“Are you sure it’s him?” the silver-haired man on the main screen asked.

“Yes.” Xiao answered with formal respect. “But the thing — the device — is not on him.”

The man on the screen lowered his eyelids, as if weighing something. After a long moment he looked up again. “Bring him back to Teleopea first.” He paused. “Discreetly.”

“Understood.” Xiao returned the bow.

The feed cut. Xiao shut down his own display and sagged back into his chair as if a breath had been released.

Even now, thinking about the kin they had brought aboard, Xiao felt that something did not add up. The man — if he could be called that — was not quite what the registry photos had shown. In simple terms: he was strange.

He could not speak Teleopean or the common interstellar tongue. Every attempt at conversation drew only a slight tilt of the head in response. He seemed to understand nothing.

His behavior was more like a silent beast than the polished, formally educated scion the royal records described.

At first, Xiao had expected resistance—that the stranger would refuse to come. Instead, to everyone’s surprise, he had followed the squad obediently and allowed himself to be escorted back to the ship. He now occupied one of the ship’s spare berths.

Xiao rubbed his temple. There were too many inexplicable points. Language barriers made any meaningful interrogation impossible. The stranger refused neuro-contact as well: any team member who approached within three paces was met with violence.

One of them—now lying in sickbay with his chest opened—was a bitter example.

It was a warning. The man had not simply killed; he had done it without hesitation.

“Bringing such an unpredictable creature back to Teleopea—what on earth is High Chancellor Mien thinking?” Xiao muttered, voicing a frustration he had kept inside.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Red alarm lights flooded the ship.

“Hostiles!” someone shouted.

Xiao snapped the internal comms on. “Report—what’s happening?”

[Captain, someone has deployed an energy net on our flight lane. We’re trapped.]

An energy net?

“Pirates,” Xiao concluded at once.

In space, besides absolute cold, stellar storms, black holes, and war, there was another constant danger: pirates. A disorderly lot, but with frightening capabilities—among them, the energy net.

“Perfect timing,” Xiao thought, his headache pounding. “All crew—be aware. Force is a last resort. We must not reveal our position or the nature of this mission. Act according to opportunity.”

Pirates usually took what they wanted and left. The nearest Fenreigan military base was seventy astronomical units away; Xiao did not want to increase the unknowns by turning this into a firefight.

The pirate ship hailed them and demanded the access bay be opened for boarding.

Xiao complied, hoping they would take some common credits and go.

They had little anyway—most of their currency had been spent before leaving Teleopea.

“Would you believe it—Teleopeans out here?” a blue-skinned pirate barked as he boarded. He had four pairs of brown eyes; all eight fixed on Xiao’s squad, calculating. The pirate’s coarse voice rasped around the hold.

Xiao inwardly rolled his eyes but kept his face stone-still. He answered in the common tongue, flat and formal: “We only have what you see. This vessel carries nothing of value. Take the credits and leave peacefully.”

“You expect us to be paid off with this?” an insectile pirate sneered, interrupting. His four-flapped mouth opened and closed; drool sprayed with each motion.

Why did the Lassixi always make him sick, Xiao thought.

“We are not a merchant ship. We are on a mission and carry very little cash,” Xiao repeated.

“What kind of mission?” the first pirate demanded bluntly—their leader, it seemed.

Xiao’s golden eyes turned to him. His narrow pupils and two-meter frame made the shorter pirate shift back as if facing a predator. “Mind your own business, Captain Kaja-Xing,” Xiao said, his voice threaded with a cold warning. “Take what you came for and leave.”

Kaja-Xing had never dealt with Teleopeans directly, but he knew their reputation. He decided it was not worth making an enemy of them. He was about to call off the board.

“Boss!” someone stormed into the bridge, panicked. Cheap clothes stained red. He clutched a weapon and pointed it, trembling, at Xiao’s team.

“Hold position!” Xiao ordered, taking in the blood on the man’s clothes.

It was blood—but not Teleopean blood.

“What is it?!” Kaja-Xing demanded.

“He—he’s dead! Mun—Mun was killed! By that Teleopean!” the pirate shouted, eyes wide with terror. His blue muscles twitched.

“What do you mean?” The pirates pulled weapons in sudden fury; the Teleopeans presented their anionic rifles.

Tension tightened until it felt as though the air itself might crack.

“Captain Kaja-Xing, my men follow my command. None of them would mutilate your team,” Xiao said, his face still impassive. “This is a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” the terrified pirate stammered. “I saw him—he tore Mun’s head off and he—he—he ate Mun!!!” The man trembled uncontrollably.

“He did what?” the pirates and Teleopeans demanded together.

Xiao stared at him in disbelief. “That’s impossible. All my team are here; aside from the one in sickbay—” He fell silent a moment, then his gaze shifted. “Except one. In the rest chamber.”

