“No one more superstitious than a soldier,” I say, thinking of all my own rituals before battle. If I wear my lucky helmet, if I keep a picture of my family tucked against my heart, then I’ll live to fight another day.
“And a lot of the soldiers who settled out here did so for the quiet life. They’ve seen some shit in their time during the war and they don’t want to be poking at a supposedly haunted mountain.”
“Supposedly?” I say, arching an eyebrow.
Jaxran just grins. “We’ve seen some shit, too, Dhak, but one thing I haven’t ever seen is ghosts. Though, I’m an open minded man. I wouldn’t want to rule it out entirely.”
“But you have a more sensible theory?”
“Denestra’s main export is crystals, not something I knew a lot about before moving out here, but I’m trying to get my head around it so I can understand the miners. Two of the quarries near here are pulling out Nimeshu crystals.”
“The stuff used to make laser cores,” I say.
I think of this time yesterday, standing over the cryo-chambers and wondering if laser cores were what we were about to find. It feels a vecking lot longer than twenty four hours ago.
“Exactly. And if there are Nimeshu crystals,” Jaxran says. “Apparently, there’s an outside chance there are Leshantu crystals, too. If there’s a significant volume of them, it could account for the black out.”
Still now, the word ‘Leshantu’ gives me a bit of a shiver. They were a favoured weapon of the Prenetashi and their allies, crystals with the unusual property of interfering with electronics. Very rare. The Protectorate never did figure out where they were sourcing them from. Perhaps Denestra is the answer.
“You think the people who took the princess are hiding in the mountains?” I say.
Jax shrugs. “It’s where I’d hide, if I had a secret smuggling operation.”
“A secret smuggling operation that’s trafficking women across the stars.”
“You think whoever hit the market today is part of the same group that took her in the first place?”
“I’ll be worried if it isn’t,” I say. “As then we’ll have two smuggler groups operating out here.”
“You think they have eyes in Denestra Two? Think they saw your girl and decided to steal her back? Why take a load of my people, too? The princess has value. She’s beautiful. Painfully close to Prenetashi levels of beautiful. There’s bound to be a high paying market for that. But my people? Why risk blowing the cover they’ve taken great pains to keep out here stealing them?”
“Their cover was blown as soon as they took the princess…”
“No,” Jaxran says. “They could have done that quiet. Could have distracted us, could have lead her away.”
And thank the stars above and below us that they didn’t. We would never have found her. We may not find her yet, but at least we have a chance.
“When we intercepted the ship transporting the princess,” I say, “there were twenty-three others we rescued with her. Perhaps they took your people to fulfil their order.”
“Appease their buyers until they can get more Human women. Maybe,” Jax says as he clips a belt of weapons around his waist. He’s picked all old fashioned, propulsion based weapons. Nothing laser. They won’t work in the electronics blackout zone.
“How are we going to find these smugglers without scanners and tracking equipment?” I ask, looking at the specialist gear I’m going to have to leave behind. No point bringing it if it won’t work. Instead, I pick up a grapple. It’s spring loaded, so will work just fine.
“It’s a still day today, the wind won’t have covered their tracks. We can follow the transports as far as they go. Then, we’ve got Ness. He’ll be able to track your girl across the desert - just need a scent for him to follow. Somewhere in that mountain range there will be mining tunnels. That’s where they’ll be hiding.”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” I say, clipping my fully loaded belt into place.
“Good job we’re on the case, then, isn’t it?” Jax says with a grin.
We race back to Denestra Two. Jax picks up Ness and talks to his team. They’ve got nothing out of the hostiles they managed to detain and are in the process of running their identities through UP databases to discover who they are. Then we’re off again, following the ruts in the sand left behind by the wheels of the transport. The bikes fly over the dunes, making up some of the time we lost going to pick up our gear.
After maybe half an hour riding, we find the transports. They’ve been abandoned in a small space enclosed by rock. They’re not hidden, but they aren’t immediately obvious, and they’ve been driven far enough into the range of whatever’s blocking the electronics that our bikes are starting to play up a little, so any surveillance gear might not have made it this far.
I’ve brought a pillow case from the princess’ bedroom for Ness to scent. He sniffs at it, then begins sniffing round the transports, yipping when he picks something up.
“Take us to her, boy,” Jaxran says.
Ness walks ahead of us, nose to the ground, snuffling at the sand as he goes. It’s slow, and the heat of the sun burns against the back of my neck. My heart is still beating a little too fast, the scales on my chest hardening because of it. It’s handy for when someone tries to shoot you, but when you’re trying to walk, the harder scales limit your range of movement. I walk stiffly, almost robotic in my arm movements.
“We’re going to find her, Dhak, it’s what we do,” Jax says, correctly interpreting my gait as agitation.
“It’s what we did, Jax. We’re a long way from our army days.”
“Some things never leave you. Ness will take us to their lair, then we go in hard and fast, take them out before they even know what hit them.”
“You better hope we can,” I say. “It’s more than my life’s worth not to.”
Chapter 12
Charlie
I wake up with a headache that seems determined to split my skull in half. Pulsing pain behind my eyes makes me reluctant to open them, and I groan as I push myself up into a sitting position.
