by Celeste Raye
Jeval said, “I do try.”
The thing sat. Margie’s nose wrinkled. It was a Morger. They were the only creatures who stunk like Sulphur and unwashed feet. She kept her head down, letting her hair hide her face and the revolted expression upon it.
The thing’s presence came with a bonus though. Trying to breathe past its reek kept her mind occupied and off Jeval and that amazing sex they’d had. Sex that had been wholly satisfying in a bodily way but that had left her heart bleeding and her senses feeling like she had somehow missed something that should have been there, but hadn’t been.
The Morger rumbled out, “You selling today, stranger?”
“No, but I might be renting.”
What? She froze, her muscles cording and tautening at his causal words. That had never been part of the plan! Or at least nobody had told her that it was part of the plan! If the Morger took her out of that big Hall, he’d find himself gutted by the short and sharp blade she had hidden in the belt that held her pants up.
The Morger grunted. “I am not in the mood for a rental. I want to own.”
Jeval said, “Then we have nothing to speak about, now do we?”
The Morger grunted again and ambled off. Margie had to repress the urge to wave a hand in front of her face to try to dissipate the odor he left behind.
Jeval whispered, “It smells like that rotten egg Marik found in a nest a few days ago; remember?”
Margie had to repress laughter by lifting a hand to her mouth and pressing down firmly.
That movement was hidden by the fact that just then a massive fight broke out between two slaves who were fighting for the right to be auctioned off to the wealthiest patrons.
Danger was everywhere, and she whispered back, “I think I should get near the other slaves, the ones brought in by that trader from The Federation’s pleasure world.”
He bent down low. His hand cupped her neck, his fingers spanning across the skin that covered her pulse. Her heartbeat picked up at the casually ruthless gesture. She knew it was for show and that he would not harm her, but fear flooded her system anyway.
He spoke in a harsh tone. “Go on. Go be with the other slaves while I enjoy myself. You annoy me.”
She was sure that last bit was true.
She went, skittering forward on her hands and knees, keeping her head and eyes down the whole way.
The slaves huddled near a raised dais. Pungent alcoholic beverages circulated above but the costliest drink was, as always and on every world that had been civilized and taken to the brink by tech and pollution, water. Not just water, but clean and clear water. Pure water, brought in by ships that traveled many cycles to find it and bring it to those who could afford it.
Revant Two had fresh and clean water. That alone made it ripe for taking, even if there was not much of that water. She had, in truth, no idea how much of it there was but she did know that the planet’s position made it hard to reach and that the water would go flat and stale and become not worthy of the high dollar sales that the traders wanted, so that would help keep them at bay.
But for how long?
The slaves she chose to sit next to looked afraid and tired; many had brands, and some had tattoos on their legs or on the napes of their necks. They were allowed to talk amongst themselves, but very quietly, although, none were.
That sort of flustered her. How was she supposed to get intel if nobody was talking? What would be the best way to start the conversation? Should she just ask, hey, have any of you heard any dirt on The Federation lately?
Probably not.
She squirmed a bit, her nerves rising as she considered a hundred different gambits and discarded all of them. Time was passing way too quickly, and she had to figure something out. Everyone was counting on her and Jeval, and she did not want to disappoint them, nor did she want to miss something vital, something that they needed to know, so she didn’t dare scoot back to where Jeval sat either.
She licked her lips and shot a glance at a male next to her. He was of a species unknown to her, but he looked vaguely humanoid. She whispered, “Have you been here before?’
He gave a short nod of his head. Heart beating faster now, Margie whispered, “I’ve never been here before. I was on Orbital before I came here.” It was true enough, anyway.
A few of the slaves perked up. One female whispered, “I hear it’s lovely there.”
“It is.” Margie looked around the Hall. It stood on a desert plain that stretched far and wide. The city was the only one on the planet, and it had a rep for being rough and tumble, for keeping whatever happened there discreet, and there was plenty of reason to be discreet as well. There were about a hundred dance and carding halls as well as other gambling places. There was rare and exotic entertainment, some of it provided by slaves and some provided by hired entertainers shipped in for that purpose. “I’m a little scared.’”
Another female, definitely not human but very lovely with her green skin and hair, gave her an encouraging smile. “It’s not so bad. They’ll start shouting for us to entertain them soon. Do you have any skills beyond the delights?”
The delights? Oh shit. She meant sex! “I was a gurley on Orbital.”
The green female asked, “How’d you get here?”
“I owed a debt I couldn’t pay.”
They all nodded with understanding and sympathy. Margie looked down at her hands, hoping to look as forlorn as possible. She whispered, “I hear that it’s better to be sold to a Federation officer than to…to a trader. Is that true?’
The male next to her asked, in a voice so low it was barely audible. “Are you being sold?”
She swallowed hard. The fear came back. Her hands actually shook, but it was because she was afraid they would know what she was really doing, trying to open a conversation that was forbidden. “I don’t know. I am trying really hard to please him so that doesn’t happen, but I am terribly afraid that he will sell me to recoup the credits, that he may find the credits more attractive than me.”
