Prison Moon_Ice Heart

by Alexandra Marell

  “What are they going to do to us if we speak? Strip us naked and make lizard men fight for us?” Billie Rae had no intention of going quietly. A small rallying point for the terrified women, she chivvied and joked.

  Janie found a smile in the chaos of uncertainty. How many of these women were still in denial? Still hoping, like she did in the cage that this was some prank or a kidnapping by every day human perverts?

  She couldn’t think of saving these women tonight when nothing mattered but Kelskar and winning this fight.

  No cloud cover and well into the night, jewels of frost sparkled on the worn planks. Overhead, the home planet blurred to a misty smudge and a breathtaking canopy of crystal stars and twin moons held court in a velvet sky streaked with blue and pink.

  A jarring contrast to the dilapidated arena of death below.

  Fighters far outranked the prizes in number making all the women desirable catches. The first dragged forward, stripped and forced to stand fainted in a boneless heap when the grey-skinned victor pounced onto the platform to claim his prize. The second spent the whole of her round heaving and throwing up.

  One by one they were yanked forward, the gowns ripped from their bodies to jeers and whistles and made to wait for their fate.

  “I’m last up. You’ll be gone by then.” No warmth left to share, Janie and Billie Rae shivered together, already feeling the loss of parting.

  “Yeah and I just know the ugly fucker that looks like a walking mountain will be taking me home. Still, I’ve had worse dates and I bet you have too.”

  Janie buried her face in Billie Rae’s shoulder, trying to warm her icicle of a nose. “Justin,” she said. “Emptied the till and ran off with another woman. And somehow I missed all the clues.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “No. I can hardly remember what he looks like. Billie Rae, is this a dream? You’d tell me if it was, wouldn’t you? I mean, things like this don’t happen, do they? None of this is real.”

  “That worries you, doesn’t it?” The crowd screamed as one, rising in a giant wave of bodies to salute the new victor. His blooded, slime-covered lizard face appeared at the edge of the platform, sending his prize into a hysterical flight across the platform, dodging his grabbing hands and threading with surprising agility through the massive enforcers throwing themselves into her path. Lizard man chased her down to jeers and laughter from the crowd. The camera box raced behind.

  Billie Rae shook her head. “Dating 101. Never humiliate a man in public. Boy, is that going to come back and bite her ass tonight.”

  Only two girls to go, the knot in Janie’s stomach twisted another turn. They’d make her watch him fight. Watch him bleed.

  Just come for me. When it’s all over, just come for me.

  “You didn’t answer my question. You don’t want this to be a dream, do you?”

  “At first that’s all I wanted and now I’m terrified it might be.”

  “Jeez, you have it bad. He must be a good guy.”

  The pang in Billie Rae’s voice surprised her. “The best,” Janie said simply. “But he took some finding. Half a galaxy and all.”

  Billie Rae stroked her hair, twisting a lock around her first finger. “Like I said, you’re a lucky bitch.”

  “I know it’s not a dream. My aunt was abducted, when she was seventeen. No one knew at the time, but I do now.” Twisting her head, Janie checked for enforcers. Long into the contest, the scaly beings with razors for fingernails had grown bored of taunting the women and given up on trying to intimidate Billie Rae into submission. The best warriors fought last for the most contested prize and they didn’t want to miss a moment.

  “No shit? Well, I always reached for the stars and look where it got me. Christ almighty, it’s so fucking cold, we’re going to give frigid a whole new meaning tonight.”

  “I’m glad we met, Billie Rae. If anyone can survive this, it’s you.”

  Billie Rae flashed her perfect teeth in her best pageant smile. “Well someone’s got to teach these barbarians some manners. Maybe my years at Miss Ellen’s School for Young Ladies won’t be wasted after all.”

  Bloody hell. Manners, tea and scones, lace tablecloths and fancy cupcakes. It all sounded more alien now than this. Too cold to form words with their trembling lips and rattling teeth, they gave up, waiting for the enforcer’s lance to prod Billie Rae to the stage. Not about to give him that satisfaction, she hauled herself up on shaking legs, lifted her head and finger combed her hair.

