by Mel Odom
Paralyzed by the venom racing through his body, Yuburak collapsed to the floor.
Zhoh stood over his vanquished foe and felt the precious blood weeping down the side of his face. “How do you know Sxia?”
Yuburak panted as his body failed him, leaving him more dead than alive. “You are no longer favored by the primes, Captain Zhoh. You have enemies here.”
That surprised Zhoh. Personal vendettas were not allowed within the Phrenorian Empire by the will of the primes. Any personal problems were immediately dealt with or dropped so the Empire could continue moving forward.
Zhoh drove his patimong into Yuburak’s thorax, deliberately missing both of the warrior’s lungs. Sitting next to Yuburak, Zhoh cracked open the lieutenant’s exoskeleton to reveal the pinkish gray flesh within. He scooped out a handful, watching as Yuburak’s eyes widened in terror and pain. The venom paralyzed him, but it did not dull his pain receptors.
“I’m going to eat my fill of you, Yuburak,” Zhoh said, “then I’m going to give what’s left of you to the krayari that live in my quarters. When the time comes and you leave me, I will excrete you onto a dung hill and there you will remain till you dry out and blow away.” He pushed the lieutenant’s flesh into his maw, feeling the blood run down his face.
SIX
Kahl’s Lamp
Makaum Civilian Sector
Loki 19 (Makaum)
1651 Hours Zulu Time
Mostly what you’re going to have at Fort York is soft service. You watch, you keep the peace when it comes to military ops—and that’s mainly hardcases out in the Green Hell that don’t let a body count stand in the way of profits from looting and illegal drugs—and you drill.” Terracina sipped from the longnecked bottle he held.
Sage held a bottle as well. They didn’t come out of a manufacturing plant. Uneven brown glass marred by imperfections, slightly bulbous, the bottle had been handblown in a local business. He liked the weight of the bottle in his hand because it felt more solid than those in the space station, and more welcoming than the bulbs soldiers drank out of in the field.
The local brew wasn’t beer. It was some kind of fermented fruit or nut¸ maybe a blend of both, but it was just as heady as he remembered from the night before. His senses were already buzzing and the edginess he’d had since planetfall was a step back.
He and Terracina sat at a table outside a small café in the heart of Makaum’s downtown sector. Three- and four-story buildings filled the narrow streets, and all of the structures had plants and roots knotted through their walls that provided part of the infrastructure.
The Makaum people traveled on foot, on bicycles that were obviously corp trade, and on dafeerorg, domesticated lizards the size of Bengal tigers. Serrated teeth filled the long mouths. Occasionally motorized vehicles shot by the locals, and most of those were driven by corps sec teams or by natives hired by offworlders to pilot groundcraft for them. Only a few of the vehicles belonged to Terran military.
Mosquito netting hung over the outdoor area of the café and a veritable cloud of insects that Sage didn’t recognize clung to the mesh. Clicks, whistles, scratching, and humming filled the air despite the white noise generator that Terracina set on the table, but the cacophony was diminished. Small winged lizards half the size of a human flitted through the space above the netting and dined on insects as large as Sage’s fist.
“Want my advice?” Terracina lifted an eyebrow.
“Sure.” Sage shifted his gaze from one of the domesticated lizards ridden by a young woman, who looked away when she realized she’d been caught staring at the diner. Like most of the populace he had seen, the Makaum woman possessed green-hued skin with shifting tints.
According to the military’s reports, the Makaum people had developed some chameleon-like abilities. Some of them, it was said, could disappear in the jungle without making a move, just fade right into the background. Mostly, they were human-looking, but they maintained a distance when it came to offworlders.
“First thing you do, you go to provisions and get you a white noise generator.” Terracina tapped the squat, fist-sized cube sitting on the table. “These babies have been spec’d out to manage ambient noise on industrial worlds like Dithor 9 where iron mining goes on around the clock. They provide peace and quiet there, but the best you can hope for on Makaum is to deaden the constant noise of the insects.”
