Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Sazahk forced open the door to the Qeshian diplomatic chambers, the power of his implant surging through him but doing nothing to allay the helpless, panicked tightness in his chest. The cluster of robed dignitaries spun around, but Sazahk ignored them.

He focused on his brother standing at the head of the table with the blue of shock sweeping across his nose. "I need your help."

Serihk wiped the colors from his skin and nodded. "Give us the room."

"Emissary." One of the older diplomats balked. "He doesn't have clearan?—"

"Give us the room," Serihk sharpened his tone, and the diplomat shut his mouth and gathered his tablets without another word. Heads down, everyone shuffled out, leaving the brothers alone. "You're bleeding."

"It's clotting." Sazahk had accepted the gauze and medical tape from the nurse who'd chased him and bandaged the back of his neck as he'd raced across the station to the Senate offices.

"It'll get infected." Serihk set his tablet down on a desk against the wall and started toward him.

"It won't." Sazahk plucked a tentacle from the floor's molding and brandished it in front of him, making Serihk stop. "The gauze is sterile, and no qesh has died of an infection in centuries. But I'm not here for that, Serihk, I?—"

"I know why you're here." Serihk clasped his hands behind his back. "But there's nothing I can do."

Sazahk dropped his barrier, and this time, he approached his brother. "You can get them out."

"I can't."

"Of course you can." Sazahk stopped short of grabbing him, hovering at arm's length. "You're the most powerful man in the Senate?—"

"I'm really not." Serihk flushed orange.

"You can call someone or threaten someone or bribe someone or manipulate or?—"

"Is that what you think I do?"

"Or pull strings somewhere in your vast network of power"—Sazahk waved a hand and tentacle around to encompass the amorphous currents of authority that all seemed to converge through his brother "—to remove them from this situation."

"I can't change Human law and I certainly can't change Andrew Wate." Serihk swiped a hand through Sazahk's imaginary web of influence. "As barbaric as they are, Human laws are very clear. Trespassers forfeit all rights to life. Dominic Turner is on Wate property illegally, and Wate has every right, and believe me, every desire, to kill him."

"It's—" Sazahk choked up as the well of emotions overflowed into his throat. "It's not just Dom."

Serihk frowned and blue speckled across his cheeks. "What do you mean?"

Sazahk couldn't shake the picture Patrick had painted for him: Garin and Dom pinned down behind the bulletproof door of a Wate Group server room. Nothing between them and death but stainless steel and Dom's ability to hack the security system enough to keep it there. They could be injured. In the time it had taken for news to reach Sazahk and for Sazahk to reach Serihk, they could already be dead.

But it wasn't Dom Sazahk's mind circled, as much as he cared for him.

Garin overtook every signal Sazahk's every neuron fired. All Sazahk could think was that two days ago Garin had been fine and now Garin might be dead and a part of Sazahk, a terrifyingly large part, felt like it might die with him. And he knew that was illogical, because one didn't become truly attached to another person in as short a time as they'd had together, but to have no more time? For the possibility to be wiped completely away?

It staggered him.

"Sazahk." Serihk grabbed Sazahk's shoulder, grounding him, and Sazahk realized his brother hadn't touched him in ten years. "What do you mean, it's not just about Turner?"

"I mean, he's not the only one there. He's not the only person the Wate Group has their murderous sights set on." Sazahk swallowed and swayed into Serihk's hand. "They have his bodyguard, too. Kevin Garin."

Serihk's eyes narrowed as he searched Sazahk's face, clearly not following Sazahk's train of thought. And why would he? He didn't know about Sazahk's feelings. He probably didn't even know about Garin. Because for all Serihk's championing of civilians and the common man and for all his fury and indignation over Human oligarchs and nepotism, he still assumed the only figure of any note in the current situation was the Turner. "And that man is important to you?"

Sazahk nodded mutely and the muteness more than the nod likely made Serihk pull back, eyes widening.

"Oh." Serihk's throat flooded with blue and gray. "He's—You—" Serihk put his other hand on Sazahk's other shoulder and squeezed. "He is important to you."

Sometimes Sazahk forgot Serihk had known him longer and better than anyone. "Please, brother, help me." Sazahk grabbed Serihk's wrists. "Just help me this time."

Serihk winced, the first true crack in his brother's armor Sazahk had ever seen. "I didn't know, Sazahk."

