Death Drop (24 page)

“Dezmara, luv, what ‘bout
him
?” Simon asked as he quickly glanced over one shoulder then the other to make sure no one else was there. She gave him a puzzled look, not quite understanding who ‘him’ was exactly.

“Oh, c’moff it, luv—HIM!” Simon said as he motioned through the open doorway with his head.

“You mean Diodojo? What is it with you two? Why can’t you get along?”

“Bloody beast doesn’t like me—don’t know why. Can’t like somethin’ wut hates you from the git, luv.”

“Doj was found on the derelict with me. They said he was standing guard over my cryo—wouldn’t let anyone come close at first. Come to think of it, he kinda treated Felix and his crew like he treats you.”

“An’ they turned out to be stand-up chaps, all right, didn’t they? Jus’ goes to show, he’s nuthin’ but a wild animal, that one—you’ll see. I’d bet my knickers”

“RAAAAAEEEER!”

“’oly shite!” Simon cried as he tumbled sideways and then scrambled to his feet, only to cringe against the wall, trapped and scared out of his mind. Diodojo had crept into the room and was threatening him with a low, guttural death growl that pinned Simon helplessly in position.

Neither Dezmara nor Simon had any idea what Diodojo was or where he came from. He moved gracefully on four paws and a long tail swept down from his back, slightly curling a few inches above the ground. The short fur on his body was a silver-gray with large, dark circles and it shimmered as his muscles moved and rippled. He inched his powerful frame forward, closing in on the cowering Kaniderelle. Dezmara had never seen him so menacing. Diodojo had green eyes the same shade as hers but now they glowed with ferocity. His ears were pinned to his sleek head and each snarl flashed his deadly teeth.

“Doj! What the hell’s gotten into you?!” Dezmara scolded.

“Call’im off, luv! He’s off ‘is nut, he is! Call’im off!”

“Doj!” Dezmara called with a hard tone she had never had to use with him before, but he steadily inched forward, head down, ears pinned back, eyes squinted to protect them from the flailing limbs and gnashing teeth of the bloody melee soon to come. He was poised to tear Simon to shreds.

“DIODOJO!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, and this time it sounded more like a plea than a command. Her voice was strained with desperation and Diodojo could hear it. He stopped his advance and the intensity of his growl decreased to a low grumble in his throat that could barely be heard over Dezmara and Simon’s panicked breaths. Diodojo backed away, still flashing his fangs as pulses of anger quivered his lips. He retreated slowly at first, keeping his gaze locked on Simon, who kept his eyes fixed in terror on his would-be attacker. If Dezmara hadn’t been so confused and scared, she would have laughed: Simon looked like he was about to turn around and climb the training room wall just to get away.

Diodojo padded backwards and flashed his incisors one last time at Simon for good measure before turning abruptly and rubbing his left flank against Dezmara’s thigh in his usual greeting. The affectionate blow pushed her sideways and she took a few steps to regain her balance. As he curled around her, she turned to scold him and saw that he was baring his teeth at Simon again.

“Doj! What the hell’s your problem?!” she said as if the creature could answer. He couldn’t. Diodojo didn’t speak. He looked at Dezmara and the fire had gone out in his eyes. He leaned against her leg as he brushed past again. Dezmara reached out to calm him, but he stopped short and pulled his head away with a jerking flinch.

“Ruddy beast ‘as gone bonkers—dangerous, he is—you’ll see. He’s bloody”

“Approaching port of entry—Trinity Straits,”
the voice of the holodex chimed into the room, cutting Simon off, but Dezmara didn’t notice. She didn’t hear the beginnings of Simon’s rant or the holodex. She was fixated on Diodojo and urgently needed to know what was wrong with him.

“Doj,” she said gently. “Doj, what’s the matter? Why won’t you let me get close?” She stepped softly across the padded floor toward him and carefully ran her fingers down the bridge of his nose. He responded in his usual manner. He squinted his eyes and flicked his long tail as a soft purr rumbled up from his chest. She ran her hand along his snout, moving slowly upward to stroke the top of his head. As she moved past the ridge of bone over his right eye, he winced and let out a growling yelp but didn’t pull away. Dezmara explored his head further, gently parting the fur with her finger tips. Diodojo grimaced and gave a muffled groan as she probed the length of a large, raised lump stretching from the upper ridge of his right eye three inches onto his head.

