Something wasn’t right.

The last week they’d had a peaceful journey. There were no issues with maintenance or mechanics; they’d fueled up without problem twice at different outposts. Sirus had even checked in with the old steward Colin when they landed on Pedranus to resupply. The old codger had tears in his eyes when Sirus had requested his permission to marry Joslynn.

Now they were outside Treon space and the planet’s outposts were empty. There was no sign of the Treon forces or any person of authority. The scan on his ship indicated there were still citizens on the surface of the planet and in the family seat, but far less than he had anticipated.

Princess Giselle’s voice came through the transmission. “Are you reading what I am?” she asked. Her voice was strained and nervous. Sirus felt bad for the unblooded warrior. What a mission to have as her first.

“There are thousands missing from the seat. The outposts are empty. I have ships circling the planet for anything they’ve hidden among the moons and stars, but so far nothing.” Sirus was quiet as he studied the planet before him through the massive viewer on the bridge. The scan didn’t show any of the Treon nobles either and his ship had been uploaded with the proper genetic scan before they’d left. “I don’t believe the Treon lords are on the surface.”

If they were even in the area at all.

Lord Lucas had made it to Draga Terra despite multiple attempts on his life. It only made sense the two would stay apprised and leave the seat if necessary. “Orders?” Sirus asked.

Despite being the one with more experience, this was Princess Giselle’s maiden voyage and she was the highest ranking soldier. Sirus would support her and make sure nothing happened to the future heir.

“I want five ships on recon,” she said. “Widen your patrol until you hit Seprilles space and then report. Intersecting patterns and stay on alert.”

A feeling in his gut told him this wouldn’t end well, not because of her orders, but because of some deep instinct in his warrior’s body. Sirus half-listened to the affirmations while he studied the flagship Draga’s Justice. Giselle was no doubt watching Treon just as he was, at this precise moment.

“No one land on the surface,” Giselle said. Her voice was strong and sure through the transmission. “It could be a trap. Keep your eyes peeled. I’m sending patrols to the Treon space outposts. We are trying to make contact with the Seat as we speak.”

Sirus nodded. Good girl. On the surface they’d all be vulnerable and could end up smashed between the atmosphere and the ground if Treon rained fire on them from above.

As he studied his constantly updating scans Sirus could scarcely believe how much improved his vision was now that he could see with both eyes. It renewed his confidence and Sirus knew his fighting skills would be twice what they were before, if not more.

Giselle said words of encouragement to their warriors as they waited for word. Thank the goddess of war he would not have to follow bad orders and possibly break that promise.

All of a sudden the transmission lines were clogged and there was yelling, reports were being thrown at him from five different stations and Sirus tried to sort through it all. A massive explosion hit his ship and the Warrior’s Curse rocked hard to the side. Sirus managed to hold his ground and barked out orders.

It wasn’t just the missing Treons bearing down on them. No, there were also glittering, black ships that didn’t show up on his scanners. Ships that tore through the royal fleet with a viciousness Sirus had never experienced. He gritted his teeth and held the console hard as he flipped through his scans and data, locating each of his ships in the armada. He kept a wary eye on the Draga’s Justice. It would be his head if a royal died on his watch.

“Warriors engage, report any enemy’s weakness, and stick together!” Sirus roared over the intercom. He checked his weapons, thankfully no damage to his cannons. “Ready the missiles.”

“Missiles at the ready, sir!”

Goddess, protect them. Sirus gritted his teeth and said a silent prayer that he would be able to return to Joslynn after this was all over.

“Fire!”

Starships full of his people exploded in the night sky. Those starships he’d so carefully maneuvered from the Scyrian Army burned and despite the lack of sound in space, a percussive wave rocked the Warrior’s Curse. Screams and warriors begging for help rattled the transmissions until those helpless cries were all Sirus could hear.

His hands gripped his consoles so tight his knuckles were white and his teeth ground together so hard he thought they would shatter at any second. Missile after missile hit his enemies. The Treon forces broke apart as easily as glass against marble.

Sirus had to roar his orders over the death screams of his people. His pilots did as commanded, moving the Warrior’s Curse to protect the Draga’s Justice from those glittering ships of nothing.

The Neprijat forces were unlike anything he’d ever encountered before.

Sirus unleashed his entire arsenal on those monstrous ships and it took nearly everything he had to bring down only one. The engines of the Neprijat ship stuttered and then failed with small explosions. He watched the ship get pulled into Treon’s orbit. It screeched toward the surface, but there was no fire as it broke through the atmosphere. The heat did nothing to the ship. Not until it shattered into the ground and created a massive wave of destruction from the point of contact did the ship actually break apart.

Giselle’s voice went directly into his ear through a private communicator given to all generals. “We can’t win against these monsters,” she stated, something in her voice became dead; lifeless. A warrior who knew they would lose in one manner or another.

