After War (Revenge Squad Book 1)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “Yes, Sergeant,” I said out loud as I got back into the truck.

  Silky shot me a glance, but thought better of mentioning me talking to my ghosts. And if he noticed my smile as I drove back to Sijambo Farm, or read my happy mood with his freaky alien head fronds, then he had the smarts not to mention that either.

  I hadn’t been in a good mood for months, but today the extremely modest levee broke and a trickle of optimism wetted my parched spirits. I didn’t want to be happy, but I couldn’t help myself, because life had just gotten interesting.

  — CHAPTER 11 —

  A year passed.

  Now, when I say it like that, it sounds as if it sped by in a flash, nothing to report, maximum dullness.

  The reality was hard work, a modicum of success, an accommodation with Silky (which didn’t quite reach the foothills of friendship, but at least brought them within effective range of heavy weapons), a little more success, and constant vigilance for threats from pests (whether Meskilot flies or those Revenge Squad vecks). But no one died – which felt like a good thing at the time – and the only shooting came from regular practice and the occasional warnings I gave to crag dogs showing too much interest in my pigs.

  To give you an example of what happened during this year that just passed, have you ever considered how the food on your plate was grown? To grow the wheat and barley that make your bread, beer, and whiskey, did you think all farmers need are some seeds, a little dirt, and some summer water? If that’s what you imagine, then stick with it, pal, because the reality is far more complex. I mean, wheat, maize, and barley aren’t even native to Klin-Tula. These little details kinda matter.

  Most of the crops I grew were strains of Earth plants, bred for the alien soil of this planet. But dirt is a complex business when it comes to agriculture, and I had to prepare my soil with the appropriate trace minerals and cultures of micro-flora and fauna that traced their ancestry to distant Earth. Yet to succeed, I couldn’t fight Nature as she expresses herself on this world, because here it is we who are unnatural, our wheat and barley that are the alien invaders. On Klin-Tula, success in agriculture is as much art as science, and I had come to a realization that I wasn’t very artistic.

  Silky was.

  When we returned from Dulnthorpe with the truck filled with soil cultures, he insisted that we didn’t dig trenches in my ashen fields and fill with this Earth muck. Instead, we blended the Earth culture with the native soils. The wheat barely noticed the difference; the barley suffered, producing strappy weeds that were no use for anything but feeding my ever-hungry pigs. Silky and I discussed the barley failure most thoroughly. And if Silky wore the print of my knuckles on his face for a few days afterwards, my features also gained some temporary decoration courtesy of Silky’s hollow-boned little fists.

  I didn’t agree with him, but I respected how hard he’d fought his case. So I let him stick to his bio culture plan one more time, and ruin another crop of barley.

  Except it wasn’t ruined. Quite the opposite; not only were the ears of grain plumper than I’d ever grown before, but the chemical analysis showed we were hitting all the right sweet spots, especially a high alpha amylase enzyme content.

  Our crop varieties have three growing seasons per year, and by the third season my soil had finally stopped warring on itself and concentrated instead on producing such high quality crops that word was getting around town that Sijambo Farm had transformed from a hermitage into an inspiration for the often marginal local farmers.

  And so, the year after I had stood on my deck and shot at a stumpy-tentacled alien intruder, that same annoying alien was sitting beside me, enjoying the late summer sun beating down on the deck to the accompaniment of a case of fine malt whiskey.

  It would be nice to have said that the whiskey had been made with our grain, but that’s not how whiskey works, and if you thought it was, I highly recommend you do more research. But we had sold our barley to the distiller who made that whiskey, and they told us that if we kept up our consistency, and expanded our scale they were looking to produce high margin, limited edition, single malt whiskeys.

  I could picture the bottles, Sijambo Single Malt emblazoned on the label.

