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“… Koko…” He sighs. Why call me Koko right now? It unsettles me further. He and Niko once called me this often but reach for the honorific less since we’ve been mating age. I’m their elder by a few passings.
“You have something on your mind,” I say. “So what is it? Spit it out.”
“You’re right, but I’ve been hesitant to discuss it.”
“Since when did you mince words with me? Save the honeyed words for your politicians.”
“Why did you destroy the Azza station that was monitoring Kar’Kal?” he asks.
“What kind of question is that?”
“The unanswered kind, apparently,” he quips. “I’ll wait.”
“It was a skeleton crew. A simple task. Why leave them alive with their station functioning when I could easily destroy it? They won’t be able to release any security bots from the station or report on the happenings without sending more bots or a team to Kar’Kal. Besides, that card I gave you with the info from the station’s logs was full of interesting information.”
“You are capable of downloading a copy of their station logs without being detected or killing a soul.”
“But killing Azza is more fun,” I say with a grin. He doesn’t smile back. “Every Azza soldier I kill is one less soldier to stop us from taking our planet.”
“I know this. But there is such a thing as strategy. And chain of command. I’d like to remind you that I sit at the top of that chain.”
“You sent me there!”
“I didn’t ask you to destroy every last soldier posted on Kar’Kal,” he says, leveling me a glare. “I asked for information.”
“Which I retrieved for you. Since when do you care how I come by that info?” I’ve done a million ugly things for Mak that he doesn’t need to know about. He only has an inkling of what I do to acquire intel.
“Since it’s forcing my hand,” he says sharply, not amused by my flippancy with him.
“It’s better that we act now,” I say. “There’s no time to waste.”
“It would’ve been better to wait until we were already assembled. On top of that, there are diplomatic ventures I was pursuing. We’re lucky I finished the deal with the survivors of the genocide, because if I hadn’t gotten it done, our hold on the planet would be just as precarious as the Azza’s.”
“The survivors,” I scoff. “And what deal did you make? For weapons codes, then?”
He pauses, heaving a sigh that tells me his answer will piss me off.
“We have an alliance. I’ll no longer be the only Ka’lakka,” he says. “They’re establishing their own House. And I will treat their Ka’lakka as my equal so long as he follows the same guidelines as me.”
My eye twitches. I know I did not hear that correctly.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Kalla.”
“The Deadheads will have a Ka’lakka?” I grit the words out through my teeth.
Mak shrugs. “It was their suggestion, and now they will have to adhere to our laws or face down a challenge. He will have to rule fairly, or someone from his house can seek to replace him. That is our way.”
“Our way! Not the way of these… these usurpers!”
“Nothing will change if we don’t make choices that lead to a peaceful future,” he says. “We need their help to take the planet without slaughter. Their numbers are pitifully small, so I don’t see much chance of them double-crossing us with any success.”
“You traded that for what? Their bombs? An engineer whomightknow how to reengage the planetary defense system?”
“I’m confident that he will do it, and he will do it well. This is the most important aspect of the plan.”
I stand up from my seat and pace away from him, knowing I might say something treasonous. Mak knew just what he was doing when he sent me on this mission. He knew he had plans to see the Deadheads and forge some stupid alliance, and he knew I would oppose it. So he sent me packing while he signed papers. It’s not like I could have stopped him— he’s king, after all.
