Sarazen's Hunt

by Isabel Wroth

  “Have you made progress tracking Reykar’s movements?” Tarek’s question cut through his thoughts, the pride ruler’s stern visage peering at him from across the holo-table.

  Quoll stepped forward and reported they had not yet located Reykar. “It is on record he intended to go to the festival, but there is no sign of him having boarded any registered transport.

  “By all accounts, he is still here. His quarters are unused and what scent there is says he hasn’t been there in some time. I am attempting to pin point his current position using his torc but so far have had no luck.”

  Every Sarazen, no matter his duties, wore a specially designed torc on S6. Each torc was unique in that it carried a DNA-based security tag that allowed the wearer to move through the prison with total autonomy.

  It tracked their movements, and if they were not wearing their torc, they could not get through the secured docking bay or take any transport off the planet.

  Their torc couldn’t be used or activated by anyone else, actually deactivating once it was removed from the owner’s skin.

  “What we do have,” Quoll said with a chuff of triumph, “is the medic who ran from the Asha’na and escaped using a molecular displacement field.

  “A’tarey and his squad successfully captured him just outside the shuttle bay and are bringing him in now.”

  Alec gave a triumphant growl, the scent of her blood spiking through the air when she lost control of her claws, obviously eager to get her hands on their prey.

  “Commander V’ar, your current position?”

  The hologram of the warship commander glimmered brighter as V’ar stepped closer, reaching out to activate his screen, displaying his battle formation.

  “Asho. My warship is holding orbit directly above the prison, and all available warcrafts are positioned around the planet to ensure nothing and no one breaches the quarantine. What warriors I have to spare have been sent to assist in maintaining order.”

  Tarek nodded as he surveyed the formation of the smaller battle cruisers with a critical eye.

  “Warship Seven is standing by, contact Commander Dar immediately should you require more warriors.”

  “I will contact him if the need arises,” V’ar confirmed.

  Tarek gave a final nod, looking away as someone called to him urgently. “You have this matter well in hand. If the Scylla have gained a foothold, I trust you will eradicate it. I want hourly updates on my secure channel.”

  The Asho’s image winked out and seconds later, A’tarey entered the small command room of the prison facility to announce he had a medic awaiting their attention.

  ~This time, I get to ask the questions. Alec’s voice in his head was absolute, her expression tight, daring him to deny her.

  ~Are you certain?

  Alec pushed past him with a soft snarl. ~Oh yes. I’m certain.

  *****

  Kalix watched his mate slowly, silently walk circles around the young male chained on his knees in the center of the cell.

  The poor bastard was trembling, the scent of his terror rolling off of him in palpable waves, and the longer Alec remained silent, the more the medic twitched and shuddered.

  When she finally did speak, her voice acted like a whip to their new prisoner’s flesh. He jerked so hard the chains rattled.

  “Where is Reykar?”

  Eurn gulped audibly, his wide eyes flicking to the warriors stationed at the exits, at Kalix where he stood in the open doorway. Kalix could see the poor decision brewing to pretend ignorance.

  “He is on leave after having attended the Breeding Festival.”

  Alec hummed thoughtfully as she made another circle, shocking everyone else and left Kalix fighting arousal when she swiped her claws through the chain securing the medic to the floor and grabbed Eurn by the throat to haul him up into the air as high as her arm could reach.

  With his hands bound behind him, Eurn struggled, and despite being of the approximate same size and weight, Alec showed no difficulty in holding him.

  “Eurn, I am exhausted,” she told him, her tone hard, yet held an edge of carefully crafted boredom.

  “I’m hungry, I’m wearing a dress, and I’ve just found out there is a prisoner full to bursting with parasitic larvae that have the potential to kill every living being in this solar system. I am clinging to my patience by a thread. A thread, Eurn, so let’s cut the shit, shall we?”

  Eurn gargled out a semblance of sound, his eyes bulging in his face which was quickly turning purple.

