Page 74 of Taken to Voraxia
Everyone is indoors, quarantined to their homes, but for the warriors. Pe’ixal remains under arrest. Voraxia is quiet. It is all sand and the dimming light of the xamxin river and the thick trunks of our trees shooting out of the ground like the spears of some great and ancient being.
My pulse is steady and even. I am calm, knowing that Rhorkanterannu will be soon apprehended. He cannot have a fighting force on this planet, and he cannot have a means of escape. And even if hedoes, there is no chance that he will be able to access what it is that I think he means to access. Or rather, who.
My Rakukanna is safe.
I know this because I know that there is no single being that would be able to break through the defenses that surround her, through Krisxox. Not even me, if this is what she commanded of Krisxox. His savage fighting style is unparalleled, so unless Rhorkanterannu attacked Krisxox with the full strength of his fleet, then there is no way that anything would ever be able to get to her…
A slight rustling, a sudden hush. I lift a fist and the entire contingent comes to a swift and silent halt. The wind shifts, carving a path between the werros. On its breath I taste a foreign scent.
“My Raku, do you hear that?” Xa’Raku asks, and as she does, I do.
The skin on the back of my neck prickles and the plates on my thighs and chest harden. My breath thickens as I inhale deeper. And deeper. I wait and then I hear it again.Nox. It can’t be.
The Xanaxana punctures my lungs like shards of glass, that wicked shrapnel. I pivot as the wind whips across my face, warm, even while my insides turn to ice. Bullets. And then a faraway explosion.
“Nox!” I break formation as the word flings out of me and rides on the heels of a hundred of the foulest curses I can think of, and a thousand more pleas. I hold the Xanaxana high in my heart as the xub’Raku and the xcleranx fall in behind me.
We plunge through the fading light, our boots sinking into the sands. I don’t mind. I grew up here. My body is adapted to this planet. I know every inch of its surface and I know that there is no way Rhorkanterannu could escape this city without my knowing so if he thinks even for an instant that he will take my Rakukanna with him, then he has no sense at all.Or he knows something I do not.
A dagger of uncertainty spears the wall of my confidence. Slowly I feel it begin to crumble.Rhorkanterannu is no fool. No being that operates the madness of Kor could be. He has built himself an empire from space rubble. And now he has come for her. And I fell perfectly into the palm of his hand allowing this distraction at the docks to separate us.
My mouth dries as I storm forward, the sound of weapons firing growing louder. Another explosion shakes the foundation of the trees surrounding us. From a great distance, I hear the sound of branches splintering.
“Hold!” One of the xcleranx shouts. He raises a fist and a werro branch cascades to the sandy floor in front of our contingent. It’s barely settled before I start forward again.
“Look out!” A xcleranx tackles me from behind and several more issue distant shouts. A thunderous cracking explodes just where I’d been standing and when I rise, I see several xcleranx bodies trapped beneath the wood. I react towards them, but then a roar of pain tears my attention around. A Voraxian roar. One that I recognize.
“Go! That will be Krisxox. The xcleranx will rescue their fallen. I am right behind you, my Raku.” Xa’Raku leaps over the branches, issues terse orders and sprints after me.
Another branch falls. I duck under it and leap over the next. My mind is a haze of need. Ineedto see her. Need to have her in my arms. But the pounding in my head and the mad switching of the Xanaxana in my chest only becomes my hysterical and more frenzied and the ion fire in the distance only increases in volume until all at once, it dies.
Nox. Nox nox nox. Krisxox will have won. He will have kept the females safe. Our xcleranx fighters will have dismantled Rhorkanterannu.But when I arrive, circling the next bend, my thoughts of salvation are lost.
Xa’Raku gasps beside me but neither of us speak. There is no time for words. There is only the guest werro where my Rakukanna set up her laboratory, split up its sturdy center. It too battled for her. Just as the bodies of my xcleranx did. They appear lifeless now where they lay.
Xa’Raku and the other xcleranx immediately begin the process of triage while I follow the path that was cleared through them into the lab.
It looks almost just as she left it.
Except for the boot prints. Large, heavy boots and so many of them. Too many.How did so many descend on world?Rhorkanterannu’s ship was inspected on arrival and it was built for only four passengers. There are dozens of boots on the ground here.It’s just not possible. And more importantly, where have they gone?
I crouch, feeling the cracks in the moss floor with my hands. Dry and damaged and betraying evidence of smaller feet. Two sets. Yet neither female is here. And where is…
“Krisxox! My Raku, Krisxox!” One of the xcleranx shouts and I exit through the fractured and charred hole in the werro to see Krisxox’s mutilated form emerging from the treeline. He is pure gore, pure violence. Evidence that he did not give his life in his attempt to save the females, but tried, covers his form.
He wears a collar ringed in metal that is not of a Voraxian make, and holds one arm stiffly against his chest. Burn wounds cover his entire right side and when he staggers, I catch sight of the blood smeared across his face, down his neck and across his shoulder blades. I surge forward and catch him as he falls.
“Krisxox.”
He attempts to bow to me but I keep him upright. “I know where they are. I know how they got there, but I do not understand the technology that powers it.” He looks hardly able to stand, but he still manages to form coherent words. “I followed them. Her.”
“The Rakukanna.”
“Nox. Svera. I put a tracker in her life drive.” This shocks me. We do not track our people. Krisxox must see the yellow rise in my ridges, disrupting some of the black. I make no attempt to hide such colors now. There is nothing left of my control. There is only my exposed heart bleeding.
What is he doing to her? Is he performing shekurr? Allowing each of his Niahhorru to rut my Xiveri mate? She ismymate.Mine. And my own hubris got in the way. So determined to flush him out, I was not there to protect her.
“She is a prisoner. I thought it best, in case she tried to escape.”
