“Are you sure this is the place, boy?” Iskar glanced out the viewport of the glider and saw nothing but a slightly run-down eating establishment. Its name was printed across the windows in incomprehensible human-language characters. Inside, empty tables were arranged around a central serving counter.

The place seemed deserted, but as Iskar narrowed his eyes, staring into the deep shadows at the rear, he saw movement.

“That’s where the Collector does business from,” the kid said. “People go to him, not the other way around. He’s always there.” His eyes darted nervously around the cabin before settling on Iskar’s hands.

The boy’s eyes widened.

Ah. Iskar’s claws were out. When had that happened? It must have been in response to his dark thoughts. On the ride from Teluria to Darkside, he had quietly been contemplating how he was going to hurt the man who had taken Mari against her will.

Surprised by his lack of self-control, he slowly retracted his claws.

That was the effect she had on him. There was no denying it now. He was deep in the grip of this exquisite madness, and there was no turning back.

Mari. Maribel. Her younger brother had told Iskar her name. Iskar imprinted it on his mind, pleased to finally have a name to attach to the face, a face that had blessed him with lustful fever-dreams.

His anger twisted and writhed inside his heart, turning into a deep feeling of possessiveness.

“He usually goes around with these three mean-ass looking guards. They’re probably in there with him right now.” The boy, Arturo, looked over Iskar’s shoulder.

Behind him, Iskar’s men, Tyrak and Vaka, were checking their weapons. Like Iskar, they were heavily armed.

Tyrak and Vaka were experienced grunts, having served in many ground campaigns under the former Empire. They were supremely proficient at both street and close-quarters combat, and they had the ability to adapt to any situation—Iskar should know; he’d trained them himself.

They also knew better than to question his orders. When told that they would be accompanying him into Darkside, Tyrak and Vaka hadn’t so much as blinked, although Iskar had caught them giving him odd looks when they thought he wasn’t looking.

He was the first to admit that his behavior was unusual for a Kordolian commander—irrational, even—but the terrible sense of urgency that flooded every fiber of his being robbed him of all coherent thought.

At this point in time, Iskar was not a rational man.

When Mari’s brother had explained what had happened, speaking in broken Universal, Iskar hadn’t wasted a moment.

And now they were here in Darkside, sitting in a Kordolian glider that silently hovered above deserted streets.

It was probably only a matter of time before the authorities showed up, but Iskar didn’t give a fuck.

“Tyrak, you come with me,” he growled. “Vaka, wait here with the kid. This won’t take long.”

“Sir.” Vaka thumped his fist against his chest in the old military salute.

Movement below caught Iskar’s attention. Men in dark suits filed out of the shop. Armed with large guns, they stared up at the glider with hostile expressions.

Yes, it probably wasn’t a good idea to bring a highly conspicuous military-issue Kordolian glider into the crime-ridden streets of Darkside, but Iskar was done with trying to appease these humans.

We abide by Earth’s laws when it suits us.

He would deal with the consequences later.

A loud crack split the air outside. One of the men stood with his gun raised in the air.

“Looks like someone just fired a warning shot,” Vaka drawled, appearing suitably unimpressed. He glanced at the sylth—the glider’s monitoring system. “A weak energy blast. Barely disrupted our shields. You want me to hit them back, Sir?”

“Give them a small taste of plasma fire. Just enough to maim, not kill. We don’t want humans to get the impression that we’re indiscriminate killers.” Iskar was also mindful of the boy—Mari’s very own blood. It was his duty to protect the child from things a child wasn’t supposed to see.

Vaka rolled his eyes. “Dialing it down, Sir.” He pulled the trigger.

A bolt of blue plasma sent the men running for cover.

As the dust cleared, Iskar noticed a black hover-car rising in the distance. It wobbled as it quickly gained altitude, its thrusters roaring.

Someone was in a hurry.

“Change of plans,” Iskar snapped. “Follow that hover-car.”

A lifetime in the military had given Iskar good instincts for this sort of thing, and he was almost certain the person he wanted to speak with was trying to escape in that vehicle.

Should have gone the stealth route. Any human is going to try and run when faced with the likes of us.

But he was far too fucking angry to try and be stealthy. If the Collector tried to run, he wouldn’t get far.

Fools. There was no way these humans could ever hope to outrun a Kordolian glider in their simple air-vehicle.

The hover-car accelerated away, but Vaka was onto it.

“Whoa,” Arturo exclaimed as they shot up into the air. The glider dipped and swerved, and suddenly they were on the hover-car’s tail. “How fast can this thing go?”

Within a few heartbeats, they were out over the vast expanse of the desert, heading deeper and deeper into a barren red-dust wasteland.

“Want me to shoot them down?” Vaka asked.

“No. I don’t think they’d survive a crash at this speed, and I need this human alive for questioning.” Iskar eyed the neat rows of exo-armor sitting beside the artillery racks. “Bring us over the top of their vehicle and maintain equal speed. I will extract the target myself.”

Tyrak and Vaka stared at him.

“What, you think I’ve forgotten how to carry out a high-speed ambush and extraction? I was a grunt once, too.” Iskar shrugged off his ceremonial jacket, draping it across the back of his chair. He strode over to the exo-armor outfitting bays and uttered a string of commands in Kordolian.

The outfitting pod closed around him. Iskar allowed the fluid Qualum arms of the pod to remove the rest of his clothes, including his sleek protective undervest and the various weapons strapped to his body.

The exo-armor snapped around him, fitting like a second skin. A dark helm closed around his face. He retrieved his weapons, securing the various firearms and blades in strategically placed holsters and sheaths.

The pod opened.

“Holy shit,” Arturo exclaimed.

Tyrak and Vaka nodded in approval.

“We’re above the car now, Sir.”

“Good.” It felt good to be back in armor.

Once a grunt, always a grunt. Mating Fever might have turned him a little bit crazy, but Iskar hadn’t forgotten his training.

The only difference was that this time, it was personal.