Chapter 8
Alerts were sent planet-wide and everyone was to be on the lookout for Timor. Anyone having any information was to contact the ThunderGuard immediately. Patrols were stepped up and children were sent home from school. Li-en made his way down to the prison cells in the basement of the Lair where Sol and Nihi were being held.
"Lord Li-en! What is going on? Why have I been placed in here?" Nihi was utterly confused and the liger wondered if he was just that good of an actor or if he truly had no idea what his colleagues were capable of.
"Take Nihi to interrogation. Lord Panthro will be down soon for Sol," he told the guard. The lynx and his fellow guard, who was a puma, went into the cell and removed Nihi. The moved him down the hall in chains and then chained him to the table in the center of the small room that only had a one-way mirror in it.
"You need to tell me everything you know regarding your shipmates and maybe then I can help you," Li-en said as he took a seat across from the still confused-looking liger.
"Why did you call Ekber, Sol?" Nihi asked.
"That's his real name. We verified that you are who you say you are but it would seem that both Ta'o and Ekber were not honest with us. Where did you meet them and how did you escape Thundera? What happened to the rest of your crew?" Li-en pressed.
"Our crew landed in a small village to offer support since the roads into the town were destroyed due to the earthquakes. While we were there, the planet started to break apart. We waited as long as we could, trying to get as many people into our ship as we could before we had to leave. We lost four of our crew members and picked up only the two others regrettably. The town was near the epicenter of the planet's destruction and anyone who could not move fast enough were killed instantly. We might have been one of the first ships to get away before everything started to fall apart," Nihi explained.
"So you let the two men you never met lead you into space?" Li-en gave him a look.
"Our pilot never made it back to the ship and I only had the skills to fly us from town to town. I didn't have the skills to take us off planet. We weren't even sure if we'd survive the attempt to exit the planet's atmosphere. Ta'o said he knew what to do. After he successfully navigated us out and away from the planet, we all agreed he should pilot the ship. He was knowledgeable about the universe so we made him captain," Nihi said.
"He is a terrorist and so is his friend. They tried to assassinate King Claudus before the planet began its death. You didn't know that?" Li-en was skeptical.
"We didn't ask a lot of questions. They didn't seem to matter considering everything and everyone we knew and loved was dead," the prisoner heaved a sigh.
"Point taken but why wait all this time to come to New Thundera? King Lion-O had been broadcasting for years regarding Third Earth and then New Thundera. Why come here now? How did you and the crew get sick?" Again the liger tried to get more concrete answers.
"We heard of the reformation of New Thundera but Ta'o told us that it couldn't be possible. I asked him about trying to head for Third Earth. He said that the ship wouldn't hold up and that we would need to land somewhere where we could either buy a new ship or try to shore up the one we had. We landed at an outpost and had begun to look into things when the Mutants had started their war with the Luntacs. We hunkered down and tried to work on our ship as we soon discovered that buying a new one was out of the question. While we tried to fix our ship, we took jobs at the outpost so we could keep working on the ship. I think we just kind of slipped into a rhythm and it wasn't until Bihter got pregnant that I insisted we get moving. I wanted to be sure the baby would not be born at the outpost. I figured once that happened we'd never leave," Nihi told him.
"Tygra estimates that your wife is seven months pregnant. It should not have taken you that long to get here even with that ship of yours in the state it's in," Li-en pointed out.
"We started hopping from outpost to outpost as we moved closer to our destination. Things kept breaking on the ship. We'd have to stop for a week or two at each outpost fix something and then move on. I became impatient. I demanded to know why things kept breaking if we'd been working on the ship so much. I didn't have enough knowledge about the mechanisms. Melik pulled me aside and said that he thought someone was sabotaging us but he couldn't prove it," the liger said.
"He's the ship's engineer. How could he not?" Li-en raised an eyebrow.
"Our ship is older than dirt. Things break. He was busting his butt to get us to Third Earth but he had to sleep sometime. Then we all started getting sick," Nihi filled in.
"You said you were on your way to the next trading post when everyone got sick," the ThunderCat thought he'd caught him in a lie.
"We were until I realized that the nearby planet would be closer. Checking our coordinates, I realized that Ta'o was going to steer us away from the planet and he had to know that we were closer to it rather than the trading post. I confronted him, as is my right as first mate, when Adil got sick, because now there was no one to care for Bihter. He claimed he read the charts wrong and then steered us to New Thundera," Nihi said. Li-en was just about to ask about the black hole debris that they had found when the Lair alarms went off.
"Secure the prisoner!" Li-en ordered the guards before running out of the interrogation room.
To Be Continued…
