by Celeste Raye
She’d just begun to dream of a future. She’d heard that there were large expat communities of humans across the universe and that many of those expats lived in large worlds where the living was cheap. She had hoped, she had, that once her debt was paid, she could find a way to live more cheaply on Orbital then retire from the gurley life and head off to some far-flung land where she could just spend her life in peace and with some semblance of ease.
She’d been so close. So very close. But once The Federation had discovered where a lot of those credits had come from, they had immediately issued an order to take the siblings into custody for treason and the crimes of wrecking and war. They had had to flee that pleasure planet in order to survive The Federation’s order. So her debt had remained unpaid for the large part.
Her dream had died, but it had been resurrected by the trip to Revant. At first glance, it had been something she had not wanted.
It was primitive, though it was rapidly gaining and making strides. But that first day, when they had touched down, the sheer beauty of it had paled in comparison to the fact that there was nothing and nobody there.
She had been so afraid of being there, and now she was afraid of leaving the place that had become the home she had always dreamed of, even before she had known she could dream of such things or what they even were.
She tucked a strand of her shining hair behind one ear and said, “Okay. I’ll do it. But I won’t like it.”
His eyes, large and wide and as blue as the sky, danced with a sort of amusement. “I didn’t expect you to.”
She grouched, “I still don’t know why we can’t make you act as a sex slave. I’m sure you could charm the hell out of the female sex slaves and probably even a few of the male ones if you really put your mind to it. I’m sure they’d really take a liking to you.”
His face took on an indignant and outraged expression once again. His chest puffed up. His hands went to his hips. His eyelids slanted downward. “You do know that I’m not going to excuse you from this no matter how many insults you hurl at me or how many pokes you take at my manhood?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, her eyes traveled down his attenuated and leanly muscled body, right to his crotch. There was a chubby and plump outline there, one that she had seen before. He was so well-endowed that even the baggy trousers that he wore could not completely disguise the fullness of his member. A hot blush stained her face, and she jerked her eyes upward again. “Who says I’m trying to poke at your manhood?”
Oh, God. Had she just said that? She had! Things just kept getting worse by the second!
He said, “Good to know.”
He strode out of her hut, and as he went, she couldn’t help but notice the way that his tunic top rested just above his narrow waist and right above the firm and tight swell of his enviable ass. How he managed to keep an ass like that was beyond her. It was perfect, all muscled and full and…
God dammit!
That she had long been attracted to him was no secret to her, and she was fairly certain that it was not a secret to him either. The real question was how in the hell she was going to pretend to be his sex slave and do that around a large crowd of people while still ignoring the attraction that was so blistering hot that it often made her skin feel as if she were being exposed to not one, but several, suns.
Her long raven-black hair swung around her as she paced up and down the confines of her hut. She had a lot on her mind. The woman who had been sentenced to be sent back to Old Earth had been screaming for most of the day, her voice ringing through her hut’s thin walls and out into the world. Her daughter, a young and sincere woman who did, in fact, work hard, and who often tried to hush her mother’s complaints, was on edge. Mostly because she had been refused admittance to the hut. In fact, her things had been taken from it and then placed in a nearby hut shared by two young girls around her own age.
The punishment was harsh, and Margie was still conflicted about her part in that woman being sent back to the war-torn planet from which she had come.
She knew it had to be done. But she regretted her action and escalating the situation. She should not have spoken. And if she had spoken, she should not let the situation get so out of hand that the brothers had interceded.
Jeval was cruel, sometimes unconscionably so. He would not think sending that woman back was unkind. He would see it merely as a tool to prevent open hostility between the two very different sects of humans there on the planet. It was actually that and nothing else, but that decision didn’t take humanity into account. It took into account only the greater good.
She stopped, her head lowering between her shoulders. The crown of her head met the cool stone and mud wall of the hut, and she sighed, her shoulders drooping low as yet another scream from the hut, situated very near hers, rang out.
Margie said, aloud, “I don’t have to do this with him. I could refuse. Here, all can refuse. I have the right to say no. But I also have the right to bargain. If he wants this for me, he has to rethink that decision. Perhaps the threat and the day’s imprisonment will be enough to make that woman rethink her position.”
Could that be possible? She supposed it could be. It was worth a try anyway. She didn’t want that woman’s death on her conscience any more than she wanted to refuse to go along with the rather outlandish plot that had been hatched around her and created for her. She did not want to question herself as to why she wanted to go and do that so much.
It was a stupid thing to do. She was probably going to get her silly self up and killed, or something even worse!
If she had learned anything over the years of living on Old Earth and in the Below, it was that treachery abounded and that nowhere was safe. She had learned the hard way that people would do anything to save themselves, even jettison off those that they claimed to love the most.
