The strength went out of Dehna so abruptly that Hamm almost didn’t catch himself. He staggered to the side a step, and Dehna moved away. She sniffed the air and rubbed her wrist along the side of her neck, then raised it to her nose in self-assessment. Hamm tolerated a great deal of what would otherwise be inappropriate behavior from her. Nobody could program a bio-processor like Sergeant Dehna, not even given twice the time.
The altered pheromone scent hadn’t registered until Reccin mentioned it. Now he tasted it on every inhale. Though not the first time Dehna had attempted such on him, Hamm had always been indifferent to her posturing. And ignored it.
This time the odor was caustic. He fought back the urge to gag.
Her gaze hardened as she glanced between the prisoner, her littermate, and Hamm. She spoke slowly, reluctantly. “It appears this discussion is best left to those with more level heads than mine.”
Hamm nodded, watched her retreat into the corridor before turning her back. He did her the favor of not looking away until she had.
Reccin stared at him and chuffed in dismissal. Then hefted the human’s weapon like a piece of firewood. The movement drew Hamm’s attention to the death stick dangling in Reccin’s grasp. He’d forgotten about the weapon after dropping it to deal with the sergeant. The prisoner had attempted to rearm himself; Reccin wouldn’t have touched the death stick, otherwise. His vision shifted into thermal, registering for half a second the small male’s heat signature, almost completely red, so strong it flared into white in some places. No way would he risk another furr’s life. “Take that thing and lock it up.”
Reccin nodded and carried the weapon to the far corner of Hamm’s office. He handled it as he would a poisonous lizard poised to strike. The prisoner watched the chief with a pained look on his face and pushed to his feet, leaning against the wall.
Hamm pounced, crushing the alien to the wall with the force of his weight. He braced his elbow on the wall by Marc Staille’s head and rested his wrist against the front of the prisoner’s throat, half-claws poised against his neck. Just there, where the pulse pounded beneath thin flesh.
“Tried taking your weapon while my back was turned. Not a smart move, Staille.”
Though Staille registered Hamm’s attack, his focus had been on Reccin. His reaction was a fraction too slow to do more than tense. No doubt thinking the end of his life was imminent.
The throat beneath his grip convulsed. “Dehna wasn’t very friendly. Of course I did. Self-preservation.” His breathing ragged, the soldier writhed, struggling. He didn’t manage to move much, but Hamm could feel the flex and tense of muscle, the resistance.
He curled his lips, baring fangs as a growl vibrated up from deep in his chest.
“This has been a misunderstanding. I can fix it, easy. Just need—” the translation device failed momentarily, Staille’s native tongue indecipherable “—contact with command. So I can tell them.”
Reccin added his own growl in counterpoint as he returned to stand at Hamm’s shoulder. His mane had fluffed out so far from bristling that his shoulders and neck looked twice their actual thickness. The chief’s scent saturated the air, blatant disapproval. “Contact. What, so you can tell them coordinates for the next attack?”
Staille made a sound like the cafa clans in the far north, body tensing as he shook, accepting Hamm’s weight as though it were nothing, no resistance against the arm at his throat. He let his head fall back as he continued to bark and Hamm retracted his claws a fraction to avoid injuring him. The male’s voice sounded strained when he continued. “If they wanted to drop munitions on you here, they wouldn’t need me to provide coordinates. Sir.”
“They wouldn’t?” Hamm glanced at Reccin and nudged the prisoner’s chin with his wrist. “How would they simply know where you are, without you telling them? Does your race share some sort of mind-link?”
Staille wet his lips, his gaze unfocused. He even lifted his head and let it drop back against the wall, repeatedly. The scent of ’nip swamped the air between them, but there was something different in the way it smelled. It fascinated him into relaxing his hand, fully retracting his claws. The alien had small teeth, but glimpsing them had an unexpected effect on him. There was nothing challenging in the male’s demeanor, and he wasn’t struggling. So why was he baring his teeth?
