Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

THREXIN

H e had spent the day testing Kaia Halena's immunity. She may have been immune to her husband, but according to Orion Halen's own father, he only had ten percent uhyre blood. He and Renza had hunted down his biogineer, Tetha, the day before, and spent hours preparing a testing plan and development methodology. Tetha was a trustworthy male who could keep his mouth shut—Threxin did not wish to spread any possible rumors about the prospect of a vaccine among humans or uhyre.

Procuring a sample that morning was… difficult. He'd stood in a medbay examination room with Orion Halen and his female looking at him warily as he informed them of his plan. He would collect and provide Kaia Halena with minuscule traces of exorin to ingest, at which point her blood and mental capacities would be tested for signs of behavioral modification.

Elysian's records from Old Earth had shown footage of how humans reacted immediately upon ingesting the substance. Physical signs like immediate pupil dilation, increased pulse, and flushing of the skin were soon followed by arousal, rambling speech, and loss of coordination. Once the exorin wore off, chances were high that they would begin suffering withdrawals: lethargy, chills, perspiration, fever, and uncontrollable demands for more.

"No goddamn way," Orion Halen had said.

"I say, human."

"I don't care what you ‘say,' asshole. I'm not letting her drink your drool."

"She ingests your… drool … all the time."

"Yeah. I'm her husband ."

"And I am her commander. And yours."

Kaia Halena bristled at that, lip curling up in disgust.

"I'm not letting her risk?—"

She stepped between them then, keeping her eyes on her mate. "How about both of you let me decide what I'm willing to risk here?"

It was a foolish suggestion. Everyone knew Threxin could decide for her. But he resisted issuing a correction and waited for Orion Halen's reaction.

"Fuck that." Orion attempted to step in front of her and shield her from Threxin's line of sight, but the female ducked him with a shake of the head. After several ticks of a tense standoff she apparently decided to try another approach. Threxin watched carefully as she softened before his eyes, turning to face her mate fully.

Her lids drooped, lashes fluttered. Her eyes relaxed into something more aloof as she placed both hands atop Orion Halen's chest and tilted her chin up to him. Immediately the stench of violence permeating from Orion dispersed. His entire body leaned forward slightly, and Threxin wondered if he'd even noticed.

It was smart. And, he realized, not entirely unlike the gesturing he'd witnessed in Alina the night he had her in his cabin, convincing him to let Per Halen live. Was that calculated on her part too?

She'd looked so desperate when he had her plastered against his bedroom wall, her fingers clawing for him. She had offered herself completely, and it was only his own self-control that avoided disaster because she was so perfectly willing to give up her sanity. Then, on the floor, she had been so perversely submissive and so…

"Shoq," he grunted and spun to grab one of the few sampler vials stacked on the rectangular counter lining the wall. He ripped off the cap and held it to his mouth, pursing his lips to aim a string of exorin into the container.

"What the fuck…" Orion Halen said behind him.

Threxin hissed at his weakness, even if it was convenient in the moment. The mere thought of Alina Argoud shouldn't elicit such an immediate reaction. But Threxin hardened at the thought of watching the spikes lining his cock pop one by one past her plump bottom lip and disappear into her mouth. If they found a vaccine, that could become a reality. He could have her any way he pleased, in a million ways.

The vial was full and he grabbed another, collecting the rest of the exorin as he tried to calm himself. That was more than enough for their initial testing.

When he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned around, both humans were watching him incredulously.

"You're one horny fucker, aren't you?" Orion Halen raked a hand through his hair. They exchanged glances, Kaia shifting against her mate, Orion's hand on her waist drifting lower.

Instead of dignifying him with a response, Threxin grabbed a syringe, ripped its protective packaging, and extracted half a human milliliter of exorin from the container.

"We will begin with this," he said, holding the syringe to the light. The exorin stained the plastic walls of the syringe as he flipped it over. It oozed thickly to comply with gravity.

Kaia gave Orion Halen's hand a squeeze and nodded. She stepped forward to accept the syringe, but Orion grabbed her upper arm, making her turn back.

"Kaia, if it doesn't work…"

"If it doesn't work, I have my supply," she said, voice low. "Right?"

Orion Halen's throat bobbed in a swallow, his grip on her arm loosening.

"Right."

Threxin had his doubts that Orion's diluted exorin would satisfy the female if she did grow addicted to the real thing, but he wasn't about to point that out and make things harder for himself. He would rather not have to restrain anyone to get this job done.

Half a milliliter appeared to have no discernible effect on Kaia Halena. They had called in Tetha and the human scientist Kaia and Orion had been working with to draw a blood test for later analysis. They upped the dosage to one, then five, then fifteen milliliters to no effect.

