by Carven, Anna
Decadence
Darkstar Mercenaries Book 4
Anna Carven
Copyright © 2021 by Anna Carven
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Also by Anna Carven
Chapter One
The alien pressed the smooth, round silver device in the palm of his six-fingered hand.
Bzzt.
The collar activated, surrounding her neck with a ring of fire.
This pain was unlike any kind of agony she’d experienced before. It felt like she was being stabbed with a thousand knives while boiling water was being poured over her.
She screamed and dropped to her knees. In desperation, she clawed at the terrible restraint, but as her fingers met the collar, the agony spread through her fingertips, making her weak.
“Do it again,” a gravelly voice said through some sort of hidden sound transmitting device. The speaker chuckled slightly; a cold, cruel sound that filled her with despair. He spoke in some weird dialect of Universal. “I want it broken and tamed before I receive it. If it arrives in any other condition, I will consider yer contract null and void.”
The alien minion holding the device—tall, slender, silent, and faceless behind a featureless helm—never ever spoke. Only the male with the gravelly voice spoke, issuing commands in accented Universal… in a tone that definitely wasn’t human.
He wasn’t in the room. He must be far, far away somewhere, waiting to receive her.
To these aliens, she was little more than chattel. That much she understood, even through the haze of drugs they’d pumped into her system.
She was completely helpless.
Alone.
In space.
Thousands and thousands of miles from Earth.
She didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been days, even weeks. She’d lost count of the number of times they’d tortured her like this.
What the hell were they trying to achieve?
Bzzt.
The collar fired again. She fell forward onto her elbows, completely paralyzed by pain. The injuries she’d sustained from their beatings—broken bones, bruised organs, and probably even worse internal injuries that she couldn’t bear to think about—doused her in pure, blinding agony.
She was naked.
Cold.
Helpless.
Bound.
Her hair was dirty and disheveled. It fell around her face in waves. Tears leaked from her eyes. Her vision swam. The drugs in her system made her feel weak and sluggish. She couldn’t fight back anymore. She tried to rise to her feet, but the strength wouldn’t come.
Why is this happening to me?
But she knew why.
Out of all the women that had been abducted and taken aboard this horrible alien ship, she’d fought back the hardest. Once she’d realized the full extent of what was happening to them; once the last shreds of hope evaporated, something inside her had snapped.
So many times in her life, she’d rolled over and let people take advantage of her.
Fuck it.
No more.
“Submit, human. It’ll be much easier for ya that way. All ya have ta do is bow the head, let go of that annoying look in yer eyes, and acknowledge me as Master. Give up now. Any hope ya have now of freedom? It’s just an illusion that will never come. Best accept yer fate. See, we’re just getting started. If this doesn’t work, we’ll take it to the next level. Only other option, should ya prove to be of no use to us, is death, but that would be a waste of good credits now, wouldn’t it?”
The alien’s smug, gravelly voice grated against her nerves. Who was this self-entitled prick?
If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’d rather die than surrender to an asshole like you. Sienna raised her head and stared at the grey metal ceiling, where she suspected the recorder device was hidden. The slender faceless alien accomplice kept glancing in that direction, after all.
She summoned the last of her strength and spat. “Fuck you,” she said in English, her voice coming out as a cracked whisper.
“This won’t do. That tone of voice is completely unacceptable. Why are humans so stubborn? Punish it again.”
Bzzt. The collar fired, sending her into a deeper dimension of hell.
“For some reason, this one is harder to break than the others. It’s inconvenient, but carry on. I like the look of it. If its skin was a better hue, it could almost pass for Kordolian.”
Kordolian?
She’d been bought by a Kordolian?
Fear snaked through her heart, turning her cold even as the aftershocks of pain rumbled through her body.
Everyone had heard rumors of what Kordolians were like.
She let out a tiny whimper of fear. She was so screwed.
“Y-you can’t b-break me,” she hissed in imperfect Universal, still staring up at the ceiling. “G-go and get fucked.”
The buyer laughed. “Is it stupid, or just stubborn beyond belief? Pain isn’t enough, is it? Yer going to have to use the implements, Ephrenian. Go and get the tools.”
The slender, faceless alien shrugged.
She froze. Implements? Tools?
“See, human, we’ve had slaves for longer than yer kind have known civilization. There are lots of ways to get a body and mind to bend to the will, no matter what the species.”
