by Joe Vasicek
James didn’t answer. His father peered over his shoulder at the screen.
“Ah,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” His tone of voice, however, betrayed his relief.
James said nothing.
“I remember how I felt when I lost my first bill,” his father continued. “You win some, you lose some—in a perfect democracy like ours, it’s only natural. It’s all for the best.”
James felt his blood rise to his cheeks. His father put a hand on his shoulder, but he immediately shrugged it off.
“We’ll be home soon,” his father continued, choosing to ignore James’s angry gesture. “It’ll be all right. Your mother is safe, and we’ll all be together soon.”
“Dad,” said James, “how many ships does our family own?”
“What do you mean?”
“How many ships? And how much in financial assets?”
“Well, our branch of the family owns five ships, two of which are in port at the Colony. In terms of net financial assets, we have about fifteen million Gaian credits.”
Good, James thought to himself. That should be enough.
His father frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“I need to take out my inheritance.”
Chapter 5
Stella stood up straight and faced the airlock door as it slid open. Another pair of soldiers in fearsome black armor stepped forward. She cringed, expecting them to take her forcibly by the arms and march her off like the others. Instead, they moved aside, letting a short man dressed all in white step through.
She frowned. What is this?
The man gave her one look and clucked his tongue. “Too young,” he said in an almost incomprehensible accent. “Too young.”
“What?” said Stella. She glanced up at the soldiers, but their faces were unreadable.
The little man stepped forward and pinched her arm. “Ow!” she said, drawing back. He clucked again and put his hands on his hips.
“You stay still. Yes? Good.”
Stella stood awkwardly in the middle of the chilly airlock while he examined her, poking her stomach and feeling her hands and arms. His round head was balding on the top, with thick tufts of blackish-gray hair around his ears. He had a long scowl on his face, which from the deep creases in his skin appeared to be a permanent feature. Unlike the soldiers, he wore a crisp white button-up shirt that stretched nearly to his knees, like a formal smock. His loose fitting trousers were also white.
“Not good, not good,” he said, shaking his head. “Need bath.”
Stella glanced to the soldiers on either side of the doorway. I don’t suppose I have a choice, she thought to herself. For now, she’d play the Hameji at their game—with time, an opportunity for escape would present itself. Hopefully.
“You follow me,” the man said. “Understand?”
“Uh, yeah.”
The man looked her in the eye and scowled. Even though he stood nearly a full head shorter than her, she still felt intimidated by his gaze.
“Come.”
Despite his short stature, the man took off at a brisk pace and quickly disappeared around a corner. Stella found it difficult to keep up; fortunately, the soldiers didn’t force-march her. She supposed that was a sign that she’d moved up in the Hameji world.
The main corridor was only twenty yards long—too short for the ship to be anything but a shuttle. So they’re transporting me somewhere, Stella thought to herself. If she could break through to the cockpit, there was a chance—but no, with the soldiers following her that would never work. Better ride it out and see where they took her.
“Come here,” said the little man, motioning impatiently to an open door near the end of the corridor. Stella followed his lead and stepped into the passenger cabin.
From her terrifying experience on the prisoner ship, she expected something drab and purely functional—an empty storage room, perhaps, or a simple holding cell. Certainly someplace more fit for cattle than for humans.
Instead, she stepped into a room as luxurious as a private yacht. Soft, oversized blue and purple couches lined the room, each with dozens of silk-tasseled pillows and cushions strewn out across them. The walls were pure white with ornate gold trim reminiscent of the old baroque style of the first Gaian Empire. An enormous duraglass window stretched from floor to ceiling on the opposite side of the room, offering a breathtaking view of the starfield beyond.
Stella froze in the doorway and stared in disbelief at the lavish accommodations. After the nightmare of the prisoner ship, she didn’t know what to make of her new surroundings. It felt surreal to her. The seats were so luxurious and soft, the purple and blue colors so rich, she felt as if she had found herself in a completely different world.
“No good,” muttered the man, shaking droplets of sweet perfume on her body from a small crystal vial. “No good. Need bath soon—very dirty.”
The accent. Where had she heard that accent before? The question had been bothering her since she’d first heard the man speak. In an instant, it came to her: the man was speaking Belarian. On her last voyage with the McLellan family, the entire crew had spoken it exclusively to help her practice the new language. The short, bald man’s accent had to have come from some local dialect in that system.
“What is your name?” she asked in formal Belarian.
The man froze where he stood and stared right at her. Stella met his gaze and smiled.
A flood of words poured out of his mouth, only a few of which she fully understood. She could pick out a word here or there, but couldn’t understand any phrases or sentences. Eventually, the man noticed the blank expression on her face. He stopped and forced a smile, composing himself.
“You are a smart girl,” he said in formal Belarian, slow enough that she could understand. “My name is Engus, and I am chief cut-servant of Master Qasar.”
Cut-servant. The word itself was unfamiliar, but from simple cognates she pieced together the basic meaning. The root used for “cut” confused her at first, since it was only ever used in a physical sense; either Engus was a servant who cut things, or else had himself been—
Realization of the true meaning of the word struck her like a meteor. Engus was a eunuch.