Sirus knew in that moment, they would lose thousands and gain nothing in return.

There was only one option. “We can draw them to the surface,” Sirus suggested. “Draw them down and out. Then take them on as warriors.”

Giselle paused. It was a massive risk, Sirus knew this. They knew next to nothing about the Neprijat or how they fought. But there was a small chance they could draw the enemy out and cut them down without their ship’s protection. “You want me to act as bait?” she asked.

There was a tiny tremor in her voice, but the princess hid her fear well.

The monsters would only follow a royal. No one else. Giselle would be an extremely valuable prisoner of war.

“Yes,” Sirus said, knowing how badly this could go. They knew next to nothing about Neprijat tech, how fast the ships could fly, or the weapons they had. He only prayed they didn’t possess worldbreakers.

His warrior’s kept the starships on constant escape and evade maneuvers as they fired at will, taking down Treon starships. “Take the Royal Army down there and draw the monsters out. I will contact Seprilles and call for aid. Scyria will take down the rest of the Treon forces and then land on the surface. Our forces will come from behind to meet you on the battlefield.”

This was full out war.

Sirus had never experienced true war before. He could see the bodies of his people floating in space, hitting the debris of his warships in millions of tiny pieces. There was no time to evade the dead. Bodies bounced off ships trying to escape the Neprijat horde. Maybe if they survived this battle they could gather their people, but for now he had to ignore them all.

The Draga’s Justice was massive and rammed through Treon forces like a knife through warm butter. It was those glittering black ships that tore through their forces like a monster at a feast.

Giselle’s starship was headed straight for Treon.

“Will do, Commander Sirus,” Giselle said. Her words were hard as steel. “I’ll make sure to get their attention.”

At her words, Sirus saw the Draga’s Justice launch one of those worldbreakers. The weapon smashed into the largest Neprijat ship and the blast was blinding, so white and sudden Sirus had to shield his eyes. His starship’s defense was activated and the shield came over the viewer just in time to prevent everyone on the bridge from being blinded.

That worldbreaker rattled the nearby ships like flags in a storm. It shattered the Neprijat ship into a million pieces of glittering obsidian. Sirus felt the dread rise in his throat. Worldbreakers were so destructive they had very few of them and that Giselle had been armed with one meant she had orders to take out all of Treon if necessary.

Bile rose in his throat as he sent a distress call to the Seprilles forces, thanking Katsia the time of year had brought the two planets close enough to send aid. Then he sent out orders to his armada to attack Treon ships as he watched the small group of remaining Neprijat streak after the Draga’s Justice.

Those malicious ships disappeared after Giselle with a good portion of the Royal Army’s armada, diving into the clouds as they entered the planet’s paltry atmosphere. Sirus turned his full attention to wiping the battlefield clean of Treon forces. He threw out orders as he saw a few give the signal for surrender. Some of his soldiers would stay and arrest the men and women aboard the traitor ships. Then he turned his focus to the planet. Most of the Scyrian Army made for the planet. Sirus turned a thousand of his most vicious starships toward Treon.

They arrowed down at terrible speeds.

Sirus knew exactly how hard to push his ships and he knew the exact level of skill his warriors possessed. He put them all to the test in those dire moments as they screeched down, rattling through the atmosphere hard enough they could shake apart if his pilots and engineers hadn’t performed this maneuver a million times before.

The clouds parted and the grey, rocky expanse of Treon opened up before them. The Draga Army poured out of their starships, running towards the mountain seat of Treon. It appeared the Neprijat wanted the princess alive badly enough they’d left the safety of their nearly impenetrable ships of death.

What Sirus saw as his warriors performed the combat landings flawlessly was…difficult to describe.

Even as a hardened warrior with cycles under his belt fighting minor skirmishes from pirates, mercenaries, dealing with House feuds, and the various different policing he had to do when it came to the scavengers – legal and otherwise amongst the stars…

Sirus had never seen anything like the creatures that burst out of the Neprijat ships like sickness from an infected wound. They were the monsters from nightmares – the stories told as children didn’t do them justice. Those angular limbs crawled and skittered over everything with breath-taking speed, inciting true terror in the warriors who ran towards the protection of the mountain.

At least there they could try and bottleneck the creatures to a manageable amount.

Sirus already had his armor on and as many weapons as his body could hold. With a final order to the soldiers who would watch the starships and give cover with the ship’s guns, he joined his warriors in the cargo bay.

The Warrior’s Curse landed hard on the surface of the planet and they braced for impact. The doors slid open before they’d completely stopped moving and as one, he and the soldiers secured their masks and ran out onto the killing field.

The extra oxygen helped his heart pump as he ran. They all ran as fast as they could towards those creatures, despite the fear and terror. The stench of them still made it through the air filters and Sirus nearly gagged. His hands tightened on the hilts of his plasma blades and he roared another order.

