by Viki Storm
Definitely not that stupid bond that Anax was going on and on about.
Because if there was a bond, he wouldn’t have dishonored it by lying about being able to take me back to Earth.
Because if there was a bond, I wouldn’t have wanted to go back to Earth. Isn’t that proof that there’s no mystical Universe-ordained connection between us, no Unseen Hand that paired us together through the light years of spacetime?
This is too much. I just need to get some rest. I close my eyes and slouch down in my chair, trying to get comfortable and go to sleep. I envy those people who can nod off in cars and airplanes, but I’ve never been one of them. Especially because I keep getting the feeling I shouldn’t let my guard down around Yaubin.
“Brooke,” Yaubin says.
“Yes?” I answer.
“I guess it’s time to tell you,” he says. My stomach sinks. This is where he says, It’s time to tell you the unwritten rule of space travel: Ass, Gas or Grass, No One Rides for Free.
“What?” I ask, steeling myself.
“We’re not going to Earth,” he says. Before I can open my mouth, before my tired and stressed-out brain can process what he just said, I feel a sharp sting on the upper part of my leg.
He just stabbed me, I think. I’m getting woozy, like I just got up in the middle of the night to pee after an eight-beer bender. In his hand I see a small plastic vial of some sort, like an epinephrine or insulin injector.
Not stabbed, but drugged.
Which is probably worse.
- - -
When I wake back up, I have a splitting headache. Way worse than the aforementioned eight-beer bender would give you. This feels like my skull is actually fractured—and for all I know, it is.
“Oh, hell no,” I say out loud. I want to sound like some femme-fatale who’s about to start kicking ass and taking names, but my voice is nothing but a pathetic croak—a plea, a prayer.
There’s a collar around my neck. Again.
Fuck fuck fuck. Can’t I get a God-damned break?
You got a break, a voice in my head speaks up. It’s stern and snarky, reminding me of an infuriating combination of my ninth-grade homeroom teacher and the first supervisor I ever had when I worked at McDonald’s. You already got one hell of a big break, and his name was Anax. You’re the one who walked away from it and onto this death-trap spaceship with the treacherous Yaubin. Then, for good measure, Mrs. Horton-mixed-with-Jessie adds: you dumb bitch.
Yeah, well, maybe. Probably.
But Mrs. Horton from Jefferson High School and Jessie from McDonald’s store #302 never knew what it was like to be stranded on an alien planet. To be told they’d never go back to Earth ever again. That sort of information makes you do crazy things.
Like leave the one person who’d been kind and helped you, and gamble it all on the hope that some stranger dangles in front of you. You gobble up what you want to hear and push away what you don’t.
“Delightful, she’s awake. I really thought you screwed up that one and gave her too much.” I know that effeminate, prissy voice.
It’s Hilf.
“I told you, I know my work.” I know that voice, too. Yaubin.
“Bravo, brave warrior,” Hilf says. “Now we might actually be getting somewhere. Oh, little human? Are you awake? Sit up and join us, please. We were just about to have a lovely slice of uro and k’wir paired with a rare nliq from the planet Ravati.”
I assume he’s talking about food, but even though I’m starving, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of eating. I do pull myself off the ground and see the table Hilf’s referring to. We’re not in Yaubin’s spaceship anymore. I can’t tell if we’re in another ship or if we’re grounded, but one thing is for sure: the digs are exquisite. The table is covered in rich upholstery, probably something hand-woven by an artisan race of octopods who weave intricate patterns with their tentacles. There is a lavish spread, little plates and bowls filled with all sorts of alien foods. Fruits, meats and breads are obviously identifiable, but there are also things that look about as food-like as the cutlery itself. He’s eating off of what appears to be porcelain, but I’m no expert on that because they don’t sell porcelain at Target, and that’s where I buy all my dishes. The utensils resemble Earth cutlery, except the fork has only two prongs, and the spoon is not round but the shape of a shovel’s blade.
