Page 3 of The Commander

Night had fallen while Commander Bastian interrogated a rebel and his accomplice. There was nothing left of the long, yellow edged shadows of dusk when he stepped out the doors of Corrections and descended the concrete steps to the asphalt. Other than the sentries, he saw no one outside the building, which was how he preferred his evenings to go.

Two humans had been caught last week outside the closest town moving illegal contraband. Using one meat sack to encourage honesty in the other, Bastian asked his questions. A series of unsatisfactory answers darkened his mood. Where had they gotten the contraband? Who were they working with? Where were the rest of the rebels?

Screaming empty inanities, the tiresome example created a pathetic mess as he died. He hadn’t had any information to give, it seemed. Bastian didn’t mind fresh human blood. But dried blood turned sticky. He needed a change of clothing.

High pitched screams stopped his progress. Sounds of distress bounced off the old buildings and metal warehouse walls of the command base in high pitched, discordant notes, hitting his ear membranes with screeching blasts. What a terrible noise.

Had the night duty caught a female out after curfew? With one prisoner dead, it was nice of the duty to find a convenient replacement. Even a female one. He’d never spoken to that gender.

Coming in from the northeast, the grunts held their captive between them. She writhed and twisted, fighting to escape her inevitable doom. Bright red hair blazed around a pale, terrified face as she struggled against their grip.

What a reckless creature. Why risk capture after curfew if she valued her life?

The local rural imbeciles were nothing but trouble. Livestock listened to directions with more aptitude. His people owned this planet and everything on it. The sentient population had ample notice of the law: obey or die.

Complete human extermination would have simplified everything. The Sarrian didn’t need humans. Eradication was preferable to the time and effort it took Bastian to train stupidity. Unfortunately, the lesser-elevated-over-educated minds running Control had disagreed. They didn’t want to waste “resources.”

Resources, they called them. What rot. This earth was full of filthy males like those he’d left behind in Corrections. They were skittering bugs, running for cover whenever Bastian got close enough to stomp on them.

The menial workers housed at Sarrian expense in the towns spent more time working to feed themselves than they did cultivating taxable resources.

Now his personal mental resources would be consumed for hours dealing with this new captive.

With her scent in their noses, the red hats slobbered with hunger for their chance at her. People on this planet put them in a frame of mind that stressed their minuscule grunt brains. This night duty detail appeared to have forgotten every protocol he’d ever tried to teach them.

Fucking worthless red hats.

The little female fell to her knees, broke their hold, rolled, and flipped herself into a stand. She took three steps.

Good show. Bastian barely withheld his applause at her efforts. Her face glowed with the strain. She had spots across her cheeks. Freckles? Vibrantly alive, her heat signature burned his eyes. The air carried the scent of her fear to him now that she was close.

The red hats recaptured her easily, calling to each other in throaty barking sounds of triumph. She yelled unintelligible slurs as they brought her down again.

Like any prime battler, he enjoyed the scent of prey. The male captives in Corrections had fed that enjoyment since they’d been brought in. But this one, this female, her fear tickled at something unusual and unexpected in his body, like a feather brushing across the back of his neck.

What was this? His secondary senses opened to take in the full, salty, warm musk of sweat beading on her skin and dripping down between her tits under her layers of clothes. He wanted to taste those beads, suck them up with his lower tongue.

He kept that response locked down. Now was not the time. He was of a higher order than the hairy assed red hats. A prime battler could control himself at work or at play. One did not slobber over local flora and fauna.

Her fear had interesting tones, however. He didn’t need to taste it on his receptors to read that information. Out of place and unique. An invitation to bite and see if she was the perfect combination of fuckable and edible.

What was this? Fuckable?

Commander Bastian did not fuck. Where had that notion come from?

He narrowed his eyes. Sniffed the air again, letting it roll over his senses. What was she?

Why was she different?

Different was interesting. But not good. Anomalies had a way of coming around to causing him trouble.

He hadn’t been exposed to many human females. They usually kept their distance from him on the occasions he visited the towns. Males he’d encountered smelled like dirt, rotting wheat, and shit. He assumed all humans went around stinking like that.

Not this human. Not her.

He should kill her now. Right now.

The red hats had managed to tear up the outermost layer of her clothing. A tight, inner, dark layer thwarted their efforts to get to her skin. She’d sourced a soft armor manufactured years ago by humans that stopped their bullets. So many layers. How could the shapely tender thing breathe?

Earth women appeared in a fascinating variety of shapes and sizes. Bastian appreciated their soft curves, a change from his own species’ sharp edges. The redhead had a slim, delicate neck and a clean, stubborn jawline. Easily hooked. Cut. Broken.

She escaped the grunts’ hold once more and hit the ground like a dead weight. One grunt picked her up, then tried to shoulder her. Shifting and wiggling like an eel, she slipped right out of their hands for the third time since he’d stood there watching, hitting the ground headfirst. Playing with their food, the grunts kept letting her escape.

The sound echoed. He smelled her blood. His secondary senses winked open before he could stop himself. Salty. Hot. Sweet. Velvet. He wanted to slide his tongue through that smell in a slow, careful examination of all its notes. All that was her.

With a small, practiced twitch of his neck and shoulders, he shook himself, forcing control. No. He would not. There would be no slide of his tongue down the tendon of her neck, between her breasts, exploring other creases. Absolutely not.

