Chapter 15

Brodie’s eyes sputtered open to blinding light. He tried to look away but lay on his back, too weak to move. Firm hands eased him onto his side. Brodie coughed and gagged; his throat was raw. He couldn’t tell where he was. He rolled onto his back as his chest constricted in panic at being helpless.

Brodie’s body was a dull ache, his limbs too heavy to move. His vision started to return, and Brodie worried when he didn’t see or hear Aurora. One moment, he’d heard the gas, and the next, he found himself in a cage with ten other men he didn’t know.

An older man, who looked starved, came to him when he sat up.

“You look important.”

Brodie blinked at the bearded guy.

“Brodie Erikson, Captain of Loki’s Mischief.”

“Kyle Rodgers, Captain of the Intrepid.”

“Where are we?” Brodie asked.

“The holding pens. It’s a hellhole.”

Someone else came to stand over him, a younger man with pale skin and short, silver hair. Augmented contacts made his eyes look pink. Though his face was almost angelic, there was something cold and hard about his expression.

“Alabaster Quiggly.”

His lack of facial hair made Brodie think Alabaster hadn’t been held for long. The other men all looked to have been trapped there for some time.

Brodie’s vision cleared enough that he could look around. They were being held in a warehouse divided by fences, with ten to twenty prisoners inside each fenced area. He saw there were also other aliens; he recognized the Yahve and Vuln, but there were also some races he didn’t know.

Brodie froze when he spotted reptilian humanoids. When he looked at them, they all turned and stared, which he found unnerving.

“What are those?” Brodie asked, pointing with his chin.

“I don’t know, but the guards are extra careful around them. They showed up about a week ago. One got out and took down three guards before it was shot,” Alabaster said.

“Are there other aliens besides the Yahve and Vuln ... and whatever those are?”

“There’s a large group of what can best be described as feline humanoids or catpeople. They must be a delicacy because the Burel slaughtered some of them for some sort of celebration,” Kyle said.

“The Burel ate them?” Brodie asked in shock.

“Like I said, hellhole,” Kyle said, looking at his shoes.

“What exactly are the Burel planning?”

“That’s a good question. I know all the women were taken somewhere else,” Alabaster said.

“We have to escape,” Brodie decided.

Up to this point, he’d assumed they would be taken prisoner and eventually let go. The best-case scenario would be an exchange of captives. But Brodie now felt he would never leave this place alive if he didn’t take matters into his own hands.

“Don’t you think we’ve all thought that?” Kyle asked. “I’ve been here for three years. Every time someone tries, they execute them and their ship’s complement. They’re holding our crews as a way of controlling us.”

That was when Brodie realized the rest of the men in his cage were fellow captains. Frustration balled in his gut. His muscles ached, and his stomach cramped. He still felt weak and unsteady from waking, and his throat was too dry. If they didn’t escape, they would die. He had to find a way out and save everyone.

When Aurora couldn’t move her arms and legs, she’d gone the practical route and fallen asleep. Her father taught her that you slept when you could when facing combat because you didn’t know when your next chance for rest would come.

When Aurora woke, she found she could now move. Aurora’s mind raced to figure out a way to escape. But she kept coming back to the question, escape to where? She was on an alien world, and it would be evident to any of the natives that she wasn’t one of them.

Then Aurora remembered something else her father had told her: life with a cheat code wasn’t life. There were no shortcuts, so she should stop trying to think of clever tricks to get free. If Aurora was going to do this, it had to be to free her men and Brodie. That meant she needed information. She had to take a deep breath and come to grips with the prospect of being held for a long time.

But Aurora grew up on a planet intent on killing her and her people. It seemed that every bug, plant, and animal was deadly. She’d been forged in the crucible of her hard homeworld, sharpened by her environment and strengthened by the love of her people.

That environment helped her people develop a philosophy. Their existence wasn’t something to be engineered or optimized to avoid pain. That was what it was to be human—the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other. That meant Aurora would endure for now, with the hope of success down the road.

Hope in the shadow of fear was the universe’s most powerful motivator. She also knew that people who were scared made rash decisions. To avoid making a mistake, Aurora had to take a deep breath and think this through. She started by considering her surroundings.

Aurora thought back to what she’d seen when she came to on the gurney. The first cell she’d passed by held an alien reptile. It had stood stock-still as she’d been wheeled by. Aurora would have immediately prepared to defend herself if she’d come upon it in the wild. It was clearly an apex predator, calculating how it would take her down.

The next cell had been every bit as disturbing. A feline-like head peeked out of a pile of blankets, hissing and showing its teeth. Aurora had gotten the impression it had nested and was protecting its offspring. The only positive was it might not leave its cubs to attack her. The lizard person was more of a concern.

Seeing those two made her remember an old axiom: There was no such thing as safety, only degrees of risk.

Aurora didn’t want to face the two new aliens she’d seen if at all possible. And to be honest, she didn’t care much for having to fight the Burel, either.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Aurora put her head between her knees and took deep breaths. She wondered what other aliens might be housed here. Would any of them help her escape? And where were Brodie and the rest of her crew?

It had been three weeks since Brodie and Aurora had been captured. Bjorn looked over the list of things that remained to be done before they were ready to find where they’d been taken. He knew they would never be truly prepared, but the past few weeks had gotten them to the point that Carmichael Just, the Goth Warlord, felt they could hold their own against the Burel fleet.

King Denhardt had quietly brought scientists and engineers to help figure out the technology they’d salvaged. One major roadblock remained: they still hadn’t cracked the secret of the small power plants. Loki and everyone else felt they needed to get their hands on Burel computers to solve the mystery.

That didn’t mean Loki hadn’t absconded with a handful of the power plants and integrated them into Loki’s Mischief and the two Yahve phantom-class stealth warships. It just meant that they couldn’t recreate them.

King Denhardt had also sent for battleships to be upgraded one by one. At that moment, the Thor was getting a once-over. Brodie had been offered second in command on the massive spaceship right out of the academy. Thor and Óðinn were the crown jewels of the Norse fleet.

Having a small fleet of warships in the system had not gone unnoticed by the other clans of Norse. Bjorn would soon have to bring them in on what was happening. King Denhardt had held him off until now.

“Your presence is requested in the war room,” Loki said in his earpiece.

“Be right there.”

Once the various ships started to arrive, the room began to fill up. King Denhardt stood at the front of the room and motioned Bjorn to join him. Finally, all the invitees arrived and were seated.

“Would Erik and Val please come up front?” King Denhardt asked.

The two came forward.

“Bjorn asked his staff to think outside the box on how to handle a possible confrontation with the Burel. They’ve come up with something a bit controversial that I want to run by everyone and get your take on. Erik ... Val ... the floor is yours. How are we going to defeat the Burel?”