Chapter 53

Chapter

Fifty-Three

Torq

“ W here is he?” I said to no one, as I walked through the hallways searching for the envoy from Earth. I had promised to help keep him distracted so that task wouldn’t fall so heavily on the human women, especially Jess. Seeing her flirt with Captain Gorman had not been an experience I wanted to repeat anytime soon.

I had expected to find the human in the staff dining room, but he had not shown up the entire time I’d waited. He had also not been with the admiral or the security chief, although no one had answered Commander Vyk’s office door, so I could not be certain they were not together.

Crossing the main hall, I cast a questioning glance at the entrance to the School of Battle. Vyk would not have taken the captain back to the gauntlet or challenged him to the climbing wall, would he? I shook my head and tried to convince myself that the Drexian would not be so foolish.

No, the captain must be somewhere else in the academy. Somewhere I had not yet searched. He was supposed to be conducting a review of the human integration, which I assumed meant a full inspection of the school, which meant he could be anywhere.

My stride faltered as a figure emerged from the entrance to a stairwell. His gait was slow, but I recognized the uniform.

“Captain Gorman.” I made sure my tone was artificially upbeat, as if I was thrilled to see him again. “I have been looking for…”

My words faded as he stepped into the light and revealed that not only was his cheek bruised from the incident on the gauntlet, but his other side of his face was now swollen and purple.

“What happened?” I could not help myself. His injury was too pronounced to ignore, and I had to know how he’d managed to acquire another bruise so quickly. I had always been told that humans were not as tough as Drexians, but then I had met the human cadets and been disabused of this notion. Until now. Unless this human was especially fragile, he was setting an all-time Academy record for the most visible injuries in the least amount of time.

“I was attacked,” he rasped, his voice rough and cracking.

I wondered if his windpipe had been damaged, since his voice was so hoarse, but even so, I had a hard time believing what I heard. “You were attacked? Here? In the Academy? ”

He glowered at me, clearly disliking my tone of disbelief. “Yes. I was attacked. Do you not think your Drexian colleagues are violent enough to do something like this?”

I knew that any Drexian could easily do that much damage, but I also knew that we were supposed to be welcoming the human envoy, not wounding him. “Can you tell me who did this?”

He shifted on one foot and then winced. “I did not see my assailant, but Fiona will know. She was with me.”

My pulse quickened. The Strategy instructor had been with him when he was attacked? “Was she hurt?”

He dropped his gaze. “I do not know. She was gone when I came to, and so was whomever struck me.”

I blinked at him. Something was not adding up. If Captain Douglas had seen her friend be attacked, she would not have left him, and if a Drexian had struck him, he would not have left his victim wounded and alone. But no Drexian I knew would launch an unprovoked attack. The human was not being honest.

“So, you were with the captain when you were unexpectedly attacked by someone you never saw and when you came to, the captain was gone? Did you not think that she might have been injured, too? Did you not worry about her?”

He had still not raised his eyes to meet mine. “Why would she be attacked? She is one of you now. I was obviously attacked because I am an outsider coming here to pass judgment on your beloved academy.”

I was starting to understand the individual who had attacked the envoy. This human was begging to be put squarely in his place. And as someone who had also needed to be knocked down a few pegs, I felt like I could say this with confidence.

I folded my arms across my chest. “I do not think the captain would claim to be a Drexian just because she teaches here, although she has done an admirable job adapting to our ways. And I was unaware that your role was to judge our entire school.” I gave him a cold smile. “After millennia producing warriors who have been fighting across the galaxy and protecting your planet, I did not know we required your approval.”

The human cleared his throat. “I did not say—“

“We should not worry about that right now.” I bestowed a broad smile on him, switching my persona quickly to knock him off-guard. “I should be getting you to the surgeon.”

“Surgeon?” His eyes went as wide as they could, considering his facial swelling. “I do not need surgery—”

“That is what we call our med bay here, and you should have a medical professional look at those injuries.”

I took his arm and steered him toward the surgery, before anyone else could see him in his current state. Our surgeon could do something about the swelling and make the human look like he hadn’t endured a very powerful hit by what I suspected could only have been a Drexian. I needed to get him to the surgery, instruct the surgeon to keep him sedated until his face looked normal, and then make sure Fiona hadn’t also been hurt.

Then I needed to find out from her who had attacked the captain and why. There was more to this story than the lies the human had spun for me—and I was going to find out what they were and what he was hiding.