Commander Jaize Lorna
“I hope you’re happy,” Malnia said, her eyes shooting daggers into mine. “One of us is going to be a parent.”
I was happy, of course. Ecstatic, really. Out of the two of us, I had always been the one who wanted children the most. But now that I was going to have one, with a human no less, my wife was clearly furious at me.
“You know I wanted you to be the yula to bear my children,” I said as gently as I could. It was a sensitive subject to both of us, and Malnia was prone to bouts of temper. It had been a peaceful few days for me to escape the house for a while and train without having to worry about the feelings of the females I was bound to, but now that I was back, I remembered why it had felt so good to let go of all my marital strife and bed Christina.
What I hadn’t counted on was not being able to get the human out of my head. Everywhere I went, all I could think about was her. It had never been like this with Malnia. Of course, I enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh with her quite thoroughly, but as for keeping my mind occupied, the only thing that had ever done that had been the promise of advancing my career.
“It didn’t work out that way though, did it?” Malnia spat. “If I would have married Volnos, this wouldn’t have happened. His wife already bore him three children! Why did I ever settle for you?”
Her words not only stung, but they made me angry. It had been for her sake that I’d taken on the extra shift with Squad 22, where I had been stricken down with the disease in the first place. Most of the Verians I was working with at the time couldn’t even speak at this point. They were weak and bedridden, their wives not even considering the tragedy of being unable to bear children because they were so terrified that their husbands were going to perish right before their eyes.
“You think you understand everything that is happening, but in reality, you’ve always resented me. Even before.”
“Before what?” Malnia asked, throwing her hands in the air. “Before I realized just how weak you were?”
I wanted so badly to throw it in her face that what she considered a weakness was actually a testament to my strength. The fact that I wasn’t bedridden with this disease, what the human referred to as Project V, was proof that I was made of stronger stuff than most of the men on my entire planet. That I had earned my position of leadership through the merit of my hardiness and the incredible amount of work I put into leading my squad.
But I couldn’t tell her any of this. If she didn’t already see it and understand it enough for herself, then it was clear she would never be happy with me. Still, it would make Malnia and her family look bad if the marriage was dissolved entirely. It was against the law to divorce your mate on Helna. Now only would it dishonor our names, but it would make Malnia ineligible to seek out a new husband. The only way around these laws was for me to either die or go missing, in which case it would be the honorable thing for a man to step up to take care of her.
“I am sorry that you feel that way. I still believe we can make this marriage work,” I said.
It was what I was supposed to say. There was a lot to lose for both of us if we couldn’t stand to live with one another. It would show that we were stubborn, foolish Verians who were not suited to having a life mate. If we couldn’t compromise and find constructive solutions to problems at home, then how were we supposed to be expected to be able to do the same thing but with another Verian? It was a sort of cultural safeguard against toxic relationships.
“It doesn’t matter what happens anymore,” Malnia said. “The males are all off to war or dying in an effort to liberate our people. I have half a mind to go to Earth to start over.”
“Perhaps the laws governing the Verians on Earth will change and we can both benefit from an agreeable separation,” I said with a sigh. “But for now, perhaps it is best if we try to avoid one another.”
“Agreed,” Malnia said, though judging by the look on her face, I had a feeling that she was far from a state of leaving well enough alone. She wanted vengeance, and I could only shudder to guess what she might do to seek it. Her father wouldn’t find it a punishable offense for me to breed with a human; after all, it had been a direct order from the doyan, but what else might Malnia accuse me of so that I lost favor with her father?
I left the room with these concerns on my mind and almost turned to the refuge of the guest bedroom. However, another female was in there. This time, an impregnated, moody human who was furious at the simple fact that I even existed.
The worst part about it was that I truly cared for her. I just had no idea what to do. If I wanted to prove it to her, I could try to rescue her young brother from the prison, but then I would no longer have the leverage I needed for her to cure me of the horrific disease that had been plaguing me for far too long. Not only that, but it would make me appear weak to Malnia and her father, and I would likely lose rank among my people.
I sighed. It seemed there was no winning when it came to developing feelings for this human. It felt worse having her angry at me than it ever had feeling the wrath of Malnia’s temper. At least with Malnia, I knew that most of her reasons for anger were self-centered and unwarranted. But with the human, all I could do was feel terrible for my misdeeds and wish in vain for some way to make it up to her.
