Chapter 23
I am so wretchedly cold. The shivers rattle deep in my bones. But I am moving. Light glazes the ice, brightening. A force I can’t see pulls on my body, and I smash against a heartless metal floor.
Ice shatters and leaves me lying limply in the middle of a cargo bay. I fold my mask back behind my ears and gasp for air. The bare feet and talons of a Talhuskin walk by me. He spits on the floor near my face. Heavy metal doors slam shut.
The poison in my body spreads through my veins, darkening my orange light to a sickening green.
“So this is the one causing so much trouble?” a nasally voice asks in Denarsoan.
Two Denarsoan males in dented armor grab me and wrap chains around my neck, arms, wings, and waist.
“Get up,” he says in English.
I try, but the sickness has zapped my strength. The guards try to get me upright, but my knees buckle. The room tips, and I fall forward. Resting my head on the floor, I orient myself to the sensation of the cold metal. It’s dirty, gritty, and reeks of the bodily fluids of many species.
“We’re running out of time to question him. General Kaslok wants this one delivered to him.” The male on the metal throne before me rests a finger to his temple in irritation.
“What are you?” he asks in English.
I wouldn’t tell him, even if I had the strength, even if I knew. I’m still not entirely sure.
He continues in Denarsoan. “Tell that Talhuskin that he over-drugged this one. He’s worthless.
We’re going to have to forego interrogation.
He clearly can’t tell us why they’re defending Mindor and Alpha Prime with so many forces.
I’m certain they have ore, tech, or medicine the way they protect them, which proves my theory right. ”
I sigh, partly from disbelief, some from exhaustion, and the rest from triumph. He is wrong.
“Something to say now?” he asks in English.
He is going to die at the hands of General Kaslok when the Neb finds out they have none of what he listed. But I’m going to let him dig his own grave.
The guards tug on my chains, straining my arms and my wings. My skin screams. My wings bend until the sharp pains of fractures begin.
“What is your plan?” the leader demands from his throne. “What are you protecting? Tell me where it is, or I will have them break you.”
“Do it. I don’t care. We are everywhere. It is everywhere.”
He gets up, snarls, and smashes a fist into my face. Pressure explodes in my cheek. I soak in the pain and withdraw inside myself like I used to as a hatchling when the Talhuskins had a little too much to drink.
A maniacal laugh escapes me.
“What the fuck are you?” he demands.
I sway from the misery as I look up at him. The room tips and spins. “Whatever I need to be.”
He grabs my face and looks me over like he can’t quite figure me out.
Join the club.
Then he shoves me away and steps back. “Get him out of my sight.”
“We’re docking in five,” someone says from the doorway.
The guards use the chains to pull me over and drag me through the room. My wings catch on the doorway. I try to pull them in against my back, but the guards tug hard and rip me through the doorway, snapping one of my wings.
The surge of agony makes me writhe and choke back a groan.
Every movement of it sends inundating pangs through my back that crawl around my sides with fiery fingers.
But the guards don’t stop. They haul my body through corridor after corridor, over bulkhead doors, down a ramp, and into a long passageway of cells.
Faces look down at me with pity from behind bars and sealscreens: humans, Thorians, Amphirans, Alustri, Ferrim, and so many more.
So many of my own kind.
Whispers circulate. They know me.
The guards drag me for what feels like hours before they dump me outside of a cell at the end of the hallway.
“You want to take him up now?” One of the guards asks.
“No,” a deep, full-bodied male voice booms out. I peer up at the large Neb. He clicks a pattern that suggests he’s pissed. But the Denarsoans don’t seem to pick up on it.
“Fine. Whatever. He’s your problem now.” They turn and walk off.
The beastly Neb glowers down at me. He picks me up by a handful of chains and eyes my broken wing. His eyes are pale blue-white, his fur dull and matted in patches with blood. He clicks again, and I think he’s disappointed.
The male lowers me to the floor a little too quickly, and my body hits with a painful thud. He opens the cell door and adjusts his grip on my chains when someone else yells at him.
They click back and forth, communicating in a language I don’t understand. But the male that’s joined us motions for him to follow.
My prison guard picks me up by a fistful of chain, drags me around a bend, and hauls me up a steep, spiraling ramp.
We get off of it several floors later to weave between many Nebs.
They are all dressed in full-body armor, rocket boots, and badges bearing the symbol of Mesannok that I saw in Aura’s briefing.
They rap their knuckles on the armor plates on their chests, filling the hall with a droning rattle that muddles my thoughts.
The floor beneath me switches from metal to glass. Below, I see gray Nebs working at guns, loading ammo belts, and missiles. A shell casing with Terran-30mil stamped on the side hits me in the head. Then another smashes into my shoulder. The Nebs turn me into a target for their rage.
My body is pummeled by spent ammo casings of all kinds as I’m lugged through the blanket of clinking shells on the floor. The brutish Neb hauls me in front of a different throne. This one is taller, made of chrome, and smokes.
I’m propped on my knees. My chains are clipped to links in the floor, stretching out my arms and my wings. The jarring motion tugs at my broken wing and sends a pang through my spine that makes me nauseous and my heart skip a beat.
I dare to look up at the male who scowls down at me.
He’s slumped sideways in his chair and surrounded by twenty guards, all covered in weapons with pale blue-white eyes like his.
He wears Thorian-style furs with black chrome body armor and sets aside a stick of something woody that smokes.
The Neb puffs out a breath of that same smoke.
I have to assume he is General Kaslok, like the Denarsoan said.
The Neb sits forward and clicks his tongue with his mouth closed. Another walks up to him and sets a tablet on the armrest, then returns to his place along the perimeter.
General Kaslok speaks to the device in his percussive language. It translates. “You killed my only son.”
Well, shit. I’m in big trouble.
Good.
He gets up, walks to me, shows me one of the ships I just detonated, then grabs my good wing with both of his hands. Dread stirs weakly in my gut.
He breaks my wing over his knee.
I grit my teeth as agony surges through my spine and up my neck.
Stinging fingers shoot up and down my shoulder and side.
An urge to cry out strains in my lungs. But I have seen the damage his kind has done to innocent worlds like Vinym, to ours, and so many others.
They’re allied with Talhuskins and Denarso.
So I will give him nothing to savor and fight the instinct to curl forward. I snarl up at him instead.
He lands a fist to my face. Then another and another, until I lose myself in the pounding waves of his hatred.
I don’t blame him. He is a father grieving the loss of his son. I would be furious, too.
Somewhere in the pummeling waves, I find myself wondering if my father ever grieved sending me away.
When he stops, my head lolls back as the poison and the beatings finally drop me into a state of bare awareness.
I’m still here.
“Why are you here?” he roars.
The chains hold me upright, but I’m slumped backward, staring at the hallway where I entered. My blood streaks the floor. “Why…are you?”
He growls and paces, then stalks toward me, grabs me by my broken wings, and lifts me up to his face. “Why do you stop us now? What do Mindor and Alpha Prime have?”
I blink my swollen eyes to pull him into focus. “Friends.”
He roars at me. “What ore do they have? What food? What medicine? What are you protecting?”
I laugh, and it’s pathetic. I’m a drooling, choking mess, struggling to breathe through the blood and the bruises everywhere. “Allies. Something you know nothing about.”
He shoves me to the floor, paces away, frees a gun from his belt, and walks back to me, pointing the barrel at my head.
This is my end. I’m too weak to free myself. With all the other Nebs in the room, there would be no escape even if I could pull free of my chains.
I’m sorry, Brynna. My beautiful mate. Forgive me.