Master Sergeant

by Mel Odom

  Guards along the individual labs stood up smartly as Zhoh passed, and he took great satisfaction in that. He was an excellent leader; the troops under him knew that. He led them in battle and did not command them from the relative safety of battlescreens. He spilled blood with his troops, and together they dined on the bodies of those who had fallen before them, despite the Honor Pact that existed between the Phrenorians and their enemies.

  War was not for the weak. Only lesser species tried to restrict it.

  Zhoh peered in the tall windows of Lab 9. He knew the schedules of the people under his purview. Geneticist Nhez Chofisia would be on duty now. His chelicerae unfolded from his face and touched the thick acrylic observation window, feeling the tremor of movements vibrating through the surface. He closed his eyes and experienced the room on the other side of the acrylic through tactile sensation rather than sight, feeling his way through what he had seen. He could not place everything, but the vibrations touched him on a primeval level that he felt linked him with his ancestors.

  The lab held a number of crates filled with captured insects of all sizes. The smallest were fruit flies and the largest were the saber spiders, easily the apex predator out in the jungle. The large cages containing the saber spiders were on the other side of the wide room. The massive arachnids, physiologically similar to the Phrenorians in many ways, battered the force walls again and again, causing small tremors to run through the lab.

  Zhoh pulled back his chelicerae and opened his eyes.

  Technicians labored at several of the tables. Most of the subjects were still alive at that moment, but others lay dissected in trays while nanobots plundered secrets from the corpses. Nanobots had been one of the best technologies the Phrenorians had gotten from contact with the Terrans. The species was quite inventive, spurred by that innate curiosity so many of them exhibited.

  Getting the technology from the black market had been well worth encountering the Terrans. With help from the nanobots, the Phrenorians had been able to better understand their moulting process and manage a quicker turnaround to hardened exoskeletons. Their evolution continued at an accelerated rate. They became taller, heavier, more powerful, and their exoskeletons turned thicker and harder, making them more difficult to kill in combat. These were good things.

  Besides the stolen science, there was the satisfaction of killing the Terrans in combat. Phrenorians tended to be territorial and combative. They had bred for those traits, and Zhoh was the culmination of those efforts. Even after the shame of his brood, several females hungered for his spermatophore to ensure a higher standing in the Phrenorian hierarchy.

  Mating could be pleasurable, but Phrenorians were not as oblivious to the gene pool as the Terrans and other human cultures. Bloodstock on Phrenoria was important. Families rose and fell on who they had been and who they would be.

  Zhoh’s own family had lost some of their power because his mate had delivered ten ill-formed offspring that had all died soon after birth. He had mated up from his station, therefore the responsibility for the failed brood had fallen on him. His mate’s father had bought off the geneticists and ensured their reports reflected the same finding.

  If he had lived thousands of years ago, before the Empire had emerged to allow the Phrenorians access space, as their homeworld was drowning in overpopulation, Zhoh would have killed his mate for failing him, cracked open her exoskeleton, and eaten her, then excreted what remained into the nearest ceremonial dung pit.

  Those times were not now, and Zhoh sometimes felt that the Phrenorians were less because of it. So he had borne the shame that was not his own, and his family was forced to bear it with him.

  In addition to the public knowledge of his failed family, Zhoh had been reduced in rank and sent to Makaum with strict orders to make himself over into the warrior he was destined to be, to salvage himself from the ashes of his shame. He could be successful in his mission—or he could die.

  Leaving the large observation window, Zhoh walked to the access door. The guard on duty instantly let him into the lab. Zhoh passed through the air barrier that ensured no flying or crawling insects made it out into the rest of the building.

  Nhez Chofisia, the lead scientist in the department, stood hunkered over a scanning device. The medical tool had been another Terran invention that had been appropriated through the black market, then reverse engineered for use throughout the Phrenorian Empire.