With a strange ambling gait, the alien—this Ephrenian—walked across to the opposite wall and retrieved something long and made of dark grey metal; a stick-looking thing with pointed metal barbs at the end.
“Time to get ya marked,” the Kordolian said, and the smug satisfaction in his voice made her want to retch. “When ya understand that yer owned, it’ll be much easier for ya to accept yer place in the Universe, little pet.” The alien laughed, before barking rapid-fire orders to her captor in a language she didn’t understand. “Now I need to go and handle some business. Ya better have morphed into a good, quiet little slave by the time I get back, else we’ll have ta put yer in the box.”
The faint static of the transmission went dead.
The Ephrenian advanced toward her, gently slapping the barbed stick-thing against its outstretched palm.
She stiffened.
What the hell was it going to do with that—
Boom!
The Ephrenian never got th
e chance to use it, because at that moment, the metal doors blew apart.
Naked, in agony, terrified, and unable to do anything but crane her neck upwards, she stared at the smoldering edges of the doorway, peering through a haze of acrid metallic smoke.
For a moment, there was only silence, and then the Ephrenian started speaking rapidly and frantically in its strange alien language. She couldn’t understand the words, but it was clearly a desperate plea for help.
Nobody came to his aid.
A male voice—a different one—drifted into her consciousness, speaking yet another language she’d never heard before, the words cool, clipped, and precise.
A dark shadow appeared at the edge of her vision, but before she could clearly make it out, the Ephrenian rose up behind her; lurching, furious, its slender arms outstretched, four-fingered hands extended.
And then it was upon her, encircling her neck with an impossibly strong grip, cutting off her air. She flailed about, trying to break its grip, but then it activated the shock collar again, sending a burst of searing pain through her body.
Her vision went black.
“S-stop or I kill h-human,” the Ephrenian said in heavily accented Universal.
“No,” the dark shadow said, in the coldest tone Sienna had ever heard in her life.
Suddenly, the Ephrenian’s grip on her neck loosened, and something warm and foul smelling splattered across her cheek. The shock collar went dead. The Ephrenian slumped to the floor. She stared across in horror and saw a single black blade protruding from its neck.
Blood gushed everywhere, rancid and viscous and green. On her hands and knees, she scrambled away, slipping and sliding across the metal floor.
And then a pair of obsidian arms surrounded her. The dark shadow was lifting her up, encircling her with pure muscular power encased in a suit of hard-yet-pliable black armor.
She couldn’t see his face. It was hidden behind a menacing black helm.
He—it—was impossibly strong. There was no way she could win against this lethal creature.
He’d killed the Ephrenian so easily. It was almost laughable.
Panic set in.
He’s going to kill me!
Fear granted her unnatural strength. She fought back, arms and legs flailing as she tried to break his grip.
But his arms were like solid steel.
She screamed.
She kicked harder.
The pain from her injuries became so bad she nearly blacked out.
“Stop,” the Shadow said in perfect Universal. “I’m not going to hurt you. Stop.”
There was something different about the way he spoke. There was no threat in his voice; no cruelty.
Something about his tone almost made her feel… safe.
So she stopped and stared up into darkness.
Who are you?
One of his arms was circled around her waist, supporting her weight with such ease she could have weighed as little as a feather. Against her bare skin, she felt the hard contours of his body.
Is he human?
He almost felt that way… but he couldn’t be. No human she knew was this strong or silent or lethal.
Suddenly, all the fear started to drain away from her body. It was like she’d used up all her adrenaline and now she was completely spent. Her breathing slowed. She grew lightheaded. Her vision started to blur.
And to her astonishment, the Shadow reached out and gently caressed the side of her face with the tips of his armored fingers.
Amidst all the smoke and blood, with the stench of death hanging in the air, this was actually happening.
Like some fantastical, surreal dream.
“You are safe now,” he murmured, and his deep, rumbling voice shocked her with its gentleness.
“Safe…” she whispered, her eyelids drooping as the fear ebbed away.
Was it really possible?
But she couldn’t keep hold of that thought, because her world was drifting away, merging with the Shadow that held her in his arms…
Fading into perfect black.
Chapter Two
Ikriss Peturic, former High Commander of the Kordolian Imperial militaries, captain of the Kordolian alpha-class stealth cruiser Warsong, ex-Second Division warrior, former Military Intelligence special operative, and current mercenary in charge of this specific retrieval operation, leaned back into the outfitting pod, allowing the machine to withdraw the exo-armor from around his body.
