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Patrick raised his hands. “Fair enough.” He lowered them again when Prince Hyg turned back around. “Look, I’m not a negotiator. I usually shoot what I’m told to until I guess I decided I didn’t want to anymore. But there are better people to talk to out there than me.”
Prince Hyg’s lips curled in a humorless smile. “You’re kind to keep up the charade.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows. “Charade?”
“You pretend I have a choice when, in fact, my options are to talk to your diplomats or fight an entire sector’s army to the death.” Prince Hyg raised his eyebrows back.
Fal’ran snorted. “It’s still a choice. You’d be surprised how many people choose shooting over talking, even when everyone knows how shooting’s going to turn out.”
Prince Hyg swept his dark purple eyes up and down them. “I could kill you and still have time to scramble the Colony’s fighters. I could launch a counterattack before your people learn you’ve failed.”
But again, Fal’ran couldn’t find the fear. Prince Hyg cared for his people, that much was clear, and Fal’ran had learned how far people could go to protect those they loved. But there was something soft to Prince Hyg. Not weak. Fal’ran didn’t read him as weak. But soft, gentle. Like the pretty purple flowers in the jungle would turn toward him as he walked, and the pretty insects with wings like his, but a hundred times smaller, would flutter about him wherever he went.
Prince Hyg wasn’t about to pull a gun on them, no matter what he said.
“You could do that.” Patrick nodded, his tone as certain as Fal’ran that he wouldn’t.
Prince Hyg smiled a small, almost embarrassed smile, like he knew they didn’t believe him. “But I won’t. And I won’t forget that you could have killed my people and destroyed our future and didn’t.”
Patrick frowned. “You don’t owe us anything.”
“I do.” Prince Hyg nodded. “But for now, I’ll give you this.” He gestured to the door. “Let’s fetch your diplomat.”
Relief poured off Patrick’s skin. “I think you’re making the right choice.”
Prince Hyg scoffed as he touched his antenna to the door. “I stopped thinking that a long time ago.”
The door folded open, and chittering rippled out through the ranks of Insects awaiting them outside. They parted before their prince and Fal’ran scanned his eyes across the crowd. There were so many individuals of so many types. Standard-looking Insects like Nam, Soldiers, Insects bigger than soldiers but without the mandibles, a handful of Interrogators like the one that had tortured Patrick, smaller ones, white ones, others Fal’ran only glimpsed. Even Insects of the same type had differences like any other species, different noses, eyes, cheeks. There were obvious men and women. Only one gap glared in the composition of Insects gathered in the hangar with them.
There were no children.
“Sazahk,” Patrick hailed once the crowd separated enough for them to see their squad. “Contact Emissary Serihk’s ship. Tell him Prince Hyg has agreed to speak with him.”
“And that we need a ride out of here,” Bar’in added.
Sazahk made a face as he straightened up from poking at the hard, black floor. “You don’t want a ride on that ship.” But he tapped quickly into his data tablet, anyway.
“I want a ride on any ship that was manufactured in this sector,” Fal’ran retorted.
“You can say that again,” Patrick murmured as he and Fal’ran passed the huge Soldier and crossed the invisible threshold to join their team. Bar’in and Tar still held their rifles at the ready, but they’d dropped the barrels to point at the ground.
“They’re on their way,” Sazahk said after a few moments, and the reality of it settled into Fal’ran’s bones.
“My prince, what are they saying? What have you—” the big Soldier started forward but caught himself at the Prince’s sharp look, snapping his mouth and mandibles shut. “Forgive me.”
“I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, Loh.” Prince Hyg brushed the Soldier with his feathered antennae. “Building our Colony.”
Fal’ran and Patrick exchanged glances. Prince Hyg used a tone more hopeful than threatening, but land use could be a zero-sum game and the sector was still recovering from the last territory war.
Sazahk’s tablet dinged. “They’re ten minutes out.”
A sudden thought hit Fal’ran. He still had no idea what the ship they stood in looked like from the outside. “Will the entrance be obvious to them?”
Nam raised an eyebrow. “It’s the big hole in the side.”
Sazahk stepped out from behind Tar and Bar’in, so close to the unofficial no-man's-land between their squad and the Insects that Fal’ran almost yanked him back on instinct. “In the meantime, could I ask you some questions about your physiology, Prince Hyg?”
Patrick flushed red. “Sazahk.”