After the fourth draw of blood, Kaia Halena looked exhausted and flinched at the sight of a needle. Orion was demanding they stop for the day, but the female insisted on just getting through this as quickly as possible. Finally Kaia, exasperated and on edge, grabbed both the remaining vials from the counter, pitched them to her mouth, and gulped them down.

Threxin sighed, running a hand through his spikes. "That was not part of the protocol."

"Fuck the protocol. Either I get addicted to this shit or I don't," she snapped, offering her arm to the human engineer for the final draw. "Let's get this over with."

Orion drew the final vial of blood and stored it in the secure container. Then, both he and Threxin watched her for many ticks, waiting for something to happen.

"Why are you doing this anyway?" Kaia asked in a bored voice, slumped in the examination chair with one foot propped on the edge. Her red-painted fingers drummed an impatient beat on her knee. "Why do you give a shit, if your big plan is killing half of us and keeping the rest corralled behind a fucking fence?"

Because I want to claim your assistant did not seem a wise answer.

"Both my kind and yours appear compelled to break reasonable rules," he said. "If I can remove the dependency dynamic completely, I will eradicate a large part of the problem."

"And then what?" Kaia narrowed her eyes.

"Then perhaps we have a slightly more than minuscule chance of surviving on the same rock without descending into what your Earth became," Threxin said evenly. "You were working toward a vaccine too, no? Did you change your mind?"

Kaia scoffed but offered no answer. She clearly did not like the prospect of a closer cohabitation with his kind, but what she liked mattered not at all to Threxin. It was up to him to command Colossal and lead his cohort to a better life. And more and more, logic dictated that perhaps the humans would be an increasingly unavoidable part of that.

Threxin's innards lurched with a sensation akin to a moment of zero gravity when Alina Argoud chimed him that evening using the device he gave her. The contact pulsed with a unique texture in the patch adhered to his inner wrist—each incoming sender had its own signature.

"Can you come to my cabin?" Her voice came through his bone-conducting earpiece.

Threxin's lips twitched in a half-smile. She was being uncustomarily direct, and the fact that it was about the topic of seeing him pleased him. He ignored Renza's curious lifting of the spikes when his brother nodded his smirk and turned around, pulling his black work gloves off his hands. They'd been inspecting one of the uhyre craft with the mechanics, making sure they were kept in flying shape.

"I can," he said quietly once he was out of earshot. "Tonight. One ship hour."

"Okay."

She cut off the connection abruptly, not wasting time on pointless words or goodbyes, and Threxin was liking this little human more and more by the tick.

He arrived in Alina Argoud's cabin to find her in her plastic spinning chair, back straight and feet planted firmly side by side. Something was wrong—he could not tell what it was exactly, but he could tell it was not good. She had a look in her eye and a tension in her posture that made her usually pliant form look positively adversarial.

"We need to talk," Alina said, and Threxin's eyes flicked to the way her fingernails dug into the plastic edges of her seat at its underside.

His apertures narrowed, his spikes lowering.

"Okay." Threxin peeled off his black gloves slowly and crossed his arms on his chest. "Talk."

Alina sucked in a sharp breath, her hands tightening on her seat, and threw her bangs out of her eyes. "I need to ask you for something, and I need you to say yes, Threxin."

Ah. His lip twitched in a small smile. The female was simply nervous about making a request. He doubted there was anything he could not procure for her as long as it was on the ship. Or perhaps she wanted to request some additional leniencies on the ship?

"Ask," he prompted.

"I need you to take better care of the people down on the CRD. Get them proper medical care. Get them food. Fix the overcrowding. Some of them can clearly come back up here—there's room, even with your people. "

Threxin's brow drew back in surprise. He had expected… something different. He had certainly not expected her to request major policy changes.

"And I need you to let registered people Upload," she said, words coming fast but firm.

Threxin ran a thumb over his mouth as he considered the sudden appearance of these demands. Not the demands themselves, of course, they were ridiculous. But something had gotten into Alina's head between that morning and now, and he was very much looking forward to finding out what it was.

"I will think," he said. It was not entirely a lie. He would certainly be giving this conversation much thought, just perhaps not in the way she would like. Her requests were illogical.

"Well, can you think fast? Because people are dying out there," Alina blurted.

He leaned back, watching her.

"Your kind is weak?—"

"Gee, thanks," she muttered under her breath, and the way she rolled her eyes made his limiter kick in, his talons flexing.

"Your kind is weak," he continued, "but idiotically belligerent. I cannot afford to have more of you up here."

"Then treat them better down there!"

"What do you know about that deck, human?" Threxin watched her closely. "I take it you went down there. How?"

She scoffed at that, and it made black threads tighten beneath his ribs until his brain was forced back down.

"I'm not going to tell you how I know, Threxin," she said, crossing her own arms atop her chest in a mirror of his stance.

"You know I can make you." She heard the chill in his voice; he could tell by the way her eyes widened for a flash of a moment. And the way fresh fear rolled off her skin.

