Page 232 of Galaxy Games Four-Book Box Set (Galaxy Games)

232

Confrontation

M aya

I should be terrified, or if not that, at least nervous, but I’m feeling steady. While I wait for my two friends to join me, I watch events unfold in the aft cargo hold.

I’m surprised there are couples touching, a few are kissing, one is racing down the halls hand in hand. I think they’re going to his cabin to consummate things. Most females are shaking their heads and backing away from the males who are probably right this moment explaining machta in calm, steady voices.

Maybe it was lucky A’Dar’s saliva made its way into my bloodstream without us knowing. I was never faced with a choice in what has turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me—A’Dar, not The Game.

I don’t know who was tasked with choosing and procuring these thousand females, but they’re not at all what I would have expected. Some are in their forties. I’m sure the Xenons wanted females of breeding age, but since TGN assumed we’d all be dead within hours, I doubt it mattered to them.

Am I mistaken, or do I see a couple of human males in the mix? That’s not exactly what the Xenons came across the galaxy to find. The TGN staff must have been in a helluva hurry to grab the first thousand people they could locate without delving too deeply into their Facebook profiles.

“I want to explain things to all of them,” A’Dar says before I get a chance to say the same thing. “The females need to know they have a choice and what the consequences are. They should know this can be painful and possibly fatal to the males if unfulfilled. In order to make informed decisions, they need to hear how it will irrevocably change their bodies.”

“But we can’t tell them right now or Zedd could put things into motion that we won’t be able to fix.” I finish the thought for him.

A plan strikes me, not that it’s a panacea, but it might help things. I put that on hold. First things first.

I stop the screen’s scroll and keep it focused on the storage closet. Zedd has some sort of gizmo that is painting the nails of one hand while she frantically scrolls through her computer with the other.

Although I’ve only seen her with her made-for-TV face on, she looks frazzled now. She’s not looking at the feed from this vessel, she’s searching on what appears to be the Internet. I may not know what spooked her, but I gloat when I see her sweat.

Anna barges through the doors, an almost-panicked look on her face as if she’s afraid she arrived too late for a party. I guess that’s not too far from the truth. Emily arrives only moments later.

“Emily? You want to do this?”

“Do I want to kill the female who stole me from my perfectly mundane life and forced me into terrifying circumstances that almost resulted in death by big, blue cookie monster, then acid-spitting cockroaches, then almost raped by the jolly green giant? Luckily, I found a terrific male. No thanks to her. Yes, I want to be here. The glee she displays every time she tears someone’s life apart is heinous. Someone needs to stop her, and I think it should be the three of us.”

I set the screen to scroll again, and we watch as A’Dar and six other strapping armored warriors stalk down the hallway. We each grab one of the pirate’s rifles, and, as if we’re seasoned military, we check the charge on our weapons and clutch them to us, at the ready.

Watching in mesmerized horror, I see A’Dar and his males open Zedd’s door with a press of his hand to the palm reader. It’s almost anticlimactic that she’s so stunned, so reluctant to pull her right hand from her manicure-bot, that she takes long moments to reach for a gun.

Even then, she was so enamored with the Xenon tech she grabs for a gun that, unbeknownst to her, was disabled by the electro-pulse. Stupid female chose size over function. If she wanted to stay alive, she should have chosen one of the charged weapons she brought with her.

“Get out, you idiots!” she orders as she points her rifle vaguely in the males’ direction. Is she so full of herself, so used to giving orders, she doesn’t know what peril she’s in? She’s facing seven Xenon males who are so incensed at the treatment she’s shown them and the precious females they came across the galaxy to collect they’re almost rabid.

“Put down the gun,” A’Dar orders.

If I weren’t watching so closely, I would have missed it, but Zedd’s perfect lips rise in the tiniest smirk just before she pulls the trigger.

If the smirk was interesting, then the shock on her face when her gun proves no more useful than a doorstop is downright amusing.

“Showtime!” Emily says in her gleeful Southern drawl.

“Wait! I just want to watch for one more minute,” I say as I put my hand up in a stop motion.

Zedd doesn’t say anything else. Well, that’s not true. She’s sputtering, just not saying actual intelligible words. She finally looks at the males, possibly noticing for the first time there are seven enormous, skilled warriors crowded into her little hidey-hole, their eyes boring into her with hatred. And all she has is a useless piece of space-age plastic in her hands.

Before she can reach for one of the weapons she brought with her, A’Dar grabs them and hands them to the other males. Then he uses the equivalent of Earth zip ties to secure her legs to the legs of the chair and her wrists to the armrests.

When her struggles prove futile, her rage explodes with imperious commands to release her. It doesn’t take long for her to realize the males have no intention of complying with her demands. Her anger swiftly morphs into fearful begging and pleading.

Now that Zedd’s subdued, my friends are flicking their gazes at me, wondering what the hold-up is.

“Taste it,” I say. “Allow yourselves one extra minute to watch her experience what it’s like to be the prey instead of the predator. Taste how sweet it is. Hear that sound? That’s her heart pounding. Do you smell it? Her skin has bloomed with sweat. See her eyes widen in terror? This is only the beginning.”

When I’ve drunk my fill, my chest filled with satisfaction, I say, “Ready?”

“Yes.”

As we stride down the hall toward Zedd, I ask myself if I want to do this. Do I really want to kill her in cold blood?

“It’s not cold blood,” I say out loud. When Anna and Emily whip their heads toward me, I repeat. “We’re not killing her in cold blood. There’s a good reason.”

“Like putting down a rabid dog,” Anna says, her teeth gritted in determination.

It’s not like we can arrest her and take her to the police,” Emily adds. “This is righteous justice.”

“We are her judge, jury, and executioners. If anyone deserves to die, she does. I know this goes against everything we’ve been brought up to believe, but we aren’t Earthers anymore. There’s no judge and no jury. Just us,” I say with conviction. Nodding in agreement, Anna and Emily close in and we do a quick group hug, then proceed.

We enter the room and I allow myself to notice every detail from the smell of Zedd’s instant sheen of fearful perspiration to the slight feeling of claustrophobia with seven Xenon males, three human females, and one red bitch in this cramped room.

“I’m a rich female,” Zedd says, chin held high. She still doesn’t believe her reign of terror is over. “I can pay any price you ask.”

She’ll be brazen to the end even though she’s tied to the chair, her makeup is running down her cheeks, and her trademark nails are smudged and chipped. The impeccable Ms. Zedd has been brought down, and it feels great to see.

Functioning purely on autopilot, these words pop out of my mouth, “Push the record button. You’re going to confess your sins on galaxy-wide vid,” I say levelly.