Chapter 276: Dancing With The Devil
I woke up from an extremely pleasant nap only to be told that the Hive queen I had spoken to a few days ago was trying to get a hold of me.
Frig, was it only a few days ago? That meeting felt like years.
I grumbled my reply and got dressed in something comfortable. I knew the Hive queen would be dressed to the nines, but I really didn’t have the energy to compete, so I was going with comfort rather than style.
I trudged down the hall, reminding myself that I needed to let the guys know what was going on with me and figure out our next step. I had a lot of issues still to take care of, and the last thing I wanted to do was deal with the ice queen.
"What do you want?" I asked as I sat down and got myself comfortable in the captain’s chair. I looked across the command bridge at the screen that was larger than any movie screen I had seen on Earth, including the Imax one.
I felt like I was about to go dancing with the devil. It wouldn’t matter where I put my feet; I could be screwed either way.
There was silence on the other end of the line, and I looked at her, wondering if the link was still active. Or maybe she wasn’t expecting my response. Either way, it wasn’t like I could see her face to get a read on her.
"You took down the Alliance," she said. The words came through to me in English, but there was a loud buzzing noise in the background, like a badly translated movie where they didn’t remove the original language, just put the English over top.
"I did," I replied, not sure what other answer she was looking for. "I told you that I was going to do it. You chose not to support me."
"We want our planets back," she said, and I could see her raising her chin to be able to look down on me. Oh, sweetheart. After figuring out that there are nightmares in every home and in every house in the universe, the Hive has become a lot less scary.
"And?" I asked, raising my eyebrow. "You didn’t want any part of the deal that I was offering you. That is not my fault."
"We want our planets back," she said, and this time, the buzzing sounded a lot more threatening than before. Really wishing I had my can of Raid, I looked at the female.
"I went to you and laid it all out," I started, holding up my hand when she made a sound like she was going to speak. "You told me that you would be watching. But you didn’t accept my offer. Why should I give you a reward for all of my hard work when you did nothing?"
"Do you really think it is wise to upset me?" she demanded. "Do you know for sure that one of us isn’t on board your ship right now?"
"No, I don’t," I said calmly. Was pissing off the assassin queen really that great of a deal? Probably not. But neither was pissing me off. And she didn’t seem to be that concerned over that possibility. "Do you know how many voragyvis are in your room right now?"
She visibly jumped and looked around. "Even if there is, they have never bothered us."
"Yet," I added on with a smile. "They haven’t bothered you yet."
She sat there silently, like she was in control of the whole situation. I really wanted to remind her that she was the one who called me, begging for my help. Not the other way around.
"I assume that you know that all of the members of the Alliance council are dead. That is the reason for your call. But do you also have the reports on how they died?" I asked. I could feel a weight crawl up and into my lap, but I remained looking at the screen in front of me.
"They died from voragyvis poison. But nobody controls the voragyvis, so you cannot claim kills that aren’t yours. Do you know how many people my Hive have killed?" she retorted.
"Nope, and I don’t really care either," I responded with a shrug. "And you really shouldn’t be so sure that no one can control a voragyvis. The little nightmares do have someone to answer to."
This was not the conversation I wanted to be having right now.
Didn’t she understand that without an Alliance, she could have just gone back to her home worlds, and no one would have cared? Or was she under the impression that there was still an Alliance, I was just the head of it?
Either way, she was wasting my time, and I was not happy. But if you think I was just going to tell her that, then you don’t know me all that well, now, do you?
I was the Little Red Hen in this story, and I would not let people take advantage of all of my hard work simply because they didn’t believe I could do it in the first place.
Maybe now she wouldn’t underestimate me so much.
"We want our planet back. Or you die."
Whelp, I guess there really wasn’t any clearer way to let me know what was on her mind than that.
"Then take it back," I replied with a wave of my hand. It wasn’t like I wanted it for myself anyway. She might as well take it back, and then, hopefully, there wouldn’t be so many cranky wasps around the universe ruining everyone’s picnics.
Okay, it was official. My brain was done thinking for the day.
But one thing seemed to have worked its way under my skin, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it—a planet to call home.
Was that what I wanted? Was I prepared to leave Jun Li and find a planet that I could live on without worrying about anyone else ending up my mate or trying to rip my eggs from me?
I ignored whatever the queen was saying, too wrapped up in my own thoughts on the matter.
I heard a click of the link being terminated, but it didn’t really register.
Would the guys be happy being on a world? And if that was the route that I took. Which one would we call home?
