“There’s an ancient cemetery farther to the West,” Silandra replied. “They’ve taken Sisa there.”
“Did he say why they kidnapped her in the first place?” Mel asked.
“I’m not sure,” the Sylvan went on. “Some kind of offering...”
“To whom?” Mel asked.
“He said a strange, decaying man came to the village one day promising everlasting life if the chief gave him a sacrifice. The chief was old and dying, so he agreed.”
“A lot of good that did him,” Mel said, giving the dead chief a light kick.
“Please, let’s hurry,” Silandra urged. “I sense her fear.”
“Onward!” Sir Golan shouted.
With the warrior in front, Sisa in the middle, and the two other froglings in the back, the group followed a meandering path through the cemetery. Sisa, pulled along by the Katak warrior, kept a telepathic link with him so she could understand what he was thinking.
Keep moving, he said in her thoughts.
What is this place? she asked.
The garden of the dead, he replied.
After a few minutes, they reached a crypt of white marble, tilted slightly, with a pair of torches burning on either side of the entrance. From the interior, multiple creatures appeared through the doorway. Each was humanoid, hunched over, and at times using their hands to steady themselves as they moved. Their skin, where not covered by filthy rags, looked diseased and partially rotted.
Ghuls, the warrior said.
What do they want? Sisa replied.
You.
Sisa shrank away but the warrior yanked her back.
“No!” she said aloud.
In the distance, in the direction of the village, her mother’s voice cut through the night.
“Sisa!”
The girl struggled against the Katak warrior, but the other two froglings pushed her from behind.
“No!” Sisa screamed.
The Ghuls, three in all, met them just outside the crypt. The warrior chirped something from deep in his throat, handing the girl to the nearest of the creatures.
Sisa screamed again and, in the distance, her mother’s voice began shouting her name. The girl could see a light approaching, but still far off. She kicked at the Ghul, but he was surprisingly strong. He dragged her toward the crypt entrance.
“Sisa!” shouted Silandra’s voice.
“Help! Help me!”
Past the threshold, the stench inside the tomb filled Sisa’s nostrils. She made another lunge toward the entrance, but the Ghul gripped her arm tightly as the other two tugged at the heavy metal door.
Seeing the warrior still outside, Sisa thrust her thoughts into his.
Don’t do this! she yelled.
It’s already done, he replied.
She heard her mother still calling her name as the door shut. Then there was only silence and the entombing dark.
Chapter Fourteen
Sylvia Flax could smell Walter Ruggles’ aftershave. Hunkered down in the chilly, unlit hold of a Celadon starship, she recognized it instantly and knew he was somewhere among the other passengers, all held captive in the darkened room. Apparently, he had survived the pirate attack after all.
When Flax first got a whiff of Ruggles’ cologne, she was sitting in his cabin on the Jewel of Amann. It was one of several things about him that annoyed her.
“Why do you wear those glasses?” she had asked, sitting in his room.
“To see,” Ruggles replied matter-of-factly.
“Obviously,” she said, looking up from her datapad, “but why not get your eyes corrected?”
“I have astigmatism.”
“What about implants?”
“Not on my salary...”
Flax sighed, tilting her head.
“You’re quite a catch, Mr. Ruggles,” she said.
At that moment, the ship rocked sharply, and an alarm went off in the corridor. The jolt knocked the datapad from Flax’s hand. It slid across the floor and under the bed.
“Well, shit!” Flax said.
“It’s the IDEA people!” Ruggles shouted in a panic. “They found me!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Flax replied.
The lights flickered and Flax felt the artificial gravity fluctuate. Her stomach turned.
Ruggles was heading toward the closet.
“Where are you going?” Flax asked.
He tapped the control, opening the closet door.
“What do you think?” he said.
“If IDEA can track you in the middle of nowhere, I’m sure they’ll find you in a closet.”
Sounds of explosions and blaster fire filtered through the walls and floor. Flax considered leaving, perhaps to find someone from the crew, but Ruggles objected.
