Page 63 of Taken to Kor
“They want revenge.”
“Maybe. Sounds like my darling nana also thinks she might be able to take the colony back.”
I guffaw. “Preposterous.”
“Ontte, well, she’s crazy. We all know that. But she’s definitely not going to be able to do any of that, because we’re going to catch her. Right, Rhork?”
“Of course. No one leaves Kor without our knowing…”
“Rhorkanterannu! Deena!” I hear Tevbarannos’s voice — not through the token, but in person. He’s panting, rushing down the street, past the mob that’s mostly Niahhorru at this point. He has black blood smeared across his chest and one of his lower arms looks broken or dislocated. He cradles it against his chest, teeth clamped together as he struggles to breathe through them.
“Tevbarannos!” Deena shouts, turning to face the Niahhorru with her arms outstretched. He was always one of her favorite pirates. “Shrov! What happened to you?”
“The Drakesh that took us,” he heaves, skidding to a stop while the Niahhorru gathered make space around him.
Deena reaches forward and takes one of his less-injured-looking arms. “Shrov. You’re hurt. Did the Drakesh do this to you?”
“Ontte,” he heaves, then shakes his head as he uses her shoulder to right himself. I call for Quintenanrret in the meantime. “Centare.” He nods, contradicting himself. “Not the Drakesh. Well, the Drakesh at first, but then the Egama…”
“What?” Deena and I say in the same breath. I exchange a glance with my wife and see two things that make me smile. Her worry. Her exhilaration. She has not forgotten how much fun it was fighting Egama-Sky mercenaries that very first time.
Stars, my female is perfect.
I reach out and touch her neck, pulling her away from Tevbarannos as Quintenanrret appears at his side. He has a scanner in hand and passes it quickly over Tevbarannos’s limp arm, finding the break and then repairing it just as quickly.
“Thank you,” Tevbarannos says, sucking in his next breaths a little more easily.
“The Egama,” Deena presses at the same time I say, “The Drakesh.” The smile we exchange this time is pure fire.
Stars, my female is a perfect pirate.
“So. The Drakesh took us. I didn’t understand where they were taking us at first, because they didn’t seem to be ready to kill us, even though they could have, right away. Instead, they took us to one of the Niahhorru ports.”
“Which one?” I ask.
“South Star.”
South Star? “Interesting,” I muse. The North Star port is where the mothership is housed. If the Drakesh were trying to overtake a ship, I would have assumed it would be that one. Of course, they’d have gotten nowhere in it, because that ship is anchored to me and can only leave planetside when I’m at the manual controls in the command center.
“Right. So they took us to the South Star port and then they tested all of us against the yeeyar reader until they got to Herannathon.”
“I see. Herannathon’s ship is docked there?”
“Ontte.” He winces and clutches his side while Quintenanrret mutters curses and insults and tells him to be quiet and let him seal his wounds without complaint. The rebuke ends in a small shoving match between them.
Deena groans, “Oh for shrov’s sake! Pirates, focus!”
Tevbarannos’s mouth twitches and several of the pirates standing around listening on chuckle. She shouts again. “Would you just finish the shroving story? Where are they now? Why did they want Herannathon to open the key to his ship?”
“Because Herannathon, the filthy pirate,” he says it as an insult, though in Meero, such a term is only ever an endearment, “stoleone of the females in the tanks. The human females, I mean. I mean he stole the shroving tank! He had it on his ship and the Drakesh knew about it. They tried to unload it with the help of two Egama mercenaries and they might have succeeded if your Eshmiri friend, Ashmara, and her crazy horde hadn’t shown up. They blasted the shrov out of the Egama, wounding one of them.
“The Drakesh killed the injured Egama — I guess, so he wouldn’t talk — but instead of unloading the tank, they were cornered and just all piled onto Herannathon’s ship and took off.”
“Shrov!” I bark. “They took Herannathon with them?”
“Ontte.”
I’m less furious with the fact that they stole one of my pirates then I am with the fact that stealing my pirate means that they have what they need to be able to take his ship off planet. That tank is as good as lost to us now.
