11. An Eye for an Eye

Ophion allowedthe humans their moment of frivolity. Who was he to intervene in the mating rituals of a lesser species? Besides, it was a perfect opportunity to show them his worth. He hadn't revealed that he recognized the ship that had ripped them from hyper. It was the owner of their stolen yacht: the Pirate King. He was well acquainted with him. He himself had been one of his possessions for many years.

And now Ophion would seize the opportunity to get even.

The yacht's airlock cycled open, and Ophion clocked twelve moderately armed humans across the bay. Some were taking cover behind barrels or shipping containers. Others were pointing their guns nervously at the empty airlock.

"If anyone's in there, come out with your hands up. The boss isn't happy about you blowing up his reincarnation ship," a pirate called out from below.

Ophion lunged at him.

He landed square in the middle of the man's chest. The fool didn't even react as Ophion knocked him bodily to the floor. He jabbed him in the neck with his talon and injected him with a paralytic poison that sedated and then killed him.

"What in the void!" a nearby pirate called out at the sudden carnage.

The rest turned their weapons in his general direction.

Ophion snatched the deceased pirate's plasma launcher from his corpse. It was heavy ordinance meant for battlefield use, not shipboard combat. It was the most foolish weapon Ophion could imagine using inside a star vessel.

His tongue flicked excitedly as he powered it up and lobbed a round of explosive plasma bolts at the pirates, blowing fatal holes in a number of them before hurling the expended weapon with such force that it snapped a retreating pirate's spine and caused him to fall limp and spasming to the ground.

Ophion launched himself across the meters-wide gap between himself and the remaining crew and executed them all in turn, pleased with how cleanly he cleared the room. There were no survivors. And he'd taken no damage—a victory if ever he'd seen one.

The airlock of the yacht cycled open again, and the abominations appeared from within.

For some reason, they looked horrified at Ophion's meticulous work. The man he'd first injected with his venom was beginning to dissolve now, his corpse liquefying as the artificial toxin forced his body to denature into a bubbling goo. Ophion didn't care to explain to his hosts the specifics of why he'd done any of it the way he had. After all, there were few rules in The Game.

The smaller abomination, Auren, was dry-heaving at the sight of Ophion's latest victim. They'd been fighting through the battle cruiser's lower decks, making their way toward the bridge, for nearly an hour. Countless pirates had fallen, and Ophion felt the rush of The Game compelling him into a bloodlust.

"Would you mind telling us how you seem to know your way around this old thing?" Lupo asked from his rear.

The cruiser's interior was labyrinthian, and there were new armed adversaries around nearly every corner. Ophion peered into the next hallway, eyes peeled for movement as he tasted the air.

He hesitated. Then he turned to regard the humans. He deliberated whether he wished to share his tale or not. It was a personal story. And the thought of revealing himself to aliens—abominations no less—was uncomfortable to say the least. But he needed them to trust him. He had nowhere to go. He would be killed on sight if he ever returned to Keth space. He'd been dishonored.

"Very well."

And so, as he ushered the abominations into the empty hallway and toward the bridge, he finally told them his tale.

* * *

Three of them had set out from the Keth homeworld. Unlike humans, the Keth rarely settled planets outside of their home system. It was sacred to them. Superior. And the majority of their population lived on the arid mega-planet they'd evolved on. It was home to hundreds of billions of his people. In his mind, it was the beating heart of The Game, the center of Keth power—an impregnable fortress surrounded by their vast fleet of overwhelming warships.

Ophion had hundreds of siblings there—too many to keep track of. Each was endlessly scrapping to win favor from their father, a high lord in the Keth nobility. Their family was ancient, and only one of them would inherit their house—the one who played The Game the best. Twenty years before meeting the abominations, Ophion had set off into the stars in a bid to be the boldest of his siblings.

The Keth had known about humanity for millennia. Mankind had been noisy, relatively speaking. And while they could have easily wiped them out early in their spacefaring history, long before they'd settled a huge swath of this region of the galaxy, that wasn't how The Game was played. There were rules. And so the Keth had left them alone, allowing them to approach some approximation of rivaling their own technology before entertaining the possibility of conquest. After all, there was no glory in a Game that wasn't fairly matched.

