by Calista Skye
“I relieved Baron Pantoflir of a valuable item, as you point out. A human female of generous proportions. Now I wonder if you might have another one of a similar kind as the one I acquired. From the same… um… brood, perhaps?”
“The Lord does not have knowledge in detail of the lots that are sold at the auctions. If such a one as you mention exists, he is not aware of it. But it interests him. Now he insists that you leave. You scare him.”
Yeah, Xan'tor could scare anyone—
It suddenly flashes through my mind that I could make a serious splash right here and now. The pipe bomb I found in Xan'tor's cabin is strapped to my left forearm, under a bundle of alien plastics. I'm pretty sure I could blow up that heap of Bululg trash called a Brood Lord. I think he's the chief Bululg here at Earth, so killing him might make the invaders seriously consider leaving.
My right hand goes to my left forearm, trembling fingers quickly searching their way under the chaos of plastics. An action like this would resonate through the Resistance, showing everyone that we are strong and active, powerful enough to kill the chief slaver.
Probably everyone else in the room would die, too. Including me.
And including Xan'tor.
He gives a small, indifferent bow. “Then I shall discuss the new mission with Underlord Mlur.”
The pipebomb is a hard, cold cylinder against my fingertips.
Xan'tor turns and gives me a little wink and a smile that only I can see. “You are scaring the Brood Lord. We must leave.”
My fingers stiffen on the bomb, right on the protruding part that must be the trigger.
I can kill myself. I've been mentally prepared for it for a while. That's not a problem. But...
He takes my arm and the moment is gone. He drags me through the doors the same way we came until we're back at the bare corridor. “Good performance,” he whispers. “I don't think any of them noticed you at all.”
I don't reply. This may have been my only chance to strike a really big blow for Earth. And I hesitated at the crucial moment.
Damn. What kind of Resistance fighter am I? I didn't even get any information about Emma.
Xan'tor walks back the way we came, and I hurry after him, not looking at anyone.
He stops at the only window to space I've seen in this huge spaceship and pretends to admire the view of black space. “Stay behind me, act like a slave, and keep looking down. I am now going to see a slightly lower-ranking alien. He's one of their smartest officials, and I don't want to risk him figuring out who you are. You will have to wait outside while I see him. Do not start wandering around. With me, you attract no attention. On your own, you will be noticed and recaptured. If that happens, there's nothing I can do for you. Can I trust you to not do anything silly?”
“I know how to follow orders,” I hiss at his back, carefully not answering his question.
“That was not what I asked,” he says. “I will ask this person about your sister, too. He might know more. Indeed, I'm pretty sure he does. Stay here and look at the floor. Do not look out this window. If anyone talks to you, you understand no languages.”
“Fine,” I mutter.
“I might be a while. There is much to discuss with this underlord.”
“Okay.”
He turns around and fixes me with his luminous suns. “Stay here.”
I meet his gaze for a second, then have to look away. “I heard you the first two times.”
“Good.” He strides off, a door on the other side of the hallway opens, and he walks inside, head held high and tail swishing like on a tiger preparing for a pounce.
The door shuts behind him and I start limping down the hallway.
- - -
I only meet a handful of aliens, but even when I'm on my own I don't attract much attention. I increase the limp and try to make myself shorter by keeping my knees bent and stiff while I walk. I want to look as pitiful as possible. That is completely in line with how pathetic I feel – I may have just blown the only chance I had of killing the main enemy.
Fine, so I can't know how much explosive power that pipe bomb has. Okay, the brood lord might not have died. Sure, if I had blown myself up, I would have ruined every chance of finding and rescuing Emma.
But all those rationalizations ring hollow. The actual reason I didn't throw the bomb is that I couldn't bear the thought of killing Xan'tor.
Inexplicably, my eyes fill with tears and I have to stop because I can't see where I'm going.
Why must he be so great? Why did he give me his own cabin? Why did he have to keep his promise of asking the chief Bululg about Emma? Why did he have to crack a joke and wink at me at the crucial moment, making me feel that there was only him and me that mattered in the whole universe?
Dammit, why couldn't he be the alien creep that I thought he was in the beginning?
Pull yourself together, soldier!
I take a couple of deep breaths. No problem. I'm still on the enemy mothership, I can still do some damage. Now that Xan'tor is not right beside me, I don't have to be limited by not wanting to kill him.
He's probably right. Emma has long since been sold to some alien it would be impossible to find. She's probably dead already. And even if she's not, it will be impossible to rescue her. The Bululg are efficient and ruthless.
I will walk through this ship and find a good place to detonate the bomb, a place where it will do some damage. And then I will finally do the right thing.
Actually, what did the desperate contingency orders say? Take with you as many other Earth girls as possible. Or words to that effect.
Okay. I'll find my way to the auction section and then detonate the bomb. If it's powerful enough, it might even blow a hole in this ship and maybe make it crash. That would be a real victory, one that tells everyone on Earth that the Resistance is alive and fighting. If the explosion happens in the auction section, then nobody can be in any doubt: the Resistance did this.
