by N. I. Snow
The soldier's voice was barely audible as he pleaded, “Please High Elder, I was only…”
Salianos lashed out with a clawed hand at the golden Tazalian's head, piercing the soldier’s skull, ending his pleas. Violet eyes still burning, Salianos looked at the two stiff-backed Elders. The scarred, bronze-scaled Tarline looked down with mild interest at the dead soldiers; he would have enjoyed torturing at least one of them. Yahrik, on the other hand, had his dark-blue eyes focused on Salianos.
The High Elder spoke calmly to both of them, “Give orders to each warship’s commanders. They are to continue the attack on Earth until either the humans have surrendered or are annihilated.”
The burly Yahrik bowed his head to Salianos, “Right away, High Elder.”
As Yahrik walked towards the exit of the docking station, Salianos gave Tarline his orders. “Tell our pilots to have the ship ready to jump within the hour. We are going home.”
Tarline nodded his scarred head knowing better than to question the High Elder.
The fire slowly dying in his violet eyes, Salianos watched the bronze-scaled Elder follow after Yahrik. It would take nearly eight months for the ship to reach Tazal, but Salianos would be patient. He turned his gaze to the dead soldiers. Kahluna would die on Tazal just as Umelia had died. Nothing would come between him and his chance at gaining the Gaia's power—not even the human cub, Emma. If she tried to mislead him, she would learn very quickly he was not one to annoy.
Ten
Aboard the jagged nightmare ship, Valkyrie, a clatter woke Emma from her dreamless sleep. Rubbing a grimy hand across her face, she sat up. Her tired gray eyes looked across the cell to find a plate of odd-looking fruits and a bowl of steaming water with a ragged gray piece of cloth next to it. Emma brushed her long black hair behind her ears before looking around the dark room outside her cell. Somewhere in those shadows the gray-scaled Seeker was still lurking.
She hated being right. The Seeker's smooth, guttural voice rang out from somewhere to her right, “I understand your kind cannot survive long without food. After your little excursion through Neapolthia, you must be starving. You can use the bowl of water to clean yourself.”
Emma slowly slid herself over to the food, “So you can be nice after all.”
“I am ensuring you arrive on Tazal alive and healthy. It would not bode well for my reputation if you died before arriving.”
Emma crossed her arms across her dusty vest, “You’re saying I should eat to stay alive so that you don't look bad? Well, then, what if I starve myself?”
Zaharak appeared in front of the control panel to the cell. “I have ways of forcing you to feed. You don't mind feeding tubes in your throat, correct?”
Emma could tell from the look in his golden eyes beneath the fedora that he wasn't kidding. She picked up a round, fuzzy, orange fruit with pink stripes, but she gave Zaharak a snide smirk before biting into the fruit. Her mouth watered at the sweet flavor that filled it. Nothing on Earth tasted as good. Zaharak left as she took another bite; apparently he knew she would not be able to stop herself after one bite. Once she finished the orange fruit, she grabbed a lilac egg-shaped fruit and bit into it. It was just as sweet as the other, though a bit more tangy. Within minutes she finished the entire plate of food, just then realizing how hungry she had been.
After she had finished her small meal, she pushed the plate to one side and pulled the bowl of water to her. Picking up the rag she dipped it into the water and wrung it out. With the rag now wet she ran it over her face, wiping away dirt and sweat. The water washed away her remaining fatigue leaving her more alert to her surroundings. She dipped the rag back in the water and wrung out the excess dirty water before washing off her arms. She lifted up the sleeves of her shirt underneath her vest to wash her shoulders. Placing the rag on the steel floor she began pulling off her worn shoes and socks. Stuffing her socks into the shoes she placed her aching feet into the cloudy water. The remaining warmth was enough to sooth away some of the throbbing.
Once the water became cold she pulled her feet out and pushed herself into a crouch. Slowly she rose to a stand; every muscle in her body felt as though it was tearing apart. Pressing both hands against the small of her back she winced as vertebrae in her lower back popped. Letting out a sigh she walked around the cell, the muscles in her legs protesting against moving again. She had grown accustomed to the musty smell of the chamber, but the thick air still made it hard for her to breath.
