Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
The human party is quite raucous. Arkan declares it must be confined to the cargo bay after finding several villagers cavorting in the halls and even a few fucking on the bridge. Humans really do get everywhere.
I want to spend time with Emily, but she keeps being swept away by her people who claim they need her for one thing or another. I allow this, knowing how important she is to them, and vice versa. There will be time to have her to myself later.
Much later, apparently, for the party rages through what would be their night. It is loud, even hours after it began. The sounds coming from the cargo bay do not let up in intensity, and at a certain point, I decide it is time to break the affair up. They all need their sleep, and I want to take my pet to bed.
Opening the cargo bay doors, I growl dominantly at the assembled humans.
“Alright! I think it’s time to wind this… up?”
The sounds continue. But the bay is empty. Every stick of furniture, scrap of fabric, all gone. There is no party here. There is just the memory of the party, playing through the ship’s speakers into the great empty maw of the cargo bay.
“ARKAN!” I shout my brother’s name. “Someone has taken the humans!”
Arkan soon gets to the bottom of things, after he and Kahn and Jennifer all take their turns staring at the empty cargo bay, and after Arkan checks the ship’s transport logs.
“They’re gone,” he confirms. “But nobody took them. A ship-to-ship transfer was initialized on the bridge. I think they used the party to cover for their escape.”
“Sick,” Jennifer whispers to herself in a way I find far too admiring.
“All the humans are gone,” Kahn confirms. “Everyone except Jennifer and the injured girl in the sick bay who still has not regained consciousness.”
“I can’t believe my pet is gone,” I say.
“I think your pet organized the escape, Zain,” Arkan says. “She’s the only one who had access to the bridge. The rest of them were being held in cargo and I don’t think any of them sneaked out of there.”
“Why would she do that?”
Jennifer is leaning against the wall, toying with a flick knife that she must have gotten from the human cargo bay. “What’s the last conversation you remember having with her?”
“She asked if we sold humans, and if the others of her village were also going to be sold.”
“And you said…”
“Yes.”
Jennifer looks at us with an expression of uniquely human female derision. “You may be ‘advanced’,” she says, slipping the knife into her pocket so she can make little crooked signs with her fingers in the air. “But sometimes you are fucking stupid.”
“What is that impudence supposed to mean?”
“It means they didn’t want to be sold, dummy. It means humans don’t consider themselves your products or your inventory. How many Euphorians do the villagers need to eat? How many ships need to be overtaken by human battalions before you realize that the fact you’ve picked off a few of us in isolation and made us pets for some families on your world doesn’t mean we are actually good pets. Or pets at all. Those are wild, free humans. And they’re taking a whole ass Wrathelder ship back to Earth and back to their military facilities. They’re going to have it taken apart and reverse engineered before you know it. And shit’s going to get even worse down there. Because the military is going to take that tech and it’s going to be used by humans against other humans. People are going to get sucked into the sky, and….”
She keeps talking out loud. Meanwhile, my brothers and I are having an intense conversation in our minds.
“We need to retrieve those humans before they return to Earth. We have to capture the ship,” Arkan says.
“We should contact Wrathelder,” Kahn says. The pair of us look at him askance, as that seems like the most insane plan possible. He explains himself in short order.
“We need all available resources. Wrathelder can help. At this stage, they can still retrieve both their ships if we succeed, but the three of us cannot take this ship and capture a human vessel manned by hostile humans. We have not spent the last year building a transport fleet. They have.”
They both look at me, as if waiting for my input on this plan.
“I want Emily back.”
My contribution is limited to that sentiment. I want Emily back so hard that missing her physically hurts. I cannot believe that she has left me, let alone organized the mission that led to her escape. I have to think that we are missing something.
“Make the call,” Kahn says. “Before it’s too late.”
Arkan does the deed. “I cannot believe we are doing this. He is the enemy. He is… hello, Phenix.”