by Leslie Chase
Trying to remember how to check for injuries, I wiggled my toes. Yes, definitely could feel them move. Okay. Time to try sitting up again.
The second time I tried, I managed it. It didn’t help much — the room was so dark that I could hardly make out anything at all.
A little light leaked in at one edge of the room. Just a touch, just enough that I could make out my hand as I held it up in front of me. Feeling around, I realized I was in a box of metal about six-foot-long, maybe three high and three wide. Sitting up was about the best I could manage, and I was glad that I hadn’t tried to stand. I really didn’t need another knock to my head.
The walls were regular, so I knew this wasn’t part of a crash. But beyond that, I had no idea. One wall seemed loose, a door maybe? Light came in at the edges, anyway, but it wouldn’t open when I pushed and pulled at it experimentally.
“Okay, so I’m trapped in here, what else have I got?” trying to fight down panic at my situation, I looked for my purse. No luck. Nothing. Nothing in my pockets either. I was starting to get worried.
Quietly, I tried to listen for some sign of life around me. Nothing. There was a drip, and maybe footsteps in the distance. Or maybe I was imagining those.
“Hey!” I shouted, kicking at the door hard enough to rattle it. “Hey, is anyone out there?”
The impact echoed through the space outside and I kicked again, harder.
“Quiet,” someone hissed urgently from above. It was an unfamiliar voice, and I frowned. I didn’t think it was speaking English. Or Spanish, for that matter, not that I was very fluent in that. But I knew exactly what he meant, even if I didn’t have any intention of listening.
“What the hell?” I demanded. “What’s going on here?”
“Mother of Stars,” the voice said again, low and desperate. “Keep your voice down or they’ll hear you.”
“Who?” Reluctantly, I lowered my voice.
“Our captors, of course,” he hissed. And yes, hissed was the right word. He sounded more like a snake than a human, and I couldn’t work out how I knew what he was saying. Thinking about that gave me a headache. “You don’t know where you are, do you? What do you remember?”
I swallowed, trying to fight a rising tide of panic. The longer I was trapped in this tiny box, the worse it felt. And now I was supposed to accept that I was someone’s prisoner?
Got to find out what’s going on, I told myself. If that means trusting Mr. Snake in the next box, okay. Let’s see what he can tell me.
“I remember…” Frowning, I tried to focus. A bright light on the road? Something like that. “I was driving through the desert. On my way to Barstow. Then I don’t know.”
“Ah. Sad.” The voice sounded sympathetic now that he was no longer worried I’d attract attention. “Whatever this ‘Barstow’ is I’m afraid that you will not see it again, friend. Like the rest of us, you have been captured by slave raiders, and by now we are far from your homeworld.”
Wait, what? There was too much information to process in that, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Homeworld? Raiders? Never go home again?
I shuddered and hugged my knees. This has to be some kind of prank. Or a nightmare. Or a bad trip. Except this felt too real to be any of those.
Memory crept back. The light pulling me and my car up into the sky. The flying saucer. The gray aliens, advancing on me. I shuddered. That had to be a dream, a nightmare. Didn’t it?
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the impossible thought that he might be telling the truth.
“I’m no one,” he answered. “Just another slave on my way to market. Not even a good one: they failed to sell me at the last two stops. The name’s Ssarl.”
It sounded more like a hiss than a name, and I knew I’d never get it right. I tried my best though.
“Okay, Ssarl, I’m Emma. Now how do we get out of here?”
“Get out?” His hissing laugh held no humor at all. “When we arrive at market, our captors let us out of these cages so they can sell us. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll let us exercise first. But unless someone opens your cell, you aren’t getting out of there.”
We’ll see about that, I thought, squirming around to look at the door. It wasn’t easy to examine it in this light, but I thought that the hinges didn’t look very secure. A few good, hard kicks, and maybe they’d bust loose.
Or maybe I’d just attract attention, but what did I have to lose?
