Fragile Bond

By Rhi Etzweiler

Sergeant Marc Staille is one of five sniper-scouts in Sierra Red, a forward element for an exploratory team. He and his beloved rifle companion, Mat, are responsible for neutralizing indigene predators on Horace Deuce-Niner so the battalion following in their wake can locate and extract raw materials for their space-faring ship, Mother Diaspora.

Turns out the huge feline predators on this dry, rocky shithole are a great deal more than they seem, when one locates Marc in his roost, flushes him out, and captures him. Even years of training make it difficult to think when pheromones are short-circuiting logical thought.

But how the hell is the alien managing that? Because it’s not coincidence.

For the Furrs, arousal and attraction are weaknesses manipulated in order to exert dominance. They have honed manipulation into a biological weapon. And Hamm is determined to put an end to the hostile invasion of his homeland and the slaughter of his people no matter the cost. His squad sacrifices themselves so he can capture this human. When he discovers he’s forfeited his chance at bonding with one of his own in his effort to subdue the small alien, it’s of little consequence to him. Its warrior spirit is larger than he ever imagined, and that alone is enough to fascinate him. He’s forgotten their weapon works both ways.

Hamm’s fascination with the male human creates friction, even if it does give the clan collective desperately needed leverage for bringing the invasion to a halt. He has to play it right, though, or he’s more likely to end up another casualty of this war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhi Etzweiler
• Release date: Nov 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536551754

Rhi Etzweiler

Rhi Etzweiler writes stories across the full spectrum of speculative fiction, from military science fiction to historical fantasy. Many of their characters reflect the influence of a military upbringing, in addition to incorporating LGBTQ aspects and themes ranging from gender fluidity to gay romance. For the latest information and updates about Rhi's current projects, sign up for their author newsletter via http://eepurl.com/bbLTjv or find Rhi.Etzweiler on Facebook, and @musefodder on Twitter.

Book preview

For those who still seek

that home to sink their roots deep—

Journey on, kindred.

About Fragile Bond

Sergeant Marc Staille is one of five sniper-scouts in Sierra Red, a forward element for an exploratory team. He and his beloved rifle companion, Mat, are responsible for neutralizing indigene predators on Horace Deuce-Niner so the battalion following in their wake can locate and extract raw materials for their space-faring ship, Mother Diaspora.

Turns out the huge feline predators on this dry, rocky shithole are a great deal more than they seem, when one locates Marc in his roost, flushes him out, and captures him. Even years of training make it difficult to think when pheromones are short-circuiting logical thought.

But how the hell is the alien managing that? Because it’s not coincidence.

For the Furrs, arousal and attraction are weaknesses manipulated in order to exert dominance. They have honed manipulation into a biological weapon. And Hamm is determined to put an end to the hostile invasion of his homeland and the slaughter of his people no matter the cost. His squad sacrifices themselves so he can capture this human. When he discovers he’s forfeited his chance at bonding with one of his own in his effort to subdue the small alien, it’s of little consequence to him. Its warrior spirit is larger than he ever imagined, and that alone is enough to fascinate him. He’s forgotten their weapon works both ways.

Hamm’s fascination with the male human creates friction, even if it does give the clan collective desperately needed leverage for bringing the invasion to a halt. He has to play it right, though, or he’s more likely to end up another casualty of this war.

Chapter 1

::Sight: Blur of Tawny

The tripod steadying Mat’s barrel helped, but the rifle still felt heavier than an elephant in Marc’s arms. Sweep up the valley and secure the pass for the advancing battalion. That was the game plan, at least.

Maintain radio silence. He hadn’t had contact with any of his fellow forward scouts in close to a day. But he hadn’t seen them, either. This was the most boring job in the fucking universe.

He inhaled a hit of nicotine from the small vaporizer in his chest pocket, not so much out of need but as a means of passing time. The air here was thin and weak; the device delivered nicotine along with moisture and a thousand other little things the lungs and body needed to function properly. Gravity a little on the dense side too, but far less than he’d trained and prepped for.

In some ways, Horace Deuce-Niner was no worse than a rough day back on Mother. Except for the grit.

The wind picked up, shifting, whisking the moisture off his sweat-damp cheek. He reached down, pinching dirt between his fingers to toss into the air. Watched how the wind grabbed it, the direction it scattered.

Ghastly dust. Not even in the green zone offered escape from the grit, lush with life and a far cry from the arid stretches of rolling bare dunes. A fine sheen of dust covered every inch of him and his kit. Even the scope bolted to Mat’s barrel, except where he touched the knobs to make fine adjustments to the focus. Inside his tightly sealed canteen, sand still managed to taint the water. Half the desert of this gods-forsaken planet had taken up residence in his gut in lieu of actual bacteria.

