Page 16 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

- Umbra -

Caret’ax stays in the room. The robots clear the table so fast it’s like a hurricane swept it all away. But they work much more quietly than a storm.

I turn Vera on. “Can you translate so Caret’ax understands?”

“ I can try,” she chirps.

“Caret’ax, how many are aboard this ship?” I ask.

Vera translates, and she seems to do it well.

“Right now,” he says, “there’s only the prince, you, and me. Then there’s your AI and Bellatriz the sword.”

“No slaves aboard the ship?” I ask innocently. I have to find out.

“Slaves?” Caret’ax says, clearly surprised. “No. The Khavgren Empire doesn’t condone slavery. No Imperial citizen is allowed to keep slaves. It’s a serious breach of the law.”

“All right,” I say and get to my feet. “Can you please show me the ship?”

He gives a short nod. “It would be an honor.”

He takes me on a tour of the Gladiux . As I expected, a tour of a warship like this is not all that interesting and I don’t learn much.

It’s all alien machinery, flashing panels, and strange gizmos.

I mostly don’t understand what I’m looking at, and Caret’ax also can’t explain how the ship works.

Even the artificial gravity is a riddle to him.

I get the impression he’s not a man for theoretical stuff. He’s a hands-on kind of caveman alien.

Still I’m pretty sure he’s avoiding several areas, such as more hangars and weapons and things that might be of interest to Space Force and to me.

“Wait,” I say when we pass a door filled with alien warning symbols “Can we go in there?”

Caret’ax doesn’t even slow down. “This is a warship. There are many secrets aboard it, and many places that are very dangerous to seek out. I will show you what I can without killing us both.”

“Great,” I mutter. But I stay alert, and I take several mental notes about the layout of the ship.

“Thank you very much for the wonderful tour,” I say when we’re back outside the room where we started. “I think I’ll rest for a while. It’s been a long day.”

“Very well, Umbra.” He nods and walks towards the control room.

Inside the cabin, I sit down on the high bed and dangle my feet. “Did you keep track of everything that happened on that tour, Vera?”

“ Of course. Do you want a recording?”

“No. But were you able to gather enough information so we can get out of this room and maybe use the elevators?”

“ I assume so. Are you going to escape again?”

I look around, trying to spot any microphones. “Are they listening to what we say in here? I don’t trust that sword AI.”

“ I’ve made friends with the sensors in here, so no. They won’t snitch.”

“I don’t like what I’m hearing about the Empire.

Okay, they don’t do slavery. Fine. But they are losing a war, it sounds like.

Do we know that Mareliux will be able to help Earth in the way he said?

What if he can’t? What if this doesn’t work at all?

There are too many unknowns about this whole scheme.

I think I have enough information right now to make a real difference for Space Force.

Maybe the geniuses on Earth can figure out how it all works from your recordings. ”

“ They can’t,” Vera says immediately. “ There’s not enough to go on. Caret’ax didn’t show you any of the really important parts. And that Syntrix thing sounds pretty important. There is every chance their space travel is based on that.”

“Damn.” I sigh, deflated. “It’d be a hell of a homecoming if I could explain how this ship travels without thrusters, jumps between stars, or generates gravity. Right now, all I’ve got is a party trick with a glass. And apparently, that won’t even work on Earth. So I got nothing.”

“ Well, if you’re going to try something, this is the time,” Vera says. “ I paid enough attention and made enough friends among the systems on that tour that I can now open most doors and sweetly boss around most of the elevators. This ship was never designed with internal security in mind.”

I put my ear to the door and listen. Nothing. “I guess they figured that anyone who was aboard a warship was supposed to be there and should be able to get around easily to do their duties. Or maybe they just trust people more. Shall we go?”

“ Sure. The door is open. Caret’ax never locked it.”

“Then Caret’ax is on my ‘good guys’ list.” I open the door and sneak out into the deserted corridor. “Do you remember where that armory was?”

“ Yes. But that’s one of the doors that won’t give me access.”

I walk fast down the hallway. “Makes sense. I actually don’t think I can shoot Mareliux, so it’s fine.”

“ Do you like him?” she asks, like an inquisitive four-year-old.

I make my way down the corridor, tension coiling in my chest. If they catch me, I can just say I lost my way.