Am I just accepting this story? I asked myself, then shook my head. It didn’t matter if Ssarl was telling the truth — I was locked in a box and I had to get out. That was enough.
My first kick made me yelp as the impact shook my sore leg, and the metal box rang like a bell around me. But maybe the door had given, just a little.
“What are you doing? Emma, stop that! Stop it now!” Ssarl sounded even more desperate, and other voices joined in. Just how many people were stuck here with me?
I kicked a second time, harder, and this time I braced for the impact. The cell shook around me but there was definitely some give in the hinge. Thanking God that I was wearing decent boots, I kicked again. And again.
Outside, the clamor died down quickly. I grinned, kicking one last time. Something popped inside the door and it swung open with a painful creak.
Free! Well, free-ish at least. It was a start.
Pulling myself out of the small space, I looked around nervously. There wasn’t much more light out here but it was enough for my dark-adjusted eyes to see by. And what I saw was horrifying.
There were more metal boxes like the one I’d escaped from, filling what had to be a cargo bay of some sort. A transport, carrying hundreds of prisoners — and that was just what I could see from here. Who knew how many more there were out of sight?
The room felt vast, and there could have been dozens of spaces like this one inside it. Thousands of slaves in tiny cells. The thought made me shiver. Maybe the rest of them were empty, but I didn’t want to bet on it.
Each box had a serial number on it, written in a strange script that I could somehow read. I, apparently, was 34357-248. Wonderful. The box above mine had to be Ssarl’s, and I looked for a way to open it. There was nothing, not even a handle on the door.
“How do I open this thing?” I asked, knocking on the metal. Ssarl hissed something under his breath before answering.
“You don’t, idiot. Get back in your cell before a guard comes. You do not want to find out how they’ll punish you for trying to escape.”
“No way,” I told him firmly. “You can stay if you like, but I’m getting out of here.”
“You don’t understand,” he insisted. “They will already know you’re free, Emma. If too many of us get out, they’ll just vent the cargo bay into space and kill us all.”
I shuddered at that, not sure whether to believe him. It was hard not to think about it, to imagine the air whooshing out of here, leaving me choking and freezing and dying…
Nope. Not going to let that stop me. I’m not just going to climb back into that box and surrender. If I didn’t try to escape now, I knew that I never would.
“You may have given up hope, but I haven’t,” I told him.
“Hope only gets you in trouble,” Ssarl replied, resigned to his fate. “I’d wish you luck, but I know how this ends. You’ll have to learn for yourself, I suppose.”
Somewhere nearby, I heard heavy footsteps on the metal floor. If I wanted to get away, I had to go now. Gathering my strength, I headed in the opposite direction, turning a corner and getting out of sight.
The rows of crates stretched off in both directions. My jaw tightened as I looked each way. This place was like a maze, and I’d never find my way anywhere inside it.
Left or right makes no difference, I need to see where I’m going, I told myself. That means up.
The stacked boxes weren’t too difficult to climb. Deliberately, I thought as I clambered up. Being stacked four high, any prisone
rs in the top crates would need handholds to get down safely. Pulling myself up, I made it to the top of the stack just as the approaching footsteps turned the corner behind me.
Rolling onto my back, I tried to control my breathing and prayed that whoever it was hadn’t seen me. Below, someone moved up and down the corridor. Heavy steps echoed, and a deep voice growled.
“Where’d she go, then?” The speaker sounded bored more than anything.
“How should I know?” another said, or rather chittered. It sounded more like an insect than a human. How many kinds of alien were aboard this ship, anyway? “Cell’s empty though. Told you it wasn’t a malfunction.”
That got an angry grumble from the first speaker. Trying to resist the urge to peek, I listened to his footsteps march up and down.
‘This is chance to see an alien’ warred with ‘you need to get as far away as possible’ in my mind, and I bit my lip as my curiosity and fear fought. I should run, I knew that. Eventually they’d look up here, and when they did, I wanted to be far away.