Sazahk frowned, thrown by his brother's wrecked voice and the gray and orange spiraling up his throat. "About Garin? You couldn't possibly have?—"

"No. About what they did to you." Serihk dug his fingers into Sazahk's shoulders, then loosened his grip with a shuddering sigh. "You think I'm this all-powerful being who knows and dictates everything, but by the time I found out they'd detained you and taken your implant, it was already done."

"That's not true." Sazahk released Serihk's wrists and stepped away, but Serihk held on. "That's not true. You arranged it. You thought you were negotiating a deal for me, you?—"

"Yes, I arranged for you to be cut off from the Archives and stripped of your access and position instead of being incarcerated, but I didn't arrange for them to mutilate you." Serihk bared his teeth, red and black slicing through the orange gathered on his jaw. "I wouldn't have let them do that to you. If I had known, if I could have stopped it, I would have."

Sazahk sealed his lips closed as his understanding of the past painfully refactored.

He believed his brother.

For all his resentment and fury and betrayal, he'd never considered his brother a liar. Which meant his brother hadn't known. He hadn't known what was happening while Sazahk lay helpless under that knife. His brother hadn't known, hadn't sent him there, hadn't been responsible.

Hadn't had the power.

Sazahk searched his brother's face, his scrunched brow, his dark eyes shaped just like Sazahk's, his colors a cacophonous riot across his skin. He hurt. Sazahk had hurt him with his resentment and his distance.

His brother had never set the record straight, because Sazahk had never given him the opportunity. Sazahk had never even directly confronted his brother about the betrayal that he felt so deeply.

Serihk spoke first, softening his grip on Sazahk's shoulders, then dropping it, his hands hanging by his side. "And I want to help you now, but I can't."

But Sazahk didn't have any other options. Garin didn't have any other options. He shook his head, backing away, then turned to pace the room. "No, you have to. There must be courses of action available to us, other people who have, or could be persuaded to have, a vested interest in the survival of Dominic Turner. And if Dominic Turner can be recovered alive, there's no reason his bodyguard can't be either."

Serihk sighed in the indulgent way he did when they were children and joined him in front of the main screen. It lit up with a series of holographic displays of various people Sazahk didn't recognize. "Your obvious ally is Alistair Turner."

"Which one is that?" Sazahk searched the faces for someone with Dom's piercing blue eyes.

"This man." Serihk waved forward a photograph of a man that looked far more like Oliver than Dom, besides the cut of his jaw. "Except he's not your ally, because he's no one's ally. You wouldn't be able to arrange a meeting with him and even if you did, I'm not entirely sure he's interested in seeing his son come home alive."

Something of a plan formed in Sazahk's mind. He reached through Tazal Station's vast communication and security systems, searching for his team. "Unless he's a clinical psychopath, he must feel concern for his own progeny."

Serihk raised an eyebrow. "I think there's a very good chance he is a clinical psychopath."

"Then I can appeal to his rationality," Sazahk replied, but something else tugged at him. Something like the drive that had made him seek out Serihk, knowing that he was a powerful man, someone who could help Sazahk if anyone could. "I know what I need you to do for me."

A frisson of energy went through Serihk's frame and he straightened, turning to face Sazahk. "I will do anything in my power for you."

"I need you to get me an audience with Prince Hyg."

Sazahk picked at the loose thread on the left sleeve of his robe as he stood alone in the small, windowless room. It felt like a lifetime since he'd last worn a robe when, in reality, it had been less than four months. He'd stopped when he'd joined Squad M, switching the robes out for hardier clothes that stood up to more involved work.

He rolled the thread between his thumb and forefinger as he tracked Patrick's tablet through the warrens of the Human diplomatic chambers, linking his implant to it as naturally as breathing. Serihk hadn't taken Sazahk's access to Tazal Station's security apparatus, though Sazahk had seen the thought cross his mind when Sazahk summoned Squad M through channels he shouldn't be in. But due to the nature of Squad M's current mission, Tazal Station's security couldn't track them, anyway. If it did, the mission would fail.

The mission they were performing for him. It was difficult to believe the group of Klah'Eel had been in his life for such a short amount of time. He hated to imagine it without them anymore.

The door on the right of Sazahk's room slid open and pulled Sazahk from his obsession over Patrick's signal creeping along a far hall.

"This one? I remember this one." A huge, familiar Insect Soldier entered first, his deep, rumbling clicks translating into Universal in Sazahk's ear where he'd tucked a translator.