Somehow, she had the real power over me. Malnia was right to feel threatened. Christina was the one who occupied my thoughts and motivated my actions. I would just have to choose those actions more carefully from now on. Especially if I was ever going to find a way to regain her trust.
***
“Jaize, you are needed at the training grounds,” Commander Karhal said. I sighed. It was the third time this week that he had sent me to deal with the most problematic, self-righteous men on the entire force. He knew just how much I loathed going there. None of the Verians there had any respect for authority of any type.
“Right away,” I said, sighing heavily. I walked to the doorway and began pulling on my uniform when a dark form in the hallway caused me to pause.
“Going out again, I see,” Malnia said, a self-satisfied grin on her face. Of course, I knew who was to blame for this. Whenever we had a fight of any kind, she told her father everything from her own perspective. The man took joy in giving me the horrible jobs that nobody else in their right mind would ever want to do. Seeing me struggle to keep my composure with the men in this particular squad seemed to give him great pleasure. He was waiting for the day when my patience would be fully tried, and I would lose my temper in full. Then he would be free to reprimand me in any way that he saw fit.
I was determined not to let it happen, and if I showed even the slightest bit of displeasure to Malnia, it would give my boss a sick satisfaction that made my blood boil. And so I smiled as brightly as I possibly could.
“You know how troublesome many of the troops can be. Particularly those who have been out on the field for a long time, only to be brought home with nothing to do. We will keep their hands busy for a while until it is their turn to be deployed again; don’t you worry about that.”
Malnia’s smile faltered slightly, and I left, an unmistakable sense of satisfaction coursing through me. Still, it didn’t last long. I mounted my thuse, taking a look at the window of the guest room where Christina was laying, her abdomen swollen slightly with child. She was being left alone with my malicious wife, and I had no way of making sure that she was safe. All I could really do was ask the Pelin chef to keep an eye on her, and since we were on friendly terms, or so I liked to believe, I could trust that he would do his best. But the small, hairy man was no match for the power of a Verian’s temper, especially Malnia’s, and it seemed reckless to put them both in harm’s way by leaving.
Regardless, fulfilling my duty was of the utmost importance, and my leg was starting to feel better on its own, well enough that I could walk again, if only with a slight limp. It made it difficult to keep up with some of the soldiers, but for the most part, I knew how to keep up appearances. If any of them knew that I had been stricken with the disease, they would avoid me like the plague. Nobody knew whether or not it was contagious, and nobody wanted to find out.
I couldn’t let them though, as it would give them something to hold over my head. I could only hope that if I was able to get Christina’s brother out of prison, she would still uphold her end of the bargain, despite the fact that she was now with child and would likely never forgive me. She thought the only reason I had lain with her the night our child was conceived was because it was my duty to create a hybrid with her, when in fact I had been burning for her from the moment I had laid eyes upon her. It seemed the cruelty of this life knew no ends.
“Yul Lorna!”
I grimaced at the sound of the most outspoken soldier on the squad, a boy named Jareal.
“Good afternoon, soldier,” I said, standing in expectation of a salute. He gave me nothing and continued on his way, and I sighed, wondering whether or not to let it go. It seemed unwise to pick a fight with a young man who was eager to shed blood as opposed to sitting on his hands and waiting for orders, so I decided to choose my battle. It would do no harm to let the boy continue walking. I hadn’t been feeling well at all throughout the week. It would be a while before I could stand up for myself again. I wasn’t stupid enough to pick fights that I couldn’t win.
“Commander! Come here and check this out! It’s hilarious!”
Nothing any of these men had ever claimed to be funny ever struck me that way, and I braced myself for something crude as I turned to walk toward the man who had summoned me.
My stomach dropped when I saw the young human boy standing in the middle of a circle of men. His face was flushed a deep red color, and his eyes were watering with strain as he attempted to maintain a squatted position while every Verian man in the area took turns filling his arms with heavy things.
The boy was just tiny, around ten Earth years, and I recognized him immediately. It was Christina’s brother Lucas.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, stomping through the circle of laughing men and swatting all of the garbage off of the boy’s arms. I gripped him by the neck and pulled him upright until he was standing tall beside me as he attempted to catch his breath.