“Easy,” someone says, their hands closing over my shoulders to steady me.
I’m surprised to be touched. I didn’t think aliens did touching.
“What happened?” I say.
“Sleeping gas, I think,” my helper says.
I remember being shoved into the back of a van, being driven somewhere over very uneven terrain. It felt like we were driving for about twenty minutes, but after that it gets hazy.
I try to open my eyes, but dizziness hits me so hard I could believe we were on a boat, the floor swaying beneath us. But the woman holding me rubs my arms and makes soothing sounds. Not words, just murmurs. I hold on to that sound, allow it to fill my mind, pushing out the fog and fuzz of my headache. Gradually, the floor stops swaying. Or I stop swaying. Either way, I feel able to open my eyes again.
At first, I think I haven’t succeeded. Darkness surrounds me, and it takes a moment for my eyes to start to adjust, features appearing out of the darkness. Mostly the shapes of other people sat in little clusters around me, heads bent close as they whisper to each other. I can’t pick out any of their words, but the room buzzes with an undercurrent of fear.
“Who were those people?” I ask my companion.
She just shakes her head. It’s hard to tell for sure in the darkness, but she looks young. My age, maybe even younger.
I look around, listening to the sounds of the voices talking around me. Everyone here is female like me. We’ve been kidnapped. I’ve been kidnapped again.
Can that be a coincidence? I don’t think so. For starters, I don’t believe Captain Dhakhar would have brought me here if he thought it wasn’t safe. We may not be bffs, but he rescued me in the first place. I can’t believe he would want me to get kidnapped again.
Unless I annoyed him to the point of despair. It’s a possibility.
“Where have they taken us?” I ask.
A few of the people sitting close enough to hear our conversation whimper.
“Haunted?” I say, trying to fill my voice with disdain even as my heart starts beating a little too fast.
“Local legends says…”
“No,” I say, cutting her off before she can spook me any more. “I refuse to believe in ghosts. I’ve already had to get used to the idea that aliens are real, I’m not doing ghosts, too.”
My eyes have adjusted enough that I can make out most of the room, so I get to my feet and walk round it. It appears to be some sort of storage space - for crates and supplies as well as prisoners. I walk over to one of the crates and examine it, looking for a way to get it open. It feels like its made of metal, the material cool compared to my body temperature, and smooth. But a fine layer of dust, or maybe sand, coats the top, as if the crate has been in place for quite some time. I can’t feel any handles or catches or even seams. Just smooth, unbroken surface. Running my hands around the top, I feel the slightly raised ridges of bolts. No chance of getting that open then.
With a snarl of frustration I kick the crate, the clang of my boot against the metal prompting a gasp from the other women, each of them turning to face me. I kick the crate again, knowing full well it won’t do anything, but giving in to the rage feels better than being terrified.
“You need to stop that,” one of the others says.
“Or what?” I snap, rounding on her. “I’ll be kidnapped by someone and locked in a dark room inside a haunted mountain?”
I kick the crate for a third time.
“You’ll anger them!” someone hisses.
I don’t know if they mean our abductors or the ghosts and I don’t care to ask for clarification. The hairs on the back of my neck are already standing on end.
“Someone will come for us,” I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.
“No one comes here,” someone says. “The spirits protect the mountain, they kill anyone who enters.”
“Well, we aren’t dead yet,” I say, my voice getting louder and higher, like screeching might keep the ghosts at bay. “And neither are the people who brought us here. So maybe there’s a chance we can escape these spirits of yours that definitely don’t exist anyway.”
The only response I get is stony silence from everyone in the room.
I kick the crate one last time, then stalk off into a corner away from the rest of them. I drop down between two crates, my back pressed against one, my hugging my knees to my chest. My mind reels with anger. Anger that I’ve been kidnapped again, anger that my first good memories since waking up in Xentra hospital have been tainted, anger that the Captain couldn’t save me.
Anger that I couldn’t save myself. Twice over, I couldn’t save myself.
In the movies, women in situations like this can climb and fight and run and be badass. I’m about as far from a badass as it’s possible to get. I might be able to walk through the estate on my own at night, but that’s just because I’m Jason’s girl. People know better than to mess with Jason, and therefore me by extension. What little bit of power I have, it comes from him.
A couple of years ago, I asked Jason for money to join a gym, because it seemed to be the thing everyone was doing. Join gyms, do squats, take cute pictures of their butts to post on social media.
“You don’t need to join a gym,” Jason said. “You’re already beautiful.”
And I’d been so flattered, any thought of gym membership had gone out of the window. It hadn’t occurred to me that getting fit wasn’t just about vanity, and I’m kicking myself because if I’d been stronger and faster, maybe I wouldn’t be here right now.
I press my eyes shut, tears slipping out, running down my cheeks. I’m going to die here. Maybe not physically, but one way or another, this is the end for me as an individual with choices. They’ll sell me into slavery, I’ll have to decide whether I’d rather do whatever is required of me - be it labour or sex or something else - just to live, or die so I don’t have to. Either way, my life is over.
And I’ve never really done anything with it.
