Page 46 of Decadence

In this crazy new reality, he was the only power she had.

“All right then, let’s go,” she growled, looking at each of the Kordolians in turn, staring right through their menacing black visors. “You want me to go quietly? Fine. I have two conditions. One, you take care of my people. Two, you let me see him as soon as he’s able. If you fuck around with us, I’ll raise hell, I swear.”

The Kordolians exchanged a look, speaking softly to each other in their native tongue.

“You will be a worthy mate for the boss,” one of them murmured.

Mate? What the hell? Her heart did a somersault. She couldn’t bring herself to deny it. A thousand dizzying possibilities opened up in front of her.“W-why do you say that?”

“Those things you asked for? For us to protect your people and bring you to him? Those were his orders, too.”

“Just pray to the Goddess that he survives,” the second warrior growled. “Because if we lose our Commander, we will turn each Sector in this cursed Universe into another level of the Nine fucking Hells.” He lapsed into his dark-yet-melodic language, uttering some deathly serious vow that she could never hope to understand.

Stars. Were the Kordolians so on-edge that this could push them back into their old ruthless ways?

“Don’t you dare say that,” Sienna snapped. “Do not underestimate your commander. He isn’t going to die. He’s tougher than that.” She said it out of hope more than anything else, but it seemed to be the right thing to say, because the Kordolian warriors grunted and nodded in approval.

“The human knows better than us,” one of them said wryly.

Sienna glared at the Kordolians, dread and hope twisting in her chest like writhing serpents.

She could only hope that her gut feeling about Ikriss turned out to be true.

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Chapter Twelve

They escorted Sienna out into the back alley, past her artificially heated and humidified vert-gardens; past the trash-bots and recycling drones and security nodes, which were beeping like crazy.

A faint hum captured her attention. Shielding her eyes, she looked up between the buildings and saw the dark outline of a hovering Kordolian ship.

A thin, flexible ladder dropped from a hatch in the vessel’s dark belly. Without warning, one of the warriors grabbed her, putting his arm around her waist, gripping the ladder with his other hand.

“Don’t fight,” he growled as the ship rose, lifting them up into the air, the ladder swaying between the ancient brick walls as it retracted into the ship.

She didn’t even get the chance to let out a decent scream.

Suddenly, they were clear of the buildings and the rooftops, and Sienna could see her neighborhood below; the painted white roof of her restaurant’s building, the swarming traffic in the streets, the snow-covered pavement… and crowds of people amassing at the entrance to her restaurant.

Oh my god.

Menacing dark figures stalked along the sidewalk where she and Ikriss had stood not too long ago. The Kordolians were holding the crowd of humans at bay, like wolves amongst a flock of sheep.

But there was something strange about this crowd. The people simmered with tension, and it felt like they could erupt at any moment. Some were shouting. Some raised their fists in anger. Someone lit a smoke-flare. Enforcement vehicles and drones appeared, and she caught sight of several uniformed Enforcers stepping out of an armored hover-car.

Another hover-car swept in from above, this one black and unmarked and sinister looking, as it was fully decked out in armor-plate. It landed beside the Enforcement vehicle. A crew of six heavily armored humans disembarked from the armored flyer and marched toward the Kordolians, wielding strange looking black guns.

Sienna couldn’t see any sort of identification patches on their uniforms, which was weird, considering that Federation law made it mandatory for all Enforcers to display their ID numbers.

Who the hell are those guys?

The crowd seethed. More Kordolians appeared; she could tell them apart by the way they moved; fluidly, gracefully, like leonine predators.

A chill coursed through her, and it wasn’t related to the menacing sight of the Kordolians. The icy wind swirled around them. Suddenly, she remembered that she was wearing barely anything.

She was a fucking mess.

But in the midst of all the confusion, it somehow occurred to her that the Kordolians down there were being terribly restrained, considering what they were really capable of.

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