“Fucking Debbie!” another said a little louder.
Traitor he understood, hell they called him Benedick Arnold and even Hanoi Jane sometimes. It was the second insult he didn’t like as they were making fun of his sexual preferences. There were other service men and women who had different lifestyles and that wasn’t usually something anyone questioned or ridiculed anymore. It was one of the few things about modern society and even the military that was good. Yet, they now called him Debbie Darden as a way of mocking him and his life choices.
Moving faster he passed the stocks and glancing to them for just a second before he had to look away. These weren’t the normally pillories of medieval times that clamped around your hands and neck. Those were intended for discomfort and humiliation. The Blue’s version clamped around the ankles of the legs with the victim sitting down behind it with their feet and legs elevated into the air. From this position they would be forced to lay on the floor as the soles and bottoms of their feet where now on a higher level so they could be easily beaten. A Karduan male would then be given a long thin reed and would whip the bottom of the feet of anyone who was being a repeated troublemaker or a nuisance.
Currently, there were two prisoners locked in the stocks whose feet looked like raw hamburger. Even the Karduan ladies thought this as a barbaric punishment back when Darden had first suggested it but they quickly accepted the idea that humans understood only this type of extreme pain and brutality. He had also pointed out that the guards would be easily able to tell who the troublemakers were from their obvious limps.
Reaching the door to the corridor that he was heading for he almost looked back but forced himself to keep moving. He didn’t want to know who said those comments and just wanted to get through the common area as fast as possible.
Before he could step through the door something hit him in the back of the head causing him to yelp. It hurt like hell and he winced as his eyes watered from the pain. Looking to the right he saw where the object fell that it was a metal nut.
“You fucking traitor!” one of the men from the pillory yelled in defiance.
Scotty picked up the nut and turned slowly around as he scanned the mass of prisoners in the commons. They were all laughing and smiling at him. Several of them mouthed swear words at him while other gave him the finger.
Rubbing his head, he walked over to the men trapped in the stocks and looked back at the crowd. He then smiled and kicked the closest one right on his damaged foot. The Confederation officer screamed out in pain. Darden then moved to the next man and kick him in his bloody foot sending him into an agonizing scream.
Looking back, he saw the duty shift of prisoners erupt into anger and surged for him as he rendered a second and third blow to the men with the whipped feet. The crowd of prisoners had enough and they charged the traitor intent on not only stopping him but ripping him apart.
“You damn traitor!” someone screamed as they charged.
Darden didn’t run for the nearby door but turned back and watched with a smile. As the prisoners rushed towards him the Karduan guards activated their slave collars. They had the work shift’s collars programed into their forearm controls of their armor. Tapping a pre-set switch, the guards watched the entire duty shift fall to the ground in a quivering mass.
Scotty was unaffected as his collar was set to a different setting and command frequency. Turning back, he saw that the two men in the pillories were also unaffected by the mass shocking. They had probably been from a different work shift and weren’t preprogrammed into this shift’s setting. To the guards this didn’t matter as they could shock everyone if they wanted by using a general setting signal. They could also set their shock controls to a proximity around them or to target an individual. These Blue ladies had long ago enslaved their own men and they had become very good at maintaining control of their servants as well as their slaves.
Shaking his head, the traitor thought that it wasn’t fair that these prisoners were left out as he pulled his leg back and gave each one of them another good kick before he left. If they wanted to mess with him then he would mess with them. It didn’t matter to him because if he ever wanted to go home then all of them had to at some point die. He knew that he was their Judas and that they would someday make him pay if they survived. To him it was a no-brainer that they couldn’t be allowed to live beyond this station.
Darden waved his hand over the door’s sensor and a moment later it slid open. He was allowed almost unrestricted access throughout the station. It was his sole privilege as the station mistress’s gofer and confidant. It seemed that Bie-Tor was as paranoid about her own lady officers as she was about her Blue males and her human slaves. It was their way to seek glory and to advance by any means possible. Killing a rival in a duel or reassigning them to an out of the way planet or station was the norm.
For some reason the station mistress took a liking to him. He didn’t know why and had hoped it wasn’t sexual. It turned out she needed an ear to listen to her rants and to eavesdrop on her officers. She trusted no one and wanted all rumors, grumblings and scuttlebutt reported to her daily.
Over the past two years as a slave he had learned their language while he was traded from one prison to another. For the most part he tried to keep it to himself but when he came to this station he was found out. As a telepath she had read his mind and knew what he feared, what he had done and what he could do for her.
At first, he spied on his fellow human service men and was quite effective. Sometime they would almost figure out that it was him who was their traitor but fortunately for Darden he was extremely paranoid and had managed to escape before they could get their hands on him. He still was occasionally mingled in with new prisoner groups from time to time but mostly he was her gofer.
He ran messages to her female officers, who hated receiving orders from a human male. It was almost a way of scolding them as they were humiliated to take an order even if it was on an electronic data cube from such a creature. He brought her all of her meals and took the beatings if they weren’t prepared correctly. He was her insight into the human mind on how they thought as well as how to break them.