“I’ll do that.” Sage had already grown tired of the incessant barrage of noise. He’d been to Dithor 9, protecting the mining site from the Phrenorians. In addition to all the constant noise, the mining site had been in one of the continual sunlight regions. Darkness and silence had come at a premium.
The café was near the fort, so it was primarily frequented by soldiers and civilian support staff, as well as the port personnel. The young soldiers swapped games, media packs, and lies as they sat at the tables. They acted like they were back in primary education, and the fraternization between the male and female soldiers was obvious.
Other patrons kept themselves apart from the soldiers, but they watched them with curiosity and caution. Many of the nonmilitary personnel wore Terran clothing, but others were dressed in shirts and pants made with lightweight material, corp grunts who handled the daily work of keeping the business flowing. Only a handful of Makaum people sat inside the café, and they kept their own counsel. Sage got the feeling the Makaum people were there primarily to watch the offworlders.
“Something else you want to get for your down time is local clothing.” Terracina tilted his bottle at Sage’s armor. “Even ACUs will get hot. Locals make their outfits out of spider silk and plant fiber and don’t bother being too creative with it. They got tailors here that will make your clothing custom fit for next to nothing. Not as durable as offworld stuff from the corps, but it’s cheap.” He smiled. “You can do your bit to help stimulate the local economy and keep the profits from the corps.”
Sweltering inside his armor, Sage took in the fit of the native clothing and how the shirts and pants hung easily. Most of what he saw was gray or brown, but here and there bright colors stood out, though those were primarily offworld clothing.
“They choose the muted colors on purpose.” Terracina grinned. “Allows them to step into the shadows easier out in the jungle or in the dark alleys here in Makaum. A lot of the lizards and the big spiders can see color. That ability makes the Makaum critters hunt the Phrenorians because some of the Sting-Tails tend to stand out in this environment with their bright colors. Those exoskeletons come in a lot of different reds and yellows, as well as blues and greens that are a lot safer. Black and brown tend to blend right in, but the Empire doesn’t much care for those colors.”
Curious but trying to remain polite, Sage studied the Makaum people at the scattered tables around him. As a general rule, the indigenous population kept to themselves, but they kept eyeing the soldiers and offworlders around them. Most of them were male, but there were a few females. All of them were tentative and watchful.
Terracina continued telling stories. He was good at it, and he had a lot of them to tell since all he had on his mind was waiting out his return home. That kind of energy expended while waiting made a soldier talkative. Suddenly that other world, the real world, was coming back into focus. A lot of soldiers had trouble getting back to normal even though they believed that was what they truly wanted.
A lot of them didn’t make that transition.
As Sage listened, he separated the knowledge from the color and kept what taught him about the planet, the fort, and the people he was going to be around. While he listened, he ate, not really paying attention to the food. Terracina had ordered the meal. Sage didn’t really care what he ate. It was all fuel to keep him going. Some fuels were better-tasting than others, and he did have his favorites, but those weren’t necessary.
He also watched the young soldiers in the café, silently irritated at the way they had their guards down. They were there for socializing, for entertainment,
for a chance to get away from the fort. They had stepped away from being soldiers. On one hand, Sage didn’t fault them, but on the other they needed to remember they were in hostile territory. An unwary soldier was a near-dead soldier just waiting for the bullet, beam, or bomb that would make that final change.
“This is part of the DMZ.” Terracina pointed with his fork. “You go farther north, you hit the region claimed by the Phrenorian and (ta)Klar embassies. They each cut themselves out a nice-sized piece of real estate, but I can’t blame them. We dropped a fort into place on our end of town.”
“The Phrenorians aren’t fortified here?”
