This one is tall for a koob. But I’m tall for a human. And Lash, well, he’s massive and the other koobs are all watching him. Communicating in low croaks and clicks.
Big Lash doesn’t sell that he notices any of it. He just sits there, a statue with shades, muscles taut like he’s always pumped. If the koobs are gonna try any of that manhood testing, it probably won’t be with him.
The koob captain croaks out some decent-sounding Standard. “You-ah, have bot?”
“Translator bot?” I ask, looking around for a machine that I know isn’t with us. “No.”
“Maybe we-ah, no be formal, ya? K’k’k’k. We speak you-sa Standard.”
“Probably be a lot easier,” I say, and not to be a smart-ass. I’m having no trouble following what the koob is saying. “You speak Standard well.”
The koob nods. “You-ah… warri-aurs. Big battle, ya? Leejun ya?”
“I was. But we’ve got some marines and soldiers.” I nod to Lana, Abers, and Easy, and then wave my hand vaguely at Lashley. “And stuff. I was Legion.”
“No more Leejun?”
“Not for me.”
The koob clicks and inflates its airsac. “Leejun, tough fight. Big die. Big die.”
He turns over his N-4 and taps on some white letters written in koob. There are four hashmarks behind the words. “This-ah, how many leejonayers big die from this one blaster.”
I clench my jaw, hating the fact that a leej killer is standing right in front of me and I can’t do a kelhorned thing about it.
Evidently, the koob notices I’m ill at ease. He points to another string of text with even more hashmarks behind it. “This-ah one, is me.”
I’m not sure I hide the confusion on my face. My brows are definitely furrowed. “So who killed the legionnaires?”
“First ones. I give him big die.” He holds open his hand and wiggles his three long fingers, pantomiming some sort of explosion maybe. “Big die. This one first is chief of weak tribe. Not like Pekk.”
At the sound of their own tribe, the other Kublarens, who are standing around maybe following the conversation and maybe not, begin to croak and stamp their feet. A few of them send slug rounds into the air with their old automatic rifles.
“Okay,” I say, feeling some of the tension going out from how the koob went out of his way to say that it wasn’t him who killed those four leejes—now just bones and hashmarks. “So what are the marks by your name for?”
“Ik’k’rah,” the koob says. “The zhee.”
I nod. “Looks like you dusted a number of the donks.”
“Big die,” the koob says, nodding his head so that all of his upper body does a slight bow from the process. “Foreign-ars k’k’kik all big die. No match Kublakaren warrior in fight.”
The beating that Victory Company gave all those koobs years ago aside, this guy isn’t exaggerating.
That the Kublarens hated the zhee and those who gave cover for what was just a naked grab for territory was obvious. What was more subtle was the way this koob made a point of calling out foreigners. Koobs have never been keen on outsiders, something that dated back to first contact during the Savage Wars. Back then, they took out their hostility on the Savages. Wiped out a small lighthugger’s worth before the Legion ever chased ’em down.
And then the Legion, after a couple of skirmishes, found out the koobs were so angry with the Savages that they agreed to send warriors from virtually every planetary tribe out to hunt them down. It was the earliest beginning of what was a slow inclusion into the Republic itself. Back when there was a Republic. I’m not sure what you’d call it now.
But foreigners. That was the tell. Because that meant me and my team just as much as it did the zhee. Never mind that we’re supposed to all be friends here on this mountain with our two great leaders laughing and croaking like old college friends.
Foreigners.
This was what Surber had taken the time to warn me and my team about. And now it was up to me to show him that we were different.
“Can I show you something?” I ask the koob.
The alien flicks its tongue out, moistening an eye. “What does leejonayer wish to show? K’kk’k.”
I turn and start walking towards the back of the truck, motioning for the koob to follow but for my team to stay put.
“What’re you doing, Carter?” Abers whispers into the comm.
“Gonna show him my balls.”
Easy jumps in. “Did you bring macros for him, then?”
I ignore the snickering from the squad at that one, and decide not to answer. If I tried to talk right now with the grin on my face, I’d probably break out laughing. But I pull it all together once I reach the big truck’s tailgate.
Black flies are back. Not as many as in the lower elevations, but whichever ones flew high enough into the mountain air—yeah, they’re happy they found the smell.
The koob licks its nostrils, leaving a thick layer of saliva over the opening. Maybe to cut down on the stench, I dunno. “What these-ah?”
I take Mel S. from my back and hand it to the alien. He looks over the shotgun appraisingly, like he admires it. I don’t blame him, but it’s not a gift. I take it out of his hands.
“Ain’t enough room on that gun for all the marks I made on Kublar,” I say, and then I reach in and grab the robe of the koob I was looking for. It’s Chieftain Skagga and his tongue is lolling out of his thoroughly holed body.
“Sometimes,” I say, “us foreigners bring the big die to you koobs just fine.”
The koob bends down and examines Skagga’s face, then spits onto one of the corpse’s hazed eyes. He peers