“What the…how did this happen?”

Dezmara jumped as he let out two loud roars. She placed her left hand under his chin and softly stroked his head on the opposite side of the wound.

“Sy, do you know how this...” she trailed off as she turned to where Simon was cringing against the wall, but he wasn’t there anymore. “That’s weird. Guess he doesn’t trust the auto-pilot to guide us into the Straits—they’re not
that
dangerous. C’mon, Doj, let’s see if we can’t find something in the infirmary to take the sting out of that bump.”

Diodojo walked reluctantly behind Dezmara out of the training room. He didn’t want any medication—he wanted to be alert—but the pain in his head was excruciating. It was a miracle he was able to get up from the engine room and get to Dezmara. His vision blurred with every step, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could fight the overwhelming urge to lie down and go to sleep. He wished she could understand him, he wished she knew what he knew.

Dezmara led him across the threshold of the small infirmary and tapped the shiny cushion on the bed twice.

“Up you go.”

He aimed the best his drowsy eyes would allow, but his strength drained from his limbs as soon as he left the ground. His legs crumpled beneath him on impact and he landed on the table in a heap on his side. His eyes fluttered and he saw Dezmara reaching out to him and shouting something, but her words couldn’t penetrate the thick haze of drowsiness that rolled through his mind. He didn’t want to pass out—he needed to make her understand somehow. He gave out a weak grunt in a final, desperate attempt to warn her, but it was too late. He succumbed to the curtain of darkness that fell over him and slipped into unconsciousness before he could get through to her. Diodojo couldn’t make her see—Dezmara was in the gravest of danger.

Chapter 22: The Great Gate

D
ezmara cleaned Diodojo’s wound, bandaged his head the best she could, and left him to rest in the infirmary. She was back in her captain’s chair staring out the forward viewing pane at an immense asteroid field—they had finally arrived at The Trinity Straits.

Long ago, early pioneers in search of precious minerals and new worlds to claim as their own discovered three identical planets orbiting the sun of Luxon. So similar were they in composition, terrain, resources and ecosystems, the explorers named them Trinity Major, Trinity Medar, and Trinity Minor, based on their relative sizes to one another. All three of the Trinity planets were rich with a rare ore and Triniton civilization thrived for thousands of years around industries based on its multitude of uses. Unfortunately, after the Durax invaded the Trinities, they found the ore valuable as well.

The Durax easily conquered all three planets with their cruel powers. They enslaved the people and forced them to mine the ore to use for their savage war machines. The Durax drilled and dug, scarred and raped the land. They blasted with slaves still trapped inside the caverns and cut through huge swaths of rock and stone, flesh and bone in enormous open pits where hundreds upon thousands of slaves toiled. Those who weren’t cut to pieces by the machines, crushed to death in the pits by falling rock, or ripped apart by explosives deep in the caverns had died a slow and painful death in the labor camps.

The pillaging of the Trinity planets had continued day after day, year after year, millennia upon millennia until finally, one by one, they fractured and tore apart, spilling their rocky guts into the cosmos. It is said that at the time of their demise, the three were in a rare alignment with one another and Luxon. The Trinity System was once a flourishing part of the galaxy, but now only the moons of the Trinities were left, forced to stare like horrified kin at the stony remains of their once thriving siblings strewn across the universe in a seemingly endless trail of debris. Because of their unique arrangement at the moment of their destruction, the broken pieces formed three rings of asteroids that swirled in virtually the same plane around the large remnant pieces of their respective planets of origin. Runners, Dissenters, desperadoes, and thieves learned to navigate through thousands of miles of marred rock by staying on the outskirts of each ring; an immense line of obstacles that provided the perfect place to evade the Durax or each other.

Luxon Station was a space port built on the remains of a dead planet: Trinity Major. It was a gathering place for anyone or anything that didn’t want to join the ranks of the enslaved and conquered. To the naïve or inexperienced, this would have implied that everyone docked there was an enemy of the Durax. But all it truly meant was that everyone on Luxon was a dangerous outlaw.

