Page 83 of Mazorium Buys a Human

The bot docking station had been deliberately sabotaged.

The only reason for someone to do that would be to draw me away from Mika. It had happened the day Damascus and Iris arrived.

Another ship showed up on the same day and had been hiding this entire time. It wouldn't be hard, I only had survey satellites pointed at the planet looking at weather patterns, not the kind that looked for intruders. I'd never had to worry about that before.

Now I had something so valuable there had already been one attempted kidnapping. I cursed myself. How could I have been this stupid? Of course someone was here to steal Nadia and Mika, they were precious beyond wealth.

Fear made my heart race as I pushed the flier to its maximum speed. It was dangerous to move through the trees this fast, but all that mattered was getting back.

I passed the last tree in time to find a strange shuttle taking off from our stump. The thing was old, with obvious signs of heavy use and poor maintenance.

My flier didn't have weapons of any kind; my only hope was to block them. I aimed the flier at the shuttle, hoping to hover over them, to make it impossible for them to finish taking off.

They must've noticed my approach because the shuttle suddenly shot up. I pushed the flier to follow, but it wouldn’t be long before I was unable to keep up with them. The flier wasn't built to leave the atmosphere.

I needed to stop them before they got too high.

If only I could—

The bots! I had three flying bot stations set up on the planet, and they'd only destroyed one of them. Using one hand to guide the flier, I used the display interface and launched every bot available to fly. Then I redirected every bot already in the air.

“You will not steal my humans!” I vowed as several bots changed direction from their assigned sections. They were faster than the flier and easily caught up with the shuttle. I watched them gain on the vehicle and realized I needed a plan.

It would be easy to use the bots to destroy the engines, but that could cause them to fall from the sky. There were mechanisms to minimize the impact of a crash on the occupants, but I couldn't be sure Mika and Nadia would survive.

Then it hit me, the lower thruster! It was only used to leave a planet. If I disabled it, they'd be forced to land.

Two more bots had caught up with us, and I sent all three into the thruster. It was barely opening to launch them into space, and the bots impacted it. Sparks flew everywhere, and the shuttle jerked before losing altitude. It was a rapid descent, but not so bad they wouldn't be able to control their landing.

There weren't many places to land, and they had to pick a stump where the tree had broken at a severe angle. They landed in the middle of the trunk, with the front of the shuttle pointed up the incline.

I aimed the flier at a higher spot than them. I was in such a rush to get the flier down I felt something crack on landing. I ignored it and ordered the hatch open.

It separated from the lip slightly but then stopped. Whatever had made the cracking sound must have affected the door.

I looked at the display, hoping to see a quick and easily fixed error, only to be confronted by the image of seven Talins leaving the shuttle and forming a line facing me.

Every single one of them had a projectile weapon usually given only to the military.

This was very bad.

Chapter 25

Mika

I held Nadia tightly against my chest as the shuttle landed hard. I didn't know why we'd landed so soon after taking off, but I could only hope the ancient shuttle had an issue and we were permanently grounded.

Nadia was screaming, and the Talin in a nearby seat banged on the bars of the cage they'd shoved me into.

“Quiet!” he snarled.

“She's scared,” I said. “We humans make noise when we're scared.”

“No wonder your kind is almost extinct,” he said and banged the cage again, as if that was going to help.

I still couldn't believe this was happening.

When I heard a shuttle landing, I thought it was Iris coming back. I'd planned to tease her about not being able to make up her mind, but then I'd seen the shuttle and the unfamiliar Talins sprinting toward me.