Despite all of this, I’m glad that I mated with Aren. That we bonded. The release and exchange of genetic materials altered my hormones enough to turn my torso back to its original red color. It was difficult going around with that hot purple flush—and achingly full balls. I barely blend in to this crowd of rebels as it is, but it would be impossible to pass by undetected with my desire and lust broadcast on my chest in a bright purple patch.
My imagination reels with images of horrible things that could happen to her. Before leaving, I sent a comm to the auction house, asking when they were going to auction off the newest batch of pleasure slaves. I received a reply that there was an auction for virgin breeding mates that very evening, but if I was interested in the disgraced females—ones who have already accepted the genetic material of another—then I’d have to wait until next week, when they had a new shipment coming in from Earth.
My fists clenched when I read those words. Disgraced? There was nothing disgraceful in what we did. The custom that would take a male’s mate and sell her as a brothel slave—that is a disgrace. The foolish oath-breaker who dishonored his vows, who took her virginity when it was not his to take—he is disgraceful.
Yet she bears the weight of consequences. Grave though they be.
How in the sickly dark void did the peacekeepers know that she was in my chambers? No one knew.
That’s not entirely true. And entire ship-full of rebels know she’s Marked. Captain Ingzan knows. Admiral Superior Zuro knows. Either one of those parasites could have alerted the peacekeepers just out of spite.
Which is why I want to use the Screaming Talon as the instrument of my destruction.
As I near the ship, I hold my head high and infuse my stride with confidence and purpose. I walk as if I am walking down the corridors of the Imperial Fortress. There’s one sentry lazing at the entrance—some hapless lad who was picked for the task of guarding Noxu’s son’s ship. I don’t spare him a look.
My hand is on the latch for the main hatch when he musters the nerve to speak. “Halt,” he says, but he’s a nervous lad—asking me to halt, not commanding me.
“What?” I say. I look into his eyes, boring into them with all my fury. He seems to shirk back and I realize he is very young. All these rebels are very young. A whole generation of Zalaryn males so hopeless and despairing of their future that they decide to cast their lot with Noxu. How bleak must their futures seem if this is the preferable alternative? The strain of not having any Zalaryn females, I fear, has reached its lowest point. Generation after generation we have managed. We’ve taken human females from Earth and other human settlements, and it has been enough to maintain our population—but just barely.
And now these lads see a pointless future. They are asked to raid for the good of their planet, to ensure the survival of their race—but they can’t contribute to the survival of their race in the most meaningful way: by mating and producing offspring. For the vast, vast majority of this generation of males, there is no possibility for mates and offspring unless they happen to strike it lucky on a raid and get very rich.
And who is offering them the opportunity to get very, very rich?
Noxu, of course.
It’s no wonder. We should have seen this coming generations ago. Xalax’s father, the former High King, should have been working on some solution to this problem. There’s no way our breeding program with the human females is sustainable long-term.
And our term just ran out.
We bought this rebellion. All of us—the entire Zalaryn race. With our greedy use of the qizo minerals before we properly studied their effects. With our cold casting aside of our own females, impatient with their deformities and weakness. With our eagerness to take whatever species had compatible DNA. With our short-sightedness. With our auction house that excludes most warriors from being able to mate, denying most of our population the irrepressible biological instinct to reproduce.
We bought this rebellion.
And the price is dear.
“What is your business with Captain Ingzan? He is not aboard the Talon,” the guard says, doing his best impression of a fearsome male.
“And when he returns,” I say, inwardly relieved. I had gambled on the fact that Ingzan would be away. “He will be looking for a skull to smash if his ship is not prepared for his pleasure slave.”
“Pleasure slave?” the guard says. Just the mention of a pleasure slave turns his eyes into glazed orbs bulging in their sockets.
“Yes, and I am tasked with preparing his chambers for her arrival.” I gesture to my travel sack.
He swallows hard, his youth and inexperience plain on his face, and I feel a twinge of pity for this little lost soul. “Is she human?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, “from the planet of Delictera.” This is a planet in the second quadrant, famed for priestesses who worship at the altar of pleasure—their fabled arts known through the universe.
“How’d he get one?” he asks.
“Not by any means available to a watch guard like you,” I say unkindly, berating him the way a superior is supposed to berate his subordinates. I have already explained myself more than would be customary.
“Of course,” he says. He opens the hatch for me. “My humility is at your feet, yours to crush,” he says, the traditional offering of apology.
“I should hope to lift it up instead,” I say, accepting his apology.
I have one foot inside the ship when rough hands clamp on both of my shoulders.
“Who is this?” he says. I know the voice. It is Admiral Superior Zuro.
“I am preparing the ship for the captain’s pleasure slave,” I say, sticking to my story.
“Unless you’re going to chain yourself up and offer your arse to him,” he says. “I think you a liar.”
“Sir?” the guard says. And I know he’s not talking to me. I’m not the ranking officer anymore.
