These creatures have become my worst enemies. I loathe them more than I thought I could loathe anybody. My worst impulses and my most dangerous thoughts are directed toward them. They should be a great deal more afraid than they are.
First they took me and forced me to suffer. They used what they discovered from me to help defend against our systems. And now they have my pet. There is nothing I will not do to retrieve her. They have to know that.
Drak reaches around and yanks the cables that run the microphone and speakers out of the console. That solves the problem in the short term. It stops me from making criminalthreats, and it stops me from hearing their smug commentary. But it does not get my pet back.
“You need to calm down,” Drak says. “They’re not going to hurt her, and even if they do, you can’t threaten to annihilate them. That’s a crime.”
“Then I’m going to be a criminal,” I seethe.
I know, deep down, that I will not bring the full weight of my threats to bear.
There have been those of our species, in the past, before Alara, who did terrible things with their power and authority. Psyons have deleted worlds before, removed bloodlines. We are destroyers incarnate, though we have branded ourselves as kindly guardians of space and time.
I will make them pay for what they’ve done to me. My poor pet will be so scared. All she wanted was to find her father, and now I have drawn her into unimaginable danger. Perhaps I should have left her there in her station. Maybe I could have given her a better life if I’d just given her some credits. But the moment I saw her—no, before that. The moment I felt her inside that craft, I knew she was mine. She belonged to me. She still does.
I want her back, more than anything. I should have had her closer. But it almost feels as though they distracted us on purpose, fed us the leader and his men so that they could take her. Those are big pawns to play. Perhaps they thought we would all be taken. Maybe it was just an act of opportunity on their part.
The more I think about it, the less this gambit makes sense. It is so personal. The Psyon Empire, Alara, won’t care about thehuman. Not at all. It will not stop the war. It will stop me, and only me.
I wonder if there is another reason they want her, besides the obvious attempt to regain control over me. It would have been easier to come down, shoot me, and be done. This is something else more twisted.
They’re not done torturing me. That is all I can conclude. They want to keep control of me, and they want to keep hurting me. It’s personal.
“You three can return to the home realm,” I say. “What I am going to do with this ship will not please Alara.”
They look at one another, and I can sense the silent conversation between them.
“Go,” I say. “That’s my last order. Go and leave me to this.”
“We’re not leaving,” Aric says. “They attacked us. They evaded our weapon. Alara needs to know that. We are not going to have dominance in the same way we did if they are able to neutralize it. Things are going to get brutal and bloody, and your pet is only a small part of it. We should all return to the home realm and report to her.”
He’s right, I realize. The war just pivoted in a new way, and we just lost more ground than I want to admit. All I can think of is my pet, what might be happening to her, what awful things she might be suffering. The thought is barely sustainable.
“I need to get her. Now.”
“That’s what they want. They’re drawing you into a trap,” Drak says. “We will get her back, but you have to stop freaking out.They’re not going to kill her. If they do, they lose their bargaining chip.”
“They might kill her if they decide she’s not going to function the way they want her to. If I don’t go to them, if I don’t negotiate…”
My pet’s life has been in danger from multiple directions since I met her. I wanted to save her. But now I’ve thrown her back into a worse situation than the one I found her in.
“How did they even know she existed?”
“Maybe they were scanning the ship?”
“Maybe they saw her at the station we docked at,” Fidas says. “Maybe we’ve been under surveillance for longer than we realized.”
All this time, I have been talking about how we are at war and how everything must be taken seriously, and here I am, having somehow lost the most precious thing to me because we took a jaunt to a wrestling arena in a shady station off the beaten track.
CHAPTER 9
Mara
I am beginning to become accustomed to being kidnapped every few minutes, I think.
The Lizard King seems enchanted by me. He has taken me to a lizard dinner table, and he is offering me fruits and vegetables and meat. He watches me eat with cold interest.
“Special little thing,” he says. “Caught between worlds. Treated like an animal by a creature driven mad by its own power. He is mad, you know. Quite insane.”
