Silence while my brother wrestled with more than just his footwear. “You are expecting Xandros and I to not fight for this? For her?”
I turned my back on him to put on my cloak. At least I did not have to wear the cursed coveralls underneath. It was a relief to swing free once again. “We have no choice. If she does not want us, we must let her go.”
“We could?—”
I spun to stare at him. “If she wants to go, we have to permit it.”
“But—”
“Enough, Rhodes. I know how difficult this is. No situation where we force her is going to succeed.” I shouldered the pack, and met his stare.
His eyes glowed garnet-red in the darkness. Unlike Xandros, who rarely ever challenged me, Rhodes pushed all the time. It was good, because it kept me aware. But in this case, I had to be alpha.
He held my gaze without blinking. When I raised my chin, I heard his teeth grind.
Then, he looked away. “Shaftz, it stinks here,” he muttered.
I silently agreed with him as I wrinkled my nose at the thick fog in the air—the stench of industry, unregulated by pollution controls of any kind. The Nirzks did not care about life. They only cared about profit.
We moved into the city, walking as though we had a destination. Being far taller than most, we would not fit smoothly into the enslaved population. But the Nirzk slave masters and regulators would be prevalent among them, and they were very close to our bulk. With our cloaks and our wings held close, the darkness would hide much.
From what we had seen so far, this was a lumber town. Huge floating barges carrying logs pulled up to conveyors. The doors dropped on their sides, and their cargo rolled off to be carried away, sorted, and stacked.
I kept an eye out for a barge parked unattended, but these seemed to be in permanent service. The shipyard the navcube had shown us did the maintenance on them.
By the number of people on the streets, the slaves must work in shifts. They were likely permitted only minimal free time to sleep or, it appeared from the number of bars along the main street, drink.
The Nirzk regulators were easy to spot—they were the loudest of the bar patrons, and loitered in the street in groups. Most wore cloaks, but some had their hoods down as they joked and squabbled among themselves.
Manticores. Just like dragons, they were an ancient human myth, but based on the real-life monsters visiting their world. The ancient humans had not understood that they were looking at aliens.
Although the monster moniker would suit the Nirzks well. They were not shapeshifters, and they might possess fur rather than scales, but they certainly lacked a warm mammalian heart.
We walked past a group of five who were clearlyinebriated. Four males with a single female. She was larger than the average Drake—pushing eight feet in height—and in typical manticore fashion had shaved most of her face. Her mane was restricted to three braids on top of her skull. A leather bustier pushed up four breasts, and their quadruple curves were covered in short, golden hair. Her muscular legs were also clad in leather, and behind her waved her lethal tail—with a bulbous tip ending in a stinger.
The males were a little smaller, but more heavily muscled, with long, luxuriant manes framing their narrow faces. Only the alpha carried his tail elevated over his head, revealing the large poison gland at the end. The other three carried their tails low, so that they were barely obvious beneath their cloaks. There was no doubt who they were. The Nirzk society was matriarchal, and powerful females gathered large harems over time.
Xandros believed that lack of frequent sex led to the males being so vicious. Of course, my sex-obsessed brother would think that. It was true, however, that the Nirzks were as nasty among themselves as they were to other species. It was just part of who they were.
To me, the souls of the Nirzks were present in their eyes. They possessed a coldness and calculation that was true to their ruthless nature.
As our primary competition in claiming the resources across the cosmos, they had been our enemies for eons. And over that time, Drakes had become so embroiled in the conflict that they had lost themselves. The gulf between dragon and manticore had narrowed—we might not be slavers, but we had become oppressors. It was one of the reasons first our father, and now Azrome’s triad, were pushing for change.
They believed we were no longer who we used to be.
I had faith in the concept, but change came slowly, and often at great cost. The need was there. Although Earth’s population was not enslaved, there was little difference between their behavior and that of these residents. The locals here avoided the manticores, avertedtheir gazes, and walked as though the chains were as literal as the collars around their necks.
Subservience, however, was not enough when Nirzks were looking for entertainment. Off to one side writhed a slave who had been punished for some transgression. The Nirzks often used minute doses of their tail venom to inflict excruciating pain—it was an effective deterrent for anyone contemplating rebellion.
I had good reason to know.
As we walked near, two of his fellow slaves dragged the groaning victim into the closest building. I gritted my teeth as we walked past the Nirzks, but they did not even glance our way. They had evolved primarily as sight predators, and although their hearing and sense of taste were better than a Drake’s, the slitted nostrils on their flattened faces were not suited to sniffing us out.
The shipyard was at the far end of the town, and the street traffic diminished enough that Rhodes and I skulked in the back alleys rather than walking the street. When we got close, we climbed onto the roof of a multi-story building, and crouched down behind the parapet to take a look.
Our target was enclosed in a ten-foot fence with a single security gate for personnel. An assortment of vessels awaiting maintenance were scattered rather than neatly parked.
Any one of them should have a power core that would be compatible with theStardrifter’sbracket system.