  “I can smell the wet rot of the Scylla on your skin. You’ve been very close to them, or close to someone infected by them. It took me a while to figure out what that other smell is.

  “It’s been a while since I had to deal with putrefaction. My guess is one of the people you’re working with was infected, and you thought amputating the limb would stop the spread. Hmm?”

  Alec tilted her head, letting Eurn drop back to his knees, crouching down in front of him while he wheezed and sucked in deep lungful’s of air, staring at Alec as though she had grown a second head.

  “I tried amputation already. Hacked off a leg, an arm, a hand once. Didn’t work. Once they’re inside you, the larvae reproduce inside their host at a speed that defies all logic, and there is no escape save death. Have we scanned Eurn yet?”

  “We have, Asha’na. He is clear of infection,” A’tarey confirmed gravely.

  Alec stared into the fearful face of the medic, giving him a disdainful sniff. “Lucky. You.” Eurn’s relief was obvious. “So what are you then, huh? A traitor to your people? A supporter of the Original Council?”

  “N-no!”

  Alec continued on as though Eurn hadn’t spoken at all. “Doing their dirty work, playing with specimens in a lab, dumb enough to think you can control the Scylla and the spread of their spoor?”

  “No!” Eurn denied, his voice growing stronger with his honesty.

  Kalix felt his lips twitch, wanting to curve into a grin, feeling Alec’s burst of triumph as she began to herd Eurn along exactly the way she wished.

  “Then the Brivikan prisoner in the other cell was just a little oopsie? What about all the other prisoners you and Reykar have been experimenting on? How many have you had to kill in order to keep the larvae from eating their way through the bodies?”

  “I don’t... I don’t know what you mean.”

  Alec let her nose wrinkle as the stink of falsehood perfumed the air around Eurn.

  “You don’t know what I mean? I see. A’tarey, will you bring me some of the Brivikan’s blood? We’ll let Eurn have a look to jog his memory.”

  It was Tor who returned with a vial of black blood, offering it to her with a disgusted shake of his head when Eurn looked to the elder medic for help.

  “Thank you, Tor. Now then, no doubt you’re familiar with how the infection begins, Eurn, but no one else here has seen it.”

  Alec held the vial up to the light, showing them all the way the blood pulsed and moved as the larvae within struggled to find purchase. Like they could sense an uninfected body close by.

  It took considerable willpower to keep himself still. Kalix wanted nothing more than to slap the vile of viscous poison out of his mate’s hands and drag her away from it.

  ~Don’t you dare allow a single drop of that to touch you, Alec.

  ~I won’t.

  “On Moika, we learned fast to cover our heads. The Scylla always aim for orifices already open to them. If they can’t spit in your face, they make a cut and spew their parasitic saliva all over you,” Alec told Eurn, extending her index finger to slowly release a crystalline claw.

  Sweat broke out on Eurn’s face, his gaze fixated on the razor sharp point as it moved closer to his chest.

  A’tarey stepped up to hold the medic steady when he tried to jerk away, watching dispassionately when Alec sliced through Eurn’s tunic and left a bleeding stripe over the skin of his heart.

  “We noticed that people who were cut on t
heir arms or legs, it took them a little longer to present symptoms. If you got cut here, the poison reached the heart the fastest and symptoms began to show within a few hours.”

  Alec moved the vial of blood closer, and before she even managed to get it halfway, Eurn began to shriek.

  “NO! No, please don’t! Don’t! We were trying to find a cure! Please!”

  Alec paused, tilting her head as she invited Eurn to speak. “We?”

  Eurn’s shoulder’s slumped with defeat, fixated on Alec removing the vial of toxic liquid back to give back Tor.

  Kalix watched the slender tube, watched Tor, as though he held a live explosive, only releasing a breath when Tor turned to pour the black blood into another glass, the caustic blue substance burning and consuming all trace of the larvae.

  “Myself, Reykar, and another medic. N’kara.”

  “There is no medic stationed here named, N’kara,” Tor growled hotly.

