Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

THREXIN

T he reclamation of the ship did not take long. Once they destroyed the enemy's combat fighters with their own planetary missiles and satellite nukes, it was only a matter of maneuvering around the ship's mounted projectiles, latching to the hull, and searing a speedy but careful opening in its surface to accommodate a pressurized passage tube.

It took much longer to do so with this ship than it had with Elssian , Threxin acknowledged with some pride. In fact, Clossal as a whole looked much more impressive. It was a massive and practical black beast, with zero effort spent on appearances and all of it on defenses, however useless against his efforts.

Just at that time, his Clossal objected to being underestimated by landing a hit on their transport vessel.

"Shoq," his brother swore next to him, adjusting to keep the transport steady as the mechanic in the back did his work.

Threxin made for the tail of the craft just in time to watch his men push the seared hull inward. They looked back at him through the transparent sealed tube they had created between the transport vessel and the colony ship.

Threxin secured his helmet. Renza exited the cockpit already prepared. They exchanged raised chins over the heads of the others. Finally Threxin entered the tube and, on the other side, pushed through the barrier of the opening sealed to Clossal's hull gash.

As expected, the humans had blasted oxygen from the part of the ship Threxin had been targeting. It looked like a storage area, strewn with containers full of shiny packs. Threxin ripped one of them open with gloved fingers while two of his men put a temporary seal back on the hull and two others worked at the door on the other side. Green gel spilled up from the packet, floating in beads around his head. Threxin appreciated the magnetic force holding his boots to the floor in the absence of gravity.

He hoisted his weapon from the harness on his shoulder and approached the door when it looked like the work was nearly finished. His brother stood beside him, followed by twenty other males and three females.

"Kill them all?" Renza checked.

"May as well."

The door opened on laser fire, and they killed them all.

Threxin was wiping human blood spatter from his visor when red alarms shrieked overhead and oxygen was once again vented with a deafening gush. He ducked out of the way of bodies and equipment that careened toward him.

"Shoq," he muttered, nodding at his men to take the next door. This was not convenient.

This time Threxin did not waste any time while the others were dispatching another group of humans. He scanned the space for any semblance of a gene reader. Spotting it, he cleared the bodies in its path and unsealed his suit. Shrugging his arm free to expose his hand, Threxin struck his palm to the indentation in the wall. For several ticks he waited, hoping the thing was indeed what he thought it must be.

It was. He smiled at the sensation of faint pricks applied to his palm .

A high-pitched sound chimed overhead and a soothing voice surrounded him with a Human phrase, playing over and over. It took Threxin some time to wrestle his mind into processing the language—Universal—so the repetition was appreciated.

"New Commander authenticated."

The human female who had burst into the command center in a panic continued to interrupt matters.

"Quiet her," Threxin told Renza, who did the job by slamming his knuckles into the side of the female's tiny head. He pushed her body away as she went limp and crumpled to the floor.

Threxin turned his attention back to the hybrid before him. His kin.

"I note the resemblance," he mused in Universal. Barely, but it was there. The faint glow behind this male's eyes, this Orion Halen , matched his own, and the male's movements betrayed a certain jerky kinship. He was bigger and wider than the other humans too. Not as big as anyone in Threxin's cohort, of course, even the females. But bigger.

"What do you want?" his human-kin asked.

It took a few ticks for Threxin to catch up with the pace and manner of the human speech and translate the question in his head.

"My ship, of course."

"Don't need my permission for that," Orion Halen leveled him with a dull glare.

Threxin scanned the commander's seat in which he had settled while he processed the male's words. He ran the sharp tips of his fingers down the sleek armrests as he searched for the sampler port. When he thought he understood well enough, Threxin huffed a chuckle. "I do not need you for anything."

He held his wrist over the probable spot. To his satisfaction, the sampler needle extracted itself with a little click and hovered at a point just above Threxin's right wrist. His apertures tightened as some of the resignation Threxin had sensed in the human's demeanor was replaced with a blackness he should recognize, but of course never could.

Threxin smiled as he lowered his wrist and the sampler found purchase in his vein. He noted that Orion's own arm had a small round socket embedded into a nearby spot—he would need to arrange for that.

"Transmit to Elssian ," the uhyre instructed.

Threxin followed the former commander's gaze over his shoulder toward a pale-faced human shaking down at the control deck.

Something nonverbal passed between them. When the human moved to unsteady action, Threxin growled a warning, and weapons clicked from the door where his cohort stood ready.

"She's doing what you said," Orion spoke, slowly this time. "She's the comms officer. Configures the transmission."

