by Celeste Raye
Tann: Delti Utopia 6
(A Sci-Fi Weredragon Romance)
Celeste Raye
Copyright ©2017 by Celeste Raye - All rights reserved.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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Chapter One
Mariana
Mariana stole a glance at the virtual screen remote. It wasn't locked down. True to her promise, Tylina had left it available for her to use. She had to hurry. The allotted time for cleaning her master's office was a mere twenty minutes, and he expected it to shine, despite his propensity for clutter and grimy smears on the acrylic surfaces.
Mariana keyed in the code for Delti Utopia 6. Instantly, the way station appeared. She studied every inch of it as she automatically turned chaos into a serene, spartan workspace. Not a fingerprint was left to mar the surfaces or identify the occupant.
In the depiction of the way station, there were aliens from many worlds roaming the streets, but her interest involved the pirates: humans who had turned to raiding spaceships, outlying planets, and space stations when Earth had rejected the poor. The poor being anyone not a multimillionaire. On this ravaged planet, you were either a slave or a slave owner. There was nothing in between. Many had tried to remain free, growing small gardens for food and offering services for a pittance. Mariana's own mother had been one.
Once upon a time, Mariana had lived in extreme luxury. However, she remembered nothing of it. Her father had been one of the multimillionaire corporate class that had taken over Earth. Unfortunately, he had died when she was barely two. Her mother had been horrified to learn that the corporation claimed he was a traitor and his family would not be compensated or protected. She and Mariana had been tossed into the dirty streets, beggars and homeless.
Her mother often told her stories about those desolate days as a reminder of how life could change in an instant and how privileged she should feel to be enslaved by kindhearted aliens. "We lived in a one-room mud hut with mats woven from reeds to lay on," her mother explained. "It took me weeks to build it. During that time, we sheltered in a storm drain. I stole food from the unprotected gardens of others who had little more than we did. You were sick all the time from being exposed to the elements. Eventually, I was forced to trade my body for goat's milk to keep you alive. After two years, I couldn't continue. I wasn't equipped for that kind of life. My once perfectly manicured hands constantly bled from digging in the dirt. My skin went from soft and silky to a browned and dried husk. You, sweet child though you were, cried incessantly. You were starving. For both our sakes, I took you while you were sleeping and left you among the flowers at one of the compounds."
Mariana knew the story by heart. Tylina, only five at the time, had seen Mariana's mother deposit her in the garden. She had alerted the guards, and they had captured her mother. Instead of alerting the authorities, the alien family had offered work, for a price. Mariana's mother would become an indentured servant: a slave. The child would have tasks to perform, but mostly she would be companionship for their daughter, Tylina. They would have shelter, food, and clean clothes in return for scrubbing the forty-room mansion, cooking meals, including corporate dinners, and being at the occupants’ beck and call. Luckily, being a companion to Tylina allowed Mariana to become educated, and the alien girl had come to love her friend, as a sister. Thus, her cooperation in leaving the virtual screen remote unlocked.
For fourteen years, Mariana had lived in this mansion. Not in its opulent rooms above stairs, but in the basement servant's quarters. Her cot was among a long line of others. There was no privacy, no soft linens or cozy reading nooks. The walls and floors were gray concrete blocks, with small slits for windows near the top to allow a hint of sunlight. The cots were bamboo structures with rough cotton bedding. But, the showers were warm, the food abundant, and they were sheltered from the elements. Old suitcases sat at the end of each cot, containing two changes of clothing per servant. They were replaced twice a year to keep everyone looking nice and neat, unless you were a growing child like Mariana. She was given "new" clothes every three months, hand me downs from Tylina, until she reached the age of twelve and stopped growing.
It had been a relief to acquire the same uniform as her mother. Tylina's clothing didn't exactly fit her properly. The only thing she and the alien girl had in common, body wise, was the fact that they both had two arms and two legs. Tylina was four feet tall by age five and six feet by the time she turned twelve. Where her dresses and pants hung loose on her skinny body, they clung to Mariana's skin like glue. By her twelfth birthday, she was drawing far too much attention from the men.
That was also the age when she realized her mother's duties didn't always end at bedtime. Their owner often had corporate guests. During those times she would awake to discover her mother's bed empty. So too, were the other adult females' cots, and even a few males. She asked her mother several times, "Where does everyone go? Why can't I go too?"
The reply was always the same: "You are too young to go with me, and it is none of your business anyway. Sleep while you can."
