by Robin Lovett
Gods. I gulp hard. I must have misheard. That can’t be right. “How old were you when your mate died?”
Any smile that might have been in his eyes fades. His gaze travels to the sky. “Twenty-two.”
My breath stops in my lungs. “You were mated so young.”
“Tiortan was only twenty,” he muses quietly. “We were practically kids. It’s unusual. But when the Attachment happens…” He takes a deep breath. “It’s considered good fortune to find one’s mate early in life.” He says a phrase in Ssedez involving sounds only his dexterous tongue could make.
“Why?”
“When the heart is full, life is fuller.”
“Has your heart been empty since she died?” I feel like he needs to open his eyes and live.
But my question has the opposite effect I intend. He closes his eyes, and his face contorts like he’s in pain. “Do not ask me that.”
“All I meant is—”
“I know what you meant,” he seethes through his teeth. If we weren’t in hiding, he would’ve yelled it. “You meant I should move on. Guess what? I fucked you, didn’t I? So that must mean I’m over her.” He glares at me, and I stare back, unable to believe what he just said.
And then I think about it.
And think about it some more.
Oh my gods, no.
“Does that mean…” My voice shakes. “Please tell me you’ve had sex with other people since she died.”
He leans on his knees and stares off into the forest.
“Someone besides me,” I press, needing an answer.
But he doesn’t respond. He won’t even look at me, and my heartbeat accelerates. It would explain so many things. His fervency. His sex drive. His unquenchable need for more of me. If I hadn’t had sex in a hundred years, I’d be the same.
Or, I am the same. With him. Not that that means anything.
So, his unfettered lust has nothing to do with how attracted he is to me. It’s because he’s been denying himself for a century. But that doesn’t explain…
“Why me?” I whisper.
“I do not know.” He says it with such finality, the subject is closed. He’s not commenting anymore to assuage my curiosity.
Which is good, because a loud clanking comes from beyond us, and the Hades hangar bay door opens.
If my heart was racing before, it slows, trudging in my chest like it’s just been filled with mud. My hands get clammy, and I realize why I’ve been so chatty and provoking him with painful questions.
I’m nervous. No matter how strong my sense of duty is that I must do this, I don’t want to be here. I escaped and thought I’d never see this ship again or the people on it. But he might not even be onboard. Maybe they gave Dargule’s ship to someone else.
“Assura, remember to breathe,” Gahnin whispers beside me, and I’m suddenly grateful he’s here. I don’t have to face my fears alone.
I glance back at the ship. It’s going to be okay. We have to succeed.
Out walks my worst nightmare.
Chapter Sixteen
Gahnin
She goes so still beside me, it’s like she’s not even there.
She makes no sound, no movement. I have to look at her to be sure she has not run away.
It must be a technique, something she does to remain undetectable. But her pallor is paler than I have ever seen her, like all the blood has drained away from her skin. She does not respond when I encourage her again to breathe, so I assume my attention is unwelcome, and stop.
The human standing at the end of the ship’s gangplank looks like someone straight from the old videos of the Ten Systems genocide war against the Ssedez.
I was not old enough to be a warrior until I turned thirty, after the war was over, despite my mate being among the dead. The Ssedez hid themselves on an unknown planet, so the Ten Systems would never find us again—and they have not, until now. But I have seen images of the conflict, and their soldiers looked just like this.
The soldier in black armor and helmet stands surveying the forest. He must be this Dargule who Assura fears. There’s no curiosity in his stance or gesture. No wondering or searching for discovery. Nothing but cold, hard supremacy. Like he expects everything, even the dirt, to bow down beneath his feet.
His head and shoulders square forward, posture rigid and domineering. If he pulled blasters and started shooting at the trees for not bending before him, it would not surprise me.
“Is it him?” I whisper to Assura. “Is the one in the front Dargule?”
She gulps hard, her neck clenching, then she turns her eyes to me. Sheer terror. She looks frightened enough to run.