But I couldn’t resist the temptation. Creeping to the edge as quietly as possible, I snuck a quick look over the side of the crate I lay on.
Don’t make a sound, I told myself. It wasn’t easy to keep myself under control, though.
The lizard-like creature below was at least seven feet tall, wore some kind of orange suit and held a nasty-looking baton in one hand. His face was more like a snout and his skin was green and scaled.
Like an upright crocodile, I thought. All muscle and scales and teeth.
I tried to tell myself it was a human in a suit, but he looked more real than the best special effects I’d ever seen in the movies.
No way had someone set this up to fool me. No way.
As I stared, the alien’s companion came around the corner. This time it was one of the gray aliens, huge black eyes on a bulbous head. It held some kind of ray gun at the ready. Yeah, fighting these guys wasn’t in the cards. Time to get out of here.
“I don’t have time for this. Let’s set a drone after her and get back,” the newcomer chittered as I crawled backward nervously. That didn’t sound good.
Quiet as I could, I dropped into another corridor between the slave-crates and picked a direction at random. With no idea where I was going, I didn’t have much choice. At least my footsteps were light enough that I could make good time without being heard.
I hoped so, anyway. With no way of knowing how good those aliens’ ears were, it was all guesswork.
Each time I came to a junction I picked a direction at random, but the place was a maze. For all I knew I was going in circles, but I pressed on. What choice did I have?
Is there even anywhere to go? I started to think maybe Ssarl had been right.
Somewhere behind me, I heard movement. Not the heavy footsteps of the aliens, but something lighter and quicker. Crap. Let’s get a move on. The endless corridors stretched around me, and I ran, giving up stealth for speed. That might not be the smartest idea, but I was starting to worry that I’d be lost in here until I starved.
Rounding a corner, I froze. Ahead of me, standing in the middle of the corridor, was something new. A boxy black thing standing on four legs, metal and plastic in the shape of an animal maybe three-foot-high with glowing red eyes watching me.
Was this the drone the aliens had talked about sending after me? Or something else?
It took a couple of quick steps forwards, moving almost but not quite like a dog. I took a step back, slowly, and it followed with a strange mechanical whine that set my teeth on edge.
“Good dog?” I tried. It kept coming. “Sit? Stay?”
Maybe it would have listened if I’d sounded more authoritative. Maybe not. All I could say for sure was that it ignored me and kept coming.
The shiny black carapace opened and some kind of thing stuck out. I didn’t wait long enough to get a good look. Turning and running, I made it two steps before I heard the dog-drone running behind me, a fast clatter of legs that overtook me before I could register it. It pounced, hitting me in the small of the back and carrying me to the deck in an undignified tangle of limbs.
Twisting, I tried to throw it off. Before I could even start to roll, though, blinding agony shot through me. It felt like my whole body was on fire, like I’d been dipped in acid, like… I couldn’t describe it. The pain was like nothing I’d ever felt.
Shaking and shuddering, all I could manage was a whimper. The pain only lasted a second, leaving as quickly as it had arrived, but my muscles still wouldn’t do as I told them. Lying in a heap on the floor, I felt tears run down my face and kept as still as I could.
I didn’t want to give that thing another excuse to zap me. It waited, crouched next to me, and I thought I could feel its malevolent eyes on me, waiting for an excuse to hurt me again.
“Hah, there she is,” a booming voice filled the corridor. The bigger of the two aliens I’d seen before, I thought, though all I could see was his boots. “I told you the drone would track her down in no time.”
“Yes, yes, that’s what it’s for,” the other alien agreed. “So what do we do with her now? Break her legs so she can’t run off again?”
“No!” I squeaked. It wasn’t so much the threat that scared me. The casual, bored tone in which he delivered it was even worse. “No, I’ll stay where you put me, really. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Shut up,” the big alien said, and I clamped my mouth shut instantly. I didn’t want to risk adding to the list of punishments.
