Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

THREXIN

I t had been three days since the jump and nearly one ship month since his arrival on his Colossal . Time dragged, especially now that they were simply traversing human space—the most dangerous place for them to be—with no end in sight. By all accounts, the jump had been a success.

Colossal's signature would not register on any transceivers; Threxin made sure of that. They would navigate cloaked, which meant it was up to them to keep wide-range quantum radar on at all times and avoid other ships and major navigation routes. In the meantime Threxin had instructed his own engineers to find a way to jump through human space and avoid this manual navigation. Orion Halen's timeline of one year before their next jump was unacceptably long.

For one, they were running out of rations.

His ship had been perfectly balanced to sustain seven thousand human lives for the duration of Colossal's intended expedition. If they had found this planet they'd been looking for, the humans had expected to rely on natural resources, their seed collections, and fertilized animal eggs in stasis to grow their food on the planet itself. If not, they had expected to return to human space and restock.

"If we don't import water soon, people are going to start dying," Orion had warned him as they entered the command center that morning.

"Then perhaps you will not need to cull so many once we get to my new planet. Where is your female?" Threxin noted for once that she was not shadowing her husband like an increasingly pallid ghost.

Orion Halen hesitated. "Busy."

Threxin grunted. He had suspected she was ill. Was she dead?

"My offer is contingent on you doing your best to keep us alive, Threxin," Orion said coolly.

"Yes. Your… offer," Threxin's spikes twitched. "It is not something you will hold over me, human. I stated my plan from the beginning and it has not changed. The humans on the ship remain your responsibility."

"I can't make more drinkable water magically appear out of thin air," Orion snapped. His temper ratcheted up Threxin's own impulses as his body responded, kicking in his limiter.

"Calm yourself, human," he warned.

"Calm myself?" When Orion looked at him, his eyes may as well have been mirrors of his own. Their relation was undeniable in the glow of them. He studied Threxin with unmasked suspicion. "What have you done to yourselves? You aren't normal."

Threxin smiled and continued to walk. "Fix your own hydration issues, human. If you want your people alive, you will make them live with the resources you have."

"Then at least let them Upload," Orion snarled after him.

Threxin flicked his talons and kept walking. "The rig remains off limits."

The rig was a monstrous thing, under permanent guard by three of his cohort. Threxin had quickly realized it was perhaps the most critical part of this ship. When humans died, they expected to live. Who knew what they were capable of to make that happen?

Ship weeks ago, Orion's female had asked him to allow humans to Upload instead of sharing Threxin's new planet. It was not an unreasonable idea on its surface.

Allowing humans to Upload would let the ones who did not want to share a planet with his kind live on without a cull. Threxin had gathered that access to their Heaven was a commodity. Many would prefer that, maybe even more than the rig would support.

But until his engineers studied the technology and ensured there was no way to communicate with the outside world after Upload, the risk was far too great to bother. If two-way communication turned out to be a possibility, Threxin's mission would be compromised. Even if they got to his new planet before it happened, no one could know there was an uhyre cohort who had found what the humans had been searching for for centuries. Because they would look. And they would hunt. And eventually someone who had been Uploaded may be able to piece enough information to help them find.

No. Threxin and his cohort had to be invisible. He would take no chances.

"You realize, brother, you are hinging everything on the word of your enemy?" Renza had told him that night in his cabins. "What if this New Earth does not even exist? What if he is sending you to nothing?"

"Our astrophysicists have looked at the raw data he provided," Threxin leaned against the wall in his foam cushion, staring at the cavernous expanse of his cabin.

"If the data is not forged. "

"To the best of their abilities they have confirmed it is not."

But Renza was right. He had been poring over historical documentation possessed by his Colossal . Humans had been looking for precisely the planet Orion claimed to have the coordinates to for thousands of their years. Threxin had gathered that Orion's dam jumped the ship and set course for Apth despite her offspring's disapproval. Threxin had been fortunate—if Orion Halen had taken command of the ship sooner, Colossal would have never crossed his path.

"Well, you can soon find out. I found the sire," Renza said, scratching the center of his chest absently as he looked at the smooth scar that had formed over Threxin's wound.

Threxin's brow rose. "Where?"

"Down in the brig. It is a full deck. You should see it, brother. The imprisoned humans took it. At one point I am certain it was maintained, but now it is pure chaos. A massacre waiting to kindle. I am glad I secured the sire in time. They are on the brink of killing each other."

"Where did you put him?"

"A secure cabin that would not draw attention."

