Alien Skies, page 3
part #3 of Wakanreo Series
“Well, well,” he said, “how did I miss you? How long have you been on base?”
“About two months, sir,” Kamuhi said, still standing at attention, since the lieutenant hadn’t returned his salute.
The Miloran walked around him once, looking him up and down as if he were inspecting livestock. “How tall are you, son?”
“Two hundred eighteen centimeters, sir,” Kamuhi replied, wondering what the point was. He was beginning to feel like merchandise on a shelf.
Finally, Lieutenant Guhlhan sketched a return salute, and Kamuhi could relax.
“Ever do any fighting?” the lieutenant asked.
“Sir?” said Kamuhi, not understanding what he meant.
“Ever do any boxing, karate, keehshon, anything like that?”
“No, sir.”
“How are your reflexes?”
“Pretty good, sir,” Kamuhi said.
The Miloran was still walking around him. Without warning, he suddenly lunged forward, raising his arm as if he were going to strike Kamuhi. Without thinking, Kamuhi reacted, jumping backwards at the same time he raised his arms defensively.
“Damn good reflexes,” the lieutenant said.
There was a beep from the control panel behind him, and he turned to speak to it. “Security. Guhlhan here. What’s up?”
A voice reported a disturbance in one of the bars on the base. The Miloran assured him that help was on the way.
“Barker!” he yelled.
A Terran came out of the room at the back of the office. She was tall for a Terran woman, not so much stocky as solid looking. She had short black hair, and she wore a blue and brown ThreeCon uniform with the red sash of Security across her torso. “Yes, sir?”
“There’s another fight at the Crab Nebula. Take Jasoahn with you and take care of it.”
“Yes, sir.” She called to the back room, and another Miloran came out. This one was female. She was considerably smaller than the lieutenant, but she still had the boulder-like appearance common to Milorans.
When the two women had gone, Lieutenant Guhlhan turned to Kamuhi. “Now then, let’s you and me get acquainted.”
The lieutenant had Kamuhi remove his boots, and they moved to a corner of the room where the walls were all padded. The floor was a sort of mat that was firm enough to walk on but felt springy, which Kamuhi realized must provide protection against falls. Guhlhan instructed him to come at him in any way that he chose, and Kamuhi soon found out that the lieutenant’s idea of getting acquainted was to toss him around the room like a sack of vegetables.
The Miloran talked incessantly, pointing out Kamuhi’s mistakes and suggesting ways to improve his performance. After an hour, Kamuhi was feeling rather battered.
The two women came back and the lieutenant stopped Kamuhi’s workout to hear their report.
“No arrests were necessary, sir,” Barker said. “However, one Terran and one Shuratanian had to go to the infirmary.”
“A Shuratanian?” said the lieutenant. “They’re usually very peaceable.”
“I’m sure he was, sir. But he happened to be in the way when the Terran got thrown across the room.”
“Who threw him?”
“A Miloran,” said Barker. “The Terran was telling shape jokes.”
“That’s justifiable provocation,” the lieutenant said. “Good job.”
He looked at Jasoahn. “I have a couple of things to do in the office. Why don’t you enter the fight into the log? I’d like Barker to show Hailoaka a few of her tricks.”
The Terran woman’s eyes lit up as her coworker followed Guhlhan out of the room.
Kamuhi was uneasy and his apprehension proved to be well founded. Barker didn’t have the Miloran’s powerful build, but she was much quicker on her feet. She tossed Kamuhi around with almost equal ease. It wasn’t particularly gratifying that she couldn’t make him fly quite as far across the room.
After she had managed to flip him over onto his back, Kamuhi lay on the mat staring at the ceiling and wondering whether it was worth his while to get up. He heard heavy footsteps, and then the lieutenant’s voice asked how he had done.
“Not bad,” Barker said. “He’s in pretty good shape—he’s not out of breath yet. He’s big, but he’s quick. He just doesn’t know anything.”
“That’s okay,” said the lieutenant happily. “We can teach him.”
“What?” said Kamuhi getting to his feet.
“Congratulations, son,” said the lieutenant. “You’re in Security now.”