“Stay with me!” he pleaded.
“That’s sweet, Walter, but I don’t plan on spending my last moments with you.”
The door to the corridor slid open and a small, green-skinned man stood in the threshold. His head was too big for his body and his nose and ears were too big for his head. Everyone stared at each other until Flax jumped up from her chair, crossing the tiny cabin in a single step. She lunged at the man, punching him on the nose and knocking him down.
The little green man cupped his nose as blood poured from between his fingers. He was also screaming.
Flax touched the controls, closing the door.
“What is that?” Ruggles asked.
“Celadon I think,” Flax replied. “Nasty little bastards...”
Finding some electrical cord, Flax tied the Celadon’s hands and feet. Mostly to stop the noise he was making, she also tied a piece of cloth torn from the bed sheet around his mouth. The blood was already starting to dry around his nose.
“Now what?” Ruggles asked.
“Help me stick him in the closet.”
“But I was going to hide in there...”
“Sorry, hero,” she replied snidely. “We’re going to take his gun and find a lifeboat or something. We don’t want to get caught by these guys.”
“Do you think they work for IDEA?”
“No!”
Although they left the cabin together, Flax and Ruggles quickly became separated amid the confusion of Celadon pirates and panicking passengers. In the end, Flax was captured, disarmed, and hauled aboard a corsair starship. Now, crouched in the hold, she felt both relieved that Ruggles managed not to die, and irritated that she had not done better than him. With a sarcastic smile, she realized they were literally in the same boat.
With the first name of Bortok and the last name The Enslaver, the leader of the Ougluks had a reputation for brutality that served him well. Six feet six inches tall, with wide, muscular shoulders, he intimidated nearly everyone he met. Even so, in his private quarters inside the Ougluk base on an abandoned asteroid, Bortok considered himself more of an art lover.
On the wall, a large computer monitor hung in a gilded frame like an expensive painting. Images of famous artworks cycled across the screen as Bortok reclined in a comfortable armchair.
The first picture, Inevitable Conclusion by the Magna artist Zhug-Doja, showed a city burning against a blackened sky. The next few paintings were Gordian still lifes featuring, for the most part, casks of beer surrounded by sausages. While Bortok appreciated the subject matter, he found it visually uninteresting. However, these were still a far cry better than anything the Dahl had produced. With their idyllic landscapes of pink blossoms and wispy waterfalls, they made the Enslaver want to choke himself.
The next piece was by a human painter named Goya, titled Saturn Devouring His Son.
Say what you will about humans, Bortok thought, they know how to make great art.
Hearing a chime, he watched the painting on the screen dissolve into the face of a man who looked similar to a Dahl except for his bright, vermilion skin and dark red hair.
“What do you want, Cirion?” Bortok asked.
The Sarkan, or Red Dahl as th
ey were also called, stared from the screen with a sour expression.
“The Celadons have arrived with their latest shipment,” Cirion replied.
“Get them ready for me. I’ll be there in a bit...”
Before the connection blinked out, Bortok caught a glimpse of Cirion rolling his eyes.
The Red Dahl may love their psionics, Bortok thought, but it’s hard to cast a spell with a broken neck...
After getting dressed, the Enslaver left his quarters and made his way through the tunnels carved from the surrounding asteroid. It had been a mining colony long ago before he had found it abandoned. Nobody knew where it was, except him and his men. Hidden among the other floating rocks in the otherwise uninhabited star system, it was the perfect hideout from the Imperial Navy.
Bortok walked into an open chamber with a high ceiling and a deep hole dug in the center. Two bare-chested Ougluks brawled in the pit, with only their fists as weapons. The Enslaver liked a little blood sport before seeing the newest meat the Celadons brought him. He hated those sniveling little pirates, but they did the dirty work for him. It was a good system.
Passing the pit and down another corridor, Bortok arrived at the hangar where a cargo ship was sitting on heavy struts. The bay door was already open and the captives were lined up in orderly rows.
