by Scott Baron
It had been several days, and they still had not let him see her. When they headed back to the ship, he’d see if he could get any information from the other slaves in their little group. For now, however, he just tried to keep up.
They walked for another ten minutes or so, until the Tslavar leading them stopped outside a small tent. The front was open, and inside Charlie could see all manner of oddities carefully laid out on long tables. Contrary to the tent’s outer appearance, the inside was the very picture of organization and cleanliness.
“You four, bring your packs here,” the Tslavar said, gesturing to Charlie, Tuktuk, and a pair of faintly yellow men with long golden hair.
Ootaki, they were called. A species of humanoid from a yellow subdwarf system. According to Tuktuk, they held no powers themselves, at least, not that they could wield. It was their golden hair that was valued.
Apparently, it could hold a “magic” charge when woven and worn by a power user, though the Ootaki themselves couldn’t use it. This led to a market for their slow-growing locks, typically woven into a bracelet or choker. The truly wealthy could afford a belt or scarf of the material, but growing it would take years, and a lot of Ootaki. That was something few could afford.
The rarest of all––with the exception of the first cut of Ootaki hair, which always held the most power potential but was typically made at an early age––were Ootaki locks given freely. Slaves could be forced to ‘give’ their hair, but it lacked the basic element of free will that imparted a many times greater power than when taken by force.
These guys have more superstitions than old Chinese men eating rhino horns to get bigger erections, he had thought as the ridiculous mythology was explained to him. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Not my galaxy.
“There, on the table,” the Tslavar commanded as they stepped into the tent.
Charlie and the others gratefully slid the containers from their shoulders, the straps holding the packs leaving angry indentations in their skin from the weight.
“Now wait outside, and do not wander,” the elfin man said, muttering a quiet word for emphasis. “Nari pa.”
A slight zap from their collars lit up their skin. The Tslavar smiled, his point made, then proceeded to open the containers and lay out the contents on the table. Most were things with no discernible purpose, but the old trader seemed quite interested in many of them.
A lot to learn, Charlie noted. It’s like space Bedouins, or something. Trading, moving on, trading some more.
The Tslavar unceremoniously dumped a large device onto the table.
“Hey, that’s from my ship!” Charlie blurted.
The Tslavar gave him a dirty look.
Oops.
“Binari pa,” the alien growled. The next thing Charlie knew, he was coming to his senses, flat on his back.
“Okay, now we know what that does,” he muttered, making note of the voice-activated remote command. One of these days, you’ll be the one in the dog collar, and then, my pointy-eared friend, you’ll learn an old Earth expression about payback being a bitch.
“You not making he angry,” Tuktuk said as the blue man helped Charlie to his feet.
“Note taken,” he replied.
The slave trader and strange Bedouin-like vendor haggled a while, though the Tslavar had turned off the translation devices used by the slaves, so Charlie had no idea what they were saying. The device from Charlie’s ship seemed to interest the man, though it was apparent neither knew what the hell it was.
I suppose I could tell them that’s a waste water impeller for the toilets, but they did want me to be quiet, Charlie thought with a little chuckle. Wouldn’t want to anger Mr. Pointy Ears over there, now would I?
Finally, the two came to an agreement, pressing the backs of their hands against each other in what he assumed served as a handshake in these parts.
“Impezu Ovusk,” the Tslavar said, reactivating their translation devices. “You, come here,” he commanded the taller of the two Ootaki men.
“What is he doing?”
“Shh. Just watch,” Tuktuk said.
The vendor’s lackeys packed up an assortment of devices into the packs, but instead of loading one onto the Ootaki’s back, the Tslavar made the man kneel, then drew a deadly sharp-looking blade from his belt.
“Tuktuk, what the hell is he doing?” Charlie asked with a newfound urgency. He didn’t know the man, but he couldn’t just stand there and watch a murder. “We have to help him.”
“It is okay,” the other Ootaki said, laying a reassuring hand on Charlie’s arm. “Aaran will not be harmed. We have been through this many times since the Tslavar captured us in our youth.”
Charlie watched as the yellow-skinned man’s gleaming hair was held up in the Tslavar’s hand, then carefully cut at a precise length, leaving the man with a bob cut instead of flowing golden locks. Coin changed hands, and the Bedouin vendor grabbed the hair, quickly secreting it in a pouch, secure within his robes.
“You three, come here. We take these with us,” the Tslavar ordered.
Soon they were back walking the marketplace, a bunch of random alien junk traded for a bunch of other random alien junk, at least to Charlie’s uneducated eyes. That, and a piss-water pump from his ship, the sale of which amused him to no end. He just hoped they’d turn around soon. His pack was even heavier after the trade, and he looked forward to being free of its weight.
No such luck.
They walked and looped through the marketplace for nearly two more hours as the Tslavar conducted his business before he finally steered them back toward the waiting ship. Charlie didn’t want to be in his cell, but as tired as he felt, he nearly did, if only for the comfort of his cot.
