Travel to the Rakasan systems was not the difficult part of the journey. Dark space is the joy of smugglers as it makes maintaining conventional galactic boundaries impossible. Only with the Void Aegis, can the galactic powers maintain a semblance of sanity. Otherwise, anyone with a ship and an antimatter payload could jump in and destroy your worlds without warning. Or as if with the Xurak, plunder your empire for all it was worth.

  But with the Void Aegis, these threats were kept at bay, forced to approach from the edges of the system where they at least could be regulated. And the Rakasans kept a particularly tight watch, for there were many individuals who sought blood against them. Unlike other civilizations, they were constantly harassed with suicide bombers and those with a death wish, hoping to exact vengeance against the Demons of Kulkuthur.

  It seemed to me that any attempt to sneak our way in was doomed to failure. There were too many eyes, too many guns. I wouldn’t call the Rakasan homeworld a fortress, that word lost so much of its cruel purpose. I would rather call Hasturix IV a cancer, a disease that had grown wise enough to never metastasize, preferring to remain to its own poisonous devices.

  And so, I asked Rykar what his plan was. Was he going to secure counterfeit passes? Did he have some secret device to cloak the Aphelion? Were we going to unpower the vessel and ride a comet into the system?

  Rykar shook his head and tapped his talons solemnly. “Now why would we have to do that? Think about it for a moment. The Rakasa value humans more than almost anything. We have humans, and so we’ve come here to sell.”

  …

  Amon Russ, being the man that he was, chose the collar for himself instead of passing it off to me. Although as I saw him, with his hands bound behind his back and wearing an electro-collar, I suddenly wished it had been me in his place. I was long used to humiliation, and I could endure anything the galaxy had left to throw at me. It hurt worse, seeing the father I loved put in the same position.

  I followed watching from a servo-drone. Rykar’s excuse was that the floating camera was from his employer, making sure the deal was not reneged upon. And it was true—because the drone was also linked to an implant under Amon’s eye. While the old bird bargained, Amon would be watching for the slightest twitch in their contact’s biometrics. Should the deal go sideways, there was the zero-sword hidden in plain sight on Rykar’s belt. After all, from the Rakasa’s perspective, even if Rykar had managed to capture a live human, there was no way the incompetent braggart of a bird had found a real zero-sword.

  Not that there were many people left in the galaxy who knew how to tell the difference until it was too late.

  The Rakasan station was an outpost, a hub deliberately set in the voids between star systems where trade and communication could occur without the usual restrictions. These outposts were the only place in the Rakasan Empire open to aliens. And while the more grisly parts of Rakasan culture were wisely hidden away, the architecture still left no doubt to the nature of these aliens.

  The station’s blacksteel hull were large, featureless plates which formed into two pyramids conjoined at the base by an exposed cylinder core. Brutish reinforcement beams accented the design, while orange light poured out of narrow slits. It wasn’t quite a furnace, more akin to the hue of those eerie horizons you see in the early morning or hazy twilight. And the atmosphere inside magnified this nauseating effect, as if you were walking in a space that wasn’t quite real. The all-encompassing light didn’t sit properly, turning the whole world into something hostile and strange.

  The slates on the wall panels were embroidered with the shapes of many aliens, fused into the blacksteel as decoration. Their screams of agony were captured for eternity, and their suffering faces watched silently as Rykar escorted one of the last human beings alive in the galaxy to his curator.

  It astounds me to this day, as it did then, that how many aliens treated this place of depravity as yet another market—no matter how distasteful. Truthfully, when my fleets fell upon the Rakasa, when I ordered the destruction of their worlds, it surprised me the incredible outcry, the rage and the false tears as the galaxy wept for the worst of them. They all bitterly bemoaned the loss of their torturers, the demons which prowled in the night. In the one act I felt which would unite the galactic powers on my side, I found them all suddenly against me yet again.

  It was only then I learned that the galaxy does not care about cruelty. The only evil it will ever acknowledge are those who dare to stand against cruelty. It did not matter that I had come to end the gravest of evils. I had robbed them of a marketplace, and for that sin, I was the enemy of all enemies. I do not know how many alien children I have saved, for that number must be uncountable by now. I only know the contempt I was given. And for that, I did not weep, when I decided to make the galaxy safe for my grandchildren.

  …

  Amon stood a man inspected as a proud animal for sacrifice. The Rakasa with its long leathery neck seemed to enjoy every muscle, every nerve with which it could abuse the man. The Ophidian Raptor was a lower lizard which only prided itself for the hunt. The Rakasa was a lizard which delighted upon revenge.

  Its grafted metallic wings shuddered sporadically at the possibilities, even as Rykar bartered for the price. Not just a human, not just a survivor of the Fifth Aberrant War, but a warrior of it. I had never seen a greed for flesh before, eyes seeking the torment it could inflict. Its face was far more refined than the Raptor’s, a narrower snout patterned with flesh for the more subtle expressions.

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  I had wondered of the type of alien placed in charge, of not a mere collection, but a mega-complex dedicated to the suffering of mankind. There were no questions left in my mind after this encounter.

  “Yes, I think we can come to a deal,” the museum curator hissed. “Fifty million vrak, that is my offer.”

  Rykar paused. He had his back turned to the curator, inspecting the unsettling decorations of the private lounge. Everything was half a size larger, to accommodate the Rakasa’s sweeping form. The gravity was a touch too high, making Rykar’s feathers shrink timidly despite themselves. The pirate lord was in the den of a meticulous appetite, and any lesser bird of prey would’ve already been in the Rakasa’s thrall.