Almost rushing through the station’s corridors he was on one of those missions even now. The communication officer had been trying for the last fifteen minutes to contact the station mistress. This was not unusual as she often refused to answer their calls especially if she was already into her meditations or in her garden where she didn’t want to be disturbed. Oh, she wasn’t incompetent and had an emergency channel to be contacted on at all hours. Her officers though were reluctant to use the emergency channel unless there really was a problem needing her immediate attention. Instead, they would send her human servant to disturb her. That way he would face her wrath rather than them.
They hated Darden almost as much as the humans did. The Blues saw him for what he was - a traitor. Oh they wanted obedient slaves but there was something about him that struck them as repulsive. Perhaps it was the way he wormed his way ever closer to the station mistress or the way he tried to ingratiate himself to anyone in power.
Scotty Darden felt their disdain as much as that of his fellow humans. He summed it up in his mind that they disliked all of them. They hated the way humans smelled which was obvious as all of the Karduan guardswomen would wear their combat armored space suits with their helmet on when supervising them so they wouldn’t have to smell them. Senior mistresses when having to deal with prisoners would wear filter masks or carry bundles of cut flowers or herbs to hold under their noses. The worst was when new prisoners would arrive reeking of the smell of meat that overpowered their senses and made them nauseous. No guardswoman wanted the task of indoctrinating them and many would try to beg off such duty or call in favors owed to them just to skip it.
To combat this, all of the prisoners were now on a total vegetarian diet but to the Blue nose they still reeked. Scotty bathed as often as he could to be free of this odor and even experimente
d with different diets. He sometimes took cast off plant snippings from the station mistress’s garden to carry in his pockets or rub on his skin to help mask his offensive odor.
Approaching the station mistress’s office door, he straightened his tunic and wiped his sweating hands on his pants. Reaching the door, he waited a moment until the sensor activated. This told him that she was there but had at least one level of security in use. If she had it totally unlocked, he would have been able to walk right in. Instead, he had to wait a moment for the computer to identify him and allow him access.
The office looked empty as he scanned the room. Her office was strange for a Karduan noble and senior officer. It was cluttered with both Karduan and human items. Most Karduan ladies preferred simplicity and almost sterile environment with just a few plants and the needed technology to do their job.
Lady Bie-Tor’s office seemed almost human. She had paintings on her walls and shelves filled with data crystals and even numerous volumes of old paper bound books from Earth. Her floors were traditionally bare though not metal but made of quarried gray stone. She had a human captain’s desk made of solid oak and polished to a high sheen. Several tables had tools and disassembled human technology that she had been examining.
Scotty knew that the mistress loved to tinker and was always taking apart any new piece of tech she could get her hands on to see what made it tick. On several occasions he had helped with pieces that she didn’t know anything about.
Though the room was cluttered there was no one there. Moving to a side doorway he saw that it was open. The room it connected to was the station mistress’s private garden. Stepping up to the doorway he cautiously looked into the garden. The room looked like an arboretum he had once visited when he was a child. Dragged there by his parents he decided that he hated nature and only wanted to get back to his room and play his VR computer games.
The mistress’s garden took up the space of the three adjacent rooms. Plants, bushes and small trees filled the space as artificial light that looked and felt like sun light streamed down. The light was created by panels in the curved ceiling that could even project a holo graphic image of the sky. Embedded sprinklers would rain down on the plants with nutrient enriched water. The floor was also gray stone but a shade lighter than those of the office. It was also ever so slightly slanted to allow the excess water to run to drains in the floor for recycling.
It was a beautiful place, one in which the station mistress would spend hours there each day just to relax and to meditate. It was here that he found her, not tending her plants, nor mediating or worshipping the Karduan goddess that they called the Bright Lady. No, she was doing one of her other favorite things. She was supervising her personal human slave as he scrubbed the garden’s stone floor.
Darden watched for a moment as the muscular white male scrubbed the stone floor on his hands and knees. He didn’t care one bit that this man was human or had once been a Confederation officer. He hated officers and this slave was no exception.
Bie-Tor sat nearby on a stool watching him almost fixated on the slave as he worked the scrub brush back and forth on the light gray stones. She was old for a station mistress and her pale blue skin was almost transparent showing her great age. Her breathing was elevated and he could hear her rasp every now and then as she watched him work. In her hands was ornate wooden cane that was not only a symbol of her office but in actuality was also a pain stick.
The slave on the other hand was no more than thirty-five Earth years old. He was just short of being called tall with light brown hair and blue steel gray eyes. He had once been a navy commander and now was just a broken creature. His clothes were nothing more than tattered shreds and the scars on his back from various whipping and tortures could be easily seen. His feet were also scarred from canings and there were various circular burn marks on his arms and chest.