I pull out a chair and sit down. I already know what this is about—and it’s not about me or my escape from Phurusian Justice.
It’s about the vita-packs. Anax said he’d switched the real ones with counterfeit ones even before the Jirdie computer genius informed us of the vita-packs’ nefarious true purpose.
“I don’t know where the vita-packs are,” I say before Hilf can even start.
“Come now,” he says, “eat first, business later.” He gingerly turns up the hem of his sleeve while he pours three glasses from an ornate metal carafe. He reminds me of a geisha in a tea-pouring ceremony.
“I’m not hungry,” I say. My stomach growls audibly. Fucking stomach.
“No need to politely refuse,” Hilf says. “It is my pleasure. Please, help yourself. You’ve been out for seven hours; you must be positively famished. This uro is a rarity, out of the reach of most humble citizens in not only this galaxy but this quadrant.”
“I’m fine,” I say with deliberate coldness. Yaubin snorts.
“As you wish,” Hilf says. “But I will not dispense with my evening meal on account of your churlish, unappreciative behavior.”
He uses prissy little tongs to put bite-sized foods onto his plates. I watch as he nibbles slowly, pausing between each bite to moan and squeal with pleasure. I let out a put-upon sigh while he dines. Yaubin uses his hands to grab a few things and put them directly into his mouth, swallowing without seeming to chew.
After what feels like forever, Hilf finally dabs his mouth with a cloth napkin and pushes his plates away. “Now, let’s get down to business,” Hilf says.
“I already told you,” I say. “I don’t know where the vita-packs are.”
“But you know that I don’t have them,” Hilf says. “Curious. Yaubin, is it possible that she’s lying? She’s a murderer, after all, so I doubt we can trust the integrity of her words.”
“Anything’s possible,” Yaubin says. “Leave me alone with her for an hour, I can make sure what she knows and what she doesn’t know.” He gives me a lewd smile, and I know that my earlier fears on the ship were not unfounded.
“That’s not necessary,” Hilf says. “I know that Anax switched the contents. Whether or not she knows the location is irrelevant.”
“Then why am I here?” I ask. But as soon as I ask, I realize the answer.
“To trade, my little low-I.Q. dullard,” Hilf says. “I thought even a human could understand. Anax will trade the vita-packs for your life.”
My life. At the expense of how many others who will die if Hilf gets his hands on those vita-packs and makes his weapon?
“He won’t do it,” I say.
“He will,” Yaubin says. “He’s the only Kenorian in a hundred years with a bonded mate. You bet all the stars in the Blackness he’ll set the Universe on fire to keep you safe.”
“He won’t,” I say. “Not it if means the death of so many others. He can’t weigh one life against millions, even if I am his mate.” And as soon as I say the words, I realize that they’re true.
I am his mate.
Deep down inside, I knew it all along. I just… I don’t know, it sounded so bizarre. I’ve had twenty-six years of Earth indoctrination, and it’s hard to brush all that aside when some big, badass alien says you’re his mate.
“Millions?” Hilf says, smiling. In books, villains’ smiles are always described as enigmatic or cryptic, but there’s no mystery behind Hilf’s countenance. He’s evil, and the idea of launching a super-weapon is causing him great joy. It’s like indulging in his gourmet meal—death and destruction is just another way to fulfill
a carnal desire. “Oh, no, my sweet dullard, more like billions. We’re talking an entire planet… Just like we did to Kenor. And that will only be the first. Once we make use of its strategic location, we can conquer so many more.”
“Kenor?” I say, grasping the implication. “The complete destruction of Kenor was you?”
“Under the auspices of Lord Phuru, of course. The Great Lord has great plans, as you can imagine. And those Kenorians are so damned smugly self-righteous. They had to be dealt with.”
“Did you know it was Phuru?” I ask Yaubin. “Or are you just so morally bankrupt you don’t mind working with the enemy?”