Didn’t get a job. Didn’t leave the country. Didn’t even join a gym.
And it hits me - all those things I didn’t do were because Jason said no.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
It’s not like he said ‘no, you can’t’. He said I wouldn’t like it, or he didn’t want me to have to do it, or I didn’t need to, he was worried about me. It wasn’t like ‘I control what you do and don’t do’. Was it?
But I’d never really pushed, had I? Every time he gave me a reason not to do something, I went along with it. What would have happened if I’d got the job application out of the bin and gone for it anyway. I’m not all that bright, so I probably wouldn’t have actually got it, but how would Jason have reacted to me doing my own thing?
He wouldn’t have minded. Jason was just concerned about protecting me. He knew my chances of getting the job were slim and wanted to save me the disappointment. And if by some miracle I got the job, he’d have been happy for me. Proud.
Right?
I hate that I’m even questioning this. Hate that my stupid brain is doubting the one good thing I have. I’m never going to see Jason again. I don’t want to ruin my memories of him.
Realisation hits me like a bolt of lightning. I’m doing it again. Someone has told me ‘no’ and I’ve given up. I’m not pushing. These people have kidnapped me and shoved me in a room and I’m ready to roll over and just take it. And this isn’t just a gym membership or a crappy part time job. This is life and death. If ever there was time to grow a spine and push back, it’s now.
Because there’s no way the Captain is coming for me. Not after my shitty behaviour towards him. Ordering him around and yelling at him for things that weren’t his fault. Snapping at him because I was terrified of flying. I hope one day he looks back on this time and realises I was just a stupid, scared little girl who didn’t know what to do for the best.
Actually, I hope he looks back on this and laughs about the time he got a lucky escape from the mega-bitch he was supposed to be transporting across the Universe. I hope he never feels guilty about this. From the way the Commander treats him, he’s got a bad enough deal in life. I don’t wish him guilt over losing me on top of it.
I get to my feet. Tears are still leaking from my eyes, my brain already telling me that this is pointless, I’m just Charlie - stupid, pathetic Charlie who probably should have told the police that the drugs in her handbag were hers. Maybe they’d have kept me in overnight that way. Maybe I wouldn’t be here right now. I ignore my brain and the what ifs and the doubts it throws at me. I watched this documentary once about how our thoughts are not us, how our brains can play tricks on us, and you can train them. Put an elastic band round your wrist and snap it every time you engage in negative self talk. The pain trains your brain out of thinking that way over time. Supposedly. I never tried it.
But I try to keep that in mind now, the thoughts being separate to me thing. Because I’m thinking I’m stupid, that I can’t do this. But I have to. Because there’s no one else to do it for me.
I search the room, rummaging in the darkness, looking for something, anything I can use. In the last corner, I find it - a forgotten piece of piping lying behind a crate. It looks like something that might have been in the crate once, smooth and new rather than pitted and rusted. I lift it, testing the weight of it in my hand. Not too heavy to swing, but heavy enough for a decent blow.
Then, the sound of a clicking lock. I turn just in time to see the door yank open and one of our kidnappers walk in. The other women gasp, scrabbling closer to each other, safety in numbers. The kidnapper sneers as he looks around, activating some sort of glow stick on his belt, then closing the door behind him.
I grip the pipe in my hands and use the cover of the women’s frightened moans to sneak clos
er. The man appears to be counting them, barking at them to sit still and stop moving.
“Where’s the pretty one?” he says to them.
I take a swing.
I’m aiming for his head, but miss, striking his shoulders. The air rushes out of his lungs and he crumples forwards, but recovers fast, spinning round and throwing a punch at me that connects with my jaw. I’m on the floor, the pipe skittering out of my hand before I even really feel the pain.
“Veck,” the man says. “There you are.”
He moves towards me. Instinct takes over and I kick at his shins. He lets out a bark of pain, hopping on one foot a moment. But it doesn’t buy me enough time to orient myself, to find the pipe. Before I can do anything, he’s grabbing me by my hair, hauling me upright. He pulls so hard on my hair my roots burn, but I grit my teeth, determined not to cry.
“What did you go and do that for, huh?” he says, face so close to mine I can taste his breath. “You made me hit you, pretty girl.”
And my brain must be rattled, because the only thing that shakes out of it is something Jason said.
I love you, my Princess, even when you make me mad. Don’t ever forget that.
“Let us go,” I grit out.
“Sorry, pretty girl, we need you. You’re the only one we’ve got left. Bit of luck you showing up here today. Maybe you’ll be enough to keep our buyers happy until we can catch some more of you. With the help of these girls to sweeten the deal.”
Definitely not a coincidence, then. All these girls were taken because of me.
And what does he mean by ‘only one left’? Was I not the only one taken? Were there other Humans like me?
He has my hair gripped so tight, I think he might rip chunks of it out if I try to move. I try an experimental wiggle and his arm goes around my waist, pulling me flush against his crotch. This is what’s waiting for me, if I let them take me, I realise. A lifetime of being manhandled, not in control of my own body. The feel of him all pressed up against me makes my blood run cold, my mind back once again to Nat’s wedding, and the thing that almost happened, but didn’t. Because of Jason.
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