Taken to Voraxia

by Elizabeth Stephens

“I really don’t like lying to them. And I really don’t like how Krisxox treats me. Did you not notice that he seemed to understand everything we were saying in there? Normally, he just shrugs me off or ignores me completely unless I speak to him in Voraxian — and even then he only responds to me half the time.”

  “What an ass.”

  “An ass indeed.”

  “Wow, Svera! That’s the harshest thing I’ve ever heard you say about anyone.”

  She rolls her eyes but her blush holds strong. “He’s very frustrating. I just don’t get why he doesn’t want me to go with Tur’Roth. He has enough women to keep himself plenty busy.”

  “Oh gross.”

  Svera just shrugs and flashes a smile that shows all her teeth. “I really don’t mind. Some of the women are sweet. I ate with one of them the other day. She offered to take me to the market and I think we’ll go next lunar cycle. Once everything with the humans is more settled. I just feel uncomfortable, is all. I’m sure he’s looking for his Xiveri mate in one of the women and I mean…I’m not closed to the idea of finding one either.”

  “Really?”

  She blinks at me in that surprised way, long, pale lashes fluttering. “Of course. Anyone with eyes can see how in love you and Raku are. Who wouldn’t want that for themselves? I know I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it.

  “I just don’t think either Krisxox or I will have much luck if we’re unwillingly hitched to one another. And I don’t like lying to my parents. And did I mention, my father will throw me off the roof if he finds out?”

  “I believe you said it was Krisxox that would fly.” I smile, but it feels forced. Thinking of Xoran, memories of his weight held on top of mine, his hand in my hand, his lips on my lips, his eyes blinking in the same way mine do as he watches me and I watch him, and time ceases to exist.

  Right now, time is all I can feel and its weight sits on my shoulders, pressing down on me like a gravitational pull, threatening to drag me into its core. It’s been too long. Far too long. I glance again at the door.

  “No, I’m much more interested in Tur’Roth.” Svera says quickly, ensnaring my attention once again. I let her. And am grateful.

  “Oh yeah? I saw the way he stepped in to protect you the other day at the ceremony. With Rhor…with the Niahhorru…” My voice fails me.

  Svera reaches out for my hands and holds them. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. Just…tell me about this thing!” She flails out, grabbing for stuff that’s strewn across my desk — well, what was once a vanity type thing that I dismantled into a flat tabletop now piled high with wires and jars of powders and secure canisters with stone lids and half-finished projects — mostly duds but a few live ones as well that I should probably find a home for…

  “That’s nothing. Just some melted metal that was supposed to be for…” I stop, realizing what I’m about to say and grin. “It’s supposed to be for these.”

  I reach past a bit of folded metal and pull out three devices, each no bigger than a fingernail — a nail, not a claw. I hand Svera one and take another. “Guess what this is?”

  “How can I?” She handles the clunky metal, turning it over and trying to find a way to open the applicator. Inside, she’d see that it was filled with copper-lined Droherion. Much different than the particle ion I used last time I built one out of dejected plastic parts and scrap metal.

  “Here. Let me show you.” I reach for Svera’s hair covering and she eyes my hand warily as I stroke one of the kinky curls that’s escaped by her ear. Singling out just one hair, I rip it quickly.

  “Ow! Hey!”

  I bring the hair follicle to the opening and thread it through the microscopic hole I planted there. The device whirs to life, emitting a low tick before sucking the hair the rest of the way in. I press down on the base and the device clicks again. A harsh buzzing fills the air as the charge kicks and the holo generator begins to creep over my skin.

  The sensation is strange — only in that it isn’t. I don’t feel anything at all, and nothing for me changes, even as Svera’s face does. She gasps. “Oh my stars! Miari, you made another one!”

  “I made another three.” I laugh. “I wanted to get it right. And I wanted to make it so that you don’t have to hold the button pressed in the entire time you want to use the generator. The ones I made have motion sensors installed so they get a better graph of the body, but they only need to get a graph of the body once, right at the beginning.” I toss Svera the device in my hand and she fumbles to catch it, drops it on the floor twice, and then finally stands — she’s never had great hand-eye coordination.