  Eurn sniffled like a cub, suddenly looking so young that Kalix had a hard time believing a male fresh out of his academy training had the skills or knowledge to find a cure the most skilled medics in the entire solar system could not.

  “He is stationed on S4, Reykar conversed with him remotely.”

  “Reykar is infected now,” Alec stated coldly, humming when Eurn nodded. “And how did that happen?”

  Eurn shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know. The tanks are a contained system keyed to open only with a specific set of codes.

  “I was not given the codes, but four days ago one of the specimens somehow escaped. It was destroyed, but not before it slashed at Reykar’s arm and spewed its venom.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “One of the test subjects possesses the ability to breathe fire. He kept it secret, but burned the creature when it got too close. It was completely obliterated.”

  “How many specimens are there?” Alec seethed softly.

  Eurn vibrated, his shoulders hunching against the pressure of Alec’s bestial energy. “T-three.”

  “And how many test subjects?”

  “There have been many, only two remain.”

  “How many, Eurn? How many have become infected and released into the population?”

  Eurn’s eyes rounded in horror. “Released? N-none! That would be catastrophic and we are nowhere near synthesizing a cure!”

  “Explain to me then, how a Brivikan could have become infected and dropped off like so much luggage at the arena this morning before Commander Kalix faced his challenges?

  “It was pure chance I saw him, and if I hadn’t, in about six days we would be facing an uncontrollable contamination of our water supply.”

  Eurn shook his head frantically, eyes wide and pleading. “Brivikan? We never used a Brivikan as a test subject. We never used prisoners, their collars would have broadcast our location.”

  The medic was not clever enough to conceal his scent or a lie, which brought up a whole new host of problems.

  “Eurn. I only have one more question for you.” The menacing purr that left Alec’s lips ensured the medic gave her his full attention. “Where is Reykar?”

  *****

  As their party followed Eurn, Alec tested the weight of the plasma pistol she had been given. It stuck firmly to the armor covering her palm via some sort of magnet without impeding the dexterity of her fingers to squeeze the trigger, and if she wanted to holster it or put it down, she simply pressed the weapon to her thigh and the magnet transferred to her leg.

  It didn’t fall off, didn’t require a utility belt, didn’t alter her balance in any way, and made for extreme ease of use.

  What could she have done with a weapon like this back on Moika?

  Eurn took them back through the medical wing, down the hall she had originally chased him, to the wall he had disappeared behind.

  Just on the other side was a decrepit staircase that led down, part of the first structure built on S6, Eurn said, built over again once their technology and need for better medical facilities had increased.

  When insisting she be part of the squadron to retrieve Reykar, Alec had not considered the way it would make her feel to navigate the oppressively dark tunnels barely tall enough for the armored warriors surrounding them to walk upright in.

  Her helmet gave her perfect thermal sight to navigate, if she could have seen anything past Kalix’s armor in front of her, or A’tarey’s in front of him.

  Kalix had ordered them to wear full body armor, except for Eurn. They could be walking into a trap, or a room flooded and filled with Scylla.

  She had pressed as gently as she knew how against Eurn with the power of her beast, testing him for deception. He hadn’t even bothered to try and fight against her influence when she asked him her questions.

  He had actually seemed a little offended when she asked if he was planning on leading them into danger on purpose.

  The tunnel came out on the opposite side of the arena, bypassing the security checkpoints all personnel were required to use, and with his displacement tech, Eurn was able to get them right into the shuttle bay where personal transports and quick moving two person vehicles that reminded Alec of the motorcycles she had seen in the old movies from earth, waited to be utilized.

  As soon as they appeared in the shuttle bay, they were immediately converged on by no less than forty armed guards.

  She and Kalix both came forward to be seen, and the guard stood down instantly. Alec nodded in agreement when Kalix praised them for their swift action, alerted the guards to the location of the tunnel, and left one of their party behind to oversee it was closed forever to any further unauthorized movement.