She was making another pass around the cell when she noticed the bowl and plate were gone. Her head turned every way to inspect the plasma panels that imprisoned her. They had never turned off. Emma frowned, “How did you do that?”
Zaharak appeared in front of her and stuck his head through the barrier. His snout only inches from Emma's face. She flinched as his razor sharp fangs flashed as he spoke, “The barriers only react to prisoners. I can pass through with no problem.”
Emma shivered, wanting to back away from the mouthful of fangs, but she held her ground. “How convenient.”
Zaharak pulled his head back through the barrier. “I have had other prisoners who have tried to kill themselves before facing the Elders. These barriers allow me reach them with ease.”
Emma walked back to the center of the cell and sat down. Her gray eyes regarding Zaharak coolly. “How long will it take to reach Tazal?”
The leather jacket Zaharak now wore strained and looked to rip as he folded his arms across his broad chest. “Accepted your fate already?”
Emma did her best to act as emotionless as her captor. “I was only wondering how long I have to figure out how to break out of here.”
Zaharak chuckled coldly. “You have a lot of spirit. Many creatures in your position have indeed tried to escape. Some have tried to find weaknesses in the barrier, others have tried to escape through death, and,” he smiled cruelly, “others have tried to barter with me. You can imagine how distraught they when they offered prices higher than what the Elders would pay, only to have it turned down.”
“Seems you’re still loyal to them after all,” Emma remarked.
The Seeker's tail twitched, “Only if they pay. My loyalty is to myself. But it is a matter of practicality not to go back on a bargain; they are regular clients.”
Prisoner and Seeker gazed at each other in an eerie silence. Emma tried with difficulty to read Zaharak, but his golden eyes masked any emotion that might have been there. The young girl tried to match him with villains from her favorite holoshows. None really matched his characteristics perfectly. The nearest match she could make was a Neapolthian mobster named Thomas. Both were cold-blooded killers, though Zaharak could easily outmatch Thomas. Both were clever; they nearly dressed alike, though Thomas lacked the fancy fedora. Thomas, however, had no problem showing his emotions. Despite all of his murders, Thomas showed remorse for his actions. As Thomas lay dying at the hero's feet, he even asked for forgiveness. Anyway, Zaharak had made it clear that this wasn't one of her holoshows. This was the real world. Zaharak was real and he would have no remorse in killing her if he needed to.
“Three standard weeks,” Zaharak spoke, interrupting Emma's train of thought.
Emma looked at him curiously. “What?”
“That is how long it will take us to reach Tazal,” Zaharak replied, examining his sharp claws.
Emma frowned. “Three weeks? How far is Tazal from Earth?”
Zaharak didn't look up as he scratched away what looked suspiciously like dried blood. “Our star system is located on the outer edges of the Scutum-Crux arm. Tazal itself lies near the center of our system. Regarding distance from your planet, it is 65,000 parallaxes away.”
Emma's jaw dropped as her brain rushed to try and calculate the distance and time it would have taken a normal human shuttle to reach Tazal. “It would be impossible to reach Tazal in three weeks then. Even a ship going the speed of light would take thousands maybe millions of years to travel that distance.”
&nb
sp; She thought she caught a glimpse of amusement in Zaharak's cold, golden eyes. “Your kind still has much to learn. There are ways to travel faster than the speed of light. All Tazalian spacecrafts are equipped with engines that are able to bend the very spatial vacuum around them. By bending the vacuum, the engines release a type of Cashmir Effect, as your kind call it.”
Emma gazed wonderingly at Zaharak. “Your saying they can open a wormhole?”
Zaharak nodded. “In a sense, plus my ship has been modified to combine the spatial bending with the dark energies flowing throughout the galaxy. My lotarKor-drives are powerful enough to connect my system to your own.”
“How is that possible, though?” Emma asked wracking her brain for the answer. “The compression within a wormhole, let alone a super-charged wormhole, would tear a ship to pieces.”
