Denisoff smiled, but it was a cautious flicker. His cold gray eyes were paying rapt attention to the distance separating my fingers from the hilts of my blades. “What if I said that if you sign up today, I can backdate your policy up to 70 days? We can retrospectively activate your policy and apply it to the people who destroyed your farm, and your hopes with it.”
“Sounds very generous,” I replied. “Except I couldn’t afford your premiums before, I sure can’t now.”
“The price has changed, Mr. McCall.”
“No? Why aren’t I surprised?”
“We no longer want your money. We want your service.”
He’s fooling you, said Bahati. Preying on your weakness.
Don’t listen to her, snapped Sanaa. Don’t kid yourself, NJ. You are not worth an elaborate charade, which means these people are genuine. Vecks, but not lying vecks. At least not at the moment.
I waited for the Sarge to cast his vote, but all I sensed from the old solder inside my head was a feeling of watchfulness.
Wait and see, he said eventually. The Sarge still wasn’t too clever with his words these days, but his tactical judgement was as sound as ever.
“I already am in service,” I replied cautiously. “I’m in the Civilian Defense Force.”
Denisoff waved my concern away. “We can release you from that.”
His words were spoken so nonchalantly, but if he spoke the truth then the implications were staggering. For Revenge Squad to have such power and influence over the federal authorities… They had to be a much bigger outfit than I realized.
Or they were lying.
But Sanaa was right. They wouldn’t go to such trouble just to recruit me. Let’s face it, I was a veteran Marine whose battered body was on the verge of slowing down, and whose mind was already half gone, and here we were on a planet half-filled with veterans. There was nothing special about me.
Denisoff gave me a few moments to absorb his words before pressing on. “We will retrospectively put Sijambo Farm under Revenge Squad deterrence, pay your premiums, exact revenge, and in return you will join Revenge Squad for a ten-year contract – an enlistment if you like. We will do all this for you on one condition.”
He pointed at the pale figure standing next to me. “My condition,” he said, “is that Sylk-Peddembal enlists too.”
I didn’t have to glance at Silky to feel the waves of confusion emanating from her head bumps.
“I cannot,” she said. I felt the bitterness in her words, even though the intonation of her translation speaker was as flat as ever. Then I felt a sudden flash of hope from her, and Silky went on. “You can release NJ from his CDF service – are you telling me you have sufficient influence to release me from my service?”
Denisoff shook his head. “We can work with the CDF and the federal authorities, but they are strictly local to this star system. Even we have limited influence over the Human Legion. Nonetheless, we wish to employ you, Sylk-Peddembal. We feel that your empathetic abilities, unique as we believe they are on this world, will make you a great asset for Revenge Squad. I have made it my business to be aware of your unfortunate legal status, and I realize that means you cannot enlist with us without drawing the attention of the Legion. However, we have concluded that there is a way in which you can be bound to us for the terms of your enlistment. You might have no legitimate legal status, but Mr. McCall does. If you are bound to Mr. McCall, and if he enlists, we are prepared to accept that you too have enlisted.”
My lips twitched, and grunting noises escaped my throat. A part of me was trying to ask Denisoff what the hell he was talking about. It was only a small fragment that had escaped my mind, while the rest of me was groaning under the implications of what Denisoff had said, implications it understood all too well.
Even my ghosts were too stunned to offer their usually unhelpful insights.
Just to make sure I wasn’t going mad – and, to be fair, I had recently spent a lot of time paddling in the warm shallows of insanity – I came right out and said it.
“You mean you want me to marry… her?”
“No, Mr. McCall. It is rather a matter of hoping that Sylk-Peddembal wishes to marry you.”
“But we can’t, we haven’t…” I looked to Silky for rescue. She was someone I had grown to… tolerate, and that was about as positive a spin as I could put on her. She was an alien for frakk’s sake. No!
“If I am bound to you,” said Silky, “then I must follow you. Until one day I shall kill you. It is our way.”
