Chapter 7
Atem
Hot blood rushed down Atem's throat, and he drank it greedily.
The ratchi in his grasp shuddered and seized as he drained his body of its vital fluid – a common reaction when ratchi bled out.
This one was the captain of the ship, the biggest and ugliest of the group.
Atem felt that the dishonorable males who would treat helpless females so disgracefully didn't deserve the honor of his drinking their blood, but he needed the nutrition.
His people were blood drinkers. They could and did, also thrive, on raw meat and some plants and a lot of mushrooms. But blood was their primary food.
They usually drank the blood of prey, of course.
To drink the blood of their enemies, to take their vitality into their own bodies, was something done only for those who were considered worthy adversaries.
They might have earned that for capturing and keeping him subdued, but they lost it for their care of the females.
However, the needs of his body outweighed that consideration. Not for himself, but for the females. For Peony with her bright green eyes. He needed to be strong for them and drinking the blood of the ratchi would re-hydrate him, refuel him, and restore his health.
The captain went limp as his seizure ceased. His blood dried up in his veins and Atem dropped his heavy body. Some of the thick, dark blue blood stained his mouth from the struggle after he had knocked him down and sank his fangs into his neck.
The captain was the last of the fifteen-man crew.
It had taken Atem little time to sneak through the ship, his camouflage easily hiding him within the old, darkened halls, and pick them off one by one.
He had a laceration across his brow, one down his right arm, and one on his left thigh from three different fights, but they had already stopped bleeding.
Atem would need to dispose of the corpses. He was going to release them out of the airlock since he felt they did not deserve an honorable warrior's burial.
However, he frowned at the mess of the bridge.
The captain was bigger and stronger than his crew and he hadn't gone down easily. Atem's shoulder was sore from being thrown against the wall and his thigh and hip ached from being slammed against one of the consoles before he got the upper hand.
The console in question was sparking and, even as Atem watched, it went dark.
He was familiar with this particular class of starship – it was a common one for traders, though the model was about fifteen standard years out of date.
He knew that the console their fight had just inadvertently destroyed was the navigation system. That was unfortunate.
He wasn't worried about getting home. The ship would still fly, and he knew the precise star chart data of Turv – his home planet – and could pilot a ship there in emergency, so getting back home wouldn't be an issue.
However, with that panel destroyed, he also lost all the information about where the ship had been – likely since it had been in service.
He wouldn't know where these ratchi came from or where they might be going.
Why they had taken him and where they were going with him was knowledge gone with their lives and the data.
He didn't regret their deaths. Unfortunately, alone, he couldn't lock one of them up and ensure he stayed that way and also keep the females safe. Ratchi had bones, but they moved like they were boneless, and they were notorious for being difficult to keep locked up. They all had to die, but the loss of that single panel meant he also lost a lot of useful information. He might be able to recover some of it, but those sparks he saw didn’t leave him much hope.
He growled in annoyance, walking past the ruined panel and instead approached the flight panel.
It was still intact, clean and well maintained.
It didn't take long for Atem to program the new destination and set the ship on autopilot.
He would need to keep a close eye on it since, without the navigation system, the ship wouldn't make the standard micro changes that were usually necessary when swinging through subspace.
He could only set a direct course and the ship would blindly follow it.
The scanners still worked, so Atem could and did set those to send an alarm through the ship whenever they got close to something so he could maneuver the ship manually if necessary.
Without the navigation, he also couldn't tell where he was in space or how long it would take for them to tunnel through the warp channels back to the Shrii Star System where Turv was located, but he didn't imagine it would take that long.
Until then...
He turned back to the captain's dead body with a long-suffering sigh, watching the dead male’s green scales already began to gray in death.
He resigned himself to the next, dirty task.
He would relieve himself first, since that wouldn’t be put off any longer.
After that, he could get to work disposing of the corpses.
Then, he could focus on the females.
Especially the one with pretty green eyes.