by Reagan Woods
The beast-king won easily, forcing her to face herself as he forced her attention to the looming disaster onscreen. Her body hung limply in the crook of his arm, a useless puppet with dangling strings. Thoughts a revolving door of horror and disbelief, she realized she would do anything to keep the dream of her family, of seeing her sister, alive.
Thick breaths of desperation clawed out of her shrinking lungs. She choked, nearly sobbing, “I promise. I. Will do. What it takes.”
“No more distractions.” The rough pads of his palm stroked over her hair, his touch almost fatherly. “It’s time to focus.”
Hash-Han’s orders never changed. The captains of the Destroyers did his bidding. From start to finish, the destruction of her most cherished hope took only fifteen minutes.
That short period was a lifetime of lessons, changing her on a fundamental level in ways his genetic tampering couldn’t. He must have seen that, because he didn’t punish her for laying hands on his person, he simply forced her to watch until the end, until dust and smoke blurred the screen.
Back in the hall, Lara dashed tears from dead eyes, stumbling toward her room on autopilot. Ironically, she had stayed in the palace all these years because the Warlords promised to find her family and harm them if she attempted escape.
They were gone now.
It was all gone.
What more could she lose? Her life was a cruel joke of massive psychic ability juxtaposed against utter powerlessness over her future. She had nothing. No dreams. No anchor. No hope.
Madness flirted with her vulnerable, shock-y sanity. In that whirling chaotic dance, a point of no return swirled past. She would get word to Corey, her fellow abductee, of what she’d seen. And then she would leave. There was nothing left to lose.
Part One
A Pirate’s Life
Chapter One
Lara
Nom’magata, neutral space just outside the boundaries of the Ventix Empire
Lara hustled down the dark catwalk that encircled the empty cargo bay, pulling her abundance of dark blonde hair into a quick braid as she went. The day-to-day physicality of life aboard the Nom’magata both exhilarated and exhausted.
The small cargo freighter was mostly without frills. There were no lifts, no glides and no escalators. Instead, there were scaffolds, ladders and staircases. Some of the hatches still required manual turns of the wheel to open. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Though she rarely thought about her own, long-dead planet anymore, Lara sometimes caught herself humming a few verses of “Dead Man’s Chest”. Life as a pirate, free to live on her own terms, suited her. That she and her fellows shared a common enemy, the VENTIX Emperor Hash-Han, against whom they actively plotted was more than enough reason to forge ahead in the cold, lonely universe.
Footsteps echoing into the dark hold, Lara travelled along the metal switchbacks and catwalks to the bridge for her shift at the helm, musing. She’d lived and breathed her hatred for Hash-Han for so long her genuine affection for her crewmates had snuck up on her.
From the moment Lara spotted the two males in the spaceport, she’d been intrigued by the Lyarans. Their human appearance after a lifetime amongst the alien Venori (animal), Novink (four-armed blue guys) and Tixerian (bugs) people had been a punch to her gut. Both males stood well over six feet with golden skin and flaxen hair. Yellow eyes with star-shaped pupils confirmed that they weren’t human; nevertheless, the similarities enthralled her.
That perceived comfort of being near her own kind sang a siren song and she’d stowed away on their ship, knowing they might turn her in for the price on her head or sell her to the highest bidder. She harbored no illusions, the Nom’magata was a pirate vessel, but, after her escape from Hash-Han’s Imperial Palace, she was low on options.
A faint curve twitched her lips as she hauled herself, hand over hand, up the sturdy ladder to the command deck, magna boots clunking noisily against the thick metal. Neither Zocan nor Lyon had discovered her presence. Instead, Ssszit, the lone Tixerian on the vessel found her. He, with his scaly hide, black eyes and sharp claws, had convinced the young Lara to reveal herself to the others. And, surprisingly, they were kind, taking her on as crew and treating her as one of their own.
Before long, she had worshiped Zocan, the serious Captain. Lyon, Zocan’s fierce male mate, had challenged her so much that she didn’t know when their mutual distrust and hostility morphed into grudging respect and then deep, abiding friendship.
