Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Rykal missed his ashika. He secretly called her that because she reminded him of one. Ashika. Iceblade. Sharp, direct, and effective. Without her level-headed guidance, the humans were starting to become panicky again.
An ashika was a special type of blade. The Aikun used them to hack through the thick ice sheets of the Vaal, creating portals to the frigid ocean below so they could hunt the eyeless creatures in the depths.
Rykal wasn’t really sure how he knew that, but he did. Fragments of stolen memories surfaced every now and then, vivid and baffling and intense. It happened to all of them, but for some reason, Rykal experienced flashbacks more frequently than the others.
He munched on a bar of protein mix as he surveyed the cargo hold. The craft they’d escaped on was a large, bulky thing the humans referred to as a superfreighter, and it had been their ticket off the doomed mining station.
Rykal went still, extending his senses. Except for the ever-present background hum of the ship’s engine, all was silent.
He listened carefully for the telltale skittering of Xargek larvae, but there was nothing.
He peered into the darkness, scanning rows of empty cargo containers.
Before they’d escaped Fortuna Tau, the containers had been full of crudely processed Armium metal.
They’d ordered the humans to dump as much of the payload as possible. Less weight equaled greater speed.
Rykal’s hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword. In close quarters, stealth and speed were king. The best way to clear out a Xargek nest was to stalk, stab, impale, and sever. In silence. In darkness. That was what they did best, and it was why they were feared throughout the Nine Galaxies.
Most of the time, their enemies died before they knew what had hit them.
As Rykal crept forward, soft sounds tickled his sensitive hearing.
Whispered words reached his ears, uttered in indecipherable human-speak.
Then, footsteps. Rustling fabric. The scrape of clumsy limbs against hard armor. Minute metallic creaks as unsteady fingers clutched ungainly weapons.
An ironic smile twisted Rykal’s lips. Someone was trying to hunt him.
Humans. They were eternally optimistic.
He moved silently down the aisle, drawing his dagger. He could smell them now. Humans gave off a distinct scent, especially when they were afraid. The coarse rasp of his breathing betrayed the first human, who was just around the corner from him.
Rykal waited in the darkness.
The human shuffled into his line of vision, his bolt-gun raised. He wore a pair of goggles with glowing green lenses. He looked around, snapping his head left and right. His breathing was labored, and a faint sheen of moisture coated his cheeks.
He had no idea that Rykal was behind him.
Rykal took a step forward, placing the tip of his dagger against the back of the human’s neck, ensuring he applied just enough pressure to make his intent clear.
“What are you doing, human?” His voice was low and soft, and threaded with a dangerous undercurrent.
He spoke Universal, the language developed and spread by the Empire.
Like all societies that aspired to trade throughout the Nine Galaxies, humans had adopted Universal, molding it to suit their strange, lilting accents.
“You’re outnumbered, alien,” the human hissed. “Drop your weapons and we might let you live.”
“Are you dense, man?” Rykal shook his head.
“Don’t be foolish.” It wasn’t his habit to give the enemy a friendly warning, but he’d grown strangely fond of these funny soft-bodied creatures called humans.
They were irrational and sentimental, and they allowed their actions to be guided by their emotions. It was somehow endearing.
“Don’t get too full of yourself, alien,” hissed the human. “There’s only one of you, and there are many of us. Too many for you to take down on your own.”
“You really think so?” Rykal inclined his head in the darkness before he froze, listening.
“Shh,” he whispered, digging the tip of the dagger into the human’s skin with dangerous precision, just a little more, just deep enough to draw a spot of blood.
The human hissed in pain. If human anatomy was anything like his own, the man’s spinal cord would be easily accessible through gaps between his bony vertebrae.
In many ways, humans looked quite similar to Kordolians. As he tracked the tiny noises echoing around the hold, Rykal’s thoughts once again drifted to her. Arin. His favorite human. Exactly how similar was their anatomy?
Kaiin’s Hells, he wished it were Arin he was getting close to, instead of this idiotic peacekeeper who stank of fear.
How had these humans obtained weapons anyway? Rykal thought all of their weapons had been seized.
Apparently not.