“Well… I didn’t like the slavery thing. But that was a lie, so yeah, I guess I like him.

Even if he more or less forced me into his scheme.

He was good at showing me how to move that glass.

His instructions worked, and he was patient with me.

But he still got me into this mess. Hey, can we go to the engine room? ”

An elevator opens, and I walk in.

“ I can try,” Very says and then adds something in the Khavgrese language. “ But this is mostly guessing. We could end up in their laundry room, for all I know.”

The doors close and a light on the wall moves. I can just barely sense that we’re moving.

“They have some fast elevators,” I comment, impressed.

When it stops, the doors don’t open.

“This is a restricted area,” Vera says. “Maybe we should find somewhere else to go.”

“Secret areas are what we want,” I tell her. “That’s where we can find out how it all works. Can you get the door open?”

The door slides up, and then another metal barrier behind that one opens, too.

“That was close,” Vera says. “I almost tripped an alarm.”

Outside the elevator is a dark space, dimly lit in red.

A deep hum fills the room and vibrates through my boots.

Towering machinery looms above me. There’s bare metal, long conduits, and slowly pulsating lights on objects that I can’t even begin to identify.

Except that some of them are metal spheres as big as houses, balancing on copper coils.

The ceiling is shaped like a dome, a hundred feet over my head.

Warning signs in Khavgrese glow around me, confirming that this is exactly the kind of place I’m looking for.

“Can you make any sense of this?” I ask, having to raise my voice because the hum is so loud.

“ Something to do with extremely high energy!” Vera yells so she vibrates on my wrist. “ I don’t feel good about being in here. The electric fields are off the charts. This is dangerous!”

“Could it be the engine?” I shout.

“ With this kind of energy around, it could! But I lack data. Hold me up with my camera facing to the front!”

I walk further into the dome, holding up my wrist with Vera on it. “Record as much as you can— shit! ”

A bolt of blue lightning shoots down from the dome and strikes one of the huge metal spheres with a sharp crack.

I crouch down reflexively. Immediately there’s another one, further away, then one much closer. The lighting strikes all over the room, and it’s getting really intense. It’s as if a ferocious thunderstorm has started all around me, except without the rain. “What’s happening?”

“ We disturbed something!” Very yells. “ I don’t think anyone is supposed to be in here!”

The energy discharges are extremely violent, and they light up the whole giant hall almost continuously.

The noise is deafening, one hard bang after the other.

The spot where I’m crouched seems to be the only place where those bolts haven’t struck yet.

But they’re definitely coming closer, from both sides.

The air is thick with electricity and is heating up fast. It smells sharply of chemicals and of burning. If the lighting doesn’t get me, the toxic fumes will. But in that race, the extremely high voltage bolts are in the lead. A single hit will fry me on the spot.

I curl up more, starting to panic. The elevator door is far away, and it’s closed. Running over there would expose me to the lightning. I would get maybe a second to sprint before one hit me.

The intensity is picking up with no pause between each hard bolt of lightning, with its bang to accompany it.

I’m trapped in this infernal alien machine, its raw power gone crazy. And it’s trying its best to kill me. I can even swear the hard thunderclaps are saying my name. Umbra! Umbra!

Vera is saying something, but even when I press her to my ear, all I hear is high-pitched pieces of words.

There’s another noise now, thin and piercing.

It’s me, I realize. I’m screaming my head off in terror, clenching my hands to my ears and squeezing my eyes shut.

Tears burn in my eyes. Damn it . Nobody will ever know what happened to me?—

Umbra!

My eyes snap open. That sound came from inside my own head. But it wasn’t my voice.

Mareliux strides towards me, a dark shape surrounded by ferocious lightning.

But none of them hit him. He’s holding a metal contraption with long, bare spikes standing up and out from the central pole, like a blown-out umbrella without the fabric.

A thick copper wire hangs down from the pole, sweeping along the metal floor.

The umbrella is sucking up some of the lightning, sending it into the floor, and the whole thing is red hot from the energy that goes through it.

How can he hold it?

He can’t. It’s hovering above his hand.

Syntrix. The word runs through my mind. He’s wielding magic to hold that thing.

He comes in close and takes my hand, the constant bolts of lighting making his tendrils look like they’re sparkling.

“I have to carry you,” he rumbles as the lighting furiously strikes his ‘umbrella’, again and again.