by Viki Storm
And it’s that ability to be easily sealed off that I’m counting on.
So we wait. The Rulmek do not engage in small talk, but I do notice that they are eying Lia a bit too much for my comfort. I remember the ruse—she is supposed to be the manager of my brothel—but knowing I have to keep up the facade does little to quell the rage I feel as I watch them ogle her.
What seems like forever passes, then finally the large double doors whoosh open and the guards are herding the human females into the docking bay.
And now I know a whole new flavor of rage.
The females are scrawny, some of them wearing filthy rags, most of them not wearing anything at all. Some have been shaved bald-headed, others have matted hair clumped together.
And the smell. Let’s just say it’s not good.
The Rulmek are treating the humans worse than you’d treat a stray caninoid sniffing for scraps in an alleyway.
All I can think is: this used to be Lia.
Lia was once dirty and scared with nothing more than a soiled rag tied around her waist.
Lia was once herded by cruel guards at the tip of a neuroparalytic gun.
Lia was once paraded about for buyers to inspect.
A rush of blood fills my mouth, and I realize that my teeth have sunken into the tender flesh of my cheek. The pain brings me back. A little.
I start to think maybe Lia was right all along—and rerouting the Rulmek ship is too kind. This fell race deserves nothing less than slow and creative torture.
I glance at my comm panel and the mission counter ticks off the seconds. Orlon should be here by now.
The Rulmek with the vest and insignia is saying something, but I can’t pay enough attention to puzzle it out. I’m too angry.
I approach the females and motion for Lia to do the same. “Which ones?” I ask her. We need to keep up the subterfuge until Orlon gets here.
She walks up and down the rows of females. This must be so hard for her—not for the first time, I think she has the spirit of a whole retinue of Zalaryn warriors.
She’s pretending to inspect the females, asking one or another to open their mouths or show their fingernails. Again, my chest feels like it’s being crushed with the sorrow of the knowledge that Lia knows firsthand what a buyer of slaves would look for while they inspected the females.
“Hurry,” the Rulmek says. “Time’s up.”
“This one,” Lia says, pointing to a female. She walks slowly, trying to stall for time as best she can.
Where the sweet motherless Void is Orlon?
Just then, there’s a loud beeping in the docking bay. The Rulmek stop everything and look at each other.
A voice is piped through speakers embedded in the ceiling. I can’t understand everything, but I understand enough.
Warning. High alert. This is the Zalaryn we were warned about. Lethal force is authorized. Do not let them escape.
Then the lights go out—and the fun really begins.
LIA
This is when things get crazy.
As if it wasn’t crazy enough to be on this warship—again—looking two slavers straight in the eye. Could they have been two of my captors, all those years ago? Perhaps, but perhaps not. There’s a lot of Rulmek in this universe, and their lifestyle doesn’t often see them into old age. I’ve tried to hide the scar on my face, knowing that the story of what I did all those years ago has surely been told as a cautionary tale.
I hit a button on my comm panel, and it activates the night-vision filter on the lenses covering my eyes. In the dark, I can see the humans huddling together, afraid and unsure what is going to happen to them.
“You’re safe now,” I say, hoping that at least some of the humans will be able to understand my language, hoping that they can even hear me over the ensuing ruckus. “We’re getting you out of here.”
I track the Rulmek closest to me. He’s stumbling around, arms outstretched, trying to find something to orient himself in the sudden, total blackness. I reach down and pull the knife from my boot. Anyone who gets stabbed by a knife concealed in a boot deserves it. They searched me and took the big, showy knife I had dangling from my belt and assumed that I didn’t have anything else. Fools.
I take three soundless steps and put the blade in the weak spot under the arm. He gives one pathetic whimper and then drops. I sight my next target and make my way to him. With the night vision filter, this is almost too easy.
I’d feel bad if they weren’t ruthless, evil assholes.
There’s pounding at the huge double doors to the docking bay, but I know that no amount of pounding or button-pushing or electronic tinkering is going to get those doors open.
