by Leslie Chase
His smile was anything but friendly. “You mistake me, Auric. I’m making you a promise. When you lose our duel, I will be merciful. Your human pet will live unharmed, in as much comfort as this blasted planet allows. I will see to it that all her needs are met.”
I blinked, surprised and suspicious. That was far too reasonable for Zaren, the kind of offer an honorable warrior would make. From him, there had to be more. I stayed silent, waiting for him to show me the blade hidden by his courtesy.
Eyes narrowing, he whispered. “If you win, she will not be so lucky. I have enough loyal warriors to make sure she will not live to celebrate your victory. It will not be a pleasant death either, Auric. You may count on my warriors to hurt her as she dies.”
My blood ran cold and I growled, letting my fury show. “I will slaughter you for threatening her.”
“Perhaps,” he said, a cold, cruel amusement in his voice. “But what will that win you? Her painful death in your arms? That is not a prize you will fight for, I think. Or you can throw the fight and make sure she has all the comfort I can show her.”
“Why would I trust you?” I asked despite myself. I wanted to spit in his face, to kill him on the spot, but if I tried, I would certainly die — and worse, so would Tamara.
“Lying gains me nothing,” he answered with a shrug. “Think about it: to me she’s just one more slave. I can spare her and see to her comfort with no cost to myself. And while you may question my honor, you can’t think I’d have risen this high if I made a habit of breaking my word.”
He straightened, smirked, and stepped back. “Think on it. Tomorrow at dawn we will meet here.”
With that, he turned his back. It would have been easy to kill him then and there, but instead I let him withdraw. No point in making myself look like a cowardly murderer. For all I knew, that was his plan — get me to try and kill him, and one of his warriors would gun me down. That would be an end to it.
I refused to make things easy for him, and in two steps he was out of my reach.
That left me alone in the middle of the Wandering Star’s deck. The humans were herded back to work and no prytheen wanted anything to do with me. Even those who agreed with me stayed back, and I didn’t blame them. If Zaren won our fight the next day, none of my friends would last long under his rule.
21
Tamara
My jaw ached where Zaren had hit me, but that was the least of my worries. Around me, the gathered prytheen watched Auric and Zaren was they talked in tones too low to overhear.
Whatever they were saying, it didn’t leave Auric happy. I saw the anger and frustration in his tense muscles, and it boiled over into me.
One of the prytheen grabbed at my arm as they started pushing the other humans back to work. I shrugged him off, darting to Auric’s side before the alien reacted. That might get me in trouble, but I had to know what was going on.
Auric fixed the other prytheen with a glare that froze him in place and snarled something. I caught the word ‘khara’ and no more, but whatever he said, it made the warrior back away. For a moment, at least, we had space to ourselves on the deck.
“What the hell’s happening?” I demanded, my fear turning into anger as I spoke. The pain in Auric’s eyes sent a wave of guilt through me.
“I am sorry, my khara,” he said, his hand resting on my shoulder and squeezing gently. “I tried to free you, but I fear I have only made things worse.”
I took his wrist in my hands, holding on and trying to calm the panic that flared in me at his words. Forming a question wasn’t easy — I tried to speak, but no words came.
Auric’s hand tightened on my shoulder, and we drew strength from each other. His smile wasn’t convincing, but it calmed me enough that I could listen.
“We have little time,” he said, voice quiet and fast. “My beloved, I challenged Zaren to a fight for you. We will face each other tomorrow morning in a battle to the death.”
I swallowed, terror and hope both blossoming in my mind. “You’ll win, right? You’ll kill him and then this will be over?”
“I can promise nothing,” he said. The darkness in his heart made me shiver, and I looked into his eyes.
Auric wouldn’t lie to me. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t hide things from me, and I put two and two together.
Hoping I’d come up with five, I asked: “Are you going to try to win?”
He winced and my heart fell. For once I hated being right, but I understood how a bully’s mind worked. I’d met plenty of them on Earth. “He’s threatening me, isn’t he? If you give him a real fight, he’ll kill me.”
