Page 14 of Taken By the Alien Killer
The grav-car hums to life. I take the rear bench opposite Sneed, eyes on the windows, hands on my knees, every muscle arranged into the posture they taught us in the academies: present, unthreatening, ready to kill. The city unspools under us—basalt streets veined with light, markets just waking, steam rising from the vents like ghosts shedding skin. We angle toward the ancient towers first, those black ribs along the coast that have stood since the first colonists swore a home into this rock.
A docent meets us at the base of the tallest tower, all sun-creased enthusiasm and field-credits. “We’ll take the open lift,” she trills, pointing to a platform that crawls up the tower’s spine. “The view is…well, you’ll see.” She smiles too hard at Kaspian, then blanches at me and corrects to professional cheer.
On the platform, the wind takes the edges of our coats and the smell of salt moves through like a blade. Star’s fingers rest on the rail, knuckles pale. She leans into the wind the way a person leans into a story they don’t believe but want to. Kaspian stands beside her, bracing her elbow with a courtesy that is more reflex than possession. Sneed plants himself strategically so the three of them form a photograph a herald would frame.
I stay one step back and two to the left, ideal intercept angle if something falls—or jumps. The city shrinks as we rise; the sea expands, a bruise-green plate thrashing white around the basalt footings. The tower itself smells of wet volcanic stone and old oil. The lift rattles, the docent narrates, the wind steals half her words and slings them into the sky.
“Grav-beam anchors were installed in the year eighty-two post-landing,” she says. “Survived five quakes and one Coalition shelling. The upper decks served as signal arrays during?—”
“You can still see the scarring,” Kaspian notes, tracking a spiraled seam of fused rock. “Impressive repairs.”
“Vakutan engineering,” Star says before she can stop herself, the pride quick and sharp. “You can tell by the bracing signatures—there.” She points. I follow the line she means, even though I already know the story of those welds, the crew that slept in harness for two weeks to stabilize the tower while the aftershocks hit like punches. One of them taught me to shoot around corners. One of them didn’t make it back down.
Kaspian turns to me. “Your people did that?”
“My people,” I echo, the words both right and wrong. “Vakutan battalions led the reinforcement. Chamberland paid with ore and blood.” I keep my tone even. No one needs my memories contaminating the tour.
At the top, the platform locks into a ring rail and the horizon brute-forces a kind of awe. The sea is a writhing metal sheet; the cliffs bite at it and don’t let go. The air tastes like iron andsalt and the promise of a storm three days from now. Star steps to the glass lip where the wind can tear at her dress and smile without witnesses. Kaspian joins her, hands clasped behind his back, saying something I don’t catch. She laughs—soft, unforced—and the sound scrapes raw through my ribs. I fix my gaze on the far shipping lanes where cargo skimmers draw white stitches on gray water.
“Commander,” Kaspian says after a moment, turning in profile to me so the coastal light paints him formal and honest, “what would you recommend a visitor see first, if they wanted to understand Akura in a day?”
“Impossible,” I say before diplomacy can filter it. “Akura takes skin and time. But the basalt towers and the west farms will teach you how we stand, and the stables will teach you why.” I realize how that sounds and add, “The beasts teach patience. And fear. Both are necessary here.”
“Then the stables,” he says lightly, deferring as if I’ve issued an order. It would be easier if he were vain. He’s not. He’s…careful.
Sneed’s slate blips before I can object that the envoy meeting comes first. “A slight reordering,” he announces smoothly. “Weather advice suggests the stables would be most picturesque while the light holds.” Of course the light holds when Sneed wills it.
We descend. The grav-car notes our course change with a chime like a satisfied throat clearing, and we glide toward the noble stables where the air always smells like warm hay, salt-sweat, leather soap, and the electric pepper of the Kilgari greathounds that prowl the paddocks.
When we step into the main aisle, the world narrows to a rhythm I know by bones: hoof on packed earth, harness buckle, the hush of giant lungs. The Akuran ridgebacks stamp and toss, their scaled forequarters glimmering, their feathered hind crestsrustling like distant thunder. Star’s shoulders loosen the way they only loosen here. She reaches out to the closest ridgeback—a copper mare with a white blaze—and the beast drops her huge head to Star’s palm with a sigh that shakes dust from the rafters.
“You still favor Emberline,” I say, and hate how my voice goes low without permission.
She doesn’t look back, but a smile pulls at one corner of her mouth. “She remembers who sneaks her apples.” Her voice is soft, meant for the animal, but it slides under my skin anyway.
Kaspian keeps a respectful distance from Emberline’s jaws, which shows he isn’t entirely a fool. “Gorgeous,” he says. “May I?”
“Flat palm,” Star instructs, turning so she can guide his hand. For one treacherous second her eyes lift—past Kaspian’s shoulder, toward me. It’s nothing, a flicker, a check of position. It lands like artillery.
I take a step back and pivot to the aisle mouth, pretending to scan the perimeter with more interest than the rafters deserve. A stable hand approaches with a towel and a question; I answer in three words. Kaspian murmurs praise to Emberline like a man trying on humility and finding it fits. Sneed watches all of it with that precise tranquility that makes you want to break something just to prove you still can.
The envoy meeting in the tower annex comes after. Polished wood table, emissaries in buttoned collars, air scrubbed of stable scent and replaced with citrus disinfectant and ambition. I stand behind Star’s chair, between her and the window, and become furniture with a pulse. Kaspian fields questions with a competence that would be admirable if I weren’t busy resenting it: port tariffs, cross-border patrol schedules, a modest exchange program for agricultural technicians. He references Chamberland documents by title. He defers to Star on localinfrastructure. He thanks the envoys for their candor when one of them bristles about water rights.
More than once he turns to me with the formality of someone who recognizes a weapon and respects its range. “Commander Rayek, your assessment?” He invites without commandeering. I answer with clipped analysis: roads here and here; convoy routing susceptible to blockade; add decoys during harvest week; watch the east ridge where raiders like to ghost in through fog. He listens, head tilted, then repeats my points in courtly language fit for minutes and signatures.
Star steals looks when the table noise swells. Tiny things: the flare of attention when I speak; the fractional downward tilt of her mouth when I stop; that helpless quirk of humor when an envoy drones on about “stakeholder synergies.” I don’t let any of it land. I fix my eyes on a point beyond the far window where the sea carves brightness out of stone and keep my face as still as the first statue ever cut.
We end where the day must—back at the stables for an inspection proper. Sneed has assembled a line of ridgebacks and greathounds under the eaves, each groomed to parade gloss, each handler at parade rest. The afternoon light goes warmer and slants, catching dust motes and turning them into slow galaxies. Star walks the line with Kaspian; they pause for names, for temperaments, for bloodline notes. Kaspian’s questions are better now—less brochure, more tangible. He asks about feed during drought, training cues for panic, how to tell when a ridgeback will bolt before it bolts.
“You look at their ears,” Star says, stroking Emberline’s crest. “And you feel it under your hand. The body tells the truth before the eyes do.”
“Useful beyond stables,” Kaspian says, tone dry. He glances back at me, then away as if to prove he isn’t checking whether I flinch.
“Commander?” Star’s voice, pitched casual, comes as she stops at the tack alcove. “Do you still prefer double-stitched reins on long rides, or did you convert to single when we changed suppliers?”
The question is harmless. It is also a knife disguised as twine. I keep my eyes on the bridle rack. “Double. Less stretch.”
“We’ll order accordingly,” Sneed says before she can follow up, already noting it on the slate. The interruption is surgical. The point is made: conversations will be chaperoned, even the ones about leather.