He couldn’t have a human honey trap driving his red hats to distraction. Where’d she come from? What was she doing here? He’d find out; then her alluring differences and his inconvenient attraction would die with her.

Her self-inflicted blow dazed her, eyes going wide and white, then fluttering shut. When they opened again, he saw disappointment and dread flatten her mouth and harden her expression. She hadn’t saved herself from her fate.

The girl wasn’t stupid, then. Maybe if she bothered to read the signs he posted, she would understand her situation. Better to die here under her own volition rather than at the hands of the duty.

If she was that smart, why had she broken the curfew? What would drive her out of one of the gated laborer communities and into the inevitable hands of red hats?

“Red! Where are the other four of you?” Bastian barked, getting the duty security’s attention. Duty teams went out in groups of eight or twelve. He didn’t see the others following.

The woman’s gaze shot to where Bastian stood. He could smell her spicy fear ratchet up, like someone turning up the heat on a gas burner. No doubt she’d never seen a prime battler before. Bastian stayed on the base and let the red hats deal with the humans since standing orders implied he shouldn’t kill them for their ignorance.

He ignored her.

“Dead. With human rebels. Dead,” the security head replied in his guttural language.

The useless grunts had been killed by rebels? Her companions then. She hadn’t been caught alone.

If she was with those irritating rebels, he wanted a chat. He wanted to find that vermin nest and clean it out. The last two were an independent team working for themselves.

Maybe this female knew more.

The rebels never bothered his base. As a rule, they avoided direct conflict, scurrying about like cockroaches in the dark, scrabbling around towns—bothering other humans. The duty chased them in circles.

Since Bastian wasn’t on good terms with Control, they refused him access to aerial information so he could hunt them down himself.

“You left behind a mess of bodies then?”

“No, Prime. Met new duty as we bring this one in,” the security head answered.

“Did you complete a search of the area? Which direction did the group of rebels come from? Where were they hiding? Have they bothered the town?”

It glanced at the others over the girl’s head. “We return once she’s in Correction.” Their callers and headsets seemed forgotten in their eagerness to get her into a cell.

“Bind her and leave her on the floor of room twelve. Don’t fucking touch anything. And then take a fresh duty and go clean up your mess. Clear those dead bodies away. File a report. Unless you are too stupid to manage and need me to do it?”

The girl’s eyes went wide with understanding. She was going to have to talk to Bastian. Her face held an expression like she’d won the lottery and was super excited, as old media would say.

Or not. Human faces were so mobile and expressive he was always guessing at their intended communication. She didn’t smell happy. No, she smelled terrified. Her bladder must be empty; otherwise, she’d be pissing her pants.

He used the native tongue here, having learned it and all the other planet related languages and information before taking his landside posting. The sounds were crude and ugly, but he liked that the locals could understand him. It helped turn up the dial of their fear.

This human female’s fear was an exceptional scent, indeed.

He should eliminate her now because the waves of her terror scent smelled much too tasty. The goddess loved to bite her primes in the ass with this type of shit. But since he had questions, her death would have to wait until he interviewed her for information. It wasn’t as if there was anything else pressing to take care of.

The grunts weren’t as pleased as he was. Whines through muzzled faces answered his order, but the look in his eyes shut the red hats right up. A grunt was a grunt. Nothing to him. He wouldn’t waste time with complicated disciplinary measures. Instead, he’d have them bleeding out their last down a drain, and they knew it.

“Ten human males? Rebels? Was she with them?” Bastian didn’t move, letting them bring her closer.

“No, no. No,” the girl cried out in her struggle. It had a pleasant ring, perfectly scratched with terror.

“Running from humans, Prime,” the red hat answered, drool dripping down its chin. It wanted her badly.

“Running from them, eh?” He gave her a once over. She looked like she’d been on the losing side of a war—which she had, of course—but had humans done that to her or the duty?

Two of the grunts had gotten into some human blood, too. He could see it in the way their eyes rolled and watered as they dragged her to Correction’s main entrance. Worthless mongrels. That was a blatant disregard for his rules. They’d pay for that. Human blood dulled their faculties. All the damn grunt soldiers Control sent had the divine ability to devolve into blood drugged and useless.

Bastian had requisitioned better stock repeatedly but just kept getting shit. He was beginning to think someone in the higher echelons of Control didn’t like him very much.

This was reasonable. His hatred for every one of the fucking, privileged, high-tier assholes was not a secret.

Not looking back to see if the red hats obeyed, he crossed the courtyard to his apartments. He needed to clean up the goo from his last talk with a prisoner. The grunts would do what they were told, reluctantly, leaving the human girl tied up like a gift.

Watching her fluid movements as she tried to end her own life any way she could, her odd human face fixed with resolve, ignoring everything but her goal, was an intriguing sight. She’d twisted that plush shape in amazing ways. Did she have a secret worth dying for?

He was drawn to this girl. One way or another, she’d find out just how dangerous his attention was. Certainly, he’d have to find out what made her interesting. Dissect her mind. Take apart that pretty package of a body. Could the way she drew his eyes be dangerous to him?

The early Sarrian survey corps had world seeders with them that tampered with planetary evolutions by adding Sarrian DNA streams to any hardy, compatible lineages they discovered. While exploring planets, his people had left a little bit of themselves behind, just in case it might be needed later. Not all humans would carry the ancient seed, but some of them might. She could be one of them.

As far as Bastian was concerned, all those seeds were corrupt. Cursed. They should be eliminated.

He’d find out if she was one of them before he finished.