The doors to the docking bay, they’ll never open again.
Another Zalaryn, Orlon, is in a stealthed ship two kilometers away. He’s beamed a modified version of the sabotage program to the Rulmek systems. He’s locked down the entire ship and cut the lights.
We have ten minutes until the docking bay exit is sealed off, too, and the warship begins its unstoppable, unalterable course towards the Kraxx settlement.
I scan the room and see that Bantokk has already gotten two Rulmek. Only two more.
My next target is at the door, pushing feverishly at the lock panel, hoping against hope that all he’s gotta do is key the right code and the door will open and he’ll escape the slaughter. Not a chance.
I raise my blade, ready to plunge it in, when all of a sudden there’s bright white pain in my knee and I am falling. I manage to break my fall, so it doesn’t hurt too bad when I land, but my knife goes skittering across the floor. I look up and see one of the remaining Rulmek hovering over me. He’s aiming his weapon at me and I remember—oh yes, of course I do—how the neuroparalytic will feel when he presses the trigger and deploys the agent into my bloodstream. It’s an icy cold that you can feel as it courses its way through your veins, branching out into every capillary until you are frozen in place, your entire body tingling with the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb that’s fallen asleep.
I sweep my foot and try to kick his legs out from under him, but he’s too stout, and my leverage is too weak. He only smiles and points his gun. I look to my side and see that Bantokk has sighted us, but he’s about three meters away—he might as well be three kilometers away.
I look this bastard in the eye while I reach into one of my cloak’s inner pockets. “Never have too many knives,” I say and throw the small blade at his face. There’s a trick to throwing a knife so it will land inside its target, rather than just hitting blunt-side and bouncing off pointlessly—and I know it. I have spent countless hours practicing, and it pays off now.
He shrieks as the blade sinks into the hollow of his cheek. While gruesome, this is not a severe wound, and it won’t stop him for long. I must be fast.
The Rulmek who was at the door lock panel has taken notice of what’s going on, and he stumbles his way over toward me. They must have gained a little bit of vision in the dark because they seem to be doing less stumbling and more walking.
I hoist myself up to my feet, but as I put weight on my right leg, my knee shrieks in agony. That son of a bitch, I think. I lunge for him, but he’s got my knife in his hands.
He thrusts the blade straight into my chest.
The pain is incredible and has the unintended side effect of making me forget the pain in my knee. I go down immediately, clutching at my chest as if that will somehow make the searing hot pain go away.
I hear Bantokk scream, and it sends a chill through me. I would hate to be on the receiving end of that Zalaryn fury.
He tackles both Rulmek in one tangle of limbs and screams. I hear the crunching of bones, the guttural gasps of agony, the pointless pleading of someone who is bartering for their life.
Then all is quiet.
“Lia,” Bantokk says. He rushes to my side and puts his hand on my chest.
“Ouch, jackass,” I say. “Watch it, I’m going to have a bruise for the
rest of my life.”
“The suit held?” he asks.
“Yes, but I think I might prefer getting stabbed. At least the blade would have made a clean cut and I could have just sprayed some derma-seal into it. Fuck, this hurts.” The suit I’m wearing underneath my cloak is reinforced with thin platinum-alloy fibers densely woven into the fabric. It repelled the blade, but my body still took the brunt of the force. Laws of physics say that the kinetic energy of the Rulmek’s arm, and by extension the blade, has to go somewhere—and even though the knife point was not able to puncture my skin, all that force was still pinpointed into one spot, and it hurts like hell.
“I thought you were hit,” Bantokk says. He scoops me up into his arms and holds me for a moment. I take in his scent, and that’s when it hits me that I’m still alive, that we just killed five Rulmek guards—and it looks like we might actually pull off this crazy stunt after all. He helps me to my feet. I’m incredibly dizzy, and I stagger and lean into him while my head clears.
“I was hit,” I say. “I’m in horrible, agonizing pain.”
