“He may really not know,” Alexander offered.“His appearance suggests he wasn’t high up in the ranks.”
“Now, that’s a problem,” Pallas remarked, pushing to his feet and shouldering the two handed broad sword responsible for so many human deaths.“Things that aren’t useful should be discarded, don’t you think?”
The man’s pupils blew wide with terror.“What are you going to do to me?”
“That depends on you, doesn’t it?”Pallas crooned.“Answer the mountain’s questions.”
The man’s heavy breathing was loud in the sudden silence.His fear pulsating like a wild thing.
Graydon forced a modicum of patience.“Why were they here?”
“I don’t know.”
Pallas stabbed his sword into the ground, making the human flinch.The expression on the other Tuann’s face was something that would have haunted the human.If he was going to live past the next few minutes.
“I really don’t,” the human sobbed.“All I know is that the higher ups were being secretive.They didn’t want anyone near that landing bay.If we disobeyed, they would have made an example of us.We never saw who it was and I definitely don’t know where they went afterward.”
“Might have been wise to leave some of those higher ups alive,” Pallas observed.
Alexander shot him an impatient look “To do that, you would have had to not kill them.”
“I seem to remember you claiming a few lives of your own, brother dearest.”
“Enough!”Graydon barked.
Alexander and Pallas quieted.They refused to look at each other.
When Graydon was sure that there would be no further interruptions, he glanced back at the human.“He’s right though.If you don’t give us something, I have no reason to keep you alive.Work with me.”
The human reeked of desperation as he sunk into thought.
Moments passed, one after another as the rest of them waited.
Finally, Pallas lost patience.He tightened his grip on the broad sword, the tendons in his wrist bulging.
“The command center!It should have some kind of record of where they went.”
“But it won’t reveal why they were here in the first place,” Alexander observed.
Pallas rolled his eyes.“Also, do you really think we wouldn’t have checked that first?”
Graydon twisted to look at the two.“You’re really not good at listening, are you?”
Pallas shrugged.“They tried to make us obedient.It didn’t take.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” Graydon murmured.
He had a feeling that these two were going to test his patience over and over again.Much like hiscolihad.For all that the forty-three weren’t true siblings, they were remarkably alike in some ways.
“What about the ship they took?”the human burst out.
“What about it?”
“That’s why you’re here, right?”The human looked at them excitedly.“Because you lost their trail.I can tell you the ship they’re in.It’s one of ours.The higher ups always underestimate our observational skills.”
“No Tuann ship was visible in the landing bay.Just the clunkers these humans consider space worthy,” Rhett observed.
“That’s because they removed the transponder before sending those ships elsewhere.”
