Page 33 of The Commander

The wind whipped at Bastian’s cloak as he surveyed the area. A tapestry of muted greens and browns, dotted with the remnants of human farmsteads and forgotten old towns, stretched as far as the eye could see.

It was a couple of miles from their lodge to the greenhouse he planned for Kitten. She insisted on vegetables, so he would give his mate a way to grow vegetables. They would not be trading with any humans they had seen. She was lucky he had left them alive.

After a burst of noise, the crow friends he’d cultivated went silent. They’d learned to follow him when he was in the woods in the expectation of scraps being left behind. Their quiet signaled a change in the forest. Prey or…strangers.

He had company. Because of the magnetic fields here, any of the Sarrian would have to walk in. They weren’t here by accident.

He led them away from Kitten and the greenhouse. There was a cluster of five buildings lining a street that Kitten told him was called Miller Creek. People had lived there, once, but it was largely abandoned now. With some of the trees cleared out of the way, he’d be able to see them better.

There were no red hats with the group. He counted four prime battlers and a gray-skin with a fifth, smaller figure keeping pace on a silent hover disc. A female. To the battler’s credit they did their job. He never heard or saw the female with them. Her softer, musky scent was too unusual to go unmarked on this planet. But her team knew what they were doing and took her protection seriously.

Once in the town he perched in a tree for the vantage point and waited, watching. They slowed. Knew he was there. Other than the normal hand to hand combat weapons, it appeared they didn’t carry anything long range. Not acting or looking like an attack party, he decided to see what they wanted.

Jumping from the limb of the gnarled oak, he allowed them to see him. The woman stepped forward first. He’d never had an opportunity to meet her personally, but he knew who she was. Dulcina Nectuis Xylos.

He guessed that two who were barely past their naming ceremonies, with tipped chins, their name day blades gleaming at their hips were her sons. The tallest, hulking battler with a scarred face must then be her mate. Another survivor of the bug planet, Bastian recognized him. A gray-skin stood a little behind her, her link to her shuttle and the Anciadrimda.

“Commander Bastain, I want to make a treaty with you,” Xylos called out before approaching, wasting no time on pleasantries. Her voice, less brassy and irritating than Eld’s, carried a steely undercurrent.

He didn’t answer.

“Eld is dead.”

As he expected. If she wanted dramatics, he wasn’t going to provide them.

“I killed her when she returned the cruiser. She is no longer necessary. Her reckless visit here enabled me to solidify my position in my House as Arch Prima. I have a proposition for you.”

He made a show using his survey device to pretend to check the time, tapping a fingernail against the screen. “Lay it on me, sister. My hunting schedule is rather full.”

She ignored his sarcasm. “You will be decommissioned. Just as others have been decommissioned. Permanently. I’ve already informed Control that you have entered into a private breeding program under my care.”

Bastian chuckled, a low rumble in his chest. “Your private breeding program? Really? Does it come with vacations? Health care? Is there a frequent flyer program? Do I get a complimentary fruit basket?”

She gave no indication that she understood his taunts. Females like her, as a rule, did not dilute their intelligence with alien data downloads. She didn’t have an implanted input device. That was what her gray-skin was for. “I will provide you with the coordinates of the other primes. Those who, like you, have chosen to disconnect.”

“A support group? Excellent! Will there be snacks? Matching T-shirts? Because I’d rock a T-shirt that says, ‘Fuck the Establishment.’” He grinned, flashing all his teeth.

This time, her younger son couldn’t contain himself. His choked back snort earned him a steady glare from his counterpoint, a belligerent sibling on the other side of their mother.

Bastain was unsurprised to learn that other battlers lived. It had taken a never ending stream of armored, poisonous giant bugs to wipe most of them out. There were few things that could kill them. So, they lived with mates. Human, he assumed. Now disconnected from Control and under the guise of this woman’s private breeding program. “How did you make that happen?”

“As you know, the Goddess’s will has been twisted and corrupted for a hundred years on Sarria since the ascension of House Ruccuna.”

“I don’t need a history lesson, woman. I am well aware of the stories. A wife who felt scorned and wanted power, who twisted her daughters against the goddess. A weak, drunk, prime battler mate who sent others to do his fighting instead of doing it himself. The rise of the other players in the great game. Social outcry. So on and so forth.” Bastian cycled his hands in a human signal to get on with it.

The woman had been trained as an orator and librarian. She couldn’t help herself.

She touched her mate’s arm. Her hover pad stayed low to the ground, slightly behind him. Not in deference, but in an understanding that he needed to be able to move to protect her.

“But you are a hunter. A born hunter. If you were not, you would not have finished the ritual. You would have abandoned it. Abandoned your mate and the old ways like the others.” Her face shone with her earnest belief.

“I don’t subscribe to the Hunter’s Way, anymore.” As far as he was concerned, the goddess of Sarria and all she stood for died on the planet with a bunch of foaming bugs.

He snorted, biting back the crude lies that formed in his mouth. He wanted to tell her that he just wanted a piece of ass, but he wouldn’t insult his Kitten that way, not even for a joke that would insult the female in front of him.

