So much for any advantage I might have had.
“Blast it, what’s a Bladeguard doing here?” Eton asked the question on my mind. They were typically found only as the bodyguards of the powerful or in elite commando teams; this really seemed like overkill. Flattering, but overkill.
“Shut your mouth.” This came from the final entrant to the bridge. He sported a simple gray uniform and an annoying bristly goatee. Everything about him screamed of a child who had decided that the thrill of ordering others around was what he wanted to pursue for the rest of his life. “Now, which one of you is the captain?”
“That’s me.” Qole didn’t hesitate, and almost stood up from where she was kneeling on the floor. “What the blazes are you doing on my ship?”
Instead of responding, he walked up to her and backhanded her across the face. Eton snarled, Arjan yelled, and Telu called him a degrading name. Basra and I were silent, watching. The man grabbed Qole’s chin and forced her to look up.
Her eyes were near black. She didn’t say anything, but I saw her hands flex open and shut as though grasping at something invisible.
The man was watching Qole’s eyes. “Perfect,” he said with a smile. “She’s the one we want.”
For the first time, a fear aside from failure began to gnaw at me. Why were they so interested in Qole? My family was, as far as I knew, the ones who had done the king’s share of research into Shadow’s potentially widespread applications. Key words being: as far as I knew. Maybe they were after more than just my ransom. Maybe they knew what I’d been after, what my uncle was after. Not only would that mean a rival family was behind this, but that our boarding party was most likely sent by one in particular, the one that stood to gain the most from stealing my family’s glory and watching us sink into disgrace.
Treznor-Nirmana. If this was a move to gain political, financial, and military power on their part, then Qole and her crew were in more danger than I’d imagined. Even if they only wanted me and Qole, it meant the rest of the crews’ lives were inconsequential—or even happily lost, if the Treznor-Nirmanas didn’t want any witnesses.
The man turned to me, and his face flickered with worry for a second, but I had to commend him—he went back to being an idiot almost immediately. “And won’t you be a pretty prize as well, princeling.” He turned on his heel, ignoring the rest of the room as everyone’s incredulous stares found me. “Bind the two of them and bring them onboard. If any of the rest resist, kill them all.”
It was an effective order. No one resisted.
I glanced at Qole as we were marched along the featureless hallways of the destroyer. She was wearing the same mag-linked restraints I was, and for the first time since she found me crushed under Eton’s boot, her expression started to register something other than pure fury. The set of her jaw was softening, but her full mouth was still pressed in a firm line, either in thought or in a stern mask for our captors, I wasn’t sure which. She was glaring straight ahead with a focus I admired, her eyes clearer now, and I was beginning to guess what that blackness meant for her. Rage.
A trickle of blood ran down her nose, and seeing it with her defiant expression made me realize how arrogant I’d been. I no longer even knew how kidnapping her would have been possible. She might have killed me in the attempt. A near-hysterical urge to laugh bubbled up in me, then popped with something like regret. As if Qole’s life weren’t dangerous enough already with its drones, asteroids, and Shadow, I’d somehow managed to introduce her to destroyers.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I whispered to her, hoping our guards wouldn’t notice.
“None of this would have happened if you’d been honest with me…Prince Nevarian. So, you’re not only royal, but a prince. How many lies can someone tell in one day, anyway? Are you trying to set a record?”
I wanted to clarify that I’d omitted more than lied, but I didn’t have time for semantics. I had to tell her whichever parts of the truth that might help her crew stay alive. “This is a Treznor destroyer—”
“I know Treznor makes destroyers. I’m not as ignorant as you might think I am, prince.”
“No, I mean the Treznor-Nirmana family is behind this. They wouldn’t have taken you if you weren’t valuable to them. So maybe if you cooperate—”
“Shut up!” Our guards, obviously fair-minded, hit us both in the shoulder blades with the butts of their rifles.
That didn’t stop Qole from scoffing loud enough for me to wince in anticipation of another blow. “As if cooperating with you people ever gets us anything but screwed!”
I didn’t risk an answer. Not that I had a good one ready.
The hallway they were herding us down was remarkably different from those of the Kaitan. There, everything was composed of metal plate and grating that had been artfully riveted and welded together, and it was obviously a well-used vessel. Here, brilliant lights lined the ceiling on either side, and periodic viewports gave us glimpses of the molecular clouds through white paneled walls. Everything was made to look as clean and seamless as possible, like a showroom for terminally bored architects. It occurred to me that the last time I had seen something like this had been on a science vessel. Not that destroyers weren’t often coldly functional, but they were usually more like military strongholds and less like hospitals. I wondered why this one would have such a sterile design, and I didn’t like any of the possibilities I could think of.
The universe, sensing my discomfiture, saw fit to provide the unwelcome answer a few moments later. Using the same ID cards that had locked our restraints, the guards authorized entry to a secure door, which hissed open. We entered what was obviously a laboratory—rows of displays lined the walls, each demonstrating different applications with statistics, graphs, or models. Robotic arms wielding surgical tools and mat-printers standing ready to produce more were on sliding tables, all arranged in a semicircle around a table with restraints.
An operating table.
I felt nauseated. Qole was right: cooperating obviously wasn’t a good idea. Something very, very wrong was happening here. Waiting for us were several men and women in white lab suits and the same goateed officer who had been issuing orders earlier.
“What in the systems is going on?” I demanded.
He ignored us, obviously getting a thrill out of doing so. “What is he doing here?” he asked the guards, as they tossed down the belongings they had confiscated from us—my bag among them. “We only need her right now, you idiots, not him. Lock him in a holding cell so I don’t have to hear him and get her on the table.”