Ain't found a way to kill me yet

Eyes burn with stinging sweat

Seems every path leads me to nowhere

Wife and kids household pet

Army green was no safe bet

The bullets scream to me from somewhere

Alice in Chains - “Rooster”

Prior to Task Force Odysseus’s deployment, Commodore Fuentes was handed a set of sealed orders from Marshal Antuma himself. No electronic copies existed in any database, and once she’d read them after getting underway they were incinerated. The orders were simple enough; deliver a package to Uzaunx before going dark, and forget she’d ever seen it. The orders didn’t explain why…but it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

Which is why she had reprogrammed one of the message drones to head for the planet surface, in case the worst happened.

Their shelter smelled terrible.

It reeked the day they’d arrived, and after two weeks packed in like sardines, the aroma hadn’t improved one bit. You’d think a society as advanced as the Triumvirate would make their waste dumps less fragrant, but it seemed some things were universal. Not that they were complaining, as the smell kept casual visitors from investigating their location. They had good line-of-sight views in four directions, and just enough elevation to tap into the odd electronic transmission. From an operational standpoint, it was perfect.

Though Musashi was tiring of stuffing cotton up his nose.

He glanced around their improvised hide at the rest of the team. Tango was wrapped around her rifle as if she was cradling a lover, as still as the mist. Her glacier-blue eyes scanned the horizon through her scope, her only movement the occasional murmur as she recorded observed data. She was attractive, in a rough-hewn way, her blonde braid dangling over her shoulder...and as deadly as a cobra out to three thousand meters.

Graybird’s fingers manipulated the controls of his console, searching out the random snippets of data floating in the aether. He had the deft touch of a safecracker, the talents of a hacker, and the soul of an artist, piecing together what appeared to be unrelated scraps into a coherent whole. He’d tapped into both the Saurotaur’s transmissions and the enemy’s...the Khonhim, they’d learned they called themselves, after deciphering their language...storing everything for when they returned to friendly space.

If they returned to friendly space.

Musashi took a moment to regard his own reflection in a piece of shattered glass. Despite his callsign, there wasn’t a trace of Asian DNA in his genetic makeup. He was the odd man out of the group; the generalist surrounded by specialists, the historian more comfortable in libraries than the field, the loner who’d been elevated to leader by default.

And then there was Whisper.

Despite humanity’s best efforts to locate and treat those suffering from the various mental afflictions that had plagued mankind, there would always be a few who slipped through the cracks. Most would end up confined, eventually, sentenced to long term therapy. The self-controlled sociopath that passed as normal was all but a myth, and before he was selected for the mission Musashi had assumed such individuals were the creation of bad fiction. The thought of someone like that being employed by the government was laughable.

Whisper had disabused him of that callow notion.

The man was an utter enigma, his dark eyes as placid as a saint’s, but when you looked closer (he’d only made that mistake once, and it still left him nauseous) you could see things squirm in those depths. He was capable of surface pleasantry, seeming to have a lively and wry sense of humor, but behind that crafted mask was something not quite human.

And the more time the team spent together, the more that mask was starting to slip.

Marshal Antuma himself had handpicked them for this mission. He didn’t know their real names, nor did he want to, any more than they knew his. They were there on Uzaunx to learn everything they could about the enemy that had torn through the Triumvirate like a Grizzly gutting a deer, and despite all they’d discovered it seemed there were still more questions than answers.

Musashi crawled over to Tango’s position, peering out one of the small holes they’d knocked out of the wall. A thick pall of smoke hung over the city, as the invaders still found things to burn. “Anything new?” he asked.

She didn’t move a muscle. “They’re still operating off the Viking playbook,” she informed him, “though they don’t seem to have added Rape to their repertoire.” Her tone was clinical as she delivered her update. “Hurrah for species incompatibility.”

“They’re still slaughtering the locals out of hand?” he asked. The first few days after the invasion had been an unending nightmare, but by now they’d become almost sanguine at the various tortures the Khonhim visited upon the defeated Saurotaurs.

“Most of them...but I’ve spotted some being herded away. No pun intended,” she said.

That was a new development. “Any idea why?” he asked.

“None,” she replied. “But if I had to hazard a guess...I’d say the ones they’ve taken prisoner had rank of some sort. They’re dressed better than the others,” she explained.

“Interrogations,” Whisper nodded, as he appeared at their side. There were times he thought the man could teleport, the way he could move without being seen or heard. And let’s not think about what he may have used that talent for in that past, shall we? Musashi thought to himself, though he agreed with his assessment.

“If they’re being questioned, you can guess what the subject is,” Graybird chimed in, looking up from his console. “They have to be asking about us. Not the team,” he hastened to add, “but humanity. That download we got from the Task Force message drone...”

They all nodded at that. Watching the Task Force die had been a sobering sight. “Any sign of them carting off their spoils?” he asked Tango, looking to change the subject.