The green female said, “It happens. And yes, The Federation officers can be better, but it depends on which you gain as your owner.”
“And that applies to every owner,” the male whispered. “Speak no ill of The Federation.”
They all went silent. Dammit. That was not working at all. Jeval had hoped she would get some pillow talk, but it seemed that all of the slaves were too afraid to speak much at all.
She sighed inwardly. The green female leaned in close and whispered, right into her ear, “He speaks the truth. No matter what, never speak of them or what they do or want or ask for. They hold all, as you know, and we are less than motes of dust in their eyes.”
That went for all things, and not just slaves, but Margie doubted that that would make much of a difference to the slaves she huddled with.
The green woman asked, “That’s your owner?”
She let her eyes flicker to Jeval. Her heart fluttered, and her pulse raced. Her inner temperature spiked and spilled juices into her panties. “Yeah. Who’s yours?’
The green female let her eyes move across the room to a vividly green male with a strip of long hair tied up into a high knot at the crown of his skull. “He is, Ruckland…” the green female gulped. She averted her face and Margie knew that the pride that had made her use her master’s name had gotten the best of the female. She was clearly not supposed to say his name; it was probably some kind of rule, Margie guessed, and she glanced around quickly to see that the other slaves weren’t paying attention at all. They were busy gathering themselves up and going toward the stage that had been set up because, as predicted, the beings there nearest it were screaming for slaves to entertain them.
Jeval strode over, tugged at her hair briefly, and walked toward the door that led out of the Hall. She scrambled to her feet and went after him; following at the distance she knew would make it look like she was following a master and not a fellow spy.
They entered the chamber,
and he drew her close, his mouth next to her ear like the green woman’s had been moments before. “Learn anything?”
She shook her head. He whispered, “I did. We have to get out of here and now. The Federation is on its way; looking to do a roundup of those they call fugitives and traitors.”
Panic settled in. “Why isn’t everyone running then?”
“Because they don’t know. I walked into the mind of a being not far from where I sat and found out that he is a Federation officer working undercover, looking for a being called Ruckland.”
She stiffened. “I know who he is.”
He grinned at her. “Then you learned something after all. Come with me; we need to get him out of here.”
“Why?”
“Because if Federation wants him, he must know something they don’t want him to talk about.”
That made sense but what made more sense was getting the hell out of there as fast as possible. Talon had earned a pardon from The Federation after that fight with the Gorlites, and only because the universe had been watching and they could have done nothing else, but the rest of the brothers had not been given amnesty.
Jeval was an outlaw, and he had a bounty on his head and a death warrant with his name on it sitting in every Federation Intel bank in the universe. He couldn’t be caught up in a sweep.
“We can’t take the time for that, not if that is going to happen soon.”
“I need him. Come on, let’s go.”
They headed back toward the Hall even though it was the last thing she wanted to do and the last place she wanted to go. She spotted the green-skinned female and whispered, “She’s his slave. That’s him over there; see the one with skin her color and the big gold hoops in his ears?’
Jeval moved. She tripped along beside him, her head down low and her eyes on her feet. Worry kept her emotions weaving between a raging desire to get the hell out of there as fast as possible and an equal desire to get to the creature Jeval said they needed and get whatever he had that the Fed wanted from him if possible.
More than anything else, though, she was scared that Jeval would get caught and captured, sent to some Fed hellhole where he would be tortured or worse and then killed.
Jeval moved close to the creature known as Ruckland and muttered, “See the human there with the brown hair? The one with the gold tunic?’
The creature muttered, in a voice pitched low enough not to be heard over the pounding music. “The Fed spy? Yes, why?”
“He’s looking for you, and he has corps on the way. A massive fleet. They are going to try to capture you under the cover of doing a sweep.”
Ruckland didn’t ask questions. His hand came up. His fingers snapped together. His slave came to him, leaping off the stage with real grace and prowess. He didn’t say a word, but he did sign a gesture into the air. The female cast a startled glance at Jeval and Margie and then she nodded. Knives appeared in her slim hands.
The four of them hastened out of the Hall, and Margie saw, with a sinking heart, that the officer that Jeval had pointed out had noticed that exit too. She gulped out, “I think we might be in some real trouble here.”
The green female said, “Me too. Ruckland, can we get to the ship?”
They were running now, not even bothering to hide that fact either as they exited into the boiling clouds of dust and laser bright rays of the alien sun. Ruckland’s slave said, sharply, “Ruckland, now!”
He transformed. There was no other word for it. He transformed into some creature that raced along the ground faster than anything she had ever seen. Her gasp got louder as the sun hit hard, striking into her body.
The female grabbed her up and then she changed too. Ruckland snatched up Jeval in his teeth and Margie dangled from the female’s as they headed for the docks, moving so fast that the world was a spinning dust bowl and ground flying below.
Margie felt sick. She couldn’t breathe. Her entire body wanted to go rigid, but she was afraid if she moved even an inch, tensed a single muscle, that the long and vicious fangs of the female, who was now at least three hundred pounds and many feet taller and wider than she had been before, would puncture her skin and kill her.