A female Drone Sazahk also recognized followed him. "Then you remember he's hardly dangerous. Do you feel better now?"

"No," the Soldier replied with a hiss, flanking the door and crossing his arms.

Finally, the Insect Sazahk had been expecting glided through the entryway, his wings rustling as the tips dragged along the floor.

Prince Hyg looked every bit as breathtaking as Sazahk remembered him, and he brought into the room with him the same aura of surety he'd had as he'd walked across the hangar to meet Squad M when they'd boarded his ship months ago. Sazahk's chest loosened enough for him to breathe.

"I remember you as well," Prince Hyg said in Universal, inclining his head to Sazahk with the trace of a smile on his lips. "The scientist. I'm afraid this is still not a good time for you to question me on my physiology."

"That's not why I'm here," Sazahk said, but despite his words, his eyes lingered across Prince Hyg's broad shoulders and the translucent wings peeking out from behind his narrow hips. "Though I'd love to know if your wings are fully functional or merely for courting purposes or perhaps to establish your place in the colony hierarchy."

Prince Hyg ruffled the fascinating appendages. "Or all of the above. But Emissary Serihk would not send me to an unmarked room in Tazal Station's political district to indulge your anatomical curiosity."

"No, he wouldn't, and he did not." Sazahk checked on Patrick's process. He was moving away from the Human diplomatic chambers, faster than he'd gone in, and hopefully with the other half of Sazahk's plan in tow. "I want to discuss Dominic Turner."

The Soldier didn't react; he couldn't understand them if Sazahk recalled correctly. But Nam Drone scoffed and clicked her mandibles, and even Prince Hyg's lips twitched downwards.

"That does seem to be the only topic of the moment." Prince Hyg walked farther into the room and folded his hands in front of him. "Time ticks away for my people, but settlement negotiations come to a stand-still because a single human child has caused an incident."

Sazahk turned to track Prince Hyg's progress around the room. "Dominic Turner is quite a bit more than a child."

"Indeed." Prince Hyg nodded and continued in a tone too calm to be scathing, though the words left little doubt to his opinions. "He is also the inventor of the weapons that punch through my people's armor and dissolve them in their own acid, as well as the architect of a poison unleashed upon the population of half a planet inhabited mostly by individuals of his own species."

"And he developed the technology to clear that poison from the atmosphere." Sazahk had expected an indifference from the Insects easily overcome by rational arguments illuminating the potential usefulness of a live Dominic Turner. He hadn't expected active disdain. "And he created the bullets to protect our sector from you when we thought you posed only a threat. He meant it as an act of defense."

"I'm sure he did." Prince Hyg stopped across the table that no one sat at and faced Sazahk. He swept his purple eyes over him and softened his stance. "Nam Drone informed me it was you that convinced your squad to spare my people. We owe you our lives, and for that, I will hear what you have to say about Dominic Turner."

Sazahk licked his lips, feeling the weight of Garin's fate on his shoulders. "I have investigated the region of Qesha known as the Dead Zone as a possible settlement location for your colony."

"I am aware." Prince Hyg nodded for him to continue.

"And I believe it has great potential." Sazahk hurried on when hope glinted in Prince Hyg's dark eyes. "But that it requires expertise and genius to realize that potential before your people succumb to whatever time pressure you've alluded to."

Nam Drone gnashed her mandibles. "Is that a threat?"

Prince Hyg held up a hand. "No, Nam. It was a plea."

Sazahk wrapped his loose thread around a finger and pulled. It was a plea, but it was more than that, too. "It was information shared to elucidate why the survival of your people and the survival of Dominic Turner?—"

"We're here." Patrick's voice spoken through his tablet and into Sazahk's implant, gave Sazahk enough warning to turn to the door on the room's left, opposite the Insects, as Tar and Fal'ran frog marched Alistair Turner into the room with Bar'in holding a handgun to his lower back.

The Soldier hissed and opened his huge mandibles wide as acid pooled on their tips.

Prince Hyg held up a hand again to quiet his man and nodded to Patrick as he walked in the door after them. "Patrick Smith. Battalion Four. Squad M. You bring an unexpected guest."

"‘Guest' is hardly the correct word." Alistair Turner tore himself free of Fal'ran and Tar's grips when they loosened. "Victim would be more appropriate."

While he had just been abducted from his quarters by a Klah'Eel squad, Alistair Turner still looked worse than Sazahk had expected, given his reputation. Bags hung under his hazel eyes and age lines carved through the sallow skin of his cheeks and forehead.