  One member down, Kalix took her hand and led her over to the cycles. It was an odd shaped thing, wide and triangular at the front end, a dip in the middle with two obvious saddle like seats and a long whip-like tail with a hollow wheel on each end that didn’t seem to be attached.

  With practiced ease, Kalix threw a leg over one of the dull silver machines, his powerful body making it seem like a toy.

  Arousal pulsed through her, overpowering her fear for a moment. Kalix paused, his eyes hot when he raked his gaze over her. His lips twitched briefly before he tilted his head at her silently, holding his hand out to help her mount up behind him.

  ~Are you prepared for this, my One?

  Without anywhere else to put her hands, Alec wrapped her arms around his chest and let herself breathe in the wildness of his musky scent.

  ~Prepared for a ride on this thing, or what we’ll find when we get to Reykar’s lab?

  ~I am more concerned with the latter.

  ~You can’t tell what I’m feeling?

  ~I can, but knowing your feelings doesn’t mean I know what’s in your heart. Hold on tight. The cycle isn’t as smooth a ride as the transports, but is more practical for the terrain ahead.

  Alec was thankful for the warning. Kalix gave a twist of his hand and the machine roared to life, and what a roar it was.

  Her body trembled with a fine hum of excitement, further distracting her from Kalix’s question.

  They took off with such speed Alec felt her ass slide backwards a fraction, and if Kalix hadn’t warned her to hang on she certainly would have slid out of the seat.

  The hot, dry air whipped across her face, blew her hair back out behind her and was so exhilarating she almost forgot their purpose.

  ~I should have anticipated you would enjoy this. Alec could hear the smile in her mate’s voice. ~We will make time to do this when our territory is not in jeopardy.

  He couldn’t feel it through his armor, but Alec gave him a squeeze. ~I’d like that.

  She felt him inside her even as they raced across the cracked earth, a warm, steady presence, waiting for her to answer him.

  ~I’m angry, Kalix. I killed hundreds of my own people and woke up every day knowing I’d probably have to kill someone else.

  What’s left of us, we survived the nightmare, we came here for a new life, and Reyk
ar used my sister’s body to resurrect the Scylla.

  He brought them here, and is purposefully infecting people to find a cure. There is no cure and it’s starting all over again. I’m angry, and...I’m afraid.

  Kalix was quiet for a beat, and that warmth she felt from him turned to something more. Something that moved through her and permeated her from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair.

  It was like the rumble he made for her when they were alone, a mental purr so comforting it left no room for fear or anger.

  ~Even if the infection spreads, we have advanced weaponry we know will destroy a full grown Scylla. Our armor will protect us from contamination, and our warriors are millions.

  I cannot fill the void of your sister’s absence, I cannot be for you what she was, but you will not shoulder this burden alone as you did before. Not ever again, Alec.

  *****

  Their journey to the ore mines wasn’t long, and as expected, Eurn led them down into the shaft that had been declared unstable.

  It certainly looked unstable, rock slides having blocked several of the offshoot tunnels they passed, the main tunnel showing obvious signs of having been cleared.

  When they came to a solid wall, Eurn shot an uncomfortable look at Kalix before reaching up to activate a cleverly hidden lever in a pile of rocks that looked no different from the others, and the solid wall very obviously shimmered.

  “There was a small medical station located in this main tunnel, a burn unit for prisoners who suffered accidents while processing the ore.” Eurn gulped loudly, tilting his head toward the solid wall.

  “It survived the cave in due to its outer shell having been made of ore. Reykar showed it to me after I agreed to assist him.”

  “Helmets stay on, Ero, take the prisoner through and clear the way. Report when you’ve reached the lab,” Kalix ordered, his arm having extended to keep Alec from rushing headlong into the lab with her weapon drawn.

  She ground her teeth, forcing herself to acknowledge he was doing it to fulfill his primary duty as a mate. To protect her from the unknown of whatever was ahead of them.

  “The lab is secure, Asha.” Ero’s voice filled the com-link in her helmet, and the revulsion mixed with horror made the hairs on her arms prickle.