But that was before things went to shit.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The blue sun’s effects were surprising, to say the least. While the color is normally associated with cool refreshment back on Earth, the reality of a blue giant was that it burned at nearly four times the intensity of Earth’s own sun. Charlie knew this, of course, but that didn’t make the strange, radiant heat any less oppressive.
I’m just lucky it’s not a supergiant, he consoled himself. Those could actually double in heat yet again, though any planet in such close proximity would be reduced to ash.
The sweat trickling down his back made the straps of the pack he was muscling back to the ship dig in even more uncomfortably. The pack itself was plastered to his skin, the moisture causing the material of his shirt to make a wet suction cup smacking sound whenever the load would shift and pull from his back.
One small bit of fortune was the small, metal flask each of the, what? Servants? He hated to be called a slave. Porter, perhaps? Whatever the phrasing, each of the men laboring beneath a heavy load had one, full of water. It was the foul-tasting stuff, again, but it was something.
Charlie unclipped the flask from the strap of his pack and took a swig. It was almost empty, but they were close to the ship. At least he thought they were, though the twisting aisles of the marketplace could be confusing, to say the least.
He was about to clip the container to his pack once more when a running man barreled into him, nearly knocking him over, running into several others as well in his flight.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” Charlie growled, then felt a new dampness on his arm. “Aw, man. He sweat on me. Gross,” he grumbled. Then he realized what it was, just as the man fell to the ground, immobile.
Blood.
“Oh, shit.”
Up ahead the sounds of a disturbance cut through the thickness of the crowd. Some rushed to see the conflict, but far more were running the other way. Charlie, feeling the natives likely knew best, turned to follow them.
Zap. Right in the neck.
“We keep going this way,” the overseer said. “The ship’s close by, and the captain wants us back.”
“But it sounds like––”
“Nari Pa.”
&nbs
p; Zapped, again.
“Okay, okay. I get it. We go through the chaos,” Charlie said. “But what about––?”
The Tslavar held up his hands. A slaap was slid over the fingers of each hand. Charlie didn’t think much of it, but Tuktuk and the others’ eyes went wide.
“Quiet. Nothing will happen to you. Now move.”
He turned to his blue friend as they closed in on the sounds of violence. “Tuktuk, what’s the deal? You all seemed legit scared when he showed his slaaps.”
“Is not that he has slaap, Charlee. Is that he have two of them at once.”
“That’s bad?”
“Is very dangerous for user. Only very strong can handle it, and me know this man. He not strong. For him to wear two mean him scared. There be very bad things ahead.”
“Well, shit,” Charlie said. “Just my frikkin’ luck.”
The jostling crowd abruptly evaporated, and Charlie realized they’d stepped into the impromptu arena. A ring of onlookers. He glanced in all directions, quickly surveying the situation.
The pale Wampeh was there, his dark hair slick with sweat. All around him over a dozen aliens of a half-dozen different species lay on the ground. Charlie couldn’t tell if they were dead, dying, or merely wounded, but he was impressed by the evidence of the man’s skill regardless. But more were circling him. It was an incredibly uneven fight, and the pale man was unarmed, no less.
Making one hell of a good showing for an empty-handed brawl, he noted.
A pair of attackers rushed at the Wampeh. One bore a club with sharp spikes jutting from the end, the other a pair of blades. They attacked in unison. The one-at-a-time bullshit of martial arts movies was nowhere to be seen in this fight, and the pale man moved at a frantic clip to avoid the flashing weapons.
With a fast snap of his hands, he broke the smaller attacker’s wrist, sending one of his knives flying. The man’s other hand still bore a weapon, however, and the Wampeh took a slice to his arm as the injured assailant spun away.
No sooner had he done so than the spiked club swung through the space he’d just been standing. Any normal man would have been dead, impaled by the weighty instrument, but the pale fighter twisted in an almost impossible way, the spikes only grazing him as they passed.
Charlie found himself rooting for the underdog, while the Tslavar tried to lead them in the safest route around the fighting men.
From the parting crowd, a young violet-hued man with bulging muscles raced toward the Wampeh’s back, a large spear preceding his speeding body. The intended target was oblivious, too busy fending off the other two attackers.
If you asked him later, Charlie would say he didn’t know what possessed him to do it, and that was the truth. In the spur of the moment, he saw what he considered a dirty trick, and his sense of fairness kicked in.
“Look out! Behind you!” he shouted, hurling his flask at the running spear-bearer.
Charlie had never been a very good shot, failing at basketball and baseball alike back on Earth, but even he was bound to make a good show once in a blue moon––or blue sun, as the case may be.
The metal clanged off the attacker’s head, distracting him just as the Wampeh turned, the spear narrowly missing his torso.
The pale man’s eyes flashed brightly, then locked on Charlie a moment.
Is that blood on his lips? He must be more injured than I thou––
A tiny flicker of a grin tugged the corner of the Wampeh’s mouth, and Charlie suddenly felt very unsure if he’d done the right thing. This only compounded when the pale man turned back to face the three men attacking him.
He quickly parried a series of attacks with blinding speed, then rushed backward a dozen steps, creating space.
He’s got to be getting tired. Why doesn’t he just run?
