by T. J. Quinn
“Great,” Roet replied.
“Would you like something to eat or drink before I take you to the engines room? My men are enjoying a snack at the meal room,” Ethan suggested.
After considering all the options, Ethan and Kenyon had agreed the meal room would be the best place for the confrontation and they needed to take the Sherlaacs away from the docking area so that Kenyon and the rest of the men could board their vessel.
“Thank you, we would love to,” Roet accepted immediately, and Ethan guided them to the room.
Ethan’s men were having a snack, pretending to be as relaxed as they could look, though they all had their weapons ready to fight. The minute Ethan walked in with Roet and his men, Steven sent out a message to Kenyon.
As soon as the message arrived, Kenyon and his men immediately boarded Ethan’s vessel. They knew the Sherlaacs would attack the moment they saw all of Ethan’s men gathered in a room and that they would try not to kill anyone. After all, a dead cyborg had no value for them.
Back in the meals room, the Sherlaacs slowly dispersed, surrounding Ethan and his men.
The cyborgs pretended they hadn’t noticed, as they offered food and drinks to the newcomers.
It only took the Sherlaacs a few seconds to drop their act and show their real intentions, pulling out their weapons.
“Consider yourselves our prisoners,” Roet shouted, pointing his gun directly at Ethan.
“Did you capture my men following this same script?” Ethan asked coldly.
Roet was caught off guard for a moment. “Your men?” he let out a loud laugh. “I should have known you were related to the cyborgs I already have in my cells,” he admitted. “Yes, it was the same script. Why change something that works so perfectly?” he asked, arrogantly.
“It didn’t work this time,” Ethan contradicted him, pulling his weapon at the same time as his men.
The Sherlaacs reacted fast, but they weren’t expecting Kenyon and his men that entered the meal room in that precise moment, outnumbering them. Though they knew they were lost, the Sherlaacs didn’t surrender and started shooting everything that moved.
It was a bloodbath and Jameson was hurt during the attack but surprise played in Ethan, and his men’s favor and they were able to kill all the Sherlaacs. There was no use leaving any witnesses behind.
When the roar of guns finally faded, they disposed of the bodies. Tired, still a bit stressed, they boarded the Sherlaacs’ vessel to look for their friends.
They went straight to the cargo area and found them there – Jaffar and all of his men, safe and sound.
“Man am I glad to see you guys!” Jaffar gushed out when Ethan opened the door to his cell.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ethan asked as he helped all of his men out of their cells.
“They contacted us asking for help. We weren’t far from them, so I replied to their call. Before we knew it, they were boarding us and taking us as prisoners,” unknowingly, they had mimicked the Sherlaacs attack on Jaffar’s vessel. “We tried to fight back, but their weapons were a lot more sophisticated than ours and surprise did the rest.”
“Did any of you get hurt?” Ethan asked, worried.
“Gabriel was shot, but his nanorobots took care of his wounds,” Jaffar answered.
“What happened to your vessel?” Ethan asked with a deep frown.
“They hid it on some deserted asteroid,” Jaffar replied, feeling a bit ashamed at the whole story.
“Do you think you can get it back?” Kenyon asked, knowing how important the vessels were for Ethan.
“Yes, of course. I recorded the coordinates of the asteroid and its trajectory. It’s a good thing these scoundrels had no idea of our capabilities,” Jaffar said with a scowl.
“It could have happened to any of us,” Ethan patted his friend’s back.
“Perhaps, but it happened to me,” Jaffar wasn’t pleased, and it was understandable.
“What do you know about the rest of their cargo?” Kenyon asked as he headed to the other cells.
“They’re female slaves. Apparently, they had them imprisoned in some place because they just went to pick them up before they headed to a place called Kalyko,” Jaffar explained.
“It’s a slaver’s planet. They planned on selling you guys there,” Kenyon explained, with a scowl.
“Yes, we heard them planning it. I’m glad you found us before could do it,” Jaffar nodded.
Kenyon could tell his friend was still upset about the whole situation, but he would have to cope with it. “We better take the rest of the cargo to Kalyko,” he said, with a deep sigh.
“What do you mean?” Jaffar asked, with a frown.
“Those women are the property of the man that helped us to find you,” Kenyon explained.
“You have to be kidding me,” Jaffar protested. “We can’t do that; how can you trade our freedom for theirs?”
“We’re not trading anything. We were able to save you guys, but we cannot save them. Besides, you have no idea if these women are here voluntarily or not,” Kenyon explained.
He knew humans rejected slavery and cyborgs had a perfect reason to reject it, since they had practically been enslaved to the governments they fought for, back on Earth. However, around these parts, slavery was a way of life, and some people embraced it as others would embrace a dream job.
“Then, let’s ask them,” Jaffar suggested. “I have no intention of getting my freedom at their expense,” he grumbled.
Kenyon sighed. “Why did I have the feeling you would say that? This might get us in a lot of trouble,” he warned his friends.
“We’ll figure a way out,” Jaffar replied, determined.
“Let’s go check,” Kenyon suggested, leading the way to the other cells.