Bortok didn’t like what he saw.
Sylvia Flax stood in a line with other passengers from the Jewel of Amann. In the row behind her, she heard Walter Ruggles mumble about IDEA agents. She wasn’t sure if he was certifiably insane or merely an imbecile. All she knew was, of her worst assignments, this was in the top five.
Besides the Celadons, Flax recognized the other brutes as Ougluks and remembered their reputation as slave peddlers. She had no idea where they had taken her, but when one of the Ougluks trudged in her direction, she knew she was in trouble.
He shouted at the Celadon corsairs in another language, motioning angrily at the humans. The main Celadon shrugged, which Flax took to mean “you get what you get.” The big Ougluk boxed the ears of the Celadon, who fell moaning to the ground. The other Celadons jumped and chattered amongst themselves. The Ougluk shouted a few more words, curses most likely, before turning to the captives.
“I’m Bortok the Enslaver!” he shouted in standard Imperial. “Welcome to the rest of your life!”
He chuckled at his own joke.
That’s never a good sign, Flax thought.
“Of course, I can’t say how long that’s going to be...” he went on.
Called it.
“Normally my Celadon brothers bring us people I can use,” Bortok said. “Slaves need to be young, able folk. People I can sell to the highest bidder! I don’t know what hole they dragged this miserable lot from, but you wouldn’t fetch a pittance. You’re a waste of my time, that’s what you are!”
“See here!” someone said behind her.
Ah, crap, Flax thought.
The Ougluk’s face, which was previously contorted into a scowl, flattened into a curious expression of interest.
“What’s your name, sir?” he said with surprising respect.
“Walter Ruggles of IDEA Furniture.”
“IDEA, huh?” Bortok said, looking worried. “I certainly don’t want trouble with them.”
“Well, I should hope not!” Ruggles replied, stepping forward. “We’re nobody to trifle with, I assure you!”
The previously towering slave trader slouched as Ruggles approached.
“This has all been a terrible misunderstanding...” Ougluk said meekly.
“Really?” Ruggles replied.
Rising to his full height, Bortok straightened and slapped Ruggles’ face, knocking the frail man to the ground and sending his glasses through the air, landing at Flax’s feet.
“...that I give a shit who you work for!” he finished.
Curled in a fetal position, Ruggles whimpered quietly in a heap.
Flax wanted to do something. Her right foot edged forward just an inch, but she stopped herself before anyone could notice. There was no point sticking her neck out if they’d just end up dead.
Bortok leaned over and grabbed Ruggles by the collar and began dragging him the way the Ougluk had originally entered. Over his shoulder, he shouted at the Celadons.
“Bring the rest!”
On the monitor, the image of Bortok blinked off. Cirion groaned and turned away from the screen. Sometimes, dealing with these barbarians was just too much.
On this isolated rock in space, Cirion’s office was his only sanctuary. His quarters were shared with Bortok’s brutish subordinates, but here at least he had privacy. With the door shut, he could almost imagine being back home, far from these low-bred creatures, surrounded by his own kind. The Red Dahl were mental titans compared to the Ougluks and their stunted half-cousins, the Celadons. Laying back in a chair, Cirion stretched out his arm and, focusing his mind, manifested a twirling sphere of energy in the palm of his hand.
This is power, he thought. The power to make something from nothing.
He sneered, thinking about his own cousins, the Dahl. They once had everything, their fingers reaching throughout the galaxy. Then they threw it all away, turning inward and leaving their far-flung holdings to rot. The farthest outposts, isolated and forgotten, had to fend for themselves. It was there that the Sarkan evolved into a new people with their own beliefs and skin color.
Now look at the original Dahl, Cirion thought. They grovel at the feet of the humans, complacent in the spread of the human plague across the stars. Only the Sarkan see the true path...
The communicator in his ear chimed.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
A deep voice replied, “Come here at once.”
“Understood.”
