spears of Uu'kata (CLEAN(ish) Version)

Chapter 20 - Truth

Charlotte's head seemed to be loose on her neck as the Helkta's approached her. Ahnekk hated this but it had to be done. The Helkta's were calling for her torture and execution, despite the fact that she was the ward of the Arinol. If they all agreed, he couldn't stop them. They'd grown impatient over the months, waiting for anything from his prisoner. It was time to give them something and drugging her was the only way he could think of getting information out of her without torture.

Helkta Shonen sat across from her and folded his legs.

"Hello, welcome to my powwow," she said with a drunken smile. "Your tusk is broken. I know a good dentist. But... it would take some serious convincing to get him to come here. What's with all the tents anyway? Why not build houses? You're all thick enough to lift boulders you could certainly build a freaking house. All you need is some—"

"Charlotte," Dorhekka said, "I am going to ask you some questions, and I need answers. Do you understand?"

"Dude, I understand lots of things," she said. "Like, I know pie day has nothing to do with pie. Which is bullshit. It's all about a bunch of fuckin numbers."

"Let's start simple. What is your name?"

"Charlotte Jean Erickson," she said with a giggle.

Ahnekk blinked. There was more to her name?

"Where do you come from?"

"A farm," she said with a smile. "We grew grain and sugar snap peas, lentils and soy beans. I used to eat them off the vine..." she trailed off, a heartbreaking sadness coming over her.

"It's gone now," she whispered. "It's all gone."

"Where did it go?" Tasha chimed in. He received a reproachful glare from Dorrehekka.

"You fucking destroyed it!" Charlotte snapped, flipping from sadness to anger in an instant.

"There were three hundred families manning that farm. Families! When you were done with us, only thirteen of us survived. Mostly children. And most of them died later from starvation or were just murdered because no one cares what happens to a refugee child. No one took care of us."

Ahnekk clenched his jaw. He didn't know what she was talking about, but he could see a deep, horrible pain grinding into her behind her young-looking eyes.

Dorhekka looked back at Ahnekk, who shook his head.

"We never attacked a farm," Helkta Fysho said thoughtfully. He was the oldest among them so he was likely to know.

"What is your age?"

"I'm twenty-eight... I think. Maybe less, maybe more," she said with a shrug, her eyes dropping closed for a moment

Helkta Dorhekka looked at Ahnekk, raising an eyebrow.

"The skath put her at only nineteen of our years," he said.

"Why's it so hot in here?" Charlotte asked, wiggling her shoulders in discomfort.

"How large is the human armada?" Fysho asked.

"Which one?" She asked in return, reaching up and gathering her hair so she could lift it off her neck.

"Which one?" Dorhekka said. "What do you mean, which one?"

"Well... there's at least twenty armadas that I know of, so you... you gotta be more... sifi-uh...Pacific, no. That's a filthy, filthy ocean. Spa-ci-fic."

This was disturbing news. How could their numbers be so great? The populations of all species were dwindling at an alarming rate since The Storm. It was universal throughout the galaxies. We're the humans somehow unaffected? How could that be possible?