to the side, watching as 48001 reached behind its back and showed him the cause of its discomfort.

A name day blade. Found near Kitten?

“It smells like humanss blood.”

Every Prime Commander carried one. The cumbersome size and the grandiose expense of each unique blade symbolized a prime battler’s commitment to the goddess of their incarnation. Battlers had once been known as the Queen’s Blade, protectors, and defenders of the queen’s body and home.

But the queen goddess was dead, silent for centuries. A governing coalition of profiteering family houses stepped into the void. They bastardized everything she represented.

Women from the houses called themselves her priestesses and took over her rituals. They commandeered all that was hers, including the battlers. A name day blade was no gift from the goddess. It was a mockery of the hunt—a mutated representation.

The naming ritual consecrated the blade to the battler, connecting them forever. His honor tied to it, the blade would one day be used to remove the battler’s heart and end his life in the death ceremony, before both were incinerated together. One did not pass on the blade or give it away. One blade for one battler.

Control valued the ability to allocate their battlers, especially during off planet explorations. The Sarrian were meticulous about leaving no trace of themselves or their technology for any enemy to discover. It was mandatory that all Sarrian carry at least two or three surgically inserted tracers.

The red hat set the blade on his desk and backed away as if it could bite him.

“Where was it found?”

“In some greenery, along with a sack that carried pants, a pair of shoes, and rabbit snares.”

“Where is all of that?”

“Gralf said not to tell you. They’re with Unch now.”

“Who?”

“56983 said not to tell you. 56541 has them. I snuck the knife out. Thought you should know.” It pointed at Bastian and tried to look honest.

Bastian tapped the intake pad of his digital secretary. The P.I. answered any question he asked and helped him keep track of the grunts and the entire area under his direction. “I want access to all surveillance footage for the quadrant. Remove all dead space for quicker viewing. Highlight any two legged creature activity in order of events and list all anomalous behaviors first.”

With the audio off, a light indicated the computer received his instructions. He wanted to know what the fuck had been going on with his Red Hats and the rebels.

“Why shouldn’t I know?” He returned his attention to the grunt in his office. The creature looked very unnerved.

“56983 said to tell Control first.”

“Fuck that.” Bastian stood up so quickly that his chair slammed against the wall behind him. He told the red hat informer, “Go to the main entrance. Stand outside the door. Do not let anyone enter.”

Bastian wasn’t going to play games or whatever the fuck 56983 was thinking. The blade was found near his Kitten. He didn’t want Control anywhere near her.

Someone was missing a blade. They kept up with all that shit, but instead of planetwide alerts, Control remained silent. Why breach protocol?

He left his office and went to the storeroom, where he found cleaning supplies. He’d laughed when he saw the stuff after first arriving. Humans had battled here and lost. If they had mixed the supplies into the right toxic milkshake of fun, they could have won the day.

He was glad it hadn’t been wasted; now he could mix up something special for the tale tell grunts.

No. Tattle toes ?

“ Titty telling bastard. ” He grumbled. The term wasn’t ideal, but it sufficed. Did those grunts believe they possessed the cunning to betray him to some Control lowlife? He knew from experience they did not. They also didn’t usually take such initiative to think for themselves.

He found what he was looking for: a half used bottle of window cleaner. He held it up and shook the contents. “That’s the ticket.”

There was enough inside. Setting it back down, Bastian lowered his pants, removed his cock from his seam, and urinated into the bottle. Swirling at it again, he watched it turn red. Next, he added the gel cleanser and capped it quickly, trapping the foaming, gassy mess that would send any grunt who breathed it into a deadly anaphylactic shock.

He didn’t have time to be bloodthirsty right now. He wanted everyone with knowledge of the discovered name day blade removed as quickly as possible. All he had to do was place bottles in the right place for the grunts to inhale.

The old school had plenty of vents. He had plenty of cleaning products and piss.

After confirming the death of the red hats in the resource room, Bastian headed back to his office. He placed the name day blade on a round scanner pad connected to his personal interface.

He hated the P.I. It had the advantage of not being directly connected to Control, its sole redeeming quality. Each message he sent to them was encoded in a single package. There was no data stream for clever humans to exploit.

Collections teams arrived for the humans’ taxes and planet resources, as well as logs and reports stored on assigned P.I.s and other like devices. Bastian had learned to erase information when he had to, but any engineer worth half his training would identify blanks in the data.

The pad was small, but the size didn’t matter. Its white activity light blinked on, then created a 3-D bubble around the blade. Bastian could touch Kitten’s hand to the P.I.’s surface and get a full health diagnostic. He could do the same to any machine or creature he came across.

