Chapter 7 | Yueril

Chapter 7

Yueril

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Every step pounding against the dirt ground felt like lifting a mountain to move us both from the vulnerability of being in the open. I'd made it out of the Den of Bounty, but my limbs were tingling, and my movements were molasses, sticking and making each decision a chore. I needed to make it to the shuttle.

Belder was still unresponsive to my communications, and I couldn't connect with my ship. The signal was blocked, and I knew that was the planning of Lord Zorn to disable any frequencies while he handled his "business".

I stumbled and hissed as a young unGor grabbed for me from an alley between buildings. I couldn't spray him while my treasure was too exposed from her cracked and bleeding jewels. They were a species that respected the Galactic Authority and its laws, but they preferred to keep to their own planet's diplomacy. It was odd to see an unGor this far out in the sector of outlaws. No stranger than finding a new species on this barren rock and one of them being a notorious outlaw that had a whole ring of heartless bastards cowering in fear and compliance. I wasn't fooled into thinking killing Lord Zorn would be the end of things.

"I can help her," the young unGor placated quickly. "You can't return to your shuttle—it's been sabotaged."

"How do you know this?" I narrowed my eyes to slits, untrusting of this out-of-place unGor.

"Because I'm the one that was ordered to sabotage it. Lord Zorn always has someone who double checks my orders, so I couldn't just leave it alone. My brother is the best pilot I know. He can bring you into the hangar of Lord Zorn's ship without being traced."

"And why would I want to do that?"

This youngling was out of his mind if he thought I would bring her straight to the ship of the very male who was responsible for the state we were both in. I didn't trust anyone on the ship to keep her safe when my body finally hibernated to heal. She would return to my ship, not a slaver vessel.

"Because Lord Zorn has a radiation chamber created to simulate the moons of her planet that will help her heal, and a special injection I've seen him use to repair his loh even after near death. He's feared not just for his ruthlessness against those who disobey him, but because no one has been able to kill him. Many have tried."

"He won't be recovering this time," I stated matter-of-factly, and I watched for any signs that this unGor had any remorse or anger for knowing his leader would not be returning.

"Then you have nothing to worry about spending a rotation on the ship before returning to your own. He came in his smaller vessel so your crew wouldn't be on alert. Your warfleet could easily destroy it, but that would alert the other ships if you attacked."

"Why are you willing to help us?"

"Not you, Hazel," he corrected, while motioning his chin to my treasure. "If Lord Zorn knew who she was, he would do worse than kill her, but if he found out after killing her or someone else doing the honor, he would destroy many lives. He is not right in the mind."

Hazel, I thought of her name, and irritation flowed through me that she had gifted this outlaw with her name, yet not once offered it to me in return. It was against her own rights to privacy to use her name without her giving it to me of her own will. I would be forced to continue to call her Treasure until she told me the name herself, but I clenched my teeth together at how this lowlife was granted such an honor. I used my tail to sneak up and wrap around his throat with the claw pointed at his chin.

"You will not use her name on your tongue," I demanded as I lightly pressed the claw into his skin, and squeezed my tail around his throat for a small reminder that I may have been injured, but not incapable. The tincture oil would numb his neck, but not enough to stop him from speaking. I was still too dry to completely subdue him, but he didn't need to know that.

The youngling lifted a brow, and his small braids twitched at his neck. He was too young to use his tentacles to reach my tail and help loosen my hold. The unGor used their hair to hide the appendages from their head, but they've been part of the Trillume Galactic Authority for many cycles now. We knew of their anatomy. One day, the male would grow to have long tentacles that could rival my own tail, though they didn't have any claws or spines in them.

"She is Lord Zorn's offspring," he croaked out.

"How do you know this?" I released my tail on his throat, but kept it wrapped in case I needed to squeeze the life from him.

"He never looks at the medical files of slaves. What's the point if he's just going to send her to be skinned alive? She shares his DNA. He's incapable of having offspring, so I thought it was impossible, but there's no mistaking it. She's from his seed, perhaps before he lost his mating loh?"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because Lord Zorn's empire is hers if he is truly dead."

He won't recover from the poison without my antidote. I nodded to the unGor. We didn't have more time to discuss this. My ship didn't have the resources necessary to help a species that wasn't in our database. If I had to wait for her recovery and then escape a slave ship, that's what I would do to save her. She wasn't some outlaw's daughter; she was my mate.

I stilled with this realization. My mate... was that even possible?

Why my body responded to a different species, I may never know, but I was certain this treasure was meant to be mine, just as I was meant to be hers. When a trill bites someone, it's because we are cleaning our food or marking our mates... She'll never be in danger of my poison again if she takes my antidote and accepts my mark.