As expected, the mission had gone smoothly. They’d boarded the Ephrenian junk-ship and retrieved all captives without a single loss of life—well, on the human side anyway.
The Ephrenians hadn’t been so fortunate.
Ikriss and his men showed no mercy to any being that was foolish enough to try and take what was theirs.
But they’d come very close to losing one. The golden-haired female he’d held in his arms had sustained a terrible beating, and her consciousness was dulled by powerful sedatives. By the time he’d delivered her to Zharek in the medical bay, her breathing was slow and shallow, her body cold and limp, her lips an unhealthy shade of pale blue.
She’d been so near to death.
For some reason, the slavers had treated her much worse than the other captives.
For some reason, her predicament had sparked a powerful feeling of protectiveness within him.
He’d taken her to Silence’s medical bay as fast as his legs could carry him.
"Nanosurgery, now!” he’d barked at Zharek, still armed to the teeth and decked out in full exo-armor. He didn’t care how he looked. He hadn’t gone to all the effort of retrieving this wounded, defenseless female just to see her die in his fucking arms.
“I’m onto it,” Zharek had said quietly after taking one look at Ikriss. The nobleborn medic could be irritatingly stubborn at times, but he had enough sense to know when to obey orders.
Ikriss had left the female in the capable hands of the medic and his assistants. Although he was ninety-nine percent certain they would restore her to full health, a sliver of doubt lingered in his mind.
She was so soft and vulnerable. He could have accidentally snapped her in two in his arms.
They’d beaten her so badly.
As the armor detached from his body and the helm lifted from his face, Ikriss let out a deep, shuddering sigh.
He dragged a weary hand over his eyes.
How the fuck had they allowed that Ephrenian transport to slip through? Their monitoring systems were the best in the Universe, but somehow, the Ephrenian ship had been able to enter Earth’s orbit to abduct a dozen young female humans.
It made him furious.
The anger was still there, coursing through his body, seeking release in the form of violence. It had taken all of his self-restraint not execute the remainder of the crew and the ship’s infernal captain on the spot. Instead, in one of the very rare moments when he’d lost his temper, he’d punched the asshole square in the face, cracking his helmet and knocking him out cold.
Ikriss had ordered his men to keep the Ephrenian captain and the navigator and a couple of the crew alive. After all, they were needed as decoys… as bait.
The Ephrenians might have captured the humans, but there was a buyer on the receiving end of their shipment.
Someone had sought to own these females for his own infernal pleasure.
Someone had ordered the punishment and torture of the human females, especially the delicate and broken one he’d held in his arms.
They were going to capture that asshole.
The Ephrenian ship would be allowed to continue on its journey, with a few… modifications.
At that very moment, the tech team were creating perfect holo-dupes of the human females from their biological data. With the original Ephrenian crew onboard and the hyper-realistic holos of the females, the Kordolian buyer wouldn’t know anything was amiss until he stepped onboard and found death waiting for him… in the form of a First Division warrior ca
lled Jeral.
They would get what was coming to them, and so would the buyer.
Ikriss almost wished he could be there to see the look on the bastard’s face.
Never mind.
Soon, they would have him in the interrogation room, and then Ikriss would take his revenge… on her behalf.
Naked and tense, he stepped out of the pod and into the armor-chamber, where several of his men were dressing in their standard-issue work uniforms, which were really just their old military kits with the old imperial insignia removed.
In the far corner stood Kail, the imposing First Division warrior who wore the traditional tribal scars of the Lost Tribes on his face. Ikriss was one of the few that understood the true significance of those scars. Kail was a Hunter, and his ability to tell truth from lies was legendary.
Ikriss found his own uniform in his personal Qualum vault. He dressed quickly, donning tapered black trousers and a plain black tunic over which he shouldered a black jacket that was cut in the formal Kordolian style.
After this, he had a diplomatic holo-meeting to attend.
He raked his hand through his longish hair, trying to make it look halfway neat. The exo-armor’s helmet always messed up his hair, which he’d been growing out from its severe imperial military cut. It was a pain-in-the-ass, but it was nearly long enough for him to braid it in the traditional style of an Aikun warrior.
He’d been wanting to do that for so very long.
Ikriss dropped onto a nearby bench and slipped on his knee-high black flight boots. He looked up at his men, who were watching him expectantly. They were a mixture of former soldiers from the five highest combat Divisions of the Imperial Military, all elite fighters in their own right.