“But, sir,” Kamuhi tried to argue, but the lieutenant brushed aside his protests.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, as if Kamuhi had expressed a fear that he couldn’t do the job. “You’ll learn quickly, I can tell. I took care of the transfer, and you should be set by tomorrow morning.”
Sure enough, when Kamuhi reported to the duty center the next afternoon, he was informed that he had been assigned to Security. When he arrived at the Security Office, Lieutenant Guhlhan was happily warming up for his first official lesson.
When Kamuhi came home that night, Yulayan took one look at him and let loose a Wakanrean obscenity. “What happened, Kam? Did that muscle-bound lieutenant do this to you?”
“He had help,” said Kamuhi, sinking slowly into a chair.
“This is ridiculous,” Yulayan fumed. “Look at you! You move like an old man. And you look like they pounded you with a hammer.”
“I feel like it, too. Don’t worry, Yulayan. It’ll get better. They’re teaching me to defend myself.”
He could tell she was still upset because her headcrest stood erect, and she couldn’t keep her claws in. He took her hand, carefully because of the claws.
“It’s all right. It’s not so bad, really. It’s kind of interesting in a way.”
“Interesting?” she said indignantly. “What’s interesting about getting battered?”
Kamuhi chuckled and then winced because his ribs were bruised. “It’s interesting because there’s a lot of science to it. You have to learn how to direct your energy and other people’s to your own advantage. It helps if you already know about mass and velocity and things like that.”
Yulayan looked unconvinced. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s physics in beating people up?”
“Not just physics—anatomy, psychology. Some things I know already, and some I don’t.”
“Do you like it, Kam?”
“Well,” he admitted, “I think I’ll like it a whole lot more when I’m better at it.”
KAMUHI got better at it, and quickly. Lieutenant Guhlhan spent at least an hour with him every day, and Kamuhi worked with the others, too, not just Barker and Jasoahn, but with all the security personnel.
Guhlhan had Kamuhi wear padding while he sparred, but Kamuhi abandoned it as soon as he was allowed. It was bulky and slowed him down without truly guaranteeing that he wouldn’t get hurt.
The techniques used by the security staff included a wide variety of fighting styles. There were kicks, punches, and throws from Terran martial arts of karate, judo, and jujitsu; flying leap kicks from keehshon, the Shuratanian form of unarmed combat; and the potentially lethal blows of juarja, Miloran boxing.
Barker showed Kamuhi the firing range where they practiced using weapons. She started with the stun gun because that was what they carried as a matter of course.
“Have you had any experience with stun guns?” she asked, as she handed him one.
Kamuhi took it and held it in his hand. It was more than twice the size of the stun gun Jared Harlengin had once used on him with no warning. “Not this end of one. Somebody stunned me once.”
Barker looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the violent type.”
Kamuhi shook his head. “I’m not normally. But it’s amazing what blind fear and raging jealousy can do to you.”
Barker gave him a sideways glance, but she didn’t ask any questions. “Anyway, we don’t use them unless we have to. They’re not totally without side effects on some species, and they aren’t very effective on some others. That’s one reason we spend so much time in practice fights—that and it keeps us in shape and ready.”
“Which species can’t be stunned?”
“Milorans are the only ones you’ll encounter here. It’s too bad, because they’re so hard to handle when they’re in a bad mood. That’s why our stun guns can also fire tranquilizer darts, but you have to be careful with them because they can be fatal on other species. Shuratanians are a little resistant to a stun charge, more than Terrans, anyway, but you can drop them with a solid hit. Stunning a Tryff gives him a terrible headache, but we almost never have Tryffs here because the gravity is too much for them.”
Barker officially checked out a stun gun to Kamuhi, and programmed it to fire only for him. She also showed him the best way to draw his weapon in a hurry.
“That’s another reason we practice hand to hand,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t have time to go for a weapon.”
Kamuhi tried to remember everything she taught him. After a month and a half of training, he started on rotating overlapping shifts, sometimes working days, sometimes evenings, sometimes nights. He went on his first real call on the evening shift.
