by Pearl Foxx
“Take them to the cells,” he commanded. “No one is to touch them until Kaveh gives his decree on the matter. That’s an order.”
3
Vera
Still chained to the other women, Vera stumbled through the rough-hewn rock corridors, with a dismal glow cast by a light that seemed to wiggle through tiny holes in the ceiling. The aliens from the ship rushed them, pushing at their backs when they slowed too much, forcing them to scramble through descending corridors and spiraling stairways of the sprawling mountain.
It had been too dark for Vera to see much once the ship had landed and they’d disembarked. Especially when she’d seen the alien with kind eyes and a too-straight spine and hadn’t been able to look away from him. But she’d seen enough to know they’d landed on a massive mountain, and now they were inside it. By the time they’d wound down to the lowest level of the mountain, Vera had lost all sense of direction. The aliens stopped them in a narrow corridor filled with heavy wooden doors.
“In.” A young guard barely old enough to have hair on his cheeks shoved the women one after another into one of the dark, windowless cells.
The pale light from the corridor barely reached into the cell, and the scent of dirt and mildew hung thick in the air. Vera bumped up against one of the other women in the dark as she attempted to see her surroundings. A metallic ping drew her attention to the floor. Something glinted as it bounced across the cold stone, landing a few inches from her booted foot. A key. With that, the guard slammed the wooden door closed.
None of the women moved.
“For fuck’s sake,” Vera muttered. Grunting against the pain in her bitten shoulder, she knelt down to retrieve the key. She unlocked her shackles while the guard’s footsteps faded into the distance.
Still none of the other women moved.
Through the fear and pain, anger welled tight in Vera’s gut. She wasn’t used to being around women. She had no clue what to say or do to get them to move. To do something. But getting angry and yelling would only scare them worse. She took a deep breath as she rose from the ground, rubbing her chafed wrists.
“Anyone else care to be free?” she asked into the dim cell.
No one responded. She glanced around at the shadowed faces. Some were shivering so hard their teeth chattered. Others didn’t move at all. Most stared, unblinking, at the floor.
“Listen,” Vera said, fighting for calm in the storm of her own fear and anger. “I know you’re all scared. I’m scared too. But we have to work together if we want to get out of here. We have to move and talk to one another.”
“Why bother?” A woman’s voice in the back corner rasped with unshed tears. “We’re all going to be slaves or prostitutes. We might as well keep the chains on.”
“You’re giving up that easily?” Now that Vera’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she could make out the shapes of the women around her and see their watery eyes staring up at her. “What would Commander Gideon think of a station crew with such little initiative? We were chosen for space station duty because we showed potential. We showed strength. If we act like merchandise, they’ll treat us like merchandise. Let’s put our heads together and find a way out of this. What do we know about our captors?”
“They’re scary,” said a curvy woman standing slightly behind Vera.
Vera grimaced as her shoulder pulsed in pain. These aliens were terrifying, but she didn’t let that come through in her voice. “What else?”
“They look like humans, and they can change into wolves,” said another woman near the door.
“They have ships?” Another voice trembled.
“Good. So we have a way home,” Vera said.
Niva spoke up from the corner of the cell. “They speak the universal language without accents, so it must be their first language.”
“Very good!” Vera nodded. “And the two who met us when we landed seemed more reasonable than Savas and his men. They might be our way out of here.” Especially the one with kind eyes. He might have been the one with the authority to imprison them, but he’d hated doing it. It meant there was some sympathy to be had.
“What if we can’t reason with them?”
“Then we steal a ship and fly it home.” Vera knew it would never be that simple or easy, but she bolstered her voice with confidence.
“We came through a wormhole,” a hopeless voice from the back said. “We’re probably light years away from home.”
“Maybe not,” Vera soothed before the tension could rise among the women. “We didn’t travel that long. The wormhole nexus had to be close to Saturn.”
Some of the women murmured in agreement, and slowly, as if they had to peel their souls off the floor to move, the women shuffled along the uneven stone floor to be unlocked. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
A slight woman with strawberry blonde hair and paler skin than Vera’s was the last in line to be unlocked. In front of Vera, she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “I was in the Falconer Elite pre-training program. I got tossed for low muscle mass, but I flew just fine. If it’s got wings and an engine, I can get it to fly.”
“That’s excellent!” Vera forced a bright smile. “What’s your name?”
“Rebeka.”
“Nice to meet you, Rebeka. I’m Vera.”
The woman who had spit in the face of one of Savas’s crew members picked up several pairs of cuffs and tossed them in the corner. “I was in maintenance, mostly station systems like water purification and exhaust, but I would pull extra shifts in life support when I could land them for the overtime credits.”
“Fantastic! What’s your name?”
“Isma.” The woman bit her lip. “I have a daughter back on the station. I’ll do anything to return to her. I don’t care about the stakes. We have to get home.”
A few of the other women spoke up with their positions. Their voices grew stronger as they parried about their abilities and strengths, just as Vera had hoped.
“And I’m an engineer.” Vera spread her hands, encompassing the group. “See? We already have a skeleton crew. We can fly out of here on our own.”