As much as Threxin had dismissed the usefulness of humans when he had reclaimed his Colossal , avoiding them completely had not been a viable option. They had for now remained a critical part of operating the ship—decent workers if nothing else. And Orion Halen's machinations were not to be ignored. The fact that he had imprisoned his own sire only confirmed to Threxin the importance of interrogating him.

"Bring him to me," Threxin said. "In one ship hour."

His monitoring drones had been compromised, perhaps damaged in the jump. The permanent vid feeds in common areas of the ship had also grown flaky. His technicians were working on it, but kept encountering new component failures for which they had no replacements. How Colossal could be missing components for such simple mechanisms, Threxin did not comprehend. Perhaps the ship had not been run as stringently as its reputation would have one believe.

Threxin had not known what compulsion brought him to Alina's cabin door for the third time since the jump. It had taken all his willpower to leave her in Lesthin's hands so callously. Lesthin was not a gentle medic, and his revulsion to humans was well known. But he was efficient, obedient, and competent. The pleading betrayal on Alina's face when he watched Lesthin have his way with her stabbed him through the chest each time it came to mind.

She had been with him for days. Fixed him. Hydrated him. Slept on her floor for him. Then she redressed his wound even after witnessing him punish two of her kind.

Threxin could not afford to do the same. Carrying her so publicly to get special treatment was bad enough. The humans had been watching, as had the uhyre. Pausing to reassure or check on her would have been worse. He had already made enough mistakes, and was making another now. He had been seen by her human nurse, whom he vetted thoroughly after begrudgingly agreeing to let her come to Alina Argoud's cabins while she recovered. She appeared competent enough, for a human.

He loitered, fighting the urge to enter Alina's cabin. He knew she had been in the medbay earlier that day to remove her casts and bandages. For the first time, the results of Lesthin's work would be revealed. It would be visible whether his medic followed his command, or if the work were sloppy.

Threxin would kill him if it were the latter.

That was why he was outside Alina's door again that night. Threxin simply had to know whether his medic would require swift punishment for disobedience.

He entered.

Alina yelped at the sight of him and Threxin stepped forward quickly, ensuring the door shut behind him so as not to release the sound. She sat rigid in her bed with a carton of yellow strips before her and her face bathed in flickering light. A peal of laughter brought his attention to the tablet, then to the light emitted from it, forming a projection of her Earth show on her wall.

"What are you doing here?" she squeaked.

Threxin stepped forward, and she flinched back. She pulled the ridiculous colorful blanket covering her body defensively to her chest with one hand, resisting as he peeled it away.

"What are you doing?" Her voice shook as he lowered himself to the bed, pushing the tablet and food away.

A warm shudder ran down his spine each time she said his name and he almost snapped at her to stop it.

There was panic in her eyes. Was he that frightening to her?

"Remove your pants."

"W-what? Why?" She smoothed her good hand over the loose black fabric on her thigh.

"I need to check your injuries."

"I'm fine. You shouldn't be here. I just need physio to get the motion back."

"Physio?" Threxin did not recognize the term.

"Exercises. I can do most of this stuff here in the cabin." She motioned to a piece of paper on the bedspread.

Threxin snatched it, narrowing his eyes as he struggled to decipher Universal glyphs. "This says ‘walking.' Twenty minutes. Out there?"

"Don't worry about that," Alina extracted the paper from his hand. "I don't need to do that. "

Threxin's spikes flattened as he leveled her with a glare. "You will walk, human."

"I think your guards will have something to say about me aimlessly limping back and forth down the halls, Threxin," she snapped.

"My guards will say nothing. You will walk. Now remove your pants or I will do it for you."

Her breath stuttered, and while she moved numbly to follow his command he observed her hand.

It was blotched a faint blue, only slightly darker than the normal deep beige of her skin. He looked to her other hand, then back. No swelling. He observed small entry marks at the top of the wrist where Lesthin had done his work. They appeared relatively unmangled.

But her movement had been restricted. He saw it as she tucked her thumbs into the waistband of her pants. Her right hand gripped the fabric nimbly, but her left did not fully bend or rotate. Threxin narrowed his eyes, observing her tugging the waistband clumsily to reveal the white strip of fabric beneath.

Threxin hissed through his teeth, gripped her waistband, and slid the pants in one drag over her legs, revealing prickled flesh. Alina Argoud attempted immediately to tuck her legs to her chest with a wince. Threxin placed a firm hand on the upper thigh of her injured leg, forcing it straight.

"Do not move, human," he said.

"Threxin—"

Yes, human, say my name. A shudder ran down his spikes.