“I will not allow anyone to harm you,” Auric said, ducking the question. That was enough for me to fill in the gaps. “Tamara, you are my mate, my soul. I cannot allow you to be in danger.”
“How do you think I feel?” I said, my hands gripping his wrist tight, tears welling in my eyes. “If you win, you can at least save my people. I’d rather that than watch you die and live to see them in slavery.”
I tried to be brave, to ignore my fear for my own safety. It wasn’t easy, not with the prytheen hunters prowling around us. If they wanted me dead, there wasn’t anything I’d be able to do to stop it. I was at their mercy.
“Tamara, my love, I cannot do something that I know will kill you,” Auric said. His voice was rough, full of pain, and his eyes glittered with tears. This tested even his immense strength. “I would do anything for your safety.”
“God damn it, Auric, please. Win this fight.” I couldn’t stop the tears now, my vision blurring and my breathing coming quickly.
Strong hands closed on my arms as the prytheen came to drag me away. For a moment I considered fighting — what was the worst that could happen? If they killed me, they’d lose their hold over Auric.
But if I fought now, Auric would try to protect me. And he’d lose. Outnumbered as we were, we didn’t stand a chance in hell.
As tempting as dying by his side was, I wouldn’t start a fight that would end in Auric’s death. Facing that thought made me understand how he felt, and tears rolled down my cheeks as I let the guards drag me away from him.
The cell they dragged me to didn’t really live up to the name. It had been a cargo container once, before the wall tore off during the crash and whatever had been inside had scattered across the landscape outside. I hoped it wasn’t anything too vital, because I doubted we’d be able to salvage it.
But the container made a handy place for the prytheen to keep their captives. I sat against the metal wall, looking at the hastily-patched tear and thinking about how to seal it against vacuum again. A pointless problem, but better than worrying about what would happen in the morning.
Around me sat other humans, all dressed in the jumpsuits of the Arcadia Colony. Colonists I was supposed to be ferrying to their new home, awakened into this nightmare of slavery. I swallowed, unable to make eye contact. It wasn’t my fault they were here, but I still felt responsible.
The other prisoners looked at me sullenly, hope lost, and then went back to their quiet conversations. No one wanted to be too close, which hurt. I understood — who’d want to invite the anger of their alien masters by being my friend? But it didn’t make me feel any better.
There was one person I knew amongst the crowd of strangers. Dr. Orson made her way over and sat beside me, her gaze falling on the marks the tenger’s sting had left on my forearm. She frowned. “What have you gotten yourself into, Captain?”
I blinked, taken by surprise and not knowing what to say. “What the hell, Doc?”
She shrugged, grabbing my arm unceremoniously and poked at the marks. Wincing, I pulled my arm away as she spoke.
“It’s either you or me, and I’m too busy being a damned doctor,” she said. “The aliens shot Donovan, McKenzie didn’t make it through the crash, and I haven’t seen Maxwell since planetfall. That leaves you.”
I swallowed, taking back some of the things I’d thought about McKenzie
. Sure, he’d been a creep of a man, but he’d died getting the ship down half-way intact which had to count for something. Braver than I thought, anyway.
But damn him for dying and leaving me in as ranking officer. Orson was right, though, it was down to her or me. Great. Now I had to take responsibility for this mess, too.
“I can’t be in charge,” I protested. “This was my first flight. I don’t have any training—”
“Yeah, well, how much training do you think Donovan had for this?” Orson said, talking over me and fishing something from her medkit. “Look, someone has to be in charge. I need to focus on the injured. You’re an officer. Done.”
An icy spray on my wrist numbed me and I saw the dark marks fade a little. Orson nodded. “Anti-toxin works fine then. Good. You’re lucky you got a low dose of the venom, it’s pretty nasty. Saw a few colonists with it before the prytheen let us put up the forcefield to keep the animals at bay.”