I grasp her hand. “We do not have to do this. We can go back. You do not have to be the hero.”
She squeezes my hand as though agreeing with me, then shakes her head and looks back at Dargule. “Looks like he took the antidote.”
I want to laugh, and I would, if she were not so obviously terrified.
I glance at her again, and she has a blaster in her hand. I did not even hear her take it out. She hands it to me silently.
I examine the black, short-range weapon with titanium settings and nuclear charger. “These are useless against their armor.”
“It works if you aim for the joint separations.” She settles her own blaster’s aim on the top of the bunker of ashes. “Dargule will take his helmet off. Fire on him when he does. Don’t bother with anyone else until he is down.”
A dozen Ten Systems soldiers march down the plank, their matching black armor clanking in unison.
“How do you know he’ll take his helmet off?” I ask.
“Because he will. He believes he’s invincible—his greatest weakness.” Her tone is as frigid as snows in winter.
The twelve soldiers disappear into the woods, and another twelve march out.
But my eyes are only for Dargule, who, true to what Assura said, reaches for his helmet, takes it off, and we fire—
At the same moment, an armored lieutenant steps in front of Dargule. Both our laser blasts glance off his helmet.
“Shit.” Assura ducks behind the bank of ashes, and so do I.
Shouts sound behind us. Blaster shots explode in the bunker protecting us.
“What’s our escape plan?” I yell over the noise of the blasters.
“There’s an escape plan?”
“You said you had a strategy!” I snap, wishing now I had asked more questions.
“I do. Kill Dargule.” I notice her hands are shaking. She is not okay. Something is wrong.
I have to help her focus. “There’ll be a dozen soldiers on us in thirty seconds. Do we fight them or try to hide in the forest?”
She looks at me, and there’s steel in her eyes. The kind of courage that comes only when facing great fear. “I have to get on board the Hades. It’s not enough to kill Dargule. We can’t let the Ten Systems find out about the Fellamana. They’ll destroy them.”
“Agreed.”
“We can’t let the Ten Systems find out the Ssedez are still alive, either.” She shoves her blaster at me. “You need to run.”
“No. I will not.”
“You promised you’d fall back if I told you to.” She starts to fumble with her weapons.
“But not like this. You need help, Assura. You are shaking.” I clasp her impotent hands that are struggling and failing to undo her weapons belt. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to surrender.”
I grab her arm to stop her. “No.”
“You never should’ve come!” The fear quaking her voice has not lessened; if anything, it’s increased to include me. “You Ssedez destroyed your home world so the Ten Systems would never find out your species survived. If they see you, it’ll be for nothing!”
“I am one lone Ssedez. My presence here does not give away my entire species.” A laser blast hits the barricade of ashes next to my head. “Their weapons will not hurt me. There’s a chance I could fight thr
ough them. Even if I cannot, the worst that would happen is they restrain me. You have no natural armor. They could kill you.”
Her eyes widen. She knows I am right.
I point toward the trees. “Hide. You may be able to sneak aboard the ship while I draw their fire.” And it will allow her time to gather courage over her fear.
She stares at the jungle, her eyes darting from tree to tree, plotting a course to the ship. “It could work.”
“Go,” I say, and she scrambles off low in the bushes. Too soon, I lose sight of her. I watched her sneak into the forest, and now I can’t see her, her movements too calculated to be detected among the trees.
I smile, my respect for her skills mounting. Damn, she’s good.
It is my turn. I stand and face the fire.
A dozen blast shots hit me in the chest.
Chapter Seventeen
Assura
Once I’m concealed by the foliage, I turn back to watch.
The armed soldiers encroach on Gahnin, and he takes their firepower like it’s mere water beating against his chest. He walks around the barricade toward them, shooting from his blaster. His aim is not as good as mine, but two soldiers go down as he hits two shots in the kinks of their neck armor.
