Page 43 of The Commander

As daughters of the goddess, they no longer wanted to be chased through the sacred woods. They would no longer stand as part of a lottery candidate pool. They wouldn’t tolerate the possessive and protective instincts of the hunter castes. Declaring themselves evolved beyond that, they decried the old ways as barbaric. Sarrian females formed groups, lobbied the houses, protested, resisted, and demanded change.

The houses were only too happy to help them spread their message and pass new laws. The rituals of the past that guaranteed a strong bond and future seed were outlawed.

Some of the prime did change with them, deciding that compromise was preferable to solitude. They killed their true selves to find a compatible mate.

Others, like Bastian, stayed the same. Angry. Disappointed. Lost. What was for them to do if they couldn’t hunt, mate, and protect? They took to the skies. As a result, fewer prime battlers reached their full potential every year. Fewer fighters. Fewer leaders. Control would be delighted to sacrifice human women to the mating chase if it meant preserving the warriors who conquered planets on their behalf.

“You said that you need to test the female’s health? How about you use your programming to keep her alive? You knowher skin on a named blade is a death sentence. Humans are not permitted to touch the blade of the goddess’s named ones. Check the rule book. Any vile little badge that Control sends for your next download could order it, and the red hats would obey. You know this.”

The P.I. was silent, thinking through its conflicting data and orders. He wanted the thing confused. It should prioritize Kitten as his mate, not follow law sentences handed out by lowly corpsmen representing Control authority.

As a human with a connection to an unmarked, unregistered prime commander’s named blade, Kitten’s life was forfeit. There would be no investigation, no tribunal, no judgment. She’d be thoroughly scanned and punished to death for daring to handle the sacred blade. Control could send any badge, from any house, after the blade.

Bastian wasn’t liked. He wasn’t agreeable. He didn’t play nice with others. There were several on the ship wearing a Control badge who would ignore other directives and leap at a chance to punish him, directly or indirectly. That is what the red hats had been hoping for, after all.

If the P.I. had other orders regarding prime breeding habits, as Bastian suspected, it would choose protecting her over other laws in its information banks.

“Fine then. I will do what I can. It may take me a couple of days. This is compacted shit.”

“Where’s the report on area activity? I want to see all the recent surveillance.”

“Sheesh, Dude. Back off. One thing at a time,” the P.I. complained.

“Fine. Keep a log of everything you do. I want to be able to retrace your patterns.”

“That’s bullshit,” the P.I. said, as acidly as its artificially generated voice would allow.

“You want to erase everything I find. This conversation. Me!”

“Your reason for existing is to help me run this base and protect my interests and thus the interests of Control. Can you tell me that erasing this conversation isn’t in my best interest? Can you tell me that it isn’t in Control’s best interest to contain the mystery of this name day blade?”

It hummed, thinking. “It’s still bullshit.”

“You’ve been installed for five years. This is life on Earth. Lots of shit. Get used to it.”

CHAPTER 14 - BASTIAN

Returning to the offices, Bastian examined the fallen, wheezing red hats with satisfaction. It took some self-control not to smash each throat under his heel.

The things found with Cara lay in a back room, soaked in grunt slobber. The crotch from a pair of her pants was missing, likely done by his “intelligent” and “well behaved” duty.

Fuckers.

He hunted for anything connected to his mate, stepping over the dying grunts. 56983, lay face down next the base P.I. Bastian yanked the power cord, slapping it across 56983’s muzzle. Glazed eyes shifted, a pained wheeze escaped, nothing more.

Control had really delivered him a batch of shit in the last deployment, hadn’t they? Did every base get the same epic stupidity and lackluster obedience or was it just him?

These hairy miscreants planned betrayal. Perhaps Control embedded orders in their brains. Or they were defective enough to think independently and plan a minor rebellion.

Clearly, the friction he’d created with Control was circling back to him. Bastian had rather hoped that would happen. He had picked at them at every opportunity since leaving the planet. If they ever came for him, he would be happy to oblige a fight. Their fake allegiance to the way of the goddess and their petty family power games would never intimidate him.

But he hadn’t had Kitten then.

One promising step forward in protecting his Kitten was knowing a quarter of the base duty was now dead. He checked on the others who were supposed to be roaming the halls, keeping watch for intruders, and came across the male captured early that morning.

Oh.Oopsie.He’d forgotten the human in there.

One of the red hats was unconscious, slumped next to the door. Bastian kicked it awake before crushing its throat under his bare foot. Opening the door to the repurposed conference room, he saw the trapped human male still alive—naked and shivering on the floor.

---