by Alison Aimes
Incineration?
A few of the prisoners surged forward.
“Freeze,” it was the same deep, commanding voice from before, “or die.”
“What by the storms of Janus is this place?” A stocky prisoner with the word Death tattooed between his shoulder blades shoved to his feet, panic lacing his voice.
Before she could blink, the faceless warrior grabbed the tattooed man, lifted him as if he weighed nothing, and slammed him back onto his knees. “Hell.”
The mocking pronouncement rang terrifyingly true.
3
“I ask the questions.” Valdus shoved the new arrival aside, his grip contracting around his ax. Familiar aggression flooding his veins as the call to kill or be killed urged him to just start swinging. To plow through as many as he could before they became a threat. Half would be dead within the next five metrals anyway. The rest? Gone within two lunar rotations. Only a rare few lasted longer than that down here.
“Any Resistance fighters?” He was likely wasting his breath, but it had to be done, especially while the shock of transport made the new arrivals more compliant.
“Familiarity with drones, Council technology, trackers?”
No answer.
No surprise. There weren’t many desirables on Dragath25. Fewer still with any skill besides raping and killing.
“Knowledge of weaponry making? Medicines and healing?” He plowed through the rows of kneeling figures, the stink of fear stinging his lungs, the chaos of crowded bodies making it difficult to get a handle on just how many Hollisworth and his guards had snatched from the surface this time.
“Four metrals and thirty nanosegments until incineration,” announced the Tribunal bot, its indifferent automated voice as annoying as ever.
“Another handful of useless chum.” He signaled to his second, Ryker. “Time to move out.” They’d entered the neutral zone for nothing. Wasted their short rest period for nothing.
He blinked away a wave of tiredness. After coming off a full shift, he was more than ready to grab some chow and some sleep—before the tracker in his blood forced him back to the mines again.
Some of his teammates were just starting their work rotation now.
Luck wouldn’t help them, but he sent it anyway.
“What about us?” The fool with Death branded on his back spoke up again.
“What about you?” He shoved past, confident his crew would alert him to any danger—and that he’d take care of it swiftly.
He wasn’t one for mercy.
Truthfully, he wasn’t one for much of anything anymore. Pleasure. Pain. Principles. They’d become useless distractions long ago.
All that mattered was keeping his remaining team alive so they’d be ready for escape when the time came.
He’d lost too many already.
“What’s beyond the doors?” This panicked whine came from a wide-shouldered guy with a soldier’s buzz cut near the front of the crowd. Blood ran from a gash over his eye and he’d clearly taken a few hits, but he still looked shinier than most of the other prisoners. Like he hadn’t been topside very long before he got sucked down here.
Too bad for him. The surface was paradise compared to below.
“The welcome committee.” His second-in-command, Ryker, always an inappropriate asshole, spoke before Valdus could, the long, thin scar snaking down his rib rippling as he moved. “Shuttle cruise director should be here any metral. Shuffle board and—”
“Joke later. Exit now.” Valdus shifted toward the soldier. “There’s no staying here. The bot isn’t lying. This transport hold will incinerate everything inside in exactly four metrals. But what’s waiting out there,” he shrugged, “isn’t pretty, either.”
“There’s…there’s been a mistake.” The soldier’s voice was a near shriek, his head whipping back and forth as he surveyed the other prisoners. “I’m not like them. I don’t belong down here. I…I was sent to this planet on a Council mission. I demand to see whoever’s in charge.”
Ryker’s twisted laugh echoed through the chamber. “Good luck. We’ve been demanding the same thing for two years.”
Valdus was in no mood. He had no love for Council lackeys, but a soldier was a soldier. “We’re inmates. Just like you.” Rumbles of surprise greeted his admission, but he no longer cared about keeping the new arrivals compliant. Shifting his ax, he yanked down the thick band around his bicep, the bold black prison numbers 591 stark against his skin. “We’re out to survive, just like you. One step away from dying, just like you.”
It was perhaps the one mercy he had left to give. Letting the new arrivals know they were on their own.
“Stay to your right,” he dropped his voice so only the soldier could hear, “and come out swinging. It isn’t much, but it’s your only shot.” He raised his hand to give his remaining men the signal to depart.
“Wait.” The soft, higher tones of a woman—something he hadn’t heard in a long time—sliced through the stifling heat. “My crewmate is telling the truth. We’re part of a humanitarian scientific mission. A crash stranded us topside. Our crew is looking for us. We could be of value. I…I know something about trackers. Take us with you. Please.”
He was spinning round, pickax raised, before she finished.
4
“Can’t be.” The knuckles of the faceless brute went sheet white against the handle of his ax. “Cannot fucking be!”
Startled, Ava stumbled back, smacking into the wall. Her fingers convulsed around the shaft of her spear.
She’d made a mistake.
She’d debated whether to speak out, especially after Pratt’s futile exchange, but then Yellow Eyes had stirred, his hungry glare fixed on her, and she’d lurched to her feet, her gaze locked on the glowing silver blade latched to the beast’s harness. Thinking maybe her fate would be the same either way, but she couldn’t do nothing. She’d done that for too long in the past.