“It will stop hurting in a few minutes,” he says. Through my night-vision filter, I can see that he’s smiling. “As long as you’re not dead, we can fix everything else.”
“You’re going to have to fix my boot after I kick you in the ass with it,” I say. “Unless you start showing me some more sympathy. A little cooing and pampering would go a long way.”
“Nonsense,” he says. “You’re a warrior. Get up. We have four minutes to get everyone off.”
The docking machinery rumbles to life and the hatch opens. The light is blinding at first, but then my night-vision lenses adjust. It’s Bantokk’s comrade, Orlon, carrying two portable lights.
“Everyone in the ship,” he calls out.
“Come on,” I say, struggling to take a few tentative steps. I can put some weight on my knee, but I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I might have rather been stabbed. I feel like I’m going to puke. I hold onto Bantokk’s arm, grateful for the support. “Let’s go, you’re safe now, hurry up!”
The women seem to get the idea—or at least they figure that going with anyone else has got to be a better gamble than staying on the Rulmek ship. They file into the docking port and onto Orlon’s ship.
We get everyone on with thirty seconds to spare and disengage the docking mechanism.
“Right on time,” Bantokk says. Orlon just grunts.
I follow the two Zalaryns into the cockpit, leaving the women in the large common area. There’s about a hundred of them, and I can only hope that we got them all. Maybe there were a few special ones that were taken out of the general slave pool, reserved for special buyers because of their unique beauty or virginity. But I can’t think about that. We saved a hundred women just now. And not only that, we locked out the Rulmek navigation systems and their escape pods. The Rulmek are on an all-expenses-paid, one-way, non-stop flight to the Kraxx settlement. Courtesy of the Zalaryn empire.
“Happy?” Orlon asks Bantokk.
“Very,” Bantokk responds. “Couldn’t have been better.”
“An awful lot of trouble to go through for a handful of humans,” Orlon says, throwing me a scowl over his shoulder. He activates the ship for light speed, and I sit down, knowing that in my injured state I will not be able to withstand the jarring g-forces of light speed while standing up.
I say nothing, but grind my teeth together. It’s not usually my style to hold my tongue, but I have enough common sense to realize that Orlon just risked his ass to save us all, so I’m not going to argue with him.
“Trouble?” Bantokk says, trying to lighten the mood. “That was a bit of sport. I rather enjoyed it. That was good for you, Orlon, getting out and about. Better than lazing on Lekyo Prime eating beefsteaks and drinking wine all day long.”
“Beefsteak is too rich, and indulging in wine is for the weak-spirited,” Orlon replies. What a fun guy he must be. “We might be sharing our planet with the humans, but that does not mean that I partake in their degenerate way of life.”
“Lighten up,” Bantokk says, clapping Orlon on the back. They must be old friends, I think. “That was quite a caper. You should be proud.”
Orlon just grunts again, as if that’s what he thinks about our caper. I tend to agree with Bantokk—that was a good stunt, and we pulled it off. There’s nothing better than planning a scheme and seeing it come off.
“You better tend to the humans,” Orlon says to me. “There’s clothing and plenty of food, but unfortunately there’s not enough water reserves for them to bathe.”
“Yes,” I say, “thank you.”
“Void-damned King Xalax,” I hear Orlon say under his breath as I walk away. “Bonded to a human female and it turns the rest of us into a bunch of human-loving weaklings.”
I quicken my pace so I don’t have to listen anymore. I can hold my tongue if I need to—but not forever.
The women are in a frenzy, and I find one who speaks my language so she can relay the message to the rest of the group. I distribute the food (small, oily protein bars) and clothes and then find somewhere to assess my wounds. My knee is swollen, and I know in the morning it’s going to be stiff and immobile. The pain in my chest has subsided, but if I sneeze it starts it up again.
Time passes in a blur, and I stay with the women, knowing that they need me here to comfort them and that Bantokk is needed to help pilot the ship.
I feel the ship decelerate and know that we must be approaching Crene. My crew will be waiting, the antibiotics loaded up into The Golden Plague, ready to fly.