Terracina shook his head and took a sip from the longnecked bottle. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
A look of irritation showed on Terracina’s face. “We check the jungle regularly. The Phrenorians have their embassy and a few outlying areas according to the agreement with the Makaum government. They can’t establish any kind of fortification—outside of the embassy. Not permitted under the treaty we and the Makaum have with them. The Phrenorians get to negotiate trade, which at the moment leaves them primarily in the red. They want the resources Makaum has to offer, but they don’t have much the Makaum people want in return.” He shrugged. “That’s pretty much true with the Terran corps too, but they’re happy passing the cost of doing business on to the consumers at the other end.”
“I don’t like the idea that the Phrenorians are getting supplies here, under our noses, to use in the war.”
“The treaty shortlists Phrenorian trade same as it does us. They’re limited to air, water, and food. No mineral resources to make weapons or armor, no pharmaceuticals other than what the Makaum people want to let go of.”
“We can control that?”
“With the help of the corps, yeah. Between the military and corp assets, we can monitor most of what the Sting-Tails do. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“You’ve been in situations like this. It’s hard to manage everything unless you control it all. Bottom line? We don’t.”
“It would be easier if we kept the Phrenorians offplanet.”
“You’ve got my vote, but the Makaum people don’t want to take a stand like that. They’re not sure whether they should fear the Terrans or the Phrenorians more.”
“So they allow both of us here.”
“Yeah. Kind of managing an uneasy balance, I think. And the (ta)Klar.” Terracina frowned. “Now there’s a shifty bunch I don’t care to trust. The (ta)Klar are only about doing good for themselves. No one and nothing else hits their balance sheets.”
Over the years, Sage had few dealings with the (ta)Klar. That species tended to stay away from active battlefronts and negotiate their business behind bunkers. Better yet, from orbiting spaceships. The only ones Sage had seen all fit the general physiques: bodies small enough to be Terran children, skin as blue as mold and covered in the same kind of short, wispy fuzz that sprouted on cheese, and wearing clear bowls over their heads because they tended to be an aquatic species. Portable rebreathers kept the liquid oxygenated.
“What do the (ta)Klar get?”
“Trade. Same as the Phrenorians. Terra and (ta)Klar haven’t gone head to head so far, but they’ve given hard stares at each other over the same cesspools.” Terracina grinned. “I guess you already knew that. You’ve been at some of those cesspools.”
“Yeah.” Sage didn’t care for the (ta)Klar. He’d never met a more self-serving and secretive race in his life. At least the Phrenorians were up front about their hostility. The (ta)Klar liked the passive-aggressive game and tended to cause hardships wherever they went.
If it hadn’t been for the way the (ta)Klar had factionalized Nogdria 7, that planet would have had a chance of surviving against the Sting-Tails. As it was, the world had been decimated and left in ruins six years ago, when a Phrenorian phalanx arrived.
That had been the last active duty Sage had seen. Medics had scraped up what had been left of him, gotten him offplanet, and rebuilt him. He’d been offered a medical discharge, but he’d grimly suffered through the DNA rebuild and stood on his own two legs—more or less—at the end of three months. He’d come back in good shape, better than the doctors had thought he would.
“So far,” Terracina said, “the Phrenorians have played by the rules. Generally.”
“It’s hard to enforce a treaty with somebody you’re at war with.”
Terracina grinned. “Gets easier when you have a fort to negotiate with. Terran ambassadors negotiated that before the (ta)Klar got involved. It’s made all the difference.”
Sage sliced into some kind of tuber, forked it into his mouth, chewed, and then swallowed. The taste was starchy and sweet.
“For now,” Terracina went on, “the treaty stands. Phrenorian soldiers and Terran soldiers can go to the same bars and restaurants, the same bordellos—in staggered shifts so they’re not there together, but they can’t invade the other’s territory.”
Sage cocked an eyebrow at that. “Bordellos?” Places where a soldier could get a sex partner for a price carried even more potential problems than a business that sold hooch. Soldiers would fight over sex partners. Phrenorian biology was different from Terran biology. Despite the general human build, the Sting-Tails fit the arthropod makeup more than mammalian.
“Sex doesn’t work between Phrenorians and humans,” Sage said.