“What if we can’t steal a ship?” another woman asked, her voice trembling.
“Then we run.” Vera didn’t want to think about that option, not on an unknown planet, but she’d be damned if she’d let these kidnappers use her like chattel. She kicked a pair of discarded cuffs, sending them clanging against the stone floor. “We all took survival training before boarding the space station. If we can’t get home, that doesn’t mean we have to live as property to be owned.”
They worked on a plan, huddled on the cold ground in a shoulder-touching circle, until one by one, they each nodded off. Vera’s voice was hoarse from whispering when she finally sat back against the wall, careful not to disturb Niva, who’d fallen asleep against Vera’s side.
Tomorrow, Vera promised herself. Tomorrow, she would get these women off this forsaken planet.
“Take five,” a male voice growled from outside the cell door.
Vera woke from her restless sleep with a start. Her blood cooled with dread as she recognized Drausus’s voice.
“But Rayner said—” the young guard posted outside their door started.
“Does it look like I give a fuck what that useless Beta said?”
Easing away from Niva, Vera rose as the cell door swung open with a screech of metal. The other women gasped and scrambled toward the back wall, half asleep and cowering against each other. Drausus stepped inside with his arms crossed over his chest. He cocked a brow at Vera.
“Leave us alone,” she snapped.
His body blocked the meager light from the corridor, his face cast in shadow, but his eyes reflected a predatory glow. “You are a fiery thing, aren’t you? Someone is going to have a grand time breaking that spirit of yours. Maybe one of Clan Katu.”
“Let them try,” Vera bluffed, even though she had no idea who or what the Clan Katu was.
&
nbsp; The big alien backhanded her so hard she fell to the ground. Blood pooled in her mouth, and stars rioted through her vision. Startled whimpers filled the air, and then someone screamed. She sat up to see Drausus looming over Niva, who was huddled in a back corner. His grinning lips exposed sharp canines.
“No!” Vera shouted. Her split lip dripped blood. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the room spun and she fell back. Her palms scraped painfully on the jagged floor.
Drausus jerked Niva to her feet by the front of her shirt. The sound of ripping fabric filled the room. He ran a caressing hand down the girl’s tear-streaked face before wrapping his fingers around her throat. “We weren’t quite done getting to know each other, were we?”
Niva screamed again, flailing against her captor uselessly.
“Don’t let him leave!” Vera shouted at the other women, pawing at the floor in another attempt to rise. If enough women could get between Drausus and the door, they could take him down. Nearly twenty women against one man.
But the women shrank back as the alien hauled Niva into the corridor. With one last sneer at Vera, he slammed the cell door shut. Through the pounding thuds in her head, she listened to Niva’s screams fade away.
As the silence grew, so did the horrible wrenching sensation in Vera’s gut.
She scooted to sit against the cool stone wall. She wanted to close her eyes, close them and fade into the blackness that quivered around the edges of her vision, but she forced herself to keep them open. Drausus had Niva to do with as he pleased, and Vera needed to figure out how to fight back. For Niva, she wouldn’t sit here and cry.
But the ache in her head grew with each breath. Her shoulder thrummed, and keeping her eyes open got harder and harder.
Around her, the women paced or stared out of the door’s barred window or talked with one another. They’d been in the cell for hours; it had to be nearly dawn by now. Vera wasn’t sure how much time had passed when heavy footsteps once again approached the cell.
The bastard was coming back. The women dropped into terrified silence.
Vera lurched unsteadily to her feet, keeping her back against the wall. “What did you do?” she shouted. “What did you do to her?”
Instead of Drausus, the pushy young guard who had first locked them in their cage reappeared. He unlocked the cell door and examined each woman until he recognized Vera. For a moment, she worried he was about to pounce on her like Drausus had pounced on Niva. But he didn’t approach. With a sharp gesture of his head, he beckoned her out of the cell.
“Exactly where am I going?” She crossed her arms, refusing to budge.
He grunted and in two steps had grabbed her arm. He hauled her out of the tiny room before slamming the door shut again.
Adrenaline burned through Vera’s bloodstream. She tried to pull free, but between her head injury and her healing bite wound, she had no real strength. Deciding to save her strength for a better opportunity, she allowed herself to be led. Wherever she was being taken, she would no doubt learn more about where they were and the people who had taken them.
Last night, it had been too dark for Vera to discern much about the rocky corridors they’d walked down, but now light slipped through the space, revealing doors and other corridors branching off at certain points. As they climbed away from the subterranean cells, the air in the halls grew warmer, and she began to hear other noises too, like rushing water, scuffling feet, and muted voices.
“Are we still inside the mountain?”
The guard ignored her and dragged her along behind him. Vera imagined he would have been happier if she’d been leashed and collared like an animal he could jerk around.
They rounded a corner, and the voices grew louder. A group of scantily clad women approached them. They carried bundles of laundry in their bare arms, their chests barely contained by the scraps of neutrally dyed fabric. Vera tried to make eye contact, but they all ignored her, their gazes locked on the ground at their feet as they walked by.
