Page 5 of Nansar
The chirp repeated itself, insistent.
The comm unit.
"Inside." Ahrick's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Now."
We crossed the dusty ground in seconds, our boots leaving twin trails in the red earth. The thick hide door whispered aside as we ducked through. Our shelter stood isolated from the other scattered habitations—intentionally so. Sound was currency here, and secrets were worth more than water. The comm unit we possessed wasn't just contraband. It was a death sentence if discovered. Every desperate soul on this forsaken planet would gladly paint the walls with our blood for the chance to possess it.
Even disgraced nobility had its advantages. My father, Duke Ako, had leveraged connections I preferred not to examine too closely. The Alliance Prime had ensured the device found its way to me through channels I didn't want to think about. It was a tether to a world I could no longer inhabit.
Ahrick positioned himself at the entrance, a sentinel carved from stone and scars, while I knelt and pried up the loose floorboards at the far corner of the shack. The unit nestled in its hiding place, screen already glowing with an incoming transmission code that made my pulse quicken.
My father.
I thumbed the connection active. Duke Ako materialized on the small screen, and despite the poor resolution, he radiated that ageless quality that marked our kind—blonde hair flowingpast his shoulders, ivory horns catching the light like polished bone. Two centuries had barely touched him.
"Nansar." No warmth. No preamble. Just my name, sharp as a blade. "We have a situation."
"Father." I matched his tone, conscious of Ahrick's shadow at my back, his attention divided between the world outside and the conversation unfolding.
"Two hours ago, an Alliance escape pod crashed on Palaydium. We've been monitoring its trajectory." Those pale blue eyes—so like my own—burned through the screen. "I need your help."
The words landed like stones in my gut. "What kind of help?"
"The pod contains a human female. Chloe Blackwood—Admiral Cullen Blackwood's daughter." He let the name hang between us, heavy with implication. "The Admiral is one of the Prime's inner circle. Chloe was traveling to Calpa to see him." Something flickered across his face—regret, perhaps, or shame. "We used her as bait. To trap the human trafficker, Declan Hewes."
Even in our isolation, news traveled. Declan Hewes' capture and subsequent escape had circulated for months.
Behind me, Ahrick's breath caught. My own lungs felt suddenly too small.
"The red smoke," Ahrick said, his voice like gravel. "Now we know."
"If Persico reaches her first—" The words died in my throat.
A human female. On Palaydium.
The reality of it crashed over me like a wave of ice water. This wasn't some rough colony where justice still had teeth. This was the end of the line, the place where the galaxy dumped its refuse. Murderers. Slavers. Creatures so twisted that even deathwould have been mercy. They'd been exiled here because there was nowhere else to contain them.
If they found her before we did, she'd become a plaything. Passed from hand to hand, broken piece by piece, until nothing remained but screams and silence. If fortune smiled on her, death would come quickly. If it didn't...
I shoved the images away, but my hands had already become fists, nails biting into palms.
"I know." My father's voice carried the weight of stone, each word deliberate. "Which is why you need to reach her first."
"Do you know where the pod landed?"
"She was implanted with a tracker before leaving Earth. I have the exact coordinates." Ako's fingers danced across the screen. A moment later, my comm vibrated. "Twenty miles northeast, at the foothills of the mountains."
Twenty miles. With every scavenger and predator on this forsaken rock likely converging on the same location.
"You'll need to move her," Ako continued. "There's a rendezvous point on the far side of the mountain range. We can arrange a pickup there, but you'll have to get her through the pass."
"Through the mountains?" Ahrick's voice cut sharp as a blade, his blue-gold eyes narrowing. "That's Welati territory. The natives don't take kindly to trespassers, and they sure as hell won't care about your diplomatic immunity—not that you have any left."
The Welati. Territorial, brutal, and possessed of a particular hatred for anyone who disturbed their hunting grounds. They'd claimed these mountains long before Palaydium became a dumping ground for the galaxy's worst, and they'd made their sovereignty abundantly clear.
I'd seen the warnings.
Three times in the past year alone, I'd passed the boundary markers. Crude pikes driven into rocky soil at the base of the mountain passes, each crowned with what remained of those who'd ignored Welati boundaries. Skulls, mostly, picked clean by scavengers. But sometimes there were fresher additions—bodies left to rot in the thin mountain air, testament to their territorial fury.