  It makes me smile as she examines the device and then retreats to look at me from afar. She watches me warily. Or rather — watches herself — warily. I do a turn for her and then shake my booty. “Like what you see?”

  “Oh stop that. I just…it works without holding it?”

  “Yes. The user can be apart from the device up to twenty paces, more or less. And I should say human paces — not Voraxian ones.”

  Svera smiles as she inspects the device up close. “Wow. I’m impressed. I’d say it’s official.”

  “What is?”

  “That you are a genius.”

  I roll my eyes. “Not at all. You should see what some of these others come up with in Tri'Herion’s lab. It’s incredible. They are so much more advanced than we are…”

  I hear her small feet pad over the dirt floor. It’s slightly mossy in here. I love the way it squishes under my toes. “You are, Miari. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

  Her hand lands on my shoulder and it’s so light and soft compared to Xoran’s. I look into her face and her wide, brown eyes are so much like my own and yet…not. Her eyelids blink up and down, like the other humans’. Like me, but only half.

  “You are a genius,” she repeats. “You always have been. Raku is so lucky to have you and don’t you ever forget it.”

  I smile. “And I’m lucky to have you. You’re saving my skin as advisor. Raku and I were discussing and after your trial, if you’re up for it, I’d like for it to be a permanent post. One with a title and everything.”

  Svera’s grin spreads, her white teeth peeking through pink lips. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to live here permanently…”

  “You could be posted to the human colony most of the time if you like. It’s really whatever you want. Just don’t make me do this alone. You know everything. You’re the diplomat. I’m just the…tinkerer.”

  “Genius,” she finishes at the same time I do.

  We smile at one another and I’m just about to open my mouth to ask her more questions about life on Qath when I hear the muffled sound of shouting just outside the door.

  Svera freezes and takes a tentative step towards me. We lock hands, surely silly looking — two Sveras holding one another amidst the mess of my tinkering space — as we wait for the sounds to die out.

  But they don’t. They get louder. And soon the voices are mixed in with the ominous scrape of metal on metal and then the horrifying bang of bullets exploding and ricocheting off of holoshields, blasting through werro wood…

  “My stars, what is that?” Svera jumps at the sound of an ion round hitting a shield wall. One that doesn’t penetrate.

  Relief hits me. “It’s okay. They’re firing ion rounds at our fighters, but our fighters are equipped with Droherion shields. They are more than enough to stop the rounds. They’ll be okay…”

  “At our fighters? I know that Krisxox stationed many xcleranx out there, but this sounds like a full out war! Rhorkanterannu is just one man — one male. He can’t warrant this level of…”

  BOOM.

  Thunder shakes the whole werro. A pile of paper and metal spills from the edge of one table and as it hits the floor, emits a small explosion of its own. Someone outside screams. There’s a roar that I immediately identify as Krisxox’s. I hope it’s a victorious one.

  It’s the sound of pain. If he’s fallen, then they
all have. Sweat wicks off my brow and I taste it on my skin when I lick my lips.

  “We need weapons, Svera,” I whisper. My experiments with the knife lay scattered on the table behind me. I grab for two, but they were failed ones so they don’t burn or sear. Still, a knife’s a knife. What are we going to do with knives? Outside, they have guns. “And we need to hide.”

  I hand a blade to Svera but she just stares at it, her hands full with the hologenerators I gave her. “I…I can’t take that. I don’t know how to use it.”

  “I know. But Kiki isn’t here.” Kiki is the warrior. She’d go down fighting. “If she were, she’d want us to try.”

  “They’re…you think…are they dead?”

  Yes. They are. “No, but we just need to be ready for anything. In case they get in, we need to be ready to fight. I gave our Raku my word. And you know Krisxox would accept nothing less from you. We have to try for them. For us too.”

  Svera stares at the knife numbly for a beat more. Outside, I hear something breaking — a holoshield fissuring, which I didn’t even think was possible. There are shouts and screams. Closer now. Much closer.

  I say Svera’s name again and grab her wrist. With force, I pry her fingers apart and shove the more stable of the two trial daggers into her hand.

