Chapter 25
Trouble Comes in Threes
Khar
“Not you three again? By the Cradle, you can cause more damage than a whole squad with heavy weapons on a bender!”
Divani Youth Drill Instructor, shouting at the Themeshvar brothers
All things considered, this was not the worst-case scenario.
Granted, he was almost certainly about to die under the Colossus’s fist, but compared to the crucibles of past chrono-cycles, which had felt like walking through the Cradle’s furnace, it still counted as progress.
Lily was alive, without serious external injuries.
She wasn’t safe yet, but he knew his brothers would do everything to protect her and care for her if he fell.
If he’d been given a choice, he would have spared her from watching his skull crushed in the Colossus’s grip.
Life, however, had taught him long ago that it was cruel, brief, and could end without warning, which meant you clung to every small joy that gave meaning to this cracked shard of creation.
His joy, his reason for being, was Lily. Perhaps it was selfish, but he was grateful he’d been allowed one last glimpse of her before the end.
Khar and the Colossus seemed locked eye to eye. There was no escaping the machine, and no chance that an intelligence guided by strict logic would show mercy. The Colossus drew back the mechanical joint that served as its elbow, gathering force for the blow that would shatter Khar’s skull.
Khar no longer saw it.
He exhaled once, slowly, emptying the tension that had cinched his chest since Lily was taken.
The moment he noticed the Vitro was gone from its berth.
The shock of speaking with Vegrun and understanding that Horos was behind the abduction.
The realization that whatever he did might not be enough.
The Vitromium was too fast. Its stealth too refined for ordinary enforcement to corner it in time.
Every breath could put light-years between him and the only being who gave his life meaning. He did not even know if she was alive.
How could he trust a slow, bureaucratic safety net where you needed clearance just to undock a ship?
Khar did not give up. Ever.
Even now, he was building a plan. Vegrun could do as he pleased. Khar would not let this go.
He still had contacts in the Legion. More importantly, he had left himself a few practical back doors into systems normally locked to civilians.
With some luck, IMPERIUM probes might catch the Vitro’s trace the moment Horos made an error and miscalibrated the shield.
Khar was certain Horos had jammed all outbound signals, forcing the ship to fly manual. At some point he would tire. Lily would not help him; Khar would bet his horns on that. And the exhausted made mistakes.
All he needed now was a ship almost as fast as the Vitro. The station’s military recon skiff might stand a chance, though he was not sure. Worth trying. He could probably crack its systems.
Khar unfolded from his crouch and headed for the dock exit when Helios’s panel lights flickered.
“What in the void?” he muttered. “Did Lily leave me a trail?”
He sprinted to the ship. The hatch irised open and the standard greeting began, the one that welcomed any new administrator on their first step aboard after registration.
“Brilliant female,” Khar barked, elated.
Helios might be small, but it shared the Vitro’s core parameters. In this situation, Lily had given him the finest gift possible.
Hope.
Khar dashed back out and pried up one of the dock’s floor plates, revealing the small survival kit he had stashed there, weapons included. No time to run home for the rest; this would have to do. Paranoia versus reality, one to zero.
Back aboard Helios, the ship dumped its typical welcome cascade on him. He killed notifications one after another and sprinted to the main console. He did not yet know the vector, but he began undocking. Alerts kept stacking. He waved them away with growing impatience.
“Speak when you have an actual idea where to go. Until then, be quiet.”
Helios did not reply aloud, but a seemingly minor note appeared on the display.
Notice: a registered ship-linked device is out of range.
Missing device: VoidBrace wristband with command or senior access. Initiate locator?
Khar stared, half-afraid he was imagining it. Lily’s VoidBrace. Of course. Horos would not have known it did not belong to the Vitro; both ships used the same design. But within a certain radius, Helios could track those signals even when the unit was powered down.
He slammed his palm to the screen and started the search. Feeling foolish but compelled to show gratitude in some form, he spoke to the ship.
“Help me find her and I will let you compete again for the position of First Husband.”
He could not be sure, but he thought Helios’s lights dimmed for a heartbeat and brightened again. The barely visible flicker reminded him of the way Divani narrow their eyes to slits, cutting the ambient glare to signal trust.
Khar let out a strained laugh, the first emotion to break through the cold fear that had clenched his heart since he realized Lily was gone. With Helios, he actually had a chance of tracking the Vitro. He also knew he would be outmatched if anyone besides Horos was aboard.
Notice: missing device locked. Navigation updated.
Helios’s voice filled the cabin, but Khar had already read and authorized a deep-space jump before the ship could finish.
The plan was to shadow the Vitro one jump at a time, riding the trace left behind, hoping they would pause long enough to be caught.
They were fortunate that Horos could not plug into the IMPERIUM navigation lattice.
Manual jumps had to be shorter; otherwise, pursuit would be impossible.
That bought Khar time to recruit allies. They would not get a second shot.
While Helios charged for the jump, a window during which outbound comms were unreliable, Khar drafted two messages.
The first went to Vegrun, informing him of the plan and that they should remain in contact.
He again not so subtly warned that as long as Lily remained aboard the Vitro, Vegrun was not to make a single move that might endanger her.
Otherwise, Khar would find himself a new mission: the elimination of a tentacled billionaire.
The second message was harder. In the end, he chose honesty and simplicity.
I need your help. They took my partner. I am in pursuit. Sending coordinates and will update after the jump.
No more context was needed. The network node he used was accessible to exactly three beings, wrapped in layers of security. No one had noticed it because no one had ever used it.
Its creators had saved it for a last resort and prayed they would never need it.
For the first time in his long, eventful life, Khar called on his brothers. The old Khar would have bristled at this. The Khar of now was past caring. He would do anything and call in any debt if it meant seeing her alive.