In the first cell, they found a group of female Nakois, native from the planet Nak and they existed to serve whoever owned them. Their blue skin and ridges all over their bodies didn’t make them very attractive, so they were used as servants all over the universe.
“They are Nakois. They are born to serve others,” he explained to Jaffar and the others.
“We can ask them either way,” Jaffar insisted.
“By all means,” Kenyon stepped aside and allowed him to question the women.
“Greetings. We have taken over this vessel, and we would like to know where we can take you,” Jaffar asked them.
One of the women got up from the floor where they were seated and looked at Jaffar, puzzled. “What do you mean? Our new owner is expecting us.”
“We don’t believe in slavery, so if you prefer to go somewhere else, home perhaps, you’re free to go,” Jaffar tried to explain.
The female looked shocked. “No! We need to go meet our new owner. Going back home would shame our families and friends. We cannot break our agreement with Master Zyrh,” the female insisted.
Feeling a bit impotent, Jaffar turned to look at Kenyon.
“I told you things here didn’t work the way they work back on Earth. Some people are born to be slaves. The Nakois race is just one of them,” Kenyon answered his unasked question.
Jaffar nodded before he turned to meet the females. “Very well, then. We’ll take you to your new owner.”
“Thank you.”
She returned to where she had been before and took a seat next to her friends.
They left the cell and went to check the others. But other than the cell with the Nakois they weren’t able to find anyone else.
“That’s funny. I could swear there was someone else,” Jaffar said when they were leaving the cargo area. “Another woman. She smelled different, and her heartbeat was certainly different from the rest of the women,” he explained. The upgraded senses of a cyborg allowed him to collect all sorts of information from his surroundings.
“Is it possible they sold her somewhere else?” Kenyon asked, with a slight frown.
“No. We haven’t stopped ever since they picked up the Nakois. Sh
e has to be here, somewhere,” Jaffar insisted. “She sounded scared and pissed at the same time, while she ranted against Roet and his men.”
“Matthew, Daniel, help Kenyon to look around for the missing woman,” Ethan ordered. “Meanwhile, we’ll transfer the Nakois to Kenyon’s vessel. We can’t take this vessel back to Kalyko. Someone might recognize it.”
Kenyon nodded and started the search with his friends.
“Can you sense her presence?” he asked them.
“There’s not a warm body anywhere inside this vessel. At least, not as far as we can tell,” Daniel replied, with a slight frown.
“Not all people around these parts have warm blood,” Kenyon pointed out.
“I know, but even the ones with cold blood show some radiation. So far, we haven’t detected any of it,” Daniel replied.
They searched the whole vessel, and couldn’t find anything.
“They either killed her or disposed of her. There is no living creature inside the vessel,” Kenyon explained.
“Well, we tried,” Ethan said, looking around the control room on the Sherlaacs’ vessel. “We have to figure a way to make this vessel unrecognizable. It’s exactly what we need to help the people on Dreshan.”
“That’s easier than you think,” Kenyon assured him. “I’ll take the slaves back to Kalyko, and when I’m back, we can work on that.”
“Good. Meanwhile, will fix all that was destroyed during our small battle with the Sherlaacs,” he announced, scowling. Some of the corridors and part of the docking bay had been badly damaged during the fight. “Let’s not waste any more time.”
Kenyon nodded and gathering his crew, he went back to his vessel.
“Full speed to Kalyko, Matthew,” he ordered, on his way to his quarters.
“Yes, boss.”
Kenyon walked down the hallway to his corridors when a different scent hit him. His nostrils flared, and he looked around, startled.
The scent didn’t belong to any of the people he knew nor to any of the Nakois. There was a stranger inside the ship.
Guided by the scent, he went looking for the intruder. It took him a while, but he finally reached one of the chambers nobody used, at the back of the vessel. It was a small one that was only used in rare cases where they all traveled on the same ship.
Pulling out his gun from its sheath, he pressed the button that opened the door, quickly entering the room and locking the door behind him.
The scent was much stronger inside the room, so he was sure the intruder was there.
“Show yourself. I know you’re in here,” he ordered in a stern tone.
His only answer was a thick silence, and for once, he wished he had the cyborgs upgraded senses. He would have known precisely where the intruder was.
“If you don’t come out on your own, I’ll send my Bokus after you. They’ll drag you out, one way or the other,” he threatened her, mentioning the nasty furry creatures, used to hunt in some planets in this quadrant, for their incredible ability to find anything alive in the perimeter.
He hated them since they usually trashed the prey into useless pieces, but whoever hid in the room didn’t have to know that.
A loud roar of rage came out from underneath the bed, and a solid fireball hit him with all its might.
Using his incredible strength, Kenyon managed to imprison the intruder’s arms with his hands and pull the creature away from him.
It was an alien female. The same one Jaffar had sensed on the Sherlaacs’ vessel.
“How the hell did you get here?” he asked, amazed, with the exquisite figure he was holding.
“Let me go, you brute,” the woman ranted, struggling to free herself.
“You’re not going anywhere until I get some answers, so you better start talking,” he said, in a calm tone, though his whole body was reacting to her presence in ways he had never experienced before.