Threxin studied him, then the "comms officer," who was frozen in place as she waited. He grunted his assent, to which the officer and Orion Halen exchanged communicative looks again. Threxin looked to the thermaview hull where the feed would be projected and waited.

There was still the small angry female who stood behind his human-kin's side, and the fury rolling off her made Threxin's limiter work in overdrive. She was, for some reason, not as fearful as a human should be, but he would deal with that later.

The humans recoiled in unison when the view of Elssian's command center appeared on the projection, along with the technically living but practically very dead commander of that ship. It had taken some time to find the right configuration of Elssian and Apthian technology to keep Elssian's human key just alive enough to retain control of the ship. It had been damaged and could no longer leave the galaxy, but remained useful as a mine of human tech and a residential hub for those who were not staying planetside. The ship was depressing, but perhaps not as depressing as living on the surface of Apth.

There was audible shuffling, then a familiar voice as his father came into view. It was strange seeing Koruth through this two-dimensional lens. It exposed his age in a new light—brittle apertures edged by black, the faded glow of old blood inside. His eyes were a pale, sickly pink. Threxin glanced at Renza. Many cycles ago, the old male would have looked just as strong as his true son. Now he was a husk who had no business dictating his descendants' futures.

"Father," Threxin said.

"You have done well."

"I know."

"Are they subdued?" Koruth's beady eyes darted around the screen, pausing at various humans.

"Yes."

"Good. I will begin my transfer."

Threxin flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture he wouldn't have dared make toward his father until now. "No need."

Koruth blinked, apertures widening, which only diluted the depth of their glow. "It will be a long journey back into range of Haevn. We will?—"

The immediacy with which his Clossal responded to his unspoken instruction to close the transmission induced a pang of satisfaction. He could already feel himself melding with his ship—or rather, his ship melding with him.

Threxin turned to the communications officer trembling in her seat. "Project as I say at channel Elssian two-five-two-six. Are you prepared?"

"Y-yes," she stuttered, then threw a glance at her former commander beside him. "Sir."

"Agh. Sze. Pre?—"

"I'm s… so sorry. I don't understand."

"Shoq," Threxin sighed, twisting his brain to capture the correct words. "Two. Five… Three-nine…"

Threxin ignored the shuffling of his cohort at the door and continued his strained recitation of Elssian's self-destruct codes. When it was done, he issued his next query to the former commander. "You have quantum radar?"

The sigh of the female beside him was long and exasperated, drawing from Threxin an appraising glance, but only that because Orion Halen intercepted with a quick "Yes."

"Show me. Show me the Elssian. "

The radar projection was blown up on the hull. Elssian's marker on the image was flanked by a few other smaller craft scattered in close proximity. In Threxin's peripheral vision, his human-kin tensed at the sight.

Then, all at once, the projection of Elssian began to separate into several unequal chunks, then dissipate into pixels on the thermaview. As the entangled photons of the radar were beamed out in Elssian's general direction and collided with the ship, their counterparts in Clossal's sensors mirrored changes in their state, building a detailed animation of the explosion.

Renza stepped forward. He had removed his helm to reveal crimson apertures stiffened into thread-thin slits. His spikes bloomed brightly atop his head, pulsing at his scalp. "Brother, what did you do?"

"Father's plans were for Father."

"But he wanted?—"

"Immortality," Threxin cut him off. "I want life."

The clearing of a throat took his attention. When he turned toward the sound, the angry female next to Orion Halen was stepping forward. "You gonna tell us what's going on or what?"

Orion Halen's gaze snapped to her, and the way her eyes flashed in his direction once more gave away the existence of a nonverbal messaging passing between them. She clicked her tongue, as though in response to some unseen instruction.

"You are communicating," Threxin observed. "How?"

Neither said a word, but words were not required.

"Of course. The… subvocalization ," he guessed. "The humans on your Elssian had such things."

Threxin peered at the sampler still plugged into the flesh of his socketless wrist. A trail of blood seeped beneath the sleeve of his suit. "Ship, disable subvocal communication in all intracranial implants. Disable all communication between human members of the ship."

His Clossal's response was immediate: "Neurosync subvocalization disabled. Communication network disabled."

Threxin turned back to the comms officer. "Open a broad frequency transmission."

She looked around as if lost for a minute, blinking rapidly. Then the female began keying buttons on her control panel. "Broadcast frequency open."

" Elssian is gone. All who wish to survive beyond the husks of Apth will report for duty by directing your shuttles to Clossal ."