Imminent Danger: And How to Fly Straight Into It (5 page)

“Yes.”

“That’s cool.”

They noticed Grashk approaching them, but he was not carrying breakfast as they had expected. “Come,” Grashk commanded. “Captain Hroshk orders all prisoners to the bridge.”

Grashk and Tarsis escorted the prisoners from the cell block. As they marched through the blue corridors, Eris noticed small, circular portholes set high in the outer wall. She couldn’t remember if she had seen them the last time she had been brought before Hroshk.
I was probably too busy being terrified out of my mind. Not that I’m all that calm this time around.
Deciding to take a chance, she said, “Grashk, can I look outside, just for a second?”

The other guard reached out as if to grab her and pull her along, but to Eris’s surprise, Grashk stepped between them and said, “You are not in command, Tarsis.”

Since Grashk hadn’t actually said no, Eris decided to chance a peek. Quickly stepping toward a window, she grabbed the sill and pulled herself up on tiptoes. She was astonished to see a brilliant white orb hanging in a backdrop of black velvet and twinkling stars. Off in the distance, she could make out another star, this one white-blue and even brighter than the first. Occasional shadows passed across the face of the white-blue star.
Spaceships?

Grashk pulled Eris away from the porthole, and they continued down the corridor.

“That was amazing!” Eris whispered.

“The Sirius stars are one of the most stunning sights in the galaxy,” Miguri agreed. “Did you spot any of the Psilosian cruisers?”

“I think so. Near the big star.”

“I do not remember if I told you, but the Psilosians were one of the few species to help my people after the Rakorsians destroyed my planet.” His hair drooped sadly.

“I think I hate the Rakorsians,” Eris said.

“It is best not to hate without a more thorough understanding of the situation,” Miguri cautioned. Then he grinned up at her with needle-sharp teeth. “However, in this case we will make an exception.”

Eris returned the smile. “So which of those stars was Sirius B?”

“The smaller white star.”

“And that’s where the slave market is?”

Miguri bowed his head. “Yes. The Psilosians have been trying to shut it down for over three hundred years but to no avail. Smugglers and thieves thrive in the darkest corners of the galaxy, and the black market of Sirius B’s asteroid belt is dark indeed.”

They reached the lift, and as the circular platform raised them to the command deck, Eris felt a chill of fear creep up her spine. Approaching the gruesome portal, she noticed that Miguri’s hair was standing on end, and his tiny hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly.
He looks even more scared of Hroshk than I am,
thought Eris.
And here I thought that was impossible.

The massive door spiraled open. The two guards herded their prisoners into the center of the bridge, where Hroshk was lounging on his huge, coral chair. The captain had clearly been waiting for them, for he immediately fixed his reptilian stare on Eris.

“Tarsis tells me you managed to survive your first Pull without too much whimpering,” Hroshk said, his purple eyes cold. “My Vekrori agent will be pleased that I’ve brought her such a hardy specimen.”

Eris had no idea what he wanted from her.
Am I supposed to grovel?

Hroshk’s gaze flickered to Miguri. “As for you, Claktill, I have located a new home for you on Ssriss. A rich friend of mine is looking for a … pet.”

Miguri emitted a high-pitched squeak.

“What a pitiful creature!” Hroshk exclaimed, rising to his clawed feet to tower over the little alien. “You tremble though no harm has befallen you! Such cowardice must not go unpunished.” He
phhh
-ed as he detached a short rod from the side of his belt.

Miguri looked terrified. Eris couldn’t understand what was upsetting the little alien so horribly.
Is it that rod he’s afraid of?
she wondered. She got the feeling she was missing something.

Hroshk handed the rod to Tarsis, saying, “Two will do.”

Tarsis grinned, exposing sharp yellow fangs. “With pleasure.”

The captain dismissed the guards, who seized their captives and marched them from the bridge. When Eris tried to speak to Miguri, Grashk said, “Silence!”

As soon as they returned to the cell block, Miguri tried to bolt for his cell, but Tarsis grabbed the tiny alien with two of his six arms and yanked him back. The Claktill’s hair drooped miserably as he squirmed around in the Ssrisk’s grasp.

