Her head ached from the mass roar of different engines as ships set down and took off. The chatter and buzz and shrieks of various alien speech added to the din. Adding in the burnt scents of rockets firing, the fetid stench of the nearby jungle, and alien body odors, made her senses reel.
Dani dodged milling tourists, busy dockhands, and hover carriers transporting visitors and their baggage to points unknown. Panic crept close on quiet feet as she saw no one she thought might shield an Earther female. Surely the Kalquorians looked for her already. They had to know this would be the first place she’d head for. They may already be in the spaceport if they’d taken a shuttle, watching for their property to show up.
A hum behind Dani eased her with a hypnotic trill. She recognized that relaxing sound and turned. She spied her favorite customer three people back. “Reggie!”
The Isetacian scuttled easily between those separating them to reach her. His many eyes widened in surprise. “Dani, why you here?”
He whistled to a Dantovonian escorting a hover carrier full of bundled cases. “Bay 7987.” The carrier whizzed off, scattering tourists and workers before it.
Dani nearly pranced with delight to see her client. “Check me out, Reggie. I’m sprung!” She indicated her collarless throat. “I guess Pob finally got sick of me.”
“He let you go?” Reggie looked around the crowd with concern. Harboring an escaped slave was punishable by public flogging, and even without her collar and slave clothing, he was obviously unconvinced of Dani’s legal liberty.
She shrugged, determined to persuade him through pretended lack of concern. She snuggled up to him like she didn’t have a care in the world, slipping her arm through one of his. “You know Pob is all about the money, and I was costing him more than I was worth. He didn’t foresee how expensive an Earther’s dietary needs can be in the long-term.”
Reggie relaxed, apparently taken in by Dani’s act. “This good for you. I sad. I miss visit you.”
“You’re so sweet. You know, you were always my favorite customer.” She sighed. “The only bad part of being free is the loss of food and board. I’m kind of hurting for funds. Where are you off to?”
Reggie rubbed up and down her thigh with one hand. Dani allowed it, hoping he’d get aroused, making him more open to helping her. He said, “Go to Joshada. Trade good there, bring raw materials, ep, ep, get finished products, make good markup on Ib-Sod.”
Dani thought out loud. “Joshada huh? Kind of close to Kalquor, and Ib-Sod is definitely not Earther-friendly.”
Reggie agreed. “Earth occupation during war make Ib-Sod not happy for Earthers. Kill on sight.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dani sighed. “Joshada might be okay until I can find transport to somewhere else. Want some company for your trip?”
Reggie hummed his happiness, and another hand grasped her thigh. “You come with me, Dani? Ep, ep, have fun time.” His lascivious grin spoke of his joy to have struck such a bargain.
She grinned back. “That’s the idea.”
Reggie pulled her towards a small, dimly lit hangar. “Here ship. We go soon after load.”
Dani stared at the small, battered hulk he led her to. Maybe once it had been a nice ship … or part of two or three nice ships. Badly fit together, looking as if someone had simply dropped a ton of spare parts on the ground, it resembled something a very clumsy and untalented Tragoom might have put together. Her heart sank.
I’m supposed to ride in this?
To Reggie she said, “This is it, huh?”
“My ship.” He looked absurdly proud of the thing.
“Wow.” She thought about his last visit to her in the brothel, of how he’d talked about making repairs. “And you fixed it after last time?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “It fly okay. Trouble with land but it come down one way or other.”
He laughed, squeezing her thigh. Dani swallowed and made a weak attempt to share his humor. The breathless chuffing noises she made sounded suspiciously like sobs.
You have got to be kidding. You’re not actually getting on that, are you?
Gelan’s clan would show up at any second to reclaim her and probably publicly punish her for running out on the contract. Thinking about that, about being beaten by the massive Kalquorians in full view of hundreds of cheering spectators suddenly made dying in a crash not such a terrible alternative after all.
She’d have to trust in Reggie’s piloting skills; there was no turning back now.
