Page 33 of Taken By the Alien Killer
Kaspian drifts in like a ghost, coat still unbuttoned, hair a little out of place for once. “I offered the attaché,” he says quickly, before Wynona can redirect him. “To send a pair of discreet agents. Mrs. Chambers declined. Mr. Chambers agreed, then declined again, and I am being very mature about it.”
“You’re being useful,” Martin says mildly.
“I’m being resigned,” Kaspian answers, with a look that admits resignation feels like cowardice when it’s neat. He glances at me and holds my eyes just long enough to mean it. “If there is anything I can do without making this worse, I will do it.”
“You can tell me where she went,” I say.
“I can’t,” he says, and means it. “I’m very sorry.”
Wynona steps between us. “We have every expectation our daughter will return shortly,” she says, crisp as a folded map. “You will stay at your post. You will keep my house secure. You will not compound impulse with impulse.”
“I don’t work impulse,” I say, and because we both know that’s not entirely true, we let that be an end to that conversation. I leave because chain of command is a habit you don’t shrug off without tearing muscle.
At 1400 the planetary defense feed burps a bulletin through the guard room with the hiccup of something that had to force its way past a polite firewall: Mining Hub Delta-6—Rook’s Rest—civilian ring—distress beacon activated—communications degraded—piracy event probable. The room goes quiet. The younger guards look at me because I have a face designed for bad news.
“Patch me to central,” I tell the comms sergeant. “Now.”
He does, fingers a little clumsy. The voice that answers is a woman I know from a training rotation, call sign Tally, good at pretending her calm isn’t built out of panic. “Household Guard, go.”
“Rayek. What do you have.”
“Reaper footprint,” she says. “Not confirmed by hull ID, confirmed by behavior. Rapid entry, precision strikes to control rooms, personnel taken rather than deleted. Power grid bled, then stabilized. Standard Khong doctrine for asset acquisition.”
“Ships?” I ask. “Numbers, classes.”
“Three heat signatures at first pass, one large, two middleweight,” she says. “Rescinded by clouds of rubble. We have no clean read. Local chatter suggests a flagship with bone-shroud silhouette.”
“Khong,” I say, and taste metal.
“We can’t confirm,” she says, and we both hear what she means: we can, but we don’t have the budget for the word.
“Survivors?” I ask.
“Some,” she says. “Dock hands, a cook, a preacher who tried to talk the raiders into better manners, three kids who hid in a crawlspace while their hearts attempted homicide. Offload to med ships ongoing.”
“Statements,” I say, and the sergeant pushes a slate into my hand as the first rough transcripts arrive, text over audio over static. I scroll. I seered-haired human female—I seeyellow-skinned Kilgari—I seelaughing, then running—I seetook them, called them gifts—I seecaptain said the pretty ones make the crew loyal.I see enough.
“Give me a vector,” I tell Tally. “I’ll take it from there.”
“Officially I can’t,” she says. “Unofficially: outbound heading on the primary strike matches vectors we’ve seen on the Stormhammer when it moves out of the Badlands for sport. If you were looking for someone you loved, you would aim beyond the old comet field and wait for rot to smell like a plan.”
“Copy,” I say. “I owe you.”
“You owe me a drink I’m not allowed during duty hours,” she says, and kills the line because she knows what I’m about to do and doesn’t want to be party to the paperwork.
I stand with the slate in my hand until the words go blurry. The room breathes around me. A young guard clears his throat, then pretends he forgot why. The sergeant watches my face like it’s a weather report for his crops.
“Sir?” he says finally, tiny. “Orders?”
“Hold the house,” I say. “Lock down the east approach. Double posts on the balcony and the stair. Rotate every hour; no one gets tired enough to be stupid. Sneed will have opinions; log mine next to his.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, relief and dread held in equal parts.
I go to my quarters and take the three things I own that matter: the Bishop with the worn corner, the knife that has had the same edge since the war, the photograph tucked in the back of a locker door of a squad who didn’t make it. I put the Bishop in my pocket and the knife at my back. I lay the photograph face down on the desk and press it flat. “I will not add to you,” I tell ghosts who don’t care, and leave the door open because I don’t intend to come back through it until I’ve earned it.
The hangar we use for unregistered sorties is technically a “salvage repository” and practically a shrine to hypocrisy. The quartermaster sitting at the manifest console is a young man with a mustache like a question. He blinks up at me, decides to be brave, and fails.
“I need a scout,” I say. “Warm. Fueled.”