Now, she wished she’d stayed silent.
“No one touches her!” Weapon raised high, the giant brute charged toward her.
But it was too late.
Grasping hands clamped round her calf, toppling her to the floor.
“I saw her first.” Yellow Eyes landed on top of her, stealing her breath.
“Mine.” Another prisoner seized her arm, dragging her toward him.
Others joined the chaos, piling on top, snarling, growling, yanking, their wild punches landing everywhere.
She tried to raise her spear, but there were too many.
Cruel hands tore at her uniform, her hair, her skin. Someone flipped her onto her stomach. A knee slammed into her back. Agony ricocheted down her spine. Vicious hands wrenched her thighs apart. Her spear was knocked from her grasp.
She was going to die. Horribly. Just as her husband had promised.
“No!” It was a shout from above.
The heavy weight atop her lifted. Grasping hands disappeared from her skin.
Shaking, she sucked down a breath and used the last of her strength to flip over.
Chest heaving, the faceless giant with the body of a chiseled God loomed above. To his right and left, bodies lay in piles.
The beast had saved her.
Around them, pockets of fierce fighting continued, but she couldn’t look anywhere but up.
Her rescuer stood with his legs planted wide apart, his breath sawing in and out, his astonishing stomach muscles shifting and flexing with every rough breath. Veins bulged at his thick forearms as he gripped the handle of his ax tight. His silver blade clanking against the other weapons as his chest rose and fell.
A bead of rust-colored sweat tracked the length of his body before disappearing beneath the waistband of his tattered loincloth.
Her tongue flicked out to wet suddenly parched lips.
For once in her life, she’d chosen correctly. She’d refused to allow fear to win and been rewarded.
Hope whispered through her that perhaps this creature was like Bell
a’s 673. That beneath the savage streaks of dirt and scars beat the heart of a man. Maybe, like Bella’s protector, this giant would keep her alive and safe. Maybe he’d lead her to the place where he’d found the ore to make his blade and she’d finally be one step closer to freedom.
Ignoring the sting of a hundred scrapes, she held out a trembling hand. “Thank you.” She cleared a throat gone tight with relief. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
He didn’t take her hand.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He flipped up his face mask.
“Hunter Valdus.” Her words were little more than a whimper. Council press had declared the notorious Resistance fighter dead long ago.
“Council bride and breeder Ayanna Talis.” Familiar brilliant blue eyes surrounded by long dark lashes stared down at her.
Eyes bright with hate.
Eyes that knew her from a time in her life she never wanted to revisit again.
“It’s been a while since my trial, but I believe you never missed a rotation of the whole spectacle.” He sheathed his pickax with astonishing speed, leaving his deadly hands free. Hands that had been used more than once to destroy anything Council related, his animosity toward her kind well known. His hatred for her husband even more so. “What a nice surprise to find you slumming it down here with us, the dirty, unwashed, non-Council Condemned.” He took another step forward. “Let me be the first to welcome you, Dragath25-style.”
The last of her hope disappeared.
This man had saved her. But only so he could hurt her himself.
5
Ava leapt to her feet. There was no time for pain. Or regret. No time even for a throb of satisfaction over the widening of her enemy’s eyes as she caught him unaware. Instead, she simply dodged his hands and spun. Doing what she did best, fleeing.
“I don’t think so.” Powerful hands closed round her waist. “We have unfinished business, breeder.”
No! She wasn’t that person anymore.
He yanked backward.
She slammed into warm steel. So hard her teeth rattled in her skull. The scent of burnt ash, oak, and man enveloped her. Too close. Too big.
A calloused hand wrapped round her windpipe. “We don’t get too many Council citizens down here. They usually have the coin or ore to wipe away their indiscretions. But you make a nice exception.”
Her heart stuttered. He was a thousand times stronger. A criminal and a killer who reveled in destruction and pain while she’d been raised to cower and serve.
No! She was no little mouse, any more. “Your grudge is with Hollisworth, not me.”
The hand round her throat tightened. “My grudge is with all Council parasites.”
She’d always harbored a secret sympathy for non-Council demands for fairer access to food and water, but killers like this man were almost as bad as Hollisworth.
She rammed her elbow into his stomach. Pain radiated up her arm. The behemoth didn’t even grunt.
“I’d lose that sudden spine or you’ll regret it.” His rumbled threat was a warm whisper against her ear.
“Valdus, look out.” The warning came from the terrifying man with the scar snaking down his ribs. He was slugging it out with two prisoners, his ax whipping back and forth. “Three at your back.”
The firm grip around her waist disappeared.
“Stay there.” The beast pinned her with a hard look before giving her his back, moving so fast his fist was a blur as it connected with one attacker’s jaw. His facemask, now latched to his side, swung wildly as he moved.
She didn’t stick around to see what happened next.
Jumping back, she sprinted for the exit, hurtling over prone bodies, past grasping hands, ignoring the throb of her ankle, an injury still healing from the crash. Just in front, she could see other prisoners disappearing through the open transport hold. Pratt was nowhere to be found.
