AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d almost told her not to consume anything when she first entered the venue. But I’d kept my peace, telling myself I was being overly paranoid. After all, so many people around her had already eaten and drunk from the buffet without apparent negative effects.
But even as I spoke those words, the camera showed Dawn’s hand bringing the glass to her face. The way her hand shook revealed her vain efforts to fight the compulsion.
I turned off the mic before addressing my men. “We need to stop whatever is happening in there, but we can’t go charging in. If Deimos orders them to attack us, we’ll be overwhelmed. We need to knock them out, either through stun or sedation.”
Deimos’s altered voice continued to reach us through Dawn’s wire.“A supply will be placed in your respective shuttles. You will drink a single glass a day.”
“A single glass a day!” Orin exclaimed. “So the effect wears off. He hasn’t perfected it yet!”
“Orin, focus!” I snapped. “How do we knock them out without harming them?”
Orin gave me an apologetic look before taking on a pensive expression. “Sedation would be safest for them. But as Nirkon has already closed the doors, we’d have to break in, release the gas, and wait for it to kick in. So an ultrasonic beam would be our best bet. The ultrasonic pulse will reach them even through the walls. We just need to make sure we have the right frequency and amplitude to avoid causing damage.”
“What kind of damage are we talking about?” I asked, impatience and worry for my female gnawing at me.
“If we get it wrong, it could shatter their bones or even kill them,” Orin admitted nervously. “Had they been purebloods, I wouldn’t be as concerned. I know exactly what frequency and amplitude to use on us. But hybrids are more fragile.”
“Figure it out,” I snapped with annoyance. “Err on the side of caution. I need this beam functional yesterday!”
“Yes, Jakar,” Orin replied with a confidence that reassured me. “I will set it to 2Hz and 150dB. It will make them nauseous and dizzy, which will give us time to go in with sedation.”
“Get on it,” I ordered.
My blood turned to ice as Deimos’s voice continued resonating through the wire as he addressed the hybrids.“The Great War is coming. You will play a pivotal role in making sure both our species are on the winning side. For this to happen, the reign of the Xeldars must end. A new era will begin, marked by the rise of the hybrids, with Gavin Aldriss as your new Magnar.”
“No fucking way,” Tagar hissed. “The boy would have never agreed to that.”
“He hasn’t,” I said with conviction. “If Gavin covets my throne, he will claim it honorably. Not like this. But if Sarenians can mind control us now…”
I never got to finish my sentence. Proximity alarms went off at the same time as Baldur’s voice resonated through our com from our frigate.
“We’re under attack! Guldan Falcons have just come out of stealth!” my Captain shouted. “They—”
His cry of intense pain cut short the rest of his sentence. I opened my mouth to call out his name, but only a shout of agony escaped me. A blinding light engulfed our vessel, and the most excruciating pain exploded throughout my body, as if every single bone had shattered, every vein and capillary ruptured, and every nerve ending had been dipped into the most concentrated acid.
The faces of Dawn and my two sons flashed before my eyes in the split second before darkness swallowed me.
The hushed hum of machinery pierced through the thick fog shrouding my mind. I felt bruised and battered inside as if an entire herd of karvelis had trampled me. My eyelids weighed a ton as I struggled to crack them open. The brightness in the room blinded me, making me shut my eyes once more before I forced them open again.
My blurred vision took a moment to adjust. In the end, the room turned out not to be as brightly lit as my senses initially fooled me into believing. The large space appeared to be some kind of medical lab or infirmary. Directly in front of me, a gridded platform served as a stretcher for the far too familiar silhouette of my ship’s captain, Baldur. Thick metal bands strapped his fully naked body to the platform. He was facing me straight on, the stretcher slightly inclined by maybe ten degrees. Despite being clearly unconscious, my captain thankfully didn’t appear otherwise harmed.
I shifted my gaze to the left. My heart seized upon seeing Orin strapped in a similar fashion on another gridded stretcher. However, unlike Baldur who only had a drip hooked to his right arm, my medical officer also had the drip and a separate bag connected to a port in his arm and a second bag to another port in his neck. Both bags were collecting a clear liquid. Beneath each of them, a flat device slowly rocked them back and forth, like they sometimes did with blood pouches, which I always assumed was to prevent it from coagulating.
If my suspicions were correct, they had implanted Orin with Kranax Beetle eggs and were now harvesting his fluids for their demented experiment.
But why the oldest of my crewmembers?
The answer that popped into my head had my innards twisting with dread. Orin still had many decades left in him. Despite his older age, he certainly was not expendable. But the Sarenians likely didn’t know what a brilliant scientific mind they had captured.
I swallowed back a groan as I turned my head to the right to observe the rest of the room. Even merely shifting my eyes around hurt. It felt like needles stabbing me directly in the brain. Thankfully, the handful of other stretchers—although they’d qualify more as proper medical examination tables—sat empty. No visible doctor or lab technician lurked nearby.
Are they preparing the rest of my crew to be subjected to a similar treatment—not to say torture? And where is Dawn?
The worst part was not knowing exactly who had been captured. My frigate’s crew had only managed to inform us of being under attack before we’d sustained a devastating one of our own. Had they also managed to send a distress signal to Haven’s authorities, who had been partially aware that we might need back up? Better yet, had they informed my father? Although the signal would have taken a while to reach Braxia, even an incomplete message would have sufficed to get my father to investigate.
Once more, I glanced around the room. Although my eyes continued to feel overly sensitive to the brightness, only a couple of dim lights illuminated the space, confirming that whoever had restrained us here had temporarily left. I quickly inventoried my aches and pains, relieved nothing indicated serious damage… at least for now. However, like Orin, I had both a drip and a port in my left arm. Stretching my neck indicated I also had a port near my nape. While they had been inserted, I couldn’t see any bags connected to them.
I silenced the wave of fear that tried to surge within me. This could only mean that either Kranax Beetles had already laid their eggs inside me, but it was much too early for the larvae to hatch just yet, or they were preparing me ahead of the eggs getting implanted.