  I purred at the thought as I settled back into my recliner, wearing nothing more than my shorts, and studied my not-friend who preferred to sit upright leaning against the wall in the coolness of shadows. Between humans, staring is generally regarded as a bad thing, unless you are cordially inviting a fight, or showing appreciation of a display, such as a magic trick, or an eye-catching body enhancement. Silky wasn’t human. I suspected being stared at was their equivalent of holding hands.

  I was coming to prefer Silky’s little alien quirks like that, because he seemed more human with every passing day. I guess that goes hand-in-hand with being a natural empath. I’m sure that to read my mood, he no longer needed the head tentacles that were the source of his empathy. He understood me, and could employ natural human body language better than I could. And I could swear that his features were changing: softening and assuming more human proportions. The whiskey was persuading me that if I made Silky wear a hat, a ton of make-up, and ordered him not to speak, then he could just about pass for human – in a crowd of drunken idiots. With another hour of drinking, I might just test that theory.

  Even the voices in my head tolerated Silky. Well, I’m not sure Sanaa was too impressed with him, but I think the Sarge and Efia had knocked some virtual heads together and ordered them to make Silky feel welcome, because whether they hated him or not, he was the last, best hope for my sanity.

  The sun was shining, business was good, and the whiskey better… Hell, I almost liked the guy myself… This was far too good to last. Silky was still a deserter, and I was sheltering him. One day that would catch up with me. But I’d lived through centuries in which my friends had ran out of their tomorrows, one by one, and so I wasn’t a big one for long-term planning. Tomorrow could deal with its own problems.

  I decided I ought to make some pretense of being nice to him, seeing as we were stuck with each other for the time being.

  “I’ve seen much stranger things than your body, Silky,” I told him. “You don’t have to cover up for me.”

  The alien cocked an eye ridge. I wish he didn’t look so human when he did that.

  He always kept his legs and torso and arms covered, but left his head bare, which I’d always assumed was to stop himself looking too alien. Maybe his chest was covered in fluorescent, writhing cilia. Or maybe he had a ‘fuck you, humans’ tattoo.

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself. I don’t care either way, I’m just saying the sight of your white, scrawny body doesn’t bother me.”

  Silky shrugged back and peeled off to his shorts.

  Now, although I’ve tended to avoid aliens like the plague, I saw a few weird sights during the war. There’s the Piynix who can mutate at will, and the Jotuns who look like your everyday six-limbed, seven-foot-tall shaggy beasts, until they do that thing where their fingers extend and bifurcate into something resembling feathers. Or combat knives, depending on their mood.

  I could go on, but nothing I’d seen of aliens in the previous three centuries shocked me as much as the sight of Silky in the state that whatever passed for nature on her planet intended.

  Her body was not so much strange, as unexpected. To be specific, unexpectedly humanlike. Shoulders, rib cage, all were in proportion, and led down to the smoothly muscled belly so pale that her skin was the color of milk mixed with a little red food coloring.

  Yes, I know I keep saying ‘her’. If the sight of Silky’s two obsidian-tipped breasts wasn’t a big enough clue, then the clincher was the digital laughter echoing in my head as my ghosts turned out in force to experience the surprise I was feeling.

  “You vecks,” I muttered. “You knew.”

  I felt such a dongwit for having thought of Silky as male for a year when – looking back at the clues – they’d known all along. Of course
they did, I’d asked them to find out everything they could about Kurlei. And if you’re annoyed because I’ve talked about Silky as a ‘he’ until now, well… Now you know exactly how I felt.

  The scientific name for Kurlei means ‘mammal-like alien’, said Sanaa.

  You know, added Bahati in a teasing voice, if I see past that skin the color of salted fish, her nude body reminds me of you, Sanaa. Lovely in her own way. I wonder if she would feel like you, if NJ were to stroke her flesh…

  Shut up, both of you. Especially you, Bahati. Other than glimpses in the communal shower, or swimming in the sea, and… and all the other times, you never saw Sanaa naked.

  Bahati and Sanaa both went very quiet.

  Oh, great.