But, at twelve, she dared ask again, and this time the reply was different. "I am protecting you, dear child. Haven't you noticed the men staring at you? They desire your body, and I refuse to allow it. I made a deal when we arrived. If I gave myself to the guests whenever it pleased them, you would not be touched until you were eighteen. Sleep while you can."
She didn't understand what her mother was trying to convey, so she asked Tylina, who had no problem explaining sex. Mariana had been horrified that her mother allowed her body to be used for such purposes, with aliens no less.
Her eighteenth birthday was next week, and she would be facing a change in her circumstances. Age would no longer protect her from the same bartering as her mother endured. Consenting to such a lifestyle would be less frightening than the alternative. She could be sold to someone who was cruel and beat his slaves. Her worst nightmare came true when she had overheard an argument between Tylina and her father, and she was now terrified.
"You can't do that to Mariana, father!" Tylina had shouted. "She's an innocent. Let her remain here until I marry; then she can be my servant. Give her to me as a wedding gift."
"Daughter, you have become too attached to the huma
n. It is understandable and entirely my fault. You were just so lonely as a child. You missed our home world and had no siblings with which to play. I gave the girl far too much leeway. She should never have been educated at your side or become your confidant. The servants are a commodity to be bought and sold when necessary. She will bring a high price on the open market. Her blonde hair, blue eyes, and lush curves are coveted by alien males. Her purity will cause a bidding war. She is too valuable to keep. Someone will steal her eventually, so it's better to sell her at auction and receive compensation."
"She's not an object to be bought and sold. She's the sister of my heart. It doesn't matter that she is human and I'm not. We grew up side by side, and by your own admission she was given an education, so she is worthy of a better lifestyle."
"You ask the impossible of me, child. Should my superiors discover that she was given the same upbringing as my offspring, I would be ruined. Punishment would be swift. She should have been servicing the guests since puberty. The only way I got away with protecting her was by promising her purity as a prize for the highest bidder, most likely one of the founders of a way station."
Mariana never told her friend what she had heard. Tylina would be heartbroken already and forcing her to admit what Mariana's future held would be more than the innocent girl could handle. She looked for a way to gain her freedom, instead. Part of her education had included the history of the universe's way stations: small planetlike structures used as stopping places for space travel and trade. Delti Utopia 6 was the closest to Earth, and since its beginning twenty-five years ago, it had become more than was planned. It was a world of pleasures. There were gambling establishments filled with bright lights, marble corridors, golden staircases, and plush accommodations for high rollers. Theaters lured actresses and singers who left servitude for riches. Bars served the finest in liquor made on far away planets. The virtual screen showed streets lit by neon lights that announced the fact that the city never shut down. The lighting was rumored to have been salvaged from an Earth city known as Vegas, which was buried beneath rubble now.
Outside the city were mansions, larger than the one she was enslaved in. The "land" was lush and green. Even farther out, there were small domes. These were homes of free people, simple and cheap, the occupants own. It all sounded like fairytales, though the screen showed otherwise.
Yet, these beautiful fantasies were not what she dreamed of, for they were beyond her reach. She had no currency to gamble. Enslavement was the same in those mansions as it was here. The tiny homes cost more than she was worth on the open market. So, it was the pirates that caught her eye. As one of them, she could be free. They traveled the universe, taking from the rich and selling or trading the pilfered booty in places like Delti Utopia 6. They could gamble, drink, and eat in the best of establishments. They were feared and thus left alone by slavers. No ties to one world, no debts, and few rules seemed to be their code. It sounded like perfection to Mariana. Someday, she might have the currency to buy her mother's freedom as well. The price shouldn't be too high, considering her age and the abuse her body had gone through for the last fourteen years. The guests had already stopped asking for her. They wanted younger, fresher bodies.
There were several issues with her desires. The first being that pirates were considered the lowest form of humanity, even below the slaves. They gave humans a bad name and danger followed them. The second was that pirates didn't recruit anyone under the age of twenty-one, especially females. No reason was given; it was simply a fact. And of course, the last issue involved her ownership. She would have to escape the estate, avoid being captured by the planet's vicious guardians, and find passage on a spaceship headed for Delti Utopia 6 that didn't include buying a ticket.
"It's impossible," she said to herself. "I'll be caught before I reach the gates. The guardians will ruin me for auction, and my owner will toss me in the streets to fend for myself. Of course, then I could become a pirate, if they would be willing to recruit a scarred, possibly brain-damaged female. No, I have to get away without detection, or I'm useless and would be better off dead."
