Weekly Drabble #296: Strike the Match (Patreon)

This week's prompt comes from LystAiP with 'hyper-luminous galaxy'. It made me think of bright, which made me think of fire and from there we ended up a galaxy aflame'. Hope you enjoy!

The chase begins its final act.

~

Strike the Match...

Commander Asalla came to Nikolai’s quarters four days after the raid. “Squadron Commander,” she said in greeting. The Akshari’s tone was clipped and her posture stiff.

From anyone else, he would have taken that as a sign of her dislike, but the alien woman was a square peg in the round hole of her culture. Akshari women were not kept barefoot and in the kitchen – they were expected to be clever, capable, well-educated and as cunning as their male counterparts – but they were expected to defer to men – at least in public. A daughter to her father, uncle or brother. A wife to her husband, a mother to her son. Asalla was one of the relative few Akshari women to openly defy that tradition. The Imperial Guard had laughed her out the door. Aside from the expected issues of female temperament and biology that made women unsuited for combat, she’d been told, no right-thinking man would ever accept orders from a woman.

Her place was at home, supporting her husband and working behind the scenes for her family’s ambitions. There was a saying in the Akshari culture. ‘No man reaches the top of the hill without a woman to lay the stones. ’It simultaneously underscored the value of their women while inculcating their secondary status. When her own family and culture had rejected her ambitions, something Asalla had always been taught were to be lauded, she had joined the Consolidation Navy instead, putting her on the path to her current position as a Commander of a Primality battlecruiser.

The Akshari woman wasn’t completely divorced from her culture; her mannerisms here were proof of that. Rather than discomfort or formal dislike of Nikolai, Asalla was trying to show professionalism and demonstrate her own emotional self-control.

True, earlier in her service some of her unease had been (among other things about Nikolai) his own demeanour. It reminded her too much of some of her own people, but her attitude had softened as she’d learned more about Cainate. He was as self-possessed as an ideal Akshari, but that didn’t come from a need for control – at least, not one that came from the same place as her people’s did. He wasn’t trying to conceal his thoughts or true opinions in order to hide his intentions or plans to manipulate those around him. After she’d learned of his history, she understood: after that trauma, nothing but the cold remained. Almost nothing, at least.

She didn’t think they could be friends, but she respected him as an officer, and he had never failed to show the same for her, unlike all too many of her countrymen. Sneering poppinjays or chortling old men who’d said there was something wrong with a woman who wanted to serve in the military. It was man’s work, they said. Not suitable for the fairer sex. She’d joined the Consolidation Navy – when there had still been a Consolidation and not two fractured halves fighting over the scraps of the galaxy – to prove them wrong, but even then she hadn’t escaped her people’s shadow.

As Black Destiny rose from its inception as an elite cadre of bodyguards into a tumour, it metastasized into the command structure of the Consolidation Navy, the general moving his own people into positions of power and influence. They had spread his doctrine and rot had started to set in. Excessive force became common – more common, the humans would argue – to quell dissent. Internal agencies began to mutter about ‘disloyalty’ and ‘seditious behaviours’ within officers that were insufficiently zealous or had views aligning with those of the Foundationists.

Asalla had done what she could to slow this corruption, but it had been for naught. Her complaints had fallen on deaf ears and in the end, her forces had been fed into a Primality trap. Not simply to get rid of her, no – that was far too wasteful, and Black Destiny was always, to use a human phrase, looking for a way to kill two birds with one stone. They wouldn’t throw away an entire task force just to be rid of her, but to remove a troublesome officer anddistract the humans to allow them to make gains of their own? Yes, absolutely.

The final insult had come when she’d learned what those gains had been. If it had been for the Consolidation as a whole, she could have accepted that. It was a soldier’s duty to sacrifice their lives for the sake of others, and she’d been willing to do that for almost two decades. Black Destiny’s plans hadn’t been for any tactical or strategic advantage against the human raiders. They’d needed the Primality kept busy while the swine made preparations for the looming civil war, solidifying Akshari power rather than fighting for the good of all.

She had turned her back on the Empire in that moment, and the government that had allowed such corruption to fester and spread. Now, she prosecuted war against the same men that had attempted to control her and use her for their own ends with a determination that matched and even exceeded some of her human peers. Aboard Defiance, no one complained about serving under a woman... or even an alien.

“Commander Dshena,” Nikolai said in greeting. He’d just gotten off shift and his uniform jacket hung open, his cuffs unfastened. “What can I do for you?”

She met his eyes without flinching, her own a shade of green slightly darker than Arina’s. “The knife is broken.”

~

Defiance’s assault had proven the key one; whereas Nemesis’s and Soulless’s strike teams encountered only terrified, confused miners and colonists on their respective space stations, Dshena had found the Black Destiny safehouse. The strike had been picture-perfect, but even surprise and speed hadn’t been enough. The Black Destiny operations had managed to purge most of the data from their computers before they were breached. Crucially, they hadn’t gotten all of it. Even more critical, several key personnel had been captured, including the waypost’s commanding officer. They’d been taken aboard Dshena’s vessel for interrogation.

She’d promised Nikolai that she would be able to get the enemy commander to talk. Commander Ki-Aing had offered the same assurances, but Nikolai had allowed the prisoners to remain aboard Defiance. It was a mark of his faith in the Akshari commander, and while some in his command had suggested that Dshena might allow kinship with her countrymen to interfere with her duties, he didn’t agree. Here, he believed the situation required an Akshari’s touch. His trust appeared justified.

Asalla, along with an intelligence officer and two armsmen, ushered Nikolai into the alien officer’s cell. There wasn’t a single mark on the man. The Primality didn’t have to resort to crude physical methods of interrogation as many frequently accused them of. True, telepathic interrogation from a human psi was far from pleasant, even damaging if the subject resisted, but that hadn’t happened here. Black Destiny had been busy. Telepathy was one of the few weapons that they had no access to. Their attempts to do so had ended with their sickening Institute’s unfortunate calamity along with the general’s recent pruning of the royal line. Few other species had psionic potential and those that did were either inconsistent in ability or served the Foundationists.

Though they couldn’t use it themselves, Black Destiny had been working feverishly to develop counters to telepaths. Their null-devices were the first product, but the men on this outpost had possessed a second, new, defence. Rather than a small device that could be removed and leave them vulnerable, many of the ranking officers at this outpost had been given a cranial implant. In its own way, it was an extremely effective method of preventing telepathic interrogation. As soon as it registered the telltale cerebral disruption caused by telepathic stimulation of neural tissue, it killed its host. Two of their prisoners had died that way.

Less exotic methods of interrogation had been necessary, but in the end Asalla had lived up to her promise. The enemy commander was unbound, tapping his fingers on the table in front of him nervously. He was twitchy, occasionally glancing towards the Akshari woman and just as quickly looking away. He would mutter under his breath as he fidgeted, but stopped when Nikolai approached the table. He looked up at the human, laughing manically for a few seconds. “Should I ask the butcher for a cut of meat?” he chuckled. His eyes darted to Asalla and then away again. “No,” he answered his own question. “No, I answer questions. I don’t ask them.”

“That’s right,” Asalla confirmed. The man flinched at her voice. “And you just have one more to answer.”

Nikolai took his cue and stepped forward, placing his hands on the table. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me where she is.” They’d missed Inheritor by two days. The enemy cutter had a lead on them, but it had shorter endurance than a battlecruiser. If they knew where it was going, Nemesis could overtake them.

The Akshari scratched at the back of his head. His fingernails came away crusty with dried blood; he’d been worrying at that spot for some time. “I don’t know where she is,” he confessed, but then raised his head again. “But I know where she will be.”