by Petra Landon
Saakshi directed a glance full of mingled gratitude and apology at Enara and took a deep breath to steady herself before standing up to face the Ketaari. He bared his large teeth at her in a predatory attempt at a smile. Saakshi gazed back at him silently, all expression carefully blanked out.
“You look very familiar, Budh. Where have I seen you before?” he remarked, more as a query to himself than her.
Saakshi cursed her luck silently. The hand that clutched the underside of the bar turned white with strain even as she struggled to not reveal any sign of her anxiety. The Ketaari’s eyes raked her upper body, the only part of her not concealed by the bar she stood behind. His eyes roved over the sun-kissed olive-toned skin, the abundant dark hair that fell to her shoulders in waves and the too-thin body dressed in the form-fitting uniform of Trader Pik’s server girls. The uniform was a garish one-shouldered red and gold top worn over red trousers. The fabric gathered in a subtle knot over the right shoulder to cover her right arm, leaving her left shoulder and arm bare. It was designed to allow the sleeve over her right arm to conceal the broad ownership bracelet she was obligated to wear on that wrist.
Saakshi forced herself to stand unflinching under the leering gaze of the Ketaari male until his eyes fell on the intricately woven tenar mesh armband she wore high on her left bicep to identify her Pura. The Ketaari had banned all religious expression on Budheyasta. On her home world, Saakshi was not allowed to wear her armband, but on this space station, she wore it with Pik’s permission. When Pik had bought her prison contract, she’d requested to be allowed to wear the symbol of her religious house openly like her un-subjugated ancestors had once done. The Ketaari male’s expression tightened with anger at the sight of her pura tenar band, and Saakshi gave up the façade of nonchalance to wrap her arms defensively around herself.
“What do you want?” she asked in Alliance Standard, abandoning any pretense at politeness.
Her words caused the male’s eyes to snap from her armband back to her face.
“What is your name, Budh?” he demanded in Ketar, the language every Budheya child was forced to learn, per the laws of the Budh-Ketaari Empire.
Saakshi remained silent, not trusting the next words out of her mouth.
The male leaned his stocky body over the bar to invade her personal space. He spoke again in Ketar, more forcefully this time.
“What is your name, female?”
“Saakshi neh Merama tik Ulmik pura Bedana” she answered proudly.
The Ketaari threw back his head to laugh uproariously with genuine amusement.
“You Budh are hilarious. Two centuries of being trodden under Ketaari feet has not stopped you from clinging to your useless old traditions” he gasped out, amidst his laughter. The pale blue eyes glowed in the pasty face, his forehead ridges standing out in stark contrast to the rest of his oddly smooth facial skin.
“What do I care about your family or religious affiliation? The rebels have gotten one thing right. They’ve dropped the song and dance to adopt simpler names” he remarked, his face still lit up by amusement.
Duh, the rebels shorten their names to be anonymous and prevent bringing down any Ketaari recriminations on their families or religious houses. What a clueless son of swine!
“Speaking of rebels, I think I finally remember you” he retorted. “You used to run with Tilabok’s cell. Your little group imagined itself quite a thorn in my side, I know. Fancy meeting you here - what a small universe it is.”
Saakshi’s heart sank – she’d so hoped he wouldn’t remember her. There had been barely any contact before her capture and imprisonment on Budheyasta. And why would there be? She’d been a lowly new recruit to the resistance cell, while he had been the regional commander, determined to brutally squash the resistance.
Before Saakshi could respond to him, a loud thump rang out abruptly, eliciting a skittish jump from the girl already on edge and alarmed by the Ketaari commander’s remarks. Her heart still pounding uncomfortably fast, Saakshi glanced around bemusedly, only for her attention to be drawn to the Hadari’Kor male she had been surreptitiously observing before. The male’s big palm rested face down on his table, his expression one of urgent demand. As her eyes rested on him in some confusion, he brought his hand down forcefully again to demand her attention. Saakshi gaped at him, utterly flabbergasted by his uncharacteristic action. In all the time she’d observed him, he had never drawn attention to himself like this! As her astounded gaze tangled with his, he crooked his finger at her imperiously to gesture at his empty ale mug. Saakshi, still in the grip of shock, continued to stare at him blankly. Suddenly, Enara was by her side, murmuring softly to her, but loud enough to be audible to the Ketaari male whose attention remained focused on Saakshi to the exclusion of everything else.