Cirion collected his datapad and left his office, making sure the door was securely locked behind him. Through a passageway cut unevenly through the asteroid, he wound his way to a large chamber used as an assembly hall. Long tables ran the length of the room, leading, on the other end, to a raised platform. Standing on the stage, a Magna watched him with eyes blazing red.
Cirion’s chest tightened.
“Ipak-Bog,” the Sarkan said. “What can I do for you?”
The Magna was two feet taller than Cirion, wearing a kilt-like garment stretching to the floor. From the belt up, he was bare-skinned, revealing a massive, muscular body along with gray, ram-like horns. His voice rolled over the Red Dahl like thunder across a plain.
“What is your report?” Bog asked, but not as a question.
Shaking slightly, Cirion glanced at his datapad.
“A new shipment has arrived, sir,” he said, almost whispering.
“And?”
“The quality seems... substandard.”
Bog’s eyes simmered, focusing directly on the slender-framed Sarkan.
“Disappointing,” he said after a pause.
“But...” Cirion went on hurriedly, “there is something you might like.”
“Go on.”
“The Celadons downloaded the ship’s passenger list and there appears to be a VIP aboard, a human named Sylvia Flax.”
Gradually, like a glacier working its way across a continent, Bog’s mouth curled into a smile, or at least as close to one as Cirion had ever seen on the Magna’s face.
The Celadons gathered the captives together and herded them through an arched tunnel into a main room where several Ougluks were assembled around a hole in the ground. They made room for the prisoners to get a view into the pit. Peering over the edge, Flax saw one of her burly captors, barely clothed and covered in horrific scars, standing below. The Ougluk was dirty and smeared with blood, but probably not his own.
Bortok lugged Ruggles to the lip of the pit, yanking him to his feet.
“I can’t see what’s happening...” Ruggles sputtered.
“Allow me to explain,” Bortok replied, releasing his grip. “Down there, which I imagine is a fuzzy blob to you, is one of our
less genteel enslavers. Frankly, he doesn’t have the temperament to be a slave trader. He prefers smashing things.”
“He sounds horrible,” Ruggles said.
“Indeed he is!” Borok admitted. “Why don’t you say hello?”
Bortok shoved Ruggles in the back, sending him like a rag doll into the pit. His arms and legs flailing in midair, the furniture salesman landed in a lump of poorly tailored clothes at the bottom.
Flax heard a muffled groan.
“Get up, human!” Bortok shouted. “There’s no sport in just lying there!”
“Stay down!” Flax said without thinking.
“Shut up!” Bortok ordered, swiping the empty air in her direction. “No interference from anyone!”
Ruggles pulled himself to his knees and elbows, his head still resting on the dirt. He coughed, making a cloud of dust appear around him. With more effort, he got to his feet on wobbly legs.
“I’m blind without my glasses,” he said.
“Look for the blurry mass of green in front of you,” Bortok replied. “When he gets close enough to see, he’s probably too close...”
“What?”
The Ougluk in the pit charged at Ruggles, who looked like an animal caught in the headlights of a truck. The brawler wrapped his thick arms around him as Ruggles gasped while the air in his lungs was squeezed out. His legs dangling, he managed to kick the Ougluk in the crotch. The brute dropped him, allowing Ruggles to scurry away to the far side of the hole.
“Low blows are against the rules, Mr. Ruggles,” Bortok said. “Just kidding. There are no rules!”
In the pit, the Ougluk roared in anger and pain. Pounding his chest, he recovered quickly and charged toward Ruggles on the other end. The human didn’t immediately react, perhaps not seeing the green behemoth rushing toward him. At the last second, his eyes suddenly wide, Ruggles darted out of the way with a loud, throaty shriek. He took refuge back where he had started, just below where Flax was standing.
“Isn’t this fun?” Bortok asked with a wide grin. “Wait till he gets an arm torn off. That’s always entertaining!”
His hair soaked in sweat, Ruggles squinted in the dark pit. On the other side, the Ougluk took his time, clearly recognizing his advantage. Flax watched them, knowing how this was going to end. It made her sick.
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