Zaharak shrugged as he backed away into the shadows, his voice the only remaining evidence he was still nearby. “Reinforced hulling in addition to careful pressurizing of the cabin during the expedition keeps the ship intact.” His voice grew fainter, “Don't worry, child, you will arrive at Tazal in one piece.”
Emma frowned, her mind still racing through the information Zaharak had given her. The more she went through the properties of a wormhole combined with dark matter, the more it made sense. If the engines could produce enough energy to bend spatial matter, then a wormhole would indeed carry a well-reinforced craft through. Though, the amount of fuel needed to make an opening would leave a ship nearly depleted. Then again, she was sure the Tazalians had already found a solution to that problem. However it was accomplished, it left her on a deadly Seeker's ship for three weeks with nothing to do.
Her gray eyes ran along the edges of the plasma barriers. Escape was out of the question. Even if she did break out of the cell, she had nowhere else to go. She highly doubted Zaharak had any escape pods built into the ship, and she couldn't just run to the control room and turn the ship around. One she had no idea how to fly a Tazalian cruiser; second she definitely couldn't fight off Zaharak for control of the ship.
As her mind eliminated the possibility of escape, she began wondering what happened to Jonah. The last she saw of her older brother was when Kahluna had tried taking her to the ship. No doubt that wuss of a girl Shalinda was crying up a storm about her own safety, though from a distance Emma did feel somewhat bad for the woman. She and Jonah were supposed to get married and live a happy life, and then a bunch of Tazalians crashed the party.
Emma then began to think of Kahluna. The stout-hearted Tazalian risked her life to try and save her. Now she didn't know if Kahluna was alive or if the collapsed rooftops had become her tomb. The girl wondered why the Tazalian had tried so hard to keep her safe. Emma hardly knew Kahluna, and yet the former Seeker was willing to give her life for her. Sure, there was the fact that she could read the Ancients' writing, but that didn't seem to be enough for Kahluna to risk her life for. Then she remembered the look in the violet-eyes of the High Elder.
A shiver ran down Emma's spine. That creep Salianos was indeed more frightening than Zaharak could ever be. That he was Kahluna's father was nearly as impossible to believe as the Tazalians' form of travel through the galaxy. Emma highly doubted he had been a very loving father. Undoubtedly he was the reason Kahluna had tried to get Emma off Earth. If there were beings any worse than Salianos, she would have to see them before she believed they were real.
Emma wasn't sure if it had been hours or minutes that had passed when a flashing glow appeared through the hallway adjacent to the cell. Puzzled she watched as it continued making strange patterns in the shadows. She also noted an odd scent in the air, like the smell of lightning during a storm. Then another smell, almost masked by the electrical odor, caught her attention. Was that burning flesh?
“What in the galaxy is he up to?” she couldn't help but wonder out loud.
A new voice startled her nearly causing her to bump into the plasma barrier. The voice was a calm wheezy voice like that of a frog trying to catch its breath. At first Emma couldn't understand what it was saying until she realized it was speaking in Tazalian. She had gotten used to Zaharak using basic Earthnan that she forgot she was going to a foreign planet. She did well now to quickly translate the voice, “I would tell you, but I am afraid you may be too faint hearted to hear it.”
Emma folded her arms across her chest as her gray eyes scanned the room for signs of another being. Zaharak didn't seem to be the kind to have a companion aboard. “Try me.”
The voice paused before continuing, “My master likes to maintain his resistance to pain. At least five times a standard day, he ensures that no discomfort can be felt in any of his scales.”
Emma tilted her head understanding very well what the voice was hinting at. “He tortures himself?”
“Indeed. I myself find it such a strange thing for a creature to do to itself. Never in all my programming would I have calculated such odd creatures as the Seekers.”
“Programming,” Emma lifted a brow. A robot perhaps?
The voice turned to an apologetic tone, “Forgive me. I have not introduced myself. I am V.C. One-Five-Three-Seven, the ships onboard A.I. system in charge of operating the craft when my master is not aboard. He, on the other hand, calls me Valkyrie, after the ship.”