"Can you… just… Can we do this later?"

He glanced up at her, seeking her eyes behind her stupid bangs. "No."

The knee was slightly swollen, but not overly so. He saw an ugly entry point in the side, slightly puckered with a hollowing in the middle. Threxin leaned in to observe it. Her thigh tensed beneath his touch, muscles jutting satisfyingly against his palm. Threxin grunted his surprise. Her muscle tone was better developed beneath the soft layers of fat and skin than he had expected. Something about the contrast of her softness and the utilitarian flesh beneath made his skin tighten.

He reached up with his free hand to run the sharp points of his fingers across the kneecap, barely making contact.

"Can you feel this?" he asked, glancing up at her.

"Y-yes."

He nodded in a human gesture for her benefit and shifted his fingers to the outer side of her kneecap, where the scar was.

"And this?" he repeated.

She swallowed and returned his nod. "Yes."

He progressed to the inner part of the knee. He had to be thorough. Her flesh rose under his traversal. "Now?"

Her voice was strained and full when she answered to the affirmative. Threxin slid his hand from the top of her thigh to tuck it against her hamstring. He grasped her calf gingerly with the other as he bent her knee slowly, watching her small face for any sign of pain. When the back of her knee was off the bed and exposed to him, he repeated the light clawing motion, checking the sensation there with the tips of his talons.

The catch of her breath drew his eyes, expecting a show of pain. But rusty red blotched her cheeks and her pupils were expansive.

"Can you feel this?" His voice was low as he held them.

"Yes," she whispered.

Threxin's tongue prickled as he licked his lips. He remained still, holding her leg up as they stayed like that, in a kind of stasis. The musk perfuming the air tugged at him, and his vision narrowed, honing in.

It took no time at all for what remained of the thin rims of her irises to disappear completely under his gaze. Her eyes were endless black space. His hand was already sliding up the back of her thigh as he shifted himself atop her legs. She leaned forward, her skin a flame beneath his touch. His other hand dragged up the thigh of her uninjured leg to her hip, then over the strap covering her groin and under the shirt that lay over the soft curve of her stomach.

"Breathe," he commanded when he noticed she was not. His apertures widened as she complied with an immediacy that drove molten heat to his groin.

"Good," he offered. Her mouth parted for air, soft belly expanding beneath his hand as she drew it deep. The pulse point in her throat visibly calmed, settling into the captivity.

Threxin released her thigh to reach up and cup her jaw. Her squishy face was so small under his palm that he covered it entirely, thumb tracing the orbit of her eye. His own pulse did not calm or settle, especially when she tilted her face into his touch.

"Shoq," he whispered, shifting his grip to place his thumb beneath her jaw, exacting a delicate hold on her throat as he splayed his fingers at the nape of her neck. He applied pressure and she was pliant, bending her neck back to tilt her face up to him as he leaned closer. Her mouth was an offering, parted and waiting.

He accepted it. He pulled her toward him by her neck and met her mouth, their heated breaths mingling. Their eyes remained locked and her tongue was at his lips. It was a strange human gesture that nevertheless had his apertures wide and on fire and his hips jutting into hers on instinct alone.

The trance broke with the closure of their eyes. Her pulse jumped beneath his hand on her neck. Restive and desperate, her hands roamed and dragged at him, and his soon did the same. The limiter hummed, but did not stop him as he shoved her uninjured leg wider, seating himself into her hips and curling his back over her folded body beneath him .

It took too long for him to recognize the taste on his tongue. To catch his fully erect spikes scraping at the roof of his mouth, drawing the exorin to the surface and to his lips. To her lips. The realization was soon followed by the driving of a needle into his skull.

"Shoq," he growled and slammed his hand into her chest, shoving hard as he threw himself off the bed. He stood, panting.

Her eyes widened, with horror most likely. Her tongue nearly darted out to wet her lips. Threxin shot his hand forward to grab her jaw and hold it open.

"Don't," he growled. He narrowed his eyes and inspected her mouth closely, searching her skin for any trace of black. He held the hinge of her jaw firmly as he did it, tilting her face up to the light. The column of her throat moved, instinctively attempting to swallow.

I want to sink my teeth there.

"Don't," he hissed again, blinking away the thought. Silent tears spilled to her temples and seeped around his fingers. He didn't know what she was afraid of—what he was doing, or the exorin. Turning her head left and right to make sure there was nothing there, he finally loosened his grip, satisfied that no exorin had gotten onto her mouth. Only then did he lick the layer of it from his own lips.