“You’ve got to wonder what they hunt for them to need venom like that,” I said, shaking my head. I’d learned to ignore the stinging itch in my arm but now it was gone I felt a lot better. “At least they’re keeping us safe from the animals.”
Orson snorted, an undignified sound. “Sure. They don’t want anyone else killing us, not when we’re their farm workers.”
One of the nearby colonists looked up from the holobook she was reading and shook her head.
“Some of them aren’t so bad,” she said. “One saved my life, remember.”
“They don’t want to waste workers, Dallas,” Orson snapped. “That’s not kindness, that’s just being a smart slaver. I didn’t say they were stupid.”
“No,” Dallas insisted. “No, he saved me from another of the aliens. They’re not all comfortable with keeping slaves. You can see it in their eyes sometimes.”
“Wishful thinking. Stockholm syndrome.” Orson shook her head. “Dallas, you’re seeing what you want to see.”
“No,” I said, letting an idea form as I spoke. “No, I think she’s right. Auric doesn’t want to keep slaves, and he can’t be the only one. If Auric can take control of the prytheen, we’ll be able to live in peace.”
Orson gave me a look and I shrugged. Maybe she was right, maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. It didn’t matter. Either I was right or we didn’t stand a chance. There were too many of the prytheen and they were too dangerous — getting rid of all of them would be impossible.
Great, now I’m actually thinking about that. I sighed. There was no putting it off, someone had to make a plan. I couldn’t just hope that Auric found a way out of the trap Zaren had caught him in.
Thinking about him sent a painful pang through my heart and I took a deep, shuddering breath. The pain in Auric’s eyes when he looked at me, the certainty that he would die, ate at me.
How could you let yourself get trapped like this? I wanted to scream at him, but I wouldn’t even get a chance to do that. If I spoke to him before his fight, I couldn’t burden him with my pain.
I closed my eyes, a tear running down my cheek as I tried to get my imagination under control. It was hard to keep myself from visualizing Auric lying dead.
This was all my fault. If not for me, he’d have a fighting chance. But he couldn’t bear to win if it meant my death, I knew. No more than I’d be able to watch him die if I had a way to stop it.
Which just means you have to find a way out, I told myself firmly, pushing down that pain and fear. Auric could win the fight, I was sure of it. I just needed to give him a chance to do it.
Opening my eyes, I dragged a sleeve across my face and dried my tears. They wouldn’t help anyone.
I’m an engineer, I told myself. I solve problems. That’s what I do.
Maybe if I approached this as an engineering problem to be solved, I could stop thinking about it as a death sentence for the man I loved. There had to be a way out.
Dr. Orson whispered into her wristband, dictating notes to the animated paperclip that was her interface. I looked around. Dallas was reading a holobook from hers. The rest of the colonists all wore their wristbands too. They’d been a fixture of life aboard the Wandering Star for so long that I hadn’t really noticed them until now.
“Why did they leave us our communicators?” I asked Dallas. They didn’t have much value as weapons but Zaren didn’t strike me as someone who’d leave his slaves any tools that might help a rebellion.
“Most of us suck at Galtrade,” Dallas answered, shaking her head. “The hologram translator isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing — and the aliens need us to understand orders. Not that they’re very forgiving when that doesn’t work out.”
She sounded bitter, and I shivered at the idea of being reliant on Mr. Mews’ translation skills to avoid a beating. But it meant that we had our wristbands, and that might be useful.
“Dallas, was it?” I asked. The colonist nodded, smiling just a little.
“Hayley Dallas, but everyone just calls me Dallas,” she said. “Colony communications tech. If we ever get to Arcadia, that is.”
“We’ll do our best to get you there,” I promised. “I’m Tamara.”
I couldn’t introduce myself as captain. That would need a while to sink in, even if I accepted the logic.
“Every human’s got their comm?” I asked, wanting to be sure. The seed of an idea was forming, and I turned it over in my mind as Dallas answered.