“No! I’ve not come this far just to lose now, no!” she ranted, struggling even harder, using all her strength.
He had to admit she was stronger than any alien female he had known before. Asloran females were as strong as males, and that was one of the reasons, few males mated in their own species. It felt like they were mating another male.
“You’re wasting your time,” he warned her, tightening his grip around her arms and easily avoiding her kicks.
She was incredibly beautiful. Her skin tone was almost golden, and it made an incredible contrast with the thick braids of dark chestnut hair falling down her back.
She was naked like most slavers kept their slaves, and he admired the perfect features of her body, especially the big, round breasts crowning her chest, and her amazingly shaped hips.
“Let me go,” she cried again, but her tone showed her tiredness.
“How did you get here?” he asked again.
She struggled a bit more until she finally gave up and stood still. “Alright, let me go, and I’ll answer your questions,” she said, her eyes locked on the floor.
He knew she was lying, but he complied, waiting to see her next move.
The minute he released her, she attacked him once again, using all her strength and abilities, but she was no match for him.
In the years he had fought as a gladiator in Kalyko, he hadn’t found a warrior able to defeat him, and this woman was a far cry from being a match to any of them.
Trying not to hurt her, he pushed her to the bed behind her and fell over her, immobilizing her underneath his muscular body. She still struggled for a few minutes until she finally realized she wasn’t going anywhere.
“How did you get here?” he repeated the question.
“I escaped from the Sherlaacs’ vessel,” she replied with a tone drained of all emotions.
“How did you get there in the first place?” he asked, still holding her against the soft mattress.
He knew she would try to escape if he gave her a tiny chance.
“They kidnapped me from my home planet, Borzan. It’s in the third quadrant,” she explained.
He had heard about that planet, but, at the moment, he wasn’t able to remember what it was.
“It’s not typical of the Sherlaacs to travel so far for a single prey,” he pointed out puzzled.
She snorted her disdain. “They said they had received a special order for a female from my planet.”
“Did they say from whom?”
“Why do you care?” she ranted, giving another try at freeing herself, to no avail.
“I’m the one asking the questions here,” he stated, doing his best to control the urges rushing through his body. Having her naked lustful body under him was making it hard for him to focus on anything else other than her.
“They mentioned a guy called Zyrh,” she replied, clearly upset.
“Damn!” Kenyon cursed.
She was the cargo Zyrh was expecting, not the Nakois. Convincing him to let her go was not going to be an easy task that was for sure. He wouldn’t believe she had escaped the Sherlaacs, even if it was the truth, so he would have to find another way, and fast.
“What’s so special about the females on your planet?” he asked, trying to know more.
“How should I know?” she ranted, but he could tell she did know but wasn’t willing to share the information.
“Alright, I’m sure he can tell me himself.” He slowly got off the bed, taking her with him.
“No! You can’t take me to him, you can’t,” her struggle returned, fed by her desperation and this time he had a bit more trouble subduing her.
“Then, tell me,” he ordered. “And I’ll consider your fate.”
“You have no right to do this, no right,”
“You’re a stowaway on my ship. I can do whatever I please,” he reminded her.
She stood still for a few moments as if considering her options before she talked again. “My species is known for being able to mate any other known species in this galaxy. Our value is quite high in the mating market
, but the Sherlaacs’ client decided he didn’t want to pay the price,” she explained indignantly.
“Mating market? That’s a thing? It actually exists?” he asked, faking an astonishment he didn’t feel.
However, he had never been interested in a mate, he had heard about the mating market, and now he knew what he had heard about Borzan. Many Asloran males had mated women from her planet. It had become some sort of fashion, the moment Aslorans found out they could mate females from Borzan, something thought impossible until then.”
“Yes, it exists, and my species leads the ranking.”
“Good for you.”
He took her to the door, and when he was about to take her to the communications room, he remembered she was still naked. Grunting, he turned toward Samantha’s quarters, sure she wouldn’t mind lending the woman some clothes to cover herself.
“I believe we’ve established that I’m stronger than you and that you won’t be able to escape from me, right?” he said, as he opened Samantha’s room.
She snorted disdainfully. “We haven’t established a damn thing.”
He chuckled and pushed her inside the room taking her to the dressing area. “Pick some clothes from there, or I’ll take you out the way you are,” he ordered, releasing her arm and standing next to her, prepared to grab her again if she tried to escape.
Of course, she tried. However, she quickly realized she wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter Three
Sharian cursed her luck and turned to fetch some clothes from the dressing area.
When she had been kidnapped from her own home, she had been so astounded it had taken her a few seconds to react. Those few seconds had been her doom since it had given the Sherlaacs the opportunity to inject a powerful sedative into her body.
By the time she regained consciousness, she was on board the Sherlaacs’ vessel, naked and tossed into a cell with nothing more than a dirty mattress to sleep on.
She was furious, humiliated and willing to kill the people responsible for her current situation.
But the Sherlaacs were smarter than they looked. They never opened her cell. Food, water, and disposal bags were sent in, through a small opening in the door, so she had no chance to try to get out of it.