“Go take care of your customer” Enara advised in Alliance Standard, gesturing at the Hadari’Kor male.
“I’ll handle the Ketaari table” she declared with a speaking glance, giving Saakshi a gentle push towards the table where the Hadari’Kor male waited with seeming impatience.
Saakshi threw Enara a grateful look before making her way slowly to the Hadari’Kor male. Her heart pounded and her hands trembled visibly from her encounter with the Ketaari. Saakshi unhitched her order tablet from the uniform belt slung low at her hip as she came to a stop by the Hadari’Kor male’s table. Her grip on the tablet tightened unconsciously as she glanced tentatively into the eyes of the alien male who had spent most of the past two months blatantly checking her out. The black fathomless eyes stared back at her, his expression impassive.
“Terilian ale, piping hot” he directed at her. His voice was deep and low with a slight husky timbre to it, almost as if his throat was scratchy.
He spoke in Alliance Standard, though they were both equipped with clearly visible translator devices. Saakshi fumbled with the controls on her tablet to record his order, her hands shaking. When she glanced up from the tablet again, she caught his eyes on her trembling fingers. His dark eyes traveled back to her face leisurely, his expression still curiously blank.
“Are you serving any meals today?” he inquired.
“Yesss” Saakshi stuttered nervously, her fingers fumbling with the tablet to retrieve the menu for the day.
“Menkana meat stew and Keeyori leaf-wrapped fish” she read out, without looking up from the tablet.
“I’ll have the stew” he stated after a short pause, as her eyes remained glued to the tablet in her hands.
A fleeting glance and a murmured acknowledgement later, she headed back to the relative safety of the bar. Once back behind the bar again, Saakshi used a few moments to steady herself before entering his meal order into her tablet to transmit to the order console. A quick glance at the Ketaari table showed Enara entering orders into her tablet with a shuttered expression on her face. Saakshi poured out Terilian ale to heat it carefully before heading over to the customer’s table to set it before him. He studied her with the same impassive expression as before, to give her a small nod in lieu of thanks. When Enara returned to the bar, Saakshi made sure to mutter heartfelt words of gratitude to the other server girl. Enara responded with a smile and a gentle clasp of Saakshi’s hand in the traditional Budheya gesture of solace.
The Ketaari male did not approach Saakshi again, but the occasional speculative glances he directed at her left her uneasy. The Hadari’Kor male’s eyes continued to follow her as she worked, but less overtly than before. He drank a few more mugs of ale served to him by Enara and picked at his stew, leaving mere moments after the departure of the Ketaari group. Taking note of the almost full meal tray he’d left behind as she helped Enara clear his table, Saakshi couldn’t help but wonder at his unexpected and unorthodox way of jumping to her assistance this evening. He had also punched a generous tip into the payment tablet that she insisted Enara not split with her.
Two
That night, Saakshi slumped in exhaustion on her narrow bed in the dormitory sha
red by Trader Pik’s server girls. Having indulged in a sonic shower, the only kind available to her, she had crawled limply into bed. She was Trader Pik’s newest server girl. This status made her ineligible for the coveted night slot. The servers loved the late shift; the tips were better and they could get away with just one short shift in addition to a longer one. Saakshi, on the other hand, worked two of the longer shifts every day with one day off every twenty days. This left her too exhausted to do more than shower and fall into bed at the end of each long day.
