Page 20 of Command

Silarra stood before him beneath the commander’s platform, unrepentant. Off to her side, Renza looked mildly amused.

“Did I not make my instructions clear?” Threxin asked. “Were you confused?”

“I was just curious.” Silarra pouted in that way he hated. Other males found it appealing for some reason. It made her look like a petulant offspring who had no respect for authority and thought she could get away with it.

“You are compromising my mission.”

“How, Threxin? What do I risk if I give some stupid human a little taste?”

“I do not have to explain this, do I?” Threxin knuckled his temple. That gnawing frustration swelled and deflated so fast, he barely had time to register even the possibility of its existence. Times like these, he wanted to both rip the limiter from his brain and praise its presence. “The human is likely to become addicted to your exorin.”

“And?”

“And if the human does not get a continuous supply, it may get… ill. It will do anything to get more.Anything, Silarra.”

“…And?”

“Shoq, Silarra, surely you realize their volatility. Not a tick ago, I had to reassign most of this deck’s cohort to their residence deck to suppress a riot, and you are about to go down there as well. Do not feign ignorance. Them being alive is bad enough. I do not need another complication.”

The humans down on the deck Orion Halen had referred to as “CRD” were going crazy in what he originally thought may be an attempted mutiny. Only soon Renza reported they were lashing out at each other over residential quarters and food rations. They needed to be subdued, nonetheless.

Silarra thought for several ticks, looking away from him. Finally she inclined her chin in curt submission. “I will dispose of it.”

“That will fix this specific problem and open another. Our agreement with the part-uhyre demands not killing his humans.”

“Oh, come on. There will have to be casualties. He won’t even know it’s gone, Threxin. The place is teeming with them.”

That much was true—Colossaldid teem with the pests.

“Find the human. Bring it here. If it is addicted, I willdispose of it myself. But we cannot kill every human at our leisure. Not if we want our planet. Restrain yourself.”

“Fine,” Silarra looked down, deferential but clearly disappointed. Threxin’s spikes flattened at her petulance. Toying with humans couldn’t bethatentertaining, could it?

“Go now. And don’t cause a scene when you fetch it.”

Threxin followed Renza’s gaze to the exit. Renza enjoyed the pouting. But when he turned, Threxin saw his brother had not been looking after Silarra’s departing rear. The command center door was already open before Silarra had even reached it, and a flash of familiar red fur slinked past.

“I forgot I’d summoned Orion Halen. He always has that red bitch in tow.” Threxin knuckled at his temple again, hissing through his fangs.

“She does not understand us anyway, brother.” Renza shrugged.

“She is too volatile. An example of what we donotwant to risk.” In some ways Threxin was more concerned about Orion Halen’s female than Orion himself. At least his distant human-kin seemed to see the reality of his and his people’s situation. His female had a persistent defiance in her eye, and he wouldn’t put it past her to do something stupid.

Renza grunted.

“And there’s the other one, following her like a damn slave, fetching her food,” Threxin continued, thinking of his encounter with Kaia Halen’s “assistant” at the canteen that morning.

“That one is perceptive.”

“That one is an idiot.”

There was something wrong with her, just like her mistress. When she first detected his presence that morning she froze on the outside, but inside she erupted. The sweat on her skin and the uncontrolled increase in her pulse signaled fear—which was normal and desirable. But she had already been in an agitated state when Threxin came across her in theeating place, before he made his presence known. She had been speaking to herself in hushed, aggressive notes as she attempted to extract illicit rations for her mistress. And then, right after her moment of stillness at the sight of him, the stupid female went straight to offering him meal suggestions. Threxin could hardly keep up with the haphazard way she reeled from one extreme to the next.

“She deduced your name from our tongue alone.” Renza smirked.

“Barely.”

“If I didn’t know better, I would have said you looked flattered when you heard it.”

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