Chapter 11
- Krix’vorr -
Sris hits the soft wall. The membrane opens and she scurries out without another word.
Silence settles over the chamber.
For a moment I simply stand there, staring at the place where she vanished. I have never thrown Sris, nor picked her up in anger. It has never been necessary.
My chest still feels strange beneath the carapace, as though the lightning left something behind. An irritation. A pressure. I don't know what to call it.
Nora stays pressed against the window. The little female watches me with wide eyes, one arm wrapped around herself where I grabbed her. The machine hovers nearby, wisely saying nothing.
I draw a long breath and force my thoughts into order. "This interrogation has become unproductive." The words sound reasonable enough.
Sris was rushing matters. Fear creates confusion.
Pain creates lies. A Chief Harrower must know that valuable captives must be handled with care until their usefulness is fully understood.
I haven’t always understood that, perhaps.
But now I know that there’s no reason to damage a specimen before learning what it knows. No reason at all.
I walk to the resting platform and look down at the living star chart. The stars continue to glow and drift inside the bowl, patiently waiting for answers that are not coming.
"You’re lucky," I tell Nora without looking at her. "Sris is enthusiastic. She believes that all problems can be solved with sharp blades."
"I noticed." The Kast flower reproduces her voice perfectly.
The dry sarcasm catches me off guard. I glance toward her. She is frightened. That much is obvious. Her scent says so, her posture says so, and yet she still manages to sound annoyed. An absurd creature.
"I did not bring you aboard to be disassembled," I state.
"No?" she asks. "What exactly did you bring me aboard for?"
For the first time since entering the room, I find myself without an obvious answer. “You may assist in my efforts to serve my Queen. And you may be rewarded.”
“What kind of reward?”
There is in fact little chance Nora will be rewarded. Certainly the Queen will never reward an out-Brood female of another species. “Perhaps you will be allowed to return to your home world.”
“What would be the point? You’re planning to totally destroy it. And you just said you would take me there.”
For a few moments I study the star chart instead of answering. She’s remarkably hard to talk to, contradicting me and turning my own words around in a way that no underling would ever dare.
Why did I take her aboard? Now that I look back on it, it was quite irrational.
I left the safety of my own ship and dived towards her broken and exploding ship in empty space, inside a mine field.
It wasn’t something I’d do for anyone else.
Even if the Queen herself had been in danger, I doubt I would have acted so dangerously. There can always be a new Queen.
The question should be simple: I rescued her because she might lead me to her world. Because her world might save my career, satisfy my Queen, and elevate my Brood. Every part of that is true.
Yet somehow the answer feels incomplete.
"You are an unusual discovery," I say at last. "Your kind travels through space without shields. You crossed a minefield that should have killed you. You escaped from my ship. Then you refused a command from a Chief Harrower."
Nora folds her thin arms over her packing material casing. "I’m not sure that answers the question."
The machine drifts closer to her shoulder.
I turn away from the bowl. "You interest me." The words come out before I can improve them.
Nora’s knits her curious and remarkably expressive eyebrows. "Interest you?"
I gesture toward her with one hand. "You are plainly prey. Yet you behave like a rival. You have no armor, no weapons, and no visible defenses. Yet you continue to challenge me. It is… contradictory. Dangerous, of course. Deadly. And yet I haven’t killed you."
Her alien expression becomes difficult to read. "On my planet," she says carefully, "most women would be nervous in my situation."
"Most females in your situation would be dead,” I point out. “The minefield would have killed them. And most males, too. Then the Beast should have killed you. Then Sris should have terrified you into obedience. Or worse. But you… you keep arguing."
To my surprise, one corner of her mouth twitches upward.
The reaction is so unexpected that I find myself staring.
The female is frightened, trapped, surrounded by enemies, and somehow still amused.
The realization sends a strange warmth through me that has absolutely nothing to do with lightning. Or does it?
“You were about to have Sris hurt me,” she says. “Then you threw her out. Well, at the wall, but she got the message.”
“Now…” I begin, but I don’t know where I’m going with it. “Sris sometimes gets carried away.” I can hear how weak it sounds when her translation Kast repeats my words in her alien language.
