Dark Space: Avilon (41 page)

Chapter 32

“A
new Matriarch? You mean a baby Gor?”

Torv’s slitted yellow eyes glittered in the bright lights of the sentinels’ helmet lamps.
“Yess.”

“Can I see her?”

“Come,”
Torv said. He turned and started toward the circle of armored Gors behind him.

Destra left Atta with the sentinels. “Stay here, Atta,” she said.

“But I want to see the baby, too!”

“No. Stay here and don’t move, okay?”

Atta crossed her arms over her chest and huffed. “Okay.”

As Destra approached the circle of Gors, she began to make out the thrashing gray limbs of a monster lying on the ground in the middle of the circle. She saw a glimmer of a skull-like face contorted in agony, lips peeled back from razor-sharp teeth. Torv walked up to his creche mates and hissed for them to move aside, making a space for Destra to stand with them and watch. Glowing red eyes turned to her as she approached the circle. Torv, tall even for a Gor, stood behind his brethren, watching over their heads. The small gap that appeared in their ranks was for her. Through that narrow aisle, she could now see clearly that the thrashing gray monster on the deck was a naked Gor, a female with a grossly protruding stomach.

“Isn’t someone going to help her?” Destra asked. She felt more eyes on her, quietly staring.

“We cannot help her,”
Torv explained.
“She shall die. They all do.”

“What? How does your species survive if all mothers die in childbirth?”

“She carries many crechelings.”

Destra gaped in horror, watching the death throes of the pregnant Gor. Her limbs were thrashing more weakly now, and a glistening pool of translucent fluid had appeared, slowly spreading beneath her. “You can’t just stand here and watch!”

“We honor her with our sight. She is worthy of it. Hers are the only crechelings that we now know of, and she the last Matriarch.”

“The last . . .” Destra looked around, her eyes skipping over the odd two dozen Gors standing in a circle around the thrashing, pregnant female. “You mean she is your last surviving leader?” Destra asked, turning to find Torv now standing behind her and looking over her shoulders for a better view.

“No,”
he hissed.
“I mean she is the only surviving female.”

Destra’s jaw dropped. “That’s what you meant when you said she’s the future of the Gors.”

“Her crechelings and the female in her belly who is to replace her must form the next generation of Gors. If we are not careful, it shall also be the last.”

“What about your fleet, Torv?” Destra asked. “You must have another female aboard one of those ships.”

“Our fleet is almost gone. The Sythians chase and kill my people. But even should they survive, there are no females aboard those ships. Only the males go to war. My creche mother is the first and only Matriarch to travel beyond Noctune, and she only does this because your people come and take her from her home. She is the one who convinces the Gors to rebel against our masters. They would only listen to a Matriarch. The Sythians are wise that they do not allow any Matriarchs to be in their fleet, but you humans change that and set us free.

“Now my creche mother is dead, and my sister dies to give life to new crechelings. We have just one female left—she who is about to be born. The last Matriarch.”

“Your sister?
That’s your
sister?
” Destra asked, pointing to the dying female.

“Yess,” Torv replied.

Destra wondered why she’d never seen or heard of this pregnant Gor before, especially since she was Torv’s sister. “You said your sister is pregnant with many crechelings. How do you know that only one of them will be female?”

“Because, only one of them ever is. For a Matriarch to give birth to more than one female is rare, just as it is rare for her to survive the birthing. Those who do survive are blessed, chosen by the gods to lead us as high praetors.”

“Your creche mother . . .
Tova,
she was one of them?”

“Yess, she survives the birthing, but she gives birth only to me and my sister.”

Suddenly Destra understood why the Gors wanted so badly to get to Noctune. They had just one female left. If they found even one more alive on their home world, she would become invaluable to their species.

Destra looked on, watching as the female Gor gradually gave up the fight and stopped her writhing. As soon as she lay still, her bulging belly began to move, her skin stretching and protruding strangely in several different places at once, as though fists were punching her from the inside—
or like little heads trying to butt their way out
. . . .

Destra’s stomach did a queasy flip, and she looked away, shuddering. Then came a wet tearing sound, followed by loud, high-pitched hissing. The circle of Gors broke and they started toward the dead female and her monstrous babies.

Torv stayed by Destra’s side, watching her carefully.
“You look away as if our crechelings offend your sight. Why?”
a deadly threat lurked in that question, and Destra forced herself to turn back and watch as the crechelings were pulled one at a time from their dead mother’s ruined belly.

“I mean no offense, Torv. My stomach is weak, and I am not used to seeing something this gruesome.”

“Is birthing not gruesome for humans?”

“Yes, but not deadly.”

They watched as two dozen armored Gors took turns comforting and cradling the crechelings. One of the adults brought a hissing, gasping little creature to Torv and he took it in both of his hands, holding it up before him and the other Gors. He grinned and said,
“Behold! Your Matriarch!”

The Gors all roared and hissed, holding up the other crechelings. The female that Torv was holding abruptly stopped hissing, and she opened two wrinkly yellow eyes to look upon her subjects.