“That’s right, Captain.” She nodded emphatically and I winced at the title. Guess I’ll have to get used to it. “The aliens won’t lower themselves to learn our language, and they don’t have the time to teach us theirs. Our holograms can translate and help us learn, so we get to keep them.”
It was a safe enough move on their part. The prytheen had nothing to fear from the communicators, not with the way they were locked down for safety. Everything ran through the Wandering Star’s systems, so as long as the prytheen controlled the ship we’d have no privacy. They’d be able to monitor any conversations we had over them. Maybe not understand them, given the language barrier, but if they were willing to simply punish anyone who used them, that didn’t matter.
Without authority over the Wandering Star’s computer systems, the colonists couldn’t do anything about that. But I had a few tricks up my sleeve that they didn’t, and authority the ship’s systems might recognize. I tried not to let myself hope too much.
“The local animals, have they been much trouble?” I asked. “The things out in the woods were pretty dangerous.”
Dr. Orson shrugged. “There are plenty of nasties out there. Lots of toxic predators, for a start, and they seem to be drawn to the crash. We’re lucky that the forcefield holds them back.”
“Yeah,” Dallas chimed in. “One of those snake-bird things killed a prytheen before they worked out that they were venomous. That’s why they switched on the field, I think. That and it makes it easy to spot anyone coming in or out.”
I wondered who that prytheen warrior had been. From the satisfied note in her voice when she spoke of his death, I suspected there was some history there. It didn’t seem like something to pry into, though.
Doesn’t matter anyway. For now, what matters is that there are dangerous animals nearby.
“You’re a comms tech. Does that mean you can get the communicators to do what you want?” I asked Dallas. She frowned as I continued. “I need to get a message out to everyone. Can you do that?”
“I can,” she said cautiously. “That’s not hard, especially for the captain. But the aliens listen in to everything.”
“Sure.” I nodded, leaning close. “That just means you have to be smarter than whoever they’ve got running their listening program, right? You can outsmart some alien who doesn’t know the system.”
“If they hear—” she cut off, shook her head. Drew a breath and pulled herself together. “It would have to be a recording. I can ping that to everyone’s comm, have the hologram play it as an update from the captain. No way to get
a reply back, though, not without them noticing.”
She looked unhappy, checking her wristband. A hologram of a puppy appeared, looking back at her and panting. “The system’s limited by design. Pushing it outside its comfort zone won’t be easy, and I can’t promise it will work.”
“That’s fine,” I assured her, hoping it really would be. I’d only get one chance at this, and if it didn’t work, I’d make things worse for everyone. No point in worrying, though. “Just do your best, it’s all we can do. Get it set up, and I’ll work out what I want to send. There’ll need to be two recordings, though.”
Dr. Orson looked at us and frowned. “Is this a good idea?”
No, I thought. It’s a terrible idea and might get all of us killed. I couldn’t say that, though. If we didn’t try this, we might not get another chance. We definitely wouldn’t get one before Auric died. “Yes. I know what I’m doing, and we only get one shot at this. Don’t worry, Doc. I’ve got a plan.”
22
Auric
I marched out onto the deck as the sun rose over the horizon. In the distance, some strange creature sang to greet the dawn, a strange alien trilling that echoed from every direction. Whatever the alien was, the Wandering Star’s forcefield kept them from coming too close to the colony ship. Given my experience with the planet’s wildlife, that was for the best.
The human colonists were already gathered around the edge of the deck, there to see the death of their would-be savior. To see what happened when someone challenged the alpha of the Silver Band. Zaren would not waste the chance to intimidate his new slaves.
Prytheen warriors stood around the humans, watching them. One of those guards would be the executioner waiting to strike down Tamara if I didn’t play my part. I tried not to think about that.
Near the center of the black metal deck a circle of prytheen warriors waited for me. Those were the real audience for this, the warriors who’d joined Zaren. The ones he needed to impress, and to whom he needed to prove his dominance.