Bolo Brigade (25 page)

Alexie studied the other woman with a cold distaste. Her hair was molded into a double-helix cone sparkling with gems, and she wore makeup at least as thick as the armor on one of Donal's Bolos. Her earrings were long, pendant affairs that hung down onto her chest, twinkling with her movements, now to the right of her brightly-painted nipples, now to the left. A gold pendant floated between her breasts, a self-levitating brooch in the design of the PGPH logo.

"It's really far too exciting for me, Ms. St. Martin," Alexie said. "Usually it's all I can handle just painting the animals on the cave walls before going out to gather my roots and berries." She turned to Chard. "I wouldn't be too sure, though, Governor, that no one on Wide Sky would vote for you. Right now, there's quite a bit of interest back there in forming closer ties with the Confederation."

"Closer ties for military support, you mean," Beaumont said.

"Partly. There's also a sizable faction that is afraid that the Confederation is going to abandon them to the tender mercies of the Malach. The only trouble is, as far as we can tell, the Malach don't have any tender mercies to be abandoned to."

Beaumont folded his arms and gave Alexie a hard look before turning to Donal. "Just how tough do
you
think it's going to be to negotiate with these Malach things directly, Lieutenant?"

"I saw no indication, sir, that they care to negotiate at all. From what I saw, they are a ruthless and determined species who apparently don't distinguish between military and civilian targets. We tried on numerous occasions to open communications channels with them, but we were always ignored. I never heard of any attempts by them to talk with us in any way, not even to demand our surrender."

"As bad as that?" Chard asked.

"I'm afraid so, sir. My guess is that we're dealing with a culture that has a markedly different worldview from ours. They don't see things our way, and it's going to be difficult to talk with them. It could well be the only way we can even get their attention is to beat them in battle."

Delacroix scowled. "I'll have you know, Lieutenant, that the PGPH is dedicated to finding
peaceful
solutions to our occasional disagreements with our non-human brothers."

"If you say so, sir." Donal looked thoughtful. "Ah, General? Might I have a word with you?"

As Donal and Phalbin moved away, Alexie's face creased in an unpleasant smile. " 'Non-human brothers.' Tell me, Lord Delacroix, do you have any idea just how ruthless our Malach 'brothers' are?"

"Miss Turner," Delacroix replied with the somewhat bored and supercilious air of one who has discussed the obvious with unreasonable people time and time again without productive result, "I could also list a hundred episodes from human history detailing our species's rapacious and ruthless nature. The Europeans of Late-Renaissance and Early-Industrial Earth and their treatment of the native aboriginals of North America. The humans of early-Atomic Era Earth and their persecutions of
anyone
who held beliefs heretical in the eyes of the establishment. The genocidal human treatment of the Throx. The Human-Groac War. The current difficulties with the Melconians. Need I go on?"

"Maybe," Alexie said, her voice dangerously restrained, "you should go to Wide Sky yourself and see what things are like there."

"Perhaps I should," Delacroix retorted, "since it's clear that the military and government mentalities don't understand what they see there."

"Miss Turner, Lord Delacroix, please!" Chard said. "We're here to enjoy ourselves, not engage in debate."

"My apologies, Governor," Alexie said. To avoid further conversation with Delacroix, she pressed ahead. "Sir, did you read my report yet?"

"Um. Yes. Yes, I did. Disturbing material, some of it." The governor glanced at the others. "Material that we shouldn't really discuss while we're here having a good time, eh? Relax, Miss Turner! Unwind a bit. You've earned it!"

"The Malach are on Wide Sky to stay, Governor Chard. You can't simply write off a hundred million people."

"Well, what's to be done? We can't challenge that fleet you described."

"Lieutenant Ragnor's Bolos might do the trick."

"If we could transport them," Beaumont said. "And if we could get them past the blockade."

"Besides, I submit that a military response is completely the wrong approach," Delacroix said. "Despite the antiquated notions of some members of the military, it is clear to those of us in the Strathan Chapter of the PGPH that the Malach issue is both overblown and insupportable. No doubt human exploiters intruded on Malach space, and the Malach responded as any threatened, sentient life form might, to protect their home worlds and industrial base by striking back at those who threatened them."

