“Rentir?” Cordelia called, with fear gripping her voice.
Tellefan’s gaze swept toward her, and Rentir’s blood raced with pure, unfettered malice.
“So, this is the female you’ve saddled yourself with.” Tellefan tutted. “She is prettier than the other. The eyes, I think. That shade of crystalline is favored on Auretia.”
“Do not speak of her.” It was all he could do to keep from launching himself at Tellefan, even knowing there were a dozen plasma rounds awaiting him.
Tellefan’s white brows climbed his silvery face. “My, my. The hybrid gives his master commands. Whatever has this ship come to?”
He produced a blaster from his robes a moment later, not even bothering to look where he was aiming as he squeezed off the shot. A dull thud followed, and Cordelia cried out in anguished fury. He traced the movement over to Thalen, who was standing alone now. His face was drawn.
“You fucking bastard!” Cordelia shouted, half out of her seat with her blaster in hand. “He didn’t do a damn thing!”
“No. He didn’t. Rentir did.” The Lord Commander turned his cold gaze on him. “That is the cost of speaking out of turn. I would think you should know it well by now.”
“Cordelia,” Rentir said, his heart in his throat.
She would not see it, but what Tellefan had just done was a mercy. Typically, it would be the one that Rentir cared most forwho died for his sins, and that was undeniably her. They both knew it.
He saw the reluctance in her face, the anger, but she subsided, sinking down into the pilot’s seat once more.
“You’ve caused quite the calamity, Rentir.” His eyes drifted past him toward the window. “I don’t have the manpower to dig out all those stolen hybrids, and I do not have the time to start over with gestation of a new generation. TheCeltalairwill arrive soon, and they will send word back to the High Lord that I have not only failed to deliver upon my teserium quota, but I have also compromised the entire operation. Trillions of yurai wasted, just like that. There will be no recovering from this predicament financially. Do you understand what that means?”
It meant that Tellefan had been lying when he’d claimed there was any circumstance under which he’d let Rentir live. He would have guessed as much, anyway.
“It means my life is forfeit,” he continued in an impartial tone, surprising Rentir. “The High Lord has no patience for failure. Forty years I’ve spent aboard this ship, conducting this mining operation, waiting for the day that my contract would be fulfilled, that I might return home to my motherland. I have ten years left on that contract. One more generation of hybrids, and then I would be free at last.”
He sighed, crossing his arms over his chest and meandering closer to Rentir. “Mine is a fallen house, you see? An ancestor of mine disgraced us by forcing himself on a female of some means, and her house did not let the insult lie. I am Lord Tellefan of the House of Loriath, and I am heir to nothing at all. Ten more years, and I would have had the riches to match my title. I would have had the means of selecting a mate from the choicest houses, solidifying my status evermore, all at the cost of a quarter of my life spent slumming it among these common workers.”
He studied his long nails for a moment, then picked a bit of invisible lint off his sleeve. “All this interminable boredom and busywork, and for what?” His head tilted, eyes glinting with fury. “So some alien cunt could sweep in and destroy all of my efforts with her pheromones, robbing me of every last singular hope I had?”
He raised his blaster again, over Rentir’s shoulder, holding his gaze all the while. Rentir did not have to guess where he was aiming. Rentir lunged into him with a bellow, but he had moved a millisecond too late. The shot rang through the bridge.
Cordelia made a strangled sound. With horror gripping Rentir by the throat, he twisted to face her, almost too terrified to force his eyes toward the point she’d last sat. But she was unharmed.
No, it was Thalen who sagged against the back of her seat, clutching at a smoking wound in his gut. Rentir was so frozen in shock that he offered little resistance when Tellefan grabbed a handful of his hair and wrenched his head back.
He could fight. He could go down swinging—but he would go down. There were too many of Tellefan’s contingent with him. Was it selfish of him to hesitate here, hoping the last thing he saw in this life would be Cordelia’s beautiful face, however marred by fear it may be?
His blood rushed in rejection of that idea, instinct overtaking despair, refusing to accept the inevitable. He caught Tellefan’s wrist, letting all six of his claws bite deep into flesh with grim satisfaction. The answering shot seared past his face harmlessly.
He whirled to face his master. Tellefan had paled, perhaps understanding for the first time how truly beyond his grasp Rentir was. And in a match of strength? Of will? Without the invisible boundary of master and pet between them, there was no competition.
“Kill him!” Tellefan shouted, writhing uselessly in his grip.
The air filled with the whine of a dozen blasters about to fire before they were suddenly lifted off their feet. He floated until he nearly touched the ceiling and then slammed back down, sliding along the ground until his tail looped around the bolted base of a chair.
“Hold on!” Cordelia shouted back at him.
Thalen was gripping her seat with both his tail and his free arm. He slipped his rifle strap over his head and slid the weapon along the ground, sending it spinning toward him. Rentir dug his claws into the butt of the gun and dragged it toward himself.
“I command you to kill him!” Tellefan shouted again, spraying blood from his split bottom lip. He clung to the divider of a console. His robes were askew in an undignified way that Rentir had never witnessed before. “Kill him or I will kill you all!”
A shrill, piercing sound filled the bridge, so acute it made every last one of them flinch. The nanotech disruptor. Thalen held it up in the air like a beacon.
The closest soldier to Rentir scrambled to bring his rifle up one-handed. Rentir, with a tail to free his two hands, got there first. The soldier fell still after an instant, painless death.
Cordelia manhandled the ship again as two of the males found their feet to pursue him, buckling their knees and then sending them sliding violently to the side. He watched as one hit the wall with such force that he was rendered unconscious.