His warriors fired on the monsters, and they fell in droves. Then like a cleansing wind his forces swept through the remaining creatures.

Sirus’s heart stuttered as he saw a…male—some kind of human male step off from one of the ships. It stopped him in his tracks and his warriors made way like water around a rock. He could not peel his eyes from the male he saw smirking at him. This was a true Neprijat and not one of their hounds—the creatures they had running after Princess Giselle.

The plasma from his swords crackled in the roaring silence. His heart pounded in his chest as he studied this…man. The human was tall and fit, wiry almost but Sirus could tell by the way he held himself the male had strong muscles. Those long fingers had sharp nails as did all Kalans but there was something a bit more violent than Sirus’s own. The claws were longer and more curved, like talons on a bird of prey.

His skin was chalky white, as though he’d never been out in the sun a day in his miserable life. Those clear blue eyes only reinforced the idea. The male gestured toward him and more of those monstrous hounds poured out of the Neprijat ship straight towards Sirus.

A thousand thoughts flitted through his head as he considered all the possible options.

Did the Neprijat really only have one male to each of the ships, or were there more waiting inside once their creatures finished all the work? Sirus dispatched those awful creatures. The plasma blades ripped through the remaining hounds with very little resistance, and his pistol took them down with a shot to the—skull.

Sirus stumbled when he realized they had no eyes, only slits to scent him on the thin air. Those teeth glittered as they got closer. He shredded them all while keeping one eye on the Neprijat walking towards him at a leisurely pace. His warriors had already reached the horde ahead of them and sliced the hounds on the tail of the Royal Army.

The male simply waited until all the monsters were dead and Sirus stood heaving, studying the Neprijat before him.

“Not bad,” he whispered.

Sirus felt every hair on his body raise at the chilling sound of that voice. It was dead leaves rustling in the wind, ancient paper rubbing against dry skin; it was the sound of death. He knew it in his bones.

“After so many centuries of peace you Kalans still know how to fight. Interesting,” The male pulled a long, curved blade from the sheath on his back. “It would be too easy to make you kill yourself, let’s play instead.”

That deadly blade whistled, cutting through the thin air so fast Sirus barely jumped back in time to dodge. He brought up his own shorter blades to block the second attack. His eyes widened when the Neprijat blade didn’t melt or shatter against the plasma. It held against them when everything from metal to stone gave under the force of the heat of atoms in a state of hyper-activity.

He let out a curse as the male fought viciously, swift and hard, giving no quarter. Sirus searched for a weakness, anything he could exploit. The Neprijat landed a kick to his chest and Sirus flew meters before landing on his back hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

It gave him the distance he needed though. He stood and pointed the plasma gun, finger on the trigger and—

“Stop.”

That quiet voice rumbled through him and Sirus felt his finger still of its own accord, try as he might he could not move the muscles to fire on the Neprijat. Despite how cold it was, sweat trickled from his brow. Real fear tasted like acid on his tongue. He was utterly frozen.

“Point the pistol to your head,” the Neprijat male said, his slight smile showing black teeth, as sharp and glittering as those monstrous hounds of his.

Sirus felt his arm move, his gun angled towards his temple and he knew the rumors had been true. The Neprijat possessed some strange power of persuasion, a wavelength no doubt scrambling his own mind to obey. Sirus didn’t know how to fight it. He couldn’t will his hand to follow his own orders. The barrel of his plasma gun touched the skin of his temple next to his eye where the old scar still remained. The smell of burning flesh had him gagging, but even that he couldn’t do.

The heated barrel melted the flesh on his face and the pain was excruciating. Sirus tried to scream. His throat convulsed but nothing came out. He closed his eyes and offered a prayer to Katsia, and a silent apology to Joslynn. There was no way he could fight this, even with all his cycles of warrior training.

In a few seconds he knew the Neprijat would order him to pull the trigger, ending his own life. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Plasma fire made him flinch. His eyes flew open and suddenly his body was his own again. Sirus lurched to his feet and watched as one of his warriors beheaded the Neprijat before him. Starships overhead fired down on the other Neprijat ships.

The Seprilles had answered his call for aid.

Relief filled Sirus so hard and fast he nearly collapsed. He got on the transmissions and told the Seprilles where to kill, ensuring any more of the Neprijat would be dead. Sirus followed the monsters towards the Treon seat, cleaving them in two while he shouted instructions for everyone to protect their ears. He had no idea if that would work, but they had to try.

The recorders zoomed in on them and Sirus didn’t bother a glance. They had hours of work left to do and an entire family seat to clear with the Neprijat to push back to the borders. Sirus sliced through a hound feasting on one of his warriors. He tried not to look too closely.

The cities would be the worst, those innocent bodies – females and children. They would haunt him.

Treon was nothing but a planet of death now.