“All forward personnel have devices kind of like the one you just crammed into my skull.” The sergeant angled his head, rolling it to the side beneath Hamm’s relaxing pressure, exposing the spot behind his ear where the bio-processor protruded, not fully interfaced. “I can be tracked anywhere. They just have to look for the anomaly in all their blips on the display.”
“They won’t know why you’re here unless you tell them. Right?”
Staille shifted, shoulders moving a fraction. “For all they know I’m dead, dragged off by predators. It’s what we thought you tawnies were. They can’t read vitals.” He made a sound resembling a purr, shifted his shoulders back and forth. Hamm lowered his forearm away from the soldier’s chin. “If I advise them that I’ve made first contact, explain the nature of your technological advancement, social structure, and cultural intellect, I’m sure they’ll withdraw.”
A heartbeat of silence, during which Staille remained still. Unresponsive, not looking at either of them, gaze focused on something neither of them could see. Either that or he was enthralled by the crystal skylight in the ceiling; whatever it was, he didn’t struggle.
Reccin placed a hand on Hamm’s arm, claws sheathed, rumbled and motioned toward the far side of the room. Hamm studied Staille’s profile, but released the soldier and followed Reccin.
“Can you trust him?” His second wasted no time, speaking in a low tone as though concerned the alien’s small ears would distinguish something intelligible in their rumbles. “Can you trust he won’t bring them down on our heads?”
“You mean more than they are right now?”
“It can always be worse.”
“You think so?” Hamm glanced at the prisoner, watched Staille blink and lower his chin, run exploratory fingertips over jaw and neck. Then he crouched into a squat and stared at his hands, turning them this way and that, flexing them rhythmically. He wondered what thoughts ran through the alien’s head. If they resembled his in any way. Those hands had killed his squad. He looked back at Reccin. “The squad’s efforts today bought us time. I won’t waste their sacrifice. We’ve a chance here to put an end to this in one fell swoop.”
The grooves furrowing Staille’s brow relaxed. Attention loosened, gaze sliding away, Staille dipped his chin.
Hamm angled his head and projected his voice for the soldier to hear him. “What do you need to make contact?”
“Your permission, a moment’s silence. And preferably an open space aboveground.” Staille held his gaze, a strange blend of challenge and submission.
Hamm had successfully squashed his arousal, regained control of his pheromones—but it cranked up a notch, and not because he’d caught a whiff of Staille’s scent from across the room.
“Before my commander and I escort you outside, I’d like to know your motivation.”
Reccin had blatantly taken control of the conversation, but it hadn’t been intended as a direct affront to Hamm’s authority as commander. Hamm knew that and tried not to hackle, but it happened anyway. His hair lifted around his neck and shoulders, all the way down his spine. When Reccin and Staille both stared at him, he realized he’d growled a warning at his second as well.
Fucking instincts were a real son of a stray.
Reccin didn’t back off, just tightened his grip on Hamm’s arm. Refusal to submit. The silly thing was that the chief’s caution wasn’t unreasonable. Hamm chuffed, irritated with himself. He wasn’t usually this sensitive about it. Then again, usually he didn’t have an alien throwing everything off kilter.
Staille eased to his feet in one fluid motion, the sort of deadly effortlessness that he was used to seeing in furrs. An
d for all they’d been watching these aliens, he’d not seen it in any of them. Until now.
“It’s okay, Commander. I’ll answer the question. It’s a valid concern.” He stepped closer, his stance relaxed. Did Staille really expect to fool either of them? All it did was make Hamm want to throw the male over his shoulder again. He could still smell the fluid dried on the inside of the soldier’s thigh. There’d been enough to darken a sizeable spot on his armor. Definitely ’nip, only . . . not. The scent of something else mixed with it. More concentrated, lacing the air as the prisoner continued.
“Your planet is your own. You’re a sovereign species with rights. To set your own trade agreements, to profit from your assets. It’s my job to kill things. That’s all I do. I never signed on to counter sapient aggression. I’m part of an exploratory force, not an invading one. And that’s the heart of it.”