I move from tree to tree, keeping my eyes on Gahnin. He is impressive, fearsome, even terrifying. And it’s so damn hot. I have to not think about it to continue moving. I want to stand and watch. He takes out the soldiers one by one.
He shoves one to the ground with a hand. The soldier lands so hard, even with the armor, he goes unconscious. One tries to fight back, but Gahnin pulls a knife from his chest holster and stabs the soldier in the shoulder crease of his armor on the first swipe.
They fall like flimsy dolls, victim to his inhuman strength. I never put together just how dangerously lethal he is. But he doesn’t kill any of them, merely removes them from his path, and incapacitates them so they can’t attack him again from behind.
I dodge to the next set of trees, crouching closer and closer to the shadow of the Hades.
The soldiers start to retreat in fear until Gahnin comes face to face with Dargule. Gahnin lifts the blaster, aiming for Dargule’s head. I hold my breath, desperate to see the end of the vile monster who’s fueled my nightmares.
Dargule’s face, though, rather than afraid, looks gleeful.
He grabs something from his weapons belt. Before I have to time to wonder what it is, warn Gahnin, or do something about it, he points it at Gahnin and shoots.
Gahnin doesn’t even duck, assuming it’s just another blaster that won’t harm him. What erupts from Dargule’s weapon is not the green light of a blaster’s laser. It’s white static, so hot I feel the blast of heat radiate to where I’m hidden, several meters away.
It hits Gahnin, and he starts to shake as though in a seizure, and static sparks come off his body. He falls to his knees.
I freeze in horror, disbelieving what I’m seeing. But Dargule bends down to shock Gahnin again, and my heart screams through my throat.
“No!” I run from the trees, holding down the trigger of my blaster, aiming rapid fire at Dargule’s head.
But it’s as though he predicted my movement. He points his weapons at me.
The white-hot charges seem to latch onto my blast shots, disintegrating them. One connects with my blaster and heats the weapon until it’s so hot, I’m forced to drop it or burn my hands.
Dargule shouts, “Seize her!” And every soldier who hid from Gahnin and remains conscious comes at me.
If it were three or even four of them, I could fight them off. But seven is too many for even me. Rather than risk injury to myself—knowing if I’m knocked out, I’ll have zero chance of helping Gahnin—I put my hands in the air in surrender.
Two of the soldiers, who I recognize by their uniform rankings, grab my arms and restrain them behind my back. Their holds are inferior, and I could break them with a twist of my torso, but breaking free now is counterproductive.
I arch my neck around them to see Gahnin, prostrate on the ground, but I breathe a sigh of relief. He is moving, writhing and moaning in pain, but conscious.
The soldiers walk me forward, and my gaze locks with Dargule’s.
My shoulders start to shake. His eyes probably used to be dark brown, but whether it’s genetic alteration or just corruption from his years of cruelty, they’re black now. It looks like he has no irises.
He didn’t used to scare me. Or I was so habitually guarding myself against my fear of him, I lived with mental defenses like armor inside my head. But in the time that I’ve been separated from him, in my six weeks of freedom, I’ve grown soft.
I’ve let those defenses down.
“Stop,” he orders.
I am taller than he is. So at least I have that to my advantage. That and nothing else. That’s why he stops me so far away from him, so the height difference isn’t obvious.
Dargule’s dark eyes shine from his pale face with calculated malice. I know that look. He’s already planning what twisted things he’ll do to me and Gahnin, and it contorts my stomach so hard, I have the urge to vomit.
A creepy smile stretches his face. “Assur. What a pleasure.” His gaze darts to Gahnin on the ground. “Tell me, who is your Ssedez friend?”
I barely suppress my shiver of disgust as the sound slithers down my spine. His voice, with his helmet off and free of the scrambler, is low, but in the opposite way of Gahnin’s resonant tone. It’s like Dargule’s is vacant somehow. Vacant of the things that make a person human—normal emotions beyond his capability. My days with the Ssedez and Fellamana are proof: “humanity,” or the respect for all living beings, is something missing more often from humans than other species, at least, in my experience so far.