It’s the first time I can remember when I struggle to take control of the situation. Any underling pushing me like this would find himself ripped to pieces on the spot.
I reach out and grab Nora’s cool little wrist. She gasps and tries to pull away, but I hold her firmly. Her arm has a scratch from the rescue, possibly where Sris was too quick cutting off the suit and clothing with her claws.
“Not bleeding anymore,” I point out, just to have something to say.
She looks up at me, breath quickening. When I’m this close, it becomes almost laughable how small she is.
And how soft and warm. My mind spins. How can she live this unprotected?
She’s absurdly fragile, far too vulnerable to travel in space.
And really too fragile to even survive aboard the Beast, especially as a female.
I reach out with my other hand, wanting to stroke the skin. Surely there must be scales underneath-
Crack.
A bolt of lightning shoots from my finger to her arm and stands there for a full heartbeat, vibrating in intensely blue, bridging us.
“Wither!” I yank my hand away. “Are… are you all right?”
Nora rubs her arm. “There’s no pain. Just bright light. What is that?”
I wonder about that, myself. It’s not Sris doing it, but I knew that already. It’s not static electricity - that could never support an arc of light like that. Perhaps this female isn’t as undefended as I thought. “You tell me, Nora. How do you do it?”
“I don’t,” she says. “I can’t. It’s obviously you.”
I fear she’s right. At least one time, the lightning was limited to me. But that may mean that it’s a weapon. Probably not wielded by Nora. She’s far too bare to hide weapons.
With one quick move, I snatch the flying machine out of the air. It spins its rotors and whines in protest as its hard casing creaks in my hard grip.
I hold the disk up to my face. “I recommend you stop that electricity show. It’s becoming an annoyance.”
“I’m not doing that!” the machine says. “It’s not me or Nora, Chief Harrower! It’s you!”
“It’s not Lucius,” Nora says quickly. “He can’t do anything like that. His only weapon is the things he says. And they're worse.”
I tighten my grip and the casing creaks more. “I never use machines. They aren’t trustworthy, the way a living creature is when you give it just a bit of pain or present the possibility of it. Machines feel no pain and most of them are indifferent to whether they live or die.”
“I’m not!” the machine insists. “I care a great deal about being alive!”
I fling it away. It wobbles through the air, and with a whine of its rotors it stabilizes a finger’s width from the wall.
“Krix’vorr,” Nora says softly, and I find I like the sound of it. “I understand you’re afraid of your Queen. Why not leave her service? Perhaps there are others who would take you in. You’re obviously a capable warrior.”
Thoughts collide in my mind and I almost laugh.
“Leave? Leave the Brood? Afraid of the Queen? Others? Take me in?!” It’s all too insane, but perhaps I should try to explain.
“The Brood is the life, and the Queen is the provider of that life. Nobody has ever left their Brood. It does happen that a brood and queen die by some calamity and only a few brood members are left alive. They all kill themselves on the spot. Always.”
“Why would your Queen kill you?” Nora asks, like a newly hatched fledgling. “You’re big and strong, brave and skilled.”
This time I do laugh, a dry bark without mirth.
“The Queen has a dozen Chief Harrowers, just like me. Beneath them are hundreds of Harrowers and Junior Harrowers, just waiting for a chance to disgrace a Chief and so take his place. Any Queen revels in the competition. And a Chief Harrower is expected to deliver, to prove his place at the top of the Swarm.”
“And if he doesn’t? He’s just killed?”
“Just killed would not be enough. He’s painfully killed, disgraced and humiliated in view of the Queen’s Court. The pain is not the worst part. It’s the disgrace.”
She looks away. “That doesn’t sound like a Queen worth working for.”
“Working for? This isn’t work, little female. This is life. This is helping the Brood and the Queen and the Swarm.”
“And then? Say you find a great target for stripping and destroying. Your Swarm and Queen destroy it and are happy. What do you get?”
I frown at the alien weirdness of the question. “Honor. Public recognition. The gratitude of the Brood and the Queen. Sometimes a Chief Harrower is allowed to become the sire of the new generation of the Brood.”