Knowing him as she did, she couldn’t help chuckling as she arrived on the deck to find Lyon pacing in front of the view screens. Every pricy gadget they’d stolen – or liberated, as she liked to think of it - was out, a testament to Lyon’s intense boredom. A verbal request would stow everything away so that the command area would appear as low-tech as the rest of the ship, but the cluttered deck was a clear sign of his restlessness.
“Getting antsy?” She swiped the controls to switch the view screens to her preferred parameters.
The crew of the Nom’magata had been waiting far longer than usual for Corey, the only other surviving Earther, to make contact. Corey resided within the Governor’s household on Opu, but she occasionally passed on information for Lara and her fellows to exploit. She sent word to Lara whenever the Novink Warlords of Opu, the Emperor’s big blue enforcers, were shipping anything of value in exchange for a cut of the profit.
“You have no idea.” Lyon scrubbed a broad hand through the white-blond spikes on his head. His massive frame vibrated with impatience, that ultra-aggressive nature chafing under so many weeks of inactivity.
“Well, you can go knock the snot out of the droids now.” Lyon spent all his free time sparring with the life-like androids. Fighting, Lara knew, was more than just an outlet for him, it had been his vocation, his calling on his home planet.
Walking over to review the meticulous notes displayed on his log screen, Lara patted his shoulder in solidarity. “I’m sure this shift will be as uneventful as the last several have been.”
“We’re wasting time. Time is money. We need to go find another vessel to relieve of its freight,” he growled, stalking the deck with a graceful prowl that she could never pull off in the bulky magnetized boots all the crew wore.
“Soon, my friend,” she replied distractedly, tamping down the worry hovering at the periphery of her consciousness. Corey had told them to camp close, that there was something big in the works. That was days ago, and Lyon was right. They couldn’t hang out this close to VENTIX space for much longer.
Lyon turned back to her, a fierce grin blooming across his craggy face. “Perhaps we should find some hapless Warlords to pick a fight with.”
His pleasure at the idea of causing mayhem distracted Lara from her brooding. “Anything to end the boredom,” she agreed fervently.
An urgent buzz spat from the nearest open console, the advance warning system kicking in, making her eat her words. Soon, the bridge was in full on red alert mode, a shrieking den of shrill noise and flashing screens demanding attention.
Running to the nearest console, Lara started scrolling through and silencing alarms, looking for the root cause of the problem. A distracted glance told her Ssszit and Zocan had arrived and were assisting Lyon in similar activities.
“It looks like a worm hole is forming precariously close to TLI 359. Shit. It’s directly between us and the planet.” She’d never heard of anything like this before. Anyone with even minimal experience creating a wormhole sent energy probes in first. That way, the jumping ship wouldn’t carom into the nearest solid object. The spatial disruption was about to erupt far too close to both the planet and their ship. “What are the odds of that? One in several trillion, at least,” she mumbled to herself, eyes frantically scanning the incoming data screens.
“Fuck,” Zocan yelled, obviously concluding that they were sitting directly in the path of the pending event horizon. In short, the Nom’magata was about to be annihilated. The surrounding
space was already bubbling and shifting ominously, the effects of time slowing as they were sucked into the warp. “Strap down. Brace for impact in ten.”
In frustrating slow motion, Lara touched the icon on her screen and a safety harness slid into place around her. This ride promised to be painful – there was no avoiding the calamity. All they could do was hope to gain enough traction, so to speak, to outrun some of the massive gravity pulling at them.
Just before they shot forward, she made a silent promise to savor her down time instead of bitching about boredom if they made it out of this alive. It couldn’t hurt to bargain for another chance at life by promising the universe she’d be more intentional with her wishes.
Chapter Two
Several Weeks Later
“Lara!” The buzz of Ssszit’s mental voice crashed through her head. “Lara, you must wake now!” The shout made her wince, but she didn’t - no couldn’t - open her eyes.