I had no choice but to claim her without consent, even before she gifted me with her name, to save her from the poison in the air. Would she forgive me for such a sin? Even if she never did, at least she would be alive. I would have to accept whatever punishment she gave, even if it was to reject being my mate.

The unGor tried to take my treasure from my arms, and I hissed in warning. He lifted his hands and grinned at me, recognizing my territorial response for what it was.

"I'm just trying to help. You may still be able to kill me with whatever last strength you have, but I'm not sure if you'll make it back to the bindle grappler after such a display."

I arched a brow ridge at him. Bindle was translating to a different language than what he was speaking... krelin? A destroyer.

"It's a small attack ship with arms to destroy another ship in close combat or dismantle key resources from a larger ship without detection until it's too late. It will get into the hangar of our ship without detection as it wasn't reported as on assignment, so we'll just return it to its spot in the hangar and no one will care. Traded it with a krelin and Vareo took a liking to it."

"Vareo is the pilot, your brother, you are bringing us to?" I questioned, and he smiled with a wave of his arm to continue towards the destroyer ship.

"He will pilot the ship."

The unGor quickly acted to right my footing as I stumbled, and we finally made it to the shuttle yard. Behind a large pile of broken ships and trash was a ship smaller than a traditional shuttle, but larger than I was expecting of a stealth ship called destroyer.

What stepped out of the open door was even more surprising. This was not another unGor, and he was half my height. I hissed at my escort and expressed my disagreement with this arrangement, "You think I will let a spawnling control the fate of my mate's life?" The unGor wasn't much more than a spawn himself, but this male standing not even chest high was beyond unacceptable. He couldn't have been old enough to know how to fly a ship.

"I'm more than capable, reptile," the boy snarked while cracking his knuckles with a smirk before turning his attention to the unGor, "You sure about this, Gen? Lord Zorn won't be happy that we kept this information from him."

"According to the trill, Lord Zorn is dead. Even if he isn't, we'd be in more danger if we let her die."

"I guess," Vareo said with a shrug. "Load up then. We have to be quick to get this thing back to the loading bay before communications are active again."

"Lord Zorn won't kill us for disobeying him, you know that," the unGor reassured the spawn with strange marks on his forehead and neck. The bird burn behind his ear was recognizable as the same one I saw on my treasure's ankle. A mark of a slave, I thought with growing anger.

"We might wish we were dead when he's through with us. He better be deader than the last time."

They both looked at me for affirmation. "He won't recover from my poison without my help," I assured.

They both sighed in unison like they were of one breath. As young as they were, they seemed to have lived more life than most, and I nodded with understanding. I would trust our lives with these spawns that hold a depth of age their years did not account for. I had no choice in the matter. I would hibernate soon to recover. Whether or not I woke again would be up to them.

* * *

The destroyer had two sleeping bays, one on each side of the ship behind the piloting deck, and a small cargo hold that would barely contain enough supplies for any long distances. Certainly not a large enough vessel for being able to make it to the nearest planet without the assistance of a larger ship.

As the ship thrusters lifted jerkily, I also noted the destroyer was not meant for landings or takeoffs planet-side. Its design did not lend to smooth navigation under the atmosphere of the magnetic pull from the planet's core. Using my own body, I shielded my treasure from jostling too much as she had to be strapped to the small cot barely large enough to hold us within one of the rooms.

We made it into orbit, and the unGor entered the small space as I adjusted upright again. He held out a medpack from my own shuttle supplies. I could tell by the mark of the Trillume Galactic Authority emblazoned on the film protecting the adhesive applicator.

"Use this until we get there," he offered.

Taking the medpack, I immediately applied it to Hazel's thigh with delicate precision. Medpacks worked best when applied where there was a large artery to transport the nanobots and support replicating for a faster healing process. There was no telling if it would work well with her species. It was untested by Trillume's scientists, but it was all we had at the moment to help her last until we got to Lord Zorn's personal medbay.

"It'll work to help stop the bleeding. Lord Zorn has used them before," he assured, sensing my uncertainty. A wise youngling. He held out another medpack, but flooding her system with nanobots wasn't going to help. If anything, too many nanobots could be dangerous. It was best to wait until these had a chance to work and be flushed out of the system.

He added when he saw I wasn't reaching for it, "For you."

The younger one with markings came up behind him from the direction of the pilot deck and shook his head with a grin. "You look like shit. Listen to the big guy and take your medicine or we might be eating lizard for dinner."