Threxin leaned back and shoved the back of his arm to his mouth to wipe it off, conscious of the way her terrified eyes followed the movement.

She was still crying.

"It is okay," he offered gruffly. "You are safe."

The words did not seem to make her feel any better. Instead, Alina Argoud's wet eyes turned to flint, flashing.

"Can't you find some other… some other…" her chest seized as she tried to force the words, "… pest … to study and fuck with? Why me? What the hell did I do to you?"

She thought he was doing this on purpose. He had let her think that. No, he had made her think that. Threxin was cognizant of the thrum of the limiter inside him, forcing his heartbeat to settle and his mind to emotionless clarity, trapping him beneath a sheet of ice. And yet something in him railed against it harder than it ever had, battering at the cage. His head throbbed as the limiter overpowered it.

"I lied," he said flatly, fighting to keep himself down, to see reason. Failing.

She leaned forward, clutching the sheet in her fists. "What does that even mean?"

Threxin retreated, reaching for distance. He needed all the distance he could get, because if he did not leave now, he feared he may never make it out.

Threxin should not have arranged to interrogate Orion Halen's human sire that evening. He had miscalculated. Misjudged. Misbehaved.

"Take him away. I will do this later," he told Renza in the receiving area of his quarters. Orion Halen's sire was apparently outside, in his suite's entrance lobby.

Renza stood infuriatingly still, his expression and mannerisms betraying nothing for several long ticks.

"I think you want to talk to him now, k'riar ," his voice was low. "He has been waiting for this, and… what he told me sounds compelling."

Renza immediately recognized the state of him. Shoq, any idiot would see it. Threxin sat on the firm cushion, apertures throbbing and groin hard as the surface of Apth Alpha. Perhaps a human could miss the way his apertures pulsed subtly or the way his taut spikes stood erect on his skull and spine. But not one of his, and definitely not his shoqing brother.

Threxin's limiter hummed incessantly in his skull, fighting to rip connections between some synapses and recreate others. It churned at the inner meat of him until he wanted to bash his head against the fucking wall to make it stop.

"What happened?" Renza asked.

Threxin desperately wanted his brother to assume whatever encounter he just had involved one of his cohort. Silarra or Keltha. Shoq, any of them would have him—some had been trying. But Threxin saw it in his brother's eyes that he stood there and he knew.

"Nothing," Threxin growled, fighting to keep his cool even as the limiter worked exhaustively. "Bring him in."

"Brother, you?—"

Threxin's skin flared, apertures snapping shut. "Bring in the damn human, Renza, if he is so compelling."

He shook his head viciously at the spike of dulling pain clattering through his head, bouncing off the walls of his skull. When he opened his eyes, Renza was retreating, opening the door, and dragging in an old male.

"Wait outside," Threxin told Renza once the man who was presumably Orion Halen's father was positioned in the seat across from him.

He glared at the human before him, attempting to focus. He swallowed it away and adjusted in his seat, wincing as his erection chafed against his pants. Resting his elbows on his knee, Threxin cocked his head to study the old man.

"You are my human-kin's sire," Threxin said.

"Per Halen." The man nodded.

He looked weak and old, and yet his face was barely lined and his body was not overly bent. His eyes were glassy, but held a shrewdness Threxin supposed he'd best not ignore.

"Your age?"

"Three hundred and fifty-seven Old Earth years," Per Halen said.

Threxin was impressed. He did not think the Elysian's life extension technology could keep one in such condition for so long, even if the ancientness of him did seep through his eyes and his air. This was perhaps the first in-person evidence he had seen of Colossal's technical superiority in this regard.

"I've been waiting for you to call on me," he said.

Threxin flicked his fingers dismissively. "What made you believe I would?"

Per Halen shrugged. "Logic. I expected you to interrogate everyone associated with my son after boarding."

Logic . Threxin encircled his wrist with his free hand, squeezing as he twisted the skin there, enjoying the raw burn of it skittering up his forearm. A good distraction from the continued throbbing in his gut and his brain.

"I needed nothing from any of you, except apparently coordinates."

"Until now."

"Now I need… verification." Threxin narrowed his eyes, watching the micro movements of the human's face. He had to be additionally observant, considering human faces all looked generally the same and were not easy to read. He'd gotten good at the base emotions: Fear. Anger. Lust. But lies? Threxin edged forward in his seat, ensuring he had a good view of Per Halen's canvas.

"Your son claims to know the coordinates of an Earthlike planet," Threxin said.

Per Halen's brow relaxed. This was apparently not a surprise. "So he does."

