Page 14 of Command

Threxin narrowed his eyes, considering.

“I say. Do it this day,” he said finally, then turned back to Orion. “You continue. For now.”

Orion took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. “We jump to human space in fifteen days. We travel through the densest portion of it, attracting no attention. We’ll need to arrange supply transports, but we can worry about that later. That traversal will take one year. This works, becauseColossalneeds a year to recharge its jump drive and restock anyway.”

“One ship year?”

“Each jump overheats the core and burns through ten tons of plasma fuel. We synthesize it here, but it takes a damn long time. In a year we’ll be on the other edge of human-occupied space. We can start tunneling about three months before that, with scouts.”

“Scouts?”

“Ships that go out to map obstacles and plot out as much of the space ahead as they can.”

“Human scouts.”

“Unless your uhyre know how to plot a subspace jump, yeah. Human scouts,” Orion said flatly.

“Your human scouts will teach. No human leaves this ship.”

“You realize we’ll have to leave eventually, right?” Kaia jumped in then. “Once you’re done with this little hostage situation, we’ll need to get back to our people.”

“Your humans will alert other humans, and like pests they will come and compromise my mission.”

“So what do you expect us to do then? We follow you to New Ea…” Kaia cut herself off. “To this new planet, on a ship only you can control, and then what? How do we get home? We can’t very well pilotColossalback, can we?You’rethe only one who can.”

Threxin looked at Orion, and Alina did not like that look. Apparently neither did Orion.

“You said my people would live.” The lack of emotion in Orion’s voice made Alina’s stomach drop. This was bad.

“They will, if this planet is big enough for two species.”

Kaia balked. “What? Live on the same fucking planet?Again?”

The red uhyre seemed just as displeased about this as Kaia was, gurgling something in unison. Threxin gurgled back.

“Two hundred uhyre joined me on myClossal. There are seven thousand of you humans, and you barely breed. Schematics your male has shown me suggest this place may host both of us. I will permit you one third of my new planet. You will cut your population in half to fit, with maintenance culls as needed.”

“Fuck off.” Kaia clenched red-painted fingers. “You already destroyed Earth!”

The two uhyre frowned at each other. “Destroyed?”

“You’re the fucking reason weneedto find another Earth,” Kaia raked her hand through her curls, and Alina wasn’t prepared to try to mitigate the situation a second time. Not to mention she was all out of ideas. “You’re unhinged. You’re violent. You’re fucking… you’re fucking addictive.” She glanced at Orion.

“You seem to have no problem with that.” Threxin’s lip curled in what could only be interpreted as disgust as he looked between Kaia and Orion. “We will impose strict quarantine between our species. I suggest you keep it. Recognize I want nothing to do with you either. And my kind was not the reason your planet was destroyed.”

Alina failed to choke down a scoff at that, drawing Threxin’s gaze to her at the worst possible moment. Lucky for her, Kaia was on a roll.

“I don’t know what they taught you in monster history class, but it’s not fucking happening,” she growled.

Threxin lifted his chin in his version of a nod, the glow beneath his facial cracks fading somewhat. “Very well.”

Kaia released a hissing breath. “Very. Fucking. Well.”

Threxin turned to Orion. “Would you like to be vented with your population deck, or have you another preference?”

Wait, what?

“No one’s getting vented. Let’s all goddamn think for a second.” Orion rose from the copilot’s seat to stand between them, the voice of reason they desperately needed. In the tense seconds of silence, Alina’s heart continued to sink into her body.

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