Humans possessed similar technology—less efficient and widespread—prior to destroying their own world. Their intelligence, unfortunately, hadn’t saved them from their own stubborn stupidity and determined short sightedness.

The P.I. scanned the knife.

“Oh shit, Dude,” it said.

Bastian sighed. When the engineers had given him the choice of what type of personality he’d like his P.I. to have, he’d blithely said, “Human.” He hadn’t specified where or when that human identity should originate, and they had randomly picked late 20th Century United States English. It had been his favorite era during his studies.

A grave mistake on Bastian’s part.

“No way! Head honcho, where’d you score that?” it asked.

Bastian ignored the question and the ridiculous moniker. “Whose is it? Why isn’t it with its battler? Where is the battler? Why wasn’t I notified of a missing battler?”

Light shifted over the blade, altering the metal’s colors and illuminating hilt jewels.

“Humm, mind blown, Dude. Seriously,” the P.I. mused, taking its time.

Bastian waited. And waited. Every blade was custom made for its owner. No two were exactly alike. Weighted to the commander’s hand, his grip, sharpened to a personal killing style. Some had hooks, serrated edges, single edges, double edges. They enhanced every hilt with unnecessary jewels and engraved the carrier’s personal oath to the goddess in the detailed work on the flat of the blade. The only thing common among prime commanders’ name day blades was their size and gaudiness. Difficult to conceal, they were always bigger than a dagger, yet smaller than a sword.

To him, this blade looked longer than average, which usually meant it belonged to a prime with an impressive family lineage and long service to the goddess. Possibly the son of one of the original Queen’s Blades. It had triple hooks below the hilt, like thorns, which would make carrying it uncomfortable. Bastian could just imagine the glee of the sadistic designer making something so deadly and yet so pointless.

The P.I.’s scan crossed diagonally over the blade repeatedly, as if to seek out and penetrate its secrets. It kept uttering that thoughtful, irritating hmm, as if it had real lips and a real mouth.

The P.I. even tsked its imaginary tongue.

“Far out. This thing’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma. No markings, but there’s a whole posse out there with the same groove. Heavy, Dude. Looks like something from Derametes of Cersa. Derametes kicked it twenty Earth years ago.”

Kicked it? “Clarify yourself.”

“Kicked the bucket, tossed the tube, evaporated the skin suit.”

“Died?”

“Took the stairway to heaven. All records of his designs floated into the ether along with him. No record of the blade at all. It does appear that the other four blades by this designer are still with their owners.”

Despite several attempts to refine the P.I.’s language, it still insisted on ridiculous as its primary choice. Bastian took a deep breath and counted to five. “Where are those owners?”

“Not in this solar system, at least, not since my last proper download. I don’t noodle that there is any devious kind of connection with this Derametes, but those blades also have the crazy rad stylized thorns. One has a delivery system for kar’nac poison. That designer was a freakin’ spaz, Dude.”

“How is it possible there is no record of the blade? Can’t you read its embedded information?”

“I spy with my little eye, nothing. Dude, I’m telling ya, it’s like taking an image of a random human fingerprint. If there ain’t no record connecting it to a blood sample or a face, no eyes on that info. This blade belongs to a prime commander that doesn’t exist.” Bastian breathed out instead of snorting in disbelief at the notion.

“However, it has recently been felt up fine and dandy by yourself, a human male and a human female. It looks like RH-V 56983, 56541, and RH-Y 48001 also carried it. Where is the human female?”

That wouldn’t do. Connecting Kitten to the blade could be dangerous. “How do I clean the blade of all evidence that it was touched by me or a human?”

“You can clean it using anti-gellen for you and the red hats. But the human data is instantly recorded. Ohhh, freaking awesome, Dude.”

Bastian waited for the apparent, “freaking awesome.”

The P.I. made an exaggerated noise of surprise. “Ha. Looks like there is a supreme pizza of human samples.”

“What do you mean?”

“People have passed this blade around more than a joint at a Grateful Dead show, and the information has become ingrained like a bad batch of cannabis. Blood’s been all over it, inside it, Dude, and there’s no way to rewind. There are interesting skin traces from a chick, too. Recent. Where is she now?”

Bastian glared at the P.I. That was the wrong answer. Again. “Find details on dead, injured, or lost commanders who led on land forces.”

“That goes back hundreds of years. I gotta search the Land of the Lost and everything. There’s gonna be freaking sleestak in the way,” the P.I. complained.