  I was distracted from thoughts of whatever my ex-spouses had gotten up to when they were alive, when the way the sun glistened off Silky’s sweat-sheened breasts pulled at my attention, and in a way I hadn’t felt for many years.

  If those bastards plugged into my spinal column thought my tongue would hang out, and my gaze would be glued to those breasts, then they had been dead too long to remember what it was like to be human.

  I didn’t get lusty. I couldn’t. Such a profound sense of loneliness stuffed my heart and my head to bursting point that there was no room for anything else. I looked away choking on my emptiness.

  “Let them tease,” said Silky, “the dead do not often have the chance to laugh. And while they do, we should talk. I want to be open and honest with you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Like the way you let me think you were a guy for the past year?”

  “I’m alien filth to you. As if you cared what gender I am.”

  I chewed that over. “Fair point.” Not for the first time, I wondered if she could really read my mind.

  “I want to talk about… about why I ran.”

  “No!” I surprised myself with my vehemence, tried to keep my fists from bunching. “Look, pal, I’m not saying I exactly like you, but… you’re good for me. I’m glad you showed up. But you’re a deserter. That’s difficult, even if you could ever persuade me that the circumstances are mitigated. So let’s just agree not go there. Ever.”

  “My gender and my reason for fleeing the Legion are intimately mixed,” she said.

  The fight drained out of me. I’m sure I turned pale. I tried to think through possible explanations for what Silky had just said, but each one was uglier than the last. I took a good look at her and couldn’t deny her need to tell her story. “Go on.”

  “Our military units reflected our civilian demography. Amongst my people, most individuals will be female at any given point in time.”

  Her gaze slid sideways, and her gestures were so humanlike by then that I knew she was recalling powerful memories.

  “What proportion of your people are males?” I prompted gently.

  She returned my gaze. “Whatever proportion we need. In civilian society we are bound to follow our husband. In the military, the males command units, and we must obey their orders.”

  “Sounds like your men have it easy.”

  “Not at all!” The translator in her throat raised its volume slightly, but with her deep frown and narrowed eyes there was no doubting the passion in her reply. “The male is constantly challenged, pushed beyond the limit of his endurance, made to perform in front of an audience watching his every move and waiting for him to fail.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t really feel a connection. “Sounds like species of animals I encountered in Africa. A single male is dominant in the herd, but the dominant is also the prime target for everyone. Other males challenge him constantly, always seeking to wear him down. They will make night attacks, not serious combat but to disrupt his sleep. He can never rest. Females compete with each other for the right to mate with him. Eventually, the moment comes when a challenger makes a serious play to wrest the herd from the old alpha and wins. The old king is dead, long live the new king… Except as soon as the new alpha is crowned, the countdown starts until the day when this new king will inevitably be deposed in his turn.”

  “The analogy is accurate,” she said, “in all but one crucial respect. There are no rival males. It is only we womenfolk who challenge the male, until there comes a point when we agree that we find him wanting. It is a hormonal thing. There is no need for verbal discussion. When he is no longer fit to lead then he is, as you put it, deposed. It all happens very quickly.”

  There was an obvious question to be asked. Actually, two, when I thought about it. I liked obvious, so I started asking them. “Dead?”

  “We kill him. Yes. Later, when the crisis is over, and we return to our rational minds, it is easy to feel shamed by the viciousness of the killing. But when we run hot, all we can think of is that the male has failed us. Consequently, our minds are filled with rage throughout the succession crisis.”

  “There you go again. Succession crisis. With my species, if your previous marriages had ended by bludgeoning your partner to death, then it would be wise to keep quiet about that when looking for someone new. Where do you go to find a new male?”

  “Go? We don’t go anywhere. The dominant wife becomes the new male, and inherits the wives and the ultimate doom of her-his murdered predecessor.”