“Sit, sit,” he said, reverting to broken New Gaian.
Stella glanced around the room and gingerly lowered herself on the nearest couch. The cushions gave way, enveloping her in a softness so inviting she almost forgot the rough burlap tunic chafing against her skin. Even the guards kept a comfortable distance from her, standing at the door. Still, something seemed vaguely disturbing about this place. Her separation from the other prisoners, the extravagant luxury of the shuttle, the high-ranking servant sent as an escort—it made her feel uneasy.
I’ve got to get out of here, she thought to herself, struggling to conceal her growing anxiety. With her thoughts once more centered on escape, her eyes gravitated to the starfield in the window. Despite the amazing view, it took her several moments before she found anything resembling the familiar constellations of home.
Just as she found one that could have been the Snake, the sound of groaning metal came softly through the walls. The stars spun wildly as they undocked and maneuvered away from the Hameji prisoner ship, momentarily disorienting her. She looked for any sign of Kardunash IV—any planet at all—but saw nothing but stars and empty space.
As she stared out the window, a strange feeling came over her, as if her body were turning inside out. The sensation was all too familiar. It started as a mild stomachache, but soon turned into a severe, disorienting dizziness, followed by an instant of total blackness, as if the universe itself had blinked.
The shuttle had just made a jump. If Ben was back on the prisoner ship, he might be light-years away from her now.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Master’s house,” Engus said in broken New Gaian. “There. You look.”
He pointed out the window at an enormous ship, long and t
apering at the forward end like a missile. From a distance, it could have passed as a deep space passenger liner, but a close examination revealed several additions. Extra rooms bubbled outward, some containing gun emplacements, others antennae and other instruments. Though this may have been a passenger liner at one point, it was definitely a warship now.
Ben, Stella thought frantically to herself. Where are you? As the Hameji warship loomed close outside the window, a terrible, heart-wrenching feeling told her that she wouldn’t find him here.
They docked. Engus motioned to her.
“You come,” he said.
* * * * *
Play the game, Stella told herself as she followed Engus through the airlock. She just had to keep her eyes open and wait for an opportunity to escape. She could do this.
The shipside airlock was unusually narrow; Stella guessed it had originally been a utility airlock for exterior maintenance work. Considering how they’d put in towards the battleship’s stern, that made sense. Why they had taken her in this way instead of through the main docking bay, Stella had no idea.
The soldier’s boots rapped sharply on the hard metal floor of the airlock. Engus keyed the inner door, and it hissed open.
“You come,” he said.
The moment Stella stepped through the doorway, a thick, sensuous odor hit her noise. It smelled like perfume mixed with something else too pungent to mask. The air was warm and humid; the moisture clung to her skin and made her feel sticky.
To her surprise, the soldiers stayed behind. She wondered why that was, until she saw a handful of wires poking out of the wall where the airlock’s access panel was supposed to be. Whoever had modified that door had designed it to work only one way.
Like a cage.
She followed Engus down a corridor unlike any that she had ever seen. Red and pink silk draped the walls, their vibrant colors immediately attracting her eye. Golden tassels dangled from the ceiling, tracing geometric patterns in their design. A shaggy pink carpet covered the floor, tickling her bare feet. Yet for all the lavishness of the place, she couldn’t help but notice how kitschy and overdone it all was. The décor felt like a caricature of something feminine. The colors were too bright, the smells too strong—even the shaggy carpet under her feet felt too sensual.
She didn’t like it.
Engus glanced over his shoulder and clucked disapprovingly. “Come!” he said. She walked a little faster, folding her arms as she followed him.
They passed a handful of other men, all in button-up white shirts like Engus’s that extended well below the waist. Their clothes were so crisp and immaculate that Stella felt out of place in her burlap prisoner rags. The men bowed to Engus as they passed, and stared openly at Stella. Even though they were only servants, their stares made her anxious.
If they are servants, she thought to herself, why are there so many of them? And who are they supposed to serve? For a moment, she wondered if Engus was taking her off to become a servant, too, but she soon dismissed the idea. All of the servants were men.
She saw women soon enough, though.
As they rounded a corner, a tall, dark-skinned girl walked past them in the opposite direction. Her skin was perfectly smooth, her body shaped like an exotic hourglass. Her hips swung from side to side as she walked, jingling coins along the fringes of her clothing. She wore a skimpy, two-piece dress, the fabric all but transparent, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Stella stopped and watched in horror as the girl sauntered away. An awful, sinking feeling ate away at the back of her mind as she realized.
“You come,” said Engus, pointing impatiently to a bead curtain draped over an open doorway.
I just need to stay here long enough to find a way to escape, Stella thought to herself as he parted the beads and led her through. I won’t be here forever.
The shaggy carpet ended at the doorway, replaced by a white and blue tile floor that extended up the walls. The air inside was practically steamy, and mosaics of fruits and vines lined the walls and ceiling. In the corner, she saw the foggy glass pane of a shower unit.
“Take off,” Engus ordered.