  Nhez was tall and lean but she barely came up to Zhoh’s shoulder—he was larger than most Phrenorians, something he took pride in, and something that instantly marked him as a desirable mate. Her exoskeleton was primarily a dark blue with a hint of dark green threaded through it. Those colors made her a desirable mate for many because color was a valuable trait among Zhoh’s people; she could hide and strike in the night and in the jungle.

  She wore a dark green vest with a multitude of pockets containing various instruments and chemicals. Her primary hands hung at her sides and occasionally twitched, useless for fine motor skills necessary for the instruments she employed in her experiments. Her lesser hands managed the scanning device and the large insect that lay in the specimen tray.

  A young male stopped on the other side of the table, opposite Nhez. He held several specimen trays in his hands. “Geneticist Nhez, you have a visitor.”

  Nhez looked up at the young man, who pointed his chelicerae at Zhoh. Turning, Nhez spotted Zhoh standing only a few feet away. Her chelicerae flickered, though whether in surprise or annoyance Zhoh did not know, then finally settled back into her face, closing off whatever emotion she might have been feeling.

  “Captain Zhoh, you have come for a report?”

  “No, I came merely to observe you working, Geneticist Nhez.”

  “Why?”

  “You have skill, and watching you proceed so methodically allows me diversion to think my own thoughts.” It was the truth. Zhoh had always appreciated a being that was so careful, so exacting in procedure. He had been that way since he’d been a youngling.

  “Do you have time for such frivolity in your schedule? I would think someone as busy as you would not have a spare moment.”

  “Knowledge is a weapon on this world. The more I can learn of my enemy and of the environment, the more familiarity I will have with Makaum.” Zhoh knew that was true, and he had reminded himself of it daily. The Terrans claimed to be here to protect the Makaum people, but Zhoh knew they wanted the world’s resources as much as the Phrenorian Empire did. The Phrenorian primes, the heads of state, had made clear their intentions for such things. “I want to make certain my weapon is as sharp as I can make it.”

  Nhez’s chelicerae flickered again, more calmly this time. A faint scent of pheromones filled the air around her, further indicating her pleasure at such a response. “It is good that you seek to extend yourself and your understanding, Captain.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you. Carry on with your labors.”

  For a moment, Nhez regarded him closely. “You are bigger than you were.”

  “Talk carefully.” Zhoh put an edge on his words and resisted the immediate impulse to strike her for speaking so directly. He passed pheromones that gave a warning to all around him. “The life you save may be your own.”

  Her chelicerae quivered in distress this time, and the pheromones surrounding her gave that off. “Of course. I am tired. I did not think.” That was not all of it. Part of her observation had been the result of her own DNA. The geneticists were bred for their curiosity and eye for detail. She trembled slightly, and Zhoh knew that an observer might well notice that response and take note.

  Stepping close to her, Zhoh seized her by one arm and leaned in close enough that their faces almost touched. His chelicerae whipped out and snatched hers, then his pedipalps, his smaller mandibles, seized hers as well. He injected just enough venom into her to dull her distress and panic, infecting her with a small euphoria of intoxication. Her eyes dilated slightly. Her distress pheromones thinned an
d her trembling ceased.

  Confident that he had succeeded in calming her, Zhoh drew back. She would have been receptive to him then. Her pheromones indicated her sexual interest, though he had none of his own. He would mate only to further his family’s holdings, and then only with someone he knew he could trust and depend on. He had learned that lesson and would not ever forget.

  “I am sorry.” She looked up at him, obviously sensing his lack of pheromone response.

  “I want the reports on the new narcotic.” Zhoh had been amazed to learn how much stock the Terrans and the Makaum people had put into drugs that diminished them on so many levels. The Phrenorian people had their own problems with members who became addicted to pheromone stimulation. When discovered, those members were always immediately put to death. Phrenoria brooked no weakness, no strain that could be carried down through families and generations and dilute the warrior spirit.

  She talked then, and he listened to the toxicology of the hooded toad, thinking that he would soon have another means to earn credits while on Makaum that would help him influence political events on the planet.