“Don’t wanna,” she sent back tiredly. Speaking mind to mind always taxed her, but it seemed excruciatingly difficult now. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
“Do not exhaust yourself,” Ssszit warned. “You’re in medical. Do you remember what happened?”
Pain. She had the impression of intense pain and pressure, crushing pressure. But that all seemed like a dim memory. In this moment, everything was floaty and comfortingly drowsy. Unbidden, a thought crystalized, and, she realized, the lovely feeling of disconnection was passing.
“Wormhole,” she remembered. “Regen bed?”
“Yes, you are in a regeneration chamber, and your wounds have finally healed sufficiently to rouse you.” Ssszit’s mental voice carried his relief. “You lost so much of your strange red blood that I feared you would not be yourself when you woke.”
“I’m strange?” She wove a snort of derision into her response. “This from the one who spends ninety percent of his time all scaled up like a bug.”
“You’re back to your charmingly abrasive self already,” he observed, taking no offense at her ribbing.
“Good that we’ve established that. Get me out of this thing!” Though her eyes were sealed shut in the breathable nutrigel, she knew she was in the pod-like medical healing unit.
Shadowy memoires of late-night horror movies with her sister flitted through her head. Anytime she found herself in a regen bed, she couldn’t avoid the irrational, momentary fear that she would somehow become one of those freaky pod people. She didn’t know why Ssszit insisted on waking her while she was still submerged.
“I wanted to assess your mental state. And I’ve found you to be as ornery as ever.”
A series of tones, barely audible to her gel-filled ears, indicated the bed was emptying. The slimy, pink nutrigel that had guided her body back together and provided nourishment for her accelerated healing drained away, allowing the box to slide open around her. It was a mental relief, if not a physical one; her body immediately began to shiver in the cold air.
Huddled miserably on the exposed slab, she did her best to wipe the gel from her face. The bright light of the med bay had her wincing back to shade her eyes with an elbow. This wasn’t her first time through the regen process, so she rolled onto her side and began the laborious process of coughing up as much of the fluid as she could. Breathing it while unconscious was one thing, walking around with it in her mouth, nose and lungs would be impossibly gross.
Ssszit’s clawed hand went to her back, gently patting and rubbing as she hacked. The knotted, heavy curtain of her hair slid off her cheek and away from her neck. Eyes slitted against the glaring light, she sent him a look of gratitude.
“As much as I would like to, I cannot tend you like a hatchling all day.” He gripped her elbow firmly and half-pulled her into a sitting position.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she shot back, voice phlegmy with disuse. She jerked her elbow from his grasp for good measure. It didn’t pay to let any male, no matter how fond she was of him, think he could put his hands -er claws on her.
“So prickly,” he teased lightly. “You haven’t asked how long it has been since the wormhole.”
Gingerly stretching her stiff limbs, Lara replied, “It must have been weeks. I was sure when we accelerated that I – that we were all going to die.”
“Yes. So, I will assist you to the sonishower,” he paused, “if you have no objections?”
She grumbled, but ended up accepting his help. Her legs were shaky, but, by her third cycle through the cleansing unit, her strength had returned. The sedatives from the regen bed were wearing off, her thoughts forming more clearly.
“Did you find the idiot who created the wormhole?”
“That’s part of what we need to talk about – along with other, more important developments. We should wait for Lyon and Zocan to discuss, but brace yourself.” Ssszit helped her from the sonishower. “You aren’t going to be happy.”
Lara wanted to know more about what happened, but, if Ssszit wanted to wait to answer her questions, then she would wait. It was unnerving because he only ducked out of overly-emotional conversations with her – feelings weren’t in his wheelhouse. However, she knew from experience that he would go all “quiet bug” on her and refuse to communicate if pressed.
“And perhaps now would be a good time for you to dress.”
Modesty wasn’t one of Lara’s qualities, she had a good, solid body. However, females were rare, and her crewmates were all male. Though Lyon and Zocan were in a committed relationship, they made no secret of their desire to find a female to share. Lara had made it clear from the beginning of their partnership that joining them in a trinepact, the traditional Lyaran triad, was not for her. A dutiful breeder she was not.