“I work with strength and power—I work for the side that will win. The remaining Kenorians have more muscles than wits,” Yaubin says. “They ate it up when Hilf landed at the settlement and started talking about overthrowing Lord Phuru. They believed it because they wanted to believe it. After the destruction of Kenor, Lord Phuru very condescendingly offered any remaining warriors a place in his service… but it was at a price of their freedom and principles—two things that only fools value. Many of them, like your precious Anax, served begrudgingly out of the desire to do something useful. But they felt the yoke very heavily after a while. Kenorians don’t respond well to being told what to do.”
“And you?” I ask. “Why do you serve, even after knowing this?”
“Because a Kenorian warrior respects power. A warrior knows when to turn foe into friend if it is in his best interest. And Lord Phuru is going to be more powerful than you can imagine. It has been foretold.”
“What, with their stupid computer simulator?” I counter. “The thing that said I was a murderer? I guarantee you that I am no murderer.”
“You’re saying you couldn’t kill me right now?” Hilf asks, twirling something that looks like a two-headed prawn from the end of his long fork. “One blast with a laser gun and end all this nonsense with the vita-packs, save yourself and Anax, save those untold billions of people I plan to vaporize? You wouldn’t even have to get your hands dirty. Not literally.”
I think about it, and even still I’m not sure. In cold blood? While he’s sitting here with a linen napkin tucked into the neckband of his tunic eating alien shrimp? Maybe I could.
“Is that what the behavior simulator predicted?” I ask. “That I’m going to kill you?”
“Oh, no, little dullard,” he says. “I wouldn’t have permitted you to live if that had been the case.”
“You detonated my collar,” I say.
“That was just to keep Anax busy. I knew he’d find a way to deactivate it. Those Kenorians are so damned honorable it makes them easy to predict—no behavior forecasting software needed. No, if you were going to kill me, I would have ordered you executed on the spot.”
“Then who am I supposed to kill?” I ask. I was never curious about this before because I was in denial about my capacity for murder, but now I’m not so sure. My circumstances and environment have changed drastically—and what’s more, I’ve changed.
“No one terribly important,” Hilf says, “but I do admit, it will come in handy when you do pull the trigger and take them out of the equation, so to speak. That’s why I’ve allowed you to live thus far. You’ll live to do me a service…” He pauses to look at the ceiling, as if lost in great thought. “Tomorrow is when it was foretold. You’ll commit your murder tomorrow. Isn’t that exciting? You might find you have a taste for it.”
“Like you? I doubt it.”
“Maybe so,” he says, “but keep an open mind.”
“I’ll try,” I say, and he smiles, obviously missing my sarcasm. “I thought when they read the charges, I was going to murder someone next month.”
“It is next month,” Yaubin says. “Did you even bother to learn how we track time in different galaxies?”
“Of course she didn’t,” Hilf says before I can answer. “Humans are too narrow-minded. Like right now, I bet all she’s thinking is something along the lines of, ‘I can’t wait til Anax gets here and gives them what-for!’ Is that right, human?”
“No,” I say, but he is right. Anax will not permit Hilf to live. He’s not just going to swap the vita-packs for my life and let Hilf create his weapon. Nor will he let Hilf kill me in retaliation.
Anax is going to go ape-shit crazy. And Hilf’s too cocky to care.
“Enough banter,” Hilf says. “This is growing tiresome. Yaubin, open a vid-link and contact Anax. It’s time to negotiate.”
“He won’t—”
“Please, human, you already tried to explain it to me, but you are wrong. He will do anything I ask with the proper persuasion. You will do anything I ask with the proper persuasion. You will beg him to give me the vita-packs, and he will comply because the sight of all that blood will sap all the honor and principle right out of him.”
Blood?
“The vid-link’s open,” Yaubin says.
“Good,” Hilf says. “Now go get me the knife.”