“Wait!” Vera said, grabbing the nearest woman’s arm before she could pass. “Help! I’m a hostage from the Zynthar—”
The woman recoiled and hissed, her teeth stretching into long canines. As Drausus’s skin had, the woman’s skin rippled as she glared. Vera’s words dried up in her throat as the women hurried past. The guard chuckled before tugging Vera forward again.
Vera glanced back at the women’s backs. But they weren’t women. They were aliens too. Vera shuddered. They all looked so human. What kind of planet was this?
Her stomach heaved with fear for Niva. What was happening to the young girl? Vera prayed someone had stopped Drausus, had caught him before things had gone too far.
After a handful of twists and turns through various-sized corridors, the space opened up into a vast cavern. Vera stumbled to a stop, her mouth gaping wide.
The guard hissed in frustration, but she couldn’t move.
They were certainly still inside the mountain, but it was hollowed out, with giant towers of stone stretching up to the highest point of the mountain. The towers contained houses and stores and a bustling hub of life. Between the towers, winding paths and alleys cut this way and that. Aliens hurried along, all wearing the same silk-like material, but most were dressed more completely than the women Vera had passed in the tunnels. Out here, most of the aliens were humanoid like the ones Vera had already met, but some were more familiar with their tentacles and beaks, chameleon skin and numerous limbs—an assortment of every type of alien that existed. But none of them paid Vera any mind as she gawked.
The space was overwhelmingly giant, far bigger than the space station she lived on.
The guard pulled her forward, and Vera stumbled on, her head swiveling to take in the sights.
They skirted along the outer rim of the mountain and passed between two towers of rock. Vera looked up and up to the peak of the mountain. Here was the source of light flooding the interior. The light wove like gossamer filaments in a pattern of delicate lace on the tippy top of the mountain’s peak. It was breathtaking.
“What does that?” Vera managed to ask. “How does the mountaintop stay standing?”
“Worms,” the guard grunted. “They hollow out canals and the light comes through.”
Vera hated herself for the awe the lights and this sprawling space had inspired in her. She hated herself for slowing to admire her alien abductors’ home. She hated that the homes along the walls and towers, the light spooling down from the ceiling, and the aliens hustling about felt just as real and authentic as life on the space station.
What was wrong with her?
They passed a crisp, clear pond, following a path that ran parallel to a small creek teeming with all sizes of fish. A giant worm-like creature broke the surface, a fish wriggling in its maw. Her flesh broke out into goose bumps.
Farther toward the center of the mountain, the space opened into a plaza full of people and tented booths. The scent of meat and pickled produce wafted through the air along with beats of disjointed music. Aliens hawked their wares, and women in white, flowing tunics and wide belts carried goods in heaping bundles with kids toddling along behind them. The male aliens prowled about, wearing darker colored uniforms like the ones from last night. When she watched them closer, Vera saw that their movements were too slinking, too graceful to be truly human. She knew what lay just beneath their skin: their wolves.
On the other side of the market, the stench of fish overwhelmed her. The creek they’d been following earlier widened into a river, and people along the banks hauled in nets of flopping fish. She tried to slow, to watch what they were doing, but her guard yanked her along without a second glance at the workers. He guided her up and over a bridge spanning the water.
It suddenly struck her that, other than the ships they’d flown in on, she’d seen no sign of technology since leaving the cell. No hover-carts. No vidscreens. No retina overlays. No people chatting on comms. No merchant kiosks with scrolling signage. Th
ese people appeared to be living in a fairly primitive manner for having brought her here on a spaceship through a wormhole.
Getting home was going to be even more difficult than she’d first imagined.
Enough was enough. It didn’t matter that she wanted to explore the market and taste the delicious-smelling meats and run her hand over the silky fabric everyone wore. She planted her feet firmly against the stone floor. “Where are you taking me?”
The guard jerked her arm, but she dug in her heels. He stopped and turned to her, a cruel smile on his face. As she watched, long canines grew over his lower lip. They reminded her of the brutality she’d witnessed on the ship and the horror of what was likely happening to Niva right now. The horror likely awaiting her at the end of this long trek he was taking her on.
Swallowing, she said, “Talk to me or I’ll scream. I’ll fight.”
“Go ahead.” He stepped close enough for her to feel his breath on her face. “I haven’t had a chance to eat today.” Then he spun and nearly yanked her off her feet to make her move. His gruesome laugh left her wondering how much truth there was in his statement.
When the market sounds had faded behind them, they came to a small, single-story building surrounded by a lawn of soft moss. It abutted the wall of the mountain where the river swept underground. It looked laughably tiny when dwarfed by the nearby buildings, which were spaced more evenly, the rock shiny as if smoothed by hand. Even the air on this side of the market smelled richer, wealthier.
The guard pointed to the small building. “Here we are.”
“Where is here?”
He shoved her forward. “Your new home.”
Vera’s blood ran cold. Before she had a chance to ask, the massive door, which looked like a long piece of tree bark, swung open, releasing a spill of golden light. The man who’d ordered Vera and the other women to be taken to the dungeon cells looked past her to the guard. “That’ll be all. Return to your post.”
“Yes, sir.”
