Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
AIRIK
Airik pulled the tight collar of the Veynari-issued shirt away from his neck. He could barely breathe. Along with Torren and Lucky, he crowded into the narrow hall in front of the hygienic suite. Nora showered inside, her scent sealed behind the heavy metal door.
Torren opened a pouch of dried meat ration and held it out to Airik.
“You must be starved for something substantial. I don’t know how you’ve survived this long, or how you’ve kept a human alive with you.
” He shook his arm toward Airik, who kept his focus down the hall where Xallix had disappeared.
“It isn’t a wonder you’re unbranded—the best of us. ”
“He is not a morazir,” Airik said, the smell of the meat making him sick.
Never, in the history of the Veynari, had the task of decommissioning a world been anyone’s duty but a morazir’s.
Triggering planetary entropy—to end a celestial body and collapse a world with its unique life signature—was a solemn ritual performed only by the strongest, shaped from childhood to bear its weight.
Though Torren’s attention had shifted to Lucky, too taken by the ooshi to respond, Airik continued, “He does not abide by the oaths. He’s liable to touch—or take—whatever he wants.”
Torren made a noncommittal noise and knelt beside Lucky.
He scratched Lucky under the chin until the ooshi flicked his tail, finally allowing himself a small pleasure despite Airik’s agitation.
“There you are,” he cooed. “Whatever has happened to you is over now, little one. You are safe.” He patted Lucky’s head once more, then stood and looked to Airik.
“Xallix still serves the Veynari Interstellar Shield Forces. An annoyance, yes, but he still obeys us. Anyway, he shouldn’t be your biggest concern. ”
Worry flashed across Torren’s face as he crossed his arms. “Did you know all that’s left of your striker craft is a crater?
As if it’d been armed with a bomb. And then there’s the human—she’s made everything a mess.
Now I must manage a salvaged human’s transfer and explain how she came into my possession. ”
“She is in my possession. Not yours.” The tingle in Airik’s fingers intensified.
Torren scoffed, throwing Lucky the dried meat Airik hadn’t taken. “Did you know the craft was at risk—is that why you left?”
Airik leaned against the door, its metal surface heating his skin. Nora must have had the water at maximum temperature. With his attention torn between Nora, Torren, and Xallix, his head throbbed.
“The power core melted. We left because I did not have enough water for two.”
“Why land at all? Did the decommission order never come through?”
“I thought the craft was a reaper’s and they had come to harvest kudra.”
Torren tossed Lucky the last bite of meat. “Then the human’s appearance was a blessing—what if the power core had failed while you were still in orbit?”
“It overheated—it was not a true failure.”
“Overheated cores never detonate like that.” Torren looked down the hall, eyes narrowing.
Pain pricked Airik’s palm as he squeezed Nora’s necklace in his pocket, the points of the cross digging into his skin. Wanting to hear her move under the water’s stream, he turned so his ear was flush with the door.
Desperate for her, he imagined the droplets sliding down her body.
Between her breasts, still marked by his bites.
Down her belly, which he hoped, with proper food, would soon soften to how it had been when he’d found her.
Then he heard her voice. A sweet melody piercing the blizzard of his thoughts.
She was singing. About the joys of hot water, of all things.
Keeping her here was depriving her of what she needed. He needed to get her to Vorakon. Where she could have some basic comforts. So that he could begin building their life together and tearing himself free from the Veynari’s hold.
Airik pushed off the wall. “We need to return to Zarmur. I need to complete the human’s transfer and speak to Aelior about her accommodations and purpose. She cannot enter the breeding system—”
“Wait.” Torren ran a hand through his hair. Airik halted, recognizing the nervous habit. “The world did not stop while you bonded with your pets. Everything is a mess—”
So, this was an admonishment.
“Forget it.” Out of patience, he turned back to the command deck. “I will speak to Aelior now myself.”
He managed only one step before Torren caught his shirt sleeve, stopping him.
“Aelior has been detained,” Torren said. “She’s in an off-world containment facility with no communications.”
Airik recoiled out of his grip, stomach clenching. “What?”
Torren slowly stepped back, cautious, as if releasing an injured animal. “That’s all I know. Once we finish this mission, we can find out why and where. Maybe request a justice tribunal,” he said. Something they could do as morazir. “But Vorn’s foot has been pressed against my neck—”
At the mention of Vorn’s name, Airik went still.