  “I cheated by the way. When I won Miss Krunchy Kreme. I slipped Dulcolax in the buffet. Took out half of the competition.”

  “Oh.” They shouldn’t be laughing. Not now with death lurking in the shadows.

  “So yeah, I’ll survive. Watch and learn. This is how a real queen walks.”

  “Find us,” Janie said. No saving these women tonight, but that time would come. “Word has it there’s a Paradise on this wretched moon. If there is, we’ll find it and make something for all of us. We’ll see you in Paradise, Billie Rae.”

  Janie raised a weary palm for the lowest high-five in history, the vision of a safe haven so clear in her head. Too many innocents at the mercy of abusers and murderers who saw only flesh to be used and traded on. She saw a fort, circled by a high fence. The fence becoming a wall, the wooden huts morphing into fine stone buildings like the temples on the mountain.

  They’d make it happen, but first Kelskar had to live.

  Billie Rae embraced her fate like a true queen, owning the stage and awing the crowd into the same stunned silence as Kelskar. Star quality. They both had it in bucket loads. Janie dozed for a while, eyelids drooping, jolting awake with every rising cadence of the crowd. Every kill that moved her nearer to the edge.

  The thing climbing onto the stage for Billie Rae dwarfed everyone. Bulging with muscles so taut he’d shame Mr Universe and some. Heavily veined skin a florid red mottled with dark blues. Silver hair falling in a slicked-back tail.

  Two eyes, a nose and a mouth and all in the right places, so not all bad. He whipped off his cloak, swirled it around Billie Rae’s shoulders trapping her arms at her sides. Billie Rae’s lips moved. The creature’s face creased in an almost comically puzzled expression. Then he threw her over his shoulder and crossed the stage to the exit area where security boxes waited to give the victors safe passage from the arena.

  “Bye, Billie Rae. Hope he’s good to you.”

  Hope. What a fickle thing. One moment urging her to move mountains, the next laughing in her face for daring to dream again. The lack of medical care alone made for pitifully short lives in this place. They might beat an infection, but a burst appendix?

  Death sentence.

  Janie buffed her frozen feet, groaning at the pain of circulating blood forcing through frozen flesh. Right now she’d take Kelskar, a cave away from everything and his arms to shelter in. Let someone else save this godforsaken world.

  “Your turn, female. Go.”

  The bulky enforcer blocked out the moonlight. No emotion in the dark eyes, the set of its jutting jaw. Chanting voices filled the night, calling for the final victim, demanding more blood. More death. Hadn’t they seen enough?

  To win her back, Kelskar must lose another piece of his soul.

  “I’m coming.” Stripping so publicly naked seemed a small sacrifice compared to Kelskar’s burden. The slip of a gown slithered to the boards. The enforcer’s gaze dropped to her, breasts, the nipples hardened to tight buds by cold. He slid the bid bag over her head, unrestrained lust narrowing his eyes.

  Let him look. That’s all he got tonight.

  “Stand on mark. Keep still.”

  Standing at the edge, Janie swayed on a sudden wave of vertigo. The platform seemed higher than she remembered when they herded the prizes up the rickety wooden ladder. Remote enough to feel detached from the leering crowd yet near enough to pick out each fighter standing on their own marks, waiting for the signal.

  Evenly spaced i
n a loose circle, Kelskar stood farthest from the platform, head bowed, a blade in each fist. He’d shed the coat, his tunic and undershirt to fight bare-chested like all the fighters. Clothes provided hand-holds to take a warrior down. But bare skin was too susceptible to friction burns, she’d argued. She remembered that conversation in the ship’s cage.

  Kelskar had only smiled and added a hint of pity that she didn’t know the prowess of a gladiator who fought like ten men in one.

  “Not problem,” he said. “I never fall.”

  Shaking so hard, arms wrapped tight about her body, she was in danger of crumpling like a broken doll. No, she wouldn’t do that. The other women survived, she would too.

  Don’t fall, Kelskar. Please don’t fall.