Tarsis raised the rod. There was a handle on one end and a shiny metal cap on the other. The reason for Miguri’s panic soon became clear. Tarsis flicked a control on the handle, and the metal tip was suddenly surrounded by crackling electric currents.

“What are you doing?” Eris exclaimed. She stepped forward, hoping to intervene on her friend’s behalf. But Grashk grabbed her arms and held her immobile. “Ow!” she yelped as Grashk’s scaly fingers tightened.

Hoisting Miguri up in the air, Tarsis ruthlessly shoved the metal tip against the Claktill’s left thigh. Miguri screeched as Eris watched in horror. “Why are you doing this?” she cried. “He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Captain’s orders,” Grashk hissed.

“Well, your captain’s a sadistic bastard, you know that?”

Down came the electrocution device again. As Miguri writhed in agony, Eris struggled to escape her captor’s many hands. “What is
wrong
with you people? Is Hroshk going to fail his performance review if he doesn’t torture enough prisoners?”

“We do not question the captain,” Grashk said.

Hroshk is insane,
Eris realized.
An insane, sadistic lizard-man who likes to torture innocent prisoners for fun. And so, apparently, is Tarsis.

Tarsis dropped the smoking, whimpering Miguri to the floor. The Claktill immediately bolted for his cell, limping on his injured leg. Wanting to go comfort her friend, Eris snapped, “Let me go, Grashk!”

Then Tarsis stalked toward her, twirling the rod like a baton. “Give me the human, Grashk,” he ordered. “Two jolts each.”

Eris wanted very much to punch Tarsis right in his scaly face, but she settled for snarling, “Go ahead! Do your worst!”

Tarsis bristled at her tone and then reached out three hands to grab her. But to Eris’s surprise, Grashk intervened. He hit Tarsis’s arms aside and then released Eris and pushed her behind him.

As Eris pressed up against the wall, the two Ssrisk began to circle each other warily. The spines on their tails extended wide to expose greenish fins, and the twin rows of scales on their heads rose like spikes. They were both making an angry
rat-tat-tat
sound like a machine gun firing.

“Why did you stop me, Grashk?” Tarsis spat.

“The human has just shown courage in the face of adversity,” Grashk returned with equal venom. “She does not require punishment.”

Tarsis brandished the rod threateningly. “You will respect the captain’s orders, not defend some pathetic terrestrial!”

Grashk pulled himself up to his full eight feet of height. He had a good six inches on Tarsis. Clenching two fists together, Grashk swung his arms and slammed them into his opponent’s chest, knocking the alien back several feet. Then, pounding all six fists against his blue chest, Grashk hissed, “You will respect
my
orders, Tarsis!”

Rat-tat-tat
-ing angrily, Tarsis backed off. After glaring for another few seconds, he dropped the rod at Grashk’s feet, hissed, and turned tail and slunk out of the room.

Eris pushed herself away from the wall, shaken by the violence of the past few minutes. “Thank you,” she said to Grashk in a quiet voice.

He hissed dismissively and picked up the rod. “There is no reason to thank me. The captain ordered punishment for cowardly prisoners. You did not display such a pitiful quality and therefore you do not require punishment.”

Eris nodded mutely as Grashk returned to the central console.
That makes no sense,
she thought,
but I’m certainly not going to argue the point.

Concerned about Miguri, she hurried to his cell. Her little friend was curled up in a ball, furry white tail wrapped several times around his thigh. Eris knelt down beside him and carefully pried back his tail. The brown fabric of his pants had sizzled away, and two angry burns stood out on his skin—skin she found far too pale, considering its usual suntanned shade.

“Oh, Miguri! Does it hurt a lot?”

“I have experienced worse,” he replied. “But thank you for your concern.”

Having no first-aid supplies and doubting Grashk would provide any, Eris tried to think of what she could use as a balm for Miguri’s wounds. Then she spotted Miguri’s bowl of breakfast. “Who would have guessed space jelly had so many uses?” she mused, slathering the cool substance over her friend’s burns.

“Ah! Much better.”

The captives decided to stay in Miguri’s cell for a while, reluctant to go into the control room in case Grashk and Tarsis renewed their argument. Neither of them wanted to become collateral damage to a Ssrisk fistfight.

