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“Is there somewhere else I can go? A recreation room or … or a library?”
The computer continued to ignore her. Frustrated, Louella slapped her hand against the panel. It blinked blue then turned off.
“Damn it, let me out!”
The door remained closed.
The lights in the room dimmed.
“What’s going on?”
Klaxons sounded, their shrill noise filling Louella’s world inside the room and beyond its walls. She gasped and squeezed her eyes shut as the memories of the Sivuul attack upon the human embassy rushed back in terrifying clarity.
“All personnel to stations,” the computer ordered in a repeating loop. “All warriors report to duty.”
Dread filled Louella’s belly, making her stomach churn. She pressed her lips together in an effort not to vomit.
“No, not again,” she muttered to herself, realizing she’d wrapped her arms around herself as though to keep from flying apart.
In her peripheral vision, Louella caught the shadow of motion. She flung herself to the opposite wall and peered through the thick glass of the porthole. Nausea swelled again and she swallowed it down with difficulty as the bulk of a terrifyingly large spaceship floated by.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”
A wide streak of red flashed past the window. The vessel rocked.
“Hull breach on level four, sector two,” the computer announced.
“Where’s level four, sector two?” Louella whispered in dread as booted feet thudded down the corridor outside the door of the general superior’s quarters.
She heard a few more thumps and thuds and one loud whine that sounded mechanical rather than biological, but thought it impossible that any of the aliens aboard the vessel could have made that skull-splitting sound. Louella huddled in a corner, the thoughts in her mind disintegrating into mental gibberish.
“Shoes, I need shoes,” she whispered, her eyes focusing on her bare feet.
The door slid open. Louella froze. She squeezed her eyes shut again, both unwilling and unable to see herself abducted yet again.
“Louella, take my hand,” a familiar voice ordered.
Her eyes snapped open. She looked up at Yas’kihn’s soot-streaked face, then down at his hand. His claws were fully extended.
“Take my hand, pretty spark. I will see to your safety.”
She blinked and watched as her trembling hand rose, seemingly of its own accord. She shivered when her palm met his and his hand closed over hers. Beyond the open door, she heard the thump of more boots, shrieks and shouts, and the hideous chittering sounds that had filled the Sivuul ship and echoed throughout its ventilation system. A whimper of terror escaped through her lips.
“Trust me,” Yas’kihn said. He gently drew her to her feet as though a pitched battle were not being fought just beyond the doorway. “Can you walk?”
She whimpered again and closed her eyes, then took a deep breath and opened them. Her voice cracked when she answered. “I’ll try.”
“You have courage,” the general superior complimented her with a curt nod. He released her hand, keenly watching as she steadied herself on rubbery legs. “Follow me. Stay close behind me unless I tell you otherwise.”
She nodded. He turned, his tail swishing once before the tip of it rose.
“Take hold of my tail.”
She obeyed and grasped it with both hands. With a roar in that language Louella did not understand, he started forward, blades drawn, a hulking predator determined to wreak havoc and vengeance upon all who crossed his path. As the general superior prowled from the room, he slashed through a huge insect, severing it in half. Louella clenched her jaws to keep the screams at bay as she jigged around the twitching halves of the carcass so as not to be caught by a snapping mandible or slip in the thick yellow ichor. Yas’kihn roared again.
Louella focused—or tried to focus—her gaze on the ceaseless, seemingly tireless rise and fall of Yas’kihn’s arms and shoulders as he slaughtered the ship’s invaders. She saw other Ahn’hudi warriors answer his summons, none of them as large or as wickedly lethal as the general superior—which waswhyhe was the general superior—but still loyal and skilled in the deadly art of war. For a second, Louella wondered why she heard no bullets or the sizzle of laser guns, then realized that anything powerful enough to breach the ship’s hull could kill them all. Total annihilation of all life on the ship defeated the Sivuuls’ purpose. They wanted slaves and food.
The ship shuddered, making everyone stumble. Louella gasped as her knees hit the hard floor. A warrior’s hand roughly grasped her upper arm and hauled her back to her feet. Yas’kihn snarled at the warrior who backed down without an answering hiss. Looking at the general superior’s expression, Louella knew that the male who embodied the ideal of the ultimate warrior in her mind had turned primal, instinct suppressing everything else. The reptilian race native to Ahn’hudin had not quite lost touch with their primitive, predatory ancestors.
