The hours passed and were like blows to my senses. A ghastly blur of death toll and destruction. My aching hand was but insignificant compared to the losses suffered that day.
Struggling shapes were at last brought to heel on the bridge and forced to their knees, to grovel before Mong.
Hadruk, the security officer, announced in a triumphant tone that the resistance leaders were dead or being gathered up. “We tractored the remnants of their pitiful army aboard, lord. Caught them trying to escape our net.”
“What a surprise,” said Mong. “Good work, Hadruk. What’s their story?”
“Ambassador Zaud from the world, Melinar, meet Lord Mong, your new master,” he announced tonelessly. “And here is Lady Volia who was shuttled off to preserve the civil aristocracy. Some Baroness or Countess or some fool thing—queen or slut to the dead Prince Athrean.”
While Zaud bowed his head in cowed defeat, Volia crouched. She was defiant, clad in her silver and red brocade. A limber woman with fiery, hazel eyes, red-gold hair spilling from under a diamond-encrusted tiara. A silver sickle was tattooed to her brow above an elegant face. That face, pinched with anguish and tear-stained, brought a pang of sadness to my heart.
“You’ve killed our people, slaughtered my Prince and husband. What more do you want?”
“Oh, everything, my lady,” said Mong.
“You beast. You’ve destroyed—”
“I know, destroyed your air defenses, knocked out your communications systems, laid waste to your beautiful planet.”
She spat a gob in Mong’s face. “I curse you for the end of time!” she wailed.
He wiped his cheek without haste. “You may do that if you wish, Lady Volia. Accomplishes nothing.”
“We will not give up! We will never surrender to your crude domination and brutishness. Our people will fight in the streets, though they be broken. They will run guerrilla warfare in the cindered forests till the end of time. You will not last forever, Mong. Sooner or later you will fall!”
“Where are your feckless allies now, Lady Volia?” Mong jeered. “The Vendecki? Who abandoned you at first sign of bloodshed?”
She stiffened and a sullen scowl lit her strong features.
“You can resist,” continued Mong, “but you will end up with buckets of blood on your hands. I urge you to speak to your surviving citizens. Advise them to surrender peacefully and these war tolls will stop. Maybe you can even spare some of the war hounds you have hiding in the hills painful deaths. We’ll ferret them out eventually.”
She turned away, her glistening lips and mouth working. She lashed a contemptuous glance my way, as if I were one of Mong’s motley brood. I opened my mouth to protest, knowing the falseness of it and knowing any words would be useless in light of her despair. A wave of nausea and animosity blossomed in my chest, then remorse for her loss and her defenselessness. I realized the full weight of my impotence in this affair. A helplessness that shamed me, being as useless here as a trussed deer before hunters.
“I will lay bare all your secrets, Lady Volia, like your puny jammer circuits. You will learn a new meaning of the word ‘invasion’.” Mong’s lips twisted in a sinister sneer. “Sift through the slave-prisoners, Balt. Bring me all their engineers. I want to know the secrets of this jamming technology. It may be a weapon I can use against other renegades like the Melinarians.”
Balt croaked some words into the com.
Mong went on, an explosive exclamation whistling through his teeth. “I have no time to waste on defiant females. You show a spark, Volia, that your husband didn’t, dead as he is in his metal coffin, but I think I will hand you over to my lieutenants. They will teach you a lesson in humility. My personal guards have been restless of late. Part of their training is to practice abstinence. Though they balk, it makes them stronger. The odd time I do throw them a bone, they light up like candles. Hadruk! See to it.”
The security officer approached, nodding, grinning.
Mong flourished. “Have Lady Volia taken to solitary. She will serve as a useful adjunct in the Temple of Light on Othwan.”
Volia struggled but such efforts were useless in the hands of Mong’s guards. I surged forward, hurled my hard-muscled body at them, but brawny arms held me back. Fists smacked me down to the metal grates. Mong glanced my way, scoffing in passing amusement. “Rusco, you do have a chivalrous streak in you. Another weakness I must cure you of.” He sighed and dismissed me and the woman without a backward glance. Now that the bloody battle had been won, the Star Lord would land his warships at the capital city of Jezuan and secure his toehold, as he had so many other worlds across the galaxy before. Of the Vendecki, I had no clue as to their fate.
“Set a course for Othwan,” Mong murmured. He
