Chapter 3

  So please, I beg of you, father, one final request. Let me go, show me there is still some ounce of love in your blackened heart for your daughter.

  -Daxia’s Farewell Note to the Devil

  Another week had passed. Zara had been making regular trips down into the cargo bay to spend time with Daxia. She’d sometimes bring down her datapad with downloaded music and share it with her. Theo, didn’t seem to mind the distractions, though tried to shift everything to a lesson to help keep Daxia’s potential from cindering. Zara had asked more about that and Theo explained that an Ignited must keep their soul fed with honing skills, knowledge, and strength. If they didn’t? Then the fire around their soul would scar it and be crippled for the rest of their life. Daxia was horrified at the idea of it, so music would turn from some of the Muse’s best works to songs that tlyek children learned about the different main trade routes through the galaxy. While it may be fascinating to someone who had never heard them, to Zara they were just an embarrassing reminder of too many videos recorded by her father of her singing them.

  Today’s session was interrupted with a chime that resounded through the halls of the ship. “All bridge crew report to your stations,” a calm feminine voice spoke before it cut out. Zara looked up and then back to Theo and Daxia, who were busy trying to figure out the distance between two orbiting bodies of star systems that Zara had picked out for them. She grinned slightly, “whatever is going on, I’m sure you both will figure this out by the time I’m back?”

  Theo scratched his cheek, “I don’t even know where to begin…”

  “Start with the distance between stars and work backwards to the orbiting radiuses and their points in yearly cycles, good luck!” She patted them each on the shoulder and walked quickly from the cargo bay up to the bridge. She was the last to arrive. The entire bridge crew only gave her a cursory glance.

  The bridge itself was a wide, half circle with the captain’s walk carving a T pattern through the floor. All of the important stations to run the ship were down below. Against the back wall was a wide, vertical glass tube with the ship’s Journeyfish inside of it. The creature floated in the vacuum of its container as if it were in water, countless tendrils wriggled about underneath its hood in search for small flakes of food that were slowly being fed into the tank. Zara always thought they had a strange regality about them, and also were very frilly. They were the main reason why this ship could travel across star systems so easily. Zara’s father, the head navigator, was at his station below near the front with his assistant. Her mother, the captain, stood at the very edge of the T looking at the hologram monitor that hovered in front of the thick glass separating the crew from space. Ana stood nearby in her armor, a grim look on her face. The entire crew’s antennae were upright, all acting in unison under the one mind of the odinrazum.

  The monitor was big, big enough for Zara to see that upon it was a display showing their current course through space. Immediately she saw the problem, there was another blip on the display and from what she could tell, it was on an intercept course. Zara’s antennae trembled then stuck straight up. Her mind melded into the minds of all those around her as she took a step up beside her mother. Zara’s sight multiplied, everyone’s eyes becoming her own and vice versa. The overload of information should have been too much to handle, but she was not the only mind there was, she was just a small part adding to a greater whole. Information flowed through her at a rate that was quicker than just asking what was going on.

  This dot was found on the display over an hour ago, that was not the problem though. Pinpointing its current trajectory through space, it would have not come from another planet typical on main trading routes nor from dead space. Still, odd, but not particularly suspicious. There are other people that don’t live along main trade routes. It apparently had course corrected to intercept the ship. The maneuver was done in such a way that both parties would be forced to exit back to real space lest the two ships fold into one another, which could end in some horrific ways from the stories Zara had heard. A kuzne, a caste of the empire’s brightest engineers, scientists, and technological geniuses, was in charge of communications and had tried relaying a message to the ship but still had not gotten a reply. There were murmurs echoing through the minds of the odinrazum that they must be pirates. This was met with intermingling and conflicting feelings of worry and apathy. The crew had a Shaped on board and zhuk warriors to compliment them. Through the miasma of collective thought though, a ringing tone of dread bled through. The ship’s signature indicated it as hailing from the Black Dragon Enclave. Daxia’s home.

  Zara felt the shiver that ran through her and everyone’s spine. They were so far from the Enclave, how were they found? Did they know? Over a dozen questions clamored through the crew’s minds at once. The captain’s firm hand over the hivemind quieted down the thoughts. The course was set, the Enclave’s ship was faster than their own so they could not run. They had no choice but to return to realspace and hope they could ward off any further inspection.With great trepidation, the crew faded into compliance and prepared for the transition. The Journeyfish’s tank sparked with electricity and the twisting spiral of space before them unwound back into an abyssal sea of black and the pinpricks of stars.

