bundle. “No one is paying attention to anything. Crux has lifted my limits on wine. They’re getting drunk out of their minds.”
“Sounds like a perfect time to show up and restore the order,” I suggested.
“No. Not yet. It’s best for us to wait. Alcohol has different effects on different species. Ognats have a strong allergy to the berry wine. It doesn’t stop them from drinking as much as they can fit in their bellies, though. Most of the ognats will die before morning.”
“That’s awful,” I gasped. “They’re willingly killing themselves?”
“One of the many reasons I imposed strict limits on alcohol, in the first place.” He shook his head. “Those without the allergy have been getting into fights and scuffles. It’s not going to end well. Dimos, for example, get extremely aggressive when they’re drunk. They’ll fight anything that moves. When plunged in a killing frenzy, they continue fighting even if their heads get cut off.”
“Well.” I rubbed my forehead. “It’s quite a crew you’ve got there.”
“They are what they are.” He shrugged.
“Don’t at least some of them come from civilized worlds?”
“All of them came from planets with some form of government. It’s just that many had been on the fringes of society even before they crashed here. Most of what we have here now used to be pirates, smugglers, and criminals on the run.”
“Those couldn’t be the only space travelers in the area.”
“Many were,” he replied. “Regular trade routes steered clear of the Dark Anomaly. The criminals took risks, by coming closer than they should, to evade being detected or captured. But you’re right, not all who crashed here were on the wrong side of the law. Some were law-abiding citizens. Most of them didn’t survive, though. One needs to be tough and ruthless to make it here.”
“Was your family among those who didn’t make it?” I asked carefully.
Finishing his meat, Vrateus took the water bottles out of the bag, handing one to me.
“My family were merchants,” he said quietly. “Although they didn’t shy away from some illegal smuggling here and there as I’ve learned while examining their log books.”
“Do you remember any of them?”
“Vaguely. Everything that happened before the crash is like a dream—foggy and fragmented. The strongest memory is that of my mother patting me here...” Staring straight ahead, he lifted his hand to his temple, touching the tattoos above his ear. “While she sang me to sleep at night, she would trail her fingers here. It felt soothing...” He dropped his hand to his thigh.
“Do your tattoos have meaning?” I asked softly.
He nodded. Sliding his finger along the ornamental lines, without even being able to see them, he named them all, “My name, the name of my clan, the name of our ship, and its home port on our planet. The tattoos tell where I belong... Where I was supposed to belong.”
Bending his legs, he rested his forearms on his knees.
“Themuls live in clans,” he continued. “The crew of our ship comprised twenty-eight people, all of them related, either by blood or by marriage. My parents, their siblings and their families. My aunts, uncles, cousins...”
“You said not all of them died in the crash.”
He’d mentioned they didn’t live long after. That he had survived the cruel world of the Dark Anomaly alone seemed a miracle to me.
“Most died. I was strapped in bed, sleeping, when it happened. The beds with my cousins were crushed, killing them. Mine ended up wedged under theirs with enough space to keep me alive.”
He ran both hands over his face.
“By the time I climbed out, the ognats and kreers had already made their way onto the ship. The killings of the survivors had started. Then errocks and yourlu joined them, with dimos and the others. That was when the rapes began...”
“Did no one see you?”
“In the chaos that followed, I crawled under wreckage and snuck out.”
“You were only eight years old, Vrateus. How on earth did you survive here alone?”
“I hid. Smaller than anyone, I could fit in tiny places no one would bother to look. As a child, I had the same advantage Malahki has. I had neither the scent of a female to excite lust nor the size or attitude of a male to ignite aggression.”
“Many would still eat you if they caught you.” Even after all my time on the Dark Anomaly, I still couldn’t fully imagine the horrors he had lived through.
“True, food was scarce. As was air and water. Without one interconnected air supply system, we relied