But I force myself to get over my reaction to him and respond to what he said. Assur isn’t my name anymore. “Who’s Assur?” I say, low enough it’s almost a whisper.
By instinct, he comes closer so he can hear me. Which is what I wanted—for him to feel threatened by our height difference. Though perhaps that’s stupid. The more threatened he is, the crueler he has the potential to be.
He tilts his head in a gesture having nothing to do with curiosity—more like sociopathy. “Is this a game? Or are you in an identity crisis, my little tormentor?”
The nickname slugs me with a punch of revulsion. He used to say it when I was most at his mercy, when there was nothing I could do to disobey him without landing myself in a torture chamber or worse, losing my job as his right hand and leaving the prisoners to face a true psychopath instead. There is nothing little about me, but he said it to screw with me and make me feel small, part of his vile manipulations. His ability to see what will torment people most and remind them of it as often as possible is insanity-inducing.
Him calling me that helps me retrieve my former mental armor. I have to protect myself and not give in to my fear if I hope to survive this.
Still on the ground, still curled in pain, Gahnin speaks in a hoarse voice. “Are you some little version of authority we’re supposed to be afraid of? Where’s your commanding officer?”
Brilliant. Even in his weakened state, Gahnin’s already caught on to Dargule’s game. His is a voice sent from someplace nearest to heaven as I’ve ever heard.
I have a partner. I’m not alone in this. Not like I used to be.
Dargule’s expression ices over. Oh shit. That ruthless, emotionless gaze that is his natural state is the one that makes me sweat most. It means he’s going to drop the civilized act and shoot straight for pain.
He lasers a look at me. “You stole my prototype.” The weapon I took from him was his latest toy, as he calls his torture devices, though he has a new one now that’s better. He had worked on the old one for months. I destroyed it before I left with the Origin. It was the only way I knew I’d get past him to free the prisoners, if he was without that weapon. The rest of my plan didn’t work.
Dargule’s mouth
twists in a vicious grin that on him is terrifying. “But you’re mine now.” He points his shock gun, or whatever the hell is in his hand, at me. “Back away from her,” he orders to the guards.
They let me go. I have no way of protecting myself. I hold my breath, assuming he’s going to shock me the same way he did Gahnin.
A silver stream of static pours from his weapon and forms into standing bars in front of me. Blindingly bright lines form in front of my face. I don’t touch them, sure they’ll do to me what they did to Gahnin—worse.
I try to go around them but can’t. I turn, and they’re all around me, above me. An electromagnetic cage. Beneath me, a solid floor forms, made of—I don’t know what. The whole cage emits a high-pitched hum.
Beside me inside the cage, Gahnin groans on the ground and rolls to his side, clutching his chest. At least he’s not dead.
“Oh, goodie,” Dargule chimes gleefully, outside the cage, next to my face. “I love it when my new toys work better than I expected.”
I have no idea what the hell that thing is he used on us, or how it could possibly work on Gahnin when no other weapon other than fire could. But this is bad. Very bad.
This is a cage I have no idea how to escape from.
I glare at Dargule and his expression of sick pleasure. “What is that thing?” He’ll most likely take the excuse to brag about it. Learning more about the device is my best hope.
“It’s an electroshock gun, powered by a mini-hadron collider,” he says with a breathy tone that on anyone else I would associate with ecstasy. Which, I guess for him, this is.
“A hadron collider? With gold atoms?” So it creates heat—like hotter than a supernova. That’s why it worked on Gahnin. If he can be harmed with fire, then superheated blasts, hotter than fire, would definitely work, too.
I glance at Gahnin still curled in on himself with pain. A sinking sensation slams my innards. What if it singed his nervous system, all the way to his brain?
I try to spit at Dargule through the bars of the cage. But my saliva sizzles in the static between the bars.
Dargule’s smile of vile pleasure widens. “This is so perfect, I couldn’t have scripted it.”
