OUT NOW AT SMASHWORDS! Get the whole trilogy! Graak finally levered the last corner loose from the air vent, only to discover another...

OUT NOW AT SMASHWORDS! Get the whole trilogy!

Graak finally levered the last corner loose from the air vent, only to discover another grille, just behind it.

Damn Yoomins!

This had to be a trick to erode his morale. For all he knew, freedom lay on the other side of this grille. He ground his talons into the gaps, trying to get the metal to either wear away or bend. He was so devoted to it that he almost didn’t hear the approaching guard with his meal.

Graak quickly covered up his activities and pretended to be doing a form of floor exercise just as the guard appeared in his field of view. It was one of the larger ones. The humans that they’d theorised were financed by a rival power.

As far as he knew, they should all speak perfect Tu'att. Yet they remained silent.

“I know your hired pirates were smuggling something,” he said, watching the guard silently placed food into the hatch too small to accept anything other than a food tray. “Tell me. What were you sneaking into my station? What were you sneaking out?”

The guard said some near-unintelligible human words and left again.

It was a meal-sized portion of tasteless greyish goo. Just the same as it had been for every mealtime since his captivity.

Graak ate it anyway. He needed his strength to plot his escape.

They did not have bars blocking his escape. Just a wall they could make permeable to anything they liked at their invisible, inaudible command. It was better technology than in any Tu'att vessel. They didn’t even need an electric current to keep him in line. If he was ‘bad’, all they had to do was seal him off from any outside contact until he behaved himself once more.

Even a Tu'att would go insane without any other contact.

The facilities were immune to sabotage. He’d tried. An ear-piercing shriek eliminated anything he tried to stuff into the tubes.

A Yoomin child would tear this entire room to shreds if it had the means… Pity all the Yoomins were on the wrong side of the bars.

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