Fragile Bond (6 page)

“Looks like you damaged it after all.” Dehna chuffed, her humor thick with a cruel streak. Not that she didn’t have good cause for her malicious attitude, but as time passed it had grown caustic. And abrasive.

“He’s fine. Did you insert an aggressive subroutine on the processor?”

Dehna snarled, and Reccin rumbled in shock.

“You know me better than that, Commander.” Dehna sounded stiff, yet she bristled when she glanced at the human.

Hamm fumbled with the latch on the strap holding the skull armor in place, small under his fingers. It finally released, and he eased the armor off the soldier, slid his hand under the male’s head so it wouldn’t thump against the hard-packed soil of the floor. Again.

He ran a finger over the soldier’s neck, felt the pulse beating and chuffed in relief, took a slow breath and tried to relax. He shouldn’t feel bad for inflicting injury on his prisoner, except that it hadn’t been an intentional act. Unlike the sergeant, he didn’t consider lashing out a logical response to painful stimuli.

“We wouldn’t have come this far if we’d known you were here.” The soldier’s voice sounded softer. And the translator came through slurred, though that was likely from the alien’s narrow chest. Hamm flexed his fingers as the soldier shifted his head against his palm. “They said the planet was devoid of intelligent life. The preliminary assessments had to conclude that the planet was uninhabited or else we wouldn’t
be
here.”

The weight and warmth of the man’s skull felt strange, but the shorn stubble covering his scalp was even stranger. Had he been shunned? Why else would he take his hair off like that? Then again, his neck lacked mane as well, which made him resemble an adolescent.

“The only communication we’ve received has been the lethal kind.” Hamm’s response to the soldier’s unspoken question made Dehna gnash her teeth, feinting sharply toward the prone soldier. He felt his hair bristling and blinked, suppressing it with effort.

His second hackled for him, a mild display to stall the sergeant. Reccin didn’t focus his attention on her, though. Instead, he continued his close observation of the prisoner. Whatever his theories or conclusions, he kept them guarded. “We question him now, right? This is the first time we’ve had a live one in custody. We need to know where they move next, what they plan, so we can counter.”

The soldier pushed up from the floor, easing Hamm’s hand away as he sat. “Are you a race of battle-happy warmongers, then? We should get along just fine.” He chafed a hand over the base of his skull, pinned each in turn with a sharp gaze. The deliberate lethargy in his movements made Hamm tense. An alpha did that to reassure subordinates that violence was not forthcoming.

Reccin glanced between Hamm and the male, then held his hand out to Dehna. “Give me one, too. I want to hear what this alien has to say.”

“I’m putting one on too, then.” When Hamm turned a surprised expression on her, she lowered her brow. “What? You doubt me, I doubt you. Better I not take your word for what he says, don’t you think?”

She made a valid point. “Go ahead, then. You may both witness this interrogation. I imagine it’ll be best, considering.”

Hamm felt the male’s gaze on him like a breeze rustling his mane where it tapered away between his shoulder blades. When he looked back, it was to find a closed-off expression as unyielding as that death stick the male wielded with such expertise.

“Not just a friendly post-coital conversation, then?” From the sound of it, he genuinely regretted the lack of a chance for private communication. But then,
friendly
wasn’t something they’d cultivated prior to Hamm’s incapacitating pheromone assault.

Lust and battle made strange bedfellows.

They had no real cause to keep him alive, aside from the need for information—just as his captor had mentioned. The reality of it felt strange, though Marc couldn’t say why. He didn’t possess a great deal of viable intel, not that he knew. The command contingent of Mother Diaspora didn’t share sensitive information. They just told him where to go and what to do, and he did it. And then waited around for extraction. Most of the time, it was boring as all fuck.

“We’ve never encountered an intelligent race before.” He looked the large tawny in the eye despite the warning not to do so. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have parameters in place for such a contingency. It isn’t our intention to go where we aren’t wanted. That isn’t what we came for.”

The male watched him as he spoke, wide honey-brown eyes flicking over his features. Marc imagined he must look very strange to them. Ugly, even.

He’d had sex with ugly people before, though it was more of an internal thing, that lack of beauty. In his experience, it wasn’t all that gratifying. Was that the case here from the tawny’s perspective? Feeling sorry for the scrawny, ugly-ass dude who had humped his leg? It made him want to laugh. And cry. He’d killed the tawny’s comrades. No doubt his captor held the same opinion as the black-maned one did. He rubbed the back of his neck again, took quick stock of his physical state—none the worse for wear, barring mild whiplash.

Since he was the one making first contact, he should do it right. He reached up to touch the spot behind his ear where his skin tingled, nerve endings sending mixed signals of hot-cold, pain-pleasure numbness, but the tawny pulled his hand away with a rumble.

Interesting. They could bridge the language barrier with a device. That made them more advanced than humans. Also, not every sound had linguistic translation after all. Not that a sound didn’t have importance or meaning, just that it had no equivalent. Fantastic.

“I’m Marc Staille, Sniper Sergeant with Space Forces Infantry.” Providing name, rank, and serial number was never remiss, and making an olive branch offer of information before demanding the same seemed like a good first step.

“I’m Hamm Orsonna. Battlemonger of the furr clans. Commander of the Coordinated Alliance Resistance.”

