Page 59 of Fated to the Dragon Alien

Rek’tor grunted and shoved the levers forward. The Mirka’s rear thrusters lit like a silent roar, fire blurring across the lower feeds. They blasted out of the DeLink Mine hangar in an arc, leaving the prison moon behind in a streak of smoke and spent rage.

No Axis alerts yet. No trailing ships. No orders coming through the clogged, delayed relay.

They were free.

As the Mirka cleared the gravity well of FK-22R, Stavian tried to take a full breath, but they were not in the clear. Bendahn always had backup plans. Plenty of them. Warm pulse monitors blinked beneath his hands. The ship’s thrusters purred. The crew were focused, efficient. Systems held. No alerts. Every escaped miner was safe.

Then, the sound he was expecting—an incoming ping.

Private channel.

The ID wasn’t coded like a security relay or emergency feed. It was direct. Stavian knew exactly who it was. His gut twisted. He exhaled once, then keyed the screen. “Incoming feed,” he said to the others. “Prepare yourselves. She’sfekkingmad.”

The hologram activated and Bendahn’s image filled the space in full-color projection. Her tall frame was as rigid and regal as always.

Jorr let out a low, clicking hiss—a unique sound of alarm made only by his species.

“I had hoped,” Bendahn said calmly, “that you wouldn’t take this path, Stavian.”

Stavian kept still and straight, not showing the fact that he was still physically depleted. If a team of guards rushed onto the bridge at that moment, he’d be able to do little to stop them. So, he held a deceptively casual pose and waved a hand as if he were perfectly fine, just a little bored. He knew how much Bendahn disliked anything but rigid deference in her presence. “What did you inject me with?” he asked, ignoring her statement.

“A little something our scientists created to halt the Zaruxian transformation process,” she replied vaguely. “If nothing else, you’re useful as a test subject.”

“Just had that lying around, did you?” he drawled, but inside his mind was churning.

Her lips pressed together. “Let’s just say we’ve had some trouble with your kind recently. Thank you for demonstrating how this compound neutralizes the more difficult qualities of the Zaruxian species.”

This…drug he was shot with was alarming. It wasn’t meant to kill him. It was meant to break him. He suspected she expected him to be rendered incapacitated, and thus, carried off for punishment. Bendahn hadn’t counted on the miners being armed. She hadn’t counted on them helping him, and she clearly hadn’t expected him to be up and functioning.

“You’re trying to spin this as a victory for you. It’s not,” he murmured, resting his chin on his fist. “But surely the other High Council members won’t blame you for failing to subdue us.”

“Insolent. Ungrateful wretch,” she snarled, her eyes flashing. “You were favored. I vouched for you. I spared you. Instead of sending you to burn with the rest of your species, I gave you training. Structure. Purpose. We honored our agreement with her and this is how you pay your debt to me. To us.”

Stavian held very still. It was disgusting how she spoke of his kind, as if they were beasts to contain. But then again, the Axis viewed everything that didn’t bow to them as useless at best, and an abomination at worst. As one who no longer bowed, it was clear that he fell somewhere on that scale. But there was that one word—her—that thudded through the back of his skull, cold and loud.

We honored our agreement with her…

For so long, he’d wondered. He thought maybe his people had been lost in a war, scattered by instability or absorbed quietly into the folds of Axis society. His file had said nothing, but now, he heard the truth that Bendahn had never uttered—the Axis had “burned” his people and hid the truth from him. He had been permitted to live, through some deal that had been paid in blood. And he was supposed to be grateful.

“You could have had a career of significance,” Bendahn went on. “But instead, you turned your back on the Axis and stole government property. Including prisoners.”

“They’re sovereign beings,” Stavian said, deceptively calm. Underneath, his bones ached with fury. His blood felt too hot for his veins. Heat rose up in his throat.

“Silence,” Bendahn snapped. Her gaze didn’t waver. “This ends now, Stavian. Did you think I didn’t know you were planning something asinine? Did you think I’d just let you carry on with that Terian after what’s been happening with—” She cut herself off abruptly and fixed him with a steely gaze. “You will power down your systems, halt your current trajectory, and senda surrender signal. Do it, or the four cloaked ships surrounding you will open fire.”

Stavian looked at Talla, who gestured to the nav screen. She shook her head. Nothing visible. He followed her gaze. A wide swath of stars and debris clusters dominated their route, but cloaked ships could hide anywhere. He pressed his lips into a thin line. The Axis didn’t believe in freedom and they never let a betrayal go unpunished.

Stavian leaned back in his seat. Cloaked Axis ships. “We’re dead either way.”

Bendahn stared through the holo-projection like she still owned him. She clearly still saw him as the orphan she’d selected for her project—her rescue pet in a neat uniform with nothing left to lose. “No, no,” she said, taking on a cajoling tone. “If you do as you’re told, the miners’ lives will be spared. Their memories will be wiped and they’ll be reprocessed into new systems. Some may even be given reduced sentences.”

Rek’tor let out a snarl from the pilot’s chair. “Liar.”

Bendahn ignored him. “As for the Terian female…” Her gaze narrowed. “She will be contained. For safety reasons, of course. But I will spare her, as a favor to you.”

Stavian’s blood boiled over. For a second—just a second—uncertainty crawled up his spine.

She was offering him a choice he’d feared from the start: Everyone’s life (except for his, of course) for the price of their freedom. If he powered down now, they might keep her alive. Might spare the rest. If he made a choice that spared her life…would she forgive him? Because making a choice that killed her was unthinkable.

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