  She took him to a cage where a dozen hooded toads sat confined. They were as large as one of his primary hands. As they sat in the relative cool dampness provided by the cage, the toads’ camouflage abilities turned their wart-covered skins a multitude of subtle colors, running from violet to red. Folds of skin covered their wide heads, cowls that masked the toads’ more vulnerable eyes.

  When attacked, the hooded toad, called the crazathi by the Makaum natives, concealed its head and secreted fast-acting poison from every pore of its skin. The poison killed even the khrelav, the large flying lizards that sailed through Makaum’s skies and tree canopies and were large enough to take down jumpcopters.

  “We have come far in our research,” Nhez said. “We have succeeded in creating doses of the crazathi venom that will cause euphoric reactions in the Makaum natives as well as the Terrans.” She must have sensed Zhoh’s frustration in his scent. “This is a great success, Captain, I assure you. The crazathi venom is extremely potent. Getting it diluted to this level has been exceedingly difficult.”

  Zhoh curbed his irritation. “I understand. The Terran corps and the indigenous population have not been able to do this?”

  “No.” Nhez leaned forward and her chelicerae unfurled, delicately stroking the acrylic barrier that kept the crazathi imprisoned. “The poison’s potency has desirable attributes for the Terrans and those species like them. In addition to that, since the resulting drug is nearly all bio materials, like the mushrooms that have been found on this planet, it will take time for enforcement agencies to learn a way to track shipments.”

  “The venom extract will be discovered.” That always happened.

  “Yes, but that will take time. We will be able to offload large shipments, relatively speaking, since not much of the venom is necessary to induce the desired euphoria. It is highly hallucinogenic. One of the potential distributors, a Piradian named Aniyol that I believe you have an acquaintanceship with, tells me that test subjects are often convinced that they can see the future while under the venom’s influence.”

  Aniyol was a disgusting creature, as all Piradians were. Squat and fat, covered in tough leathery skin, and possessing long faces that all too often looked alike, members of the Piradian race were only a step up from the krayari. Like the carrion beetles, the Piradians slid through the Gates feeding on the offal of other, stronger species. They were mostly criminals and beggars, slave laborers on several planets.

  “Can they see the future?”

  Nhez pulled back from the cage and looked at Zhoh. “If so, they would have foreseen their own deaths, wouldn’t they?” Her chelicerae curled in to her face. “No, they do not see the future. Instead they ask for more of the drug. Addicts are foolish and weak.”

  That was one of the reasons the Terran military tried to control the drug cartels on Makaum. Species that were not biologically designed for the continued struggle that true evolution required grew weary and afraid of war. Their soldiers gave in to substance abuse. The crazathi venom would only be one more weapon in the Phrenorian arsenal.

  Two of the toads launched spiked black tongues at Nhez’s face but the acrylic barrier stopped them, deflecting the long organs. The barbs insured that if the tongues penetrated flesh, they would not easily be removed. They could strike over a three-meter distance, uncoiling from the toad’s squat body. The tongue attack was a last-ditch offense and often resulted in the toad’s own demise, but not before it pumped venom into its aggressor. The hardwired response was something Zhoh appreciated.

  “You have done well, Geneticist Nhez. Send me a full report and I will forward it to the primes so that you may be recognized for your work.”

  Her chelicerae pulled in more tightly to her face in an effort not to quiver in excitement and her pheromones filled the air again, eliciting a small feeling of arousal in Zhoh that he quickly quashed. “Thank you, Captain.”

  MIND OCCUPIED WITH plans, Zhoh was not aware of the attack until it was in full motion. He was almost to his quarters when Lieutenant Yuburak stepped from the doorway on the other side of the hall with his patimong naked in his right primary. The honor blade was made from thickened orange-red resin drained from daravgane, the sacred primordial predators on Phrenoria. A full meter in length, the patimong remained flexible and had nano-thin edges that could cut through nearly everything.