  I took a deep slug of whiskey. Damn that was a fine drink. “So let me get this straight… You were married to your officer, and some kind of deep-seated tradition, or hormonal control, or alien voodoo shit meant you had to obey his direct order. Right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “But you already told me you didn’t shoot those prisoners. Which means you must have been in a succession crisis.”

  She nodded. “We were, but the process involves days or weeks of build up before unleashing in an outburst of absolute violence. My husband could sense the signs that his wives were doubting him. He knew his days were short and that was beginning to disrupt his thinking. He became careless of the lives of others. Understandable, I suppose, with his own gruesome death just around the corner.”

  “You’re saying you moved too soon. Is that it?”

  “Yes, NJ. Change was coming. My own thinking was disrupted. Not only did the sight of my husband fill me with murderous rage, but I saw the world through unexpectedly new perspectives. A male perspective. I was readying to compete for leadership. If my husband had not ordered the slaughter of those prisoners, then within a few days I would probably have become male myself. I would have led my unit.”

  “So you disobeyed this direct order,” I said, interested despite my desire to remain aloof from this… this annoyingly nude alien.

  “You humans are programmed to obey through convention, training, peer pressure, discipline, and the need for self-preservation through mutual cooperation. If you frakk things up because you challenge orders, you’re letting your comrades down.”

  “That about covers it.”

  “There remains choice for you, NJ. Not an easy choice, I know, but if your officer gives you an order that is illegal or lacks any moral authority, you humans question that order, you challenge it.”

  “And obey it anyway,” I said. “Usually.”

  “Perhaps. But not always. I have read human history, you know. It is extremely rare for a unit to disobey its commander, but your species has been at war with itself continuously from prehistory right up until you signed yourself into servitude in the Vancouver Accords.”

  “Okay, so we’re brutes. That’s just as well. If we weren’t, there would never have been a Human Legion.”

  I noticed her nudity again. I’d lived jowl to sweaty butt cheek with human men and women all my life and nudity had never bothered me. Silky’s was beginning to annoy me.

  “My point,” she said, “is that I cannot refuse my orders like you humans can. To do so is to betray my gender. My very biology. I challenged my husband too soon, and my sister wives did not back me. They took his side and turned on me.”

  “You mean they attacked you? How did you get away
?”

  “Because we were so close to challenging our husband. Close enough for my sisters to be slowed by confusion, and I escaped under cover of this confusion. If I’d stayed, they would have torn me to shreds, and I do not mean that as a metaphor. Run or die, I had no other choice.”

  I drained my glass, allowing the burning heat of our success to trickle down my throat. I decided I believed Silky, but something still didn’t add up. Whenever her thoughts turned to her past, her dark eyes seemed to cloud into an abyssal black. Now, I know she was only an alien, no matter how humanlike she might be in certain, surprising aspects, but I was convinced her soul was rotten with guilt.

  I shook my head. “You did nothing wrong,” I said.

  Silky broadcast her disgust. I’d forgotten her empathic fronds on her head could send as well as receive. I was no stranger to feelings of self-loathing and bitterness, and Silky’s emotions felt exactly the same – except they came from the outside.

  “You are human, NJ. Nothing but a filthy alien to me. I didn’t expect you to understand.”

  I felt so sorry for her that I almost apologized. Instead, I tried to do something even more stupid. I tried to reason with her. “I get it,” I said. “What you did was taboo in Kurlei society. But you aren’t in Kurlei society. You’re with me now, and I don’t judge you.”

  She shut off her expression of bitterness, but the glare she gave me was even colder. “Don’t paint me as a victim, NJ. That would be insulting. I can never escape my guilt. That’s the main reason I came here. Everyone I spoke to said you isolated yourself as punishment for your own inescapable crime. I don’t care that you don’t wish me to compare myself with you. Like it or not, we are like-minded souls. Equally damned.”

  “Me? But I didn’t run.”

  “No. Your crime is worse than that.”

  I looked away, and regretted the emptiness of my glass. She didn’t have to spell it out, because I knew exactly what she meant. My crime? I had survived.