Page 41 of The Commander

“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 thetale tellgrunts.

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 eraseinformation 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 andengraved 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.

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