Page 16 of Her Alien Savior
He dodged, and rolled on the ground, scraping the floor with an earsplitting sound of his epul against metal.
“To the letter,” Chuel agreed. “That’s the problem, Direl. You followed the words, and not the spirit of our tribe. Always such a stickler for law when it suited you, always the abiding warrior, never the leader when we needed you the most. You, Direl, could have defended our tribe.” With reckless abandon Chuel dove into the charge with his epul extended, and we crashed. Epul to epul, we parried, caught on each other, and then pushed back to lunge again. Equal vigor met with equal vengeance, as Chuel roared against me.
He thought me a traitor for allowing the trill to lead our planet after their victory against King Sylve. I had followed tribal law, and the trill had respected our laws, allowing our planet Necias Prime to be run as it always had been. It was a minor thing to accept Trillume in charge, when they chose to be honorable and seek to rule through our laws, and not force us through war. War is what would have happened if we did not accept the trill’s victory. My decision to allow the ruling to stand and give my loyalty to the trill saved countless lives. They are an honorable species to allow us to keep our own laws, and work with us, instead of ruling over us.
What would he have wanted me to do? Duel for leadership? Win against the strongest of the trill, only to have them seek a more thorough way of subjugating the necia? What is the point of winning a duel, if we lost our planet? I was not dumb, the trill had us surrounded, and we had no intentions of building our own war ships to defend ourselves. These feats we have now, these ships, these victories under our belt, the reach Necias Prime has now, was all from becoming valuable within the trill’s established power. Our warriors were always superior, I thought while Chuel and I grappled for holds, and gritted our teeth against one another. This was what I wanted to avoid. Needless death of my tribe.
We became superior to even the trill warriors, became the go-to fleet to protect Trillume, Necias Prime, and the galaxy. We, the necia, have the power now. Politically, we followed orders from the trill, but if we disagreed, we had the war fleet at our control. I had done what needed to be done for our tribe. We are alive, stronger, and have taken over the galaxy without the trill thinking anything of it.
Did Chuel not understand? Did King Sylve not understand?
Then pain exploded in my gut, blurring my vision. I was distracted with the past, and the anger of betrayal. I sputtered, blood spraying from my mouth. Chuel’s victorious gaze haunted me as he sneered.
“We will take back what is rightfully ours, whether you help or not,” he promised. I glanced down to see his knuckle epul retract from his hand, my blood between his fisted fingers. “You were injured, and slow today. You’ve grown weak with compliance, but I am not a monster, Direl. I’ll send the medic to help heal you, and perhaps this time you’ll come to your senses and fight for our tribe, not for yourself. This is the last time I’ll have mercy for you, next time you challenge me, I won’t care that you’re not in top form, or that King Sylve seeks to use your position with the trill to help us. I’ll end your suffering and show you I’m capable of being the leader you never were.” His breath heated my ears in a whisper. I grunted as he dragged me to the nearest room to toss me inside.
My body twitched to seek my victory, to seek to end the warrior who harmed me, but I dug my own fingers into my thighs to stop myself. I was not yet defeated, and this wouldn’t be the last duel I’d have with Chuel. I found that he was right, I was weak, but not in body. Despite the pain, I could have continued. He was too distracted with telling me how he would kill me next time to realize that my own fist was positioned not at his lungs, but in the soft spot of his neck. On instinct, I had withdrawn my epul just as my hand approached.
That’s how I knew I was still of sound mind. Even through rut, I could not destroy a fellow warrior. A warrior I had considered a brother before his betrayal. He did not know how close he had come to death, because it was merely a moment’s decision that saved him. A flash of understanding that stilled my hand, allowing him the opening to plunge into my side, and puncture my lung. The door closed behind me.
A sweet sound filled my ears, “Do you think he’s dead?”
Chapter nine
Riley
Ashleyinsistedthatwewake up Chester and Bryce once she woke, if I was serious about taking over the ship. I pinched my brows in skepticism at her eagerness to do something reckless, but she quickly understood what I wanted to do and how we’d need them. Luckily, Ashley knew what the hell she was doing when we revived the other two, they didn’t have to wait too long to wake up, and we didn’t have to drag them back with us. They walked, though groggily slung over our shoulders to a room I knew we wouldn’t have much time in but was better than being open in the corridors.
I thought I was the crazy one for wanting to risk my life to make sure I was free, since I was the only one with nanobugs that pretty much made me King Sylve’s slave from now until forever. He already was threatening my life, so it was a no brainer for me to risk it myself for the chance that I wouldn’t be controlled. To be honest with myself, I didn’t care about dying.
Doing this was the same as me signing up to leave Earth to begin with. If anything, having King Sylve as a target for my rage was cathartic. I’d thank him, if he wasn’t starting a war between the trill and necia.
“I overheard the crew talking about how there was no intention to hand us over to our agreed exchange hosts, we’re pretty much considered war-time prisoners,” Ashley explained.
“War-time, what?” This was not what I was expecting her to say at all.
She sighed, as if it was exasperating to have to explain things for me, but resigned herself to the task. “Look, they only watch what they say in their own language if they think we don’t have the translation for Cial, the native tongue of necia warriors.
“They all usually speak Trillix, which is the common tongue of Trillume, and therefore the most used language of the galaxy. Humans aren’t supposed to have translations for more than the languages of the planet they are exchanging with, plus Trillix. They do that on purpose as a means of controlling our ability to navigate the universe. I decided I deserved to have the full language install before I left Earth, so I hacked the H.E.T. servers.”
“Okay, so that explains why you overheard something you shouldn’t have, but war?” Maybe her translation was wrong? It was pretty bad-ass that she could hack into any server, let alone one supported by alien technology like the H.E.T., it was hard to believe, really. I knew King Sylve would be starting a war, but not that we were already at war. We could still turn things around if we stop him before we reached Trillume, right?
With a shrug Ashley dismissed my concern and proceeded to dig through the contents of this room, searching for anything we could use for our mission impossible: Take over a large Trillume warship commanded by a race of warrior aliens, who have pretty much been raised since their what—spawning?—to battle. Their bodies were pretty much weapons without even having to carry a knife, their bones were sharp enough on their own. Yet, the first thought that came to mind was the injured criminal in the med bay that I’d offered myself to, like a fool. He was just so damned sexy, and the way his dark eyes watched me made my legs clench. They were pretty before they turned all black with the swirling orange amber. But with his eyes fully dilated into pools of obsidian, well, I liked it because he didn’t seem murderous, just hungry for the same thing I wanted.
Enough, I thought, this was not the time to be thinking about boning a warrior that could easily skewer me. Plus, he was likely to join up with King Sylve based on what Shen-La was saying.
“Jackpot!” Ashley exclaimed, startling the rest of the group from rummaging through the drawers, and tinkering with buttons on the wall. I was certain one of them was going to screw up everything and sound off an alarm. She was holding up some kind of wire.
“That’s what you were looking for? That isn’t much of a weapon...” Chester scoffed.
“It’s the only weapon we need,” Ashley disagreed. “I can hack into some of their systems with this.”
“A wire?” Even Bryce was skeptical, and I had to agree if it weren’t for that gleam in her eye.
“What is it?” I asked instead, intrigued.
“They have most of their programs running through authorization codes connected with their brain implants, so there aren’t many opportunities to be able to take over the ship without kidnapping one of the warriors that have the codes. This wire is actually an implant disabler.”
“How do you know so much about Trillume programs, and a disabler?” I asked, suddenly backing away from her. A nagging feeling crept up my legs, telling me that she was more than some ordinary researcher of alien culture. Who was this person? And who did I release from stasis?
