Page 23 of The Commander
When Bastian finished cleaning the house, fewer than ten red hats remained. He washed himself in their group showers, cleaning away the stink of his fun, before redressing.
Based on a lower Sarrian life form, all the duty grunts started out as intelligent beasts that were upgraded with brain circuitry. Bred by the thousands on board the main lab in space, Bastian had always treated them as disposable.
It was unfortunate that data inputs were unable to eliminate the goddesses’ own cell bred instincts. They wouldn’t be pissing around the humans if they had.
They served fine on this planet because the humans had suffered a large scale natural disaster plus several wars that had left them almost defenseless. Their depleted numbers, weak ammunition, and high velocity weapons were no match against the sheer numbers of red hats available.
He petitioned against the use of grunts in the military over thirty years ago after watching them carry out field maneuvers under the direction of a P.I. Messy, inefficient, and prone to misunderstanding orders. And worse. When he accessed the information on them, he found the records that they were prone to a blood frenzy—chasing after the blood they craved—when their data cards failed. Any comparison of the grunts and a battler required a huge stretch of the imagination. A triad of battlers outperformed a full squadron of red hats.
Control’s answer to the petition? Begin a losing war on an inhospitable, useless planet against an infestation of giant armored sand bugs, thereby killing off more than half of the battler military. Bastian had fought in that war. He’d been told the lie that the bugs were a swarm of destruction headed toward his planet. He’d been a fool to believe it even for a minute.
A high casualty rate created a need for new military fodder. So, the biddable, cheap grunts were sent in as reinforcements. There was nothing else to do, after all. The Sarrian won the war at an epic cost of battler life; thousands of Sarrian males died. Hundreds of thousands of red hats died, but they outlasted the bug population, and the war was counted as a success by the Sarrian Houses.
Bastian used his private P.I. system uplink while in stasis to break into the ship’s data logs and discover which high caste house badge from Control crafted the plan and set it in motion.
That female became his personal enemy. Her shining status was so high up in the Sarrian hierarchy that her feet never touched the ground. The woman used an actual personal hover device that allowed her to float everywhere and artificially lifted her to the height of all the Sarrian co-species. Debtrocid Nectuis Eld, an inbred child of House singled out as a priestess and daughter of the goddess. Her father engineered the red hats as house guards, and she had made them into armies, much to her family’s benefit.
She also happened to be the Arch Prima of the Anciadrimda, the cruiser that deployed Bastian on Earth. She was the reason he’d chosen that ship. The reason he’d constantly agitated Control, questioning directives, killing each new batch of hairy assholes they sent to him. The reason he’d made himself a target.
He’d never thought he’d find a reason to live. He hoped that the DNA seed twisted into Kitten’s cells helped her understand he’d become her weapon, her battler.
He frowned at himself in the hazy, cracked mirror as he dressed. All this fucking foolishness. He’d been right in his prediction—mating made him soft and squishy. That was the first time in his life he’d ever wanted someone to understand him.
Well. Fuck.
After his fun game of bop’n slice grunt, the only ones left alive were 48001 and five others who had no discernable contact with the insubordinate 56983 or 5654. They shuffled their feet outside the building, waiting for instructions, greasy fear wafting off their hairy backs like pig cooking in a pan.
Eliminating enemies was a distinct pleasure. The splash of hot blood over his hands took him back to better times, simpler ways, when everything was natural, and he didn’t have to deal with Control or the grunts. He’d inhaled deeply when he walked out of the showers past the fresh gore of spilled guts on bleach cleaned cement and had to swallow the extra saliva.
Did he need to feed again already?
Outside the sleeping barracks, Bastian called 48001 over. “Write this down.”
Its eyes bulged. “Ssir?”
Bastian took a deep breath. Don’t kill it. “I need you to make the report on the base personal interface. You must input only the data I say. Nothing else. You are an office duty, aren’t you? Can you write?”
“Yes, sir.” It licked its lips, twitching all over, afraid to get too close to Bastian.
“Get something to write on.”
It pulled out its pocket manager. The little rectangular device carried all the daily orders, regulated by the base P.I. It had three buttons suitable for grunt fingers.
“That will work. Hit record. Report the decommissioning of the base duty and ask for more. I’ve been short for a while. I need a new complement. Requisition the replacements. Do you understand?”
48001 nodded.
“Report: Make a note that the tax quota for this period will be less than the previous period.”
The grunt nodded again as it took the information.
“Do not attempt to answer any of the P.I.’s extraneous questions or explain. I’ll scan the goods loss as I load the truck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you take care of that sick prisoner? The human in Corrections?”
“Yes, sir. Leg. Respiratory. Infection. In recovery.” The red hat shook its head up and down in an enthusiastic humanish nod. “I need him able to walk.” The grunt’s eyes bulged.
For Bastian’s plans, that prisoner needed to be able to move. “Break out the H-5 regnator from the health supplies and have that ready for me. Did you feed and water him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do both again, now. The regnator will make him hungry. File the report. Have the prisoner ready to talk with me. Do not give the base interface any extra information. Tell it you are under orders to be precise. Do you understand what that means?”
“Say what you tell me.” The grunt’s head bobbed up and down, shaking spit onto Bastian’s shoe.
“Yes. Regular procedures only. They will note the death of the duty and the release of the storage locks and will expect the request.”
“That’s right, sir.”
Bastian’s own P.I. last downloaded twenty-eight days ago. His base and the town taxes ran on an assembly line format. An automated shuttle arrived, dropped off requisitions and standard goods, then picked up the logged taxes while the base data happened through an umbilical uplink. But not always. More than once, Control had sent an inspector badge, or an engineer crew with one excuse or another.
Sometimes Bastian even let them get back on board their shuttles alive. Sometimes not.
He anticipated Sarrian on the next shuttle because that’s just how Control functioned, always appearing when he least wanted to see them. His nerves buzzed with a thousand tiny alarms, each one yelling that his private P.I. conversations would be reviewed, if they hadn’t already been accessed. No matter. He wouldn’t be here when they arrived.
They knew he had Kitten. They knew about the extra name day blade that someone wanted hidden. They knew they had enough against Bastian to bend him to their will.
They didn’t know about the rebel prisoner Bastian had alive in Correction.