I quickly wipe my face on one plasticky sleeve. It might kill Xan'tor, too. But he might also escape. He's resourceful and tough. And what the hell is he doing working for these people, anyway?
I start walking again, trying to remember as much of the layout of this ship as I can from last time. It takes me a good half hour to find the right floor, having taken elevators up and down the surprisingly large mothership. There are a lot more aliens of different kinds here, and in my disguise I kind of blend in with all the weirdness. And the weirdness keeps coming, as more and more aliens seem to pour into this section of the ship.
It actually looks like another auction is about to start. If I'm right about that, then I stand a good chance of blowing up a room full of slavers and buyers! That would be even better than killing the head Bululg, an even more obvious message.
I go with the flow, bearing the onslaught of alien smells and noises, not looking up, just being a pitiful little slave creature.
An alien with five legs and draped in gold sweeps past, followed by a gaggle of similar creatures covered in silver bits. It's not entirely unlike the metal scrap I've adorned the robe with, as inspired by Frox's jewelry. I follow them, staying close and trying to look like a part of their entourage. I had the foresight to cut Xan'tor's robe so far down that it bunches up on the floor, and nobody can tell if I have two or five legs.
Then I'm in the auction hall, but on the spectator side this time. At the front of the room is the stage where I was displayed. The mere sight of it makes a calm fury rise in me. Twelve thousand Earth girls have been auctioned on that stage and others like it, displayed and sold like objects, then taken away to be bred. In some cases to death.
But now it's over. I'll blow it all up.
I stick with the five-legged aliens as they noisily make their way to the middle of the crowd that now has to be a couple of hundred aliens.
Perfect. This way, it doesn't matter much how powerful the pipe bomb is. Even if it's only like a typical hand grenade as used by Earth armies, it will kill at least ten
to fifteen of the closest slave buyers. Maybe twenty. As well as me.
More aliens enter the room, and when the auction starts, various beings are pushing into me from all sides. This will be a bloodbath.
In fact, there's no need to wait.
Since this is the end of the line, I don't have to fear being discovered. I reach behind me and take Ingrid out of the pouch, activating her. If there are survivors, I want them to know who was behind this. And the cellphone can amplify my voice a lot more than I can by yelling. I'll just turn the volume up—
“Ow!”
Both my hands are yanked behind my back, and suddenly there's a lot of high-pitched whistling around me.
“I knew it!” Ingrid translates. “It's the lot you bought last time, My Lord!”
I'm forced to turn around, and then I'm looking right at Baron Pantoflir.
He reaches out one thin arm and yanks the alien hose off my head. My hair falls around my face.
The baron whistles.
“So it is,” Ingrid chirps.
16
- Mila -
The baron's helpers drag me out of the room to the hallway beyond. It's empty, now that the spectacle is going on in the auction hall.
They pull the robe off me, leaving me in only panties and bra.
“Well spotted,” the baron whistles. “It is indeed my breeding female.”
“The eyes give it away,” an assistant says behind me. “So alien! Impossible to conceal!”
Baron Pantoflir reaches one thin finger out to stroke my hair.
But I yank my head away. “I'm not your anything!”
There's a lot of whistling around me. There are at least eight of these guys, and I will struggle to escape—
“How true,” a deep voice booms through the hallway.
Everyone turns to look at the blue warrior who comes towards us.
I almost cry from sheer relief.
“Pirate,” the baron spits. “You stole this from me!”
“Certainly not,” Xan'tor says, towering over us all and looking lethal. “I accepted her as part of my payment for services rendered to the Bululg. The Brood Lord agrees. Let her go.”
“Services to the Bululg?” the baron whistles with such a high pitch that it's like needles in my ears. “But you took the female from me! You have performed no service for me!”
“I'm sure the Bululg will return whatever amount you paid for her. Let her go. She is mine.”
“No!” the baron whistles with a shrill. “This female is magnificent! The finest lot ever seen! I claim it and demand it and own it!”
The baron's assistants suddenly have short, weird-looking weapons in their hands.
Xan'tor looks at me. “Mila, when they let go of you, hit the floor and stay down.”
“Okay,” I manage.
Xan'tor calmly reaches out above me, I hear a meaty thud, and the grip on my arms is suddenly gone.
“Get him! Kill him!” the baron screeches.
I drop to the floor as great violence breaks out around me. There's a cacophony of whistling and bangs and growls and meat being split open.
Clenching my eyes shut and pressing my hands to my ears, I try to make sense of the last thing I saw – it was as if Xan'tor was growing, changing shape, and becoming even larger.
No, of course not. Just a trick of the light, a shadow.
Finally it's quiet, and then a hand takes mine. “We should leave.”
I get back on my feet. Xan'tor looks the same as ever, of course, except that his pants have been ripped.
But the baron and all his helpers are in a heap on the floor.
“Did you kill them?”
He drags me along, away from them. “Perhaps one or two. They are not made for combat, these things. But their weapons can be nasty. Now the Bululg will soon know you're here. And they will not like this.”
My head is spinning as I passively follow him. There's only one thing on my mind.
“Emma,” I manage as I have to run to keep up. “Any news?”