Chapter 8
Dani boarded Reggie’s ship once all his cargo had been loaded. She stared around the dim interior, barely able to make out more than shapes of the bins. Wires and loose conduits hung haphazardly from the ceiling. The console in front of the pilot’s seat contained a plethora of lights. Some burned steadily, some blinked off and on. The vid showing his flight plan washed in and out.
She seriously reconsidered her escape. Maybe the Kalquorians would let her off with a warning if she surrendered to them and begged forgiveness?
Reggie shut the hatch behind her and motioned her to the co-pilot’s seat. “Sit, Dani. Take off now.”
She paused, her hand on the back of the seat. “How old is this ship?”
Reggie hopped in his chair, and a cloud of dust puffed up from it. “Old, old. Bought cheap.”
Her nose wrinkling in anticipation of another dust cloud, Dani sat gingerly on the musty-smelling seat. Reggie set to work punching buttons, sliding levers, and issuing commands in his indecipherable language. The engine started with a terrible ratcheting sound, and alarms shrieked. Dani shrieked a little with them. Reggie smashed the panel with two fists, and the claxons died off.
The Earther rose a little from her seat. “Um, maybe it needs more work.”
Reggie nodded, his face grim with concentration. “Maybe. See soon.”
The ship lurched upward with a screech then continued to rise slowly with a series of ominous creaks. Dani grabbed the restraining straps on her seat only to find they wouldn’t connect. The ship lurched again, and she frantically tied the straps in a knot over her waist.
God, I really screwed up this time.
Another alarm blared. Reggie, unconcerned, hit the panel to shut it off once more. He nodded at Dani. “You see? Ep, ep, we good.”
Dani gripped the armrests in white-knuckled fists as the ship shuddered its way into space. “Yeah. Real epping good.”
Too close to Kalquor or not, she was definitely getting off this scrap heap on Joshada.
* * * *
Gelan pointedly ignored the noise a very unhappy Krijero made as the Imdiko packed their belongings away in the clan’s shuttle. The Imdiko was clumsy as a rule, but he was making extra noise so his irritation with the situation would be well known. Gelan concentrated on his pre-flight checklist and let Krijero have his tantrum. Perhaps he concentrated too hard because he jumped in surprise when Wynhod joined him in the small cockpit.
“That was fast,” he said to his Nobek when he recovered from his shock.
Wynhod gave him a feral grin, apparently enjoying catching the Dramok off guard. “Not too many Earther females are on Dantovon. People take notice.”
“So you found out where she went?”
Wynhod nodded. “The Isetacian she left with is well known.”
Krijero stuck his head into the cockpit. He frowned at the back of the Nobek’s head as Wynhod entered their flight plan into the computer. “Well known for what reasons?”
“He’s one of the few around here that deals fair. That stands out in this port.”
Gelan relaxed a little. “Then at least she’s not in bad hands.”
Wynhod’s fingers flew over the command controls. The shuttle was only two years old and had all the latest programs. The clan often argued over who would pilot their trips. “I’m inputting his flight plan. He left for Joshada an hour ago.”
“Are we locked down, Krijero?”
The tense Imdiko nodded. “Ever
ything’s stored.”
“Flight plan’s ready. We can take off as soon as you want,” Wynhod said. His face erupted in a fierce grin. “This vacation is turning out to be more fun than I anticipated.”
Gelan laughed in shared delight. He only wished Krijero could appreciate the added entertainment. The rush of anticipation at the coming pursuit excited him. He hoped Dani was more resourceful than she looked, that she would give them a good hunt.
He licked his lips and shook his braids back. “Let’s track down an Earther.”
* * * *
After a couple of hours of uneventful flight, Dani had started to relax. Later, she would superstitiously think that was what set off the chain of events that followed.
Reggie trilled his sweet tunes, and she let herself be lulled. When two of his hands moved over, tracing slow circles up her thighs, she sighed. Her legs fell apart. She drifted as he crawled over, crouching above, singing his song. He slid her skirt up, pushed her panties aside to expose her. Dani sat unmoving as he touched, stroked, entered.