“You monsters!” Kaja-Xing erupted when the silence on Xiao’s side held. His blue face flushed, turning an even deeper hue.

“This is a misunderstanding. We are carnivorous, but we are not savages who eat our prey raw,” one of Xiao’s squad snapped back, anger flaring.

“Quiet!” Xiao barked. Anger could be a contagion here—he would not allow it to spiral. “This is my fault. I apologize for your loss. If there is compensation to be made, we will explain and make amends when we return to our homeworld.”

“What compensation?” the pirates jeered. “By the time you get back, what will that be worth?”

Xiao took a breath, forcing the predator in him down. “Then tell me—what do you want?”

“We want the Teleopean who killed Mun!” Kaja-Xing said, flat and uncompromising.

Blackmail, Xiao realized. Of all their vices, pirates’ sentiments for their dead were worth even less than a currency unit. They wanted what sold highest on the black market.

Intelligence reports put the value of a living Teleopean—rare, partly organic, with prodigious strength—worth more than a fleet of freighters, at one hundred and fifty million credits on the interstellar black market.

Human trafficking was, regrettably, among a pirate’s trades.

“That is not an option, Captain,” Xiao said, hardening. Knowing the price only made him more resolute. He would not hand over the strange man.

“Teleopean,” the pirate captain sneered, his thick lips twisting into a crooked grin. He leveled a laser pistol, posture loose, almost amused.

“Do you really want to open fire here? This close to a Fenreigan military base—you can’t, can you?”

Devious bastard, Xiao thought.

He pictured the blood that could follow, forcing his voice to remain steady. “We can compensate you once we return. Same value, same currency.”

“No.” The captain cut him off flatly. “We want the Teleopean.”

“You—!” Several of Xiao’s soldiers stepped forward, fury breaking through discipline.

“Don’t move!” the pirates barked back, weapons raised.

A deadlock.

Xiao’s irritation burned like static under his calm. “Greed is unwise, Captain—especially here. We can’t complete our mission, and you can’t get away. The Fenreigan patrol passes this sector every thirty star-rings. The next one’s in three. You and they have… history, if I recall correctly?”

The shot hit home.

Unease flickered across the pirates’ faces. Even the captain’s grin faltered.

“You’re good, Teleopean.” he muttered.

“Take the credits,” Xiao said evenly, “or take nothing—and explain yourself to the patrol when they arrive. You know which option is smarter.”

The pirates huddled, whispering.

Then the captain straightened. “No. We’ve got three star-rings’ worth of time to wait you out. I want the Teleopean who killed my man.”

Fool, Xiao seethed. You don’t even realize how close to death you stand.

Just as the standoff teetered toward violence, the cause of it all walked calmly into the air-lock corridor.

Every weapon turned toward him.

“That’s him! That’s the one who ate Mun!” the panicked pirate—Cryer—shrieked, jabbing his gun forward. The Teleopean only tilted his head slightly, studying the weapon, then took a slow step closer.

Cryer flinched. His finger jerked on the trigger.

A beam of light punched straight through the newcomer’s chest.

Silence. Absolute.

Even the shooter froze.

The Teleopean looked down, bewildered, as if his body belonged to someone else. His hand brushed the wound. When he pulled it back, his palm was slick with golden blood.

“Oh gods…” whispered the insect-faced pirate. He swung his weapon back toward Xiao’s squad. Around him, the other pirates did the same—only to stop short.

Something had changed.

Under the ship’s cold artificial light, the Teleopeans’ eyes had begun to glow—pale gold, feral, predatory.

Mission. Remember the mission.

Xiao fought the twin urges to keep calm or to tear them all apart. Through clenched teeth he managed, “Now we’re even.”

“Fine—fine, we’re leaving,” the captain stammered, realizing control was slipping.

“No one makes me shed blood and walks away,” a voice said suddenly.

All heads turned.

The Teleopean was standing again, his tone calm but foreign—speaking in a language no one recognized, the cadence unlike any known tongue.

Xiao’s breath caught as their eyes met.

The gold was gone. His irises had turned completely, impossibly black.

The next second, every pirate convulsed—blood spilling from their mouths. They collapsed where they stood, dead before their weapons hit the floor.

It happened too fast for comprehension. Even Xiao’s trained soldiers recoiled, stunned and afraid, staring at their “rescued” kin.

The killer moved among the bodies without expression, crouched, and reached toward one of the corpses.

“Hey—what are you doing?” Xiao demanded, voice sharp but strained. He was commander; fear couldn’t show.

Then something invaded his mind.

Not a voice, not words—an impulse, primal and cold:

I’m hungry. I need to feed.

Xiao’s composure shattered. Inwardly he screamed:

High Chancellor Mien—what in the stars have you brought back to Teleopea?

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(Note: This is just a random upload of the concept art and this is one of Xiao's teammate not Xiao)