Ophion had decided to travel to the inner sanctum of human space—to Terra, the old world where humanity had begun. He intended to survey their home thoroughly for the archives before their civilization was tainted by existential war with the Keth. Such holo material was highly sought after for its educational insight, and he knew his father would respect his courage in flying so far into unknown territory, surrounded by a capable foe.

Unlike many civilizations they'd conquered, the humans had readily dispersed from the cradle that made them—the moment they'd achieved drive-travel, they'd hurried off to settle worlds where like-minded people could choose to live how they wanted instead of being forced into consensus by ancient culture and custom. Terra was mostly wild now, with only a few cities scattered across its surface, and from space, Ophion had to admit it was one of the prettiest little worlds he'd seen in quite some time.

"Prepare to take us in and begin the survey," Ophion commanded.

Their ship was small and unarmed. The Keth used only the minimum technology to achieve an aim. His species were highly secretive with their technological edge and never used more than was required to get the job done, lest a lesser species somehow acquire it and use it against them.

"Anomaly detected near the planet's moon," Therin, his pilot and lover, hissed.

"I thought this system wasn't routinely patrolled," Ophion spat, his tongue flicking nervously at the thought of failure or worse. "Get us out of here immediately."

"It doesn't appear to be human navy…" Therin started, attempting to maneuver them away from the quickly approaching vessel but seeming to struggle.

"What's the issue? Jump, you fool." Ophion struck the pilot across the head, furious at his incompetence.

"They're distorting gravity somehow; the jump drives can't spool up!" Therin cried.

Ophion realized with dismay that the surprise interloper was better equipped than they had anticipated. The humans had some technologies that even the Keth did not. They were being drawn into the bigger vessel. They'd been captured.

Ophion cursed, looking around for a weapon. All they'd brought were their ablative suits and standard-issue rifles—not enough to wage a three-lizard war against a battle cruiser. The colossal ship loomed before them, forcibly dragging them into its bay.

"Get your weapons," Ophion commanded, rising from their craft's tiny cockpit and heading toward the airlock. The three bonded lovers donned their cloaking mantles and prepared for whatever might come next. There was a clunk as their vessel landed and then a hiss as their airlock cycled open.

The shots came instantly, blowing Therin and Zultor apart, splattering bits of them across Ophion.

"Aliens!" a voice cried out from outside.

Ophion, for the first and perhaps only time in his life, froze.

For whatever reason, he had not anticipated the instant violence. He felt the loss profoundly as his lovers fell, and he collapsed to the floor as the emotions immobilized him. Soul-bonded Keth mated for life, and the loss of his partners sent him into an instant catatonia. Their viscera made his cloaking field useless. His outline was painted by their purple-blue blood.

A clinking, skittering sound barely drew his attention from his melancholy. But then he saw him. Ophion looked on in horror as a monstrous form clambered into his vessel, giggling at the carnage. It was an insectoid machine, all its legs sprouting from a spherical robotic body. To his amazement, a human head had been mounted atop it. The homunculus was monstrous, and Ophion felt fear for the first time as he regarded the human abomination that had grafted itself into a machine this way.

"Oh good, still got a live one here." The face atop the spider sneered at him as it clambered over the corpses of his crew.

Ophion attempted to draw his rifle, preparing to fire, but the abomination swiftly stabbed him with one of its forelimbs. It injected him with some type of neurotoxin that paralyzed him instantly.

"Now, now," the spider murmured, dipping low and prying at his mantle, eventually removing it and revealing him. "Aren't you just very interesting?"

The monster was the last thing Ophion saw as he slipped from consciousness.

* * *

And that was the last free moment that Ophion could remember until Lupo and Auren released him. Years had gone by. He'd been heavily sedated the entire time, never conscious long enough to fully gain his bearings. At first, he'd been brought out during great feasts aboard the battleship, one of the Pirate King's many prizes, and the spider had delighted in humiliating him in front of his crowds. The experiments and torture had been equally endless.

They'd forced him to feed on rodents and left him to sit in his filth for the better part of a decade. But he'd never given up. He knew that one day he would rip the spider apart piece by piece. And the fury of that thought had kept him going long after he should have given in. Eventually, the King grew tired of him, forcing him into a cryo chamber for storage. Ophion guessed that was when he'd tucked him away on his personal yacht. He didn't know how long it had been since he'd been thawed last.

And then, one day, a new pair of abominations had set him free, and all the fevered dreams and fantasies of violence he'd entertained would at last become a reality.

It was his turn to play The Game.