Why did he keep hearing the name of a single general?
Over and over and over. Vorn had only been voted into the Ourex before Aelior, just before Airik was born.
An unexpected selection, as another general had died in transit to newly acquired worlds in the Third Sector, attacked by rebel insurgents who’d stolen a Veynari freighter and used it to target their craft.
Vorn had been a healer in the Garden of Solitude.
His nomination by the Algorithm to the Ourex had come as a complete surprise to the remaining five and to the Veynari as a whole.
But his work in the starfields had earned goodwill and trust, so he’d been voted to ascend—one of the few tasks outside the Algorithm’s complete control—unanimously.
It was thought that because Vorn was the first general who hadn’t previously served the Veynari as part of the shield forces, the Algorithm’s programming was evolving.
That the need for galactic expansion was ending and a time for healing had begun.
But then Aelior had been nominated to replace a general who had grown too old and would soon ascend to the stars.
And then the age of war was upon Airik again, and so was the need for the morazir to continue.
“Did Vorn order you to be here?” Airik asked Torren, his hand instinctively reaching for the blade at his hip.
“I thought you were selected for a breed match—to perform the most honorable duty. Since when do you obey a single general or forgo the chance to breed without the risk of branding?” Before he realized what he was doing, he grasped the handle of his sword.
Torren’s eyes flicked down to his fist, his perpetual smile fading. “Are you going to strike me down?” His frowned—how strange to see it. “You’d better do it quick, brother.”
With great effort, Airik tried to release his grip. But his right hand—after days of the seta’s venom damaging his nerves—would not let go. Frustrated, he ripped his hand away. The sword tore off his belt and fell to the ground, metal clanging on metal as the sound rang through the halls.
Lucky made a yelp, then pulled the sword beneath his body with his tail. Guarding both Airik and Nora as best as he could.
Nora’s singing had quieted to a hum, but he could still hear her move.
Nora. Nora. Nora.
Clicking his tongue, Torren lifted a brow at Lucky with the implied order to relinquish the sword. The ooshi looked to Airik with rounded eyes.
“He is a morazir, little one.” Torren softened his words, stroking Lucky’s head. “He needs his sword. It’s what makes him unkillable.”
With a huff, Lucky hesitantly moved aside.
Torren swung the sword over Airik’s back, attaching it to his harness with a jolt. “Your arm isn’t doing any better. Did you carry the human everywhere?”
Airik should have asked dozens of things, like why Aelior—a general and one of the Six—had been detained in the first place.
Why Torren spoke of Vorn as a separate entity at all.
Or why a shield force operative, disarmed by a special order by Vorn, assisted a morazir on an extraction mission.
Or why Torren assumed Airik had carried Nora.
Instead, Airik said nothing, his eyes fixed on Nora’s door.
Letting out a harsh sigh, Torren lifted his shirt, revealing his abdomen.
Airik blew out a sharp breath. “What happened?”
Three oath brands distorted the skin on his side, repeating the same word.
Untouched. Untouched. Untouched.
Though the words were still clear, toxic ink oozed out, running down in thick black rivulets.
Torren’s body, engineered to the limits of strength and regenerative capabilities, was rejecting the brand.
But that didn’t mean Torren didn’t feel the torture of the punishment or the prolonged sting of the ink rising back to the surface.
“I’m here on a punitive mission,” he explained.
Airik’s head bent down, his chest hollowed out. So many brands at once would have killed anyone but Torren.
“I’m doing just fine—thank you for asking,” Torren huffed before pulling a tube of healing gel from his pocket and spreading some on his finger.
The gel would not work on a brand; this was the action of a man driven to desperation because of pain.
“You still have so little faith in me. If you care to know, apparently I’ve been selling my seed in the villages of Zarmur for unsanctioned breeding. ”
Airik stared, speechless.
“They must’ve changed the ink formulation because I don’t think these brands have ever hurt so much.
” He spread the gel in an even layer over the symbols, hissing as he pressed it in deep.
After a moment of no movement, he made a fist, then struck the wall.
“Ulliel save me, I think I’ve made it worse. ”
The drozekar’s lights flashed, and the neural system spoke in a mild tone of disdain: “Unauthorized expression of anger, resulting in potential damage to the drozekar’s body. I’ve logged this indiscretion to Osian’s record, pending transmission once starborne again.”