Five minutes.
Two hundred and ninety-nine seconds.
“We have a ship on radar, sir.”
Those words spark sudden hope. They left it to the last minute, but they are here now, and that’s all that matters.
“Expected ship or…”
“Border patrol vessel. Hailing us with a notification that we are leaving Authority space.”
“Keep going,” Sithren instructs. “Do not respond to the hail.”
Another thirty seconds pass.
“They’re hailing us again, sir. Asking for identification.”
“Respond with the agreed upon details.”
They follow his orders. The next update shocks us all.
“A nuclear warhead has been launched, sir. Estimated impact time, a hundred and twenty seconds.”
“What?!”
He sounds surprised for the first time. He wasn’t expecting to be fired on. That’s interesting. And terrible. And not good news for me. A nuclear warhead is not an instrument of rescue. It is a method of total annihilation, a brutal, anachronistic, terrible weapon that the Authority only uses when it wants to disavow an action. Primitive societies use nukes. Not the Authority. It positions itself as too sophisticated and advanced for that kind of weaponry.
But I am about to die. Without having achieved anything for myself. I’ve sacrificed everything.
We have two minutes to contemplate our mortality. The pilots are working on evasive maneuvers, but I don’t hear them. I have turned inwards, and I have relaxed against Sithren. We are in this together now. I will only have to tolerate him for a hundred more seconds.
I always knew this kind of end was possible. I didn’t think it would happen just as I came into retirement, but perhaps I should have expected it. It’s a trope for a reason.
Is my life supposed to be flashing before my eyes? Sixty seconds left and the ship lurches and hums. The lights finally dim as every bit of power is put to evasive maneuvers. I feel myself relax completely. Accepting what is to come, and knowing that of all the things I can fight, a nuclear warhead is not one of them.
This is the end. I am to die in Sithren’s arms, my atoms doomed to mesh with his. Someday, a long time from now, we will be be recreated as entirely different creatures, reborn anew. For now it is time to let go. Clinging will not ease the pain, nor will it make our lives any longer.
“Twenty seconds.”
Sithren wraps his arms around me, snugging me tight. We can make believe in this moment. We can believe that we are lovers, soul mates fulfilling a dark destiny of final togetherness.
“Five seconds to Dinavri space, sir.”
I open my eyes. What?
BOOM!
The nuke explodes behind us, but at the speed we are traveling, it does absolutely nothing to us. We are caught in a fraction of its wake for less than a millisecond, exposed to nothing greater than the background radiation of the universe. We tear into Dinavri territory, and my life ends anyway.
2
The Dinavri homeworld is very beautiful, but it is a cold beauty, and a terrifying one for one such as me. The buildings gleam and shimmer with iridescent colors, the same way the Dinavri themselves do. Nothing here is determined merely by function. Form is considered in all things.
We land next to the other Authority ship the Dinavri have managed to capture. The Authority is comprised of thousands of worlds and billions of souls, but this relatively small species is holding out against them all, and it is because they are more ruthless, more agile, smarter, and ultimately more determined. I admire the Dinavri. I would prefer to admire them from a distance.
I have had some time to accustom myself to the idea of being captive, since we crossed into Dinavri space. Another hour, to be precise.
I am now naked. The last remnants of my clothing have been stripped from me as part of the preparation for my return to this planet. Every time I have been here it has been in disguise, but there will be no disguising me today. I will have no modesty. Everything will be on display.
“One last detail,” he says.
He places a collar about my neck; it is of scaled design. I imagine to myself it is made of a skin of a Dinavri, and that gives me some sick satisfaction. I am now in control of precisely one thing: my mind.
The collar has a leash, of course. It wouldn’t be a ritual humiliation without props.
He has produced a comb and is running it through my dark locks, making them gleam. He wants me to look good. He is not only intending to humiliate me. He wants to gain favor, rank, and regard among his contemporaries. This is entirely about him, and his position in this society in which honor and shame drive every action and every decision.
“You know we have a human here already. If you behave yourself, I may allow you some time with your own kind.”