They dropped out of deep space. Helios immediately plotted the next destination. Two replies waited for Khar, startlingly similar in tone.
“I would never endanger Lily, you blockhead. I hired a private mercenary squad. We follow your lead.”
“Well look who crawled back. We would not budge for you, but your partner is innocent, aside from having the poor taste to fall for a jerk. Out of respect for her, we will be there.”
Khar frowned at the screen. Apparently he had that effect on everyone. Fine. They could think him a jerk as long as they did what he said. He sent each of them the updated coordinates and cleared Helios for the next jump.
The chrono-cycles blurred into a single, relentless chase.
The signal from Lily’s missing wristband grew stronger between jumps, proof that Helios was narrowing the gap.
His brothers pinged in that they were close.
They rendezvoused at one of the plotted points and boarded Helios without wasting a heartbeat, hauling aboard crates of weaponry and gear for grappling ships.
Step one of the family reunion was to attempt, with great brotherly affection, to beat their elder sibling for disappearing. Khar put them both on the floor. As he always had since childhood, minus a handful of lucky upsets. This time the victory was decisive.
Aros drummed his fingers on Helios’s deck to signal surrender, then switched to a far more dangerous armament: questions.
“Khar, what happened to you? We have not seen you in chrono-cycles and now you show up imprinted? Who is your partner?”
Khar got to his feet and tossed a packet of first-aid gel to his younger brother, Ikar, so he could patch his nose from the scuffle. All three knew Khar was buying time, but Aros and Ikar had nowhere to be except in his face until he cracked.
Eventually the silence stretched too long to bear, and Khar knew he could not stall any further.
Instead of digging into the past, which would only hurt all three, he reached for the only thing that brought him uncomplicated joy.
“I met her three chrono-months ago. I was a fool then.”
Aros opened his mouth to say he still was, but the youngest, who had always been the wisest in matters like this, kicked his ankle to shut him up.
“Ahem. So at first I kept my distance,” Khar went on.
Aros could not help himself. “You? Afraid of a female? I would pay to see it. What species is she? Must be something special if she can wring respect out of you, though I still do not see how she tolerates you.”
Khar considered spacing Aros and finishing the mission with Ikar, then forced himself to calm. Ikar’s even, neutral tone nudged them back on course.
“Khar, what happened? Tell us about her.”
Khar flicked open one of Lily’s images on the display. His grin, big enough to split his face, blurred his grief for a heartbeat. Then he glanced at his brothers and felt a sudden, lethal stab of jealousy.
“She is a…”
Ikar narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Human? Incredible.”
Khar looked at Ikar with pride, not only because Lily was extraordinary and he loved sharing that truth, but because his brother recognized such a rare, pre-IMPERIUM species. Then Aros let out a noise that was unmistakably suggestive.
Khar surged to his feet, ready to knock sense into the gold-horned clown, but Ikar held him back.
“Easy. He is trying to rile you. He missed you. But while we are here, humans are rare. I heard of one who made a name as a mercenary, spent his life searching for his homeworld in vain. There are rumors.”
Aros perked up. “Yes, for instance that sex with them—”
He did not finish, because Ikar cuffed him. The youngest sighed as if unbearably tired of the whole interaction, which Khar knew by now meant he was pretending.
“So this human female took pity on you somehow,” Ikar said. “What triggered the imprint? You would need hormonal cascades. Unless you were losing in fights, repeatedly…”
Khar nodded happily. Ikar and Aros stared at each other, startled at the implication.
“You mean she was stronger than you,” Ikar said.
“And she still chose you?” Aros gaped.
Khar’s embarrassment was almost palpable.
“I do not think she realized how much stronger. You know I do not show it because—”
All three recited their mother’s favorite axiom in perfect unison.
“Because it is not enough to be strong, you must look strong.”
“So, the vukri attacked us,” Khar continued.
“The Vitro, the Herion-12 class cruiser she’s being held on, has one single weakness: its instruments can’t detect vukri until they’re already inside.
Doesn’t matter. I was injured, and she protected me.
You should have seen her. She took down six of them with her bare hands and didn’t even break a sweat.
Then she hugged me and said I was her only friend.
And before that, I’d spent every waking moment scheming against her.
Humans are astonishing. It’s probably for the best that the IMPERIUM keeps them confined to their own system. ”
He told them everything he’d experienced working beside Lily. His brothers listened in stunned silence. When he finished, all three fell quiet, lost in thought.
“So this exceptional human female accepts you,” Aros said at last.
“That is the part I still find unbelievable,” Ikar admitted.
Khar forced himself to stay calm and answer seriously. What he had with Lily was sacred. He would never make light of it, not even with his brothers.
“I give her no reason to refuse me. When the imprint started, I had to face myself. If I had not been such a stubborn fool, I could have moved toward her the first moment I saw her. Instead I spent my energy feeling inadequate and resenting her for it. If the Cradle, fate, or pure chance hadn’t been so merciful, I might never have had the chance to make up for my stupidity.
She was perfect then, and she’s perfect now.
The bad slides right off her, and she accepts everything good I can give.
It’s as if we were made for each other. I will never give her up. ”
Ikar placed a supportive hand on his brother’s shoulder. Aros sprang to his feet and strode to one of the crates.
“We will not let harm come to her, brother,” Ikar said.
“And speaking of harm,” Aros added, “I hope your ship is stocked with a standard incubator. We brought a few vukri eggs, just in case.”
For the first time in his life, Khar felt grateful to be an elder brother.
“Of course it is.”
Aros’s smile turned wicked, and Khar had the odd sense of looking into a mirror.
“Then let us kick that Corvus’s bony backside with them.”