by Maia Starr
Finally, I spotted light ahead, a soft golden glow. It wasn’t much: just a flickering rushlight that wasn’t emitting any sort of smoke; it was an odd alien technology I had never seen before. But before I had a chance to analyze it too much, the Bardan began to speak.
“Grab your tools and begin!” he demanded.
As the group ahead of me began to thin out, I saw a line of glittering silver tools and recognized the material immediately. It was the metal pieces from outside the Raither ship, and I shuddered. It was odd to think that the same Raithers that had crashed here and escaped had left behind a group of freaks who actually belonged on this horrible planet. It brought my mind back to Zern, whose quiet sweetness had nearly fooled me into thinking he wasn’t capable of doing an unkind thing.
And yet he had shown no hesitation about kicking me off the ship, and had apparently only been waiting for the right moment to bring it up; as if it were more entertaining somehow to bring it up when I was the most off my guard and actually being stupid enough to hope that maybe whatever that relationship was that we were sharing was something that could maybe warrant the strange warmth he always seemed to generate inside of me.
But it wasn’t. He didn’t care about me. I was just some invader on his property. A nuisance. Some sort of pest to get rid of that had infested his precious ship. The sooner I was out of his way, the better, as far as he was concerned. Why had I wasted my time trying to spend time with him, feeding him and laughing with him, only to be kicked out like the world’s biggest pain in the ass?
“Get to work!” the Bardan shouted. I cringed, knowing he was referring to me. I was the only woman who hadn’t picked up one of the makeshift tools to begin hacking away at the dirt walls as the other women had begun to do.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled.
“You! Show her what to do, human.”
The Bardan was staring at Phoebe, and Phoebe sighed.
“Yes, sir,” she said with mock politeness.
The Bardan didn’t seem able to detect the difference between mockery and sincerity in the human dictation, so I hurried over to Phoebe before he might suddenly learn the difference.
“It’s pretty straightforward, really. All you have to do is dig. We’re expanding this room and continuing a tunnel south. That is going to make it easy for our captors to expand their reach of the planet. Most of the creatures here are above ground; they don’t even know we are here.”
“All right,” I sighed.
Before long, I was standing beside Phoebe, working grimly along with the others. There was no music or chatter: only the silence filled with metallic clanging and the sound of Earth being shoveled into buckets that were being carried away by a line of human women. They would reappear after taking it somewhere and continuing their digging. When the buckets were full again, they would return to the grueling work of emptying the buckets. It looked exhausting.
“Did they have to do something special to get that job?” I asked Phoebe.
She scowled at me. “They were working too slowly. Bardans are big fans of speed, and they put me in charge of dealing out punishments when the wardens aren’t able to pay much attention.”
“I see,” I said quietly. “So they were slow, and you had them go on bucket duty?”
“That about sums it up, yeah,” Phoebe said. She turned away from me to focus back on her work and smiled privately to herself. I got an eerie feeling from that look: almost as if she derived a sadistic pleasure from having that sort of power over the other humans.
I tried to shake the feeling away. I was probably just tired and overwhelmed by the situation and assigning meanings to things that weren’t there. It wasn’t possible that this place was affecting Phoebe, was it? No, humans had a good moral compass. There was a line between what was good and what was bad, and we were duty-bound as elite researchers to represent the best qualities humanity had to offer in every situation.
“You have another human with you today; I want you to have made some real progress by the time you’re done!” the Bardan demanded, his high-pitched voice reverberating in the chamber we were creating. “Dig! Faster!”
I cried out in pain as the sickening sound of flesh breaking filled my ears. My back was on fire suddenly, and then it happened again, and I realized that the little asshole was whipping me.
I whirled around to face him and dodged away from the whip. “What the hell is your problem?”
I held his gaze, and the room suddenly became silent. I could feel the weight of all eyes on me as I faced down the Bardan. At first, I thought I had sealed my death in no uncertain terms, but then the Bardan’s eyes began to shine.
“It looks like we have another volunteer to work in tunnel six!” he said, his face exceedingly cheerful.
I looked around the room at the horrified faces of the others in the dim light until my eyes rested upon Phoebe. I was shocked by the look of sheer delight creeping across her features. When she caught me looking at her, she wiped the look away quickly and feigned the same horror that was on the faces of the other women.
“You’re in for a real surprise,” she said. “Remember: don’t look down.”
Chapter 5
Captain Zern Krechan
I had been huddled in the tunnel overnight, in a small, unfurnished room with no light. I couldn’t see anything when I had gone inside, but I could tell by the scent that neither Raithers nor Bardans had set foot here for a while; it seemed odd that I had found an area that was uninhabited by Bardans and Raithers alike.
And yet, here was this space. I decided to use it as a base for the night. It had been impossible for me to sneak through the populated area of the dining hall; even at night there were Bardans and Raithers coming and going; it was as if their appetites were never satiated. I had to be careful; Bardans were known for their ability to outsmart Raithers…particularly if we were outnumbered.
