Page 15 of Taken to Voraxia
I have dreamed of this moment for one rotation, and imagined every possible outcome but this one. The one in which my Rakukanna is standing with her body planted firmly in front of another human, two dead and threelivingkhrui closing in on her. She holds a spear in her hands — not even in the correct defensive position, and yet she’s holding it as if she has every intent of using such a flimsy piece of metal to stand against the khrui pod all by herself.
The roar that rips out of me can be heard across the cosmos. I wrench my gaze away from my Rakukanna just long enough to empty the weapons panel. Withdrawing an ion sword, two black jade daggers and an ion gun, I return to the guardrail and fire an ion round into the beast nearest my Rakukanna, just as Va’Raku begins a jerky descent.
He is the best pilot I have, but I understand the source of his agitation. Because behind my Rakukanna, the other female — the one who once wore my Rakukanna’s scent — lies supine, red liquid pooling behind the hair on her head.
She is his Xiveri mate.The thought crosses my mind and I spare only one fraction of a heartbeat to empathize with my xub’Raku, who has been for so long one of my strongest allies. I would not know how to survive the pain that seeing my Rakukanna fallen would bring…and I do not intend to.
The creature I tagged with my ion round turns and roars up at me. Tufts of charcoal fur peel away from white flesh and gelatinous grey blood spills onto the ground below its heavy feet. I wounded the creature, but an ion round is not and will not be enough to kill it. With thick hide and claws that catch, I will need to get closer. Much closer. Closer than my Rakukanna now stands to it.
“Move!” I roar at her, knowing she cannot understand my words, but she is determined and stands fixed in the small space separating her fellow human from the khrui.
I climb onto the edge of the glider and roar a battle cry echoed by Va’Raku. The thrusters lurch left, avoiding a jutting spear of rock, and Va’Raku expertly tips the glider at a forty-five degree angle, giving me the advantage I need to jump and land directly on the back of the khrui.
Its hard, fur-covered body blunts my fall and in the seconds it takes to reorient myself, a massive claw cleaves into my back. I do not betray my pain and rear up, straddling its massive body, tangled in its limbs and sink my first blade into its flesh, right where one of its many arms connects to its body.
Knobby bones twist beneath my grasp as I hack into the beast, letting the other claws cut me as I work. Fresh wounds light up across my torso, but when the khrui beneath me lunges forward, towards my Rakukanna still holding her crude spear, I stab, cut and rip.
I free the arm from its socket in a mess of flesh and tendons and toss it aside. The khrui shrieks as I plunge my fist, dagger-first, into the bloody hole where its phantom-limb resides and finally locate the heart.
A shadow passes overhead and I hear Va’Raku grunt as he tackles the next khrui. A loud, wheezing screech echoes across the clearing. My gaze sharpens and my dagger plunges mercilessly as I battle my way through the thick, oily outer shell of the heart finally reaching its molten center. With one final push of my blade, the beast beneath me wastes to the side.
I jump as it falls, spinning to keep my back to my Rakukanna and the khrui before me. A massive beast roars as it throws itself from the mouth of a cave, badly stacked with rocks. Distantly it occurs to me that khrui would not have stacked rocks in such a way, but I don’t want to imagine the possibility or contemplate why these humans would have sealed themselvesinside of a khrui den.They could not be so stupid.Or could they be that naive?
I charge. Rearing up on its hind legs, the creature descends viciously and suddenly. We grapple for what feels like eternities until I eventually gain the upper hand and as I kill it, I hear the battle behind me coming to an end.
I pull my bloody short sword free of the khrui’s decimated body and the small quarry is silent but for my heavy breathing, Va’Raku’s, and alien words whispered frantically on the rocks behind me.
“…oh stars…Kiki? Kiki, come on…”
She kneels on a hard stone, the body of Va’Raku’s human draped across the wide rock before her. Red blood, slick like silk, drips from the woman’s puff of hair and from a deep wound on her stomach. The smell is stifling. Something ancient and dark.
Va’Raku rushes forward and though my chest pangs for him, I must think first of my own Rakukanna. I toss aside the khrui heart I hold in my palm.Killing them should not have been so easy, yet even now, covered in blood — much of it my own — I could tear apart a dozen more. For her.Arriving at her side, I grab her shoulder and wrench her small body around.
Catching her in my arms, I set her down on a flat stone and begin a nervouseagercanvas of her body, checking for wounds.
“Are you injured?” I struggle to speak. As I return my dagger to its sheathe, the words sit in my throat like daggers of their own.
There is blood on her, even redder than her skin, but I cannot find any wounds. Blood and waste. Even through the layer that covers her, I still cling to her scent. Or rather, am struck down by it. Ranxcera. Jujji. Grain. All is as I remembered it. Just as strong. A magic I once vowed never to believe in.
“Are you hurt!”
I grab her wrists, hoping to steal her attention, but she continues to glance over her shoulder. She licks her mouth and puckers the soft, downy pillows lining it. Wet and glistening, I may not have her attention, but she has mine. Every last drop.
“Don’t…don’t hurt her. Just help her. Save her, please.” She grips my forearms with her small five-fingered hands.
I want to savage her. I want to ravage her. I want to throw her down onto the ground and punish her then and there. “You ran from me, you covered yourself in filth, you hid from me, you deceived me with your cloaking spell, and then you left the safety of your colony to try to fight khrui with a stick! What were you thinking?” I grip the sides of her face.
She shakes her head and water wells in the pools of her eyes. “Save her, please…”
She is still holding the flimsy staff in her hands. I take it from her easily. She does not try to stop me. She just bites her lower mouth pillow, that plush decadence, and then she lifts both hands and plants them in the center of my chest.
For all my rage, her willing touch is the antidote. “She will be saved,” I tell her quietly, voice gravel as I cover her hands with one of my own. “And then she will be tried, for you both have betrayed me. I am your Raku.”I am your Xiveri.I touch her face, watch her strange, alien eyes widen, her mouth part…
“Raku!” Va’Raku barks.
I point at him and the woman currently bundled in his arms with the tip of my claw.Time. We have so little of it. “Lower the flyer. Merillian will be awaiting your Va’Rakukanna aboard the ship.”
Momentary white — surprise — surfaces in his brow before the color is snuffed. I begin to move, but my Rakukanna grabs my wrists.