What if he deserted her at the first sign of trouble?
Would he leave her there to fend for herself on a strange planet among strange creatures? Would she stand a chance if he did?
She had to consider that. If it came to a point where he had to get out and she was not in his immediate vicinity, he would absolutely choose to leave her behind in order to serve the greater good. In order to serve the planet he and his siblings had labored centuries to have and the people upon it.
Margie knew about his past.
He had been born on Revant, that long-gone planet. In his veins ran the blood of kings of his kind. His people were warriors and gifted with strange gifts. He and his brothers had taken up where their father and mother had left off, wrecking ships in order to preserve their people’s way of life on a planet outside of Federation grasp and rule. They had been attacked by the parasitic race known as the Gorlites and, with full Federation cooperation, they had been sold off to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder just happened to be a mining colony also run by The Federation’s cronies. They had lived underground, breaking their backs and bones and spirits year after year after year to produce the fuel for The Federation ships. They’d broken rock with their bare hands and bled all for the things that came from below that surface of that hot and lifeless place where they had been imprisoned, and for money to line the pockets of the greediest of all—Federation and mining officials who cared not one damn bit where their slave force came from, or how many died there in those dark and lonely mine shafts.
Jeval would do anything to protect this planet and his people. Even the humans that were not of his bloodline but who were now upon the face of that world and who he considered his subjects.
A long shiver worked its way through her body. Subjects. Yes, that was exactly how he considered those who also resided on the planet.
His other siblings insisted on democracy, but not Jeval. She had often seen him gazing at her fellow humans with a look of mingled contempt and amusement that spoke volumes about how he felt about them as a race. He had no love for them because he thought them weak and silly creatu
res. He did know, however, that the planet needed to be populated.
His race lived centuries, sometimes ten or more of them. He was only five centuries old, and had a long life ahead of him. Did he plan to, at some point, overthrow his sibling’s regard for democracy and fairness for all people? What if he became, at some point, a despot?
Or was she judging him incorrectly because she did not really know him at all? She didn’t know anyone who could say that they really knew him well, other than his brothers, and they guarded each other with some real zeal.
That attraction she had for him was so real but why it was there was what she couldn’t figure out. Sure, he was attractive, but so were many of the human denizens of the planet, and even some of the other beings there. It was not just his attractiveness—the physical part of it anyway.
There was something about him, something enigmatic and fleeting that always made her want to look closer, get to know him. Find him below that always guarded expression on his face and that defensive posture he always carried himself with too.
It was hard to tell if that was even a front or just his personality. He was like the sea, possessed of so many depths, and with only a glimpse of those depths able to be seen from the shallowest surfaces that he exposed to those around him.
More shivers worked their way through her body. Those tremblings were of fear. She did not want to die. She didn’t want to go with him and engage in this crazy plan that was no plan at all. She wanted no part of this in truth, but the truth also was that she had no choice; she had never had a choice.
From the moment he had appeared in her doorway and told her what had been decided, her choice had been taken away from her.
The choice was an illusion. Maybe it always had been. There was no way she could say no, not knowing how necessary her part in it was.
If she did, she would be dishonoring the ones who had saved her and helping The Federation claim the planet on which she now resided. She’d been under Fed rule before. It was awful and unfair, a yoke around the neck of all citizens, even those with the wealth and privilege that had allowed them to live in better circumstances.
There was no other thing to do but sharpen up her wiles and go along for the trip, do her best to glean some intel from the others she’d meet, and hope they could somehow stave off The Federation.
The Federation would come calling eventually; intent on taking the small system that Revant Two resided within. The Federation would never be satisfied until it had achieved full power and full control over every single living thing and planet in the universe, and took from it whatever it could do to ensure its own wealth and power.
The Federation would kill for total power and wealth too.
She knew that.
Everyone knew that.
The Federation had taken much from her. Now was her chance to take something from them.
And that was something she could absolutely not refuse a chance at doing.
Chapter Four
Dammit, the last thing he wanted to do was take Margie along. Every time he even looked at that human, all he wanted to do was take her, kiss her, and lay her in his bed—do everything he had ever learned of sex with her.
That was the problem.
He was about to have to pretend that she was his slave; whom he controlled, and not only that, she was the woman least likely to concede control, ever, but she was the woman that he wanted the most.
That would present a problem. A large one.
How was he supposed to parade her around for everyone to see while pretending he cared nothing at all for her?
“I don’t care for her,” he muttered as he strode into his hut. “I want her, yes, but that is not at all the same as caring for her. I am going soft in the head if I think I care for her. No way. She’s a giant pain in my ass most of the time. There was that time she bit a Mecalan in the face when he tried to stick his organ onto the stage by her feet. Everyone knows that race has a foot fetish and they love human feet and worship them for some reason I never figured out.