“Many of the houses have given up a desire for peace in exchange for power and monetary gain. They want to buy a peace that will never be true. How can it be when their corruption is killing Sarria?” The wind blew down the corridor between them, spilling her scent into his senses. She was being as honest as she knew how to be.

“I don’t want to be a part of a breeding program. I’m not a stud for a dead goddess. Maybe it is Sarria and Control and all those fucking rule-making badges that need to die.” Bastian wasn’t a true believer. He gave her a grim smirk.

“You know exactly how much firepower that would take. Don’t be a fool.” The man beside her spoke up, coaxed out of his silence by Bastian’s suggestion. His voice grated, rough, and breathy, a sign that he’d had to regrow part of his throat at some point in his life.

Some things never healed right.

The most damage Bastian ever inflicted on Control came as a Commander. Had he been willing to go along to get along, he might one day have earned a position that would allow him to destroy the Anciadrimda from the inside. But as a male, he would never reach the power that the woman in front of him could attain. He could not sway a society or build a new one.

“This earth has been stabilized. We can and wll rebuild here, with seeds planted eons ago. It is a place where the old ways can be reborn. Where the goddess’s true will can be implemented. Every continent has carried Sarrian lines to birth a future, some of the more promising, stable areas held several. You are among the first wave, the first fathers, but there will be more. Here you can be a provider, protector, teacher of your young.”

“And what will my young look like? Will my sons be soft-skinned?”

“No. They will look like you. And so will your daughters. They will be vulnerable young, however. You must watch over them carefully. They would not survive the first breath trials on Sarria. It will be better for you to build your life with other battlers, for safety.”

Daughters? Kitten wanted a daughter. Bastian was still coming to terms with the possibility. The man across from him saw the realization land in the faint change of Bastian’s pulse.

His lips twitched.

The bastard.

“My son will be soft?”

“Your children will be born soft to accommodate the human physiology. The skeleton must take time to grow and the armor to harden. They will be fragile.”

Bastian did not like the sound of that. Soft meats?

The priestess saw his reaction and seized on it. “In a Sarrian home the weak are always protected.”

Bastian grunted.

“You can join with others until your sons are sturdy enough to stand beside you. You will prepare the way for others to follow, those who seek freedom from the taint of corruption. This planet will become a new home for Sarrian—those seeking mates and families, building their lives in honor of the goddess.” Xylos gave him another one of her very painfully sincere expressions as she waved her hand at the ruins of the empty town.

“Earth 2: Electric Boogaloo? A sequel no one asked for, but hey, I’m game. As long as I get to direct. Though I am going to need some serious funding to build this utopia of yours. And a Costco card. Those bulk snacks are essential.” Bastian tapped a finger against his chin, feigning deep thought.

Some of the data mess in his head had disintegrated, replaced by the instincts he needed to live here and protect his mate. The presence of a female from house Nectuis brought it all back. He hoped he was as annoying to her as his P.I. had once annoyed him.

“You will have what you need to thrive, and you will not be bothered. Everyone who hated you on Sarria for causing trouble and in Control will believe you are dead. You will be free, Bastian. Free to build, to create your own house, to live as the Goddess intended.” Xylos pressed on, a flicker of impatience in her eyes.

“And the catch?”

“If your mate dies, you die.”

“Well, that goes without saying,” he said. No argument from him. Kitten was his reason for living.

She unclipped a small data device from her belt, extending it towards him. “The coordinates. The names. Everything you need to know.”

“No. You can write that down. On a thing called paper. With a thing called a pen. While it is simple to deactivate any threads from trackers, that is trouble I don’t want to deal with. Or you can just tell me. I’ll remember.”

She took the device back, looking at her mate, who nodded. “I will drop a map, here, along with certain other supplies you might wish to have. Nothing is tagged or tracked. As you know, the connections here are faulty, anyway.”

“Whose idea was it not to update those trackers?” he asked the question that had bothered him since he discovered the obvious weakness.

The woman smiled. Let the question hang in the air, waiting for his conclusion before she spoke. There were over a hundred houses serving the goddess on Sarria, but only a few of them owned and worked in the maintenance and development labs.

“You think the goddess dead, Commander. After the bugs, after what we suffered and lost for no reason,” the woman’s mate said.

Bastian gave the woman beside him a slow, dismissive once over as a deliberate

insult.

“She isn’t dead,” she ground out. “She knew the cycles of life and planted seeds on other planets like ours, like this one, for a rebirth. She was prepared. You don’t have to believe it for it to be true.”

Bastian wouldn’t believe it. The breeding program had come from some enterprising Sarrian House started before he was born.

If the goddess were alive, that meant she had betrayed thousands of loyal followers, males who took their names and wore her blade with pride. He couldn’t accept that.

They didn’t stay after that. Bastian watched to make sure they went. True to their word, they left the map and a load of supplies that took two trips to get back to the lodge.

Half of them were goods that would make raising a child easier and safer.

He wasn’t sure he trusted them or believed any of what she said about their so called living goddess and recreating a version of Sarria on Earth, but he wasn’t about to ignore the chance to live in peace with Kitten.