The Mercenary (The War Chronicles Book 1)

by Petra Landon

  Saakshi studied him, reassured by his acceptance of her proposition, although uneasy that he’d done so without spelling out what he expected of her in exchange.

  “Thank you. He … the Ketaari Unta-Golar … he knows me from Budheyasta.”

  A black brow arched up gracefully in silent query.

  “He used to be the Golar in charge of my village. He remembers me from when I was captured as a rebel. My resistance cell used to target him. I’m … he’s not a good person … even for a Ketaari” she said slowly, meeting his dark eyes directly.

  He stared back at her, his eyes searching as he listened to her intently.

  “Umm … I was wondering what you’d expect of me?” Saakshi inquired nervously.

  “Expect of you?” he repeated slowly, an outraged look replacing the thoughtful expression on his face.

  “As your lover, I mean” she stammered, eyes lowered away from him at the renewed signs of his temper resurfacing.

  There was a long moment of pregnant silence while she gazed down at the floor.

  “Turn around” he bit out suddenly, gesturing at her.

  Saakshi forced herself to slowly and self-consciously twirl, incredibly conscious of his gaze on her. His eyes raked her slowly from top to bottom before finally coming to rest on her face. A shiver rang down her spine at his expression - absolutely livid, a tick flexing uncontrollably near his jaw while his eyes glittered with an expression of mingled fury and raw lust. Yet, despite everything, she got the impression that this was deliberate. Almost as if his intention was to confront her or possibly deter her with this glimpse of his seething emotions. But Saakshi, daunted by this avatar of the Hadari’Kor Captain and terrified of the fate that awaited her at the hands of the Unta-Golar, felt too overwhelmed to even attempt to comprehend the underlying undercurrents of his actions.

  “How old are you?” he inquired softly.

  “Twenty-one summers” she replied warily, not quite trusting that soft voice. The biting edge of anger in his voice frightened her, and his expression of blatant male interest made her uncomfortable, when his attention at the alehouse had never done so.

  “Do you have any sexual experience?” he purred, his tone managing something she’d thought impossible – to terrify her even more than she already was.

  “A little” she muttered. When she’d first joined the rebels, there had been a hasty coupling with one of the other new young recruits. They had taken each other’s virginity in a quick and hurried act one night. It had been a result of their mutual loneliness, homesickness from their previously familiar albeit hard lives, and terror at falling short of expectations in their new roles as part of the Budheya resistance. The experience had left them both vaguely unsatisfied, and had never been repeated again by unspoken consent.

  “Let me lay down the ground rules so that we’re absolutely clear. I have a very healthy sexual appetite and I like my females uninhibited. I will not make allowances for inexperience or maidenly blushes. Can you handle that?” he asked her in a hard, angry voice.

  Saakshi almost bolted at his words. She tried to make her lips form the appropriate response through the fog of sheer terror that held her in its grip.

  “Do you think you can satisfy me?” he asked again as she remained silent, his voice bitingly angry as his dark eyes seared her.

  Saakshi gathered herself together with iron self-control by reminding herself how repugnant she found the idea of the Unta-Golar touching her. She nodded mutely at him in a hesitant gesture indicative of both her assent and her qualms, even as she inwardly prayed that she’d made the right decision.

  “I’ll drop by Pik’s to escort you after your shift tomorrow night. Get plenty of rest. You’ll need it.”

  Saakshi’s face paled at his words and his face tightened even more with an absolute terrifying fury.

  “Stay here” he bit out.

  She watched him storm out of the room, every line in his body rigid with fury. Once alone, Saakshi allowed herself to succumb to her fears and doubts, slumping in the seat with her head clasped in her hands.

  Pura Bedana, what have I done?

  She didn’t have to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, another Hadari’Kor male made an appearance. She recognized him as the male who occasionally accompanied the Captain to Trader Pik’s.

  “I am to escort you back to the station” he announced politely.

  Saakshi allowed herself to be silently escorted off the ship and back to the relative safety of her dormitory on the Trade Sphere.