  He looked up then, but not at her, at the camera boxes hanging above the pit. Good. She didn’t want him to see her or be distracted by her plight

  Win. Please win. Don’t make me watch you die.

  “Stay on mark.” A lance dropped in front of her, shoving her back onto the cross scratched into the boards. The fourth woman up had simply walked to the edge and jumped and the enforcers were taking no more chances. It was a hell of a long way down.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not that brave.”

  “Earth women talk too much.” The enforcer whacked her butt with a gloved hand, a stinging slap like the crack of a whip. She yelped, flushed with the indignity as much as the pain.

  “Makes you feel big does it?” she muttered. “Hitting a defenceless woman?”

  “Yes. It does.” He threw her a lingering glance. Grunted, effectively dismissing her from his thoughts in that one guttural noise. In the pit, the herald faced the pumped up warriors, a cone, like an old fashioned bull-horn pressed to his face.

  “From this moment forward there are no rules. Fight until the last of you stands then claim the prize. Are you ready and willing to die this night?”

  A struggle to hear him over the frenzied crowd chanting for their favourite champion.

  None shouted Kelskar’s name. Untried, he seemed to have no one’s support and everything to prove.

  No, not true. He had Janie.

  “Kelskar.” Cupping her hands to her mouth, she cried out. “Kelskar, you owe me a waterfall.”

  “Silence, female.” The enforcer spun around, a hand raised. She ducked the blow, watching the herald streaking for the gate, the warriors charging and leaping into a tight knot of muscle, slashing blades and swinging cudgels. Did he hear her?

  “Kelskar, I’ll bake you cupcakes. Just stay alive.”

  A greasy hand cut off her words. The words, spoken low in her ear told her she’d said enough.

  “One more, I cut out tongue. Understand.”

  She managed a small nod. The hand blocked her mouth and nose. Blood sang in her ears. A bad idea, shouting out like that. Not only distracting when Kelskar needed absolute focus, but if he saw her like this he might abandon the fight and try to get to her. Disqualification and death followed that path.

  “Wish I bid for you myself. Then I tame you.”

  The enclosing fingers stank of burnt embers and the breath puffing at her cheek smelled worse. She tried to pick out Kelskar from the corner of her eye. Right in the middle of the fray, using both hands, ducking and diving with incredible speed to hack and slash with deadly precision.

  For her, he’d become a killing machine again. And that was the saddest thing.

  The crowd blurred, the buzz in her ears dialled up to a piercing whine. The stars had fallen from the sky to dance in front of her eyes while she suffocated in this creature’s grasp.

  “Let female go.” The enforcer whirled away from her so sharply Janie staggered towards the edge. Another hand caught her shoulder in a bruising grip, yanking her back. Flat out on the boards, the felled enforcer groaned and pushed up onto his elbows.

  For one glorious moment hope soared. He came for her. Kelskar was here on the platform and ready to take her away. But he was still down there, fighting for his life, for hers. If he noticed this small drama, it did nothing to stop his blade.

  “You stand still. You say nothing,” a voice said. She didn’t dare turn around to see the enforcer who saved her. Not his voice. Not Kelskar.

  Kelskar.

  Another sound overlaid the singing in her ears. Kel Skar. Someone heard her calling for him. Picked up his name and sent it into the nearside section of the crowd. His name, swelling like a thundering wave as one by one the mindless mob found a new champion and joined in one voice.

  No hiding a true champion. Did she imagine Kelskar’s blade flashing more brightly, cleaving the air with inhuman speed? Janie forgot to be scared, forgot about the cold and the goosebumps pimpling her skin.

  Men died down there, but the gory opera of blood and guts unfolding in the pit took on all the unreality of an X-rated action movie complete with epic music in her head. A movie filmed by the hyperactive camera boxes, focussing all their attention on the killing machine hacking his way through flesh and bone to her.

  A wife. A child. A home and a life.

  All of it lost.

  Kelskar slashed, twirled and swung both swords together in a killing arc. The spindly creature who fought like the demon Hagri itself, dropped to its knees, a look of appalled surprise in its wide eyes.

  No time to watch it fall, Kelskar ploughed on seeking out the Regian in the melee, while in his head the chip sputtered and finally, allowed him some truth.