She watched him scrub back and forth methodically cleaning the stones. After a minute she raised her cane and pointed at him. A moment later the slave grunted and lowered his head as the invisible wave of energy hit him with an intense burning pain. A second after he crumpled to his side and she lowered her cane tapping it on the floor. The human slave rolled back to his knees and went back to scrubbing. He seemed unaware of anything except the floor he had to clean.
“Come here” she said looking over to the doorway where Darden stood.
Scotty hurried over to her and waited for her to speak.
“What do you want?” she asked sounding annoyed.
“My lady, the watch mistress sent me to tell you that the pirate has returned and wishes to speak with you,” he said lowering his head.
The Blue station mistress sighed and hopped off her stool walking past her slave and into her office. Darden followed her but made sure that he walked close to the fallen commander as he passed. He then purposely stepped on his hand with the heel of his foot pressing down with all of his body weight. Looking back, he saw the slave seemingly unaffected by the step as he just continued to scrub. Darden shook his head knowing that the once high and mighty officer was no longer so high or mighty.
Catching up to his mistress he found her talking to the vid screen on her desk as she looked at a picture of the pirate’s ship waiting to approach the station.
“Patch me through to the pirate,” she ordered to her communications officer.
A moment later the screen showed the smiling face of the human who had aided her several times in her mission to obtain ships, slaves and human technology for her house.
Being a Prendere was more than just having the gift. You had to also watch people’s movements and expressions. In this the humans were no different maybe even more easy to read. He looked rested but stressed, a strange combination for such an emotional creature. He was on the bridge of a badly damaged Vanguard sloop and was standing next to a young helmsman seated at the pilot’s station. No other personnel could be seen as the other duty stations were vacant.
“Where did you get that Vanguard?” she asked and added “where is your destroyer escort and freighter?”
Peter Alexander smiled and shook his head.
“It is one hell of a story but the short of it is I ran into that attack cruiser you’ve all been hunting,” he stated and waited for her reaction.
“What happened and where is it?” she inquired knowing that the Grand Fleet Mistress Pir-Ly of the House of Win would pay a great deal for such information. She hated the House of Win as they were part of the collation that had defeated the Four Houses including her House, the House of Tor in their recent internal war. Despite her burning hatred, her mission was to gain ships and technology while getting paid by the other Houses to repair their ships. That was why her repair station was here to achieve those goals and ultimately strengthen her House.
“Now my lady you know very well that I’m not telling you anything for free,” he said with a slight frown that then became a mischievous grin.
She nodded knowing that the human was a skilled negotiator.
“What do you want for this information?” Bie-Tor said.
“I’d like your station to repair this sloop and make sure that it is listed as my ship,” he replied.
“That can be done,” she stated and then asked “Where are your other ships and where is the enemy attack cruiser?”
He smiled again like the rogue he was. “All in good time my lady as I have another proposition for you.”
She looked at the human across the vid link and frowned. His light brown face was smiling as his blue eyes twinkled in some hidden mirth.
“Fine, dock that wreck on the upper spur, then come and see me,” she ordered and then added, “This better be good or I’ll find another way to get you to tell me what I want to know.”
Alexander the Great was still smiling when the signal ended and the screen went blank.
Bie-Tor turned and looked to her human servant.
“Go meet them and bring them here,” she commanded as Dard
en hurriedly left the room to carry out his new mission.
The Vanguard sloop’s Karduan crew had tried to escape when it was run down by the ships of the Star Wolf ‘s squadron. It had been easily disabled and boarded. In the course of these events it had taken some pretty severe damage. Some had suggested fragging it and salvaging the parts but Mike looked at it and knew that it was perfect for their plans. It just needed enough repairs to make it space worthy again yet remain in a condition that showed that it had been in a pretty bad fight.
Docking the broken ship at an upper pylon’s spur they exited the ship’s airlock and were greeted not by a Blue security team but by a single human male.
The fellow was short, thin and was dressed in a clean though worn Confederation navy duty uniform. He looked nervous and had been pacing back and forth as he waited for the airlock to open.
“Hurry up you pirate scum! The station mistress is waiting for you!” he scolded.
Peter Alexander laughed and casually strolled forward and then suddenly punched the little man in the stomach doubling him over.
“Don’t give me orders weasel,” he said and stepped around him as he headed down the corridor to the lift.
“Clearly, you two know each other,” Mike commented.
The young officer was no longer dressed in his Confederation uniform and had instead attired himself as that of a merchant spaceman in non military clothing and a civilian space suit. He left his prized Krager gauss pistol on the Star Wolf and instead elected to be armed with an 8mm Starburst automatic pistol, his Templar sword and his Randall poly-steel combat knife. In this way he looked the part of a pirate.
The pirate captain shrugged his shoulders, “The weasel is an annoying little rat fuck of a traitor.”
Collins shifted the long box he carried and shook his head, “You’re a pirate who has also betrayed humanity so what’s the difference?”
Alexander stopped at the lift and looked back as Darden finally caught his breath and slowly stood up.
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 43