Where the hell was the battalion, anyway? Had they stopped for a picnic? How long did a motorized convoy need to cover fifteen or twenty klicks? He shifted his weight, clenching and relaxing muscles one by one to ease the ache of stiffness and cramps. Then scanned along the ridgeline again. Then the valley floor. It was a great roost, the best he’d found in two weeks’ time. Unobstructed view, line of sight almost the full length of the valley.

The first glimpse of a tawny something caught his eye on the northern ridgeline, a third of the way down toward the valley floor.

He froze, every muscle tensing. Trapped air in his lungs to steady Mat as he waited for whatever he’d seen to reappear. Praying he’d been wrong.

Tell me I'm hallucinating, Mat.

The breeze gusted, rustling the canopy of trees behind him. Blowing fine grit in his face. He licked his lips, tasted the mineral tang of dirt, and tweaked the focus another millimeter.

There. Tawny dirt-colored brown. But dirt and rocks didn’t move. And weren’t shaped like heads.

Marc tracked the tango, disengaging the safety with a flick. A max-range shot for his modified M110. Right about now, his trigger finger itched for the fifty-caliber one of his fellow scouts had bitched about humping around. And never mind how loud the fucker was. The fifty-cal, not the scout.

But he knew his rifle well, how to eke the most out of what Mat had to give. Mutilate All Tangos. When the tango shifted back into sight, the shape of forehead, cheekbone, and temple was unmistakable and definitely not one of his fellow scouts.

Time to play, sexy. He squeezed the trigger, counted methodically in his head until the tawny shape disappeared in a puff of pink mist. Damn, Mat. Just like that. Knew you liked it dirty.

Silent death. Only a whisper from the subsonic-glide rounds, nothing that would be audible at impact range—Mat wasn’t the type to kiss and tell. It would take at least two more of its pack—if the tawny hadn’t been a loner—for them to triangulate his roost.

If they even could. Preliminary assessment reports of this planet presented in the briefing looked clean. No colonization, no civilized indigenes. Assets free for the grabbing, if they could hold off the hungry predators. Apparently the scent of easy meat was universal. Horace Deuce-Niner was a volatile and hostile environment despite its generous saturation of raw materials.

The predators hunted in packs, with highly developed attack skills. As a forward scout, he’d studied those coordinated tactics in depth during his formative training and education. The tawnies were certainly the largest predators employing them that he’d come across, though.

He scanned carefully, easing the scope over the vicinity in search of other tangos. It took a few minutes to locate them. He and Mat took out a second and third solitary in quick succession. Had to remind himself to breathe, slow and even to keep the scope steady, as he tracked along the ridgeline. Had the battalion been overrun? Were his fellow scouts dead?

What if he and Mat were alone in a valley of predators already in a feeding frenzy at the taste of blood? Would he be able to pinpoint the roosts of his fellow scouts and, more importantly, relocate to them? His ammunition supply wouldn’t last. He’d need to scavenge from the kits of his comrades to keep this up for too long.

The next tawny he scoped wasn’t alone. A group of three, treading through the rangy excuse for a forest on the south ridge. He took out the rear guard in another pink mist, then exhaled hard in frustration as the others darted behind a rocky outcropping. Had they really triangulated his location, despite his caution? Their hearing had to be depressingly sensitive. He waited, focused and steady. Too late to relocate. At least it was a defensible roost.

The wind gusted, shifting to blow at his back. He canted his head a fraction, letting the dry air slide fingers up under his helmet, a welcome ease against his hairless scalp. He tweaked the scope, adjusting for the change in wind direction.

Wait for it, he crooned, stroking his trigger finger over the guard. The pair eased out into the open again, only seconds later, one after the other. Oh yeah. Right there, Mat. He took them out in rapid succession.

The breeze kicked up again, bringing a scent he didn’t dare ignore. Unusual for new scents to just randomly surface given how long he’d been in this spot. The faint tang of musk. Something heavy and thick, though fleeting. It brought to mind the scent of soil, moist and dark, clinging to the roots of a dislodged weed. Rotting leaves in the undergrowth of a dense forest.

Nothing like that existed on Horace, not that he’d seen. In measured increments, Marc straightened and turned, grip tightening on Mat as he brought the rifle to bear on the stretch of rocky, forested ridgeline at his back.

Another gust of breeze, the scent stronger this time. Closer? He crouched and edged away from his roost, hooking Mat’s sling over his shoulder so he could steady himself against the rocks. He glanced around. Up would make him more vulnerable—no escape route, greater risk of being sighted—but going down this side wouldn’t be an easy feat.

Marc rested his fingertips on the edge of a sharp rock at knee height as he planted his thick-soled boot. The hostile edge to every aspect of this planet made him once again thankful for the Kevlar-gel reinforcement in his boots and battle dress. Impenetrable right down to the gloves.