It was a disturbance more than a fight. A patron of the Crab Nebula had gotten drunk and was causing a scene. The manager wanted him removed. Lieutenant Guhlhan assigned the call to Jasoahn and told her to take Kamuhi with her.
When the two of them arrived at the Crab Nebula, it turned out to be a dingy place, dark and not particularly clean. The manager was a Terran woman, middle-aged, short, and with what seemed to be a perpetual frown. She pointed out the Miloran who was causing the trouble. He was occupying a booth right next to the bar, and he refused to vacate it. He also refused to let the other patrons get past him to the bar, so that they all had to walk a long way around.
“It’s annoying the customers,” the manager said. “Make him leave!”
Jasoahn walked up to the troublemaker and gave him a friendly greeting in Standard. When he ignored her, she tried the Miloran vernacular. Kamuhi wasn’t nearly as fluent in Miloran as he was Shuratanian, but he recognized the second greeting as being the equivalent of asking how things were going.
The drunk Miloran looked up and saw Jasoahn. He took a minute to focus and then he shouted something at her in Miloran. It sounded to Kamuhi as if he were accusing all women of being faithless hussies, out to take a man for all he had.
Jasoahn tried to calm him down. She agreed with him that some women were trouble and suggested he might like to go somewhere and talk about it.
The drunk focused on her more clearly, seeming to suddenly grasp that she was a Miloran female. He grabbed her arm and pleaded with her to take him back.
Jasoahn tried to play along. She told him she needed to talk to him, that she wanted to go somewhere more private. The drunk seemed suspicious, as if an old grievance weighed on his mind. Suddenly he shouted at Jasoahn that she wouldn’t get her hands on any more of his money, and he pulled something out from under the table. Kamuhi didn’t wait to see what it was. He grabbed the empty bottle from the table and smashed it over the Miloran’s head just as Jasoahn brought her hand down hard on his wrist. The drunk fell face down across the table. Something that looked like a weapon dropped from his nerveless hand to the floor.
Jasoahn picked it up. “An aihgat,” she said, switching back to Standard. “That’s not a ThreeCon-issued weapon. He’ll do some time in the brig for this one.” She looked at Kamuhi approvingly. “That was quick thinking. Most rookies would have tried to pull their stun guns.”
“Barker told me they don’t work on Milorans, and I didn’t have time to switch it to fire darts. Who did he think you were?”
“I haven’t any idea,” she said, sounding surprised. “You understand our language?”
“A little.”
Jasoahn checked the drunk’s breathing while Kamuhi called for medical assistance. The manager fussed until a med team arrived and removed the Miloran to the infirmary, and Kamuhi and Jasoahn went back to the Security office to make their report.
The next day Kamuhi started a new shift, rotating backwards a few hours earlier in the day. While he was on duty that afternoon, Lieutenant Guhlhan called him into his office and shut the door firmly once Kamuhi was inside it. His office had an old fashioned door that swung on hinges, and Kamuhi had noticed that opening and closing it seemed to be almost a ritual for the lieutenant.
“Jasoahn gave a good report of you,” Guhlhan said. “She said you made the right decisions.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You can lay off the ‘sir’ for a while. The door’s closed because I need to ask you something.”
“Yes, sir.” Realizing what he had said, Kamuhi grinned. “Sorry, it’s pretty well automatic by now.”
Guhlhan didn’t seem amused. “Look here, Hailoaka, I’ve been pleased with your progress. You learn more quickly than anyone I’ve ever taught, and that’s saying something. But I overheard Barker telling Jasoahn that you told her someone stunned you once. You mentioned rage as a cause. There’s nothing about it in your file, and I want to know what happened.”
Kamuhi stood stiffly. “Is that an order, sir?”
“Dammit!” the lieutenant said angrily, “I’m handing you a weapon and telling you to keep the peace! I want to know if one of my people has been in trouble.”
“I . . . I wasn’t ever arrested or anything like that, Lieutenant. It was personal.”
“Who stunned you?”
Kamuhi would have been uncomfortable lying to anyone; in this situation, he was loath to do it. “A ThreeCon officer named Jared Harlengin.”
