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There was a time and place for brute ferocity.
A sword blade snapped. Yas’kihn tossed it aside in favor of using his sharp, strong claws. Then his other sword’s blade shattered. Louella could not dance out of the way quickly enough to avoid cutting her foot on a razor sharp shard. Nor could she stifle the yelp of pain.
At her cry, Yas’kihn whirled around and wrapped an arm around her waist. With a swing of impressive strength, he flung her over his broad shoulder, ducked his head with the stiff spikes of his crest fully extended, and charged. Louella grunted as her belly bounced on his shoulder with every hard footfall, but his grasp around her thighs held her in place.
“Evacuate!” the ship’s computer ordered, the volume turned up high. “All personnel, evacuate!”
Yas’kihn paused and faced the wall.
“Show us the remaining available escape pods,” Yas’kihn snapped, the syllables hissing.
A map appeared on a wall smeared with splatters of blood and ichor. Red dots blinked.
“How many personnel and refugees on the ship have yet to be evacuated?”
“One hundred twenty-three.”
“Where are they?”
The map showed blinking yellow lights moving down various corridors. The computer said, “There are too many individuals for the number of escape pods on level three, sector seventeen.”
“Divert the necessary personnel from level three, sector seventeen via the most direct route to level two, sector fifteen,” Yas’kihn ordered.
“Acknowledged.”
A few seconds later, a cluster of lighted yellow dots on the map veered downward.
“Let’s go,” the general superior ordered and surged forward just as a cluster of Sivuul rounded a corner and gave chase. The Ahn’hudi warriors met them head-on with claws and their remaining blades. Two fewer warriors continued forth, having fallen to the insectoid invaders. The map on the wall vanished.
“Record the names of the fallen,” Yas’kihn ordered.
“Acknowledged.”
Turning to the warriors flanking him as a cluster of Sivuul invaders advanced, he snarled, “Hold until all other personnel and refugees have abandoned ship.”
The five Ahn’hudi warriors established a formidable line of defense in front of him, holding fast as cluster after cluster of Sivuul invaders attacked. In a brief lull between insectoid clusters, the ship announced, “General Superior Yas’kihn, all personnel and refugees have abandoned ship. The self-destruct countdown begins now.”
“Abandon ship!” Yas’kihn ordered. “Starsea,defend yourself during countdown!”
“Acknowledged,” the ship replied.
The general superior and his cohort of fellow warriors raced toward the nearest bank of available escape pods as the ship’s computer began an ominous countdown. Six Ahn’hudi warriors and one human crammed themselves into the remaining escape pods which launched mere seconds before the Ahn’hudi ship let loose with a spray of lasers and solid projectiles aimed at the Sivuul warship. As the Sivuul warship returned fire, the Ahn’hudi ship exploded.
Staring through the pod’s one small window, Louella gasped, although the explosion did not resemble the fiery blast depicted by Hollywood’s cinematic excess. The expected fireball swelled for an instant before fizzling in dramatic fashion to nothingness. A cloud of smoke hung in the vast emptiness of the vacuum of space. Projectiles of metal and other debris shot in all directions as their pod arced away from the disintegrated remains of the Ahn’hudin warship, its trajectory different from the other pods. A few seconds later, the Sivuul ship disintegrated in similar fashion as the many bombs and lasers deployed from the exploded Ahn’hudi ship took effect in destroying the enemy.
In the cramped space meant for one being, Yas’kihn clasped the delicate human female to his chest, keeping her positioned on his lap. It was the closest he could get to wrapping his body protectively around her. He pressed one palm against her head, gently urging her to rest her head against his chest. Deep within his chest, a purr rumbled, its sound meant to soothe the distressed female.
“Listening to you purr is like listening to brown noise,” Louella murmured and let loose with a deep breath.
“What’s brown noise?” he asked, pitching his voice low to complement the deep frequency of his purr. He slid his hand down to cup her shoulder while his other hand wrapped around her hip. His gaze flickered to the pod’s rudimentary display showing the route it had determined would take them to the nearest habitable planet.
“It’s a noise of combined frequencies that’s supposed to ease anxiety and promote sleep,” she answered. “Noise colors were all the rage back home before I left for Ahn’hudin.”
“Noise colors?”Did humans hear color? Did that mean they saw sound?
She nodded, rubbing her cheek against the fine scales of his pectoral. His hide was surprisingly smooth. “Yeah, it started with white noise. People used that to block out other ambient noises so they could have private conversations. Other frequency combinations were then used to help people get to sleep. Green noise is the most popular for that, but—” she shrugged “—it never really did much for me.”
Yas’kihn snorted softly. “Humans are interesting creatures, assigning color to sound.”