The job’s done. Bantokk has done what he came to do. I helped him keep Lekyo Prime—and my sister Bryn—safe.
It’s time for me to return to my crew and deliver those antibiotics. After I find out who tried to betray us to the Rulmek, of course. I will suffer no rats on my ship.
And it’s time for Bantokk to return to Lekyo Prime and meet up with the rest of his warriors. What he said in our rented room last night was true. He can’t join the Three-Star Rebels, and I’m not going back to Lekyo Prime. That’s not my home anymore. I’m Captain Lia now, and Captain Lia needs to keep moving, needs to keep working, needs to keep sticking it to the jerks in the universe who exploit others for profit.
He’s right: it was a good caper. Nothing more.
I’ll wave him goodbye in a matter of hours.
Even if I don’t really want to.
BANTOKK
I wasn’t expecting Crene to be so green. Its reputation is shrouded in mystique. It’s the place a convict can go to forget his past and start over… but it’s also the place that a religious sect can relocate if they’re persecuted on their home planet. A live-and-let-live attitude is supposed to permeate this planet. No one asks too many questions. The law and local governments are practically non-existent—but it’s not a hotbed for vice and illegal activities like Irji is.
Still, I didn’t expect the verdant landscape, tall trees with leaves of every shade of green, grass sprouting out of every available crack in the stone or metal, moss gathering on the south side of pretty much everything. Probably that’s why this is a good place to start over; anyone with a sharp blade can make a living as a wood carver.
It’s such a stark contrast from Zalaryx, which is naught but hot red hard-packed dust and jutting rocks, and Lekyo Prime, which is naught but cold brown hard-packed dust and jutting rocks.
From above, the city looks like a bald spot on the head of an otherwise hirsute male, a flattened scrape taken out of the never ending green.
Lia beacons to The Golden Plague and the crew raises the door to the landing bay, letting her glide the small recon ship into the port. My own stealthcraft is parked here, too, right where I left it, though I’m surely going to sweep it for signs of sabotage before I trust it to fly me all the way back to Lekyo Prime. I haven’t forgotten that someone on her crew has been in contact with the Rulmek—not once, but twice—trying to sell us out.
Is this really going to be goodbye?
“We did it,” I say. “I sort of can’t believe it.”
“Tell me about it,” she says. “Just a week ago I was asleep in my bed when some big alien asshole tied me up, threatened me, kidnapped me and pressed me into service sabotaging a Rulmek warship. Talk about not believing it.”
“You make me sound so unreasonable,” I say. “And I don’t remember threatening you.” I grab her hand, and I expect her to pull it away, but she lets me hold it. The warmth between us is bordering on the electric.
My chest is prickling again, and I try to will it away, try to form the nice thick crust over the part of my brain—my heart, my soul—that is reaching out to bond with this female. I know if I look down, I’ll see splotchy, piebald patches of purple spreading on my chest. A signal from the Universe telling me to bond with her, to claim her as my mate. To throw her on the floor, tear off her clothes and bury my hard cock all the way inside her until I release my seed.
Yeah, well, Universe, you know what? You’re not always right.
I realize it’s bordering on insanity to have an imaginary conversation with the Universe inside my own head, but I’m feeling more than a little crazy right now.
We exit the small ship and stand in the docking bay. Even in the relatively sealed-off enclosure, I can feel the planet’s humidity around me like a blanket. It’s constricting, smothering, making it hard to breathe.
Or maybe it’s knowing that it’s time to say goodbye.
Why is this harder than charging into battle? Harder than sneaking on board a Rulmek warship. Harder than anything I’ve ever done before and am liable to do again.
My body is reacting to Lia’s pheromones, the molecular composition of her sweat, the oil on her face and the sweet nectar between her legs. Everything on a cellular level is screaming out to my body, to my brain, to my cock. Screaming that we are one, we are mates, we should be together and to deny it is an affront to the gods and the Void and the fabric of the Universe itself.