“Like a consort?” Nora asks, and I suspect the Kast is translating her words more accurately than she knows.
“A Royal Mate, yes,” I tell her. “The greatest honor anyone could have, mating with the Queen and being raised almost to the level of the Queen herself.”
“But still a Royal Mate must obey the Queen in all things?”
“Of course. Everyone must and everyone wants to.”
“Even when she orders the destruction of an innocent world?”
I tap the Brood mark on my hand. “We all know our duty. It would never cross anyone’s mind to not obey, least of all about a Harvest. We all enjoy harvesting a great deal.”
“But what if a Chief Harrower refuses?” Nora asks.
It’s another question that’s completely surreal, and my mind can’t cope with it. Nora not only looks alien, she has an absolutely alien way of thinking. If it can even be called thinking.
Her eyes are deep and dark, and her hair makes her look extremely exotic.
It must be a rare feature on any species.
It’s not exactly fur, but it does resemble it.
Her little nose must not draw in enough air to be effective, and her white little fangs would barely bite through the skin of a greps.
Her face changes when she thinks, her eyebrows are almost offensively expressive.
But her bravery gives me pause. She doesn’t cower, she doesn’t plead. She speaks to me like an equal. A female from a prey species! It’s remarkable.
To my astonishment she steps closer to me, holding up the stiff casing around her with one hand. “I think a truly strong Chief Harrower could refuse. I think he could say ‘no’ to his Queen. I think he could look her in the eye and say, ‘you’re wrong’. And… I think the Queen would agree.”
With her other hand, she reaches out and touches my arm. Another small lightning bolt cracks between us.
I go completely still, my mind paralyzed by both the absurdity of her words and the unprecedented boldness of her actions.
Suddenly she fills all my senses. Her sweet scent, the sound of her breathing, the moistness of her exotically full lips. I find myself slowly bending down, as if I want to place my face closer to hers, to study her even more closely, to maybe even make contact with those lips…
“Chief Harrower!” a voice comes timidly from behind me.
I whirl around, enraged. “What?!”
It’s the signals chief, standing in an open membrane, bent almost double from respect as he holds out the message tablet. “Sir, we have received a new reply to our query!”
I march over, snatch it out of his hands and kick him out of the room. The opening shuts.
“Beast,” I say to the ceiling, “you are to notify me before you let anyone into my presence in my own chamber!”
The room goes darker for a heartbeat, then brightens again - the Beast’s feeble attempt at a half-apology. I know she did it on purpose, hating Nora with a passion.
I tap the tablet to my antenna and read the message.
Great Chief Harrower Krix’vorr! May this message find you fed and feared.
I have made further enquiries concerning your previous query.
It was the Brood of the pitiful and lowly Queen Crak-difz which found the wreckage I mentioned.
The enemy Harrower in question is currently locked in battle with the ship of our own moderately respected Harrower Dri’puxz, and so prevented from returning to his queen and her Nest. Shall I intervene, Chief Harrower?
I may assist Dri’puxz and force the Crak-difz Harrower to give up the secrets.
All glory to Queen Szum-zic!
Harrower Buc’Xsit.
“Signals chief!” I roar when I finish reading.
The Beast opens a membrane and after a few heartbeats the signals chief dives in and stays on the ground. “Chief Harrower! How may I obey?”
“Signal Harrower Buc’xsit!” I command. “He is not to intervene, but he is to immediately transmit to me the location of the space battle that Harrower Dri’puxz is involved in! Go!”
The underling crawls out and the membrane closes.
I look out at the stars. The Brood of Queen Crak-difz may have found another ship like Nora’s. And possibly another creature like her. If so, I must either destroy that creature or take it for myself. The latter would be better. Two of them would be much stronger evidence than just one.
Nora looks up at me, standing exactly where I left her.
Even now, I want to reach out and touch that smooth skin. And for some reason, I hope there’s just the wreckage. Despite the obvious advantages, having another like her would be… troublesome.
I turn around and leave the chamber. There’s work to do.
Yet for the first time in many cycles, I find myself wishing there wasn't.