Chapter 20
Anax
I need to find her. Having her in my arms will go a long way towards reassuring myself that she’s not going to kill me. I don’t think she could kill anyone—like a brittle blade, she might have been expertly forged, but she has not been properly tempered. Life on Earth is too easy, too secure. They’re like innocent children, unaware of what’s really out there in the rest of the Universe. Like children, they often have wild emotions and throw fits, but their rage is impotent. That sort of environment does not breed warriors.
The campfire is smoldering, the glowing embers slowly winking out. There are a few bones scattered on the ground, picked clean and cracked open so the marrow could be enjoyed. Where is Yaubin? They were just here; I even saw him take his boot knife and crack one of these bones in half and offer one piece to Brooke. She took it tentatively and was probing her fingers inside, trying to scoop out the marrow, probably too self-conscious to put the thick bone in her mouth and suck on it, even though that’s the most efficient way.
“Where did Yaubin go?” I ask a passing Kenorian. Do I know him from before? I don’t think so. I never would have thought it possible that there would again be so many Kenorians that I didn’t know all of them by name. It is truly a boon. I meant what I said to Corvi: we are going to rebuild.
“You don’t know?” he says. A frown crosses his face, as if I just asked him a difficult question on a mathematics examination.
“Don’t know what? I wouldn’t be asking if I knew.”
“They just took off,” the other warrior says. They? The surge of jealousy takes me off guard, though I cannot say that I’m surprised. I do not want my mate slinking around with another male. Most Kenorians would never have designs on another’s mate after she’s been claimed, but there are always assholes everywhere. I’ve known Yaubin for a long time, and there have been battles where I literally had to trust him with my life.
But trusting him with my mate? That’s another story.
I wouldn’t trust anyone with her. Not because I fear Brooke’s disloyalty. Not because I necessarily fear an overzealous male. I wouldn’t trust her with anyone because the really important things in life, you take care of yourself. She’s mine to protect, mine to watch over, mine to take care of. Letting another male perform those tasks for you is a shameful dereliction of duty.
“Where?” I ask. He just shrugs and gestures to the sky. “You mean took off in a ship?”
“What else would I mean?” I thought he meant it colloquially, as in took off down the road.
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“I didn’t ask, I didn’t even talk to him. The only reason I know that they left is because I happened to be near his ship when they were boarding.”
“Damn him,” I say. But what I really mean is damn me. I must have failed her somehow, proven myself inadequate.
“Check with Udos,” he advises. “He might have the tracking coordinates.”
“Sure,” I say. Wh
ere the hell did they go?
It doesn’t take long to answer that question: Earth.
Udos has the logs, and sure enough, Yaubin requested clearance to go to Earth and back, an estimated four-day journey.
That must be it. Why she left me without even a goodbye. She found out that a trip to Earth in one of our ships isn’t the long trek I led her to believe. It’s relatively brief, a jaunt really.
But I told her it was impossible.
She found out my lie and left with the first male who promised to deliver her back to her home planet.
I have no one to blame but myself.
This must be why she kills me. I finally understand how she could be driven to murder. The one thing she wanted, I selfishly denied her.
I get my comm-panel and try to contact Yaubin and am not surprised to find that he’s out of range. My head is spinning right now. Was I wrong this whole time about Brooke? If we were truly bonded, why would she want to go back to Earth so bad? It should be unthinkable for her to leave me—as it’s unthinkable for me to leave her.
There’s only one thing I can do: go to Earth and find her. I have her data file still, I know where she lives and works, and it will be safe to assume she’s going to have Yaubin take her to the same location.
I register my flight plan and board my ship. I’m only a few minutes behind them; even at supra-light they’re not going to have much of a jump on me. I’ll land right behind them.
As I fire up the engines, my comm screens turn on, startling me in my agitated state. I flinch and look up at the screens, expecting to see a systems error message or a maintenance required message—something that will delay me. But it’s not either one of those things.
It’s Brooke.