  Four

  Saakshi’s mind continued its internal tumult the next day while she worked her usual double shift. The day and most of the night following her meeting with the Hadari’Kor Captain had been spent wallowing in a welter of confusing emotions - hope and a measure of peace for striking a bargain with the Captain, intense confusion over his unexplained fury, and panic over what she’d be expected to do for him. This vacillation between elation, hope, bewilderment, confusion and fear only seemed to generate more confusion and turmoil in Saakshi. His remarks regarding her sexual experience and his brutal honesty about his expectations of her intensified her terror. There were also times when the suspicion that his words and manner had been calculated to frighten her into withdrawing her proposition reared its ugly head. Saakshi was careful to squash this particular doubt since it meant that she’d mistaken the nature of their understanding; something guaranteed to increase her overall anxiety. That would imply that the Hadari’Kor male, who had stormed off without explicitly agreeing to their bargain, would fail to show up, thus leaving her to the tender mercies of the Ketaari swine. An overwhelming sense of fear, claustrophobia and anxiety pervaded her, and it was all she could do to not give in to it.

  The night had been the worst, for it had afforded Saakshi too much time to reflect on her dire circumstances and feel suffocated and frightened by the limited and bad options left open to her. At least she had Trader Pik’s patrons to take care of this afternoon. Being run off her feet by their constant demands allowed her the temporary luxury of being too busy to think dire thoughts. Occasionally, a sense of loss and regret would sneak in at the thought that she’d wasted her precious day off. Saakshi knew that, no matter how everything played out, her life was headed for another drastic change. Immaterial to whatever future the Pura intended for her, she could ill afford the luxury of wasting a rare day of leisure to worry about her fate.

  Preoccupied with her thoughts, the arrival of the new server girls gave Saakshi an unpleasant jolt. Their presence signaled the end of her last shift for the day. A glance around Trader Pik’s showed nary a glimpse of a familiar gray male with intense dark eyes. Thankfully, the Unta-Golar was also nowhere to be seen. She washed up in the tiny sink in the back room to eat the meal Pik provided for his servers before heading out. Saakshi verged on the side of caution this evening, taking a longer, circuitous and different route than usual back to her dormitory. Anything to avoid the Unta-Golar tonight, especially since her Hadari’Kor protector had failed to show up. A flicker of intense disappointment at his no-show despite their bargain pierced her heart. She was swift to tamp it down ruthlessly.

  The mistake was to depend on someone else. I’ll take care of myself like I’ve done all my life. I’ve survived before when faced with overwhelming odds. And I will survive this, too.

  Pura Bedana, watch over me.

  The assault, when it came, caught Saakshi by surprise, since he chose to strike so close to the relative safety of her dormitory. A hand grasped her from behind in a brutal grip as the assailant dragged her unrelentingly away from the main walkway into a nearby alley. Saakshi, who’d had ample opportunity to explore the area around the vicinity of her dormitory, knew that she was being dragged into a blind alley with no other way out. She screamed, fighting back and kicking out with all her might at her attacker, but was unsuccessful in breaking his implacable grip on her. He maneuvered her to the end of the alley before letting go to face her. T
he first thing Saakshi noted was that he’d placed her in a position where her only way out was to go through him.

  “You didn’t think I was going to let you get away that easily, did you?” the Ketaari male taunted her.

  At his words, a sense of calmness abruptly settled over her. After all the worry, confusion, fear and anxiety, the moment she’d been dreading was finally at hand. Saakshi felt an eerie serenity engulf her. She knew what she had to do now. All at once, her path forward was clear.

  “You’ve had your two days, Budh female. So, what will it be – willing or unwilling?” the Unta-Golar asked her, doing the teeth baring thing he tried to pass off as a charming smile.

  Saakshi studied him calmly.

  “No. Not happening.”

  Her calm words wiped the smile off his face, to replace it with a rather cruel expression.

  “Like that, is it?” he said softly, pouncing suddenly in a swift move without giving her an opportunity to react to his taunt.

