Find food and water. Get back to the ship. Find food and water. Get back to Nierhæ.
Get back to Nierhæ.
Nierhæ.
Keeping warm on the freezing ship had been easy with her. Her tattooed body had burned into my memory. Learning everything I could about her had kept us awake for hours in the cabin. I'd had to be gentle with her still bruised ribs and hip from the ship malfunction, but that was easy enough to take into account.
And now being apart from her felt wrong. It was safest for her to stay on the ship. Under the guise she was still my prisoner and not... and not whatever she was to me.
All I needed to do on Castellia was find food and water, a healing tonic for Nierhæ, allow the ship to charge and hope the mechanic fixed whatever problem had arisen from the shootout with the pirates. As soon as those things were finished, we could jump off planet, and I could see whether Mertonis was a pile of floating rubble or intact. The state of my home planet would decide how I would proceed.
I would either convince Nierhæ that destroying a planet was the insane choice to make, or I would help her do exactly that.
"Uhnros." That voice was familiar.
"Vyrekne." I turned to look at a Huntsman I'd trained beside since I was young. She was loyal to Sethes, and had never cared for her fellow Huntsmen. I didn't blame her, because I'd never cared either. We were competition to one another, and we'd been raised to win that competition.
With her were another two Huntsmen, unfamiliar to me. We all had slightly different colouring to our armour, different patterns engraved in the metal or different shapes of visors and armour plates. For me, I had a bigger visor than most, because I preferred having a wider range of vision rather than better protection for my face. And I'd chosen a red undertone to the colour of my armour, which was coincidentally similar to Nierhæ's.
Maybe it wasn't such a coincidence after all.
"Do you still have that mark?" Vyrekne asked, and I made sure not to respond physically.
Huntsmen never asked about other missions. Or marks. We only paid heed to our own, so we could climb the ladder. The only time a Huntsman asked about another's mark was when they planned on stealing it... that only helped them if they succeeded. Failure resulted in demotion, and a stripping of armour and creed.
"What mark?" I asked, and she scoffed.
"The only one that matters, brother." Brother. We were meant to believe we were close like siblings, all of us Huntsmen. The only reason we had that false sense of closeness was because of our brainwashing. Because the helmets separated us from everyone else. "The Sælonian Heretic."
I didn't like where this conversation was going.
"Sister, I don't know–"
"You aren't able to put her in stasis, are you?" She asked, and I eyed the other two Huntsmen as they crept to either side of me. Perfect. This was just what I needed. "How do you pass the time with a pretty little thing like that?"
I stayed silent as I got my helmet's tech to track the other two and locate any other Huntsmen that might be in the vicinity. If this was an ambush, then I needed a way back to the ship.
A way back to Nierhæ.
"Have you fucked her yet?" One of the other two asked, and the question made my blood boil.
"I know I would have." The other added, and it made anger flood my body even more. "I would have made her beg for me to stop, and pulled even more screams from her than–"
YOU ARE READING
The Heretic of Sælonis ||A Sci-Fi Romance Novella||
Science Fiction"And what will you do if you have to destroy an entire planet to end this war? Are you really willing to become a monster?" Nierhæ turned towards me, a sombre look on her face. She already had an answer to my question, and it was one I wouldn't like...