Searching for a topic of conversation, Eris said, “Why don’t you tell me about Claktilla?”

She spent the next few hours entranced as Miguri reminisced about his lost home planet. From the way he described it, Claktilla had been a paradise. The trees had towered a mile high, with teal-colored bark and broad leaves in all shades of the rainbow. The Claktilli homes had been intricate tree houses built on top of thick branches and joined to each other by rope bridges. Joyful music had filled the air each evening. Sunsets, always beautiful, had been silvery spectacles with all three moons arrayed along the horizon. The monstrous
jsgarn—
a huge, ravenous creature native to Claktilla that Miguri said could devour ten Claktills in one bite—sounded to Eris like a creature in a fairy tale.

“And then the Rakorsians destroyed your beautiful world,” she said. “Why would they do that?”

Miguri shrugged, hair drooping sadly. “Claktilla was never a prominent presence in the galaxy. We are a peaceful species and had a very small star fleet. Most of the galaxy considers us something of a joke. I think they do not take us seriously because of our appearance.”

Eris frowned. “I like your appearance!”

“Thank you, but I fear you are in a minority. Most find us quite comical looking. Regardless, when the Rakorsians decided to push the boundaries of their empire—again—Claktilla was one of the first to fall victim, because we refused to submit to their rule. The Rakorsians bombarded our beautiful planet with chemical attacks that turned all the beauty of my world into toxic sludge.”

“That’s terrible!” Eris exclaimed.

“Rakorsians expend a great deal of resources developing superior military technology. It is that, and their skill at genetic manipulation, that makes the rest of the galaxy fear them so much.”

“And now your home is gone. But how did you get away?”

“When we realized the Rakorsians were coming, we fit as many Claktills on our ships as we could and fled the planet. Not everyone made it. The Psilosians offered us some of their old cruisers as colony ships, and my people have been traveling the stars as refugees ever since.”

They stared at each other.

“Yes, I definitely hate the Rakorsians,” Eris said. She glanced at Miguri’s leg and was pleasantly surprised to see that the burns had nearly faded under the thick coating of space jelly. “Hey, you’re almost healed!”

“While your ministrations were very helpful, the truth is that Claktills heal quickly,” the little alien said. “It is one of the things that has allowed our species to survive for so long through so much turmoil.”

BOOM.

Suddenly, the entire ship shook. It felt as though the vessel had struck, or been struck by, something very large.
This can’t be good,
Eris thought nervously.

6

T
he ship shook again.

“What’s going on?” Eris demanded. “Did we hit something?” Thoughts of the Titanic suddenly sprang to her mind.
But there aren’t any icebergs in space … well, unless you count comets.
She shook her head.
Focus!

“I do not know,” Miguri said, hair spiking in agitation.

They huddled in the bottom of the cell as several more explosions rocked the ship.

Captain Hroshk’s furious voice blared over the intercom, “All hands to battle stations. The ship is under attack by an unidentified enemy. Repeat, the ship is under attack. The hull has been compromised. Kill all intruders.”

“I believe we may be under attack by raiders,” Miguri said, twisting his tail around his midsection in a defensive gesture.

“Raiders? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Yes, that is the most likely cause of the commotion. A typical raiding strategy is to sneak up on a target ship while their guard is down, disable their engines, and then latch onto the hull.”

Eris tried to imagine what that would look like. In her mind, a wooden pirate ship had its anchor wrapped around a giant blue gum ball.

“That would explain why it felt like something hit us.” Eris suddenly wished she had some sort of weapon. If they were going to be attacked, she wanted to be able to defend herself.

Miguri nodded. “Let us only hope the raiders do not try to take the bridge.”

“Why? Is that bad?”

“If they take the bridge,” he said grimly, “then Hroshk will self-destruct the ship rather than surrender. It is a matter of honor to the Ssrisk.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not good.”

“Indeed.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening for sounds of battle. Then they heard a series of
zwoosh
sounds from not far away.

“What was
that
?” Eris asked.

“That is the sound of strikers being fired.”

“Strikers?”

“Remember the gun device you said your planet’s cowboys use? A striker is somewhat similar, but it fires plasma bursts instead of bullets. And it can be used to stun, not only to wound and kill.”