Xan'tor pushes me flat against the wall as a squad of heavily armed Bululg come running down the hallway, passing us with inches to spare.
“Perhaps,” he says when we continue. “In a sense.”
None of us say anything else until we're back in the ship and racing away from the mothership.
I wipe some of the soot off my face. “I'm glad you came to find me. How did you know where I was?”
Xan'tor activates the autopilot. “Where else could you go? You'd meet closed doors everywhere else. Aliens are normally only allowed in the auction section.”
The sky above the dome is dark and strewn with a million stars that shine steadily. I sit down in a seat, but I'm too tense to relax. “What did you find out about Emma?”
Xan'tor leans against a console. “Nothing specific. Which is almost certainly good news. The underlord would have known if your sister had been sold. He knows about you, certainly. But he seemed to not know that you have a sister. There is a chance that she is still on Earth. Or possibly in a cell on the mothership.”
“Would he have told you if he knew about her?”
“I think he would. He knows I acquired you. So when I then asked about a female similar to you, he should have seen me as an eager buyer, willing to pay a high price for the full set, so to speak. The Bululg are good salesmen. But he only promised to check.”
My forearms are still clad with plastic. I decide to leave it on the left side. I might still need that pipe bomb. But I peel it off the right arm.
A painful thought keeps needling me: no news about Emma can also be really bad news. It could mean that she was actually torn to shreds by that fresk.
Xan'tor crosses his arms over his chest. “You look terrible.”
I point to his pants, where each leg seems to have split up along the sides and the fabric flaps around when he moves. “You're no fashion model, yourself.”
He glances down himself. “Ah. This is actually the very highest fashion. Nobody wears whole garments anymore.”
“I think you did when we first came here, just a few hours ago.”
He shrugs, and there's a funny glint in his eye. “Fashions change so fast these days. I can barely keep up.”
I use the alien plastic to rub more soot off my face, but it's not too effective. “Didn't have you figured as a slave to fashion.”
He makes some adjustments on a panel. “I'm not a slave to anything. Or to anyone. Are you?”
“I'm not. And again I have you to thank for it. So, thank you for saving me. Again.” The excitement, the lack of information about Emma, and the very real decision to kill myself along with all the slavers have left a dark trace on my mind, and I'm starting to feel down. “I can't see what's in it for you, though.”
Xan'tor frowns at me for a moment. “You really can't? Hmm. Mila, you can go to the hygienic chamber and clean up. Did Frox tell you how to use it? Then I'll show you something that I hope you will like. Most people do.”
- - -
I stare up, out of the top of the dome above the control room. A huge, yellowish ball hangs in space above us. It's kind of fuzzy around the edges. “What is that?”
Xan'tor gazes up, too. “That's a moon. I don't know it's name. It's called Graioc in Interspeech. It's an acronym of 'That Weird Moon With the Old Stuff Inside It' or something similar. It belongs to that planet in the distance. ”
“The one with the ring? That's Saturn.”
“I see. If so, I believe your people call this moon Titan. It's quite big for a moon. Atmosphere and everything.”
That would explain the fuzziness. “Is that where we're going? Is there something inside it?”
There's a beep from a console, and he sits down to take the controls. “You'll see.”
The moon grows bigger and bigger outside, and we must be flying towards it at breakneck speed. As it starts to fill the whole view upwards, it feels more like falling.
We fall s
traight towards it for a while, and then Xan'tor levels off. The ship starts to shake, and I realize that we're flying through an atmosphere. Finally we're through the layer of wispy clouds, and then we're zooming across a terrain that reminds me a lot of the pictures from the Earth's Moon. There are craters and boulders and low mountains and endless wastelands that must be dirty ice.
Squinting, I shade my eyes with my hand. Ahead it looks like there's a small lake, with a surface that reflects the light.
But before we get there, Xan'tor tilts the ship forward and dives towards the ground.
I grip the armrests and squeeze them. “Are you sure about this, Xan'tor?”
“Somewhat.”
The ground comes closer so fast I just know we'll smash into it and be crushed. Then Xan'tor twists the controls and we're level again, flying through a deep canyon. Yes, definitely ice. Yellowish and dirty, but still much too smooth and translucent to be rock or sand.
And just when I think it's safe to breathe, he tilts us forward again. This time we're really close to the ground – I can see our shadow zooming across the craters, about to meet up with us on the hard ice.
I clench the armrests harder. “Oh my Gooood….”
Then everything goes dark, and Xan'tor glances at me. “Having fun yet?”
I swallow and take a moment to orient myself. “I thought we'd… I mean, we're underground now, right?”
“We are. There's a hole in this moon. Big enough for a thousand small ships like this one.”
All I can see outside is darkness.
Xan'tor turns on the lights, and the tunnel around us becomes visible. It's a hole through the ice, going through layers in various shades of orange and yellow and cream. It looks so smooth, it can't possibly be natural. “Did someone make it?”
“Someone did,” Xan'tor confirms, taking us deeper inside the vast tunnel.
“Who?”
“Nobody knows. One of the Elder species, probably. They liked their moons. But they're not around to answer questions anymore.”
“So it's really old?”
“Probably.”
“Why did they make it?”