Guhlhan looked even more unhappy with this answer. “You messed with ThreeCon? Was this after you enlisted or before?”
“Before, sir.”
“Was he a Security Officer?”
“No, sir. He was the Planetary Commander.”
“He was the PC!” Guhlhan’s low rumble indicated his unease. “What the hell had you done?”
“Nothing, sir.”
The Miloran snorted. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Hailoaka. If I have to order you to tell me, I will, but I’d rather not put it on those terms. Now, the door is shut and anything you say stays in this room. Will you please tell me what happened?”
Kamuhi took a deep breath. “It . . . it concerns my wife.”
“Your wife isn’t a Terran, is she?”
“No. She’s half Terran and half Wakanrean.”
“Wakanrean? I’ve never met a Wakanrean. They must be close to Terrans if she’s a crossbreed.”
“Yes,” said Kamuhi. “They are similar. Very humanoid. They tend to be a little taller; they have body fur and retractable claws. But certainly, we’re close as sapient species go.”
“Well?”
Kamuhi took another deep breath and let it out. “Wakanreans are unique among the sapient species in . . . in the way that they mate. It’s a biochemical process over which they have no control. They call it shahgunrah. Two Wakanreans will scent each other, and then it just happens. And once it happens, they’re mated for life. Their hormonal systems go berserk for a while; there’s a period of intense passion and then it stabilizes. After shahgunrah, they experience true empathy with each other that lasts until one of them dies.”
Kamuhi paused. The Miloran didn’t say anything so Kamuhi went on.
“When I met Yulayan,” Kamuhi said, “I knew about her mixed heritage. I didn’t know for sure that she carried the Wakanrean genes that allow shahgunrah, but she did.” Kamuhi paused again, trying to think what he wanted to say. “We got married anyway,” he went on resolutely. “We had left Wakanreo, but we had to go back because her brother got sick, and while we were there, she—” he broke off.
“Sit down, Hailoaka,” Guhlhan said, and he pushed him into a chair.
Kamuhi took a moment to compose his words. “It was so quick. One minute she was standing there, talking to her family. Then this stranger came in. They both got this peculiar look on their faces, and she went off with him. I tried to stop her, but her father and her grandfather held me back. Wakanreans think of shahgunrah as almost sacred. No one’s supposed to interfere with it.”
Kamuhi sat quietly, letting his memories take him over. “I fell apart. I think I was in shock. Then after a while, Yulayan called her home and told her father that her—her mate had threatened her. He hated her because she was half Terran. She was afraid for her life.”
Kamuhi looked down at his hands. “Between fear and jealousy, I went a little crazy. Wakanreo is a ThreeCon auxiliary member, and the Planetary Commander is a friend of Yulayan’s family. When he came to her parents’ house to talk about the best way to find her, he realized I was a liability in that condition so he very neatly put me out of the way with a stun gun. I was angry when I came to, but I realized later that he had done the right thing.” Kamuhi shrugged. “And that’s the only time I’ve ever been stunned.”
“But your wife was all right?”
“They found her. She was terrified of her mate, and she asked ThreeCon to end shahgunrah medically, which they did. She came back to me, and we had Malia, our daughter. I enlisted before she was born, but I didn’t go on active duty until after.”
“Why?” Guhlhan asked. “You don’t have to tell me,” he added as Kamuhi looked up at him. “I just always wondered why you signed up. According to your file, you’re some kind of whiz kid.”
Kamuhi smiled ruefully. “I was a physicist. Yulayan is working on her doctorate in physics. That’s how we met. I was working for ThreeCon as a civilian.” He let out a deep breath. “That’s one reason why I enlisted, you see. I owe ThreeCon something. They brought Yulayan back to me.”
“Ten years of your life seems a pretty steep price.”
“Maybe,” Kamuhi said with a twisted smile. “Maybe not.”
Guhlhan went over to a cabinet and took out a bottle of Miloran whiskey. He brought it over to Kamuhi with two glasses. “I don’t usually allow drinking on duty, but I think you could use this.” He filled each glass half full of whiskey and handed one to Kamuhi.
