I don’t know what they know, but I’ll have to figure it out from Kara. She couldn’t have been so stupid as to tell total strangers what I was up to.
I pass through the prisoners’ gruel hall, which is full of dozens of humans. They all look up at me curiously, though some of the women look at me with something much more than curiosity. I ignore all of them and move toward the prisoners’ sleeping quarters– to Kara.
Just past the gruel hall is a console. I consider putting my hand on it to find out exactly where Kara is, but if Adus is actually tracking me, this would make it too easy for him. He will find out when I claim Kara, but he doesn’t need to know that I went to see her almost first thing after landing on Darkstar.
Instead, I walk down the hallway and peer through the windows. The windows are all clear, and I can look right in and see human women in each cell. Some scowl at me, others smile and beckon to me, but I ignore them all.
Occasionally I pass a tinted window– which means a Marauder is inside with one of the women.
As I near the end of the hallway, my chest tightens. I still have not seen Kara or Felicia, and there are only a few rooms left.
I reach the last two, and I see Felicia through one clear window, but the last window is tinted.
I unlock Felicia’s door with my hand, and before I can speak, she points behind me.
“Senka just went inside,” she says. “A few minutes ago–”
I spin around, rush toward the tinted window, nearly kicking the door down.
When the door slides open, I see Kara’s back against the wall, fear in her eyes. Senka is close to her. Too close.
Rage fills me. Pure, molten-hot rage that only a Marauder raised on Darkstar can feel.
I growl and grab Senka by the shoulders.
He turns around and flashes a cocky grin at me. He thinks I won’t dare hit him. I notice he’s not wearing his biosuit.
I tighten my fist and slam it into his nose.
I feel a thunderous crack on my knuckle, and when I pull it away it’s covered in blood. Senka’s eyes roll back into his head, and he drops to the ground in a heap. He twitches violently for a second or two, then stops, dead.
“Kara,” I say, putting my unbloodied hand on her. “Are you--?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “He didn’t...you came in time,” she says.
Her eyes are wide, and they look at me only briefly, then they look down past me, wide and terrified.
“He’s...he’s…,” she points down.
I look at Senka, and realize he’s not breathing. His face is a bloody mess, and his nose looks like a bag of loose skin.
“Dead,” I say. “I slammed his cartilage into his brain.”
“You killed him?” Kara asks. “Why–?”
“I saw he wasn’t wearing a biosuit” I say, “so I killed him. This is how Marauders fight.”
“Kain,” Kara says, putting her hands on my arm and squeezing. “I don’t care about Senka...but won’t this….” She looks at the door, which is already shut behind us. Felicia is locked back in her room, but our window is tinted now.
“Blow my cover?” I ask. “No. This is Darkstar.”
“What does that even mean?” Kara says, face scrunching up in frustration.
“Senka knew I wanted to claim you, and he overstepped. This is what he gets,” I say, pointing down at his corpse.
“So punching his nose into his brain is just some casual thing for you?” Kara asks, letting go of me and crossing her arms. “It’s who you are?”
“I was protecting you,” I say.
She takes in a deep breath, holds it, and then sighs, shaking her head. Her eyes are tearing up. “I don’t want to be here, Kain.”
“And I’ll get you out,” I say. “But you need to keep tight lips about that.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“I passed by three men,” I say. “They seemed to know–”
“That was Felicia,” Kara says. “Blame her. But those three want out, and I’ve already started figuring it out. We are on mining duty with those three, and the rocks are several kilometers away from base. This is the best time to come and rescue us, so we’d need those three on board anyway.”
Kara looks down at the body again. “Can you….”
I open the door and drag Senka’s body out into the hallway.
Felicia looks through her window with wide eyes, and she starts pounding on her door.
I open her door and she shouts, “Is it time–?”
I cover her mouth with my hand and push her into her room. I hear Kara coming in behind me. “Quiet, Felicia,” I hiss.
I take my hand off her mouth, and she starts ranting excitedly. I cover her mouth again.
“Make her be quiet!” I whisper to Kara.
Kara gives Felicia a look, and I feel her body relax. She looks up at me. I take my hand off, and she’s quiet at last.
“You cannot tell anyone else,” I say.
“I thought it was already time,” Felicia says, pointing down at Senka. “Otherwise, why did you kill him?”
“I need to build a certain reputation,” I say.
Kara scoffs. “And what reputation is that?”
“Someone that you do not fuck with,” I say. “A Marauder.”
“Well,” Kara says, “I certainly won’t fuck with you. Not today. So can you please get the dead alien out of our cells?”
I growl at her, and grab Senka’s leg. I drag him through the hall, like the piece of garbage he was.
When I reach the gruel hall, I whip him across the floor and slide him up to some of the male prisoners’ feet.
They stop eating and stare at me with terrified expressions.
“Bury him,” I say.
Now everyone stares at me. No one is eating anymore.
“I hope everyone is listening to me,” I say.
I point down at Senka’s body. “I hope everyone sees this.”
They stare stupidly at me, as if asking me how they could not see?
