Jakob watched the Syn slurp up bowl after bowl of stew as it sat beside the fire with a blanket of parachute cloth draped around its shoulders. The disgruntled man was leaning against the wall with murder in his shifting eyes. He was focused on both the Syn and the rifle Liz was making a conscious effort to hold on too. He scoffed to himself darkly as he thought of the sheer odds of it all. Twenty-five years of silence from the Syn and now he was stuck on a planet of the two chattiest examples of their twisted race.

  “He says we can call him Quintek,” Agra explained. She was sitting beside the Syn to translate whatever it would say between mouthfuls of stew.

  “So Syn have names?” Liz asked. She had Greg Anson’s data pad in her hands recording every moment of the unprecedented exchange.

  “No, it’s less a name and more like a description really,” Agra said. “Like a survivor or veteran. It’s a name he seems to like.”

  Quintek certainly looked the part. His black feathery down covered many scrapes scratches and scars in his dull brown body. A particularly nasty scar ran down through his left eye socket and something had taken a decent chunk out of his right leg. According to him most members of the soldier caste never survived more than a few battles. They were no more than feral children. Those that did were culled as soon as their developing intelligence was detected. Quintek bragged about alluding detection for so long, cunningly hiding amongst his kind playing dumb and biding his time. He was a proud Syn to say the least.

  “He’s survived countless battles and outlived generations of his fellow kin,” Agra added. “He’s been captured several times, and along the way it appears that he managed to learn our kinds must precious secret, the Sacred Tongue.”

  “Yeah, and he’s a murderer,” Jakob cut in.

  “Have you been listening? Quintek swears he never even saw a human until he found himself on the Orion. He hid as the battle progressed because he saw an opportunity to get away from the others.” Taylor said.

  “Yeah right,” Jakob grumbled.

  “Has he said who the Syn have been fighting other than us?” Liz asked imagining untold alien races. Agra translated the request and Quintek answered.

  “We only truly fight amongst ourselves. Anything else is hardly considered fighting.”

  “What the F*$% is that supposed to mean?” Jakob raged. He stormed over to the fireside and cried, “Everyone I’ve ever known died fighting you bastards. I’ve lost everything fighting this war. How is it not a fight to you?”

  Agra translated what Jakob said like any other request and Quintek responded, “My masters hardly consider it fighting. They see it instead as a necessary step towards cleansing the galaxy of imperfection. I suppose at the very least its considered practice.”

  “Practice?” Jakob fumed. “Practice?!”

  “Yeah, hold on what the hell, practice?” Liz and Taylor practically exclaimed in unison. It took a moment for Agra to translate their exclamation, but when she did Quintek quickly jabbered off a response.

  “Battles amongst our kind are sacred displays of power, fought to extend territory or to lay claim to great swaths of one another’s people. Blood is not spilled unless the aggressor feels victory is assured. They do this with overwhelming numbers though sometimes the skill gained from ‘fighting’ an impure race is enough to upset the balance. That is how I actually came to be captured. My former masters had the numerical advantage, but the kin I fought had long since had the weak culled from their ranks. I wondered what impure race had made them so formidable.

  “My god,” Taylor muttered as Jakob paced away with his hands in his hair.

  “So, they think we’re impure?” Liz asked. Agra nodded sadly.

  “My kin take purity very seriously. You’re all impure by default. Quintek here is impure for simply living so long and learning so much. I’m impure because well, I’m impure.” Agra said with a final note of hesitation. Jakob was still freaking out.

  “F*$%ing SOBs,” he cursed violently. “I can’t believe nobody realized this before.”

  “We’ve never seen any infighting,” Liz thought out loud. Quintek leaned towards Agra and asked for a translation.

  “Quintek say the reason why you’ve never observed any Syn contests is because humanity has only ever encountered a fraction of our race. There are many. In fact, it would be accurate to say this galaxy belongs to them,” Agra said.

  “How many factions?” Taylor asked.

  “Actually, I think I have an idea.” Liz suddenly said drawing a circle with piece of charcoal. She then divided the circle into four equal halves and began talking with eager confidence.

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  “Let’s say this is our corner of the galaxy. In this quadrant I’ll draw the extent of the old colonial frontier and I’ll draw us outside it here on Altaire IV at the edge of the quadrant. The current Syn extent obviously starts here at the front lines and towards the center of the galaxy. Look at how far they are from Altaire IV! No Syn activity was ever reported in this or nearby systems. Light years of space separate the two. Now if I draw another line look! If Syn territories are about the same size, then perhaps half a dozen Syn factions could exist in this half of the galaxy.”

  Quintek bent over to look and turned towards Agra to garble some more. “Quintek says that he has never seen it represented as such but that it is accurate. He tells me that for the moment three distinct Syn clans have representatives on this planet.”

  “What? Who?” Taylor asked shifting his gaze from Quintek to Agra.