“You were going to let this traitor into the captain’s ship?” Zuro hisses. I feel specks of spittle fly onto the back of my neck. “The ship of the son of our Lord High Commander Noxu? The biggest question is why such a vessel is guarded by a simple-minded dung beetle like you.”
Zuro strikes the lad down. Blood drips from his lips and sticks in thick droplets on the dusty ground. “My humility—” but that’s as far as he gets before Zuro bludgeons him on the head with his deactivated anankah.
Zuro has let go of my shoulders, and at first I think him a fool—but when I scan the surroundings, looking for an out, there is not much hope. We are a distance away from the main camp. There’s no proper docking bay on New Pallas, and each craft lands where it may. Nothing but dust and craggy rocks in three directions. Nothing but a horde of bloodthirsty rebels in the forth.
Sometimes, the only way out is through.
I seize the end of his anankah and piston it backwards, so that the haft strikes him in the nose. He shrieks, but does not let go of his weapon. Since I cannot take it from his grip, I relinquish my own grip on it and strike a blow to his midsection. He doubles over from the pain and the shock, and that is when I drive my knee at full force into his face. His nose crumbles with a sickening crunch. He takes in air with wet gargling gasps.
But he is a hard-headed bastard and does not go down.
He sweeps his leg across my own and I fall to the ground with so much sudden force that my teeth snap together with a sick hollow clonk that I can feel down in the tips of my toes.
He starts to charge his anankah, but that is foolish too. And his eyes are on his weapon, instead of where they should be: on my arms.
I lunge up, tackling him at the waist. I land on top of him, driving the air out of his lungs. He whoofs a noxious cloud of breath onto my face, spraying me with blood. His nose looks like a chewed-up wad of meat, but his eyes are clear and burning with hate.
His anankah is on the ground next to us and I reach for it—resisting the urge to shoot him with it. Our weapons are great tools, but they are only tools. Our true danger—our real violence—lies in our own lethal hearts. I press the weapon across his neck and lean my full weight into it. He sucks in air with high-pitched keening gasps and soon his chest is hitching, his lungs rebelling.
Then he is still.
I don’t check to see if he is alive. I don’t care. I climb into the ship and latch the door behind me. I sweep through the hallways and glance into the rooms. I shudder to remember the time I spent on this ship, complicit and compliant, ready to participate in the cruel raids of these rebels.
I go to the command center and fire up the engines. I haven’t piloted a ship like this in a long time, and even then my training was minimal. I always had more skilled pilots to control the ships when I led raids—and now I hope my own ignorance will not come back to haunt me.
I lift off without trouble and steer a big circle to turn myself around. For a brief moment I can see the two bodies of the guard and Zuro on the ground, but they soon merge into the landscape, appearing no bigger than two lumpy rocks.
I find the pavilion on my screen and lock its coordinates. Noxu and the Kraxx warlord will be there after giving their rousing speeches, either shaking hands with their supporters or retiring to the tent to draw up plans.
Either way, they’re going to be nothing but a dusty pile of calcified bones in a few minutes. I start initiating the missiles and entering the code sequence necessary to launch them.
This is really going to happen, I think. I’m really going to vaporize them—and be in the perfect position to escape. After I drop the missiles, I’m going to put it into warp and get this void-loving ship into the void and back to Zalaryx so I can claim my mate.
And claim her I shall.
I’m almost giddy at my impending success, the thought of having Aren in my arms again. I might never let her go.
But I push these thoughts aside, knowing that vainglory is not going to help me achieve success. I need to focus on the missile sequence. If I miss one stroke, I will have to start over. If I miss another stroke, it will lock me out of the system for several minutes—an attempt to keep only cool hands at the controls of weapons as powerful as these.
Focus I do. I am oblivious to everything around me.
Like the cold steel at my neck. It takes me a minute to realize what it is.
A knife.
A trickle of blood runs down my neck and seeps into my cloak.
“This is my lucky day,” he says. It is the captain of this ship, Ingzan. “When I sang a song of prayer to the fates that I might meet you again, I didn’t expect my prayers to be answered so fast. So literally. The fates must like blood as much as I do.”
“It’s too late,” I say. “The launch sequence is complete. The coordinates are locked.”
“Too late?” he says and actually laughs. His dry chuckle jounces the blade in his hand and it slices a little deeper into my flesh, like a fiddler plying his bow to the strings of his chosen instrument.
“They’re all going up in flame,” I say.
“Not all of us,” he says, laughter in his voice. I dare not turn around and push my neck into the blade any deeper, but I can imagine his crooked teeth and sinister grin. “Did you come to assassinate the rebel leader? My dear father? How cute. Let the old bastard burn. Let his herd of bleating sheep go with him. I’ll be the one to lead. Hopefully that Kraxx void-sucker will get it too. I’ll take his mantel as well. The Kraxx will be enraged when they find out that their leader has been ambushed by a coward pressing buttons from high up in the air. I’ll gather them and we’ll destroy everything you hold dear. I’ll start with that little cunt from Yrdat. She’d make a nice reward for my legion of Kraxx.”
“You’ll never—” I start to say. But I don’t finish, because everything goes black.