“We’re at the market now, no point in breaking her legs if we just have to heal them again,” he continued. “Captain’d have a fit if we wasted resources like that. Let’s just sell her and get her out of our hair.”
A long pause made me sweat and squirm, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from speaking. They clearly weren’t interested in what I had to say, and I couldn’t risk antagonizing them.
“Fine,” the first alien agreed, sounding unhappy about it. “Sure, she’ll be someone else’s problem soon enough.”
The dog-drone stepped away from me as the alien’s scaly hand grabbed my neck and lifted. I squeaked again, freezing, as he pulled me up off the deck and looked me in the eyes.
Looking down from above, the alien had seemed scary. Face to face like this, he was terrifying. Massive mouth filled with pointed teeth, narrow eyes filled with sullen anger, and enough strength to dangle me one handed. Yeah, no way was I fighting one of these monsters.
“Give us any more trouble, human, and I will break every one of your limbs,” he said. “Shame that you’ll sell for more without scars, or I’d enjoy marking you.”
I didn’t know what to do or say so I just hung limp. Both aliens laughed, and my captor dropped me. He turned, and I followed him back through the maze of corridors to where I’d started.
The other cells were open now, and a weird mix of aliens stood in the corridor, chains linking their necks. There were too many species to count, though they all had one thing in common — they stood still, heads hung low, miserably accepting their fate.
The gray alien shoved me into the back of the line, his spindly limbs surprisingly strong. I stumbled, almost fell, but a lizard-like alien caught my arm and steadied me. The gray alien laughed and clamped the last collar around my neck before he moved down the line, counting.
“Told you,” the lizard hissed, and I recognized his voice as Ssarl. “Lucky you made it back.”
I shivered and pulled my arm away. “Lucky. Sure.”
“Yes, yes, lucky,” he insisted. “If that had been me trying to escape, they’d have killed me slowly for the fun of it. The only question is whether they’d do it on the spot or make it a show for the rest of the slaves.”
Not long ago I’d have thought he was exaggerating. Having met our captors, seen the ugly anger that they carried and their casual willingness to engage in brutality, I was convinced Ssarl was right.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around m
yself as the line started to move. What horrors were waiting for me up ahead? I couldn’t guess, and I didn’t really want to.
More of the dog-drones marched alongside us, and that was enough incentive not to try to escape. That lesson, at least, I’d learned. My next attempt, I’d have a plan.
The line of slaves marched off the ship, down a ramp and onto… snow? Ice crunched underfoot, and I gawped around. The ship was parked in a gigantic cavern of ice, and there were more ships lined up next to it. Many more. Around us, more aliens watched as we shuffled off towards the market to be sold.
4
Athazar
The Firebearer rested on the icy floor of the dock, venting gasses as the local staff attached fuel hoses to its tanks. Slaves, I saw at once — not that it was any surprise. Working out there in the freezing air was dangerous and unpleasant: of course the black marketeers would use slaves to do it.
The ship didn’t wait to refuel before unloading its cargo. A ramp lowered and crewmen walked out, a double-row of prisoners between them. I remembered that hopeless shuffle from my own time in chains, and it burned more than a little to see others suffer that way.
That’s why I’m here, I reminded myself. To stop more people being treated that way, and to get my own revenge if I can.
I watched the hopeless procession. A mixed group, many different species chained together. Slavers liked to mix their slaves together, it made organizing resistance harder when you didn’t know the people chained next to you.
The last slave off the ship was a surprise. A human female, her dark hair long and unkempt. That was unusual enough that I paid a little more attention: slave traders prized human slaves, especially in the space near the Silent Empire.
Most humans in this area of space were from the Empire, and for all the Empire’s many flaws they would not tolerate the abduction of their citizens. That made humans stolen from uncontacted worlds even more valuable, either as showpieces or as victims for people to take their anger out on.