  “Well, the Syn who are still out there must be from the faction that has been attacking humanity. This same faction recently captured Quintek and pressed him into battle. Agra isn’t related to either of those two groups,” Liz deduced.

  “That’s great. If that’s all true, then I guess you two ‘good’ Syn would have no reason not to help us hunt down the rest of the Syn on this planet.” Jakob exclaimed half seriously. This was something Agra refused to translate, but Quintek seemed insistent. His interest in the humans intrigued him as much as Agra did. The black feathered Syn had more than a few words to say to Jakob, none that could be understood without Agra.

  “No absolutely not,” Agra exclaimed angrily.

  “What did he say?” Jakob demanded. Agra clawed at the ground in frustration spitting out his response with disappointment in her eyes.

  “He says that if you wish to fight then he will help you track down the others. He has no love for them or any of his kind for that matter. He will serve us now if we allow him to finally be free. That is more or less what he said, and I do not condone any of it,” Agra said waving away the idea with a gesture of her hands.

  “For once I agree with Jakob. We need to do something about them,” Liz frowned. “If he’s offering to help then we may have a fighting chance.”

  “Quintek found us, so I guess it’s only a matter of time before the others find us too. They’ll be hungry. Besides they’re more like animals so isn’t it ok?” Taylor offered.

  “I can’t believe this,” Agra hissed with disgust. She picked herself off the ground and stormed past the curtain into the deeper part of the caverns. Quintek stared awkwardly at his human companions for a moment than chased after Agra.

  “I don’t understand you,” Quintek said. The sacred tongue clicking between the mandibles in his beak had an unrefined accent. Agra figured that he had sorted out most of their people’s complex language without much instruction. He impressed her. She refused to look at him though as she turned down a fork in the narrow passageway and ducked pass another curtain into a dark chamber. She bent down and activated an old electric lantern. Dim light filled the room. A hammock hung across the center of the small volcanic alcove. Sheets of scrap metal littered the walls filled with charcoal sketches of landscapes, swirls, and fantastical scenes from her imagination.

  “Leave me alone.” Agra growled as she unfurled her hammock.

  “Fascinating creatures these humans are,” Quintek said with a contemplative hiss. “You act just like them, treat them as equals. It’s strange."

  “I was raised by one. Is that a bad thing?” Agra said beginning to get annoyed. Quintek probably didn’t weigh much and she was having a hard time keeping herself from flinging him out of the room.

  “It’s just an observation. I’m just curious that’s all. Why be like them when you can be so much more? You must understand what you are. I do. How is it you came to be here without them knowing about it?” Quintek said referring not to the humans, but his loathsome former masters. The Syn cocked his head in a curious manner and bent down to pluck something from the stone floor. He had a soft barb of red down pinched between his fingers which he held up to Agra. She quickly swiped it from his hand and shoved it back within her wrappings.

  “It’s a shame you hide yourself. I’m sure you have magnificent plumage,” Quintek said.

  “I hate it,” Agra snapped.

  “I wonder why that is?” Quintek said as he backed towards the passageway.

  As Agra pushed Quintek outside the curtain he left her with one last remark. “Your refusal to take a life intrigues me. Only killers could hate killing as much as you do Agra. Who have you killed and why?” Agra had no response. Satisfied Quintek sat beside the curtain as her light flicked off and listened in absolute silence to the human murmurings. Maybe with time he would understand them. He stayed posted beside the door picking the bloody debris from his claws. It had been a long and worthwhile day.

  “We can’t stay here,” Liz said with a sniffle. She sat cross legged beside the fire warming her hands. Jakob and Taylor clung to the warm glow of the coals as the frigid cave air forced the humans closer to the sputtering source of warmth.

  “No shit,” Jakob said flicking a piece of the rust red lichen into the hungry flames. The flames faltered as Taylor looked up with concern at the white layer of frost creeping down the opening in the cavern ceiling.

  “To think that Greg managed to find a way to survive,” he said.

  “He was only buying himself time” Liz said as she stared into the flames with a grim frown.

  “What do you mean?”

  Liz picked up one of the bowls of stew and swirled its contents with a device she must have put in her bag. A small display on the thin metal rods plastic handle flashed red.

  “This stew has micro doses of a toxin that given enough time would kill a man,” she said with dismay.

  “Let me guess, about 20 years,” Jakob said with crossed arms.

  “Damn and I thought it tasted good,” Taylor spat pushing away his bowl in disgust.

  “Without a long-range antenna, we can’t broadcast a beacon,” Liz said shaking her head. “We’ll be stuck here like Anson and die like him. That cannot happen. We need to get off this planet and notify SMCAF High Command of what has happened here immediately. They are wasting resources fighting a war they do not understand. The offensive pushes have to be cancelled immediately before anyone else dies.”

  “To think attacking the Syn was just giving them what they wanted,” Taylor whispered.

  “Don't get ahead of yourselves. We can figure out what to do next when we’ve exterminated the other Syn on this planet and gotten our revenge,” Jakob growled.