A weight slammed into his back and shoulders, bearing him forward and down, crushing him into the rock-strewn ground. Stone gouged his upper arm, a sharp, intense counter to the concussive force of his helmeted head rebounding off a boulder.

The scent of soil and undergrowth saturated the air. So thick he could taste the dirt on his tongue. Between the tight press of rocks and his attacker’s weight, he struggled to pull a knee up. It gave him leverage to heave, loosen the hold, scrabble forward, away.

Only to have claws, sharp and heavy, rake down his flanks. Unable to penetrate his armor, or he’d be bleeding out, shredded to ribbons. Shit, he should’ve dropped Mat and pulled the knife from his boot. Too late. The creature found purchase on his hips. Not just claws, but fingers. The alien grabbed hold and pinned him.

Marc twisted, kicked, as he tried to bring Mat to bear on his attacker, fumbling with the tangle of tripod, barrel, and shoulder strap. Screw getting a bead. He struck out with the rifle’s butt. Aiming for temple, jaw, cheek.

The weapon landed true, though from the sound of it, he accomplished nothing but angering the alien. It lifted its head, heavily muscled shoulders shifting in a ripple of white amber and tawny, with what looked like longer, mud-clotted hair hanging in thin dreads about its neck.

Old training vids of feral felines flashed through his mind. Great cats, they were called. Ruthless predators, living on a planet surrendered to the whims of Gaia. Mercy wasn’t in their vocabulary. He’d gotten a chill, watching a pack systematically isolate and bring down a target. He felt that same chill crawl over his skin as his attacker curled back smooth lips on a frighteningly humanoid face, baring sharp fangs inside a wide mouth. A growling sound rumbled up from deep within its massive chest. It carried a vicious edge of warning.

Why wasn’t it eating him? Marc forced himself to relax. Some things weren’t difficult to understand. It had him overwhelmed, the dominant edge of authority clear in its tone. His heart pounded against his ribs, fueled by adrenaline-saturated blood. He tried breathing deep, needed to, but the thick must made the air dense and coated the inside of his nose and mouth, reaching down into his lungs.

Dark, vivid, golden brown eyes. Pupils oblong, just enough to make its gaze odd. But the intelligence was there, the awareness, buried beneath the wild sun-bleached mane tapering over its shoulders. That chimera blending. The slope of the nose, the arch of brows above deep-set eyes. The jaws distended further than humanoid, but the tawny had more teeth in there.

Yeah, we’ll do the whole ‘cease and desist’ thing. When you fucking dismantle us both, you hairy fucking bastard! Marc swung his rifle again, striking the beast in the face, followed with his elbow, drawing his knees up into the resulting gap.

Just enough to use his legs, boot soles braced against the thing’s hips, to push it away. A grunt of effort escaped him, a whoosh of breath. The alien roared, snarled, grappling at him, claws snagging Kevlar but finding no purchase. Marc rolled to his side, twisting Mat to bear on the tawny. It eased away, aggression checked by Mat’s barrel.

We’ll take our boring job back, thanks. He took another breath, watched the tawny’s nostrils flare as it matched his rhythm, chest expanding. Sun-dark skin smooth and hardened with muscle, only a trail of white amber hair arrowing down the meridian of its torso to a very well-endowed groin and a pair of faintly hairy legs, sinewy muscle cording in its thighs.

You’ve got great taste, Mat. Of course they’d have to tangle with the largest, meanest tawny on the planet. Marc’s skin started tingling. Everywhere. At this range, one round could tear off a sizeable chunk of flesh. He eased his finger inside the trigger guard; the male’s gaze dropped, catching the move.

The air became too thick to breathe. No oxygen left—he inhaled nothing but musk and pheromones. His sight unfocused, slid sideways, gaze jumping erratically when he tried to redirect. His arms felt heavy, his brain thick. All the blood was heading south, and he couldn’t form a single rational thought. The tawny roared, fangs bared, twisting Mat’s barrel off to the side and pouncing back on top of him, claws raking at his gloved hands.

Things started getting hazy. Marc’s muscles felt limp. His trigger finger finally squeezed, but it was too late, too much delay, harmless. The male flinched at Mat’s kick and report, but only ratcheted his grip tighter. He should drop Mat. Pull his knife. He knew that, but didn’t care. The desire to resist, to struggle and fight, at least on a lethal level, faded into the background. Desire of an entirely different sort surged to the fore in his mind and body. There was something horribly wrong with this, he knew there was, but he couldn’t hold onto the thought long enough to make any sense of it.

Yeah, it had been a while since anyone had cuddled up to him like this, but he wasn’t that desperately horny. This was wrong, all wrong. He wouldn’t do this, not in