Brask's capture is the decisive reversal in his flight from the bounty hunters: a public warrant becomes a lethal pursuit, his attempt to protect Libba forces him to surrender his immediate escape, and Nylæq's private vengeance replaces any possibility of lawful custody. The event leaves Brask unconscious, restrained on an unfamiliar ship, and confronted by the dragoness who intends to make him suffer for the death of her son.

Causes and Background

The capture follows a political and military crisis on the moon. A news broadcast reports that Brask is being blamed for the moon's events and accused of killing Din himself. His refusal to hand Libba over to the Science Board has already been publicized, and the deaths connected with the crisis have been attributed to him. Biryl tells him that a warrant has been issued for his arrest; when Brask asks whether the order is for capture alive or dead, Biryl initially answers that he is wanted alive. That distinction soon disappears, however, when the hunters announce that the warrant has been upgraded to “dead or alive.”

The warrant is therefore more than a legal consequence. It turns Brask into a target whose body has become valuable to competing powers. He is a Justice Warrior who has defied the Science Board, protected Libba, and been associated with a lethal confrontation on the moon. The public account reduces those connected events to a single accusation against him, while the bounty hunters convert the accusation into a commercial hunt. The later revelation that Nylæq commissioned them adds a personal motive beneath the official one.

The Hunt and Brask's Choice

The immediate attack begins while Brask is hunting on a planet where the crew has landed to replenish water, oxygen, and food. Libba is seven months pregnant, her morning sickness has returned, and the hostile swamp environment has already driven her back to the ship. Brask remains outside because the crew needs protein as well as the supplies being gathered. In the thick forest, he detects the smell of Stlozyn and realizes that the presence does not belong to his crew. When blaster fire erupts, he rolls clear of the first shot and returns fire as six Stlozyn emerge from the bushes.

The hunters possess a cannon designed to bring down a person in beast form. A nearby tree is struck, sending flaming splinters across the clearing, and Brask recognizes that he cannot survive a prolonged fight against so many attackers. His predicament is sharpened by the danger to Libba: if he is captured, the hunters may pursue her next, especially if Nylæq has placed a separate bounty on her. The event's central value shift occurs here. Brask's freedom becomes less important than Libba's safety, and escape becomes a means of protecting her rather than preserving himself.

Brask orders Trafin to get Libba off the ship and abandons any attempt to wait for assistance. He fires over his shoulder while running through the swamp, shuts off his comm unit so Trafin cannot argue, and heads toward open ground. The hunters call after him that they no longer need him alive. At the clearing, Brask begins shifting into his beast form as the crew's ship rises into the sky. His wings emerge just as a projectile strikes him hard in the back. He loses consciousness before reaching the ground, while the departing ship confirms that Trafin obeyed his final order and removed Libba from the immediate danger.

Nylæq's Custody and Revenge

When Brask wakes, he is on a ship that does not belong to his crew. He lies on an operating table in a stark white room, with restraints around his ankles, wrists, shoulders, and waist. The equipment is not government issue, which immediately tells him that the hunters have delivered him to a private captor rather than to an official detention facility. The restraint of his body also reverses the power implied by his attempted transformation: the wings and weaponry that might have made him dangerous have been neutralized before he can use them.

Nylæq enters the room as an orange-scaled dragoness with contrasting black hair. She presents herself with a pleasant smile and mocks the bounty hunters for being so incompetent that they nearly damaged the prisoner she intended to collect. Her concern is not justice in an institutional sense but possession of Brask alive long enough to punish him. The bounty is valuable precisely because the captive survives.

Nylæq explains that she had considered doing the same to Libba instead. She wanted Brask to watch Libba suffer, but decided that the human woman did not understand what she was being drawn into and should not pay for Brask's actions. This threat exposes the logic of Brask's earlier decision to order Libba's escape: Nylæq's revenge is aimed at the relationship itself, and Libba can be used as an instrument of pain even when she is not the principal prisoner.

The personal grievance is finally stated plainly. Nylæq says that she has tried for years to make Brask see reason, yet he still killed her son. Brask rejects the accusation and begins to insist that he did not kill Din, but Nylæq reframes responsibility rather than accepting his denial: whether or not Brask delivered the fatal act, she considers him the reason her son is dead. His legal status as a wanted fugitive and his moral status in Nylæq's eyes consequently merge into one punishment narrative.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The capture ends Brask's immediate flight but does not resolve the accusation surrounding the moon. Instead, it transfers the conflict from public broadcast and bounty notices into an enclosed chamber where Nylæq can impose her own interpretation of events. The warrant, the hunters' changed instructions, and the restraints establish a progression from state-backed pursuit to private torture. Brask has moved from armed defender to captive subject without receiving a public hearing or a chance to correct the account that blamed him for every death.

The scene also makes protection inseparable from sacrifice. Brask cannot save himself and Libba through the same action: he chooses to send her away, then draws the hunters after him and attempts to transform only after she is safely leaving. His capture is therefore the cost of preserving her escape. The outcome is tragic but purposeful, because the hunters' success is measured against Brask's success in keeping Libba out of their hands.

As a pursuit-and-revenge sequence, the event combines an external hunt with a family grievance. The bounty hunters supply the physical mechanism of capture, while Nylæq supplies the emotional and ideological motive. Her accusation also preserves uncertainty around Din's death: the broadcast presents Brask as the killer, Brask denies it, and Nylæq insists that responsibility extends beyond the literal act. That unresolved distinction gives the capture its larger narrative force. Brask is not merely imprisoned; he is trapped inside competing versions of what he has done, with Libba's safety and his own survival placed on opposite sides of the same decision.