“But…” I looked around frantically. Everyone was looking at me as if this was a done deal, and I was too dumb to realize that. But it wasn’t. I couldn’t. I was drowning here – why would no one save me?
“Your feelings and prejudices are of no consequence,” stated Denisoff. “If our Kurlei friend is prepared to follow your leadership, and believes that sincerely in her heart, then she will have no choice but to follow you into Revenge Squad.”
He turned to address Silky. “Do you swear to follow Ndeki Joshua McCall, and make him your mate?”
“I do.”
I winced. Did she really have to phrase it that way?
Silky came before me and grabbed my shoulders. For a horrible moment, I thought she was going to kiss me. I tried to pull away but she had a grip like steel bolts.
“Don’t fight this, NJ,” she said. “It needn’t mean anything to you. It is only what I feel in my heart that matters.”
“No!” I firmed my defenses and fought back. “It’s not just that you are an alien. I already have two wives. I watched them die, but they are still inside me. Even if I… even if we could. You know?” I sighed. Why couldn’t life get simpler as I grew older? “Even if I could ever find a way to care for you, I couldn’t bear to lose another. I refuse.”
“Poor NJ,” she said, and tried to stroke my forehead, but I broke from her grip and stepped back.
“You haven’t listened to what I have been telling you,” she said, sounding uncannily like Sanaa. “When Kurlei females select a mate, it is not a matter of mutual affection and lust. For our males, the equivalent of your marriage is a death sentence. Their consent is neither sought nor given.”
“Forgive me my ignorance of your ways,” Denisoff interrupted, “but I need to be clear on this matter. Sylk-Peddembal, I need to hear and to feel your bond to this man.”
Silky walked over to Denisoff and invited him to place his palms on her head lumps. She swore aloud to follow me faithfully as her mate until my death parted us.
Denisoff nodded, satisfied. “Congratulations, Mr. McCall. I feel the truth of your wife’s sincerity. She has selected you as her husband.”
“She can declare herself to be the Holy Queen of the frakking Littoranes for all I care. She’s not my wife. You’re all completely insane.” I glowered at Silky. “You most of all.”
She scowled back.
Denisoff cleared his throat. “I would say I couldn’t care less what you think, NJ,” he informed me, “if not for one thing. Whether you acknowledge her or not, if your wife grows tired of you, she will try to kill you. Believe it, McCall. I have done my due diligence and this is no exaggeration. It is in her nature. Try to keep her happy during the term of your enlistment.”
He left the two of us looking daggers at each other, telling us over his shoulder, as if an afterthought, what we should do next. “I’m heading out to the regional training facility in three days. Be outside Dunthorpe’s east gate at noon. Show up on time, and I will backdate your Revenge Squad policy. Pass your training, and I will even consider placing you on the team that pays out your own revenge contract. Got that?”
“Yes, sir,” I heard myself reply.
He laughed as he hesitated, one foot in the open door of his truck. “I’m not a frakking Jotun, McCall. You’ll do, though. Don’t be late. Stragglers are no use to me.” He pointed at Silky. “And for frakk’s sake make sure you bring your bride.”
They drove off, on
e of Denisoff’s companions casting an ‘enjoy your nuptials!’ into the air.
“Well, should we?” said Silky when the Revenge Squad trucks had disappeared into their own cloud of dust. “I’m not sure I understand the term ‘nuptials’.”
I rubbed at my chin as I regarded her, not sure whether she was winding me up. Her expression was a complete blank, which I had learned to interpret as meaning she was as clueless as I felt.
“Enjoy our nuptials?” I said. “The veck’s trying to be funny. Well, the joke’s on him, because that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Her eyes widened and I felt her surprise. Damn! She had understood more than she was letting on. Got to watch that one.
I walked over to the charred ruins of my farmhouse and began to dig my way down to the cellar. Its construction made it more of a bunker, but it contained my stash of best whiskey, and its cellar role was what mattered to me now.
