Page 17 of Taken to Kor
“Then why…why can’t I breathe?” There’s a banging, like warped metal popping into or out of shape. Where is she?Where are you, Deena? What happened with the humans on the ship? What have they done to you?
“You’re panicking. If you calmed down, you’d be able to breathe.”
“You’re an asshole.” She bursts into tears and it’s a messy, gasping sound punctuated by curses and pleas to a god I know she does not worship. It is Mathilda’s god. Those pleas, more than anything, are what make my plates all lift and shift over my chest. For her to pray to Mathilda’s god now means that she is facing death.
How did I let this happen?I run one hand over my skull, fingering the raised ridges that the humans do not seem to have. Their skulls are round, smooth and tineless. At least, I assume they are beneath all that hair. Breakable.
I stand abruptly and turn. Herannathon is there holding a tube of black fil out to me. I bat it out of his hand, not because I don’t want it, but because I want to hear it shatter. He seems to expect this and holds out a second which I take and devour. “We’re nearing the asteroid field. It’ll take us some time to navigate, given our size, but we should be to her within a quarter solar.”
“Use the cannons. We’ll make it to her faster if we blow the asteroids apart.”
I turn and approach the view pane again and focus on the next pained breath she takes. It’s shallower than the last, no less agitated. I need to calm her down. To distract her from whatever is happening to her. Immediately, I know how and I start to sing words to a song I memorized a long time ago.
“Droganeene nene erro, wa da rogar tre hodona.” It’s a terrible song, really. Talks about a plant. I could have imagined that it was metaphorical for something else had I not also heard her sing songs about lights and cups and buckets and all of her eating utensils.
The effect is immediate.
Embarrassment.
It’s not an emotion I feel often, but when I do, I feel it radiate through every inch of me. My crew is watching me with interest now and most are openly laughing. No doubt, they’ve never heard a pirate sing before, let alone the captain of his ship. My chest warms and my plates lift to release some of the heat — a telltale sign. Several pirates mock me. Herannathon shakes his head and beams.
I ignore them and turn to the view pane, beyond which I can see the asteroid belt up ahead. The first bits of debris have already started to close in around us, clunking uselessly off of the ship without damaging the yeeyar or the shields.
I sing about her plant reaching for the light, soaking up the water from the basin below it, feeding and twisting and dancing to its delight until eventually I hear her fractured murmur, “Droganeene nene…erro…wa da rogar…tre hodona.” She sings with me and the tension in my shoulders releases a hair, just enough for me to be able to move less painfully. We finish the song together, our pitches wildly out of tune with one another, and then there is silence between us that’s even more pronounced than the song had been.
“Deena, can you breathe?”
“Centare,” she answers after a moment.
My fists clench. All four. I want to punch the view pane, but don’t. “You’re speaking more easily. Why can’t you breathe?” She makes a strange gulping sound. “What is that?”
“Hic-cup,” she stutters in Human.
“Hick-Cup?” I say, repeating her Human word.
“Hiccup.”
“What is that?”
“I don’t…know.” She does the gulping sound again. It sounds like it hurts.
“It sounds painful.”
“The hiccups…don’t hurt…it’s…him that hurts.” Her voice twists at the end, getting all high pitched in a way that makes me cringe.
“Him?” My heart is pounding so hard it’s all I can hear. I scan my gaze around at my crew — males I’ve known for a dozen rotations, since my birth — and right now they all look like enemies. “Who ishim, Deena?”
“One of the carpet…carpets.” She coughs. “I can’t get him — it — off of me.”
I rub my face. Pace. My ridges rise and shift, releasing heat. “Get us there faster,” I say to Herannathon as I pass him before switching my concentration back to Deena. With this silent command, I will my token back on. Because I lied to her. The command to shut it down is not a verbal command, but a mental one.
“This…personon top of you.” Herannathon makes a shocked face as he hears the words I say. Several other pirates do, too. Altogether, they look enraged and I feel the ship lurch as the males wearing tokens activate the cannons and fire at the incoming asteroid that would take too long to maneuver around. We’ll go through them. All the males on board this ship are fighting for her now.
“Is he alive?”
“Centare,” she whisper-squawks.
“How did he die?”
