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But as he took a step forward and saw the challenge fade out of Fal’ran’s eyes, a deep voice rang out over the emptying courtyard and dropped Patrick’s heart into his boots.
“Captain Smith.”
Patrick broke eye contact with Fal’ran and turned to face his general. The older klah’eel sat in the passenger side of a small, open-topped land cruiser, his face scrunched into a furious glare. The dust didn’t seem to have touched him. His uniform was still crisp and the two medals across his chest for service during the invasion of Tava still gleamed in the bright sun.
Patrick clasped his hands behind his back and stood straight. “General Yal’rest.”
Yal’rest leaned forward and rested his forearm and fist on the cruiser’s door. “A word.”
“Yes, sir.” Patrick didn’t need to smell the general to know that the word would not be pleasant. He turned briefly back to his squad—not missing the shrewd, narrow-eyed look Fal’ran gave the general’s closed fist—and bared his teeth at them to show he meant business. “Every single one of you will be here in your combat fatigues when I get back.”
He didn’t receive a single ‘yes, sir’ in response, and he hadn’t expected any. One battle at a time. But he heard General Yal’rest’s disgusted snort as Patrick swung his gatlung off his back and climbed into the back seat of the cruiser. Any other squad with any other leader would have gotten a crisp affirmative to a direct order and Patrick felt the deficiency acutely.
As soon as Patrick sat, the driver—a nondescript klah’eel with secretarial division patches—started the cruiser up and drove them out of the courtyard. They passed through the lines of tents, pulled out onto the main road of the base, and turned east toward the permanent buildings that housed the administrative offices and the quarters of men like General Yal’rest.
Patrick settled into his seat and allowed himself to enjoy the breeze of the moving vehicle as they passed tangled jungle on their left and row upon row of squad tents on their right. Training Camp Pel’on hadn’t been this packed since he’d trained here over twenty-five years ago, during the last mass mobilization of the Klah’Eel army, when they’d launched the invasion on Southern Tava. Now, they were amassing again, but the directive was a lot less clear.
Hold back the Insects.
Simple enough in theory. Much more complicated in reality, since no one knew how they operated, where they were, what their strengths or weaknesses were, or even what they wanted. Having faced them in battle himself, Patrick knew more than most, but even to him they were more mysterious monster than understandable threat.
All too soon, they pulled up to a wooden building on short stilts and when the cruiser slowed, the mugginess of the atmosphere descended on them again.
“My office, Smith,” Yal’rest growled without looking at him as he left the cruiser and strode up to the building’s door, his boots thudding on the stairs. Patrick suppressed a sigh and followed, tightening the strap of his gatlung over his shoulder and wishing it could protect him from Yal’rest’s wrath.
As soon as Patrick closed the door to the office behind him, Yal’rest spun around and stabbed a finger at him. “I am going to take your squad from you, Smith.”
Panic spiked through Patrick’s chest and he tamped it down before his smell gave him away. The general didn’t mean that. He was only threatening.
“If you can’t figure out how to control them, you don’t deserve the stripes,” Yal’rest continued, confirming Patrick’s suspicion that Yal’rest had only meant to rattle him.
Still, it had worked. He’d lost Mal’ik when the war began, he’d lost his unit after the war had ended, he’d lost the respect of his commanding officer, and he was hanging onto his captain’s stripes by the skin of his teeth. His squad was all he had left.
“This—” Yal’rest jabbed his finger down at the ground “—is the greatest army in the galaxy. It does not tolerate imbeciles that roll around in the dirt fighting amongst themselves while their weak-willed Captain watches on, do you understand me?”
Patrick swallowed down the glass shards of the insults. “Yes, sir.”
Yal’rest narrowed his eyes. “You have been allowed to coast too far in the jetstream of men greater than yourself—” Mal’ik, he meant Mal’ik, as though everything Patrick had ever done, as though the years of service and sacrifice he’d made to the Klah’Eel empire, were somehow gifts Mal’ik had given him “—but that ends now.”
Patrick stared straight ahead and didn’t reply. None of this was new. He’d stood at attention and had bullshit like this shouted at him before.
Yal’rest glared hard at him and sniffed, but the general wouldn’t smell anything on him. One didn’t grow up the only human among klah’eel and never learn the basics of scent control—and Patrick had learned more than the basics.
Yal’rest made a disgusted sound. “You will get your whores and your criminals under—”
“My soldiers.”
Yal’rest blinked, thrown by Patrick’s interruption. “What?”
Patrick cut his eyes to meet his general’s and steeled his voice. “My men. They are Klah’Eel soldiers in the greatest army in the galaxy. Not whores or criminals.”
Not anymore. Maybe once. Certainly once, actually. But not anymore.
Yal’rest’s jaw worked, and Patrick waited for him to argue Patrick’s point, but instead he bared his teeth and continued. “You will get your soldiers under control, or I will put them under the command of someone who can. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Looking somewhat disappointed at the amount of ass-chewing he’d managed, Yal’rest waved and turned away. “Dismissed.”
