Page 40 of Broken Triad

It feels right, too right, but when I wake, I am in the tent, snuggled into a sleeping bag, and the three of them are gone.

14

KRAZAK

Not one of my triad has spoken since last night. We awoke before the dawn, and I piloted our Reaver back into the hangar bay, ignoring the questioning glances of technicians and mechanics. We do not have to explain ourselves to anyone, and Khra faked the records, so that it will show that we patrolled in the north mountains if anyone checks the ship logs.

We took a few quick hours of sleep, then headed out on our patrol.

Our deepest fear was that mating with an unbonded woman would leave us empty, as it has every other time we spent ourselves in the women that throw themselves at you during the hundred years of service, women on faraway space stations and planets we saved from Scorp. A mating with them leaves you aching for more, as if you drank deep of salt water, making your thirst deepen.

With Lola…there was no Bond, and yet, there was no emptiness, either. I don’t understand. I cannot.

It defies everything I knew about our species. The Mating Rage is designed to drive us insane when we smell a potential mate. I feared that it was her innocence that drove us wild, but instead of being sated from our mating, I want her more than ever before. All I want is to pilot my Reaver back to the cave and take her again. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. I should not crave her. I should not want her.

And yet, I do.

We’ve patrolled in silence. I pilot the Reaver by instinct, flying over the barren, icy terrain, looking for any sign of the rebellion. The spire is still not repaired on the Royal Palace, standing tall yet scarred, but the black flags of Obsidian fly, proclaiming this planet as ours. I send our location over to the other two Reavers in our area.

“We’ll take these sweeps. You two go east. There could be a base in the valleys,” I say, and the other two Reavers call out the affirmative and fly out of sight.

I punch in a command, and the holographic file appears in front of me as I pilot farther north, towards the mountains, now that there are no witnesses to our flight path and we can feed the fake data back to command.

Her father.

Blake Nightly. A short man, even for a human, with a hard face. He exudes competence as he stands for the photo. He’s fifty, hard and lean, and looks out of place in the grey mining slacks of employees.

How could a man like that let his daughter work for someone like Paulus?

He belongs—or belonged—to the Davici mining conglomerate, owned by one of the three parasitic families that drained this planet of wealth since they declared Independence from the Aurelian Empire centuries ago when Queen Jasmine first issued her decrees. Foolishness. Humanities tend towards democracies, where the wealthiest pull the strings. It is the wealthy who had to pay the Aurelian Empire’s high protection taxes, and it is the wealthiest who can afford private security and ships to escape at the first sign of the overwhelming Scorp waves. To declare Independence, it required a super-majority of votes by Queen Jasmine’s decree, so the foolish poor voted against their own interests, fooled by propaganda of the rich and not understanding what they damned themselves to.

No—not themselves. Human lifespans are like gnats. It is their great-great-grandchildren who suffer.

A black thought curls up in my mind. We will live thousands of years, while Lola is gone in the blink of an eye. Dammit, how can this be! How can I crave her, when it is impossible to have a future with her?

I clench the controls tighter, pushing the thought out of my mind. It is a thought born of weakness. We cannot have a happy ending with her, but we can make her short life as good as possible.

And that means searching through endless cave systems, trying to find her father, who could, by some miracle, have survived the Scorp attack, hiding deep below the surface. We’ve rid this world of Scorp Queens, and the remaining Scorp will be burrowed deep below, drawn down to exactly where he’d be hiding. Even if he survived the initial waves, it’s likely he was killed in the aftermath—but looking at the holographic picture of his employee file, if anyone survived, it’s likely to be him.

I can judge a man in a second, and this Blake has some of Lola’s fierce determination to him.

“Coordinates approaching in two minutes,” states Khra. His aura is guarded. I can barely feel his thoughts. He’s been wracked by Lola, affected deeply, just as I have. None of the three of us can make sense of any of this.

“Going to ten feet,” I say, skimming along the mountainside. We pass over a ridge, and the Reaver dips down. There’s two smoking buildings, dead Scorp scattered, and a huge, gaping hole in the earth where a massive mining rig on tank like track wheels is lying dormant.

“Prepare for drop,” says Khra, and the three of us rush out of the bridge and down the hallway, the doors yawning open. We leap out, and land on the lip of the mining chasm, looking left and right searching for any witnesses.

A deerlike creature with tawny brown skin is on the ridge, watching us warily, unsure whether to run or freeze and hope we don’t see it.

The jet-black Reaver makes a quick turn, the autopilot activated. For the next four hours, it will fly the pattern we are supposed to be doing manually. As long as neither of the other two Reavers return and see it, no one will know we aren’t in it. Khra rerouted the coms to our smartwatches.

But if those two Reavers find a rebel encampment in the valleys and report back to us, we’re ruined. We’d be expected to join the attack immediately.

If they find the empty Reaver, there will be no excuse that is believable. We’ll be brought before Aurelian Interrogators, and they’ll work us, for days upon days, until they’ve torn out every last one of our secrets.

It would be General Ra’al, one of the only men I consider my friend, who would wield the executioner’s blade.

“Time. Three hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifteen seconds,” states Khra.

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