On days Saakshi felt too tired to move her weary body, she’d remind herself that she could have done much worse than Pik’s. Pik was a decent boss. Like most Keeyori businesses on the station, he bought prison contracts off the Ketaari Imperial Forces and, occasionally, girls from the slavers. This way, he could get away with providing food and board without having to pay his servers. Unlike a lot of Keeyori alehouse owners though, he did allow his girls to keep their hard-earned tips. The Keeyori were nothing if not extremely profit-minded. Pik expected his servers to work hard and show up on time. In return, he provided meals and a clean safe place to stay for all his servers. He did not expect his girls to provide any other services to him or his customers, and was known to growl ferociously at any patron who dared to accost the girls in his presence.
While Pik’s short, bald and plump Keeyori build did not intimidate such patrons, the threat of a station-wide ban usually proved effective. The alehouses on Keeyor 9 Trade Sphere competed madly with one another for business but had agreed on a universal ban list. If a customer’s identity tag ended up on the list, he was denied access to all the alehouses and some of the other businesses on Keeyor 9. Invariably, this meant that the customer was forced to move on to another station to carouse in. Not a tough proposition on the face of it, since stations built primarily for recreation and leisure abounded across Quadrant Five to cater to travelers with a variety of tastes. However, stations under either Alliance or Empire control were enclosed within their respective border security nets, and difficult to access for anyone without the proper ID tags required for entry into their respective jurisdictions. These stations were also known to strictly enforce their respective jurisdictional laws. Although widely contrasting, these laws had one thing in common - they were very stringent. Since non-aligned, carouse-worthy, everything-goes, mostly Keeyori-controlled space stations were fairly rare and scattered in neutral space, most clientele were inclined to attempt to stay off the Keeyor 9 ban list.
Saakshi’s next day at Pik’s proved uneventful, although very busy. Trader Pik’s, even during slow hours, usually attracted considerable patronage. The busy late shift had four server girls working simultaneously. And rumor was that most days, the servers were still run off their feet.
She heaved a huge sigh of relief as the Ketaari officer stayed away from Pik’s for the next two days. The Hadari’Kor male also failed to make an appearance, though that wasn’t unusual. Hadari’Kor were mercenaries and worked for hire. Saakshi guessed that the male came to the station for recreation between jobs.
Two days later, the Ketaari commander cornered Saakshi as she stumbled back to the dormitory after her usual double shift. She was one day away from earning her day off. Busy daydreaming about the forthcoming day of leisure, she failed to watch carefully enough for groping extremities on the main thoroughfare. She had noted early on that the Trade Sphere seemed to attract a particularly sleazy set of patrons. Taken unawares, Saakshi gasped as a hand gripped her wrist to yank hard, causing her to stumble into the wall dividing two of the establishments by the main walkway.
“Let go of me” she hissed angrily at her assailant.
He let go to bare his teeth at her in a macabre semblance of a friendly smile. Saakshi felt her heart sink as she recognized him. It was the Ketaari regional commander. She had even remembered his name – Urm Ghesh. Golar Urm Ghesh, that’s what he liked to be called by the Budheya forced to live under his control.
Forcing the Budheya to kowtow to him isn’t enough for him. The son of swine is eager to rub his position as the highest military commander for the area into our downtrodden faces. Swine!
“I hope you’ve managed to recall my name, Budh female” he remarked conversationally, an expression in the pale blue eyes that made her blood run cold. A wisp of black fear unfurled slowly in the pit of her stomach, soon to envelop her in a brackish fog of terror.
Even by Budheya standards, Saakshi had not had an easy life, having survived some tough circumstances in her young life - a childhood as an orphan, dependent on the generosity of neighbors; scrabbling for survival like all other Budheya in her village; joining the rebel resistance as a recruit to fight Ketaari oppression; mounting guerilla attacks on the Imperial Forces and even a short stint in a harsh Ketaari prison until her contract had been sold off by them. Despite the past, Saakshi realized with a sinking heart as she faced the Ketaari officer that, tough as her short life had been, her experiences might yet pale in comparison to the trouble headed her way. She went cold, a hard knot of fear and anxiety twisting deep inside her. As terror tightened its steely grip on her, she fought to steady herself. The need of the hour was to keep all her wits about her, she reminded herself. She was resilient and had faced worse before. With a cool head and some luck, she might yet manage to wriggle her way out of this, relatively unscathed.