"Yeah, well, the victim is free to leave if he's not interested in saving his son from being blown halfway across the sector." Bar'in holstered his gun and waved at the door they'd come through.

"My son is a traitor who's destroyed everything of value he's ever built, crippled his own family, and put himself in his current situation," Alistair spat. But he didn't take the opening to the door.

"My, my, humans are quite cavalier about the survival of their offspring for a species that only births a handful per individual." Prince Hyg raised an eyebrow, and Alistair scowled at him.

"What good are offspring that turn their back on their families?" Alistair lifted his chin and his upper lip.

"Well, we'll leave you to discuss that." Patrick jerked his head at the door, motioning for Tar, Bar'in, and Fal'ran to follow him out of it. He gave Sazahk an encouraging smile as they filed out, but it did nothing to raise Sazahk's spirits.

The hope Prince Hyg had brought with him when he'd entered the room, then bled dry as he'd talked, dropped dead in the face of Alistair's callousness. Sazahk had expected ambivalence from the Insects and desperation from Alistair. Instead, he was confronted with hostility from both.

Sazahk balled his fists. This wasn't acceptable. This wasn't rational. This was thoughtless cruelty that endangered people's lives. He'd thought dispassionate logic was the answer to his problem, but the emotions on either side choked it out. The emotions choked even him, and he found himself shaking.

He rounded on Alistair Turner. "Does your son's life mean nothing to you? Has he only ever been a corporate asset? Did you never see him as anything more than his intellect?"

Alistair crossed his arms. "Some corporate asset. He's destroyed everything he's ever done or ever was."

Prince Hyg made an unimpressed sound in the back of his throat. "And yet here we are, discussing him at length, as, I understand, have all the other Human dignitaries here to decide upon my people's future." Prince Hyg motioned elegantly to the door Squad M had dragged Alistair through. "As the soldier put it, you're free to leave if you're not interested in saving him. But here you are."

"As are you." Alistair didn't glance at the door. "You have an interest in him?"

Prince Hyg's wings fluttered as he lifted his lip. "Not in the slightest."

"But you should if you really prioritize the survival of your colony as you've claimed you do," Sazahk jumped in, seizing on his opening. "You need him to rehabilitate the Dead Zone for habitation."

"My people need no such thing." Prince Hyg lifted his chin. "Our scientists are more than capable."

"But you do need something from me." Alistair's tone turned sly and a smirk spread across his lips. He pulled a chair out from the table and lounged back in it like a throne. "Despite my son's best efforts, I'm not powerless yet. You need my votes."

"I need the votes of the people too afraid to oppose you." Prince Hyg snapped his wings, but the corner of his lip twitched up. "But with your corporate advantage erased and your assets ruined, how long do you think their fear will last?"

Alistair's smirk spread. "The question isn't how long it'll last, but whether or not your people will last longer."

Nam clashed her mandibles and started forward. "You vile?—"

Prince Hyg lay a hand on her arm but kept his gaze on Alistair. "You want your son saved."

Alistair flicked his fingers. "Hardly, I don't?—"

"You do," Prince Hyg overrode him smoothly. "Or you wouldn't be sitting there, and you wouldn't be offering the votes you've been withholding in the hopes of far better rewards."

"I haven't offered them yet." Alistair narrowed his eyes.

But Prince Hyg turned to Sazahk instead. "And you want something, too."

Sazahk nodded, his heart pounding in his chest. "I want your people to have a home and I want an opportunity to study your kind and your culture and your technology."

"I believe you, but you wanted that when you landed on my ship three months ago." Prince Hyg tilted his head as he studied Sazahk. "Then, you were nothing but curiosity and excitement. Now, you're anxious and terrified."

Sazahk pressed his lips together. He couldn't deny it, but he hadn't expected Prince Hyg to see through him so clearly.

Prince Hyg tilted his head the other way. "Does this Dominic Turner mean so much to you?"

Sazahk's chest twisted. "There's another man with him. A man who would die before Dominic did and I—" Sazahk's throat seized, and he swallowed through it. "I don't want him to."

"I see," Prince Hyg murmured.

Then he said nothing for a long time. He looked between Alistair and Sazahk, his hands in front of him and his fingers laced together, one slender forefinger tapping along the back of his hand.

After the silence had dragged on and the air in the room grew so thick it was hard to breathe, Prince Hyg stepped back and reached with his antennae to tangle it with Nam's.