Destra studied the Gor baby curiously. It was about the size of a human baby, but its skin was a sickly gray. Its face and body was fuller than that of an adult Gor, but her nose was flat and bony, and her ears were just two small holes in the sides of her head.

“She’s beautiful,” Destra lied.

“Yesss!”
Torv said after a moment. He turned back to her and cradled the baby against his massive chest. “They must eat soon,” he said. “They are already starving.”

A sudden, horrible suspicion formed in Destra’s gut. “Eat what? Don’t tell me they’re going to eat . . .” Bile rose in her throat as her eyes flicked to the body of the dead female.

“No, to be eaten by ones creche mates is a great dishonor, and Tava does nothing to deserve this. We feed the crechelings, but we cannot feed them from the food you give us. They must eat fresh meat, and plenty of it.”

“There isn’t any,” Destra said.

Torv hissed with displeasure.
“Perhaps you have some humans who do not deserve to live?”

Destra blinked at him, shocked by the suggestion. “No.”

“Then let us hope that we reach Noctune soon.”

* * *

Captain Picara had expected to die a quick death; she had been waiting for the severed bridge of the
Emancipator
to collide with something else and disintegrate, but that never happened. Instead Sythian cruisers clustered around them, as if herding them to a specific destination. Moments later she realized that was exactly what they were doing. Their destination appeared in the distance—one of the giant, behemoth-class cruisers.

Picara broke the deadly silence on the bridge to speak to her crew.

“They’re going to capture us,” she said. That realization came with as much relief as it did trepidation—they weren’t going to die. At least not yet. Picara wondered whether being captured by Sythians might be worse than death.

The enemy command ship grew until its shiny lavender hull was all they could see.

“What are they going to do with us?” someone asked.

Picara shook her head and reached for her sidearm. “Whatever they’re planning, we don’t want to be a part of it. Ready your weapons! They’re not taking us alive.”

When the distant, gleaming hull of the enemy ship became the gaping maw of a hangar bay waiting to swallow them whole, apprehension shuddered through Picara. The inside of the ship was dark, barely lit to a dim purplish glow. No sooner had they crossed the threshold of the hangar than they felt the sudden tug of gravity. Going from weightless to her full weight in an instant, Picara gasped. Her stomach leapt into her throat and there was a horrible moment of falling. People screamed.

Smack.

She hit the deck. Others landed around her with ringing
thuds.
Some of them stumbled to their feet, while others merely stirred and groaned. Marla Picara was among the latter group. She sat up and looked around, watching her crew rise as dark silhouettes against the alien glow shining in from the forward viewports. She tried to hold her gun steady, but from the way it flopped uselessly in her hand, provoking sharp grinding stabs of pain, she realized that she’d broken her wrist. Using her left hand to pry the gun from numb fingers, she trained it on the doors at the back of the bridge, waiting for Sythians to come boiling in.

That moment never came. Instead, they spent what felt like forever in darkness and pain, nursing painful bruises and broken bones.

Picara’s XO walked up beside her. “Ma’am,” the other woman said.

“Commander,” Picara replied, nodding to her.

“What do you think they’re waiting for?”

A sudden
clank
sounded on the other side of the doors, interrupting them. It was followed by a
whirring
screech as drills began boring through the doors. “Looks like they’re not waiting anymore. Get ready!” she called out.

But the doors never opened. Instead, a loud
hissing
noise filled the air, and Marla began to smell something acrid that made her head swim.

“What the . . .” She flopped onto her side, a dreamy haze filling up her head like cotton. She drifted away, down a dark, endless tunnel.

Eternity passed in a heartbeat.

Picara’s eyes flew open with a violent stab of pain. Black, featureless faces milled around her, red eyes glinting in the dark. One of them hissed at her, and to her surprise she found she could understand what it said.

“You are awake. Good.”

Picara’s heart thudded in her chest. Her palms began to sweat, and she felt a terrible pressure inside her head. “Where am I?” she replied, trying to get up, only to find that she was tied down and couldn’t move.

Her hands were free, but her broken wrist had been immobilized. Picara’s mind spun. The fact that they’d set her wrist showed that they were concerned for her welfare. But
why?

“
What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

One of the black faces drew near and she saw a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. Broad, papery black wings spread from its back and refolded themselves. Picara watched in horror.

“You must help us to understand your technology,” the creature replied. “We shall need it to reach Avilon.”

Picara’s eyes widened with sudden realization. Her crew had been busy making quantum tech refits to the
Emancipator,
but the components had all been ready-made, stolen and smuggled from the upper cities. Her crew wouldn’t know how to recreate any of them. “Good luck,” she said, spitting at them. “We don’t even know how our tech works.”

The creature hissed at her. “Then you will learn with us.”

Picara smiled. “Learn from what? You destroyed the Avilonian fleet.”

The creature bent close to her ear and she felt its warm, rancid breath on her face. “We do not destroy their ships. We
capture
them.”

Suddenly Picara understood the real intention behind the Sythians’ trap. They hadn’t lured the Avilonians in just to kill them. They’d lured them in to disable their ships and study them. If they managed to reverse engineer quantum jump drives . . .