Page 66 of Command

His ship had been perfectly balanced to sustain seven thousand human lives for the duration ofColossal’sintended expedition. If they had found this planet they’d been looking for, the humans had expected to rely on natural resources, their seed collections, and fertilized animal eggs in stasis to grow their food on the planet itself. If not, they had expected to return to human space and restock.

“If we don’t import water soon, people are going to startdying,” Orion had warned him as they entered the command center that morning.

“Then perhaps you will not need to cull so many once we get to my new planet. Where is your female?” Threxin noted for once that she was not shadowing her husband like an increasingly pallid ghost.

Orion Halen hesitated. “Busy.”

Threxin grunted. He had suspected she was ill. Was she dead?

“My offer is contingent on you doing your best to keep us alive, Threxin,” Orion said coolly.

“Yes. Your… offer,” Threxin’s spikes twitched. “It is not something you will hold over me, human. I stated my plan from the beginning and it has not changed. The humans on the ship remain your responsibility.”

“I can’t make more drinkable water magically appear out of thin air,” Orion snapped. His temper ratcheted up Threxin’s own impulses as his body responded, kicking in his limiter.

“Calm yourself, human,” he warned.

“Calm myself?” When Orion looked at him, his eyes may as well have been mirrors of his own. Their relation was undeniable in the glow of them. He studied Threxin with unmasked suspicion. “What have you done to yourselves? You aren’t normal.”

Threxin smiled and continued to walk. “Fix your own hydration issues, human. If you want your people alive, you will make them live with the resources you have.”

“Then at least let them Upload,” Orion snarled after him.

Threxin flicked his talons and kept walking. “The rig remains off limits.”

The rig was a monstrous thing, under permanent guard by three of his cohort. Threxin had quickly realized it was perhaps the most critical part of this ship. When humans died, they expected to live. Who knew what they were capable of to make that happen?

Ship weeks ago, Orion’s female had asked him to allow humans to Upload instead of sharing Threxin’s new planet. It was not an unreasonable idea on its surface.

Allowing humans to Upload would let the ones who did not want to share a planet with his kind live on without a cull. Threxin had gathered that access to their Heaven was a commodity. Many would prefer that, maybe even more than the rig would support.

But until his engineers studied the technology and ensured there was no way to communicate with the outside world after Upload, the risk was far too great to bother. If two-way communication turned out to be a possibility, Threxin’s mission would be compromised. Even if they got to his new planet before it happened, no one could know there was an uhyre cohort who had found what the humans had been searching for for centuries. Because they would look. And they would hunt. And eventually someone who had been Uploaded may be able to piece enough information to help them find.

No. Threxin and his cohort had to be invisible. He would take no chances.

“You realize, brother, you are hinging everything on the word of your enemy?” Renza had told him that night in his cabins. “What if this New Earth does not even exist? What if he is sending you to nothing?”

“Our astrophysicists have looked at the raw data he provided,” Threxin leaned against the wall in his foam cushion, staring at the cavernous expanse of his cabin.

“If the data is not forged.”

“To the best of their abilities they have confirmed it is not.”

But Renza was right. He had been poring over historical documentation possessed by hisColossal. Humans had been looking for precisely the planet Orion claimed to have the coordinates to for thousands of their years. Threxin had gathered that Orion’s dam jumped the ship and set course for Apth despite her offspring’s disapproval. Threxin had been fortunate—if Orion Halen had taken command of the ship sooner,Colossalwould have never crossed his path.

“Well, you can soon find out. I found the sire,” Renza said, scratching the center of his chest absently as he looked at the smooth scar that had formed over Threxin’s wound.

Threxin’s brow rose. “Where?”

“Down in the brig. It is a full deck. You should see it, brother. The imprisoned humans took it. At one point I am certain it was maintained, but now it is pure chaos. A massacre waiting to kindle. I am glad I secured the sire in time. They are on the brink of killing each other.”

“Where did you put him?”

“A secure cabin that would not draw attention.”

As much as Threxin had dismissed the usefulness of humans when he had reclaimed hisColossal, avoiding them completely had not been a viable option. They had for now remained a critical part of operating the ship—decent workers if nothing else. And Orion Halen’s machinations were not to be ignored. The fact that he had imprisoned his own sire only confirmed to Threxin the importance of interrogating him.

“Bring him to me,” Threxin said. “In one ship hour.”

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