‘We informed some senior Harmony dignitaries about our suspicion,’ said Chwekli, hands folded together. ‘Either they did not believe us, or they decided not to share that information. But humanity was warned.’
I had a pretty strong suspicion it was the latter, because dismissing inconvenient information was exactly what Harmony would have done. They hadn’t needed another complication, especially not one that’d have made willing men and women stop and think twice about becoming Reapers. Rage built in my chest as Juvens laid his seven-fingered hand on my wrist. I could read the other three Kaiji’s disapproval as easily as Cyrillic script. They hadn’t wanted the Space Marshall to come. They’d wanted to keep this discussion political, under their control. He knew it, and that’s exactly why he’d come.
‘Harmony continued the Shenoi’s existence, spread them around,’ said Szev with an undercurrent of steel. ‘The Shenoi were an all-powerful, all-consuming, savage race with no regard for life or mutual existence.’
‘That’s putting it lightly,’ Juvens grumbled. ‘They refused to engage in negotiations or consider a truce. Too many species and galactic councils have tried over the millennia. The Shenoi are a parasite, by nature and by culture, infecting living tissue and taking life-forms as their vessels, slowly seizing control until they’ve eaten cites, planets, solar systems.’ His armoured fingers traced the swirling strands of stormtech, his voice adopting a dark, thunderous tone. ‘They’ve destroyed fourteen civilisations this way. Maybe more. And with the stormtech plague humanity’s dealing with, they could make it fifteen.’
I leaned back. No wonder the stormtech was able to heal us and regrow biomass, it was their own DNA. Our DNA. I was sharing my body with a power-hungry, parasitic alien species whose life goal was to consume me. Little wonder stormtech sent our aggression rocketing sky-high. They needed us to be the strongest organisms walking around. Top of the galactic food chain.
Of course, this changed nothing. It’d make little difference to the stormdealers selling their goods in back alleys and underground workshops, and even less to folks hooked on it. No matter how deadly it was, as long as there were people willing to buy and people willing to sell, the drug market would exist.
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ I asked. ‘Why not someone else from Harmony?’
Juvens snorted. ‘We tried, once. It didn’t work out so well. You’re a soldier. You’ve seen what the stormtech does in the war, and what it’s still doing to your asteroid. You can make a practical difference the others can’t.’
I was starting to see what Saren meant about the Kaiji respecting military hierarchy. In giving us another chance to make this right, they were going to someone they believed wouldn’t ignore them again.
‘What happened to the Shenoi?’ It wasn’t as important, but I had to know.
‘We destroyed the bastards,’ Juvens boomed with undeniable pride. ‘We took the full force of our fleets and armadas and met them on the battlefield before they reached our homeworld. It was a bloody, brutal war. It cost us almost all our munitions, resources, everything. Took centuries to rebuild. But we halted their rampage across space.’ The Space Marshall made an exasperated, snorting sigh. ‘We were naive enough to think that was the end of it. Then we found that even fragments of stormtech scattered across the galaxy have done plenty of damage on their own.’
‘There’re tens of millions of people infected with stormtech,’ I said. ‘If they’re kicking around inside us all, shouldn’t they have taken over already?’
‘If that were true,’ Juvens said evenly. ‘You’d already be dead. Remember, stormtech is like any other virus or parasitic organism. The more accelerated and late-stage the disease is, the higher the impact on your body. If you combat it, the virus dies down. Fukasawa, if the Shenoi had fully possessed your body, you’d know, because you’d be busy trying to tear me limb from limb.’
‘Trying?’ I asked.
Juvens nodded towards a slim, black-bodied handgun that emerged out of his thigh-armour. The alien gave a grim smile as he tapped my chestplate with an armoured finger. ‘I don’t miss.’
My rehab had weakened the stormtech, allowed the organism to die down. Now I had given it a sudden boost, I was in a hell of a lot more trouble than I’d originally thought. ‘It can’t … hear me, can it?’ It was stupid question, but I had to ask.
‘Fortunately for all of us, no. Without contact with a Shenoi mind, the organism’s about as smart as a slab of fungus.’
‘But the risk is still present,’ interjected Szev, as if we didn’t all already know this. ‘It’ll still influence your behaviour. In that sense, it controls you, and always will.’
Little wonder they’d been so desperate to get stormtech off the market. I wondered if they had their own people addicted to this drug back on their homeworld like other species. ‘How much stormtech is swimming around in the universe?’ I asked them.
They all glanced at each other again. Szev burst into rapid-fire conversation that I couldn’t understand a word of, and suddenly all four were wrapped up in a fierce debate. Juvens gave that exasperated snorting sound and thumped the side of the pod with his armoured fist. The others were instantly silenced.
‘Enough of this drivel,’ he said, speaking to them but glancing at me. ‘He has the right to know.’
‘No.’ Szev’s voice was cold enough to freeze water. ‘The human has no right. You have no right. Your generation has no idea what our ancestors went through, you—’
‘Don’t you dare say that to me. Not now, not ever.’ Juvens spoke with thunderous rage, his eyes hard as granite. He lowered his head, thrusting his horns towards them. Regardless of species, I know what a threatening gesture of dominance looks like. ‘I have every right. I understand the sacrifice our people made. I’ve stood on the ruins of planets