Reccin glanced at Hamm and chuffed again, then raised his brows in an invitation for Staille to continue. He flexed a hand, letting his claws slide into sight briefly.
That hint of something else winding through Staille’s scent kept Hamm breathing deep. He didn’t care if it affected his physiology. He needed to know what that other piece of the puzzle was. As much as he mourned the loss of his squad and disliked the presence of the invasion force, this soldier had wheedled his way into earning Hamm’s respect with his professionalism and strange blend of aggression and submission.
“Never mind that your technology is probably worth more than the raw material they’re looking to harvest here.” Staille’s throat convulsed as he swallowed, and the strange smell grew stronger. Hamm could see the male’s wariness, caution. He would make no attempt to best either of them in a tussle. Not because he wouldn’t be physically capable of overpowering them, either.
“What if they don’t listen to you?” Reccin asked. “What if they use your signal to target and kill us all?”
Caught off guard, the prisoner reared back, then angled his head and glanced between them.
The scent thickened, saturating the air.
His need to touch, fuck, mark, intensified. Hamm’s hands twitched, his skin tingled. He wasn’t resisting, just delaying. He would. Just not while Reccin’s question wasn’t answered. And not in his office where the scent would linger indefinitely.
He’d never get anything done in here ever again if he did that.
“If they don’t listen to me, I’ll die with the rest of you, won’t I.” Staille’s voice was soft. Like it had been when Hamm had first come up behind him while he was crooning to his death stick. “But I’ll die knowing I made the right choice.” The alien’s sky-colored eyes bored into him. How could his gaze make Hamm’s blood boil that way? As though Staille’s attention radiated its own kind of heat, ten times more intense than the summer sun.
That strange scent, so subtle beside the aroma of ’nip rolling off the soldier, was truth.
As Commander Orsonna led the way through the corridors, Marc tried to take mental notes. Hanging upside down with his senses addled didn’t make optimal conditions for situational awareness. He kept finding little details he’d missed. Furr architectural techniques alone amazed him. He’d thought they were hewn stone, but no tooling marks existed. Natural formations then. But could a series of shelves jutting from a wall be considered natural?
Reccin served as rear guard, though he seemed less than pleased with the task. He grunted every time he checked his stride to avoid running over Marc. When the furr jostled him hard enough to slam him into the wall, Orsonna grabbed his forearm and rumbled something. The translation device remained silent. Perhaps the programmed subroutine was still calibrating. The furr’s grip on his arm wasn’t rough. The only thing he could parse from the commander’s body language was mild impatience.
And arousal. The furr appeared unconcerned by his half-mast erection bobbing with each stride.
Not that Marc was staring. It was hard to miss, since their concept of clothing was minimal at its most excessive, and the commander had a large-caliber gun there.
This close, the earthy scent of soil was stronger. The musk rolling off him was a heady aphrodisiac. His groin tightened in the space of a heartbeat. He caved to the urge to lean toward Orsonna and inhale a deep lungful. It earned him a glance and another wordless growl-sound.
Or was that a purr? Difficult to tell the difference; the natural resonance of their voices was only partly to blame. He was still trying to match sounds he heard with translated meanings. It was slow going without visible cues. The only time lips and tongues were involved seemed to be in a language all their own, communicating aggression or dominance, not forming sounds. It didn’t help that the bio-processor seemed suspiciously disinclined to translate many of the more important sounds, even if contextually innocuous.
He wanted to ask a thousand questions. What made this alien special? Why did only Hamm’s pheromone-laden musk affect him so strongly? It wasn’t normal, was it? He was a prisoner. Was that just how they intended to keep him cooperative?
Marc had hoped the fresh air would give him a reprieve. He was wrong.
The scent remained potent as though clinging to him in a cloud. Orsonna followed an obscure path up the rock-strewn hillside, hardly more than a narrow trail of trampled underbrush.
In need of distraction, Marc tried focusing on the landscape. He could taste the fresher air, not laced with pheromones like a narcotic. Ah, his inhaler. Would that work? Except he’d risk oversaturation . . .
