The Herr-3 incident deeply shook the IMPERIUM’s star-citizens and exposed a failure in governance: no species could be permitted to gain disproportionate influence simply by occupying key positions. The legal framework was corrected, but law offered no relief to the millions of victims the Corvus captured, imprisoned, and subjected to their breeding-song on a planet populated for that purpose alone.
Their plan had been as brilliant as it was depraved. Outsiders who watched the footage of Herr-3 saw only peaceful unity among different species. The reality was far worse. A forced overwrite of the victim’s biological map by the Corvus breeding-song, complete degradation if they resisted, and if the process succeeded, the gestation of parasitic descendants. That was the fate of anyone unlucky enough to draw a Corvus’s attention and refuse their advances.”
Documentation on the Herr-3 incident, submitted before the IMPERIUM court
The next chrono-cycles were the longest of Lily’s life.
She ate. She slept. In the remaining hours she trained within the limits of the small space, clinging to the familiar rhythm of exercises repeated until they became mindless. She meditated and practiced breathing the way Helios had taught her, and she thought, endlessly. She built plans. She replayed every short exchange with Horos again and again, hunting for some overlooked detail that could become a weapon in her hands.
Sometimes, when she felt strong enough, she let herself think of Khar.
She did it rarely. It hurt too much. The thought that she might never see him again hollowed her out, and right now she needed every scrap of strength and cunning she had.
The only variation in those endless hours was Horos’s visits.
As far as Lily could tell, he followed no schedule. He came when he wanted.
He usually brought something from the synthesizers, food that would have expanded the thin, snack-like menu available in the guest suite’s stasis cabinet, but Lily could not bring herself to touch it. Vitro refilled the stasis cabinet automatically from storage, a process Horos could not easily interfere with. The synthesizers, however, could produce anything he pleased. The risk was too great to justify the comfort of a warm meal.
Sometimes he brought replacement uniforms. Lily accepted them. Not because Horos could tell what she wore, but because she was tired of crouching in the cramped bathroom, waiting for her clothes to dry enough to wear again.
Horos was exhausted, irritable, and frustrated. Manual control of Vitro was demanding and time-consuming, and theworkload was clearly beginning to bury him. Lily watched his deterioration with a grim satisfaction.
Exhausted beings made mistakes.
She was waiting for the one mistake that would let her strike.
When they spoke, she gave him as little reaction as possible. Nothing that would provoke him, but nothing that resembled submission either. Fortunately, the hoarseness still roughened his voice since the last time he had forced a seizure on her, and it looked as though even speaking hurt him.
That did not stop him from talking.
He complained at length about the world’s injustice, about Vegrun’s ingratitude, about his own greatness. Lily listened with a neutral smile, though she would have liked to peel her own skin off rather than sit through his pathetic monologues.
Horos seemed satisfied even with neutrality, but it came at a cost. She could not steer the conversation toward what she needed most. More than once she considered changing tactics, provoking him carefully in hopes he would blurt something out while tired, but patience paid off.
After an especially long tirade about Vegrun, Horos finally mentioned Khar.
“That old tentacled lecher never expected I would take his most precious treasure,” Horos said. “He likes keeping females around him, doting on them, but the only constant in his life is what he paid for. That oversized, gaudy space carriage. He paid extra for the cloaking systems, and now those same systems mean they have no chance of finding us. Not with the wage-slave guarding his beloved cruiser.”
Lily was fantasizing about smashing Horos’s head into something unrecognizable with the dullest object she could find in the suite when Khar’s appearance in the conversation yanked her back into the moment.
“You mean Khar,” she said.
Horos flicked his hand as if something sticky and disgusting had touched his fingers. The contempt was unmistakable.
“That brute. I suspect Vegrun started digging into my affairs because of him. I would have paid to see his face when he discovered Vitromium was gone.”
He laughed, a dry, grating sound, and Lily’s chest tightened at the mention of Khar.
Horos could not stop there. After Vegrun, he spat his poison at Khar too. Dissatisfaction poured out of him, thick and sour, the kind that came from weakness. The kind that only felt powerful while degrading others.
“He thinks he is important because he is a filthy Divani and because Vegrun indulges his ridiculous behavior, but he is a pathetic loser. His whole species is. They throw away their pride for a quick fuck. He is an even bigger lapdog than Vegrun. At least Vegrun pays for sex and does not permanently alter himself just to mount someone.”
Lily’s teeth ground together. It took everything in her not to smash her fist into his smug, plague-doctor face.
Stay steady. Not yet.
She drew in a breath and gave him a sweet smile.