I nearly laughed, but measured my features at the youngling before staring at him with a serious expression to see if I could make him flinch. "Eat me, little bandit, and you'll join me in the beyond unless you have a tolerance for trill poisoning."

"Not yet, I don't," he challenged, and I grinned at him. He reminded me of myself as a spawn. A bit reckless, but eager and determined to grow strong. I took the medpack and applied it to myself. They were right. I suffered severe internal damage from my oil glands rupturing beneath my scales. The medpack would help, but I would still need to hibernate to shut down unnecessary functions and regenerate broken tissue. The medpacks technology was invented by a scientist that was able to replicate the regeneration properties of a trill after losing a tail or hand. We were very difficult to kill, which was why I was even more frustrated with myself for not handling Lord Zorn more efficiently, so Hazel wouldn't be in the state she was in now.

Hazel, I repeated her name in my mind and hoped that she would grant me the honor of saying it out loud by offering it to me when she woke.

"We'll be at the ship in a parcel rotation. We didn't dock at the planet, so you wouldn't see us coming."

"Did you take any of my crew with you?" I worried about Belder, though I shouldn't. She was perfectly capable of regenerating if they harmed her. Most species believed we were dead when we simply went into hibernation to heal. Our heart beats were imperceptible, and we already ran cold with our scales deflecting heat. As long as they didn't dispose of her out an airlock, or damage her heart, she'd be fine, I assured myself.

I went to pace the room, but a soft hand clenched in my claw, halting my retreat. I stared at the beautiful treasure before me and cringed with agony at how blue blood was leaking from her lovely jewels. Blue covered her soft green skin, leaking from the cracks in her deep emeralds. A moan whispered from her lips.

To give her something else to think about instead of the pain, I began to tell her of my past, "I was raised on the outskirts of the city where I had to train, as my ancestors had, to survive among predators of beasts with no thought other than to consume and roam the deserts.

"By my own clan's standards, I was nothing more than an animal with no rights to join the clan and more respectable beings of the universe. My whole crew is made up of animals tasked with protecting the planet when those of higher respect curled their tails in distaste, but I was willing to sacrifice myself and everything I knew to secure a future for them."

I shook my head at the oddity of speaking to a female that could not hear me. And even then, I was lying to myself and to her.

With a sigh, I corrected myself, "To secure a future for Princess Klemon. She was the only one who came to the outskirts dressed in her lab cloak and saw the life we lived as our ancestors had before us.

"She was there to test a new nano technology on unsuspecting animals , but she didn't. She kept returning rotation after rotation, bringing comforts of the city with her until I decided to approach." I could feel my neck heat with the memory of embarrassment at how I had acted then. "I had fully intended on mating her as she was beautiful and kind. In those days, I didn't think that she would turn me down as I was the strongest of the outskirts, regularly providing leadership and food for the rejected ones. We did not realize we were rejected ones at the time. Without words, I was similar to what you would call a savage warlord of the desert."

Her eyelids fluttered and fingers squeezed my claw more forcefully as she groaned out, "Mine."

I smiled, not even thinking about if I appeared frightening. Perhaps she could hear me in her dreams, and it warmed me deep within my cartilage that she felt the connection between us as I did.

"Yes," I agreed. "Yours, My Treasure. She was not my mate, but she did teach me the common tongue so she could ask permission to install my implant. Funny, how a basic language understanding is necessary for the functionality of the technology in our minds, as the program must have a base-line language to associate with or communication is pointless even if it translates many languages across the universe.

"Even us talking now is all made possible by our implants communicating with each other. Princess Klemon taught me the civility of our clan and tasked me with joining the Galactic Authority. I took her experimental technology.

"All of us did," I added with a sadness, thinking about my crew... and Belder.

"What does it do?" she whispered, and it allowed my muscles to ease, knowing she was conscious. Though her eyes remained closed. The medpack was helping, and the spawnlings didn't have to heal us at all. This small act was comforting as I felt my eyes close from the numbness seeping through my muscles.

"It stops foreign DNA from attaching to our cells," I explained. "But it's untested against the threat it was created for. It seems to have been proven to stop the replication of foreign cells in our bodies. The nanobots have saved countless lives and improved countless others from disease and death. But against what we face... the Solungor, we cannot know for certain until the threat reaches here from Solunus.

"That is why we are here. The side effects of the technology are unknown. It's only been used on the dying, and on my team. We must know that the threat is neutralized and that there aren't any adverse effects from prolonged exposure to the Ganpan-Fal in high doses. That is our mission."

Instead of fearing about what was to come, she said, "Solunus was destroyed..."

"No," I corrected her, "The planet still exists. It just doesn't belong to the Sol, or even the Galactic Authority, anymore."