Chapter 21 ZAPHAROS #2
I should have cared about these witnesses.
I didn’t. All I could think about was her.
The rest of my mind was focused on keeping my aura golden.
Carefully, I leaned in close enough that the Ohrur could feel my breath, and I let the faintest heat of my aura press against his thoughts.
Panic spooled through his mind like a loose thread.
“Find me the Ohrur ship that left from an outpost called MX45,” I instructed. "Now.”
I had finally figured out the name of the outpost through Nythor's mumbling. It took the computer a few heartbeats, but I found it.
His eyes darted; he was trying to buy time, hoping a guard would come to his rescue. They wouldn't help him. “I—names are encrypted—routes—”
“You will open the manifest,” I cut in. “You will trace the manifest hop back one node. You will tell me its current hold and send me the vector. You will route the comm through Ohrur nets and mark it with your signature. Do it now.”
He began to babble, pleading for his life—Please, don’t kill me, please—but my finger tightened on the grip until the oil-slick skin trembled. Fear makes clever men clumsy. Fear unlocks corners they hide from when their hands are steady.
Somewhere in the stall, the other customers shifted uncomfortably, but no one intervened. The Melvar stole glances, eyes wild, then looked away as though seeing gods was an act of bad luck.
The Ohrur’s fingers flew over the comm panel as commanded. I felt him sweat; I felt his thoughts like static against my will. He found the convoy manifest, the transport signature. The ship was on its way to Morrakbarr.
“Node Seven,” he whispered, trembling. “Shuttle cluster—transit lane—left the planet hours ago.”
“Good,” I said, and the word was the end of any courtesy between us.
One last time, the merchant whimpered, in a voice that was barely a breath, “Please—don’t—”
“You will tell no one about this moment,” I said, and when he hesitated, the muzzle pressed harder. “You won't even remember this happened.” My mind probed his and embedded the command, filling it with different memories instead. I wasn't as clumsy as Nythor.
“Yes. Yes. I will—”
Morrakbarr. A slaver hub. A trade planet where the Ohrurs funneled contraband and flesh alike. It fit the pattern: a moving convoy born of bargains between Cryon hands and Ohrur ledgers, rendezvousing at one of the transit nodes.
The merchant nodded, his eyes wet and vacant, the memory-threads I’d woven in his skull already knitting the lies I’d planted. He would wake to a story that tasted like cowardice and caution; he would not wake to the knowledge of what I had done. Good.
The concourse hummed with the usual commerce and the oily breath of traders, but the motion in the crowd shifted like a school of fish startled by a predator. Footsteps—not the casual pacing of shoppers but the measured, armored cadence of enforcers—thudded closer.
I straightened. Not because I worried. Because timing is everything.
They appeared as a wedge of motion at the end of the lane: three males.
Space Guardians, I assumed, by their uniforms and the way they carried themselves.
Their silvery skin shone under the artificial lighting, and the realization of who they were—or who they were supposed to be—hit me with a vengeance that threatened to rob my breath.
I knew this species. It was one of the last we seeded before we stopped with the senseless undertaking.
But this one wasn't one of the original species.
No. This one reeked of artifice, of something stitched together in vats and cold laboratories, not born of balance.
Things that were never supposed to be. They were one of those things brought to life without soul, without purpose, animated shells meant to obey and endure.
They had taken what we once seeded and corrupted it.
They?
Who?
Blind fury raged underneath my skin. I needed to find out.
I would find out.
But first, I had to get Ella back to safety.
The three males advanced in formation, their weapons slung with the easy assurance of soldiers who had known nothing else since their first breath.
Their silvery skin gleamed beneath the station’s harsh glow, every line of muscle too precise, too engineered.
Even their eyes, flat and dark, betrayed nothing, no spark of the starlight that bound species to creation.
Space Guardians. That was what they were called now.
Mercenaries. Enforcers. Tools leased out by the Ohrur, like blades from a rack.
But I knew what they truly were: echoes.
Faint reflections of something my kind had once woven, now stripped of their soul and made to serve masters who knew nothing of balance.
A vengeance I hadn’t felt in eons coiled in my chest. To see what they had become—what had been done to them—was enough to make my blood burn black.
The lead male moved with that peculiar assurance of hired killers who’ve been paid to break and take without asking questions.
“You,” the man at the front said flatly, as if reciting a list of sins. “By order of the Ohrur Council, you are under arrest for unlawful interference in merchant operations.”
A laugh threatened to tear out of me. Arrested.
The gall of mortals to think chains could bind gods.
But I remained cool and did what I always did: carefully weighed my options.
I could have ended them. A few flicks of my sword, and the concourse would have become a grave.
It would leave no sign beyond the echo of a storm.
My hands twitched; the hunger in my blood answered the impulse with a promise of carnage.
Then the idea struck, cold and precise.
If I landed on Morrakbarr with my ship, alarms would flare.
Cryons and Ohrurs alike watched for such sparks.
But if I allowed these Guardians to claim me, to present me as a prisoner loaded aboard their sanctioned route, I could travel to Morrakbarr under their credentials, and neither Cryons nor Ohrurs would ever suspect a thing.
Vaelion would seethe with fury that I had lost us another ship, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
So I let the predatory grin die.
“Under arrest?” I echoed, letting the mock-annoyance settle into my voice like dust.
The lead Guardian inclined his head. His expression was unreadable, a stony mask that made my inner alarms flare. “You will come with us. Resistance will be met with death.”
I gave a single, theatrical sigh and offered no fight. Let them make their show. Let them think they’d caged the animal. Electric cuffs snapped around my wrists. For a while, I’d allow the illusion: my shoulders slackened, my aura dimmed to a dull ember. I folded a practiced scowl into my face.
They hustled me through the station under the watchful eyes of traders and scavengers. A youngling slipped between crates and stared up at me, whispering, “Who are you? You look like a god.”
At least someone had some sense here, even if it was a youngling.
The Guardians ignored him; their business was to take me to the Ohrur council.
I suppressed a grin. We would never get to Ohrur.
Already, I was implanting orders in the lead Guardian's brain to take me to Morrakbarr.
It was more difficult than I would have thought; his brain didn't work the way normal mortals' did.
At the airlock, one of them barked into a comm. “We have a prisoner. We’ll route with the transit manifest to Morrakbarr. Stand by for clearance.”
A lie already stitched to their purpose. Perfect.
As the Guardians shoved me up the ramp and into the belly of their vessel, I sent more mental commands to smooth my presence—a low, false hum that made the sensors read me as sedated, compliant.
They locked the transport’s hull and sealed it with a short hiss.
Inside, the Guardians tried to prod me with questions; their eyes were hungry for violence and confessions.
Tired of their games, I put them to sleep, then found myself suitable accommodations.
Inside, I finally, finally, allowed my rage to take over.
I’d never know how long it lasted. My aura went completely black, and I forgot everything around me.
I destroyed the room in its entirety until I was breathless and unable to lift a finger.
Only then did I collapse on the ground and allow sleep to take over.
I needed to be at my best when we landed on Morrakbarr. Ella was counting on me.
Only what was happening to her in the meantime haunted me, broke into my sleep, and filled it with nightmares.