"Like you did Per Halen?" she asked quietly, swallowing .

He should say that yes, he could force her to talk exactly like that. Something told him she would break faster. But Threxin hissed through his fangs as he stared at her panicked eyes even as she tried to hide her terror.

"Shoq, Alina." He clasped a hand to the spikes at his neck and looked at the ceiling. "No. I cannot hurt you."

"You can though," she said, voice shaking but defiant.

"No." Threxin turned his eyes back to her—a heavy stare she markedly avoided. "I cannot."

"Well then, do this for me," Alina insisted. "Help the people down there and restart Uploads. Please."

"Humans are prone to riots."

"Like the one that got a bunch of people killed the night you got attacked," Alina ground out. "I know. I saw the bodies. And the riot started because you shoved them all down there with no idea what's going on! And now those registered for Upload are dying, including down there. Of course they're going to riot, Threxin. I would. God, how can you not understand?"

"I understand very well, human," Threxin said. "Your loyalty lies with your kind. It always will. You do not consider whether allowing Upload will endanger me or my cohort."

"Of course I do!" She sprang up from her seat to face him fully, tiny hands balled into fists. "I consider you every damn day while I try to find ways to convince Kaia and the others to… to…"

"To what?" Threxin asked, tilting his head slightly, watching her. She did not look at him, but he did. He watched the hesitation in her eyes.

"To see you. To see you aren't a monster. Only sometimes even I wonder if you are."

Threxin shook his head, a human gesture he'd picked up from Alina. "They do not need to know, and neither do you."

It did not matter. His job was not to prove to humans that he was making the right decisions. It was to lead his cohort, and them, to the most workably practical solution.

He leaned in close and grabbed her chin, forcing it up. She looked downward, lashes sweeping her cheeks as she refused to meet his eye. No matter.

"You can think me a monster," he said, his fangs inches from her mouth. "And it will not change a thing."

He snarled as he nudged her face aside and pushed past her to the door.

Threxin

The first thing Threxin did upon returning to his quarters that night was instruct his cohort to scour the ship for undetected passages between the decks. They found one soon enough, in a black hall that had appeared to be a nonsensical dead end. The passage was swiftly blocked off at Threxin's command, and the uhyre originally responsible for his failure in finding it appropriately punished.

Two days later, Renza showed up at Threxin's quarters in the morning as he was dressing to meet with his jump drive engineers.

"I know when something is wrong with you, brother," Renza said as he swooped in with his disgusting caffeine cup in one hand and sprawled on his sofa. "In the last two days you have been both late and early for your duties, and even more insufferable than usual. Insufferable, I get. But you are nothing if not prompt. You need to tell me what is going on."

"I need to tell you nothing," Threxin said calmly as he worked the clasps of his shirt. He traced an absent finger along the uneven circular scar forming on his chest before clasping the collar shut.

"I have been watching your female."

"She is not— " Threxin closed his damn mouth, realizing the trap. "I do not know who you mean."

The smug smile on Renza's face made Threxin want to cave it in. He took a deep breath .

"You are doing this cohort no favors by denying yourself, brother," Renza said. "Nor by deluding yourself into thinking I am blind."

Renza was right—he had long since noticed something going on between Threxin and Alina, and Threxin's blatant attempts to pretend otherwise were well into illogical territory.

"Until she comes to her senses, I have no time to deal with her," Threxin's voice was a flat line, devoid of emotion, but his spikes bristled.

Renza huffed out a short laugh. "You have been around these creatures enough to know sense is not their strong suit. If you intend to mate one?—"

"I have not mated her," Threxin whirled on his brother.

"—yet you are developing a vaccine which will help you allow yourself to do just that." Renza's brows drew back. "And surely you know by now humans' questionable sensibilities require some… special handling."

"She demanded something I cannot give, Renza," Threxin growled, his limiter pulling him down. His brother was speaking of things he knew nothing about.

"Such as?"

"Such as giving humans on the common deck food and medicine we do not have . Such as allowing humans back in their Heaven rig—just trusting that two-way communication is indeed impossible."

Surely he would see now how impossible this was. Threxin's hands were bound, and Alina's stubbornness would not unbind them.

Renza hummed and leaned forward, elbow on knee, and brought his cup to his mouth, taking a slow sip. "She is not wrong that the situation down there is not sustainable."

"I need to rid myself of half the humans regardless," Threxin flicked his talons. "Culling the unfit makes perfect sense. "

"It does indeed," Renza agreed. "If reaching your target human quantity is your only consideration. But you are smart enough to know there are always other options to consider, Commander."

Threxin had to bite back a retort, knowing he would now be arguing with his brother purely out of stubbornness, not reason. He had not even considered any other options, discarding Alina Argoud's ultimatum outright. They physically did not have the rations to spare, and risking exposure by permitting Upload was unthinkable. It was far too easy to think the problem impossible.