Focus on something else. That soldier mindset had worked earlier.
The scattered trees were large, branches tangling into a canopy high overhead. Their girth alone suggested the age of this place. Even given their greater height and longer reach, it still would’ve taken ten or twelve furrs to encircle most of them. No geographic distinctions stood out. Nothing differentiated this particular hill from the dozens of others in line of sight between the trees. Nothing indicated that the furrs used the subterranean space as a headquarters.
What else had he missed in the two weeks he’d been planetside?
The path opened onto a stretch of meadow on the hilltop. It was little more than a clearing between the boulders and trees with grass and wildflowers and some patches of vicious-looking thistle finding foothold in the soil. Marc gauged distances with a critical eye and nodded. It would fit a fleet of shuttles easily enough. It would do.
The chief remained within the wood line, stationing himself just out of sight behind a tree. Orsonna continued walking, and since Marc preferred his arm attached to his body, he followed him out into the meadow.
Was Reccin really comfortable letting his commander out of sight? With a member of a known enemy faction? How much an enemy was he, though? He couldn’t answer that question. He grimaced. He’d done his best to transform himself from adversary to ally. It wasn’t as though their express intent was to engage in hostile activities.
But the spirit of the military’s presence on the planet and the letter of that same presence might be highly divergent when push came to shove.
He crossed his fingers, wishing for Mat’s reassuring weight. Like a ghost limb, there were moments when he thought he could feel the rifle. He tried to ignore it and whispered a short prayer to this world’s deities—whoever or whatever might hold spiritual sway on this strange planet—that his communication would find Mother’s commanding officer in a benevolent mood.
Something was very wrong here. The pieces of the puzzle that this planet presented were falling into place slowly. More slowly than he’d like, thanks to the furrs—especially this one that caused constant distraction. It wasn’t just that Marc admired Hamm’s musculature at odd moments when a flexion created definition or natural lighting highlighted a particularly fascinating stretch of flesh-scape.
Alien technology, organic, interactive. Not particularly subtle, but not anything like what Marc had trained to assess or counter. From a programmer who was a linguist—he suspected that wasn’t just a t
ranslational error—to architecture formed seamlessly from the environment in which they existed.
Why not the same for their weaponry as well?
He had no way to counter a weapon that attacked on a chemical level, short-circuiting his mental capacity to evade, resist, escape. At least it didn’t inhibit survival. Yet.
Orsonna crowded close without warning. Hard muscle and dark-soil aroma pushing against him. He couldn’t manage more than a flinch of tension. A glider round jamming in Mat’s chamber would garner more response. The furr’s purr vibrated Marc’s thick-soled boots and rattled his brains in his skull. Orsonna leaned in to sniff at Marc’s neck just above the sweat-stained collar of his battle dress.
“Make contact with your people.” Every syllable was a tactile sensation against his skin. The site of the bio-processor’s interface felt strange. The blood in his veins rushed south so fast his vision tunneled. It took a few moments of fumbling with the radio to make his fingers understand what they were doing by touch alone.
That he managed to get an almost immediate response to the E-freq startled him. A bored female voice said, “Go ahead for Paris-One.”
Marc scrubbed his sleeve over his bare forehead as he keyed the mike again. What had happened to his skull-jug?
“Paris-One, this is Foxtrot-Sierra-Red One. Foxtrot-Five group and Sierra-Red squad no longer active. Be advised, have made first contact with sapient indigene, repeat, contact with sapient indigene. Request stand-down of all aggressive forwards. Do you copy?”
Silence dragged out for too long. Static, then, “Stand by, Red One.”
Why? The urge to scream made him grind his teeth. Orsonna encircled his torso with one arm and nudged closer, still purring. Burying his nose in Marc’s neck. Something creaked inside Marc’s chest, something on the verge of snapping. And it wasn’t from the force of the furr’s embrace.
In fact, the large male was strangely gentle, in sharp contrast to his earlier behavior.
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