With less than five minutes to go on her allotted cleaning time, she changed the virtual location. The loading docks for outgoing spaceships filled the room. She watched cargo being loaded and searched frantically for a breach in security that she could take advantage of. A warning knock came just as she found what she was seeking.
Chapter Two
Tann
The bar/gambling establishment smelled of cheap whiskey and sweat. Strippers danced on a dimly lit platform littered with coins. The counter was splattered with booze and crushed peanut shells, amid unidentifiable smears. Tann kept his back to it, trying to ignore the filth and watch out for trouble. Trouble was easily available on Delti Utopia 6, especially for the likes of him. His long black hair tied back with rough cording, steely gray eyes, tattoos, and disastrous mixture of clothing declared him to be a pirate. The prominent tattoo on his upper left arm branded him as a member of Torbin's group of misfits, making him a target for all others, including space pirates and law enforcement. It was an ironic situation because due to his unfortunate circumstances, he was both.
Actually, Tann was many things. By birth, he was a Naga: a weredragon evolved long ago from Earth's reptiles. By professional choice, he was a space cop. Last of all, by order of his superiors, he was undercover as a disreputable space pirate. It was his assignment to discover all their hidden secrets: who they stole from, why, where, and most of all what they had to do with the men controlling Delti Utopia 6. This way station was thriving where others failed. The rich were getting richer, and the law wanted to know how. Three months of this crap and he hadn't learned much of anything, except the fact that he was hated by practically everyone on the way station and Torbin's misfits didn't trust him yet.
Sure, he had passed the initiation and been given the tattoo, but the raids he'd been a part of were small and inconsequential. The pirates had stolen from unguarded spaceships while their clueless pilots and crew gambled in the casinos or threw coins at the strippers. Their biggest heist, if you could call it that, was taking over a space station. It was an embarrassing situation for all of the pirates. They had believed the space station was filled with drugs and liquor they could trade or sell at exorbitant prices, but instead it had been stripped of all its wares by another band of pirates. They found what was left of the crew locked in an empty shuttle compartment. The crew was so grateful to be freed, they gave Tann and his compatriots the drugs, they had managed to hide: mostly antibiotics and low dose pain meds. Both were hard to come by, so they had made a generous amount of gold, but it wasn't the kind of transaction the cops were interested in. Tann hadn't even sent a report. It wasn't worth blowing his cover.
Yet, Torbin had money to spare, and he spread it around with a generosity that proclaimed he knew where to get more. Something bigger was going on that Tann wasn't allowed to know about. His boss was welcomed in the fancy casinos: the ones with marble corridors, superb liquor, and plush accommodations. Those were the places frequented by the rich, as they roamed from planet to planet for pleasure, and were shown on virtual videos to entice more tourists. But, they weren't the reality for most. This dirty piece of property, housing cheap booze, pirates, and strippers begging for pennies was the norm. It was Delti Utopia 6's little nasty secret. The dregs of many planets came here to play and with them the booty that made the rich even richer. What was Torbin bringing to the way station that kept him in business?
Tann had done his best to get into one of the more elaborate gaming establishments, but the guards had taken one glance at his clothes—a military jacket with the sleeves torn out, a t-shirt from a long forgotten amusement park, leather pants won in a card game, and steel toed work boots taken off a dead man—and turned him away. Torbin, though, had been dressed just as oddly and they had welcomed him with open arms, anyway.
Tann's musings were interrupted by a sultry voice and a so
ft hand running over his muscular arm. "Buy me a drink?" Lolita, one of the strippers who also acted as an informant, asked.
"Whatever the lady wants, she shall have," he said as he dropped a coin on the counter.
"A shot of whiskey will do." Lolita was getting older, and it showed. The straps of her bra were pulled tighter to raise her slightly sagging breasts. She found it harder to suck in her belly no matter how many sit-ups she did. Her hair had been bleached so many times, it was almost crispy. Her days as a stripper were numbered, so she took money wherever she could get it. She referred to it as her retirement fund. Tann had felt sorry for her and arranged a deal that was advantageous to them both. She listened in on conversations and brought him any information she thought he might be interested in and he paid accordingly, always including a much-needed drink. She didn't ask questions about why he wanted the information. In her years working here, she'd learned it was best not to know too much. There were those who would torture you for knowledge.
The bartender swept the coin off the counter, not even noticing the splatter of whiskey that came with it. He slammed a shot glass in front of Lolita and told her, "Five minutes, that's it. Then get back up there. You're way behind on your quota, and no more drinks. I can't have you falling off the stage tonight."
