Of Blood and Angels (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 3) (7 page)

The other Andorians in the room started
shouting too.  “Andorus submits itself to the Crown Prince of Rehnor.”

Senya blinked a few times.  His eyes grew
brighter still.

“Senya, let's go,” I ordered.  “Come on
big guy, move it!”

“Okay,” he said again but still didn’t
budge.

“Senya!” I shouted and yanked his arm
hard.  He stumbled a bit but started to wake up.  “Come on!”  I pulled him to
the door and back towards the main gate of the building.

Lt. Zem was waiting outside the shuttle
smoking a cigarette.  “What are they all yelling about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I snapped, climbing aboard. 
“Let’s go.”

“That didn't take you long,” Zem said,
strapping himself in.  “Bad party?”

“You could say that,” I sighed, shoving
Senya down in a seat and fastening my own belt.

"Looks like some drunk took a dive
out the window," Zem remarked.  “Quite a mess over there.”

“I need to go north,” Senya mumbled.

“What?” I said and fastened his belt since
he didn’t seem to be making any effort to do it himself.

“Where would you like to go, Doc?”  Zem
set the controls.  “Hey, what's going on?”  The coordinates on the navigation
computer flipped.  The spaceplane took off and immediately veered 160 degrees. 
Zem sat back with his hands above the controls.  “It's flying itself.  Okay. 
Hope it's going where you want it to go, Doc.”

I glanced at Senya.  He was holding his
thumbs against his closed eyes as if he had a migraine.

“Hey,” Zem called about ten minutes
later.  “We're landing.  I don't know where we are but check out that
building.”

We pulled up in front of an ancient
fortress type building.  It was enormous and built from massive stones with
iron gates and iron bars across the windows.  The place was built atop a rocky
peak and looked like it was surrounded by a moat.  It was an Andorian Alcatraz.

We landed about a mile from the fortress
and all three of us got out to look at it.  Senya walked ahead of us a few
paces and then stopped short.

“Why are we here?” Zem asked.

“I haven't a clue,” I shrugged, noting
that Senya's hands were starting to tremble again.  He held his head.

“Is he okay?”

“I don't know, Zem,” I said, moving
forward.  “He has seizures sometimes.  Senya?” 

His eyes were closed as he fell to his
knees, still clutching his head.  He swayed there for a moment and then fell
completely to the ground.

“Senya!  Help me, Zem!”

The ground began to rumble.  Zem and I ran
to Senya’s side but neither of us knew what to do.  Senya didn’t seem to be
convulsing.  The ground shook violently and both Zem and I were knocked off our
feet.

“Look!” Zem cried as a huge plume of dust
or smoke rose from the fortress.

I threw myself on top of Senya as the
fortress rumbled and great blocks of stone and rocks came tumbling down the
sides.  We were too far away to be hit by anything large but instead were
covered in dust and gravel.  Then an explosion sounded from within the fortress
and the whole complex collapsed inward.  None of us moved.  The ground stopped
shaking.  Another cloud of dust and smoke passed over us.  I was coughing out
dust but the sky above was blue again.  The fortress was gone.

“Whoa!” Zem gasped.  “Should we go see if
anyone was in there?”

“Senya?” I coughed.  His eyes were open
now and the light was dim.  “Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“Can you get up?”

He let me pull him to his feet.

“Commander, don't you think we should
check under it?” Zem asked.

“No one is in there,” Senya whispered.  “I
will go back to your ship now.”

“Okay, Doc,” Zem replied with a glance at
me.  He got up and tried to dust himself off.  “The ship it is.”

“Sorry, Captain?” I said the next day.

“That's why I never accept those types of
invitations,” Capt. Richard growled and dismissed me from his office.  “Can't
stand a bunch of stupid drunks.”

I got into the lift totally stunned. 
Caroline was standing there.

“What's the matter, honey?” she asked.

I shook my head.  “We went to this party
last night, you know, and it turned out really badly, so I went to the Captain
to explain what happened but the Prime Minister of Andorus already rang him and
explained but he explained it entirely differently.”

“Which version is better?” she asked.

“Prime Minister Mrufe said the man who got
killed was drunk and fell out the window.”  I looked closely at Caroline
wondering if I could tell her the truth.

“But that's not what happened?” she
prompted.

“He wasn't drunk,” I said.  “And he didn't
fall.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and
chewed on her lip.

“Better go with the Prime Minister's
version,” she said.

I got back to my cabin to find Senya on a
call and working away at my desk as if nothing had happened.  He had been
working since shortly after we returned last night.

“My spaceplane will be here tomorrow
morning,” he said, clicking off his cell and returning to his netbook.

“Ok,” I nodded.  “How can you sit there
working like that?  You just…you just…”

He didn’t respond.  He didn’t even look
like he was listening to me.

“Why did you do it, Senya?  I don't
understand how you can do it.  One day you are working your ass off trying to
save lives and the next you murder a guy in cold blood.”

"It was not murder.  I do not
murder."

"You gutted him like a fish with that
knife of yours!"  I practically screamed.  "You killed him with a
room full of people watching and then tossed the body out the window!  Are you
some kind of psychopath?"

No answer.

“What did he do to you?  What did he do
that you had to brutally eviscerate him in front of an audience?"

He stopped typing.  “What do you think he
did?”

My heart seized.  "I don't
know."

"Figure it out," he hissed. 
“Then tell me, you would have done something different.”  He turned back to his
netbook.

The next morning he left.