  Saakshi, half expecting his attack, was not caught completely by surprise. She feinted at him with a move targeting his groin. In response, he stopped himself abruptly in mid-pounce to rock back on the soles of his heels. It gave her the time to drop down on one knee agilely, extract the heavy palm-length piece, fashioned from a discarded wedge of control panel, that she carried in her right boot, to swipe him hard on his toe with it. His military issue boots parried a lot of her attack, even though she’d targeted the blow well. He cursed aloud and pretended to step back. At the last minute, he leaned forward with his weight on the injured foot, and swung out his other foot in a vicious kick aimed at Saakshi’s chest as she sat on one knee before him. The foot swished through empty air as she slid down low to lie prone on the ground before expertly rolling away. She sprang up gracefully to come to a stand a little away and to the side from her previous location, ready to counter his next move. Her new position forced him to rotate a little to face her again.

  He no longer blocked her access out of the alley to the more public thoroughfare beyond it. From the periphery of her vision, Saakshi took note of the few spectators who watched their fracas. But she dared not take her eyes off her Ketaari opponent. Cognizant that she could afford only one more dodge away from the bigger male before she had to make a run for it, Saakshi’s mind mentally plotted the shortest way out of the alley and into her dormitory as she waited for him to make his next move. Once through the dormitory entry sensors her bracelet allowed her access to, she would be safe from his pursuit this evening.

  A spiteful expression on his face, the Unta-Golar unclipped a small device from his belt to punch in a few buttons. Saakshi, who understood the significance of the device, could only stare at him in horrified dismay. A piercing pain seared the prison implant on her right shoulder, spreading out in waves down her back, right arm and chest. The excruciating pain tore a scream of agony from her as she stumbled down to her knees. Saakshi panted softly, trying to stifle further screams as radiating pain wracked her body with agony. Her left hand cradled the stiff right arm protectively, while tiny aftershocks from the pain continued to prick at her. She knew that the pain would pass just as suddenly as it had begun, but it had left her with few options. Now, she would have to somehow muster the strength to evade the Ketaari male. Running from him was out of the question - she doubted she had the strength right now to stand erect without support.

  The Unta-Golar clipped away the device before sauntering over unhurriedly to stare down at Saakshi, on her knees on the station’s dirt-crusted floor. She raised pain-filled eyes to the Ketaari officer, unwilling to cower before him. He flashed her a cruel smile before swinging a meaty fist at her. Saakshi closed her eyes in defeat, her pain-wracked body unable to garner the strength to move itself clear of the inevitable blow.

  The blow never landed. Instead, Saakshi heard the distinct sounds of a scuffle, followed by some heavy blows. When she dared to open her eyes moments later, the Unta-Golar lay in an awkward tangle in a corner of the alley, caged in by two adjoining walls and the massive body of the Hadari’Kor Captain. The Hadari’Kor male leaned threateningly over the Ketaari Unta-Golar, whose stocky body cowered back against the wall. The Ketaari male’s legs lay sprawled out, one heel drumming uncontrollably on the floor in distress. One of his arms lay bent at an unnatural angle, and pale blue blood seeped sluggishly from cuts to his forehead ridges and the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared wildly up at the Captain, while his good arm alternated between pounding ineffectually on the Captain’s shoulder and trying to claw away the large hand that squeezed his throat inexorably. The Captain had crowded the other male into a corner to brace himself against the wall with one hand, while his other hand, wrapped around the Unta-Golar’s throat, throttled him slowly.

  That this entire scene was enacted in complete silence by participants and spectators alike made it seem almost surreal to the Budheya girl watching it play out dispassionately. Saakshi allowed herself to slowly slide down to rest on her bottom, splaying out her legs before her with palms braced against the floor to support her weight. She leaned back comfortably on her hands, content to watch the unfolding show.

  Thank the Pura, he came. Better late than never, I guess.

  From her position, she could clearly see every expression reflected on the Unta-Golar’s face, but not the Captain’s, whose back faced her.