When Silky made no attempt to do more than stand and watch, I straightened my back and tested the new boundaries of our relationship. “You told me that females of your kind obey their husband’s commands.”
“Only in the military,” she answered. “But I am bound to support your objectives as I see fit. And then only until I tire of you, at which point I shall kill you.”
I shrugged. “So everyone keeps reminding me. But I reckon I’ve got at least a few weeks before I wake up to find my throat slit, and it’s been a great many years since I’ve planned for a timeframe as long as that. The future can look after itself. Right now, I need you to lend me a hand, shifting this rubble. Down there in my cellar is more whiskey than we could take with us. Reckon we have two days to drink ourselves to the brink of death, and then one day to recover before showing up for duty. What do you say, wife? Is that an objective you see fit to support?”
“Is this intoxication part of the human marriage ritual?” asked my new bride suspiciously.
“We’re kind of doing it out of sequence, but pretty much, yeah.”
“Then let us enjoy our nuptials together, husband dearest.”
We set to work with a will.
——
The next morning, I awoke next to Silky with a pounding head, and remembered with a shock that I had married her.
Actually, as the clouds of confusion parted a little, I remembered that Silky had married me, which wasn’t the same thing at all. What had she said? My consent was neither sought nor given. In the unlikely event that I would be given a tombstone when I died, then that’s what they would carve on it. Nothing else summed up my life so comprehensively.
Ever since that day Silky had taken off her shirt and revealed why her species were known scientifically as mammal-like aliens, Sanaa had taunted that one day I would wake up in bed with this sea slug alien. The reality was that we had passed out on the deck recliner (fully clothed in case you were wondering), and I had just been recruited by a paramilitary insurance corporation that sounded as innocent as a lion offering to babysit for a herd of wildebeest.
I grinned. The future looked an interesting place to be.
— CHAPTER 17 —
After the Dulnthorpe pickup, we were driven north in the back of a covered truck for a day and a half. We entered increasingly urbanized and affluent areas, skirted pockets of heavy industry, and drove through big scale agriculture that made Sijambo Farm seem like a bonsai bucket. Eventually we pushed west, away from the sea. If my farm had been thirty miles from nowhere, we ended up about twenty miles from somewhere: an isolated location but near enough to the real world to be deployed rapidly.
My head was still pounding from the whiskey I had consumed in prodigious quantities, and I think Silky was in an even worse state than me. That seemed to suit the Revenge Squad people. Denisoff, who told us he was an assistant squad leader, shared driving duties with Ling. That was all the two men would reveal to us, although Denisoff did mention in passing that Ling was an associate, saying the word as if it were a junior rank in this Revenge Squad outfit.
We sat in the back, barely saying a word. They kept us fed and watered, but that was all. It was as if they wanted to pretend we weren’t there until we reached our destination: the Revenge Squad training camp for the area called Camp Prelude.
My throbbing head sided with Denisoff. A silent truce suited all of us.
When we first set off, Denisoff had made it clear that Revenge Squad was not like the military. He explained with a sneer that we wouldn’t have Jotun officers to tell us the right way to wipe our butts without fear of decapitation for insolence. Not only would we need to show initiative and resilience, but we may be called upon to work unsupervised for extended periods. More like a Force Recon Team, I decided. Whatever they were, it seemed there was more to being a Revenge Squad agent than turning up at the (hopefully) right person’s place of residence and beating them to a pulp. Unfortunately.
My spirits soared, however, when the truck parked up and we were ordered out the back. Unlike Silky, who was still as quiet as the void, my head was almost clear and as I surveyed my new environment, it felt like a homecoming.
I don’t know what kind of soldiering Denisoff had done in his previous life, but if this camp wasn’t military then I don’t know what was. It was set atop a plateau behind a ridgeline. A wire fence punctuated with armed watchtowers ran along the outer perimeter. In the center of the plateau, a clutter of single-story buildings, which looked like office blocks and equipment stores, was dominated by three triangular blockhouses bristling with gun ports.
Interlocking fields of fire, said the Sarge.