  Zhoh dodged back, barely able to avoid the lethal blade. The point still scored the right side of his face, almost severing one of his chelicerae. Stepping back in the wide hallway, Zhoh set himself and swept up his arhwat, the electromagnetically enhanced buckler that was also part of the Phrenorian traditional weapons arsenal. He flicked the power on with a lesser hand, feeling the electromagnetic charge dance through the buckler and his primary.

  Yuburak’s second attack beat down on the arhwat. The resulting dissonance buzzed in the hallway.

  Three sec guards sprinted down the hallway and drew their laser pistols.

  Yuburak crouched and held the patimong over his head, displaying the blade for all to see. “I claim Hutamah! It is my right!”

  The guards instantly stood down, holstering their weapons. The sergeant, Chantaf, a female that had impressed Zhoh with her diligence and skill after he had arrived onplanet, nodded. “You have the right to challenge, Yuburak, and I think you are a fool to do so.”

  “For that outrage, Sergeant, I will demand your death after I have dealt with Zhoh.” Yuburak moved languidly, his chelicerae twitching and twisting as he tasted the vibrations in the air. He was not as big as Zhoh, but he was younger, perhaps faster. His exoskeleton was mostly a lackluster brown and purple, colors that had forever doomed him to a lesser rank within the Phrenorian Empire. Only proving himself on a battlefield could improve his standing, and being stationed on Makaum wasn’t going to permit that.

  Zhoh drew his own patimong and stood ready. Still, the commander in him was loath to lose a soldier. “It is not too late for you to walk away, Lieutenant.”

  “Do you fear me then, Zhoh?” Yuburak’s chelicerae quivered in anticipation.

  The reaction caused Zhoh to more thoroughly taste the lieutenant’s pheromones. Although Yuburak would deny it, he tasted of fear—and something else. For a moment Zhoh was lost in the mystery standing before him, lost in seeking knowledge. Then he recognized the trace of the alien scent that clung to Yuburak.

  “You have lain with a Terran female.” Disgust filled Zhoh at the realization.

  Although the two species did not share sexual congress, there were Terrans and Makaum natives and other species that viewed Phrenorian venom as a drug. When it didn’t kill them. The Phrenorian chemistry likewise reacted to other species’ secretions. Simply licking sweat from the alien bodies could bring on bliss. Such a thing was dangerous, though, because a Phrenorian locked in bliss often could not defend himself or herself.

  Growling i
ncoherently, Yuburak threw himself into the attack. Zhoh blocked the lieutenant’s sword with his buckler, feinted with his own sword, then turned it to intercept Yuburak’s whipping tail, batting that attack aside as well. Still in motion, Zhoh curled his own tail around the lieutenant’s patimong-wielding primary and pulled it away, then he smashed the edge of the arhwat into Yuburak’s face, slicing off three of the chelicerae.

  Yuburak howled in rage. Facial disfigurement was an insult to a Phrenorian. To do so, even accidentally, was to invite lethal retribution. He wiped at his face with one of his lesser hands, smearing the black viscous blood that dripped from the wounds.

  “I would have given you a quick death, Zhoh, though Sxia did not wish that, but now I will torture you before I end your life. You will beg me for mercy.”

  The name of his mate on Yuburak’s lips surprised Zhoh. He shut down the response before all the pain and anger flooded through him. He offered no return words. His sword and his skill would speak for him.

  Hand-to-hand combat was a potentially dangerous thing. If a warrior was not in complete control of the engagement, any outcome was possible. Ending a fight quickly was preferable to a sustained encounter.

  Yuburak tried more finesse this time, but Zhoh battered his opponent’s attacks aside, blocking the patimong with his arhwat, allowing the lieutenant to knock his tail aside with his own patimong. As they closed, Zhoh dropped his patimong and grasped Yuburak’s tail, set himself, then yanked the lieutenant into his chest.

  Instantly, Zhoh shoved his face into Yuburak’s, then uncoiled his pedipalps and chelicerae and clamped onto the lieutenant’s face. Triggering his injectors, Zhoh spewed venom into Yuburak, stopping just short of killing him, but not before Yuburak raked a knife across the left side of Zhoh’s face.