Ruckland peered behind them. His body was tense. He growled out, “They follow.”
Jeval knew what he had to do but he didn’t want to, not at all. It was a small ship coming after them and they were only halfway to the docks now. The ship was clearly a Fed one and he shouted, “I got it; let me go!”
Ruckland dropped him. Jeval spun downward, flying into the dirt. He heard Margie scream a warning and he rolled sideways just in time to avoid the clawed feet of the female and having those feet rip his stomach open.
The dust, reddish orange, was a thick curtain but it did not and could not hide them. All it could do was give them away.
He didn’t know why The Federation wanted them so badly, but they did, and that meant he wanted them too, and if they went with him willingly, so much the better.
He shouted, “Make for my ship!”
Ruckland shouted back, “We have no choice! We bought passage here and have no ship!”
The dust got thicker and more choking as weapon fire came down. The female circled back around and so did Ruckland. They all stared upward. Margie screamed, “Put me down!”
The female dropped her, and she and Ruckland drew weapons again. The female went low, rolling hard as weapon’s fire struck down, sending showers of the fine powdery earth upward. Margie spotted a creature racing toward them on the ground, and she grabbed the laser gun on Jeval’s side without thinking and then it was in her hand and going off, the fire cutting the thing coming at them in half!
Horror struck her right to the core. She had killed something!
Ruckland shouted, “That damn…” then he was moving, his weapons coming up and fire blasting toward the ship. But it was no ordinary ship; it was a warship and outfitted, and the fire was heavy and wide.
Jeval’s arm and hand yanked her backward. She toppled to the ground, and he barked out, “Stay down!”
He took up a stance. Heat radiated off his body. His arms spread wide. A fresh wind, one born from somewhere deep inside him, sprang up and then a powerful sonic burst rippled and rose upward, smashing into the low-flying ship.
He had just single-handedly taken down a Federation ship!
He grabbed her by the arm as debris, flaming and weighing tons, rained down all around them. Ruckland shouted, “You blew up a…never mind. Run for it!”
They did. The docks were not far now, and they made it to them. Margie was sick and in shock, and as soon as their feet crossed the threshold, they were up, leveling above the earth and heading for space above.
Ruckland, who was clearly not in possession of a slave but whose mate was definitely his equal, leaned against one wall. He cried out, “Drop us at the nearest way port. We will seek our way across to our own ship from there.”
Jeval sat Margie down in a chair. “Why is The Federation after you?”
Ruckland looked at the female. She spoke softly. “Someone has stolen a vast amount of papers from them. It was not us, but they are hunting down the most notorious of all thieves to see if they can find out who did it.”
Margie asked, “Why would they hunt down thieves for…I don’t understand.”
She didn’t. Ruckland opened his mouth. It got wider and wider, a large shelf of jaw suddenly appearing. She gagged a little as he disgorged what looked to be an entire and incredibly precious statue! He said, “They want all of us because we move in a small circle.” His fingers swiped his saliva and some other thin fluid off the statue, which was made of a precious metal. “They probably think if we didn’t take it ourselves then we would have heard who had.”
Gross.
There was a lot to talk about, and she knew it, but the one thing she knew the most was that she could not wait to get Ruckland off the ship! He was busy bringing up all sorts of things, and she was pretty sure she was goi
ng to get sick long before he displayed his haul from the pleasure planet!
A few evenings later, right after they finally landed on Revant again, Margie stood in the doorway of her hut, trying to breathe. The intel they’d brought back was vital, but they had gotten there just a little too late!
Federation ships cruised overhead, and the citizenry stood below, many of them with hands raised to shield their eyes from the bright sun, which was rapidly being blotted out by the bodies of those ships.
Oh, God. She staggered backward. All the courage she thought she had deserted her then. Her body shook all over, and she staggered back a step. There was no safety in that hut, and she knew it, but she still had the craziest urge to run inside, throw the covers over her head, and huddle below them until the world either ended or started over again.
Jeval came toward her, his large and lustrous eyes alight with both sunlight and courage. Margie sucked in a hard breath and then, as he reached the door of her hut, she said, “The Federation! Why are they here? What is going to happen now?”
His gaze didn’t flinch away from hers. His voice was calm. “War, most likely.”
No! There was no way she could go through a war. Everything she had seen, all the blood and all the battle, was too much. Those things had already taken such a large toll on her. She could tolerate being on the wrecking ship. Watching the nightly fights and often deaths that were caused by the rowdiest of beings and people in the gambling halls on the pleasure planet had been hard, but it was something she could bear. But war?
Everything in her cried out against such a horrible thing. Death and devastation; that was what war brought in its wake. Her eyes traveled from his face to the people gathered there, all of them wearing similar expressions of fear and confusion. She understood exactly how they felt because she felt the same way.
This could not be happening. There was absolutely no way at all that they were prepared for war. They were too few, and they had far too few ships. Their new lives had barely begun, and they were about to be destroyed by the greed of The Federation.