While the ship was in drydock, I went to
the library to look for any information that I could possibly find about the
Andorian fortress.  The internet was slow and most of the pages I pulled up
could not be translated into English because the Andorian language did not use
written symbols.  I did find a pic of the fortress turned into rubble and was
staring at it when a young woman came up beside me.

“That just happened,” she said.  She had a
very thick guttural accent and her skin was tinted blue.  She wore an ensign's
stripe.

“Can you translate it for me, Ensign
Tilia?” I asked, reading her name tag.

“Of course, MaKani,” she replied.  “May I
sit beside you?”

I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly.

“I'm Commander Katie,” I said, indicating
that she should pull up a chair.

“MaKani.”  She said again and nodded her
head.  Then she said something so garbled I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

“Tell me what this says, please.”  I
turned back to the pic.  “Tell me what you know about this building.”

She named the building in words so strange
I could not even begin to repeat them.  “It was destroyed by a quake two days
ago,” she said.  “It was a very odd end to the prison.”

“It was a prison?” I repeated. 

“Yes, Madame,” she replied.  “It was a
very famous and very old place.  No one ever escaped from it.”

“I was right,” I mumbled.  “Like
Alcatraz.”

“Pardon, MaKani?”

“Can you just call me Commander?” I asked,
getting annoyed.  “How long has the prison been closed?”

“Andorian people call you MaKani,” she
replied, again with a lowering of her head.  “Andorus submits to the rule of
the Crown Prince of Rehnor.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Rehnorian Crown Prince called the
MaKennah has demonstrated his superiority over the people of Andorus and we
submit to him as our sovereign.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“The MaKennah has the powers of a great
and wondrous god."

“He does?”

She nodded, looking at me like I was the
crazy one.

“We'll see about that.  Tell me more about
the prison.  When and why did it close?”

“It closed maybe twenty years almost?  I
was little but I remember because it was very scary.  All Andorus knew of this
because it was a very famous place.”

“What happened?”

“It was haunted by a terrible beast.  The
beast killed three guards and no guard would work there anymore, so all the
prisoners went to other places.”

“Do you know what kind of beast it was or
how it killed the guards?”

“It was said to have great wings and huge
claws.”  She showed me claws with her hands.  “It came in the night and took
the guard’s hearts out of their chests with its claws.”

“Oh lord,” I gasped.

“And more, Madame,” Ensign Tilia smiled
shyly.  “It did more to them.  It cut…”

“Cut what?”

She blushed purple.

“Man thing.”

“Penis?” I prompted and probably blushed
myself.

“Yes, Madame.  It cut this and put in each
man's mouth.

“Oh God,” I muttered, stunned.  “Are you
certain this if for real?  Maybe someone made that up?”

“No, for real!” she cried and crossed her
arms over her chest.  “I tell Madame, the MaKani only the truth.”

“Thank you, Ensign,” I replied, my head
swirling.  “Do you know or can we find out if the prison took prisoners from
other planets?  Could there have been Rehnorian prisoners there at that time?”

She flipped through the screens, going
back into the history of the prison.

“Stop!” I shouted.

She looked at me blankly.

“Who is that?” I demanded.

“He died.”

“Tell me who he was!”

“Lord Srutow.  He worked for the Prime
Minister until our Savior the Rehnorian Crown Prince killed him and threw his
worthless body out the window.”

“Yes, I remember that, I was there,” I
said.  “Did he have any connection to the prison?”

“Oh yes, Madame!” Tilia exclaimed.  “He
was the warden when it closed.  He was at a party when the guards were killed. 
Then he refused go back to the prison to do his job.”

I put my head down on the table.  I was
sick.  Almost twenty years ago would make Senya seventeen when this happened. 
Seventeen was when he came to me with his head shaved and lay in my bed too
weak to move.

“Are you okay, MaKani?” Tilia asked.

“No,” I replied.  “No, I'm not okay at all
and quit calling me that!” 

“I will take care of you,” she said.  “I
am here to serve you.  You are the wife of our Overlord.  You will be our
Queen.”

“I think I'm going to throw up,” I mumbled
into the table.

“I will fetch for you a basin to spew in,”
Tilia replied and rose to her feet.

The next two weeks, I monitored the ship's
repair work followed by some vacation time.  It was a working vacation though,
most of it having been spent attending SdK board meetings and traveling with
Senya to visit our new facilities.  SdK hospitals were on four planets now. 
The month after that, I returned to Rozari and worked in Admiral Mattson's
office doing a budget proposal for him.  To tell the truth, I loved being home
and by the time I had to go back to space, I was torn again about going.  I was
anxious about Senya.  The beta proteins were obviously building up in him and
he was extremely antsy.  He didn't sleep at all.  Frankly, he could hardly sit
still for more than a few moments.  During meetings with SdK staff, he
continuously paced the room.  Both Thad and Shelly rang to tell me how worried
they were.

“Maybe we should go to Karupatani?” I
suggested later that night.  We were walking the grounds up to the waterfall
and back.  Exercise seemed to help a little bit.

He considered it for a moment.

“I do not have time now," he
decided.  “I shall go to the Karuptani continent here after you leave; as soon
as I can spare a day or two.”

“Don't explode and blow up something,” I
cautioned.  “Keep a handle on it, please?”

He nodded but was obviously preoccupied
with something else and as soon as we got home, went right back to his office.

Two days later, I was back in space on the
ship.  I was sitting at the com, overcome with guilt.  I shouldn't have left
him.  He was obviously on the edge and now without me there to monitor him,
what would happen?  I decided to call Shelly before we went dark.  She could
alert Donak and maybe they could convince Senya to let them bleed him or something. 
I took out my cell.