"We didn't threaten them!" Alexie said, her voice sharp. "These things are monsters! Totally irrational by human standards!"

Elena's brooch wobbled alarmingly between her generous breasts as she laughed. "Miss Turner, you astonish me! Just because a being is alien doesn't mean we can't learn to understand it, given time!"

"Oh, we understand them perfectly, Ms. St. Martin," Donal said, returning with the general. "They want to kill us."

"Governor?" Phalbin said. "A word, if you please. There's a possible problem. . . ."

"I think, Lieutenant," Elena said, smiling at Donal as Phalbin drew Chard aside, "that you would be astonished at just how much like us these Malach must really be. I think we could find a lot in common with them, if we could
just
get to really know them."

"Perhaps, Ms. St. Martin, we'll have that opportunity very soon now."

Aghrracht the Swift-Slayer raised all four hands, slasher claws extended, and the multitude surrounding the base of the pyramid altar on which she stood echoed her gesture, the sound of their chant rolling like thunder through the vast, circular chamber.

"
B'dorogh m'yeh Sha'gnaasht ta-Yasechyegh ra naschevyecht!
" the thunder boomed. "Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

"We who survived," Aghrracht called, her voice amplified to fill the worship chamber, "are blessed of the universe! May only the swiftest, the strongest, the keenest-sensed, the smartest live to pass their seed to future generations, that
Ma'ala'acht
, the Race of We Who Survived, might prosper unto the eight to the eighth generation!"

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

"May our seed grow strong!"

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

"May fang and claw, sense and mind, ever grow flesh- and tendon-slicing keen!"

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

"Evolution, intercede for us!"

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

"Evolution, improve the genome of the Race from generation to generation!"

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

At the chanted cue, a low and rounded dome at the base of the pyramid steps split into eight pie-wedges, the wedges sliding back into the floor like a huge and sharp-clawed hand slowly opening to reveal a sand-filled pit. Eight Malach males stood there, leashed to a post. As the wedges sank from sight, the leashes clicked open, freeing the prisoners. Already excited, their throat ruffs flushed and extended in territorial display, they stood uncertainly for a moment, eyes blinking rapidly in the bright spotlights that bathed the pit.

Hands still raised, Aghrracht descended the broad, stone steps from the top of the pyramid to the pit. All eight males watched her approach, nostrils flaring, mouths gaping at the first sharp whiff of the pheromones signifying her readiness to mate.

One of the males shrieked desire. The
Urrgh-shi
, the Mating Fight, began at once.

Malach males were quite a bit smaller than the females and much less massive, resembling bright red, six-legged lizards with outsized heads, fangs, and slasher claws. Though intelligent to a degree—more intelligent, say, than the Malach-symbiont brooders—the males were neither self-aware nor capable of advance planning or complex thought. Their language was limited to a few hissing or snarling sounds denoting rage, pain, desire, pleasure, and the like; they possessed no role in Malach culture beyond reproduction. In the remote past on embattled Zhanaach, attempts had been made to breed intelligent males to create more vicious warriors in greater numbers, attempts that had uniformly failed. It seemed that male brains were wired for mating and combat . . . specifically, for competitive mating combat among themselves, which, of course, proved useless for the battlefield.

As Aghrracht stepped into the arena, her pheromones unleashed
Urrgh-shcha
, the mating frenzy, goading the males to the attack. In seconds, three males, fractionally slower or less well-endowed than the others, were dead, their carcasses literally ripped open and their blue-green blood splashed across the sand. Aghrracht took her stance, straddling one of the torn corpses, head high, mouth open, drinking the mingling scents of blood, meat, and foreplay. Around her, the crowd of watching Malach warriors shared the frenzy vicariously, shouting out the ongoing chant, "
B'dorogh m'yeh Sha'gnaasht ta-Yasechyegh ra naschevyecht!
"

Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker, Blessed Survivor, favor us!