  Instead, Rykar disinterestedly plucked a flower from its obsidian vase. The petals were the color of pale flesh, and the stem was covered in thorns. Rykar snapped it in half, hopefully killing it.

  “That’s not good enough for my employer.”

  The Rakasa emissary’s eyes narrowed, displeased. “It is a most foolish notion, to think you can haggle with our kind. Truly, I can scarcely remember a time when an alien was so unwise to refuse my first offer.”

  “I beg your forgiveness,” Rykar rested on the couch opposing the larger Rakasa. He threw his feathered arms out comfortably, crossing his knees. “It is not that my employer intends to anger you—quite the opposite. It is rather…” Rykar searched for the right words. “In markets such as these, we deal in things that cannot be shortchanged with money. Wealth is only a greasing lubricant to obtain more authentic things: people, experiences, and… more creative lifestyles. What I’m trying to say is that my employer has come to appreciate the wisdom of the Rakasa, and he wishes to partake.”

  The Rakasa stiffened, tapping its metal claws on the furniture. “And what exactly is the wisdom of the Rakasa? So many aliens fantasize about what we keep hidden, away from the eyes of the galaxy. They often project their own desires, looking for something that is not really there. We are not sadists or masochists. We are not interested in taking your prisoners, your unwanted filth. And if your employer is trying to flatter us, he can look to other places to get rid of his trash.”

  Rykar leaned in and tapped his talon on an earpiece, pretending to receive instruction which wasn’t really there. “My employer says there are two reasons to hide something. The first is that it is abominably ugly, and you must shove it into darkness so that no other eye will see it.”

  “And the second?” the Rakasa asked, a creeping interest entering his voice.

  Rykar continued, “the second is to protect something from the unwashed public, the eyes that defile with their sight. In order to preserve true beauty… true purity… you must protect it. To keep something sacred, you must hide it away from the masses.”

  The Rakasa listened intently to the old bird. “Your employer is acquainted with our truths, but he is by no means wise in our arts. For his courtesy, I shall enlighten him. It is a simple observation that pain and pleasure are a closed loop, that the excess of one leads to the other. In reality, there is only one divide: a life lived tepid and a life that burns.” The Rakasa outstretched its claws, and I saw the metallic joints that were artfully yet painfully interwoven with the leathery fingers. It was not enough to graft. I realized that the modifications must’ve sent shivers of pain with every slight twitch and movement.

  Rykar nodded carefully, masking his disgust by pretending to be the bird he had once been. In many ways, the pirate lord was the best choice for this task. He was playing a scared slaver playing an overconfident cutthroat. His movements were too exaggerated, too put on for show. In other words, exactly what the Rakasa were used to dealing with.

  The emissary licked its teeth with its forked tongue as it continued, savoring the conversation. “Now you believe we seek the extremes of experience, mingling both pain and pleasure to become inseparable because we are explorers or artists or addicts. This is far from the case, though we indulge in all three. My species did not set down this path ignorantly seeking some horizon of bliss that is not there. In fact, it is the opposite. As we go further and further, everything collapses into a singularity of the same experience again and again.”

  The Rakasa raised a claw and without flinching, drew a line of blood across its cheek. “The untrue, the false, the temporal, these things are all purged. The passing things, the unreal things, the lies with which we distract ourselves, it is all there to obscure you from yourself. This is The Truth of All Things, that as you strip away the many layers of reality, there is only one place you shall find it. This is the Truth of the universe, writ on every being that walks and breathes. Everything else is delusion. Everything else is a lie.”

  For the first time, a look of unease passed Rykar’s expression. His casual act dropping for a single second at the malice of the Rakasa.

  “Tell your employer this. We practice our arts to discover ourselves—our real selves. We have uncovered the workings of reality and our place within it. For your generous gift, I must refuse your employer, as I would like to do business with you again. I do not blame him for his cowardice. It is an unfortunate trait your master inherited from humanity.”

  It was at that moment Amon snapped his bonds with a carefully hidden knife. He rushed the Rakasa, aiming the plunge the blade into the lizard’s neck. Throughout the entire conversation, he had been staring death at the Rakasa, and now it was the time for his vengeance, or so the part he played, in this most delicate of negotiations.

  Just the blade sliced through the skin, Rykar had pressed the button on his remote. The electro-collar activated, and Amon fell to the ground, convulsing in agony. Through the microphone, I heard the most creative of curses, spat in between screams of abject pain.

  “Kavak!” The Rakasa kicked at Amon. The alien hardly noticed the blood trickling from its neck, more insulted that Amon had been able to attack it. It was humiliating, being so close to death. The Rakasa reached for a knife, and quickly ran the blade along Amon’s ear, cutting it off. It tasted the old man’s blood and whispered something in the torn flesh.

  “Step away!” Rykar yelled, aiming a pistol at the Rakasa.

  The alien glanced up, bemused. “Do not worry for your profits. I do not harm your merchandise. A human is one thing. A human marked by a Rakasa is of far more value, for we do not let go of our treasures. You shall be paid sixty million for this… opportunity”

  The Rakasa raised itself, its towering form dwarfing Rykar. The alien glanced to the floating drone. “I cannot overlook your sloppiness however. Our transaction is conditional now. You shall personally see our fine exhibits. I will honor your request to understand my species. That, or there is no deal.”

  “The human stays with us until we’re paid,” Rykar demanded.

  “On your human ship, yes.” The Rakasa’s eyes went distant, imagining some delicious horror it had planned. “Before you leave, we will have to discuss your vessel. It displeases me that such a ship suffers only in silence.”