Page 21 of Command

Idiot Renza.

“You know it will continue, yes?” Renza changed the topic before Threxin could set him straight. “The mingling.”

Threxin bared his teeth in an almost snarl. Purely mechanic. There was no bite to it in his heart. “Stupid. The lot of them. What do they need humans for? They break too easily and they grow obsessed. If we are not careful, we will have a human hive to subdue and I will need to vent them. And this Orion Halen may not break if I do.”

Renza let Threxin spew his rant and when he was done offered the obvious explanation: “They are a novelty. Perhaps you isolate a few we can use. Then Silarra and the others can be amused with a smaller batch and leave the rest be.”

Threxin hummed, tasting the idea. Renza was not always an idiot. Most of the time he wasn’t.

“Have you made progress finding Orion Halen’s sire?” Threxin asked for the tenth time in ten days.

Renza hissed through his fangs. “The bastard tucked him away somewhere. For all I know he’s hiding him in the residence deck, or some shoqing closet.”

Perhaps he killed him.

“Keep looking.”

They had nine days until their first jump, to the edge ofhuman space. The sooner Threxin could get the coordinates of his planet, the sooner he could resolve all seven thousand of his problems.

Nine ship hours later, Silarra had still not appeared with her toy human. Threxin needed her down on the CRD to deal with the remnants of the riot—mostly body disposal at this stage. More than that, her refusal to do as he said required swift consequence.

Silarra’s cabin would be along the aft side of the ship, about midway down the hull. Threxin was almost frustrated to find that the ship did not contain any physical maps or guideposts—as with theElssian, the humans had relied on the augmented vision provided by their brain implants to guide them. So he traversed with a map pulled up on a clumsy human tablet, attempting to get his bearings.

Threxin paused in a strange hallway, staring at the screen. He’d noted the entrance to a blood passage, which was what the humans called the secret corridors only commanders and their blood relatives could access. He would need to explore that later.

“Oh.”

He turned toward the small voice that accompanied the familiar murmur of a door sliding open.

Orion’s pet’s pet. Again.

“You,” he said. “Why are you out of your cabin?”

She stood in the doorway of a cabin. Over her shoulder Threxin glimpsed the small size of it and was immediately envious.Shecould keep an eye on all four walls. Her arms would be too short to touch them all, but he certainly could. If Threxin didn’t need to keep a close eye on Orion Halen or remain within direct reach of a gene sampler, he’d have claimed one of those.

What were those patches of color in her cabin anyway? Fabric scraps and random items, from a glance.

“I was just… I heard running a few hours ago, and then nothing. I was worried…” She brushed the useless clump of fur from her eyes only to have it fall right back. He felt the sudden urge to shove it from her face. “Is everything okay?”

“Return to your quarters and stay there, female,” Threxin warned. There would soon be bodies brought up from the riot on the lower deck. He didn’t need this deck’s humans to start asking questions.

“Sure, but… are you… lost?”

Did helooklost? Threxin straightened his spine and squared his shoulders. “No.”

She glanced at the tablet in his hand. He tilted the map out of view.

“What sector number?” She asked with a knowing look he did not appreciate. She was nervous, as she should be. Her heartbeat jumped in the side of her throat, and the musky scent of salty human adrenaline was cloying. But still she wanted to… what? Help? Why?

“Cabin A-zero-five-four,” Threxin offered gruffly, wondering what the human would do with the information. Perhaps this would be a good experiment. Would she send him in the wrong direction to meddle, like a good minion for the former commander? Was she evencapableof providing fruitful guidance?

“Oh, that’s just a few passages away,” the female said, and he tensed as she stepped forward. But her hands were empty and a cursory examination of the volume of her clothing suggested she hid nothing. Nevertheless, Threxin’s reaction made her halt and take a small step back once more.

The female pointed down the hall. “Go that way. Take the third right. It’ll be a wider corridor. Follow that for about two hundred feet, and take a left when you see a common laundry chute.” She eyed him when he tilted his head at the term. “Abig hole in the wall. The cabin will be on your right. Anything that ends with an even number is on the right from that direction.”

Threxin committed the directions to memory, extrapolating terms like “take right” and “take left” to mean “turn.” His apertures flicked open and shut in quick acknowledgment, and she flinched at the motion, eyes widening momentarily.

“Get back in your quarters, female,” he commanded, lowering his voice.

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