Page 58 of Infala: Bonded to the Enemy
Valin hesitated, processing the information. “Okay, but it will take time?—”
“He said an admiral would be here in a day.”
“But I haven’t seen any messages.”
“He hid them. Or deleted them, I’m not sure. But I know what I heard.”
A look of fierce concentration washed over Valin’s face, scenarios playing out in his head as he gamed out all the possible outcomes. Finally, his lips turned down slightly as the reality of their options lay before him in painful clarity.
“Then there is no way to hide this. Not now. And the others will notice their absence come morning. Worse yet, even if I could somehow disable the communications array, the admiral’s ship is still coming. And no matter what, they’ll figure out what happened.”
“What can we do?”
“I could stand and face the consequences of my actions. It is what a Dohrag would do.”
“But you said it yourself, you’re only half Dohrag. And I can’t lose you. Not now.”
Valin caressed her cheek with such startling gentleness for a man who had just slain four of his underlings with his bare hands. “Nor can I bear to lose you. In any case, my accepting my punishment is not an option. Once I am gone, nothing will protect you aboard this station.”
“So, what do we do? There’s no shuttle. No way out.”
Valin actually laughed, albeit quietly and without humor. “Not exactly,” he replied. “There isoneoption. It just happens to be one that no self-respecting Dohrag would ever consider.”
“I sense abutcoming.”
“But lucky for us, as you noted, I am only half Dohrag, and the other half of me has no problem with it at all.”
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Valin moved fast, dragging the four bodies into the kitchen with startling ease. Shalia knew he was strong, there’d never been any doubt about his physical power. But to manhandle the dead men so easily was eye-opening. They were Dohrags, and stocky, muscular ones at that. And yet Valin was on an entirely different level.
After seeing how the men treated one another, Shalia wondered if that was one of the big factors in his climbing the ranks despite his origins. The torment foisted upon him since childhood combined with great physical gifts had set him up to mete out doses of violence with great prowess and speed. Given that he’d risen all the way to command this station, she felt pretty sure he’d cracked a lot of skulls along the way. And she doubted he regretted a single one of them.
She cleaned up the blood fast, making quick work of that part of her task before anyone might see the aftermath. It proved to be a good thing.
“Hey, get me a hydration beverage,” a crewman named Zorx said, wandering into the mess hall and heading toward the kitchen.
It happened sometimes. The men would want something and would come back in to have Shalia fetch it for them. She knew they were just looking for an excuse to be alone with her on the off chance they might get lucky, though only Grallox and his buddies had progressed to the actively grabbing stage. The others seemed to either respect Valin’s commands or fear him. In any case, the woman was off-limits while aboard the station and they all knew it. If they wanted release, they’d either have to wait until they had a new shuttle, as well as a new batch of prisoners working the fields, or they could just make do manually the old-fashioned way.
Shalia balled up the bloody rag and tucked it inside a fresh one, stepping in front of him as he moved toward the kitchen. “I’ll get it for you right away. It’s a bit of a mess in there, but take a seat over there and I’ll bring you a piece of the sweet I was working on. You can be the first to taste it.”
“You prepared a dessert?” he asked, stopping in his tracks.
“Yeah, I’ve been working on a recipe. It wasn’t quite ready for the whole crew, but if you sit right there, I’ll bring you a piece. It’ll only take a minute.”
Zorx wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He plopped himself down and watched the human female hurry off to the kitchen.
Valin was crouched low, hiding his bulk from view, along with the four bodies. Shalia’s quick thinking had just saved him from having to kill another of his men. One he had no particular beef with.
She dropped the rags and got to work, quickly mixing a slurry of fruits and some leftover pieces of what passed for bread with these people. It had no flavor and was pretty dry, but that actually worked well for her needs.
“I’m just heating it up. It’ll only be a minute,” she called out, mixing it all together fast, the bread chunks greedily absorbing the juices.
She put it in the Dohrag equivalent of a microwave andwarmed her impromptu dessert. Steaming but not too hot, she took it out and added a dollop of something that had the consistency of heavy cream, though she still hadn’t figured out what exactly it was. It was in the kitchen, so it had to be edible, and that was all that mattered. She grabbed the hydration pack along with the warm dish and hurried back to her visitor.
“Here ya go. Tell me what you think. I’ve been trying to get the flavor and texture right.
Really, she’d just pulled the recipe out of her ass, but she’d enjoyed baking for years, and this was reasonably close to a very, very crude bread pudding. She just didn’t have the time to make it properly.
