Tarion sat in silence for a long moment, then opened his eyes and stood, extending a hand to me. When he spoke, it was with great difficulty. “If this is truly what you want for yourself and you are unafraid of the consequences—if it makes you happy—then I am happy for you, Dashel, and I wish nothing but the best for you and Natalie.”
I stood, clasping his hand in mine. “Thank you, Tarion. That means a lot to me.”
“However,” he added, “you must remove her collar at once. If she is to be accepted as your mate, she can no longer wear the totem of the Pax.”
“I'll see to it that it's removed at once. And her request to visit Earth?”
He sighed heavily. “I cannot make any promises, except that I will bring it before the fleet admirals and make as strong a case as I can.”
“I appreciate that.”
Lehar put a claw on my shoulder and squeezed, then left with Tarion in tow. My focus returned to the Gyygnar's two sections trading holographic blasts and bombs, and I wished for another bottle again – but this time, to celebrate.
23
Natalie
“Hold still, please. This might take a few cleks, especially since we'll only have one shot to get it right.”
The engineering assistant's name was Grenek, and he was a Junior Grade Lieutenant. He worked slowly and carefully, using a delicate set of picks and mini-lasers on the locking mechanism of my collar. The look of intense concentration on his reptilian face reminded me of the way Daniel used to look when he was poring over a complicated engineering problem – eyes squinted, tongue poking out the side of his mouth, nose twitching slightly.
I tried to picture Daniel with yellow eyes, scales on his skin, and a forked tongue. It was difficult not to laugh at the mental image, but I knew I had to remain as motionless as possible during the procedure.
“Why only one shot?” Dashel was standing in the corner of the outer engine core chamber, watching Grenek closely.
Grenek snickered. “Because if the first shot doesn't succeed, we won't need to fiddle with the lock anymore – we'll be able to simply slide the collar off her neck, since her head will have exploded.”
“That's quite the bedside manner you have there, lieutenant,” Dashel commented dryly.
“Dammit, captain, I'm an engineer, not a doctor,” Grenek smirked in response. “Besides, I doubt you'd get anything more comforting out of Stal if he were here instead.”
“That's a fair point,” Dashel laughed. “I'm surprised the Pax would put so much effort into booby-trapping a slave collar, though.”
“I'm not,” I said, trying to keep my head as stationary as possible. “The Pax overseers in the mines were big on spectacle – sending messages, making examples of people, all to keep the others in line. And remember, this wasn't the same kind of collar they slapped on all of their workers. The others had minor traps installed too —spikes or blades that would pop out if they were tampered with, for example. But nothing that would kill the one who tried to remove it. Just enough to teach them a lesson not to try it again.”
“Then why the explosive charges in this one?” Dashel sounded genuinely curious.
“Because I'd been promoted to a higher level than the others – trusted with greater responsibility. They wanted to show that that trust could just as easily be revoked at the first sign of disobedience or attempted escape, so I wouldn't overestimate my own importance to them. There's a reason they used an element as rare as durabilium to fashion this collar. Due to its hardness, it allows the shaped charges to detonate inward, effectively vaporizing my skull in a big enough blast to let the others know they meant business.”
“They're big on psychological terrorism, aren't they, those Pax?” Grenek mumbled, rotating one of the lockpicks gently. “They're scalpels in a galaxy of broadswords. If they weren't such monsters, one could almost admire them. And with those little hands and fingers of theirs, they're capable of designing and building much cleverer and more miniaturized technology than we dragons are. Sometimes, I'm surprised our strength and savagery has been enough to keep the playing field even. Otherwise, we'd just be one more species in their infernal Alliance, taking our orders from a bunch of Vence and Mosets.”
“Perhaps you'd be better off focusing on the task at hand than engaging in this sort of morbid speculation.” Dashel fidgeted uncomfortably, no doubt at the prospect of life under Pax rule. As someone who'd experienced it firsthand, I couldn't blame him.
“No worries, I'm talented enough to do both at the same time,” Grenek chuckled. “Now hold your breath and pray to any Earth gods you're inclined to, because we're almost...there.”
There was a series of faint blips, and the collar unlatched, tumbling to the floor.
My hand instinctively went to my neck, feeling the area where the collar had been for years. The skin that had been beneath it was raw and chafed, and there were lots of flaky dead skin cells, since I'd never been able to properly wash there.
It had been a part of me for so long. I'd even been proud of it, for God's sake. It had defined my entire identity, in a strange way. It had set me apart from all the other humans in the galaxy who'd been abducted.
Now it was just...gone. And I was just another Earther female on an alien planet, like a thousand others.
“Better?” Dashel asked.
“It'll definitely take some getting used to.” I turned to Grenek. “Thank you. You're exceptionally skilled,
