The communicator in the center of the Tethylen’s bridge played a high, warbling tone. Rapier turned around in his chair and stood, marching to the wheel-shaped pad laying flat on the floor and reading the tiny display on its side.
“Incoming communique from the Overbattlematron, ma’am.” he reported.
“Accept.” Wakizashi said offhand. Rapier bowed slightly in acknowledgement, pressing a button on the device. The top of the communicator glowed blue and, one by one, points of light began to appear fixated in the air above. Soon, a polygonal representation of the towering officer stood in the center of the room, colored a radiant cyan. Her antennae were perked up with excitement, almost pushing her cap off of her head.
“Commander on deck!” Rapier barked. On cue, all officers in the room stood and saluted.
“Overbattlematron Dao,” he regarded her, kneeling. In the corner of his eye, he could see Wakizashi lifting herself from her throne to do the same. Dao twirled a scribestick in her fingers idly, saluting with her other hand.
“At ease,” she commanded, her voice stern and flat. She caught the scribestick and returned it to her pocket, then said, “report, you two.”
“Ulo reports that human forces across the planet have finished their retreat, ma’am. We’ve forced them to destroy most of their large ground-borne equipment and ammunition. For the time being, their armored forces are neutered, and as you surely know, the humans find their strength in their machines.” Rapier said, his eyes cast down.
“Rather unsavory, but I commend their efficiency,” Dao noted, her gaze pointed elsewhere, “there is something to be admired in their… mongrel tactics. Noble savages to a tee; I imagine you’ll be exaggerating these traits, Wakizashi?”
“They rival even the Aralu in tenacity and zeal, ma’am, though they are inferior physically for obvious reasons.” Wakizashi replied.
“Perhaps we shall cease needing to send the sons of Aralush to war one day. Say, how often do humans lay clutches?”
“The average human female gives live birth to an average of two over the course of her lifetime, ma’am.” Rapier supplied. Dao’s antennae dipped in disappointment.
“Wakizashi, is this a hard limit?” her voice was heavily measured, a habit Rapier had noticed that a lot of Oxilini held just before they were going to give an order that had best not be shirked.
“Well, no, the most a female has birthed is almost seventy, but–”
“When you take over, I want thirty per woman. If one can manage twice as many, then this should surely be lenient enough. Understood?”
Wakizashi paused for a moment, considering the math. Rapier, personally, thought it far too high, even if the average Poslushi female averaged five times that. The thing with Poslushi was that it was far easier to bear huge numbers of children when you did it all at once and had a birth canal that more than accommodated the eggs on their way out, and humans had neither of these advantages.
“Consider it done, ma’am.” Wakizashi said quietly, obviously unhappy but, in true Poslushi fashion, unwilling to rock the spacecraft. Dao regarded her acquiescence silently, then turned to Rapier.
“Captain-General, I am told by the honorable Judge Khopesh that she is most amused by your performance. She has informed me that as of now, your probation is annulled. All suspended pay will be delivered to you shortly, and you will be available for leave when the Magistry of Logistics determines an appropriate time.”
Rapier’s antennae perked up slightly, but that was the extent to which he allowed his excitement to peer through. His career was finally back on track, even if he had basically reached the ceiling for a Poslushi male. “Thank you, ma’am. Please inform Judge Khopesh of my eternal gratitude for her mercy.”
“Duly noted. If you are prepared to do so, collect your forces and begin superluminous transit, bearing one-three-five by oh-two-four. Of course, if your pride is still wounded from your last stint on that planet…” Dao said, her voice vaguely humorous. Wakizashi let loose a hissing, chittering laugh and Rapier did the same, even if he didn’t find the slight to his honor very funny.
“It is not, ma’am. If that is your will, then what is shall be.”
“As expected, Captain-General. Dismissed,” Dao saluted once more, her image flickering and fading, leaving the room in silence. Slowly, the conversations restarted, ramping back up in intensity.
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Then, Wakizashi scared the daylights out of Rapier.
“Captain-General, I need to speak with you privately.” she said flatly. For a moment, Rapier felt his heart stop; he was sure he had been found out. Shakily, he rose from his kneeling position to face her. Her expression was inscrutable, and he couldn’t smell any emotions coming off of her.
“Yes, ma’am.” he choked out. Wakizashi spun around and the two left the bridge. Every slam of a bulkhead behind him was a drumbeat in his funeral procession. No, it wouldn’t be his funeral. Each beat was a footstep as he dragged the plow forward. Wakizashi was going to sting him hard, pumping her venom into his veins until her glands ran dry and his mind disintegrated.
