Page 68 of The Commander

Their ability to scan everything from unique cellular markers and subdermal scar patterns to clothing, weapons, and name day blades was legendary. That particular technology had kept order on Sarria for a hundred years.

That technology followed them all into space and on to other worlds. As a prime, Bastian hadn’t cared. They knew where he was, but they still couldn’t make him do what they wanted if he wasn’t in the mood. He’d grown up always knowing the third eye of Control watched him in life and in death. He hadn’t known there was a way to stop it.

The P.I. made its version of an exasperated sigh. “Fuck if I know, Dude. My best guess is that each battler’s tracking threads were deactivated as a whole. In one swipe, removing each dude from the database at different times. Can’t tell you how.”

“They deactivated themselves while on board the Anciadrimda, or immediately after leaving Sarria?”

“Ooh no, big hauncho-rindo. Someone else went into the glide and smashed those missing dudes with some heavy bleach to avoid notice. A little helping hand, if you know what I mean?”

“A cover up.”

Kitten listened from the doorway. Her eyes sparkled with silent questions.

“Right,” the P.I. agreed with him. “A really good home job or hand job, whatever the case may be.”

Kitten covered her mouth as her face turned red and her eyes bulged with humor.

Fucking P.I.

“Who was the someone? Who would have that type of clearance?”

“No P.I. could do it. That isn’t a wave I can ride, even if you begged me to.”

“Answer the question.”

The P.I. made a sound like it was choking. Bastian recognized the sound. It did that when it couldn’t answer a direct question. If he kept pressing, it would have a coughing fit, declare itself sick, and need to take a full cycle of rest.

“Fine. Please check on all Sarrian fatalities since arrival on this planet. I’m looking for specific, non-combat P.I. technician or engineer corps with the badge rank for installation and programming.”

The P.I. cleared its throat dramatically, then spat out two names. One of them had died many years before Bastian’s arrival from an undocumented Earth disease and the other on board the Anciadrimda. They both died sometime after the three prime battlers’ last known positions. A complete bleach job, as the P.I. had said.

He had the P.I. search for other recorded deaths, though he already had what he needed to know. There wouldn’t be any proof and the connection was loose, but Bastian had enough information to trust his suspicions.

His own data downloads included every bit of information he could get his hands on

Control’s plan to expand the goddesses’ reach in the known galaxies with the spread of the Sarrian Empire. He’d learned all kinds of interesting details. If he’d hated the waste-of-space badges of Control before his stasis, the knowledge he’d gained had not improved the feeling.

It might be cluttered in his head, but he never forgot any damn thing. He knew all the sentient beings he’d shared a ship with before his deployment and while in stasis. No prime battler worth his name and blade ever boarded a ship under another’s command without knowing who he might be stuck off planet with. While he didn’t know the missing primes personally, he’d heard two of the names before. They’d been on the Anciadrimda with him.

Someone in the highest ranks of Control had wiped all the information about the extra name and blade, as well as three missing prime battlers. And they had gone so far as to commit murder to make sure no questions would get asked or answered. The trail was hazy, indeed, but there were very few Sarrian with that amount of authority.

The Sarrian had sent their seeder corps to mess with the human DNA hundreds of years ago. They snuck in to watch while humanity crawled through its evolution, visiting the planet inside their small, fair light speed class birds with five man crews. It sounded like a prime had not returned from one of those survey missions as well. One of the three had gotten separated from his name and blade, leaving it behind for humans to find.

Bastian hadn’t been awake the entire time while in space. He’d chosen stasis until the sleep madness woke him and he accepted his tour on land rather than stay trapped aboard ship. A suspicious nature compelled him to devour all the data and human information that he could, as well as the Anciadrimda’s scope of mission and agenda. A male who liked to toy with his enemies had better be informed.

There was nothing more the P.I. would give him on the blade, but now Bastian had a better understanding of how the waste-of-space worms in Control would use it against him.

Leaving that subject, he asked for and received a current equipment inventory and full roll call of red hats. “And compile anumbered list of every duty who might have had interactions with Danov.”

The P.I. noticed a pattern. “Man, if you hadn’t ditched all the Yellow Badge officers when you rolled in, maybe you wouldn’t be so gnarled and clueless with these happenings. Someone would have been keeping the accounts and already made your orders.” Bastian really wanted to strangle it.

Kitten’s eyes crinkled with amusement.

CHAPTER 22 - CARA

The commander was going to do something to the muzzle heads that had betrayed him, and he didn’t want Cara to watch. For a sarcastic, sadistic, seven foot tall alien with an exoskeleton and two tongues—as far as she could tell—his abashed expression when he tried to explain he didn’t want her to see was rather adorable.

Dammit, she really liked the alien.Everyone else on the planet agreed he deserved the proverbial fate worse than death, and there Cara was, dick whipped and falling in love. Brenda had told her that she was weird because she was a virgin, because she liked to read the old histories, because—lots of reasons. None of them had anything about Cara being alien compatible.

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