“Then there was the time she slapped a Harlender for taking a credit back when she wouldn’t smile at him. As I recall, she shouted, ‘You smile you ugly four-faced motherfucker!’ but why she would think he fucked his mother is beyond me. Their kind isn’t born of mothers; they come from eggs.”
Margie was a foul-mouthed, highly-tempered creature who just happened to have a body that drove him mad—and why wouldn’t it? She was elegantly petite and thin with a set of firm, high breasts and a swell of hips that drew his eyes and made him want to travel his hands along the dangerous curves of her skin. He wanted badly to let his fingers come to rest there between her thighs, to see if she would be wet and willing for him. And that hair, like the finest spun silken web, how it would feel tangled into his fist was something that he often found himself pondering. That smile of hers, all red lips and shining and strong white teeth, made his eyes go right to her mouth and think of kissing it until she was breathless and weak against him.
Those thoughts weren’t making it any easier for him to reconcile himself with the fact that she was the one his siblings had chosen to go along with him. He had argued until he had literally gone blue in the face, but they had pointed out that she was the best suited to it given that she had been a gurley girl, had been aboard a slaver ship, and would absolutely know how to talk to people who were held as slaves, whether willing or not.
The crux of the matter was that there was no way in the world that that woman was going to even attempt to pretend to be happy to be with him.
Of course, that could actually be a large selling point for their ploy. They left in the morning and he did not have time to think the situation through as much as he would’ve liked.
He had to go for various reasons. That gift of his would be incredibly helpful if they found somebody who might have information that they could use to discover what it was The Federation was now planning. It had to be something big. They had to move quickly, and they had to be able to decide whether or not it was worth going to war or if they should adopt a wait-and-see attitude about the current situation.
His muscles stiffened as he walked. With The Federation, there was rarely any use in adopting a wait-and-see attitude. He knew that. Even his brothers knew that. This new martial rule that they had laid down was chafing the hearts and minds of quite a few races that held their planets and systems outside of Federation role.
It was chafing quite a few under Federation rule as well.
But those most used to the yoke were usually the last to throw it off, and he knew that too well to hope that those who had been under that rule the longest would ever do anything more than mumble and grumble about the situation.
There was little to be gained by entering into The Federation at this late date. Once upon a time, The Federation had been created for good—it had been created in order to keep war at bay and to assist all citizens regardless of race or system or planetary origin in living in peace and harmony with other races and planetary systems.
But that Federation was long gone. Over the last few centuries, The Federation had existed solely as a profiteering company. They took what they wanted by either force or credit. They subjugated those who would fight against them. They destroyed those that they could not subjugate. They were violent, and they had a massive army at their back. Many of those in The Federation’s service had no love for The Federation. They did, however, have massive amounts of love for their planet, and they did not want to see that planet destroyed.
They also had a strong sense of self-preservation and didn’t want to die, the punishment for refusing that service. All living creatures had a natural instinct to do whatever it took to survive, to extend their lifespans, even his race—which had the added advantage of being some of the longest-lived beings in the universe.
The Federation was known for destroying the planets of those that rebelled against them or who refused to be a part of their ruling class
.
They were known to kill any and all who refused them anything, especially if that something was something The Federation thought it was owed.
There was no way to know if the universe would simply accept this new development or rebel against it. Given the history of The Federation’s rule, and the way they had always just kept right on making things worse for the very beings they were supposed to care for, and the way that those beings just continued to allow them to govern, it was unlikely that The Federation would grow less tyrannical, ever.
That Federation had to be wiped from existence.
He had heard that centuries before, from his grandfather, then a very ancient being that had watched The Federation warily over the centuries and rather accurately predicted that they were growing in power. His grandfather had also said that when it came to something that powerful, one must not just kill it but burn the very earth it had stood upon, even if it meant giving one’s self to the fire as well in order to ensure that that thing could never grow again.
This thought stayed with him as he strode to the small hut that was now his home.
He entered slowly, all of his senses tingling as they always did. It had been so long since he had had a space that was solely his own that the strangeness of it hit him again as he settled the door closed behind his body. He looked around the one room carefully. Everything appeared to be in place, and nothing looked disturbed. He sniffed the air, letting his mouth open widely so he could taste the air on his tongue. There was no scent there, and no sign that anyone or anything had been within the room.
His sleeping pallet sat high above the floor with the aid of a platform that he had built with his own hands. There were a few small shelves on the wall that held the things that he liked the most, mainly books. There was a small wardrobe that he had also built for his clothes and a small area for bathing.