Rapier could hear his heart pound out a somber rhythm. By some miracle, he still couldn’t smell his own pheromones. If he let himself secrete for even a moment, a wave of fear would blast out of him like a bomb. Thankfully, Wakizashi didn’t seem to notice how terrified her subordinate truly was.
“After you,” Wakizashi said, holding the door to her quarters open. Rapier rushed in a little too quickly, and Wakizashi closed the door behind her.
“W-what did you wish to discuss, Viceroy?” Rapier stammered.
Wakizashi sighed, putting her hands to her mouth pensively. “There’s… there’s really nothing to gain from pretending, Rapier. I know about the antivenom; I found the injector in the refuse storage.”
Paradoxically, Rapier was actually somewhat relieved. He fell to his knees, the fear draining away and simple emptiness replacing it. “Just get it over with already.” he muttered.
Then, Wakizashi’s hand was on his shoulder. “Stand up, Captain-General.” she ordered, and Rapier acting almost autonomically, his body no longer fully under his control.
“I’m not going to sting you again,” Wakizashi said, leaning in. “I understand if you had someone ready to help you in the event that I stung you. I won’t punish them; I don’t even care who it was.”
“What do you want?” Rapier said.
“You know, I stand by my previous assessment,” Wakizashi mused. Rapier noticed that she was inching forward, towards him, and he found himself moving back at the same pace, “you really are one of the more chivalrous of the species. You deserve a lot better than what you get.”
Rapier continued to slowly retreat, his hands clenched in front of his heart. Just then, he noticed how much bigger than him Wakizashi really was. “I don’t think I understand…”
“You’ve proven yourself capable; one really must respect that. Now, I’ve a bit of a proposition for you, Rapier.”
“And that would be?” Rapier chuckled nervously, just before bumping back-first into the wall. Then, it hit him.
“Oh.”
Wakizashi’s hand was on his shoulder again, pressing him into the wall. The way she looked at him was foreign to him and very, very wrong. “I’ll do all the work for you; it’s really quite safe when the female isn’t lazy. Besides, isn’t it the duty of us both to continue the species and the bloodline? You’ll be just fine, I promise, and happy too…”
Her hand began to drift downward at the precise moment that Rapier regained his wits. Almost too quickly to see, his hand grabbed hers, the thumb pressed hard into the chink that formed her wrist. With a flick of his wrist, he could break her hand.
For the first time in his life, Rapier stood up to a female of his kin. “No. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but if you take this any further, I will ensure that you will never have the faculties to harm another person again. Ever.”
Rapier had obviously struck a nerve, as Wakizashi was instantly put on the defensive by such a strange event, stepping back in shock. “I-if you don’t want to, I can just have you as a trophy consort. I mean, I can take care of you, and we can be together; you have to understand that I really enjoy your company!”
“I don’t care about what you enjoy, you Pos-damned animal!” Rapier shouted. He felt strong, stronger than he had ever been, and it felt good. “If you can’t understand that I want and need things too, and if you can’t respect my basic fucking boundaries, I want nothing to do with your harem!”
Wakizashi looked down, horror evident in her eyes. “Pos, what’s gotten into me? Look, I am so very sorry; this whole thing was all so poorly thought-out! I was going to say something poignant and you were going to reciprocate and we would conceive an heir and things would work out! We could live happily ever after!”
Rapier paused, then started to laugh a throaty, hoarse laugh. “Of course! How could I have been so stupid?”
“What?”
Rapier leaned in close, so that the vitriol in his words could be truly appreciated. “All this time, I was under the belief that you thought I was a person, but no. I’m just a puppet, a plaything! You thought that if you made yourself the dominant partner, I would just give in, lie down, and think of Poslush!”
“That’s not how it is…” Wakizashi’s voice was wavering, on the edge of breaking. Rapier could smell pain in the air; that was how it should be. “I just thought you would be happy with me…”
“If you ever cared about me, you wouldn’t have humiliated me before my men, broken my mind, and practically molested me,” Rapier enunciated, “you’re truly beyond saving. I’ll be requesting a reassignment as early as I can; I hope for your sake we never meet again.”
With that, he spun on his heel and left the room, leaving Wakizashi to sit down, practically shell-shocked. However, Rapier knew this victory would be short-lived; soon, Wakizashi’s ego would resurge, telling her that Rapier just needed a little more convincing, that he’d want to be hers once she showed him how good she was. He would have to act soon if he wanted to save his own chitin. He would have to act sooner than being reassigned.
As Rapier marched back to the bridge, a terrible, wonderful plan was forming in his head. If he could, he’d bring Ulo along, but that was secondary; Ulo’s safety wasn’t the one in question. It was a most dishonorable plan, but Wakizashi had one thing dreadfully wrong about him.
He wasn’t an honorable man.
In the Combine, no one was.