But there were things to be done, if Threxin truly valued the female and the effect she had on him. When he was near her, he felt like the Threxin he'd been before Koruth killed his family and molded him for his own purpose. She made him vulnerable in a way he hated, and yet she had never betrayed that weakness.

He'd lied and told her it did not matter if she thought him a monster. She may as well have grabbed a firedagger and stabbed him through the chest all over again. Worse than that, he had seen how distraught the sight down in the CRD had made her. He wished he could wring the neck of whoever had brought her down there.

Threxin sighed, eyeing his brother, who for all his stupidity was wise beyond his age. He needed to fix her, and he loathed himself for how invested he had grown in this female. This human . But the thought of her never speaking to him again unless by force made him sick. She had come to him so many times, and opened her soft arms when he had come to her. She'd treated his wound after watching him kill two of her kind, and worried about him when she should have worried about herself. She had shown him, even if she didn't know it, just how his she was.

Now, it was his turn to show her that he was there with her .

Shoq. Threxin clamped his palm to his spikes. Never had he imagined getting himself into such a mess when he came to claim his Colossal.

He rolled his shoulders, tension aching at the center of his back.

"You do not think me a hypocrite?" Threxin muttered as he and Renza prepared to leave for the command center.

"Oh, you are the biggest hypocrite I know," Renza laughed, slapping a firm hand on Threxin's shoulder. "But you are my brother, and I am long since used to your nonsense."

Threxin shook his head, spikes flicking at the good-natured jab.

"So with these modifications and a single shipment of plasma, you can induce a safe jump in…" Threxin studied the schematics projections atop a glass tabletop in an office off of the command bay.

"Four ship weeks from shipment, if we perform all the upgrades in the meantime," Stharn, one of his jump drive engineers, said with a touch of pride.

That was considerably better than the one-year timeline Orion Halen had insisted upon earlier, making Threxin wonder if human engineers were so much less advanced than Apthian or whether there was a touch of exaggeration in the timeline. For what? What had Orion Halen been buying himself more time for?

"But that requires arranging a supply shipment for the plasma."

Threxin rubbed a knuckle into his temple. "I am already arranging a supply shipment… I will add plasma pallets to the list."

"One more thing," Stharn said. "We have worked in secret, as you commanded. When we go in to implement the changes…"

"Remove the human engineers from the maintenance rounds. From now on, uhyre are the only ones that go near the jump drive."

Threxin would not risk interference.

He opted for the largest dock to arrange his shipment—the rear dock, where he had delivered his punishment and where he'd watched Alina perform her cleaning duties. The aged dockmaster was sitting in a stained plastic chair, electronics strewn around him as he hunched over a piece of metal, staring at it with bloodshot eyes.

The old man's face paled, eyes darting around as Threxin entered his tiny office off the side of the main floor.

"C-Commander," he stuttered.

"I require you to arrange a resource shipment."

The man's eyes widened, head bobbing forward a little in a human gesture of disbelief.

"I'm not in procurement."

"The resource procurer was nonessential." The official was not required for day-to-day operations of his Colossal and had been sent to the ship's common deck many ticks ago. "As the human with control of delivery dock, you will be resource procurer now."

The man blinked for several ticks, but then he rolled his chair away from the desk, back straightening into something more presentable. Humans really did fare better when put to work. Alina certainly seemed to.

"Of course," he said, palming his overgrown beard. "I'll compile a thorough list of everything we're running low on and put an order in imme?—"

"Plasma pallets. That will be the first priority."

"Plasma pal… Sir, we synthesize those here."

"I need more, faster."

"Why? Plasma fuel is used only for the jump drive, and we are nowhere near the position to use it…" His eyes widened as he trailed off.

Perhaps Threxin should have picked someone less—he looked at the wiring, chipsets, and other electronic knickknacks gathered around the office—technical. He did not need a human who grew nosy.

"We have synthesized three pallets. I require fifty-seven." He could practically see the human doing the math in his head.

"And food? And water?" the man pressed.

"Food, water, medication—whatever is most needed for common human ailments. Enough sustenance to increase rations. Fast-germinating seeds. Graywater to germinate them. Plasma pallets. That is all."

"This will require several shipments, as such things are sourced by different?—"

"No," Threxin snarled for strategic emphasis. "You will obtain these things in a single delivery. I will not have three human ships arriving in this dock. Arrange for a remote handover, then deliver it all in one batch. Do you recognize?"

"Yes, sir. Give me a day to figure out how to get that done… Then I'll need a comms line to place the order."

Threxin had no choice. Only a human could arrange supply without drawing suspicion, considering his cohort had no idea how such things worked in terms of logistics or realistic human communication.

"I will return tonight for your intended frequency and script. I will review. Do not do anything stupid, human."