Dezmara stared at the rocky band of minor planets that stretched into the blackness for what seemed like forever as she waited to be hailed. She lifted one leg from the ground, laced her fingers together, and slipped them over her knee, resting the heel of her boot on her chair. She should have been contemplating approach vectors and close-object collision maneuvers, but she wasn’t. There was something else on her mind.

“Sy,” she said as the holodex connection clicked through to the engine room. “Would you come up here for a sec? Thanks.”

A few moments later, Simon walked into the cockpit, diligently toweling the grease from his paws. He stuffed the stained rag into the back pocket of his smock and flipped his goggles up on his forehead.

“’Sup, luv?”

“I wanna talk about what happened in the training room.”

“‘Onestly, luv, I don’t care if you’re Human or not. Makes no difference”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said as she swiveled her chair so she could read his face. “Why did you run out of there?”

“You serious? You saw ‘im—completely bonkers, he was! No tellin’ what he might’ve done to me—or you for that matter—if he decided he wasn’t in the mood to listen to you anymore. I was gettin’ out of there ‘fore he started up again!”

Dezmara looked into his yellow eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath and let it escape her lips in a slow, noisy hiss. “Okay, Sy, but there’s something else,” she said as she stared at him as blankly as she could. She wanted to remain as neutral as possible before she asked the next question. She needed to read his honest reaction, and she didn’t want to give him any advanced warning.

“Doj had a huge lump on his head, like he was hit with something
very
hard.” She tried her best not to sound like she was accusing him, but it was pointless—there were only the three of them on the ship and she knew
she
didn’t hit Diodojo over the head with anything.

“What’re you sayin’, luv?” Simon said with a look of genuine shock.

“I’m not
saying
anything. I’m trying to figure out what could’ve happened to him and I need your help.”

“I don’t know how to say this, luv,” he said sheepishly as he looked down at the floor and kicked his furry foot at invisible stones. Dezmara’s heart quickened and her face contorted in hurt shapes as her suspicions were about to be proven right.

“Have you ever thought for a tick-tock that
you
might’ve done it?”

“Me?!” she shouted. “What kinda shit is this? I
know
it wasn’t me!” Dezmara quickly stood and her body tensed with anger. “Now you better start makin’ goddam sense in the next two seconds or I’m gonna”

“When’s the last you saw’im without the lumpy-bump?” Simon interjected, his voice rising in volume to match hers. Dezmara’s mind was overcome with rage and it took her a second to even consider his question. She calmed down just enough to humor him, and it took her several moments to sort through the last several days; and then she had it.

“Before the run to Prosiris,” she snapped. “We were in the cockpit together.” Her tone was less caustic but she was still breathing hard and her muscles were on fire; ready for action. “I got the call for coordinates to the start vector and then…” She dropped her gaze to the floor, then shook her head. She closed her eyes tightly as stabbing pangs of guilt threatened to wrench tears from the infinitesimal space between her upper and lower lids. “I didn’t put him in his harness…I was so focused on the run. I flew straight to the launch and didn’t check to make sure he was safe.”

“An’ you remember
that
run, don’t ya?” said Simon. “I’ve never been turned upside down, yanked left an’ right, back an’ forth so many times in my life—an’ that’s sayin’ an awful lot after flyin’ round with you for the last three years. Diodojo likes to get into some of the tight spaces between the pipes in the engine room—likes the warmth, I think. Plenty of hard stuff to crack your skully on back there, luv. Some of the spaces he gets into, he coulda been back there for a while without me noticin’.”

“Shit, Simon, I’m
so
sorry,” she said as she dabbed at the tears in her eyes with the back of her hand. “I feel like shit.”

“’Sall right, luv. Been an emotional day for you, I’m sure. No hard feelin’s.”

Dezmara put her fingers on either side of her forehead and took a deep breath as she slouched back into her captain’s chair with a heavy whomp.

“Thanks, Sy, I’m sorry.”

“No worries, luv, ‘onestly. Just fly us into Chuudagar in first place an’ everythin’ll be right as rain.” He winked a yellow eye at her as he gently patted her right shoulder with his paw.