“This Marauder tried to force himself onto one of the female prisoners. This is not our way. Some of you prisoners may be new, you may fear for your lives. We may kill you, and we will force you to work, but no one should force themselves onto you. The penalty for this is death, and I will be the executioner. Do you understand?”
No one even dares nod at me. I see dozens of shocked and stunned men and women, and they are hanging on my every word.
“And one more thing,” I say. “I claim Kara. She’s mine.”
I see some of the women look away. They think I’ve contradicted myself.
“No one can claim you if you don’t want to be claimed,” I shout. “It’s your choice!”
In the back of the room, I spot Raius. He’s trying to conceal a smirk, but failing. Either he’s happy that Senka is dead, or he’s happy that I specifically was the one who killed him.
I ball up my fists, digging my nails into my palms. Killing Senka did not relieve my anger, it just made it burn hotter. I was supposed to be with Kara now, but because of this piece of shit, she doesn’t want to see me. As if we have unlimited time– as if I’m not trying to juggle two missions at once– three if you count training the Seraphim.
And now another asshole– Raius– is standing in my way. He’s standing in front of the only way out of the prisoners’ quarters.
I walk through the gruel hall with my back straight, and I try to swallow my anger. I don’t want to kill Raius, too.
“Kain,” he says, once I’m near him.
I shove past him, ignoring him entirely.
Before the door shuts behind me, I hear his footsteps pattering behind me. I continue to ignore him.
“I’ve been assigned to assist you in training the Seraphim.”
“Tell Adus I don’t need your help.”
Teal tendrils snap across my field of view, they interlink from both sides, and thicken until they form a thick teal shield in front of
me. Raius’s biosuit.
Is he going to kill me? I won’t be able to fight him this close unarmed, but I’ll die trying.
I turn around and glare at him, twitching my ears in anticipation.
“You don’t know how to use a biosuit,” Raius says. “And I do.”
Oh, he’s not going to kill me? I misread the situation– or perhaps he will wait to kill me.
“So you’ll train the Seraphim to use the biosuit. I’ll train them in everything else. I’ll take mornings, you take evenings.”
“There are no mornings or evenings on Darkstar,” Raius says. “Or have you been gone too long?”
“You know what I mean,” I say. “It’s just an expression.”
“A human one,” Raius says.
“Seraphim, too,” I say. “We’ll be training Seraphim.”
It’s a weak save, but the best I can think of.
“We’re training them to be Marauders,” Raius says, narrowing his eyes.
“I train them at waking hours,” I say, my anger bubbling up to a breaking point. “You train them after last meal.”
“No,” Raius says. “This isn’t what Adus wants.”
The teal shield slams into my back, but before it can knock me over, it wraps itself entirely around me. It blocks out all light and sensation of movement. Maybe I did fall over, but I can’t feel the inertia or the sudden impact against the floor.
I feel the teal film press into the top of my skull, and then it presses harder into a spot a few centimeters away. It feels like it’s searching for something– probing me.
It presses into a few more spots, and then it settles in one location just above my forehead. It steadily increases the pressure, until it feels like the worst migraine I’ve ever had– thankfully the shield has blocked out all light.
There’s no fighting. When I try to move, I feel my muscles attempt to flex, but there’s not even enough give for that. I don’t move a single micrometer despite exerting my full strength.
The pressure on my skull reaches a breaking point, and then I feel it turn from a blunt oppression into a sharpness. A tendril. It jams through my skull– a horrendous feeling, surgery with no anesthetic– and I feel it...melting into my brain.
It’s a cold pulsing flaring through my nerves. I know it’s just in my brain, but I can feel it everywhere.
I start to see flashes of light, but it’s nothing that I see, it’s just the tendril entering my visual cortex.
It worms its way all through my brain, but I’m still conscious the entire time– one thought from Raius and I’ll die instantly, and I won’t even know it happens. Kara will be left totally alone.
When the lights from within my brain die down, I see Raius again. The teal film is gone, but the lights in the hallway are all too bright. He’s just a blurry purple shape. My eyes soon adapt, and I realize I’m standing up still.
Everything snaps into clear focus, and all the pain melts away. I feel...perfectly normal.
“What the fuck did you do?” I hiss at him.
I raise my hand to grab him, but a teal tendril blasts out of my chest and grabs him for me. I can feel it around his neck, almost as if it were my own hand. I look down and see that I’m covered in the teal armor...the biosuit.
I let go of my anger, and the tendril drops Raius, then pulls and melts back into my body.
“See,” Raius says, coughing. “Adus wants me to teach you to use the biosuit.”
13 Kara
“This really is hell,” I mutter into my gruel.
Felicia frowns at me.
“The food is what sterilizes us, you know?” I say. “As long as we’re eating this, we’re sterile.”
“Did you want to have a kid here?” Felicia says.
“That’s not the point! It’s inhumane!”
“They aren’t human, Kara.”
“And that fucking asshole. Kain. He was supposed to be better than them, but one little setback and he goes full-on berserk monster.”
“One little thing,” Felicia says. “Senka was going to rape you–”
I feel tears fill my eyes, and I shove the tray of gruel away.
“He was protecting you, Kara,” Felicia says. “What happened to your optimism?”