A small price to pay for freedom, she thought.
Multiple alarms went off at once, shocking Dani into wakefulness. The ship shook all over like a frenzied horse trying to buck off a rider. Reggie sprang back to his seat. All his pounding on the wildly blinking console couldn’t shut the claxons off this time. As dispassionate as a weatherman commenting on the possibility of rain during the weekend, the Isetacian muttered, “Aug, aug, no good.”
Dani sat up straight, her fingers digging into the seat’s armrests. She was too frightened to straighten her clothing. “What do you mean ‘no good’? What’s happening?”
Six sets of fingers flew over the console as the whole ship shuddered again. “On fire. Parts blow off. Must land.”
Dani’s stomach threatened to jump out of her mouth. “On fire? Parts have blown off? Oh God, oh God, we’re going to die.”
Reggie’s voice remained bland. “Maybe. Hold on. We land on moon LXS-42. Control by Earth during war. Maybe help still there.”
The ship’s dampers screamed as it entered the moon’s atmosphere, the craft shaking and shuddering. Unsecured containers behind Dani bounced and flew about the compartment, one narrowly missing her head on its way to smashing the controls. Remembering safety instructions from shuttle flights before, Dani bent over, sticking her head between her knees and covering her head with her arms. She thought she might have been shrieking, but in the chaos she wasn’t sure.
The few dim lights they had went out, and an instant later a boom deafened Dani. The floor beneath her feet rose sharply, and then the world became a cacophony of thunder and earthquake. She felt bruising impacts all over her body as debris pelted down.
Then all went quiet and dark and Dani knew no more.
Chapter 9
Dani woke to a red-tinged clutter of small storage containers. She blinked her eyes slowly, trying to remember where she was. Bit by bit, it came back to her.
The Kalquorians. Escaping Dantovon in Reggie’s battered shuttle. Crashing.
The control panel before her, wires springing here and there like tufts of sparsely growing hair, had gone dark. The pulsing red light came from one panel on the ceiling. Tumbled cargo containers piled up around her seat, obscuring her vision of Reggie.
Dani evaluated herself. Her back and shoulders ached. She was sure she had been bruised by the flying cargo, and her head pounded. She carefully rubbed the back of her scalp and discovered a lump where something had bounced off her skull. She’d been knocked out, but her vision didn’t blur. Other than the thudding headache, she seemed fine.
“Reggie?” she croaked. When she got no answer, she shoved at the storage containers to see if her pilot remained in his seat. Maybe he’d gone for help.
But Reggie still sat in his seat, the upper part of his body crumpled on top of the control panel. Half his eyes, or at least half of the eyes she could see, were closed. The other half stared at nothing, glazed in death.
“Oh Reggie, I’m so sorry.” And she was. The Isetacian had been a good guy. Tears rose in Dani’s eyes, and she wiped them away.
After a moment of sorrow, she took stock of her situation, ignoring the nibble of panic. They’d crashed. She’d survived. Reggie had said he was setting down on some moon, something like LSF-52. The Earther military had kept a base here during the war, and so help might be available.
“Okay. Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Dani said to herself out loud.
She shoved containers aside, keeping them from falling on Reggie’s poor broken body. He couldn’t feel pain anymore, but for some reason she couldn’t bear to treat him like he hadn’t mattered. She even felt a pang of guilt like this had been her fault, though it had been his half-hearted maintenance that had sent the ship down to its death spiral. He would have crashed whether she’d come with him or not.
Still, conscience nagged at Dani. She’d been present, the ship had gone down, and Reggie was dead. She couldn’t quite shake the feeling she’d brought bad luck on board with her.
She managed to clear a spot so she could stand up, once she’d untied the knotted restraining straps. No doubt they’d saved her life by keeping her from bouncing around the ship like the cargo. The top of her head brushed the ceiling, and she remembered the sensation of the floor rising up beneath her feet before she’d lost consciousness. They’d landed hard, all right. It was a wonder the whole damned shuttle hadn’t disintegrated.
