The donk takes a step and it’s clear he doesn’t want to. Then, he seems to surrender to his fate and charges Pikkek, kankari knife swinging wildly, giving a thousand cuts to the air.
But death did not come with them.
Pikkek ducks low and dodges away to his right. As he does, he swings out his tomahawk, almost as much holding the blade for the zhee priest to run into as swinging it. The donk’s hoof comes right off, causing a painful bray to bellow out of the zhee’s now-foaming mouth.
The cheers of the gathered koobs soon overwhelm the zhee’s cries of pain.
Now the bots are buzzing in close, capturing multiple angles of what happens next. The priest tries to push himself up onto one foot, pointing the kankari at Pikkek to stave him off. Pikkek swings his hatchet and sends the clawed hoof to the dirt, still holding the knife.
The only word I can use to describe what comes next is butchery. Pikkek goes to work chopping the donk up, using his tomahawk like a meat cleaver. The red lights capture every spray of blood and the cheer of the Pekk warriors with each stroke.
I don’t know when the zhee dies or what kills him. He’s maimed, disemboweled, flayed… but by the time Pikkek starts to remove the donk’s head from his body following four meaty thwacks, the zhee has definitely been dead for a while.
I expect Lana to whisper another “damn,” but she’s silent. We all are. So is Nilo on the comm, though I doubt he’s surprised by what happened. He knows the koobs about as well as anyone and I know the koobs well enough to be aware that this level of brutality is par for course. Unlike the zhee, they never sought to spread their culture across the stars. But they were damn sure just as violent as the zhee in their isolationism.
After displaying the head, Pikkek swells his airsac to mammoth proportions, stretching the purple membrane so much that I think it might burst. He tosses the donk head into the dirt and then squats down, pulling the mouth apart so violently that I think I can hear the jaw cracking.
Another koob walks into the circle and pulls up its robe. It squats over the donk’s open mouth.
“That’s a Kublaren female. She’s laying a clutch of eggs in the priest’s mouth. It’s a Kublaren ritual indicating a desire for total war and complete domination of an enemy. ‘The young shall spring forth from your dead.’”
Easy makes like he’s going to throw up, but he’s just playing for the moment. Lightening the mood in a situation none of us would have predicted and probably a few of us are wondering exactly how to process.
“Tell me we don’t have to watch Pikkek fertilize those eggs next,” I say into the comm.
“Not if you don’t want to,” Nilo says. “But the rest of the zhee on Kublar, you can bet they’ll all see it.”
I decide to perform a weapons check. Had my fill of the show. Most of the team does the same. Except Lash. He keeps watching. Doesn’t flinch.
I look up at the whirring sound of several sets of miniature repulsors and see the bots screaming away from the scene in all different directions. This must be what Nilo meant about the zhee on Kublar seeing what happened. The bots are going to be relaying it all.
Pikkek is hop-walking to the truck, zhee blood still adorning his face, arms, and robes like combat ribbons. “Big die,” he says. “Big-ah, KTF.”
“What’s next, Mr. Nilo?” I ask, but Brisco is the one who responds.
“Get your team moving toward the Soob. We’re telling the zhee that if they don’t like what just happened, that’s where the fight will be.”
“Roger that,” I say and check my charge packs before addressing my team. “Looks like the next fight that comes is gonna include all of us. Be ready. The donks aren’t gonna be in a friendly mood after this. I think Big Nee just kicked off something that’s only going to end in genocide.”
42
Morning
Museum of Kublaren History
Green Zone, Subiyook City
Hopper walked the security perimeter he’d set up around the Museum of Kublaren History. Like most everything in the Soob, it was a newer construction. One of the first pieces of Republic-funded improvements that came once the Pashta’k tribe was recognized as the big winner following the koobs’ civil war. Hopper hadn’t visited it though he liked museums, but one of his guys had. It was all very rah-rah Republic and rah-rah Pashta’k tribe.
How much of it accurately depicted the history of Kublar was anyone’s guess. Hopper had seen some of the Republic-funded galleries and museums on his home world and while they weren’t filled with outright lies, the propaganda was easy to spot and the exhibits were extremely selective. The museum curators were displaying what they and presumably the House of Reason wanted seen.
The museum Hopper had been ordered to keep a tight perimeter around, and not let anyone inside under any circumstances, didn’t make mention of the Battle of Kublar. At least that’s what the guy had told Hopper.
The guy.
Hopper remembered when he knew the name of just about every man he fought alongside of in his SOAR Company. But Team Nilo was different. They were probably a regiment in numbers, but the handlers like Surber kept the various squads separate. The two platoons’ worth of men was the largest force Hopper had been attached to since arriving on Kublar. He recognized some of the men, had actually spoken to fewer, but mostly didn’t know who they were.
But they were all on Team Nilo and that was all Command seemed to care about. If you didn’t like it, too bad. You weren’t being paid to like it. You were being paid to do your