"Do you know them as well?"

He watched Per Halen's eyes carefully as the question was asked. Watched, and waited. And when he spotted a hint of uncertainty crease his brows, something inside him ignited into a sense of victory so acute, so carnal, that a bolt of lightning lodged itself in his head and would not let go.

Threxin ground his jaw against the limiter's assault. The implant in his brain had clearly had enough of his stupidity. He clenched his hands into fists and sat through it as it brought him down, tamping his excitement.

"How curious." The old man's voice came faint, his lips moving in slow motion. Threxin glared but said nothing until the pain subsided.

Finally he refocused. "You will tell me where it is."

One of Per Halen's graying brows rose. "I think we have misunderstood each other, Commander."

Threxin leaned forward once more, a fisted hand flexing as it dangled between his knees. "I would wish not to go through the trouble of extracting my information from you, human. But I will if need be."

The man's face lost some color, but still he shook his head. "Did my son tell you why his mother—my wife, now in Heaven—sent Colossal to you?"

"Records indicated she considered it a likely habitable planet. Your New Earth ." Threxin chuckled at the uselessness of their mission. Apth had not contained a New Earth in a very long time.

"So the records say," Per Halen smiled thinly. "I suppose he wouldn't tell you the real reason."

"And you will," Threxin surmised.

"I love my son, Commander," Per Halen stated matter-of-factly. "He is the ideal to which humanity must strive. Mostly human, with just a touch of…" He smiled, gaze sliding to Threxin's talons. "Just a touch of monster in him. This is where humanity is headed, Commander. This is where Colossal must be headed. My wife recognized that. She was the ideal too…"

Threxin let him talk. Perhaps the human would let slip something useful about his destination.

"It is a practical matter too. Of this ship's survival. My son shares nine percent of his blood with you. Colossal requires at least five percent in its heir to function reliably. Even if the wife he dragged from the backwater of the universe were to bear him a child, it would be below the threshold of reliable authority with the ship. Consequences would be… uncertain. But certainly not good. Though Kaia has other uses…" he trailed off.

It was tugging at him now, the unspoken intention in Per Halen's words. Threxin did not want to hear him say it. How, after all this time, after vilifying the uhyre for thousands of years, had these people managed to be so shoqing willing to crawl onto his cohort's cocks?

"Mare Halena picked Apth not because she was deluded into thinking it was our New Earth," Per Halen said quietly. "It was for you. We weren't certain, but we had to try. It was her last gift to this ship and her people before her Upload. The hope that you will take a human mate. Hell, take many. Take them all. And continue the ship's line of command in a way my son cannot. Help humanity not just survive, but evolve."

They sat in silence for several ticks as Threxin mulled the delusional spark in the old man's glassy eyes. Finally, with a small smile, he spoke. "What possibly made you think I care about helping humanity do anything?"

Per Halen's gaze hardened. "This ship is your legacy, Commander. A symbolic and practical joining of uhyre and humanity. I had hoped you would be capable of appreciating that. Besides, your kind have done it before. You fucked your way through Old Earth like goddamn rabbits. That is why my son and all before him are alive today."

"You humans blame us for your Old Earth," Threxin barked a bitter laugh. "And now you want us as your saviors."

Per Halen's lip curled with what Threxin could only interpret as disdain. "My son is delusional if he thinks he doesn't need you. He hedged his bets on his new planet, thinking he won't need Colossal once they get there. Like my wife, he thinks he has his people's best interests at heart. I know what you will do if I tell you the location. I love this ship, Commander, and the humans on it are my responsibility as much as they were my wife's and my son's. You can reject your duty to it, but I will not do the same by sending them to death."

His duty! This fool thought Threxin's duty was to fuck humans.

He could not help it. A guttural laugh tore from his chest, the tension in his spikes crumbling. He leaned back, relaxed, all his former arousal banished at the ridiculous delusion of this aging human male. They really were something, the humans. They truly thought they were the most important beings in the universe. That they had the right to live and others had the duty to save them.

"Renza!" Threxin barked, chest still shaking with remnants of amusement. Renza cocked his head when he reentered. "Take this idiot away. I will work on him tomorrow."

Something tugged at him as Renza dragged the human to the door.

"Your son's female," Threxin called to him. "What ‘other uses' does she have?"

Per Halen stuttered his step, looking back. "Perhaps you should ask him."

The lash of anger at the human's defiance didn't get a chance to rise before it was forced back down as a thick pit in Threxin's throat. He had been looking for this human for weeks, and all he came away with was more questions.