Felicia and I are sitting alone. The men from our mining team ate earlier than us– they put us on staggered shifts– and everyone has already heard that the brutal murderer brother of the High Commander claimed me. No one wants to risk so much as looking at me.
“When Senka’s body hit the floor,” I say, “I lost a lot of my optimism. Kain acted like it wasn’t even there, like he could just have a regular conversation with a fucking corpse on the ground.”
My legs feel like rubber, and my back is flaring with pain.
“And this fucking gravity,” I hiss. I reach for the dial on my exosuit, but Felicia grabs my wrist.
“Kara,” she whispers. “Come on. We need to get rid of these things. This all has at least made you realize the urgency of getting off this hellhole. So you don’t like Kain...whatever. He’s just a tool for us to get off here. You don’t have to marry him.”
I wipe my tears away and look up at my sister. Is that what’s really upsetting me? I saw some semblance of a future after this nightmare, and– I realize now– it had Kain. Now, even if we escape, I struggle to see him there...and that emptiness hurts.
“I thought he was better than that,” I mutter, putting my hand on Felicia’s.
“We don’t know yet what things are like here,” Felicia says.
“I think we have a pretty good idea, though,” I say, shaking my head.
“So how would you describe it?” she asks.
“Cold, dark, brutal...merciless.”
Felicia nods. “And so to survive this place– to pretend you belong here– how would you have to act?”
“God,” I say, shoving Felicia off me. “You’re just trying to defend him. Why don’t you marry him? You can have a nice big wedding, and when one of the bridesmaid’s boyfriend’s smiles at you, Kain can rip his head off.”
“I think you just need some rest,” Felicia says.
“Yeah,” she says, “so we can fill up three more wagons with big stupid fucking rocks.”
I do feel a bit better after I sleep, though I wake up in the middle of the night from aching pains. All of my muscles have that feeling you get two days after going to the gym on New Year’s Day. But this time, I don’t get to wait a year before I work out again– or even a weekend. There are no weekends. Every day is rock hauling day. Every single day until I escape or die.
But I do feel better. About Kain at least. What was he supposed to do? Slap Senka on the wrist? Tattle on him? This is Darkstar, not kindergarten. If he had done anything less than what he did...what was to stop Senka from just coming right back a day– a week– a month later, and doing what he wanted to do to me? With the position Kain was in, was there any other real solution or way to save me?
Is it fair of me to blame Kain for how awful Darkstar is? He’s the one who abandoned it, who turned against it. It would be easy for him to be just as bad as Senka...but he’s not.
There’s a knock at the door, and I jolt upright, which sends my muscles into spasms, and I fall right back down.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “I need to remember the gravity….”
Another knock.
“Come in!” I shout.
As if I have any real choice. Anyone who is outside of the cell can open the door as they please. Knocking is only ever a formality.
The door slides open, and Kain’s muscular frame fills the doorway. He’s covered in a skin-tight teal armor. It’s skin-tight everywhere except for his cock. A way-too-big crotch plate is there instead...or maybe it really does need to be that big.
“You…,” I say, looking him up and down. “You got a biosuit.”
He nods.
“So we can–”
He holds one finger up to his lips, and I stop speak
ing. He shuts the door behind him, but still stands stiff as he looks down at me.
I slowly sit up this time, and I brace my back against the wall while sitting on the bed.
“Is the exosuit not working?” he asks.
“It is,” I say, “but the miners showed me how to adjust it. I have it set to barely help...so I can get rid of the exosuit sooner.”
Kain nods. “I see. I was hoping to hack into the killswitch for those...but if you can lose them entirely it would be easier. It must hurt.”
He sits down on the bed beside me.
“Did I say you could sit on the bed?” I say.
He goes to stand back up, but I grab his wrist. “No, stay.”
He sits down, but doesn’t loosen up.
“Where does it hurt?” he asks.
“My back, mostly.”
“Moving in higher gravity puts a lot of strain on the core. The back and stomach mostly. Those muscles have to work extra hard to keep everything from toppling. And if the muscles aren’t strong enough, the spinal nerves can get pinched.”
He’s close to me. Right beside me. On my bed.
“I can’t keep relying on the suit,” I say. “We need to be able to act on any escape window...it’s one more variable we have to eliminate.”
“I agree,” Kain says.
“I just hope I can stand up tomorrow. Back to the grind.”
“I can get you out of it,” Kain says.
“Felicia, too?” I ask, eyes widening.
He shakes his head.
“Then I’m working, too,” I say. “Even if I can barely walk.”
“Felicia would understand,” Kain says.
“Maybe, but I need to spend more time with these three miners. I think they could really help us. They’ve been here longer, and Darkstar has made them strong.”
“Fine,” Kain says. “But at least let me do something for your back pain.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What can you do?”
“Darkstar training requires that we can kill a human with absolutely minimal pressure. We have to know how every muscle and bone fits together, so we can break and tear them apart. Dying to a human in battle would shame debt your entire family–”
“So you’re going to break and tear my back apart?” I ask, laughing.
Marauder Kain: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars Book 5) Page 7