“I didn’t think so either. But Makaum is as close as we’ve gotten to the Sting-Tails in a relaxed environment. What we’ve discovered is that the Phrenorian males do have a taste for human sex pheromones.”
Sage digested that, thinking it wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever heard, but it was unexpected. “How many bordellos?”
“Three places.”
“Locals do the work?” Sage had to ask because a fight over a local girl would extend past the two military powers involved. Getting the locals riled up when a prostitute’s blood was inadvertently spilled made things more difficult. The balances were hard to keep in a DMZ.
“No local guys or girls. Weird thing. The Makaum women will sometimes fraternize with us, and I’ve even heard a few of the soldiers have gotten into intimate relationships with the male Makaum, but none of the locals work the cathouses. Everybody in the bordellos was brought in by the corps.” Terracina grimaced. “Entertainment ventures, they call them. At least the entertainment is professional. That helps some. Those guys and girls will kill a client that gets out of line without hesitation. They laid down that message when they first arrived. Two corps bashhounds who thought they would take liberties ended up laid out in front of Ruby Lights. In pieces. No one knows if the sec people at the bordello did the chopping or if the prostitutes did it. But the message was clear.”
“Yeah. It would be.” Sage sipped his brew. “Is the community against citizens working in the bordellos?”
For a moment, Terracina paused, then shook his head. “I think it’s just that the Makaum in general have a higher sense of self than that. Kind of sounds lame to say that out loud, but that’s what I think. The Makaum put up with us, and they like some of the toys we bring along, maybe some of the otherworldliness, but they don’t want to be used by us. If they could have put up a wall and kept everyone out, I think they would have. As it is, I think they’re resigned to just trying to make the best of a bad situation, now that we’ve found them.”
That was interesting. None of the places Sage had been had taken the moral high ground and held it. Military occupation was too pervasive, and there were too many things offworlders could bring to planets that didn’t have space travel. He took another bite of tuber and the spices it had been cooked in exploded inside his mouth. For a moment it felt like his mouth had been firebombed. He took a sip of his drink to quench the flames.
“What about the (ta)Klar?”
Terracina shook his head. “As usual, they keep to themselves. They work with the council, but they don’t . . . partake of the available enter
tainment.”
Sage chewed and thought about that, building a mental construct of how things worked in the streets. Demilitarized zones were pretty much the same everywhere. Soldiers didn’t kill each other when they were in town only because they didn’t want their privileges restricted. They grudgingly traded tolerance for the illusion of freedom and safety. Civilizations did that on a planetary scale as well.
The Phrenorians had amped-up passions and the sense of unease in the area. They were death out in the field and aggressive once they’d decided to establish themselves or take a planet.
The (ta)Klar, on the other hand, seemed to live only to do business. All of their social conventions were directed toward that end. They didn’t interface with others unless there was a deal to be made. Romantic relationships were part of the deal, so no (ta)Klar man or woman was going to marry down. Or fraternize. They gave themselves only when benefits could be worked out.
“The fact that they’re choosing to keep a low profile doesn’t make the (ta)Klar any less able to defend their embassy, though. We and the Phrenorians know that.”
Sage nodded, taking it all in. “You’ve been working teams in the brush?”
“Yeah. Based on intel we get from the local hunters and trappers, and there’s precious little of that, we’ve gone out and taken down some drug labs and fields. Enough to keep us busy, but not enough to keep us sharp.”
“Resistance?”
“Limited for the most part, but I think that’s changing, becoming more aggressive. The drug traffickers we’ve taken down lately have had increasingly heavier firepower.”
“Somebody’s investing.”
“The corps claim their field-study groups have ‘lost security equipment’ while exploring.” Terracina cursed. “Nobody believes that.”
“But it’s hard to disprove.”
“Yeah.”
“Who do they say is taking the equipment?”
“Deserters from the civilian population. People the corps have brought in.” Terracina cursed again. “You think they’d screen their people better.”