  I meet her gaze, which is wide and watery — not dazed though, as I first thought, but calculating. What is she thinking?

  Something huge slams against the door with enough force to knock me off my feet. I crash into the table behind me and drop my knife. As I scramble to pick it up — and regain my breath — I see Svera tuck her blade somewhere into her flowing aquamarine dress as she also picks herself up off of the ground. Her gaze however, is pinned to the doorway and I follow it.

  “Comets,” I say at the same time Svera says, “Tri-God, help them.”

  The door at the end of the room is cracked in the middle. Gunfire passes across it. Bright white-blue ion rounds, but also rounds in reds and purples. I don’t know what those are but they must be powerful if they can crack holoshields and the stalyx-reinforced werro doors protecting us. The last thing protecting us.

  A purple haze shimmers in front of the gap in the door and another thunderous roar follows it. The door caves a little further. And then I hear metal on metal, plus the zing of my new weaponry being deployed. Roars. Gasps. Pain. Anguish.

  “Svera,” I call to her, intending to offer assurances or who knows what. But I’m never given that chance. Svera shocks the stars out of me when she throws herself at me. She rips at my hair with her little fists and as she flails, she knocks the knife out of my hand for the second time.

  “Svera,” I gasp, slapping her hands away from my face, “what are you doing?”

  She wrenches back at the same time the door caves fully. I can see our xcleranx piled in front of the doorway, trying to use their own bodies to stop whoever’s coming. They’re dead. Oh stars, I hope they aren’t. Please don’t be dead. None of them can be dead…not for us…not for me…and Krisxox…where is he?

  “Svera, do you see…” But Svera isn’t looking at them. She’s looking at the hologenerator she’s clutching, feeding my hair into the insert. Mere moments are all it takes before the hologenerator fires to life with ticks and clicks and whirs and suddenly I’m standing where she just was. Her hands disappear into my — her — hair and I imagine that she’s tucking away the generators in her hair wrap.

  “Oh no…Svera, no!”

  “They’re here for you. Now hide!”

  “No, Svera!” But the door explodes open and takes me with it. We fall to the ground, apart from one another and it takes me too long to reorient myself. I’m on my hands and knees. My head is spinning. Spots burst behind closed eyes. I can hear a distant moaning, and then rough commands barked in a voice I’m terrified to recognize.

  I start at the sound of boots on dirt, crunching through moss and dragging through the sand beneath it. “Take the Rakukanna,” he says and it can be no other than Rhorkanterannu.

  “Shouldn’t we take both? There are two,” another voice calls.

  “Centag what you do with the second. One breeding female does us nothing. Not when we want the entire offering. The Rakukanna will get us that.”

  I shake my head, fighting to clear it, as I push myself up to sitting and blink up at the beast. The four-armed king glances at me, but only briefly. His gaze rather focuses on the other side of the room where Svera kneels wearing my face.

  “Should we kill her to send a message?”

  Rhorkanterannu rounds on the male beside him and with nothing more than his deadly sharp claws, slashes through the soldier’s powdery skin.

  Despite the plates, dark black blood flows freely and the one who’d spoken folds back between the bodies as he seeks his escape. Bodies. There are so many of them. As they spill into the room and step over the xcleranx corpses, I count at least thirty. That makes one hundred and twenty arms. Comets, where did they come from?

  “We do not kill females. Not even human females,” the king snarls, flashing shards of sharpened teeth.

  Across the room from me, Svera stands wearing my skin. “I’ll go with you willingly. Just please. You must stop the violence. Let whatever xcleranx you haven’t killed yet, live.”

  The king grins and it’s like shrapnel pummeling flesh. He is easily the most terrifying being I have ever beheld. “They are already dead, my Rakukanna,” he says and it sounds like he is completely fine with that fact. Maybe even happy about it.

  “There is just the one. The one who refuses to let go. Sevrenn iahndru lat. In him, life persists. The Niahhorru honor this, so he will not die today. Not by our hands. But we will not let him prevail in his attempt to keep you from us. You are our bargaining chip, my sweet Rakukanna.”