Her new plan was simple: find a place to hide.
Easy. Clear. Desperate.
Adrenaline surged as she crossed the threshold—only to skitter to an abrupt stop.
An anguished rush of breath singed her lungs, the air outside the transport hold as hot as a laser strike. But what she saw was even more searing.
She’d run headlong into an ambush.
“Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”
Knees weak, her gaze jerked wildly from one horrifying mini-scene to the next, her mind barely able to process what it was seeing.
Just ahead, illuminated by flickering greenish lights, shrieking creatures caked in red dust grabbed the fleeing prisoners, knocking them to the ground with fists or crimson-soaked shovels and pickaxes.
Beyond that, bodies littered the narrow cavern of unending blood-colored rock while other attackers crowded around the dazed, downed men, forcing them onto their hands and knees, lining up behind their spread legs.
Pained grunts, pleas for mercy, rang through the air.
She gagged, her body folding in on itself.
She’d thought she’d understood what hell was. This was worse.
“It’s an actual female. Get her.”
Her head snapped up, the gleam of metal catching her attention. It was a shovel. Headed straight for her temple.
“No!” A speeding boulder plowed into her. The beast. She plummeted with him, air from the whoosh of the shovel brushing her cheek, the ground coming up fast.
She threw her palms outward, bracing for a painful hit. Only to have the world tilt as her body twisted in midair. She landed with a grunt on top of unforgiving warm steel.
He’d taken the brunt of the fall.
Her gaze clashed with ice blue eyes so close she could see the splashes of silver within. But unlike the soft, malleable material she’d worked with in the lab, these flecks were hard and cold as ice. “When I tell you to stay, you stay.”
Her lip curled upward, her refusal on the tip of her tongue.
She never got to utter it.
Instead, he tossed her to the side as if she weighed nothing and leapt to his feet, snarling at the men closing in. “Touch her and you die. She belongs to me.”
His ax flashed, a menacing arc of metal.
It would have been heroic as hell—if she didn’t know he fought only to dole out the pain himself.
She wasn’t surprised to see the other attackers scamper back, their palms coming up in a gesture of submission, their gazes flickering to the ground.
Apparently, even in their bloodlust daze, they still recognized a bigger threat.
So did she.
Shoving off the ground, she darted round his big body, her gaze locked on the bend. There had to be a nook there. Some kind of small crevice where she could hide.
She wasn’t nearly fast enough.
“There’s no escape from me.” A hand clamped round her waist and then she was twisting in midair, a grunt escaping as her stomach connected with unforgiving muscle.
The beast had tossed her over his shoulder.
A shrill whistle rent the air. Followed by two shorter blasts. Some kind of signal.
He was on the move.
She scrambled to find purchase as they dashed down the tunnel, digging her hands into the slick ridges of his back, and caught a glimpse of the rabid animals who’d attacked her already launching themselves at someone new.
She could only pray it wasn’t Pratt.
Her stomach heaved. Just as her hand scraped the rough edge of a weapon.
In her fright, she’d forgotten. Her captor had a veritable arsenal strapped to his back.
Panting hard, she seized hold of a nearby handle and tugged. The damn thing wouldn’t give. Her effort only earning her splinters.
Until a sharp sting at her backside had her sucking down a silent gasp.
“Be glad it won’t come out,” he growled. “Your kind only gets one chance to stab me in the back. Try it now and you won’t like the consequences.”
His threat shimmered between them.
But it wasn’t the first
she’d heard.
She curled her hands into a single fist and aimed for a kidney—only her hands stalled in midair. A strange metallic humming noise sent her gaze shooting upward.
Hovering only a few paces behind was a silver elliptical machine, the size of those antique dinner plates from old Earth. Red and green lights flashed furiously from its underside.
The drone looked decidedly unfriendly. And oddly modern in these surroundings. Its sleek, streamlined design a shocking contrast to the crumbling, crude state of everything else down here.
Her skin prickled with dread.
In the next heartbeat, a shrill beep sounded and a green light shot from its underside, slicing the shoulder of an attacker near the transport hold.
She gasped. The man screamed, his palm slapping over the wound as he collapsed to the ground and went still. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air. Shrieking, those around him scattered.
“Is it protecting us?” Her voice shook as her head bobbed up and down.
The beast’s grip around her legs tightened. “Nothing can protect you from me.”
She fought another wave of panic. Shoved aside a tangle of hair. “What does it do?”
“Never been on the receiving end of your kind’s little tools?” He sprinted faster.
She had, but her husband had preferred those with a more personal touch.
She fought a shudder.
“Electronic guard,” he said at last. “If you’re hoping for rescue, it won’t come from there.” He dodged another mass of writhing men and kept running, his breathing not even labored. “It’s linked to the tracker and programmed to deter frenzies by shooting anything in the vicinity with an elevated heart rate and rising heat level. It won’t kill, but it will leave a nasty scar.”
Elevated heart rate? Hers had to be off the charts.
“It’s…it’s coming toward us.” She twisted in his grasp. Change of plans—she’d run from both the electronic guard and this man. “I’m weighing you down. Let me go.”