Beyond the hall was the place where the human had been taken, but I had heard enough to know that she would be safe for the night. At least it gave me a chance to hang back and regroup. I had been up half the night thinking about what I was going to do to save the human, but I also knew that if there was going to be a fight, I would need to be rested. And so when I was sure I was out of sight, I allowed myself to sleep briefly—just enough to get my energy back.
“You are really going to like it here. It is always a treat to introduce Keno to a new friend!”
The sound of the Bardan’s voice made my skin crawl, and I backed up against the wall so that nobody would see me. They passed by the entrance of the room I was in and headed deeper down the corridor. I had gone there myself, but an extreme heat had caused me to turn around and head back. I could tell I was only going further away from the human, and whatever was at the end of this hall was dangerous.
“I’m sure it will be a blast. We need the tunnel completed soon. He should not bother you unless he is hungry. But if he is, you may need to work smart.”
I gaped at the Bardan’s back, recklessly sticking my head out the doorway. The human he was leading through the tunnels was Lila. I was so close. All I had to do was take him out and get her out of here.
I crept out of the small room and trailed behind the Bardan, my eyes boring on the human. Lila’s graceful body was moving ahead of him, her eyes kept forward as she tried to make anything out in the darkness. Raithers had no issue seeing in pitch-black darkness, but we preferred not to be without the sun in any way. Our planet was one of the most beautiful in the galaxy in that way, the sky being unbelievably beautiful, but it had always been a novelty that meant little to me.
Instead, I had always preferred to occupy my time with training: whether indoors or outdoors, it didn’t matter. Sure, the sky was beautiful, but there were more important things to me than the way the planet looked. I had to focus inwardly; I had gone through a lot in my life, and focusing on being the strongest I could be was a way to help me prove to myself and everyone else that I was a survivor.
&nbs
p; “No! Please, don’t make me go in there!”
Lila’s voice was frantic now, and I peered ahead; there was a gaping hole in the middle of the ground ahead of her, and the Bardan was already laughing sinisterly.
“This is quite an honor. You are going to make the Erksha very happy.”
My chest became tight as a visual of the terrifying worm-like creature flashed in my mind. Was he really going to feed the human to an Erksha? I had to stop him.
But just as I was charging the Bardan, the horrible little creature shoved the human forward, and she screamed shrilly, disappearing into a deep, deep hole.
“You gredding monster!” I bellowed, causing the Bardan to turn to me, its reptilian eyes wide and confused as I charged toward him, sending both of us hurtling down after her.
***
The heat was overwhelming, and I winced, glowering down at the Bardan as he fell. My hand was still wrapped around his neck, and I saw with a start that we were falling down a long pit with magma oozing at the bottom. As I fell, I saw with relief that the human had landed hard on one of the several jutting platforms made of rock that were leveled precariously above the magma. The Bardan was squirming to free himself from my grip when we both slammed into the rocky surface of another platform.
“Let go of me, Raither scum!” the Bardan exclaimed. I narrowed my eyes in anger. This Bardan was responsible for putting my human in mortal danger. He didn’t deserve my mercy.
I got to my feet, my grip around his throat tightening.
“I am going to destroy you.”
Before he had the chance to reply, I held him over the ledge and let go. He let out a piercing screech that echoed throughout the chamber, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before the other Bardans came running. Unless they were too afraid of the Erksha to go anywhere near this area, which seemed to have been the case, judging by the smell. I was trained to detect the Bardan scent and had been given a vaccination against the chemical odors their bodies emitted.
“Help!”
My attention was torn away from the Bardan at the sound of Lila’s frightened shout. I looked up, spotting her small form standing rigidly on a platform that was high above the one the Bardan and I had landed on. I climbed quickly along the wall of stone and dirt nearest me and scrambled toward Lila just in time to catch sight of the tremendous Erksha rising from the magma below and fixing its gaze upon Lila.
It reared its horrific head, a mouth of shark-like teeth, sharp and jagged, and it stared at Lila, who was trembling before it, unable to move. The creature was unbelievably huge, and Lila was dwarfed by its massive pink body.
Everything went by me in a blur as I began my single-minded quest to reach Lila. She still hadn’t realized that I was there. It was as if she had been blinded by the horrific creature in front of her. Although it was several feet away, it would take no time at all for the Erksha to strike.
Before I could even register what I was doing, I was standing in between the human and the monster, holding my hand out protectively in front of Lila.
“Zern?” her beautiful voice asked in shock.
But there was no time to acknowledge her or give her a proper greeting. What I had to do was to rescue her from this potentially awful fate. The last thing that I wanted to do was to see the human ripped apart before my eyes. The Erksha were cruel and merciless creatures. They lived within the magma of all worlds, but nobody usually knew about their existence. It was hard to say whether this Erksha had already been on this planet before it had been turned into a prison, or if perhaps it had been placed here purposefully because of its cruel actions.
If the latter were true, then I was dealing with an even more dangerous beast then I may have originally determined.
The monster looked at me with an amused glint in his eye, almost as if it was having a hard time believing that I had the nerve to believe I would be able to protect the myself, let alone the human. And the truth was that I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull this off.
