Chapter 13

~ Hel ~

Penny’s voice sounded off with determination. “Stop. I forbid the ship from leaving this sector.”

“Um, Penny? You know you’re not really a queen, right?”

Staring her down, she responded flatly. “Regardless of what you may think, neither are you.”

Hel looked at her youngest sister closely. Something was different about her. For possibly the first time in her life, the girl was not joking around.

“What’s going on? I can tell by your tone it’s serious?”

“All this business about being a queen is a bunch of drivel.”

Vraden spoke up. “It is not. She has chosen us and we accept her rule.”

Swiveling her head from Vraden back to Hel, Penny asked, “Are you aware that not everyone aboard this ship considers you their queen?”

“This is the first I have heard about it.”

Armon unfolded himself from the ceiling beam he’d been hanging from and dropped to the floor. “You are not my queen. My queen and my infant son are locked in cage in the underbelly of this ship even as we speak.”

Hel turned furious eyes on Vraden who was shaking his head no. “It is true the Golugua are housed in the belly of the ship and they are kept in cages, but they are too dangerous to be released.”

Penny folded her arms over her chest. “Yeah, I remember you saying that about Armon in the beginning as well. He hasn’t taken a bite out anyone so far. Don’t you think you might be mistaken about some of them?”

“No. Definitely not, my little queen.”

“Do not ever call me that again. I really mean it, Vraden.”

“As you wish.”

Raec stood from the step he was setting on and turned to Hel. Leaning forward in the huge throne chair, she waited for him to speak.

“There has been a longstanding debate among our kind regarding whether the Golugua are truly sentient or if they are mere animals that speak.”

“Since they speak, I’m going to go with thinking of them as people.”

“Most of them are too aggressive to allow loose on the ship.”

“Like my sister already pointed out, Armon seems fine.”

“They were created by our ancestors to be mindless killers. The need to kill is built into their molecular programming.”

“Says who?” Penny was now standing face to face with Raec, with her hands on her hips.

Vraden was the one who answered. “The queens allowed very few of us to get close to the creatures. I was forced to pump Armon full of medications to save his life. I believe some of the genetic material I used changed him slightly, taming him.”

Armon’s growly voice sounded off. “We were not created. We were captured and enslaved. I am no different now than I have ever been.”

Vraden’s fingers danced over his computer console, as he murmured under his breath, “I beg to differ.” Suddenly, a three dimensional image of Armon engaged in battle jumped onto the screen. He was running down a race of fur covered humanoids, lunging for their throats, ripping flesh from bone and killing without apparent thought or remorse.

Hel stared at Armon curiously. “You do not behave that way anymore.”

Penny turned to Vraden. “Do you even know how he got hurt?”

“It appeared to be some kind of weapons fire. There was a hole in his side, under his wing.”

Reaching into her pockets, Penny pulled out a handful of round disks and tossed them onto the floor. “The queens use these disks to control the Golugua. It sends a signal that makes them feral and drives them into a bloodlust. They use the Golugua to clear whole worlds of people. Armon tore his out in a fit of frustration. We’ve removed them from the others.”

Standing, Hel had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “We’ll pay a visit to the Golugua and see for ourselves if the queens have been deceiving everyone for an endless age.”

“I want them freed.” Penny was going to be intractable on this issue.

“I promise we will do all that we can to remedy this situation.”

Leading them to the Golugua holding area, Penny pulled the string from around her neck and rubbed the fob over the scanning plate. They entered with twenty warriors, including Raec and Vraden.

Hel threw up one hand for them to stop. The nervous warriors hovered just inside the door with their hands on their weapons.

One spoke, abruptly halting her entrance. “Careful, my queen. Without Kabelda to control them, the flesh eaters will be unpredictable.”

Forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other, Hel moved towards the cage where Penny and Armon were standing. Sure enough, inside were several creatures, including what appeared to be a small infant.

“Open the fucking cage.”

Having never been exposed to her fury, the drones hastened to comply. The small female flung herself at Armon and he caught her with one wing, drawing her to him. Wrapping the other wing protectively around his mate and child, he turned accusing eyes on her.

“Penny, tell me everything.”

“Long story short, the Maruvian queens have been keeping an entire species held hostage for thousands of years. They use the same mind control disks you found on the drone who attempted to kill you to make them feral. When they want a bloodbath, they simply turn up the volume and it drives the Golugua into a mindless rage.”

“This is the first I’ve heard that the devices had more than one setting.”

“I helped the drones tear apart Kabelda’s suite and found a bunch of information squirreled away. We used the ship’s computer to help us deactivate the remaining disks safely. Armon says the queens implant and control the devices, so I’m thinking most of the drones actually thought the Golugua were mindless killing machines. Kabelda controlled everything, so when the handlers came in she’d just turn it up enough to drive home the point that they were aggressive, dangerous creatures.”

Feeling the bile rising in her throat, Hel commented disgustedly, “It makes sense that this would be one of their most closely guarded secrets. Keeping the drones in the dark had the added advantage of generating fear of the queens unleashing highly aggressive killing machines on anyone who didn’t follow their orders.”

Alexis added, “If the drones discovered the truth, it would be all too easy for them to grow a backbone one day and simply remove the devices.”

“Since the queens were apparently using the devices on the drones from time to time, they definitely wouldn’t want that secret getting out.”

“May the gods forgive us. They all look perfectly calm.” Vraden’s horrified expression ate away at the idea Hel was harboring in the back of her mind that the drones knew.

Looking from Penny to Armon, she finally stated, “Unlock the cages and find them housing. Armon, you communicate to your people that we will expect cooperation until we can sort through this mess.”

Penny responded, “I have some questions about this situation. You asked the drones to scan for the devices and they found the ones on the crew and removed them. How is it they didn’t notice thirty or more of them attached to the Golugua?”

Raec answered for his sire. “When drones scan, we target areas of the ship where we expect to find people. It’s the reason Kabelda didn’t know you three were in the cargo bay aboard the Terillian vessel. Since cargo bays are locked tight during transport, no one thought to scan that area. This is a similar situation. Why would any of us have expected Kabelda to be mind-controlling what we believed to be mindless creatures?”

Sighing, Hel responded tiredly, “What you’re saying makes sense. From now on we scan everything.”

“Your will be done, my queen.”

Glancing at Vraden, she finally brought up a situation that had been weighing heavily on her mind. “From now on, we’ll break the day into four shifts. Raec and I will take the first shift. Vraden will take the second shift, and we will accept suggestions for the other two.”

Vraden spoke up helpfully. “I’m certain several drones would appreciate the chance to gain leadership experience.”

“We need to cultivate a command crew that can work independently of our commingled family. Arac had verbalized an interest in settling on the Maruvian home world. Raec and I have discussed that possibility as well. We both are in agreement that space is no place to raise small children. Queen Carolyn would probably be delighted to have a fully functioning mother ship at her disposal.”