Page 91 of Stripped By the Alien

“My assistant, Deeg,” he says and gestures behind him just as some kind of alien octopus enters. I spot tentacles and spikes and many round eyes among thick scales on a shapeless, black and orange body.

I involuntarily take a step back and grab Krix’vorr’s hand. Okay, there’s the menace. Absolutely all the menace any inquisitor will need.

Krix’vorr doesn’t budge. “Ah. Greetings, Assistant Deeg.”

“Deeg doesn’t speak,” the Inquisitor says while the monster oozes its way aboard the Beast, long spikes stroking the walls and making them pull away. “And you won’t interact with him. Well, hopefully you won’t.”

I get that, too - this is Brax’tok’s bodyguard, the enforcer that will keep Krix’vorr from simply killing him. And it should work just fine.

“Your stateroom is ready, Inquisitor,” Krix’vorr says. “And we have a room for Deeg, as well. Now I understand what the metal pipes are for.”

We walk through the Beast, with Deeg following us quietly. He mostly travels on the ceiling, using his strong tentacles to stay up there.

“Deeg’s quarters,” Krix’vorr announces and opens a round membrane. “The pipes are a steel-magnesium alloy.”

I look inside the room. It’s filled with gleaming metal pipes in every shape possible, like a giant jungle gym.

Deeg immediately swings himself through the opening and begins climbing on the pipes like a happy monkey, moving with astonishing speed and agility.

“He’ll be happy there,” Brax’tok says. “Which is a rare state for him. I feel quite welcome, Chief Harrower. Thank you.”

We show him to his more normal stateroom, and then Krix’vorr and I stay in the command chamber while the Beast detaches from the Nest and makes her way into space.

The Nest falls away behind us, its vast bulk shrinking into the dark until it's just another shape among the stars. Krix'vorr stands at the viewport with one hand resting low on my back, and for the first time since we knelt in that chamber, neither of us says anything at all.

I lean into him. He's warm in the way he always is, a heat that seems to come from somewhere deeper than skin. "We're really doing this," I say eventually. "Hunting a planet that might not exist, so an Inquisitor with a nightmare for a pet doesn't feed us to your ship."

"When you say it like that, it sounds unwise." His hand tightens slightly against me. "It was the only offer I had. Everything else ended with your Earth Harvested."

"I know." I turn and press my face against his chest, just for a moment, just to feel something solid that isn't a throne room or a threat. "Thank you for choosing worse for yourself instead."

He doesn't answer that directly. Instead his other hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, careful in the way he always is with me, like I might break if he isn't. "I would choose it again," he finally says. "I find that troubles me less than it should."

For a while we just stand like that, watching the Nest shrink to a point of light and vanish, the Beast humming contentedly beneath our feet as she accelerates hard into open space.

“We’ll set a course for the center of the galaxy,” Krix’vorr says. “The Gzet are more likely to be there than further out.”

“What do we do when the Inquisitor realizes that we don’t know which way we should go?”

Krix’vorr reaches up and strokes one of the tendons that hang down from the organic ceiling. “There’s no reason he will know. He won’t be allowed in here.” The Beast’s tendon shudders in delight.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to get out of this somehow. One option is to have Krix’vorr take me to Earth. I don’t think he would plunder my homeworld, but this ship has a crew and I can’t imagine they’ll all keep quiet about the location. Just one of them spilling the beans is enough.

And it would mean losing Krix’vorr, something that I’m less and less willing to consider. I’ve never been as alive as I am with him, never felt so cared for or appreciated or just loved. He’s lied to his queen for me, and he has basically staked his life on finding a planet other than Earth, when he knows or must strongly suspect that Earth is a really ripe target.

But even if I thought that would work, I couldn’t do it. Because Sophia is out there somewhere, captured by the Gzet.

She isn't dead. I don't know why that thought hits me so hard right now. Maybe it's the insignia, drawn on my shoulder, only visible if you know they’re there. Maybe it's the fact that Lucius called me Captain. Maybe it's the way Krix'vorr keeps risking everything for me.

But Sophia isn't dead. I don't have any proof. I don't even have a good reason.

I just know.

And somewhere out there, beyond all this madness and politics and queens and harvests, my friend is all alone among slave-trading aliens. She doesn’t even know I’m looking for her.

A coldness goes through me at the thought. She must feel so abandoned!

But I’ll find her. Whatever it takes.