  He steps aside and four of the four-armed pirates drag Krisxox in by the hair and the arms and the legs. They have a metal circle around his neck that sizzles with an electric charge. His face is completely bloodied and he looks like he’s been burned from the right shoulder to the right hip. His gaze rips around the room, struggling to settle but when it does, it settles on me with force.

  I jerk into the work table behind me, objects on it clattering against one another. I think about reaching for another half-formed weapon, but realize quickly there’s no point. Weapons didn’t save Krisxox. And I’m no Krisxox.

  Svera, in my skin, gasps. Krisxox doesn’t look at her though. He stares at me with a brutality that hollows out my insides, because he’s looking at me like the distance separating us is flaying him. Flaying him alive. Nox, he’s not looking at me like that…right now I’m Svera in his eyes.

  I open my mouth to speak, but choke. Krisxox’s ridges flare a deep and demanding grey. “Are you hurt?” He shouts, though his voice is just as mangled as he looks.

  I shake my head, feeling awkward under his stare. “Svera, are you hurt?” He repeats.

  “Silence,” the Niahhorru king orders.

  Krixox surges towards him with a speed I can barely grasp and succeeds in dislodging one set of arms controlling him, but not the others. The ones caging him pull him back onto his knees and one of them whacks an electric stick across Krisxox’s back.

  He roars in pain and Svera screams, “Stop! Please. I’m coming. Please.”

  Little Svera who looks like me takes a few tentative steps towards the pirate king. He holds out two of his four hands. The other two carry a gun and a large sizzling disc of a shield unlike any I’ve ever seen — one I can only see visibly in certain angles but one whose energy I can feel from across the room.

  She holds her tiny hand towards one of his, hesitating just before she lets him take her. “But you have to hold true to your word and leave him alive,” she says, voice shaky.

  “I would leave you my word,” the king growls, “but do you trust the words of a pirate?”

  “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  Rhorkanterannu nods at her solemnly. “Then y
ou have it. Your guard will not be killed. Today, he will live. Sevrenn iahndru lat.” He crosses one of his hands over his breast in a gesture that is surprisingly human. Svera mirrors the gesture and Rhorkanterannu’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.

  She bows more deeply then and I wince when I see the hologenerator ripple across her back. The moment fades a second later, and I wonder if any of the other Niahhorru saw it. None of them react and I clutch my chest. I can’t imagine the king will take deception well, not least of all if Svera gets her way and they leave me behind. I won’t let that happen. I won’t let her leave her with them alone.

  I shift to stand and take a large step forward. I freeze in the middle of the room, in the middle of the destruction. Svera looks back at me, her lips opening.

  “Miari,” she rasps, but I shout over her. “Take me instead!”

  Krisxox surges against his chains, but is kept still. Rhorkanterannu shoots him a disgusted look. “I do not need you,” he says of me, gaze again drifting to Svera when she takes one of his hands in both of hers.

  “Leave her,” she whispers, “Please. Leave her with the other xcleranx.”

  Rhorkanterannu looks down at the contact, seemingly satisfied. She’s going to get away. He’s going to leave me behind and take her.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I blurt.

  The king reaches out and touches her sternum — my sternum. He strokes one of his knuckles between my breasts. Through the hologenerator, I pray that he cannot tell the difference between the tunic Svera wears, and my own hybrid flesh.

  “Am I?”

  Svera rasps, “Don’t listen to her…”

  I surge forward but one of the Niahhorru step out to meet me and I am blocked by a big silver arm. He meets my gaze. I lick my lips and shudder all over when a waft of spice hits me. Bergamont and rich, fragrant earth, it reminds me too much of Xoran…when he’s aroused.

  “We should take her,” one of the pirates holding Krisxox says. He glances at me and licks his lips. Krisxox yanks hard enough to collapse the brute onto his knees and as the Niahhorru falls close enough to reach, Krisxox lifts, arches over his thick neck and bites where the plates don’t reach. I stand there, shocked and horrified as Krisxox rips out a hunk of the man’s throat, just below his ear.