It seemed most of the unsecured cargo had slid into the cockpit. Once Dani cleared a path she moved into the small storage area, also lit by pulsing red light. A large part of it had open space in the back now that the cargo was forward. Unfortunately, the hatch to escape the downed transport was at the end near the cockpit. It took her several minutes to clear the area of containers.
Breathing hard from effort, Dani pushed the switch that should have opened the hatch. It emitted a weak beep and slid back only three inches.
“Damn it,” she swore. Her arms trembled from the workout she’d had just getting to this point, but she would have no choice but to shove the reluctant hatch open.
First she pressed her face to the tiny slit, trying to see what was outside. Nothing but blackness greeted her eyes. She couldn’t see a thing.
She could hear, smell and feel, though. An eye-watering layer of buzzing like that of a million insects carpeted the world beyond the shuttle. Over that, bestial far-off screams rose that made Dani’s hair stand on end. Images of fantastical beasts ran before her mind’s eye, monsters possessing sharp fangs and claws. She knew the screams probably came from prey, not predators, and that freaked her out even more.
The scents weren’t much better. The air that wafted in smelled dank and fetid, similar to the jungle stench that drifted into Ler, but more rotted. The added tang of saltiness made Dani think of soup left out on the kitchen counter to mold for a month.
Ler had been on the brink of autumn, with cool breezes to refresh. Here, it was warm and humid, the odors of rotting vegetation made worse by the muggy air. LFN-22, or whatever the darn moon’s designation was, didn’t feel welcoming in the least.
The only comfort came from the star-strewn sky overhead. The tiny points of light didn’t show Dani her surroundings though. She worried the moon might not rotate, that she’d crashed on a permanent dark side.
That would suck big time.
But she smelled vegetation. Things didn’t grow without a light source, right? So daylight was bound to come. She hoped. Dani crossed her fingers like a child wishing for a pony.
She retreated into the ship and tried to close the hatch once more. It didn’t budge no matter her efforts, and she was forced to concede defeat.
“I sure hope nothing dangerous can get in,” she muttered. Three inches of space. Did this moon have venomous things like snakes? Spiders? After a moment’s consideration, Dani shoved containers back in front of the hatch, closing off the opening against small but lethal predators.
Once that was done, she stood before the blocked hatch, her head down, shoulders sagging. “Damn, I really did it this time. This is the biggest cluster fuck I’ve ever pulled.”
At least when Earth fell apart, there’d been resources to loot for a little while. She’d known most of the dangers surrounding her on her home planet. She knew nothing about this environment, none of its hazards.
Dani went back to the cockpit and gently lifted Reggie off the console. She groaned to see how broken his body was. It felt like his bones had all snapped like matchsticks. He hadn’t been strapped in, and no doubt he’d been dashed against every surface until he’d come back to rest in his chair.
“Please, let it have been quick. Please Reggie, please have died fast.” She didn’t want to think he’d suffered the pain that would have come with his injuries.
A stained cloth heaped under the darkened console near his chair, and Dani took the time to cover Reggie’s poor battered frame. She wondered if she should bury him in the morning. She knew nothing of Isetacian funeral customs. She wanted to have him rest in dignity, but couldn’t even begin to fathom how it would be accomplished.
At a loss, Dani turned her attention to the helm’s console. It looked intact, but pressing her fingers over it, trying to bring it to life so she could get information about the moon, yielded no results. Like Reggie, it was lifeless.
Dani sank into the other seat and bawled. It was Earth after Armageddon all over again; on her own, and all Dad’s money couldn’t bail her out this time. No police. No military. No friends either. When the bombs went off as the Kalquorians invaded, emergency services had buckled under the strain, disappearing within days. The survivors had gone into ‘every man for himself’ mode, clustering into gangs that fought not only against each other but amongst themselves as well. And Dani had been left to find her own way, starving more often than not.
Alien Slave Page 10