The Drone gasped and chittered, her mandibles clicking. "No, surely nothing so drastic."

Prince Hyg withdrew his antennae. "It is not drastic."

"It is, my Prince, there are other ways." Nam reached for Prince Hyg with hands and antennae but stopped before she made contact.

"If there are, we haven't found them." Prince Hyg offered her a small smile, then turned back to the room. "Alistair Turner, I have a proposal for you."

The fuzz around the edges of Garin's vision concerned him.

It concerned him more than the blood staining his midriff and hands, because a man could fight through being covered in blood, but he couldn't fight through being unconscious.

"Garin?" Dom thrust his face into Garin's for the sixth time in as many minutes.

"I'm still here, Dom," Garin sighed. He was pretty sure the black playing around his peripheral vision wasn't something Dom could see, but Dom's hovering was starting to make him doubt that.

"Can I take a look?" Dom reached for Garin's middle, but Garin batted him away with the hand he wasn't using to apply pressure.

"No. I'm fine, just let it be." Garin scooted back to sit up more against the wall, and adjusted the haphazard bandage job he'd done with his small medical kit. He'd only had one pack of gauze big enough to plug a bullet hole, but it was one more than he would have had if he hadn't taken Professor Jerry's class at the academy. That man had drilled the importance of preparation into his head deeper than anyone else before or since. He wondered how the old guy was doing these days…

"Garin?" Dom's blue eyes appeared before him again.

"Still here."

Dom sat back on his heels and scratched his nails against the fabric stretched over his thighs. "I think I should open the door."

"What?" Was Garin's hearing going now, too? They'd been pinned down in the server room for hours upon hours, which was longer than he'd have liked to go without proper medical treatment, but he hadn't noticed that much of a deterioration in his faculties.

"I think I should negotiate opening the door at least." Dom tapped his finger against his knee. "Offer them something in exchange for bringing in a doctor for you or taking you to a medical facility."

So Garin hadn't heard wrong. That was even worse. He didn't have the energy to couch his opinion in kind words, so he went for blunt honesty. "That's a terrible idea."

"What?" Dom's eyes blazed, and he lifted his chin. "It is not."

"Yes, it is." Garin didn't wince when stretching his legs out in front of him sent pain lancing through his abdominal muscles, but it was a near thing. "Best outcome is they kill us both quickly. Worst, and way more likely, outcome is that they kill me first, then torture you until you've regurgitated everything you know about the data you just wiped from existence, and then they kill you. You ever been tortured before?"

Dom paled.

"Yeah, it's not fun." Garin had been lucky in his career. Most of his torture experience had been in training. But he still knew more about withstanding it and inflicting it than he wished he did. "I'm proud of you for what you've done here. Destroying that information. But make no mistake, you've put a target on your back for the rest of your life. People will do anything to learn what's in your head."

Dom took a shuddering breath and nodded. "I didn't consider that when I made this decision, but I understand."

Garin grimaced. Hadn't considered it. Dom's na?veté surprised him sometimes.

Dom dropped his head. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this."

Garin huffed a laugh shallow enough to avoid jarring his injury. "I'm pretty sure I forced you to."

"But I'm still sorry." Dom curled his shoulders in.

"Hey, chin up, we're not dead yet." Garin knocked the outside of his boot against Dom's outer thigh. "We're in a solid position, actually. We just gotta wait for your dad to come save us."

Dom snorted a bitter sound and lifted unimpressed blue eyes from the floor to meet Garin's gaze. "We both know my father has no interest in saving me."

Garin sighed. "No, we don't know that."

"I signed my own death warrant with him when I deleted my work from the Turner databases." Dom shifted from his kneel to sit cross-legged on the floor. "The only thing I could have done to make him hate me more is gift-wrap it for Andrew Wate. Which, hell, maybe I've done by coming here, anyway."

"He's your father. He doesn't hate you," Garin chose the words because they sounded right and because he hoped they were true, more than because he strictly believed them.

Dom scoffed, clearly not believing them any more than Garin. "Yeah. Right."

Garin pushed himself up the wall to sit a little straighter. "On the topic of your father and family, and because I'm possibly at death's door?—"

"Garin!" Dom snapped his head up. "You said?—"

"Possibly." Garin waved a hand at him. "I said I'm possibly at death's door. And given that, I want you to promise me that if I die, you'll make up with Oliver."

Dom's expression darkened immediately. Years of resentment, animosity, and hostility gathered like storm clouds in his handsome face.