  Lucidity brought fresh pain shrouded by an uncontainable rage spilling from his brain into his sword arm. Blocked by a giant, the Regian slithered from his sight line, shrieking his insane laughter, bleeding heavily, from a head wound seeping grey green blood.

  The giant fought with brawn, but little brain, swinging a homemade axe in wide circles, making timing crucial. Slower than he was in his prime as god of the arena, Kelskar ducked under each arc, waiting for the male to draw breath. In that crucial moment of distraction, he’d have him.

  Distraction. If only these warriors knew how that plagued him at this moment they would all set on him at once. The chip chose now to open the doors to his past, stealing concentration but in doing so lending purpose to the fight. He dived under the axe-head, driving up into the giant’s groin. The being grunted and continued to swing. Kelskar wrenched out his guts-covered sword, drove again while in his head another grisly scenario played out like a relentless Vidi View.

  He thought to save them all. The detour to the landing dock, the snivelling nurse babbling and slowing them down. The time it took to locate his trusted lackey and fling the terrified princess into his arms with orders to get her off world, lost him precious moments. Faced with her childish trust in him, her loyal bodyguard, he chose duty over his family. And looking back, he still didn’t know how he could have acted any other way. Whether it would have made a difference.

  Kelskar dropped into the grit and dust, rolling under the giant’s gargantuan boot raised to pound him into oblivion. Sever the coronic nerve, render him senseless and finish him off.

  None calling his name from the watching throng. They knew him only as incomer. Gladiator Kelskar brought down the arena walls with his acclaim. Kelskar the man fought alone.

  Where was that fucking Regian? He wanted its head.

  He got the reed player instead, surprisingly still alive. The being spun around, chins flapping, one foot skidding sideways on a slick of blood. A few lank strands of hair plastered to his sweat-stained cheeks.

  Too easy to kill. Kelskar stared in disgust at the resignation in the being’s eyes. Not an executioner. Let someone else finish him.

  “Do it,” the being croaked. “I will not survive this. You at least will be merciful and make it swift.”

  “No. You will not die at my hand this night.” At the far side of the pit, the Regian took unwarranted pleasure in battering a screaming being’s head to a mashy pulp. They would meet in the deadliest embrace before night’s end.

  Kelskar lashed
out behind. His blade kissed flesh, but made no purchase. The creature he wounded uttered no sound. Eerily quiet in this arena of death. Save the screaming from the Regian’s unfortunate victim, the warriors fought with grim precision, saving their energy for crushing blows and slashing swords.

  They came here for death. They came for the prize shivering on a wooden platform.

  Janie. His woman.

  With a roar, Kelskar thrust the sword into the centre of the reed-player’s chest, loathing the gratitude in the man’s eyes. A clean, virtually painless kill, unlike the Regian’s victim crying out in horror as the dark gods dragged him to eternity.

  Janie. He couldn’t think of her. Not now. Couldn’t look at her standing so bravely on those boards, hope beating painfully in her chest. The overloaded chip had other ideas, fast forwarding memory in a crazy tumble of images through the horror of losing everything to the welcome dive into oblivion ruled by the chip. Years of slavery and obedience, a heart willingly turned to ice. And then Earth woman Janie Roberts, unwillingly betrayed. Most willingly saved and loved.

  His family was lost to him, walking the otherworldly paths in eternal sunlight and bliss. She was still in reach. Real flesh and blood to him. He had only to kill his way to her and claim her for all time.

  The reed player closed his eyes, crumpling to the dirt with a soft sigh. Above him, a camera box stood out against the bright array of moon and stars, shadowing every move. Making particular focus of this former gladiator tipped to win the day. The betting closed with him as unknown quantity, the one to watch. That stood for nothing here, where rules had no meaning.

  Four remained upright, all of them blooded and battered, slowing with fatigue. Choking and coughing on the tarry smoke streaming from the torches. The diagonal slash to his stomach, where the Regian attempted to gut him in the first few moments of the fight, stung like ten dancing devils. Kelskar paid it no heed.