Emma gritted her teeth, trying to not sound rude, “Or refers to you being the ship.”
The Valkyrie's A.I. made a humming noise, which Emma guessed to be an electronic form of a sigh. “I have run that option through my processors as well.”
A brighter red light followed by a hypersonic screech like that of a jet engine gradually rising in pitch filled the hallway. Emma had to clap her hands over her ears as Valkyrie raised its own volume to be heard over the sound, “I do hate when he does that one. It is bad enough the hull could be torn apart by the pressure from the lotarKor-drives. The Hekti's normal sonic levels alone are high enough to warp the hulling.”
It was several minutes before the screech faded away along with the red light. Emma's hands shook violently as she lowered them, “I'm surprised I haven't lost my hearing after that.”
“My calculations show that for a human in your position you should be at a safe enough distance to retain no permanent damage from Hekti at its current level. Normally he has it maxed out.”
Emma looked at the hallway with skepticism, “His eardrums should have burst, not to mention his brain!”
“I have run every possibility through my processors, and I have yet to find a probable reason as to how he is still functional. And the Hekti is mild in comparison to the other devices he uses on himself.”
Emma shivered as she imagined what the Tazalian torture devices could do to a human. Had she been near the Hekti when it had gone off, her eardrums would have burst as well as several arteries in her brain. Yet to hear that it had no effect on Zaharak was unnerving. The Seeker couldn't be invincible. No creature in the entire galaxy was safe from death. Then how was it possible that he could endure such extreme hypersonic levels.
“It is nice,” the Valkyrie's A.I. cut through her thoughts at an inappropriate time.
“What the torture?” Emma asked with shock.
Again the Valkyrie became apologetic. “Finect. Forgive me. That was not what I had meant. I was meaning to relate how nice it is to have someone to converse with.”
Emma looked up towards the roof of her cell with a quizzical look, “You don't talk with Zaharak?”
“Only when he is planning one of his attacks or when he needs me to pilot the ship.” The Valkyrie's voice became indignant, “My intelligence was programmed to fly luxury cruisers and converse with passengers. It is quite tormenting to be built into a ship flown by a socially impaired Seeker.”
Emma frowned, “Couldn't he have reprogrammed you to be as reserved as he is.”
The Valkyrie pondered this for a moment; it had not calculated that before. Finally it agreed, “He indeed could have, but I assume he finds it to be a wa
ste of his time.”
Emma doubted that was true. Surely Zaharak could find time between torturing himself to reprogram the Valkyrie's A.I. Why had he not then? The current A.I.'s programming didn't suit Zaharak's personality. Why keep it, unless…Emma caught her breath…unless Zaharak truly did have a weakness after all. Despite all his years of solitude, maybe he still needed some form of companionship. How long had the feeling of loneliness eaten away at the Seeker's black heart before he finally caved in.
Emma's face nearly beamed with pride at the knowledge she had gained. That was until she saw the cold, golden eyes staring towards her. Immediately the joyful feeling melted away. They reminded her of what she was dealing with. The next day—or night—when Emma awoke she found the Valkyrie's A.I. reprogrammed to sound more like the Seeker himself. Zaharak was proving to her that he had no need of a companion. How had he known her thoughts?
Dreamy eyed, the Elder Lutianist slowly raised his drooping eyelids. He had hardly drifted into his slumber when he had been awakened by the sound of his study doors sliding open. Blinking his milky eyes, he scanned the room for the culprit. Though the figure was merely a blur, he recognized it to be the Elder Abilasso.
Lutianist smiled at the fading green-scaled Elder; his thin voice whispered through the air like a gentle breeze across a prairie, “Mylïna Abilasso. What brings you to my confined study on such a lovely afternoon.”
Abilasso's amber eyes scanned the long oval room. Compartments lined the walls from floor to the high, vaulted roof, every shelf filled with small, glowing golden objects. The burly Elder walked towards the rapidly aging Lutianist. His bony snout calm and focused with a voice to match it. “Remind me again, brother, why you call this room confined?”