Marc listened to the sounds, watched the commander’s mouth, lips, tongue as he formed each syllable. He was sure half the words had translated incorrectly; he had no way of confirming their accuracy.
Battle, commander, resistance.
Had the ground team dropped into the middle of an ongoing war? His brain remained in soldier mode with little conscious effort. Focused, ignoring the faint traces of arousal and musk still clinging to the air, heady, intoxicating and tempting. Nowhere near as thick, but enough to keep his cock at half-mast despite his mental discipline.

“Dehna is Linguist Sergeant, and Reccin is Chief, my second.”

“Linguist. Did you expect to understand my native tongue?”

Orsonna growled. “She didn’t have to, no. She communicates with the bio-processor, constructs the proper subroutine. The bio-processor interfaces with your system and runs the program. That’s how you’re able to understand me.” He pointed to a spot behind his ear, angling his head to expose a small lump embedded in his head. “And I you.”

“Get some intel about when his battalion will return, where their central command is located. That’s more productive than sharing our knowledge with him. Don’t you think?” The female provided sharp contrast to Hamm’s open demeanor. Another aspect that baffled him. Why was the commander being so friendly? Just an interrogation technique, playing one against the other? If so, their execution was all wrong.

“Our command isn’t planetside.” He directed this at Dehna, even looked up at her, despite Orsonna’s warning.

The female tawny—no, furr, the commander used the term furr—bared her teeth, but didn’t snarl. An improvement. “So you have your own planet and the whole of the night sky to explore, and you choose to invade our world. Any reason why?”

His ‘own planet?’ Marc grunted and let himself laugh. “Not my decision. I’m just a rifle-wielding ground-pounder. One of . . . hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The choice to come here was made as a result of aerial surveys of your planet. No visible habitations. Strong signatures of raw materials we need.”

“Not your decision, but you’re here.” The female snarled.

“Dehna.” Orsonna shifted to face her, an edge of disapproval in his voice.

“You’re to blame just as much as every other member of your race invading our planet.” She flexed her hands, claws unsheathing, and coiled into a crouch.

“
Sergeant
.” The whipcrack of Orsonna’s voice conveyed command so thick, Marc flinched, adrenaline spiking.

His heart hammered so hard it fucking
hurt
. Any second now his life would start flashing before his eyes.

“You deserve to die, every last one of you.”

She leaped at Marc, and Orsonna surged up into her path. He twisted, leading with his shoulder straight into the center of her chest. The weight of his body checked her momentum. She staggered back, shoulders heaving as she struggled to regain her breath.

Was it over that fast?

Her eyes flashed that strange turquoise refraction as she launched a second attempt. And parried Orsonna’s blocks, trying to twist past him. Her commander proved his rank wasn’t just a title, outmaneuvering her and locking her wrists in either hand.

Marc jerked his legs in tight, scrabbled backward until he hit the wall. Reccin sidestepped the pair of combatants, studying his half-sheathed claws as though pondering his options.

“Aren’t you going to help him?” Reccin’s lack of involvement was fascinating, not to mention inconvenient. Orsonna had abandoned Mat on the floor a couple feet away. Nothing between Marc and his rifle except open space and a little bit of careful planning. His hands itched to feel its weight. He just needed the chief to cooperate.

Reccin glanced at him. “Against my sister? No. This is their disagreement. If the commander wishes to defend an alien, he does so with his own strength.”

“Because she sees only a violent solution to a hostile situation? Because he sees the potential for a diplomatic one? And what, you’re steadfastly neutral?” Marc eased toward Mat a fraction as Orsonna and Dehna pitted their strength against one another. There was little visible movement now, just throaty growls. Orsonna’s were on such a low register that he could hardly hear them. He could feel the vibrations in his chest, though, traveling up into his feet and hands from the ground.

Was it an equal match? Or was the commander unwilling to use more force than necessary in order to preserve Dehna’s dignity?

The unknowns frightened him. The unknowns were what killed, got you good and dead. His pulse jackhammered, adrenaline thick in his blood. There was a calm logic behind the violence. Problem was he lost a good bit in translation. All the things he didn’t understand left too many gaping holes.

Reccin must’ve understood his confusion. “She won’t be moved from her desire for vengeance simply because he overpowers her.”

The furr had a very good point there.

One of Orsonna’s feet slid and he flexed it, dug in with unsheathed claws to push Dehna into retreating. Reccin gave up pretending not to watch them, following every shift of weight, every fraction of ground gained or lost.

With the chief’s focus elsewhere, Marc eased toward Mat a few inches. Testing to see if Reccin’s attention would shift back to him. It would be futile to rearm himself only to have four hundred pounds of furr pounce on him.

He scooted a little further, glancing back and forth between Mat and Reccin. He licked his lips and tensed, poised. Small increments. Little movements wouldn’t register.

The chief’s gaze slid toward him, eyes flashing turquoise, nostrils flaring. He bared his fangs, flexing his hands, claws sliding out. His low growl made Marc break out in a sweat.

Fuck.

Marc froze. Reccin kept growling. So he eased back away from Mat a little. The chief’s threat still didn’t stop. Not until Marc had his back up against the wall again.

There went that idea. He needed them all distracted, but even that didn’t seem enough. Marc wasn’t sure how the chief noticed his movements, but he did.

He wanted to cry when Reccin retrieved Mat from the ground. Holding it by the scope, no less. He felt sick.

Reccin gagged and waved a hand in front of his nose. “Littermate. I don’t understand why you’re shifting your scent to influence him. Surely you know it won’t work?”