Yueril
Thebuzzofwingsalerted me before I saw them. How did they get past the moon's security? I slowed my heartrate to blend in with the sounds of the shuttle gearing up to leave. They wouldn't be able to track my heat or discern the sound of my breath from the buzz of their own wings. It was a white noise of their flight, and if they had wanted to sneak up on me, they wouldn't have used their wings at all. They even communicated with one another, the clucking of their throats echoed off the metal.
I'd have to remember to tell Hazel the shuttles should shut their doors closer to launch, but I knew she would tell me that safety goes both ways. Closing the doors could also be dangerous in trapping someone on a ship that hasn't passed all the system checks. She'd say the security of the docking station should be priority over the doors of the shuttle. I smiled, of course she was right. I'd focus on resecuring the dock after I killed the krelins daring to steal a shuttle.
I flattened myself against the wall, my tail at ready to stab whoever entered.
"Stay back, spawn," a deep voice echoed. "The trill will know we are here. We are not trying to hide from him, but your wounds leave you vulnerable to trill poison." A pause before he continued, "That's right, I have no fear of being poisoned by you. I'm wearing a trill robe made specifically to protect against being sprayed by you. And yes, you could kill the youngling, but he knows as well as I do that not every warrior survives a mission. He will die gladly, though I will be disappointed that I spent so much time training a warrior that couldn't survive his first mission."
Trill robes were designed to keep our poisons inside our robes, protecting those around us if our instincts triggered from being caught off guard. It would protect a wearer from another's poison, though that wasn't the original intent. Every trill protects their robes from getting into the wrong hands.
"It wasn't difficult to get one," he continued to gloat. "You see, we happen to have a trill on krelis who has no need for it anymore."
Belder... I felt my control faulter and a hiss escaped through my teeth.
If they killed Belder, this would be their end. My second in command was a kind heart who stayed behind on Krelis to help a human who was suffering there, and I wouldn't have been surprised to find her sympathizing with the krelins that thought they were keeping her against her will. She could have left any time she wished, but her big heart was likely the reason why they were able to kill her.
It was probably done by someone she trusted.
I warned her.
My second eyelids slid into place and I saw the heat signature of one krelin that was brighter than a subtle heat that could have been mistaken for the heating vents through the walls, or even an electrical discharge from the shuttle's equipment, but the krelin has told me that he was wearing a trill robe. It helped us regulate our bodies, keeping our oils from drying out, which for other species helps dissapate their heat, but another trill knows what to look for. The heat waves from the other trill pulsed to the time of their two hearts, and the other heat signature was dull, but had the same rhythm.
I moved slowly, betting on the krelin keeping the hood of the robes low to keep my poison from finding its way to his airways. He would not spot me quickly. It was the other krelin I had to be careful of alerting him.
"There you are," he said with a chuckle. "I was hoping you would be a man of action. Our kan horns can sense our surroundings, and in this close proximity, I'm afraid for you that I'm keenly aware of any movement made in this hallway. I have no need to see you to know where you are. My warrior Li-aq is going to place this hood over your head to prevent you from poisoning us, and you are going to let him, or the owner of this robe will really have no reason to have it returned to her."
"She's alive?" I hissed, having no reason to keep silent anymore.
"For now," he said dismissively. "The queen is quite testy since her human's passing."
"The human is dead..." This would explain why they were acting now. The queen is no longer distracted with her obsession over the human mate, and now her focus has returned towards ruling Estreldez.
"We have the planet surrounded," he confirmed the situation was worse than I had predicted.
"My link satellites would have known," I objected, still clinging to hope that the protection I had been working on didn't fail us.
"Yes, that was annoying to discover," he agreed. "It's why I said surrounded, instead of being able to land. You've made invasion trickier, but not impossible. This moon is the farthest from the planet, and when timed correctly there is a gap in your net that allowed us to land here without alerting you. We will be using this shuttle to land on the planet and disable your access to activate your radiation weapon. My queen assures me that all I must do is disrupt any signals from leaving the palace, and then our ships will pass right through your net without worry of being melted. I was disappointed when she turned down my request to blow up the moon we're on now. It would have done the same job of destroying enough of the weapon you've made that using it would likely destroy more of your planet than our ships, but she insisted the planet shouldn't be harmed... for now."
"You have no idea what you are doing," I said with measured aggitation. "Belder would never trade her life for those of an entire planet."
"I thought you might say that," the large krelin adjusted their wings behind them and pulled the hood tightly about his face to protect himself. Clucking echoed through the hall, and another set of clucks responded from above me. I looked up to see a krelin drop from the ceiling. My spikes along my head hardened, and my instincts took over, spraying the room with my poison as a large blanket was smothered over me.
"You said he wouldn't spray us!" the younger krelin yelled with annoyance. I hate to disappoint, I thought with a grin. My tail swept up from under the blanket that was used to contain my poison, jabbing into the krelin that fell atop me. Our spray wasn't the only way to end a prey's life.
"Commander!" he grunted and fell to the side wheezing.
"You're not dead yet," he snapped. "Do your duty and contain the trill. Li-aq, go make sure the shuttle stays on course to launch back to planet."
"Yes, Commander."
The blanket was wrapped around my mouth, as the krelin tried to suffocate me. My teeth bared, I sunk them into his flesh. He screamed before I realized I'd been fooled as my head swayed with the whooziness of unconsciousness fast closing in. A strange smell filled my nose and burned my lungs. Their musk...
It appeared the krelins were not as dumb as I believed them to be. They may swarm and act as a collective unit, but their queen and their warriors thoughtenough steps ahead to wait and plan. They waited until their was an opening in the radiation net to send a single ship to land on the farthest moon Bina before anyone could detect it. They planned on disabling the entire net from within instead of directly attacking single satelites like the Almder predicted. They had an entire legion of ships waiting around the planet for the defenses to fall. And they found a way to musk this fabric, and timing the delivery of smoothering me with it before the musk could dissipate within the air.
"He'll die," the younger krelin prompted his commander.
"As will be your duty if it comes down to it," the concern easily dismissed. "It will take too much time to make sure the trill dies properly, but knowing he is out of the way and unable to contact the surface was the goal. Our warrior will be remembered as the hero that guaranteed our success. Trill poison is a death sentence, it's better to let him bleed out. Help me move the bodies off the shuttle."