Although I remembered the weakness of the Erksha—inside their mouths was a small hollow cavity that contained the monster’s central nervous system—the thought of getting close enough to the area to actually do any damage was both terrifying and discouraging. It seemed that there was no way that I would be able to do what needed to be done without being completely mangled and killed, or at least seriously deformed for the rest of my life.
“Zern, please,” the human begged. “Don’t get yourself killed for my sake. Just try to get out of here. It’s my own fault this is happening. If I would’ve just kept my cool and stayed put…”
“No,” I said shaking my head without taking my eyes away from the creature. “I should not have told you to leave the way that I did. I didn’t want you to. The truth is…”
But before I had a chance to finish my sentence, the Erksha lunged at us. The human screamed, and I pushed her out of the way and rolled ahead to dodge its attack.
Luckily, I still had the knives that I had been equipped with at the beginning of my journey, and soon, the Erksha was thrashing away from my blade. Its skin was nearly impenetrable. I should have known that anything that spends a good amount of time and molten lava was not going to be phased by a blade, even a blade of Raither quality.
It was becoming more and more clear what I would have to do, no matter how unappealing it might have sounded. I would have to get into its mouth and destroy the creature from the inside out. Whether that meant my doom or not, as long as the human survived, I would be able to say that my mission was a success.
I could hear the human sobbing behind me as I stood and attempted to collect myself before I resigned myself to my undesirable fate. The last thing I wanted to do was to get close enough to this creature that it could digest me, but I had to do it for Lila. She was a victim of circumstance, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was cruel of the Resha Federation to deny her and the rest of her people the opportunity to go back to Earth.
At the very least, I could make up for it in the best way I knew how. The Erksha let out another terrifying sound that made my blood run cold. The human’s sobs were cut off by what I can only assume was a wave of fear, and I looked up into the beady red eyes of the Erksha as it measured me up. I knew that it was going to lunge at me, but there was nothing that I could do about it. If it was going to come at me this way, then at least I would have a chance of getting into its mouth unscathed and tearing apart its central nervous system so that the human could leave. I owed her that much at least.
I braced myself, summoning all the courage in my body so that I was able to face the creature coming at me unflinchingly. If I was able to fully concentrate, I would be able to save myself. But if I choked up and allowed my fear to take over, then I might as well be sacrificing myself without a fight.
Suddenly, my body was enveloped in a moist darkness, and I gasped for breath as I tugged my feet forward, doing my best to avoid all of the horrifying teeth that were surrounding me. The creature’s tongue flipped me back and forth, trying to get me between its teeth and to crush the life out of me. I had to act fast and quickly attempted to locate the cavity where the central nervous system was located.
I held the knife tightly in my hand and thrust forward to cut the bundle of nerves at its core. Suddenly, the creature’s jaws slackened beneath my feet, and I began to tumble down the steep slope of its tongue until I found myself falling over the sharp edges of its teeth and down to the ground. The creature was swaying dramatically, and I knew that if we didn’t act, it was probably going to fall and the land on the human and break the platform, potentially destroying us both.
“Zern, you’re all right!”
I barely had time to heed the human’s relief. Reviewing all of my options revealed that if we followed the slope of rock up the face of the cavern walls, we would be able to find a way out this forsaken dungeon and escape once and for all.
The Erksha let out a deep moan that shook the Earth
around us, and I grabbed the human, pulling her to her feet and leading her forward. She was almost too afraid to move, so I lifted her up and carried her as I ran toward our only chance of escape. There was no telling what would happen when the full weight of the Erksha landed on the unsteady platform of rock that had been formed above the magma. The human seemed weak, not only from fear, but from the extreme heat in the area. It was clear that humans were exceptionally vulnerable, and I had to do whatever I could to make sure that she got out of this alive.
She held onto me tightly as I ran, occasionally meeting my eyes with her own. They seemed to be asking a million questions, but there was no time to give her any answers. I knew that she hadn’t expected me to come and find her. In fact, it had been quite the surprise for us both. And if I didn’t get back soon, then I was going to lose the only chance I had of getting off of this prison planet once and for all.
Once I finally made it to the corridor, put the human back down on the ground and we walked slowly together toward the end, where the room I had been staying in overnight was hidden. What I wanted to do was to get to the entrance of the underground tunnel as quickly as possible so that I could make sure that Lila was able to escape this hellish prison.
My chest was tight as we made our way, and I could see our escape clearly. There was nobody guarding the door. It was as if we were destined to get out of this horrible place without any further consequences.
“Wait, where are we going?” Lila said, her voice wavering. “There are other girls down here. Humans. We can just leave them here. There are innocent women who deserve the same chance that I’m getting now.”
I gaped at her in disbelief. I had nearly lost my life to save hers. There was no way that I was going to let her talk me into getting us both killed.
“You need to lower your voice. Better yet, stop speaking entirely. There is danger here, and I need you to go up this ladder and out that door and never look back. It doesn’t matter whether there are one million humans in here. We got you to safety, and that’s what matters the most.”