Page 3 of Taken to Kor
“You’re trying to steal women.”
“I’m trying to save a species.”
“It’s still stealing. You tried to take Miari and Svera.”
“Perhaps that is only because I hadn’t met you first.”
My chest tightens. I imagine him wanting me. I shouldn’t want that, but I do. I’d be willing to do a lot for a little attention at the moment. It’s only been a few solars since I’ve been stuck in this cell, but it feels like a lifetime.
“Rhorkanneteru,” I whisper.
He laughs again, this time a little shorter. “Rhorkanterannu.”
“Rhorkanterannu,” I repeat, then huff. “It’s too long.”
“All Niahhorru have long names. At least, all Niahhorru of worth.”
“I still say it’s too long. You could make it shorter. Just the end part, or the beginning.”
“What would you call me then?”
I reach for my water bottle again, then again, lower my hand. I cross my arms over my chest and lie back on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, imagining it a lunar sky full of stars. “How about Rhork?”
There’s a long silence after I say that. Then, “Interesting.”
And that is the first time I ever met Rhork.
Two hundred solars later, or now…
2
Deena
My whole body is jittery. It has been since I boarded the Niahhorru battle transporter, helped rescue Svera and managed to escape. Now, I’m in the escape pod staring blankly at the control pad built into the armrest of one of the four chairs in this tiny little thing.
I got it to jump space, like Krisxox told me too. That was good advice. Without it, I’m pretty sure I’d have been caught right away. But now the control pad is flashing at me in bright blue, asking me for coordinates to my destination because I’m apparently low on energy, or fuel or whatever thing powers this pod. That’s what I think the blue blinking light means, anyway.
Coordinates.
My mind goes completely and utterly blank.
And then I start to laugh. I laugh long and hard and so crazily, I’m forced to remember every single time Mathilda, my dearest grandmother, told me that I was insane. Mental. Mad. A madwoman. A lunatic. I feel it, then. I feel all of it.
Because I don’t know the coordinates to take me back to the human colony. I don’t knowanycoordinates except for the ones Rhork wants more than anything else in the universe.
I gnaw on my bottom lip, tearing it to pieces as my fingers hover over the controls. Finally, the warning signs get louder and I fidget in my chair. What are my options? I could sit here and die, or I could go there and try to find the humans. Maybe start a new freaking life.
Yeah. A new life. That’d be good.
At least, it can’t be any worse than the one I just left.
My fingers are jerky and hesitant as I input the coordinates Idoknow. The only ones I know because they’re the only ones ever given to me. Svera told me to use them only if I was in a bind, but right now I’m in a pretty massive bind, so I throw them in and strap myself into the control chair and brace as the ship jolts, changing sectors again and returning me back to the grey zone between Quadrants Four and Five, not too far from where I disembarked the Niahhorru mothership in the first place.
I’m headed to the satellite that Rhork’s been trying to get to all along.That’swhy he took Svera and not me. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m defective. He just wanted the coordinates…
The dusty colony sand swirls around my ankles and sticks to the sweat on my skin. I’m sweating everywhere. I have been since Mathilda dragged me out of that basement and brought me here to watch this deal go down with Rhork. She’s going to give him Svera, the human advisor to the moon colony.
Svera has the coordinates that Rhork wants.
