Page 2 of The Warrior's Oath
Nyota turned to find the source of the advice. It came from a very tall, very muscular man, standing perfectly still, leaning up against a partially shaded tree. He was standing so still you could almost miss him if you didn’t know he was there. Alert, quiet, and silently watching her.
Her eyes cleared a bit and she saw he wasn’t a particularly large human but rather an alien, though one humanoid in shape.
He wore a short-sleeved shirt, making visible his tattooed, deeply tanned skin that seemed to give off a subtle, almost golden glow where the sunlight hit it. He looked as though he had been pretty well banged up from the crash as well, his clothing torn in places and his body scraped.
The crash!she suddenly remembered. “Hey, we were on a ship. Something happened!”
“Yes.”
“The big lizard-looking guys. The Raxxians. They were holding me prisoner. They were holding a lot of us.”
“Livestock,” he replied plainly. “Notprisoners.”
“What?” Nyota said, confused, trying to prop herself up on her elbow and failing miserably. “Ow, my head.”
“I told you, do not move. You are intact and nothing is broken, but you hit your head quite hard. You must move slowly.”
Nyota slid back down, resting her head on the ground. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to heed his advice, but more that with the way her body felt, there really wasn’t any other option.
“Oh man, I must’ve taken a hell of a knock.”
“That would be putting it mildly,” he replied with only the slightest hint of amusement.
“But hang on. Back up. What did you mean,livestock?” she asked, trying to relax her neck to relieve some of the tension throbbing in her poor cranium.
He cocked his head slightly, as if sizing her up. “We were all taken by the Raxxians.”
“Right. That’s what I said.”
“We were taken to be used as a food source. You should already know this.”
“Food?”
“Yes. Most of us, anyway. A few they had other uses for. My general, for one. Rumor had it that when they captured us, they kept him alive. I fear most of our compatriots did not fare so well.”
Nyota struggled to shake the fog from her mind. She was concussed, clearly, and that meant she was not thinking straight. But the fact that she was with it enough to realize she wasn’t thinking straight meant perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she’d first worried. And now that she thought about it, yes, there was something seriously wrong going on aboard the Raxxian ship.
“Oh, hell,” she mumbled. “That’s right. The Raxxians eat people.”
“It is coming back to you. That is a good sign.”
“But what happened? I-I was in a holding compartment.”
“Yes, as were we all when the ship fell under attack.”
“The attack. Right.Right!There were explosions. And then the compartment door locking system broke. Everyone took off running.”
“In the course of the battle, many of the livestock compartments were unsealed. Several took flight down the corridors, including yourself. It was a chaotic time.”
Nyota’s head pounded miserably as she tried to recall more details. But thinkinghurt. The additional blood flow was not doing her concussion any favors.
“We were attacked, and the ship broke apart,” she said.
“You are correct. The individual compartments are designed to preserve their cargo. It is how we survived the main body of the transport ship’s destruction.”
“But how are wehere? We were in space.”
“The automated systems locked onto the nearest planet and set us down here, albeit rather roughly.”