Stella’s body instantly grew tense. She gave him a puzzled look, pretending not to understand what he had said.
“What?”
He reached over and tugged at her clothes. “Take off.”
Her cheeks went pale, and she kept her arms wrapped firmly around her chest. “No.”
Engus put his hands on his hips and clucked loudly at her. “You need wash. Take off.”
Behind her, the beads clattered. Stella turned and saw another servant step into the room, carrying a stack of bath towels. He was tall and lanky, with his long black hair tied back in a ponytail. He bowed at her, then at Engus.
While she was distracted, Engus grabbed her tunic and started to lift it up. Without thinking, she pushed him away.
“No!” she shouted.
Engus’s face turned red with fury. He stood up straight, stomped the ground with one foot, and shouted a string of incomprehensible Belarian obscenities. Stella cringed, while the tall man set down the towels on a bench and put a hand on Engus’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him.
“I can wash myself,” Stella said in Belarian, her voice a little shaky. “I don’t need you to undress me.”
Engus shrugged off the other man and stepped right up to her, placing his pointer finger only inches from her mouth. His eyes were wide with indignation.
“No,” he said. “You learn. Take off.”
Stella hesitated, not sure what to do. She would rather run away than undress herself in front of these men, but she had nowhere to go. Play the game.
While Engus fumed at her, the new man gave her a friendly smile. He seemed harmless enough. They’re just eunuchs, Stella told herself. They won’t try to do anything to me.
As if that made it any easier.
She took a deep breath and pulled the tunic over her head. As she dropped it by her side, flashbacks of the prisoner ship came flooding back to her. She trembled from the memories and covered herself as best she could.
Fortunately, Engus wasted no time. By the time she had her tunic off, he already had the shower door open.
“In,” he said. Stella was all too eager to comply.
The cylindrical shower chamber was a newer model, with hundreds of water jets embedded in vertical rows along the wall—many times more than the shower unit on the Llewellyn. It stood a couple of feet taller than her body and was narrow enough that she could easily touch the edges with her elbows. A small light fixture set behind smooth duraglass illuminated the chamber from the top. The glass door was diffuse enough to give her some privacy, but transparent enough for the men to see her. She tried her best to ignore that.
All right, she thought to herself, searching for a waterproofed access panel. What next?
Hot, pressurized water shot out at her from all directions, blasting her skin. She yelped in surprise, but soon got over the initial shock. The soap had a wonderful, fragrant smell, and the temperature was perfect—not too hot, not too cold.
She raised her hands above her head, letting the water wash over her. With her eyes closed, she brought her hands down and rubbed the sweat and dirt out of her face and hair, massaging her scalp with her fingertips. From there, she moved down and built up a good lather across her body. The soap penetrated her pores, flushing out the filthiness of the prisoner ship and leaving her wonderfully clean. For a brief moment, she forgot the war, forgot the prisoner ship, forgot the eunuchs and the harem and all of her fears and anxieties and just closed her eyes and let herself relax.
The rinse cycle blasted her from all sides like a flood. She gasped for breath, tilting her head back to keep her mouth and nose clear. The pressure was so high that all she could do was sway from side to side as the shower water pummeled her. It made her feel as if she were swimming up a waterfall.
After what felt like an eternity, the water died down and the c
hamber gradually emptied. A blast of hot air hit her from above as a roaring vacuum opened in the drain beneath her feet. She reached up with her hands and stretched her whole body upward, standing on her toes. The precious water streamed down her skin under the powerful hot wind, sucked into the drain where it would be collected, filtered, and recycled.
All too soon, the hot air died down and the door slid open. Stella stepped out on unsteady legs, too delirious to care that she was naked. The air in the room felt surprisingly cold compared to the warmth of the shower, and she began to shiver. Someone, either Engus or the other servant, wrapped a towel around her. The fabric was soft and thick, like a blanket. She pulled it close.
As she did, hands grabbed her through the towel and started to rub her down.
“Yi!” she shrieked, jumping away.
Engus clucked and shook his head. “No,” he said, stepping forward with his hands outstretched. “Need dry.”
“I can dry myself!” she shouted, self-consciousness flooding back to her.
Engus’s face turned beet red, but the tall man put a hand on his shoulder and conferred in a low voice. After a few moments, Engus nodded and folded his arms.
“We wait,” he said. “You dry.”
With the men still watching her, Stella turned her back to them and loosened the towel just enough to dry herself. Perverts. She wished they would at least give her some degree of privacy, but that didn’t seem to exist in this place. Not for her.
When she was finished, she wrapped the towel tightly around her body and picked up a second one from the bench for her hair.
“Come,” said Engus. He motioned to a small, metal chair on the other side of the room.
As she sat down, Engus and the other servant pulled up stools. Engus took a seat at her side and started filing her nails, while the taller man sat down directly in front of her. Stella watched him reach down and gently lift her leg onto his lap. He then took out a rough, sponge-like stone from a pocket and gently scrubbed the sole of her foot. Even though it was strange to have a man she didn’t know touch her that way, Stella had to admit that it felt really good.