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  The captain wordlessly commanded the communications officer to send another request to the dragon’s ship. An uneasy silence followed before the window before them was suddenly taken up by a new hologram monitor. On the display were two figures. One was armored in the Teyhozkin Plate used by the Order of the Ignited. It did not invoke the same feeling that Theo’s did. This plate was sleek with a strange mesh, like insect wings, folding out from them like a waistcoat and draped down the throne they sat on. Around their neck, thousands of small spines rose out, giving the appearance of them carrying some mammal predator’s pelt over their shoulders like a trophy. This plate extended out along a whip-like tail similar to Daxia’s but with too many barbs over the top ending in a bone-white tuft of fur. The worst part was their helmet. The Teyhozkin plate helmets were usually more simple in shape with three shallow Vs stacked atop one another for a visor. This helmet was a deep crimson and had a muzzle extending out from it that made them look like some grinning, monstrous canid. Four horns sprouted from their head, two black, arcing backwards like lightning, and two red curling down to frame their face.

  The ra at their side was much less intimidating. The tall and willowy avian humanoid stood in a strange set of armor she hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t of any design she had seen in use throughout the galaxy, with a mesh of smaller looking plates over what might be an exoskeleton. It was black, like the masked man’s own armor, but with a distinct mechanical sheen that the carapace of teyhozkin armor lacked. His skin was yellowish tan with feathers poking out at the crests of his cheekbones and eyebrows with a single line of red feathers arcing down the center of his hairline surrounded by short and professional black hair.

  From the monitor, his expression was calm and collected, compared to the relaxed posture of a predator that the masked one took. The latter spoke, their tone commanding with a small growl to his words further distorted by the tinny filter from his mask. It was in a language that Zara did not recognize, but it sounded violent and angry. The only word she managed to get was “Nazexia,” an insult in her own language the equivalent of calling a human an ape. The ra spoke next, translating, “Hail, citizens of the Nazeko Empire.” Zara had a thought that whatever the masked man said was not so cordial, but her and the crew remained silent as he continued, “You address the Lord Power of the Black Dragon Enclave, the Black Wolf of Syronia, and son of its most glorious Patriarch. Prepare for immediate boarding. Any resistance will be crushed.”

  Zara’s heart tightened in her chest and she immediately looked to her mother for leadership. She was always so stalwart and regal in the face of adversity and behind her cool mask, Zara could see a tightness in her gaze.

  “May we at least know the reason for this sudden breach of intergalactic law? You are far from your Enclave, sir, and we are well within client territory of the Order of the Ignited. I can’t imagine that you intend to do us harm, surrounded by enemies,” the captain spoke, keeping the edge from her voice. Zara applauded her ability to not even allow the slightest quiver from reaching her tone. The captain’s antennae twitched once and through the odinrazum the chaotic feelings of the crew were wrangled within the tight grip of her control. A single command was sent, “warn the Ignited” to one of the murav on board.

  Power laughed, speaking once more, aloof. The ra translated, “This does not concern my lord.” The warning was ominous and they continued, “We are searching for a fugitive who has escaped our lands. We have been making inspections on any passing ships, please comply. As long as we find nothing there will be no need for bloodshed.”

  More murmurs clamored to be heard within the collective mind of the crew. They needed to run, they were going to be found out. They needed to give up the Ignited. The Longshi would cinder them all and leave them as food for the streamer eels.

  The captain responded, “We will prepare for your arrival.” Everyone looked back to her in shock, but she didn’t spare any of them a passing glance.

  The ra smiled, “you have 3 minutes. Any suspicious movements will displease my lord.” There was no further reply, the monitor winked out. Silence followed.

  Then an explosion of panic. People were trying to leave the odinrazum but the will of the captain was ironclad. She forced them all to remain still and not disturb the quiet. The turmoil within subsided. Then the formation of a plan bled into everyone’s mind. Zara’s eyes widened and she looked up at her mother. She returned her gaze, reaching a hand down to brush some hair from her face. “Go, see to the Ignited.” She said, releasing Zara from the odinrazum.

  “But–” Zara tried to protest.

  “Go.” She commanded, “it is safest there.”

  Zara’s eyes narrowed, “No! Absolutely not. If I’m going to be captain one day then I need to be here with you, with the crew. I’m not going to just sit there in the cargo bay hoping that everything will be okay!”

  The two stared at one another, unwilling to back down. Zara pleaded wordlessly to her mother. Another walked up to the two of them, her father, who put a hand on the captain’s shoulder and gave her a look. The captain’s shoulders slackened and she sighed. “Very well, but should things go wrong. Take Madam Hedar to the escape pods and set its destination to the closest planet. Go with her.”

  Zara hesitated, but saluted. She wouldn’t be doing that last part, but they didn’t have time for any more arguing. “Yes Ma’am.”

  Her mother nodded curtly, then looked ahead. “Prepare the engines and the Journeyfish. We are going to make another jump.”