Anna, sensing his presence, looked up and saw him. Except it was not Anna. The malevolent glow that hooked him from her eyes was pure Rixxar warrior.
“He’s here. How did you—”
Anna interrupted Liam’s bemusement with harsh-toned words of her own.
“Valent of the Draxxar. We meet. I seek your surrender. Come with me back to our world.”
“You seek something you can’t enforce,” John said, moving closer. “You are alone in this world, and you have less than half my resources. Intellectual and technological. I’d go home if I were you. Except—oops!—you can’t.”
“How have you blocked my fellows out? Do you mean that I am unable to leave?”
“That is exactly what I mean. Our cells can’t travel through the ozone layer. I was able to come here because it was broken, but I have fixed it now. Just in time for your little friends to be deflected and sprung straight back into the Milky Way. What fun they must be having. What a shame you aren’t with them.”
“You must break the ozone layer again. The fabric you repaired must be rent anew.”
“Well, it will happen eventually, humanity being what it is.” John shrugged. “But you could be in for a long wait.”
“Whatever process you have instituted, you must have the power to reverse it.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t believe you. You are bluffing. Do it, or I cut off sustenance to your unborn child.”
“You cannot do that. That is an act of murder for which your own High Council will judge you. An act of genocide. My mother and I are the last surviving Draxxar, as you know.”
“I will do it, and I will take this vessel and kill it also.”
“Stop. These threats are idle. We must exercise our rationality. You are behaving like a thug from the Chavian Belt. I know you are not like that!”
“How dare you compare me to that riffraff!”
“Chavian is as Chavian does.”
“Cease! You mortally insult me. Continue and I will be forced to kill you.”
“Kill me how? You are trapped in the body of a girl. Could you even get out if you wanted to?”
“My fellows should be here.”
“They aren’t. Face it, Rixxar One, you aren’t in a bargaining position here.”
“I have your bond mate and your child. I would say that my bargaining position was strong.”
“And if you kill them, what then? You will perish in this atmosphere, without the technology to inhabit a human shell completely, as I do. You have no cards to play.”
“But I can kill your child.”
“Out of spite? I thought you at least better than that.”
Liam, whose gaze had been ping-ponging between Anna and John, finally found his voice, though it was only to say, “What the fuck?”
“Shut up,” John and Anna chorused.
“Come with me,” John said. “Come to my hideout. I have technologies there that can help you.”
“Liar! You have technologies that can kill me. I am staying here.”
“Really? I think Security might have a word or two to say about that later on. Liam, take her hand.”