Bastian recognized the reference to this planet’s ancient media, but he couldn’t guess at its meaning. “Do it.”

“Dude,” the P.I. replied flatly.

“Do it as quickly as possible.” He wished he could promise the P.I. death if it didn’t comply, but the thing wasn’t alive, and its deactivation was not in Bastian’s best interest.

Yet. There would come a day.

“But I haven’t shaken hands with your chick yet,” it wheedled.

“You will not be meeting the female.”

“Dude, no pressure, but I gotta check her health to make sure she’s, like, ready for the baby bump and all that. Iron levels. Folic acid? Vitamin D? Most people around here are paler than white acid wash jeans. She needs some serious sunshine vibes and a food court full of the good stuff to, like, nourish that potential pregnancy glow.”

Bastian gritted his teeth and balled his fists. He could not smash his personal interface.

“When is your next download scheduled?”

“Twenty-eight days, El Jefe. They skipped my previous download, and the one before that was nine days late. They are totally hanging ten on the tardiness. When do I meet the squeeze?”

Control’s priorities were built into the P.I.’s way of thinking. And of course, all the assholes who thought they directed Bastian’s life would want to know all about his new mate. They’d never miss the opportunity to use his most vulnerable asset against him. He would not allow them to manipulate him or endanger her. That was a given. Unfortunately, he was certain that some big headed Sarrian scientist had developed a back channel breeding program for this planet using the ancient gene dump, and the P.I. had been ordered to collect information on any suspicious females.

The prime population at home suffered due to the lack of Sarrian brides willing to mate and attempt a bond. A prime needed to chase, conquer, and claim his mate. Years before Bastian’s birth, a cultural revolution took place on Sarria among all the compatible species females.

As daughters of the goddess, they no longer wanted to be chased through the sacred woods. They would no longer stand as part of a lottery candidate pool. They wouldn’t tolerate the possessive and protective instincts of the hunter castes. Declaring themselves evolved beyond that, they decried the old ways as barbaric. Sarrian females formed groups, lobbied the houses, protested, resisted, and demanded change.

The houses were only too happy to help them spread their message and pass new laws. The rituals of the past that guaranteed a strong bond and future seed were outlawed.

Some of the prime did change with them, deciding that compromise was preferable to solitude. They killed their true selves to find a compatible mate.

Others, like Bastian, stayed the same. Angry. Disappointed. Lost. What was for them to do if they couldn’t hunt, mate, and protect? They took to the skies. As a result, fewer prime battlers reached their full potential every year. Fewer fighters. Fewer leaders. Control would be delighted to sacrifice human women to the mating chase if it meant preserving the warriors who conquered planets on their behalf.

“You said that you need to test the female’s health? How about you use your programming to keep her alive? You know her skin on a named blade is a death sentence. Humans are not permitted to touch the blade of the goddess’s named ones. Check the rule book. Any vile little badge that Control sends for your next download could order it, and the red hats would obey. You know this.”

The P.I. was silent, thinking through its conflicting data and orders. He wanted the thing confused. It should prioritize Kitten as his mate, not follow law sentences handed out by lowly corpsmen representing Control authority.

As a human with a connection to an unmarked, unregistered prime commander’s named blade, Kitten’s life was forfeit. There would be no investigation, no tribunal, no judgment. She’d be thoroughly scanned and punished to death for daring to handle the sacred blade. Control could send any badge, from any house, after the blade.

Bastian wasn’t liked. He wasn’t agreeable. He didn’t play nice with others. There were several on the ship wearing a Control badge who would ignore other directives and leap at a chance to punish him, directly or indirectly. That is what the red hats had been hoping for, after all.

If the P.I. had other orders regarding prime breeding habits, as Bastian suspected, it would choose protecting her over other laws in its information banks.

“Fine then. I will do what I can. It may take me a couple of days. This is compacted shit.”

“Where’s the report on area activity? I want to see all the recent surveillance.”

“Sheesh, Dude. Back off. One thing at a time,” the P.I. complained.

“Fine. Keep a log of everything you do. I want to be able to retrace your patterns.”

“That’s bullshit,” the P.I. said, as acidly as its artificially generated voice would allow.

“You want to erase everything I find. This conversation. Me!”

“Your reason for existing is to help me run this base and protect my interests and thus the interests of Control. Can you tell me that erasing this conversation isn’t in my best interest? Can you tell me that it isn’t in Control’s best interest to contain the mystery of this name day blade?”

It hummed, thinking. “It’s still bullshit.”

“You’ve been installed for five years. This is life on Earth. Lots of shit. Get used to it.”