They must have kept a secret stash somewhere. The freighter was a large craft, after all. Too big for them to check every nook and cranny. Not that it mattered. Weapons or not, the outcome would be the same.
The human began to move, but Rykal placed a hand on his throat. “Don’t,” he murmured. The human froze. Rykal’s senses were stretched taut, demanding absolute concentration. His ears twitched as he listened, searching for variations in the silence.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…” He mouthed the words silently in Kordolian, counting the footsteps, reading the patterns, detecting subtle differences in scent. “There are six or seven of them,” he said softly, “including you.”
“H-how?”
“Shh,” Rykal repeated. “If I have to tell you to be quiet again, you’re dead.
” He flipped his dagger, turning it so the blade was facing towards him.
He slammed the hilt of the dagger into the human’s skull, sending him crashing to the floor.
The human slumped into an awkward pile of armor, weapons, and limbs.
“Better yet, sleep for a while.” The human had been a pain-in-the ass, but he’d also been a valuable source of information.
The only reason Rykal hadn’t killed him was because of a promise he’d made to Arin.
“Fine,” she’d grumbled. “I’ll do as you ask and go down to Nova Terra. But only if you promise not to harm any of my people while I’m gone.”
Rykal was a killer, but he didn’t break promises. That would be dishonorable. That’s why he rarely ever made promises.
“I’m not going to make any promises I can’t keep, but I’ll try my best not to harm them,” he answered honestly, “although it depends on whether they can behave themselves.”
A sharp buzz diverted his attention, bringing him back to the present.
There was a small comm device in the unconscious human’s ear.
Someone was babbling in human-speak. Rykal carefully extracted the comm from the man’s ear, untangling the crude speaking piece from his collar.
“I’m coming for you,” he said, speaking into the comm.
“If you give up now, I might let you live.”
The response was a few sharply uttered human words that sounded like cursing amidst crackling static. Rykal sighed. Why did these humans have to become difficult all of a sudden?
When Arin was here, they’d been disciplined and sensible, but now, this rabble of humans seemed to fancy their chances against him. Rykal was about to show them how misguided they were. He had to act fast. There were thousands of humans onboard this freighter, including fifty-odd peacekeepers.
There were six Kordolians.
The humans had to be kept in a state of fear. It was the only way to keep them controlled.
So far, the humans had been too afraid of them to try and take them on, but it was only a matter of time before someone got cocky and stupid and decided he or she could start a revolution.
Point in case.
Two more humans approached him. They were spooked now, judging from the way they walked, their steps shuffling and hesitant.
Humans were so awkward and clumsy, just like children.
Rykal sheathed his dagger and issued a mental command, summoning the virus-impregnated nano-particles that dwelled in his bloodstream.
They were reinforced with Callidum, and when they coalesced over his body, they formed an impenetrable barrier.
Rykal’s body was already protected by his hard-yet-flexible suit of exo-armor, but he’d left his face bare.
Now he summoned his helm, welcoming the familiar burn as the sub-cellular particles swarmed through bone and tissue and skin.
They could try to punch him, stab him, shoot him, burn him, and impale him, but nothing would get through.
Rykal began to run, heading towards the source of the sound. He left every one of his weapons sheathed or holstered. He didn’t want to kill the damn humans unless it was absolutely necessary, so he would use only his hands.
For a First Division warrior like Rykal, not killing was much harder than taking a life. It required restraint, and when it came to fighting, Rykal had never had any reason to show restraint.
But now, he thought of Arin, and for some reason, he wanted to please her.
Like a swift shadow, Rykal descended on the humans, who were moving in some kind of back-to-back formation, their guns held before them, their green goggles glowing in the darkness.
One of the humans had enough wits about him to fire off a shot of bolt-energy.
The white beam struck Rykal in the chest, but it didn’t slow him down.
His fist smashed into the human’s face, sending him crashing to the floor. The second human whirled, cursing.
Rykal’s hands closed around his neck as the human tried to angle his gun towards Rykal’s head. “It won’t work against me,” Rykal grated, as he tried to figure out how to put this one down. He settled for squeezing the points on the human’s neck where he presumed the large arteries ran.
The human struggled a bit, then slumped. As soon as his body went limp, Rykal released his grip. He didn’t want to strangle the guy.