“I guess my shipsuit didn’t make it,” Lara tacitly acquiesced to the change in subject.
She combed her fingers through the snarls left in her hair as best she could, fuming. The gray, one-piece suit, a gift from her crewmates, was an irreplaceable piece of technology from the decimated Lyaran home planet. It was part bio-monitor, part temperature regulator and hands-down the most comfortable piece of clothing she had ever worn.
“It was shredded and fried, but Zocan managed to get the fabricator to repair it.” Ssszit pulled the flimsy looking suit off a nearby counter, tossing it to her. “Get dressed and report to the command deck.” He exited unceremoniously through the sliding doors that separated the med bay from the rest of the ship.
“I’m glad you’re alive and well, too,” she grumbled at his retreating back.
“I am not unaffected by your survival,” he admonished, continuing their conversation though he was no longer physically present.
It bothered her that Ssszit was being so evasive. She had nearly lost her life and she wanted answers. This ‘wait and see’ crap was not working for her. Whatever the news, it must be bad.
“If you had trained your mind as rigorously as you have your body, you would be able to pull the information from me,” he chided. “Now it is too late and what will be will be,” he sent ominously. He knew her excuses and wasn’t impressed.
Logically, she knew she was safe from Hash-Han. He’d left her alone all this time, hadn’t he? But logic played no part of her fear that the Emperor would somehow sense if she used her abilities too freely. If he really had ‘felt’ her birth, using her gifts might be akin to laying a bread trail straight to the Nom’magata.
“Get your ass in gear, Lara,” Ssszit snapped impatiently, no doubt sensing the direction of her thoughts. This subject was her mental hamster wheel; she could run her legs off, but her fear kept pace.
Dressed, she slapped her hands on her hips, scanning for her magnaboots.
The boots were tucked tidily away in a cubby. She pulled them on with grim satisfaction. Not quite the shit kickers her father had worn, but good enough. Now she was ready to deal with whatever this fickle universe had in store.
Chapter Three
“The dungeons on Opu!” Lara choked out
her panic.
Her crewmates knew her well enough to let her process this shock and disappointment. This despair. None of her friends, made a move to comfort her. There was no comfort to give.
“Corey won’t survive.” She drew in a steadying breath. Released it. Counted the divots in the nubby ceiling. Anything to keep the tears of rage at bay. She just needed to think. Action would suit her better, if she just knew where to begin.
“I can tug a few lines, maybe find someone to help her off-planet,” Ssszit’s thoughts were nearly a whisper through her mind. The Tixerian conveyed a wealth of hesitance, of resignation in his tone though he appeared totally relaxed leaning against the command console.
“I hate to ask that of you, my friend,” Zocan, the soberer of the two Lyarans, spoke. His long, lithe frame was taut with concern. “Corey is Lara’s friend and has been a valuable contact,” long golden hair rippled over his broad shoulders as he nodded at Lara. “But she must be removed from Opu or given a quick death.” He ignored Lara’s horrified gasp, continuing, “She knows too much about us. And we’ve been a thorn in the governor’s side for a long time. We cannot give him a chance to torture our true identities out of her and run to the Emperor with the news that we’re alive.”
“Zocan is right.” Lyon stood, arms akimbo, next to his mate. Pity shone from his yellow eyes. As did resolve. “I’m sorry, Lara, but this is how it must be. You know the fate of a female in the dungeons.”
Lara hung her head, hiding the lone tear that escaped her rigid control behind the wild tumble of her hair. She had seen the inside of the Novink dungeons on Opu. Once. The atrocities afflicted by the dungeon master were unspeakable.
Corey was soft, delicate, coquettish. The antithesis of Lara’s own fierce, untamed nature. Corey would not last long in those dungeons either way. But it squeezed her heart like a vice to know that, if Ssszit’s rescue turned into an assassination, Lara would be the only Earther remaining. Hash-Han had made it clear that none of the others would be allowed to live.