Two more males were down, one dead, the other feebly clawing the sand with his throat slashed open in an emerald splash. A third hesitated a fraction of a
quesh
between the last two and was simultaneously grabbed by both hind legs. He shrieked agony until a claw slash gutted him and the legs were ripped free; both hearts were still visibly pumping behind his bloodily exposed rib cage as his killers dropped him to the sand.

Two males only remained now, circling the dying carcass. Aghrracht eyed them both, checking for wounds or visible weakness. Both were scratched and clawed, but they circled swiftly, with precise agility, teeth bared in manic threat-grins.

It was over with brutal suddenness. One of the males stumbled on a dying brother, falling backward, and the other leaped with a victory shriek. The fallen Malach, however, brought up its hind slasher claws in a perfectly executed
cha'igho,
a groin-to-sternum gut slash that dumped the leaper's intestines on the ground in a steaming tangle. The victor rose to his feet, panting a little, the bloodlust still hot in his eyes and the flush of his ruff as he looked around the arena for other challengers.

There were none. He was alone with the waiting Aghrracht.

Aghrracht felt a delicious, anticipatory shudder pass through her body. This male was
right
. She felt that. Quick enough, strong enough, lucky enough to survive the
Urrgh-shi,
he also possessed one other quality that Aghrracht approved of. She was certain that his fall over the corpse of one of his fellows had been deliberate, a ruse to entice his last surviving opponent into making a fatal mistake.

Smart.
Very
smart. Males didn't have the intelligence necessary for making long-range plans, but the smartest showed a certain feral cunning in arena combat, a highly desirable trait to those females seeking good seed. She decided that she liked this one.

The mating was consummated to the approving shouts and chants of the audience. The male scrambled beneath her tail, then grabbed hold of her belly, his slasher claws sinking deep into her scaly hide. The smell of blood and death had made her ready to receive him; the pain of his claws and of his savage thrusting triggered ovulation. Rearing up high, she looked down at her mate as he scrabbled for a better grasp. Her hearts thrilled within her. He had such appealing, ruby-red eyes, such lively pink tendrils, such perfect teeth. . . .

Her mouth opened, and her head descended with terrifying speed, her jaws closing on the male's head with a loud and satisfying crunch. The male jerked in his death spasm and completed the act with a long, deep shudder. Decapitated, he'd lost all sexual inhibitions, and his body actually redoubled its efforts, pumping fast and hard.

Finally, though, it was over. With a last shudder, the male's death grip on Aghrracht loosened and the headless corpse dropped onto the arena's floor. Aghrracht finished chewing and swallowing the head before turning to the audience, hands upraised.

"Evolution, improve the genome of the Race!" she cried.

"Sha'gnaasht Skilled Tracker," the crowd roared back, "Blessed Survivor, favor us!"

She was certain that the mating had taken, though it would be a while before she actually felt the stirrings of new life within her. In twenty or twenty-five
quach
, she would pass the still-tiny embryo pouch to a brooder, feeding it to the simple-minded creature with her face tendrils and tongue. In another two hundred
quach
or so, the newborn Malach—one or two females and, depending on how many had been eaten by their siblings in the meantime, anywhere from five to fifteen males would chew their way out of the brooder's still-living carcass. The females would be welcomed with blood ceremony into Clan Swift-Slayer. The males would be turned over to a male-care center, where females past mating age would feed and house them until they were old enough to reproduce.

Carefully, with an almost fastidious delicacy, Aghrracht devoured the corpse of her mate, bones and all, before carefully washing her hands and body clean as the crowd cheered her.

Many in the crowd, she knew, stirred by the performance, would make arrangements to mate with males of their own later this day. Sex, for the Malach, was neither a specifically private nor public act, but a simple mingling of duty and pleasure to be performed whenever males were available. Only in special religious services, such as this one, did sex become a part of ceremony, a means of unifying the Packs, improving morale, and reminding those present of the duties and the glories attendant on all members of the Race of We Who Survived.

"The Race continues," she called, addressing the crowd. "Life continues, adapting, overcoming, becoming stronger generation by generation."