“Other than a few baubles and trinkets? None that I’ve seen,” she told him, as he once again tried to make sense of what they were seeing.

Earth had seen its fair share of invasions in its history, and some of them had been almost as bloody as what they were seeing here. But even the most infamous examples...the Huns, the Mongols, the Conquistadors...they’d all been after something other than just wholesale murder. Land, gold, slaves, each of those same invasions had served some purpose, some need of the invaders, but for the life of him, he was no closer to understanding the Khonhim’s motives than when they’d first arrived. It had all the earmarks of Jihad, and while the invaders were just as thorough as the Einsatzgruppen, there was a sheer ferocity that seemed more at home with the Aztecs than a space-faring species. It was almost as if the enemy was a plague of locusts, consuming all before it...but that made no sense either.

“What is it they want?” Musashi asked out loud. “They’re not making any moves to colonize, they’re not prospecting for fissionables...so why are they here? What’s driving this invasion?”

“Religious fanaticism?” Graybird suggested.

“Maybe,” Musashi admitted, “but I prefer not to settle on that answer without some proof. It’s too easy a trap to fall into when searching for motives. Besides, if it was religious, I’d expect to see rituals involved. Altars, sacrifice, that sort of thing. This is more like...pulling the wings off flies.” He glanced over at Whisper as he said that, who returned his gaze with a bemused half-smile. He suppressed a shudder and looked back towards the city, as Tango lifted her head from her scope and contemplated him for a moment, before speaking.

“I don’t think it’s any of that,” she told him. “From everything I’ve seen, this feels personal to me.”

“Personal?” His mind spun at the thought. “But...that would presume some previous contact between the Khonhim and the Triumvirate, and we know they’ve been at peace for over ten millennia.”

Tango shrugged, as she went back to her rifle. “It’s just my take on what we’re seeing,” she replied.

What if she’s right? he wondered. That might explain the reason behind this invasion, but how can we confirm it?

There was only one way, and Musashi had known all along it might come to this, though he’d shied away from it. They were here to gather data, yes, but taking more direct action raised the risk factor more than he liked. Only they’d exhausted all their other options, and if they didn’t discover the answers to the questions Antuma had sent them here to learn, all of it was for nothing.

Musashi closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, before turning to face Whisper.

“We need a prisoner,” he said at last. “Someone who has direct knowledge...and who won’t be missed.”

Whisper’s smile was positively gleeful. “I thought you’d never ask.”

It was a couple of hours before dawn when Whisper returned with his prisoner, bound and gagged. The Khonhim towered over the dark-eyed man, and yet his every gesture screamed his terror of him. There were few marks on the Khonhim warrior, but whatever it was Whisper had done to loosen his tongue had him as giddy as a schoolgirl on her first date.

He so very much did not want to know what he’d done to make that happen. Not for anything.

Whisper forced him to kneel in front of him, which was an odd sight up close since their knees bent the opposite way, before removing his gag. Tango had her rifle trained on him, as cool and detached as ever, but the prisoner didn’t even look in her direction. All his attention was for the man who’d captured him, and Musashi almost pitied their captive. Graybird had the recorders already running as he stood before the Khonhim.

“What is your name?” he asked. It was always better to start off with something simple and establish a rapport.

“...Chaaghtozh,” he answered, never taking his eyes off Whisper, who pulled a hidden dagger and began cleaning his fingernails. Chaaghtozh made a small sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a moan, before looking back at Musashi. “Keep that one away from me, and I will tell you what you wish to know.”

…definitely did not want to know what he’d done.

“Why are you here?” Musashi asked. “Why have you attacked the Triumvirate worlds?”

Chaaghtozh raised up his head. “To fulfill our forebears' pact,” he answered.

“Pact?” Musashi asked in surprise. “What does that mean?”

The Khonhim warrior told him. For hours they questioned him, and the more he talked the more dumbfounded they became. Chaaghtozh held nothing back, spinning a yarn that hung together all too well to be fabricated, and as the sun began to rise high in the midday sky Musashi could only stare at him in astonishment.

“I don’t believe this,” he said at last. “It’s insane!”

Whisper’s blade came out again. “You think he’s lying?” he asked.

Chaaghtozh shrank away from him, even as Musashi held up a placating hand. “Put that away,” he ordered, as the Khonhim sighed in relief. “No, it’s not him I don’t believe...it’s the Triumvirate.”

“Things just got more complicated,” Tango agreed.

Graybird looked over at him. “We’ve got to get this back to Earth,” he said with feeling.

“Agreed...though I’m at a loss how,” Musashi told him. “We try taking off in our shuttle, and they’ll shoot us out of the sky.”

Whisper giggled as he held his knife to Chaaghtozh’s throat.

“...what about his?”