  “This is for using the pain implant, Ketaari murtobak” the Captain bit out in sudden fury, his words breaking the silence in the narrow alley.

  He flicked off the fist pounding on his shoulder with a casual shrug as he stared down at the Unta-Golar.

  “If you ever touch her again, I will personally break every bone in your body. Are we clear?” the coldly furious voice demanded of the Ketaari.

  The Ketaari male stared back at him with vicious eyes, his expression uncowed. The Captain casually exerted a little more pressure around the Unta-Golar’s windpipe, and the Ketaari’s legs went limp, his face turning bloodless and pale.

  “Are we clear?” the Captain repeated, more softly this time.

  The Ketaari nodded, his pale eyes a tad unfocussed, though the expression on his face promised retribution. The Captain finally let go of his punishing hold on the other male’s throat, to leave the Ketaari limp and panting on the floor. The Hadari’Kor male sprang to his feet fluidly, turning his back on the male gasping for breath at his feet to stride over to Saakshi. For a moment, he gazed down at her in silence. An emotion she’d be hard-pressed to identify flashed though the tightly leashed fury on his face. The black eyes glittered with anger and something akin to regret.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly.

  Saakshi shook her head mutely.

  “The pain implant?” he inquired, the black eyes holding her captive.

  “The effect has worn off” she responded calmly.

  “Come” he commanded, holding out his hand imperiously to her.

  Saakshi retrieved the piece of control panel she’d used on the Ketaari to tuck it back in its usual hiding place in her boot. The black eyes watched her silently, the palm still held out to her. She allowed him to pull her up and steer her through the small crowd of spectators, a large palm at the small of her back guiding her.

  They walked in silence towards his ship, stopping just once to attach the suppressor device to her bracelet to enable her to bypass the station’s exit sensors. Once they were alone in the shuttle and on their way to his docked ship, he turned to face her.

  “I apologize for being late. It will not happen again.”

  Her eyes snapped up to meet the regret in those dark eyes. Saakshi nodded to acknowledge his apology.

  “You fight pretty well for a tiny female” he remarked approvingly after a short silence.

  She managed a wan smile at the double-edged compliment.

  “Who taught you …” he paused, before stating the obvious. “The rebels?”

  She nodded mutely again.

  “How much did y
ou see?” she asked him.

  “Enough” he gritted out, his teeth clenching.

  “Didn’t they teach you when to run?” he inquired softly after a short pause.

  “I was getting ready to, but he blindsided me with the pain implant.”

  The Captain hit the shuttle wall with his open palm, cursing fluently and with ease in a variety of different languages.

  “Son of a swine” she interjected, not wanting to be left out of the cursing party.

  After an instant of stunned astonishment, his expression lightened.

  “No doubt” he agreed, his dark eyes filling with soft laughter.

  “Ketaari murtobak” she offered next, showing off the single word in his language she knew. She’d learnt it by paying attention to his cuss words, the ones she could decipher anyway.

  “Absolutely” he gasped out, bursting into unfettered laughter. The effect was to make him look years younger without the serious and unapproachable mien he usually radiated.

  “What does it mean?” she asked him, her eyes observing the laughter on his face.

  “Unknown paternity” he responded, his face still lit up with amusement.

  The shuttle doors opened wide as it came to a stop. She followed him onto his starship. This time, they headed to a different section of the ship, using an elevator to move up levels. This part of the ship was more populated than the ante-room they had met in the last time. Greetings were called out to the Captain, and Saakshi sensed a few curious glances directed at her.

  “You’re good with languages” she remarked. They always spoke in Alliance Standard, and his was impeccable. She’d also heard him swear fluently in a few other languages, although that could just be a common male trait irrespective of species, she mused philosophically.

  “Your Alliance Standard is pretty good too” he complimented her.

  “All Budheya children now learn Alliance Standard along with Budhi. The Ketaari force us to use Ketar for all official business, but we want to prepare for a time when Budheyasta can join the Alliance as a free world.”