“Golar Urm Ghesh” she responded quietly, refusing to show any fear.
The Ketaari smiled happily at her answer, seemingly pleased by her response. He stood a few inches taller than her and a couple of decades older, if she recalled correctly. Stocky with a deep chest and the bulging neck and upper arm muscles so common in Ketaari officers, he was unremarkable in appearance with his sallow complexion, forehead ridges, cropped white blond hair, watery blue eyes and seemingly bloodless lips. The Ketaari home world was an ice planet. Rumor was that the only way the Ketaari could survive the hot and arid desert world of Budheyasta was the military uniform that sheathed them from neck to toe. The specially designed uniform regulated body temperature and retained moisture, thus helping Ketaari posted on the Budheya home world to acclimatize and survive the alien and inhospitable conditions.
“I have been promoted to an Unta-Golar. My friends and I are here to celebrate my new rank.”
He stared at her hopefully, but Saakshi made no response. It was all she could do to not flinch away from his thick body positioned so close to hers.
“I was not planning to be on this station very long, but I changed my mind after I saw you.”
He paused again, waiting for a response from her.
“I have applied for a month’s leave before I start my new assignment. I would like you to spend some time with me.”
This time, he managed to get a response. Saakshi studied him coldly.
“I cannot” she declared tersely.
The pale blue eyes narrowed at her words.
“Cannot or will not?” he inquired, in a tone sharper than any he’d used so far on her.
He glanced around the busy thoroughfare as if gauging the crowd. Saakshi tensed in response, gathering herself to sprint away from him. Her tough childhood and years in the resistance meant that she was not incapable of defending herself when the need arose. But she knew well that a one-on-one confrontation with the Ketaari in close quarters would not lead to a good outcome for her. On the other hand, she was quick and knew this part of the station well. She’d have a far better shot at evading the commander if she made a run for it. Saakshi waited nervously, poised for flight, her eyes scanning his expression carefully. Finally, the Ketaari stepped back from her as if he’d come to a decision.
“I will give you two days to think about this, Budh. Then, I come for you – willing or not. It is your choice” he declared.
That night, Saakshi lay frightened in her narrow dormitory bed while she desperately pondered her limited options. She could run. This was not a particularly well-guarded station and she was reasonably sure tha
t, with a little effort, she could escape it. But once off this station, where would she go? Going back to Tilabok and the others on Budheyasta would only bring down more trouble on them for she would be an escaped Ketaari felon. In effect, escaping to any part of the Budh-Ketaari Empire, as the Ketaari ironically called their slice of space, would be too dangerous for her. It would also endanger any Budheya who helped her. That left her with only two choices - Alliance space or neutral territory. Traveling through neutral space was easier, but her chances of survival on her own without allies would not be very high. Alliance-controlled territory was a much safer option for her, but the Alliance had stringent border patrols and didn’t allow anyone in without the proper tags. She could attempt to acquire the appropriate identity tags to allow her access through Alliance territory, but that would take a lot longer than the two days she had. And it would need currency that she lacked. Eventually, she drifted into restless sleep, only to wake up exhausted. It was the start of another long day of double shifts. Saakshi consoled herself with the reminder that tomorrow was her day off as she made her way tiredly to Trader Pik’s.
An hour into the first of her shifts, Pik asked to see her in the back room. Since it was rare for Pik to ask to speak to a server girl in private, his request pierced the cloak of apathy that hung over Saakshi this morning, one built up by her anxiety and alarm. For a moment, she pondered furiously whether she was in trouble – if she’d somehow shirked any of her duties at the alehouse. The back room was a small, airless chamber that doubled as Pik’s office as well as a stock room. It was also where his server girls ate the meals that Pik provided for them. Pik shut the door behind him to direct a penetrating look at Saakshi. Pik-u-Aak had been a trader for four decades, and had a reputation on the station for being a male of his words and for treating his servers well.