A fourth man entered the fight, a faint purple glow forming in his hands as he joined the armed assailants. This, it seemed, was what the Wampeh was waiting for.
He stomped his right foot, and the men hesitated.
“Tuktuk, why did they stop?”
“They just realize what kind of Wampeh they dealing with,” he replied. “No so easy. This one no victim. This one hunter,” he said, then hurried even faster, trying to distance himself from the scene.
The last thing Charlie saw before his group dove back into the throngs of spectators was the Wampeh clapping his hands and barking a guttural word.
“Azkokta!” he growled, and for a brief instant, a near-black blast of power flew from his outstretched hands.
The four men fell as if pummeled by a giant hammer, their bodies broken and twisted. Only the man with the purple glow had survived, but only just. The Wampeh reached down and hauled him to his feet, pulling his head to the side, exposing his neck as he leaned closer.
Charlie didn’t see what happened next as the porters all rushed into the crowd, hurrying back to the ship. But he didn’t need to see. He couldn’t believe it, but he knew what had happened.
That wasn’t his own blood on his lips, he realized with horror. “Wampeh,” he softly said. “Sounds an awful lot like Vampire.”
Chapter Thirty
“Jesus, what the hell did I just see?” Charlie asked as the group of load-bearing men neared the ship.
“Was Wampeh. I tell you this already,” Tuktuk replied.
“I know, but his face––was he drinking their blood?”
Tuktuk shuddered. “I tell you, very, very rare, but some Wampeh take power from others.”
“So they drink blood. Holy shit. He’s a motherfucking space vampire.”
“No, no, you mistake.”
“Oh, thank God,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I was about to get really freaked out there for a minute.”
“No, of course not. Would be impossible have a society if everyone drink everyone’s blood.”
“Okay, it must have just been the light or something.”
“Oh, no. Now that one. Him drink blood.”
“But you said––”
“I say very rare. I see him show true self when power man come into fight. Wampeh was holding back until then. Waiting for to see if stronger man come.”
“And when he did, he took his power?”
“Yes. Good, Charlee, you learn.”
Charlie was floored. A tricky vampiric alien who sucked magical energy out of others and was a pretty badass fighter regardless. And he had just stuck his nose in the creature’s business.
Way to go, Charlie, he groaned to himself, adjusting the load on his back, wondering if the whole thing might just come back to bite him in the ass, the dark humor of which was not lost on him.
He increased his pace along with the others as their Tslavar guard forced them along at a brutal clip despite the size of their loads.
“Hey, Tuktuk, why doesn’t anyone use wheels around here?” he asked as the straps dug into his shoulders. “I mean, it’s nice to be out of the ship and all, but it would be more efficient, and a whole lot easier than us carrying all of this on our backs.”
“We carry because Captain Tür no want spend for Drook-made sled.”
“So, no flying carts. Gotcha.”
“No. But telling me, what is wheels?”
“Round things that make carts move. You know, wheels.”
Tuktuk just looked at him with a confused expression. Then Charlie took a closer look around. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed before. No one had a traditional cart. Even the rabble of the marketplace were using strange, floating conveyances, powered by what Tuktuk called magic.
“No one has ever invented the wheel around here?”
“I still no understand what is wheel, Charlie.”
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, an odd little grin spreading across his face. “I may just get to reinvent the wheel after all.”
Charlie moved close to the other porter slaves as they lined up to carry their loads into the ship, quietly asking each of them if they’d seen another human, like him. A f
emale.
He knew Rika was there somewhere. He had seen her taken aboard the ship when he was first captured, but there’d been no sign since then.
“Oh, the new female,” a stocky, short fellow with enormous hands and deep red skin said. “I’ve seen her. Keep her alone, they do. A cell at the far end of the ship near the rear storage. Heard her cries, I did. Late at night it was. But a tough one, she is. The Tslavars seem frustrated when they come from her cell.”
Charlie was both distressed and relieved. She was still on the ship, but they were mistreating her, likely as they had done to him. But the red man was right, Rika was a tough one, and even if she hadn’t bathed in the healing waters, she’d be a tough nut to crack.
“Where is your water container?” the Tslavar logging their packs into the ship’s stores asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Um, there was a fight back on the way here. It must have come off with all the people running.”
“It is your responsibility. You lost a piece of your kit,” he said, slapping Charlie across the face. “You will have reduced rations until the cost of it is recuperated. Captain Tür may opt for additional punishment as well. Now get moving with the others, and go back to your cell.”
Great. Now I’m in the shit for helping a vampire. A space vampire, no less. The others had heard the Tslavar, and Charlie knew at least a few had seen what he did, but despite not knowing him, none, it seemed, were motivated to rat him out. The hatred of the Tslavars was a bond of mutual suffering they all shared.
Sweaty and tired, Charlie flopped onto his cot as soon as they reached their cell and fell asleep almost immediately.
It had been a several-day voyage to the next world on the Tslavar’s agenda, and oddly enough, Charlie found himself getting used to the fact that he was traveling farther and faster than any human ever had. In fact, in a mere week, he had been to more worlds than his entire species, save Rika, with whom he was currently tied.