Textbook, agreed my first wife.
And so it was. I’d helped to build blockhouses like these: temporary encampments used in particular to overwinter and to garrison regions where not all the locals were convinced they wanted liberating. Blockhouses would not last long against a strategic artillery battery or an orbital bombardment, but they would be heavily armored, and I expected the four stories we could see continued deep underground. Given that we were on a world supposedly at peace, I would call those blockhouses pretty frakking military.
We had arrived in the early hours, the darkness inside the well-lit perimeter broken by a handful of floodlights that were so bright that they emphasized the deep wells of darkness that hung over most of the camp’s interior. The lighting looked temporary, and despite my fatigue I connected the immaculate-looking barrier at the front gate with the fact it led through to rutted dirt tracks and concluded that Camp Prelude was still under construction.
The place was deathly quiet other than a low animal growl that emerged from the shadows and sounded to me like a challenge.
Denisoff ordered us to grab some sleep while we could, and Ling hurried us away to the second floor of Blockhouse ‘B’.
“Just for tonight,” he said with a grin, “you will sleep in agents’ quarters rather than in the recruit dorms on the floor above. Naturally, as befits your status, you’re in the married quarters.”
I thought he was playing a joke but after unlocking the door he shrugged and walked off. My heart sank when I saw that the room had a solitary double bed, one occupied within moments by Silky who turned over onto her side and immediately began her whiffly snoring.
They had to be joking!
On the other hand, the bed was a luxury, and I’d slept alongside men and women of every sexual orientation, most frequently of the far-too-fatigued-to-care persuasion. But those bedfellows had always been human people, and I wasn’t about to give my distinctly non-human wife any ideas about us getting too pally. So I grabbed my bag and left her with a mumbled g’night.
There were three rooms in the corridor. The first was locked, and while the next one wasn’t locked it wasn’t exactly empty either. After deciding I had apologized enough to the couple I’d disturbed, I crept back to my allotted room, grabbed a pillow and slept on the floor, wondering why this alien deserter who had somehow slid herself into my life was in the bed and I was the one making room
for her.
Made no sense, but I’d slept in far less comfortable accommodation than that floor, and I soon fell into sleep for the last few hours before dawn.
— CHAPTER 18 —
After three hours’ sleep, at 07:00 hours on the morning we arrived, I found myself outside on a parade ground lined up, but not at attention, with Silky and fourteen other Revenge Squad recruits. I purposefully took a different position in the line from her. I had told her not to reveal under any circumstances that we were married in her eyes. I mean, our marriage was only the flimsiest of administrative conveniences, and if the other recruits got wind of it then there was one aspect of our relationship they would focus on like a targeting laser. Ndeki the Alien Faggot. That’s not the kind of moniker you wore with pride.
Standing in front of us, hands clasped behind his back, Denisoff regarded us with a critical eye.
My eyes were on the boss, but I’d checked out my new comrades as we’d assembled. If we were a military unit, we’d win any battle before the shooting started because our enemies would be incapacitated from laughing at us mismatched misfits. There were a pair of Wolf-humans, with their brightly colored armored skin, courtesy of the alien parasite that if rumor had it right was passed around Wolf units by ritualized rack time. Then we had a Tallerman – who at least looked humanoid in a lumpy kind of way – and a Littorane who didn’t, its fat belly slung so low between its four stumpy legs that it scraped the gravel.
The rest were humans of various subtypes, ranging from a young Marine girl who looked like she should be at school to a little old lady who’d given me a sweet wave as I walked past but who’d probably seen sights during the war that would give the rest of us nightmares. She went by the name of Conduit, and was the damage control space rat turned grocer who’d rigged up my zero-point barbecue. Now, that’s the kind of skillset that could prove very handy out in the field, and make up for the weakness of her physique.
I barely knew the woman but her presence cheered me more than I could explain. Perhaps, after all I’d gone through trying to make it on my own, I was feeling relief at being back on a parade ground.
After War Page 12