"He's your brother, Dominic."

"Yeah, and Alistair's my father, and Victoria's my mother, and all we've ever done is fuck each other over and make each other miserable." Dominic looked away, staring at the door shielding them from dozens of Wate Group guards.

"You and your brother have both suffered under your parents. You have more in common with each other than not." Garin leaned his head against the wall as the fuzz around the outside of his gaze crept toward the center. "Family's important, Dom, and he's the last good bit you've got."

"You would say that." Dom sighed and looked back at Garin. The fury and indignation drained away to leave behind the vulnerability and sadness Garin had come to understand really lived in Dom's heart. "Your family's more important to you than anything."

Garin nodded. "That's right."

"I don't blame you." Dom drummed his fingers along his thighs. "Your family seems great."

Garin nodded again. "They are."

He'd been confused, at first, about why Dom knew so much about his family. He'd assumed it was about control, but he realized now that it was more like a little boy peering into the windows of the house across the street where the nice family lived, marveling at how different it was for other people and wondering why it wasn't like that for him. It was fucking sad and Garin knocked his boot against Dom's knee again, in too much pain to hug him like he wanted to.

"Are they…" Dom trailed off as he twisted his lips and drummed his fingers faster. "Does it…Does it feel like enough? Having your family? Like you're complete?"

Garin almost thoughtlessly replied that having his family was more than enough, but then Sazahk and his superfluous spare microscope appeared in Garin's darkening vision.

Floating closer to unconsciousness than he would like, Garin felt Sazahk tucked under his arm, stealing the warmth from beneath his shirt, and questioning him about every little thing. His heart filled and lightened, like a balloon lifting into the air.

He hated the way they'd parted, and he hated that he didn't have a clear path back to him.

"It's…enough, having my family, I think, but there's…" Garin blinked his vision back. "There's something, someone, else…" If there was a Sazahk shaped hole in Garin's life, could he really say his family was enough? They were wonderful and amazing, and it felt like a betrayal to say that they weren't, but…they weren't.

"Garin?"

Garin scrunched his eyes closed as Dom's incessant questioning derailed his wobbling train of thought. "I'm still here."

"No, that's not it." Dom held up a quieting finger and turned toward the door. "Do you hear that?"

The urgency in Dom's voice jolted some much-needed adrenaline into Garin's system and for the first time in hours, the black pulled out of Garin's vision. He sat up from the wall and followed Dom's gaze, straining his attention out into the hall.

"That's gunfire." Garin shoved himself to his feet, gritting his teeth through the wave of nauseating pain. Gunfire and yelling and the unmistakable sounds of men in a panic.

"Are they under attack?" Dom didn't struggle when Garin pulled the younger man behind him. "Is that good?"

"Not necessarily." In fact, if it was someone who had gotten wind that a Turner was vulnerable in hostile territory, it was much, much worse.

The heavy, rhythmic tread of marching boots reverberated from the hall, and shouted words in a strange accent. A wave of chittering and clicks Garin had only heard in intelligence videos followed.

Dom stepped around Garin with a look of disbelief. "Are those?—"

"You threaten an individual under the explicit protection of the royal family. Stand down now or be eliminated."

"—Insects?"

Two thuds shook the door before them, followed by the sounds of metal ripping and sizzling.

Garin kept his gun pointed to the floor and his breath flowing evenly through his lungs. "Shit. The Insects want you dead, too, don't they?"

"I—they—I mean they might." Dom shrank back, retreating into the dead-end room. "I made the bullets that kill them."

"Of which, I don't have any." Garin tightened his grip on his useless gun. The door before them screeched and a chunk of it peeled away, clenched in the massive mandibles of an Insect Soldier. "Fuck."

"Dominic Turner?" An Insect behind the two Soldiers shredding the metal to pieces called through the gap.

Garin glanced at Dom, who stared wildly back at him. Garin jerked his head at the door and Dom blinked and swallowed before choking out, "Yes?"

"What is your status?" the Insect demanded over the grating roar of the door being split apart.

"Um, alive?" Dominic called back, stepping behind Garin. "And unharmed?"

"Good."

The two sides of the door fell with a clang, and the Soldier that had spoken stepped through, energy weapon in hand and mandibles clacking. After a professional, practiced sweep for threats, the massive Insect pinned his dark eyes on Dom.

"Prince Consort Intended, my name is Ust, and I am here to escort you to safety."