“The prison shipped him out here to see if he could be of any use to us. So far, the answer is a big no,” Heane Vagios said, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice. “I mean, they could at least send us a hybrid! What the hell is this kid doing here anyway?”
“That is a good question,” I said. “I’m going to find that out.”
I shoved the boy in front of me and led him to the commander’s tent for privacy. The rest of the men hollered with laughter as they collected their rubbish from the ground, and I did my best to contain my anger.
The boy was clearly terrified, and I sat him down at the round table in the middle of the room and poured him a glass of refreshing iean from the cooler. It was on hand for anybody who hurt or strained themselves minorly, but it was also one of the most satisfying and delicious drinks on the planet Helna that was still available.
The boy drank it greedily, and I smiled sadly at him.
“Have they been picking on you for long?” I asked, sitting down across from him. The boy regarded me with suspicion in his dark brown eyes before he finally nodded.
“Since I got here.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
I sighed. It didn’t surprise me.
“What are you supposed to be doing here?”
“They said they were going to test out whether or not I was ready to train for war.”
“For war, huh? Do you know anything about war?” I asked.
The boy nodded grimly, and I thought of his parents, how they had been killed by the horrifically efficient weapons of my people. There wouldn’t even have been a body left for the boy and his sister to say good bye to.
“And what do you think? Would you say you’re ready for war?”
“I don’t want to,” he said, with sudden fire in his eyes. He looked at me seriously, as if ready to do whatever bargaining he had to do in order to maintain his life away from the battlefield. “I can fix things sometimes! Maybe I can just work on, like, machines and stuff like that. But I don’t want to go to war or be a soldier. Especially not if it means being around assholes like them all the time.”
I almost expected the boy to cry, as his sister had been prone to do since the beginning of her pregnancy, but he looked at me evenly, waiting for my response with a kind of grim determination. He would accept his fate, no matter what that happened to be. And as far as he knew, I was the enemy. And frankly, I wasn’t so sure that I wasn’t.
“Well, I’m not really in charge of what happens to you,” I told him evenly. His face fell, but his lips stayed set in a grim line of determination. “But I will put a word in to my friend in the prison that you would do better elsewhere. Between you and me, the guys here, they’re awful. I wouldn’t be working here if I didn’t have to be.”
“Why do you have to be?” Luke asked.
“My boss doesn’t like me very much, so he gives me bad jobs sometimes.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Luke.”
The boy flinched. “How do you know my name?”
I stammered for a moment, unsure of how to answer him.
“I know things,” I said, deciding to keep it mysterious. Kids were always more accepting of mystery than adults; at least I had always thought so. I had never encountered one who asked so many questions though. Especially to their captors. He and his sister were both fearless, it seemed. I couldn’t help but admire it.
“All right. Well, don’t tell any of them what my real name is. My parents always told me that if I got caught, to give them the name Max. So just call me Max, all right?”
“All right,” I agreed. Though I couldn’t help but think that Verians wouldn’t give a single care about what the boy’s name was. all that mattered was whether or not he had a function. Otherwise, he would be deemed unworthy of the resources that were being allocated to him. Helna was already lacking. Having another person on the planet to care for who wasn’t serving the express purpose of winning the war was just a waste of space and resources.
“Why don’t you spend the rest of the day working on laundry duty, Max?” I said.
If he was out of the way, then he was less likely to get picked on. It was the very least that I could do for his situation. At the end of the day, he was going to be shipped back to the prison, and probably sentenced to spend the rest of his days there until an execution was scheduled. These men were clearly not going to allow him to join their ranks, unless they wanted somebody to mess with. But even then they weren’t stupid enough to put someone who couldn’t do the job on their squad. It would put every single one of them in immense danger.
“The laundry?” Lucas whined. “That’s girl stuff!”
I grinned. “Actually, the laundry can be done by anybody. I guess you would prefer to be out there with the rest of the men then? If that’s the case, then there is nothing more that I can do for you.”
Lucas sighed and shook his head. “I’ll just do the laundry.”
“Good boy,” I said, standing from my chair. I led Luke to the laundry tent and showed him the basics. I watched him until I was satisfied and then went out to deal with the rest of the soldiers, hoping that the day would bring no more unexpected surprises.