Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  The two of them had had lots of opportunity to discuss the situation, exchanging opinions on exactly what was going on, and speculating about how the entity had come to exist. The crew was clearly much affected by the ship ghost, although they could only sense it emotionally; they were argumentative amongst themselves, uneasy and frightened, and unmotivated to do anything more on board than was strictly necessary to keep the vehicle going and their selves, and their comatose prisoners alive. Mikal and Xoraya guessed that they had their orders and did not dare to deviate from them, but any ambitions beyond that had been leached by the entity’s need to feed on their energies.

  “Not an efficient use of personnel,” Mikal had muttered (mentally) to Xoraya at one point.

  “Agreed,” the Xeonsaur had responded. “Although, it likely doesn’t matter much to Gorsh. I suppose that he feels that he has enough people under his thumb that he can waste the energies of a few.”

  “If keeping us penned is a waste of energy. He may believe that feeding the ship ghost is worth any cost, as long as he can be certain that we cannot communicate with the outside universe.”

  “Agreed, again,” Xoraya had sighed. “And we haven’t come up with any ideas about how to fight the elusive beast.”

  “Do not despair. We have only begun.”

  Mikal had interjected the thought with a touch of playful lightheartedness that would have done Kati credit. Xoraya, recognizing the sentiment, had responded with a mental grin.

  *****

  Gorsh himself was among the small knot of people who welcomed the ship when it landed on Wayward.

  The landing took place at what the man who piloted the vessel termed “Gorsh’s private space port”, within the confines of a large property located in Salamanka, a sprawling city on the continent which also contained the Estate which Milla had brought into the Gorshes’ marriage. The ship ghost was pleased to return to its source; Mikal and Xoraya could sense its satisfaction as the vehicle touched tarmac.

  “So you got me the female Xeonsaur and the Agent,” Gorsh greeted the pilot, who was the first person out the hatch. “But not the woman I wanted.”

  “That’s right,” replied the pilot. “She was not with the other two when we found them on the Laboratory Island. There were only a contingent of the locals, most of them burly guards, guarding I don’t know what. These two took off in a flit so we chased them down and grabbed them. With them in our hands, and the locals pissed off at us, it didn’t seem worth the effort to continue to search for the woman.”

  His colleagues were hauling the two drugged bodies on mag-lev stretchers out of the vessel. Gorsh came forward to take a look at them. With a satisfied nod, he instructed a trio from his retinue to take over from the crewmen; the threesome were teenagers, one girl and two lads, dressed in drab grey uniforms, but livelier looking than anyone else.

  “Filled with the irresistible energy of youth,” subvocalized Xoraya to Mikal as they followed the proceeding in their formless state. “Even the taint can’t dampen that.”

  “It doesn’t matter about Kati,” Gorsh was saying. “I understand that she developed a thing for the Agent during their flight from us on Makros III. And we’ve got him. She’ll be along soon enough, to try to rescue him, and the devil knows who else, besides. That’ll be the second time she’ll have fallen into my hands like a ripe peach. And this time I won’t let her get away.”

  Mikal felt himself mentally cringe at the words.

  “He’s right about her coming,” he moaned (if that was the right word).

  It was Xoraya’s turn to cheer up her companion.

  “Don’t worry about Kati,” she admonished him. “She’ll come, but on her own terms, and she won’t be easy pickings for our unfriend, here. Have faith in her, and don’t let the taint suck the stuffing out of you.”

  It was good advice, and put the way Xoraya did, it had Mikal chuckling mentally at the image she had painted. The two of them settled down to follow the comatose bodies, hoping that wherever they were to be taken would be where they would find Xanthus Hsiss, and the ESP-adept youngster, Murra.

  *****

  Gorsh was more disappointed by his men’s failure to capture Kati of Terra than he was prepared to admit. The young woman with the cheerful personality and the indomitable spirit had impressed him after his feline employees had unceremoniously dumped her on his slave-gathering ship.

  Keen to please him, they had tried to pick up a child that they had come across during a hunting outing that he had consented to, after the last pick-up on a very distant planet which had yielded some interesting possibilities of slave merchandise. The cat-men had explained afterwards that it had looked like a simple snatch; after making a meal of small animals, they had come across the boy, asleep on a patch of grass in a vast forested area, with no-one nearby besides an older couple who were picking berries at some distance. They had not realized that the child’s mother was among the nearer bushes, also picking berries. She had objected ferociously to the attempted capture of her son; it had taken the efforts of both felines, and an injector-full of tangle-juice to subdue her, after she had attacked one of the cats with a bowlful of berries, freed her boy, and sent him scurrying towards the older couple.

  Gorsh had docked the cats’ pay for the fiasco, but had kept a surreptitious eye on the captured woman afterwards, impressed in spite of himself, to see how she threw herself into looking after, and entertaining the young fry in the room to which he had directed the cats to drop her. His surveillance equipment had, of course, picked up the conversations involving her and the two teenagers from her world about possible escapes, but snatchees were always talking that way, and he had not given it much credence. When he had decided to take her home to Wayward as a second wife, he had had the whole roomful that she was in, implanted with translation nodes, and not just the two teenage girls, as had been his original idea. He had had plenty of nodes, thanks to the Vultairians’ greed for slaves untraceable by Federation spies, and doing everyone in the room had avoided any awkward speculation on the part of those of his crew who had gossipy tendencies.

  Perhaps his mistake had been to toss the Federation Peace Officer into the same room, when it had become necessary to store his comatose form among the other captives. At first that had seemed like a brilliant idea; the two teens had taken over his care without any prodding from the crew, thus freeing crewmembers for more important tasks. The girls had done the work it involved in an efficient and kind manner; even he, an established slave-trader had been pleasantly surprised by the ability and caring these creatures from a primitive planet had demonstrated.

  He had not truly realized how capable the young women, especially the one now calling herself Kati of Terra, had been, until after she had executed the successful escape. Then he, with his crew, had studied the continuous surveillance records of the events in the room, and had forced Ingrid, Roxanna and Murra to decant the contents of their minds through their nodal connectors into a recording machine. It had become clear that he had made the grave error of underestimating them all. With the cooperation of the Xeonsaur who was navigating the ship—under a judicious dosage of the mind-tangler, which allowed the Lizards to remain mentally functional even while their bodies were kept inert—Kati and Murra had engineered Kati’s escape with the Federation Peace Officer in tow.

  The human woman and the Peace Officer had joined forces to cross the planet they found themselves on, and to thwart all his attempts to recapture them. Until now, more than two years later, he finally had the Agent, Mikal r’ma Trodden in his hands again, along with a second Xeonsaur who was looking for the one he was holding captive. Only Kati of Terra had eluded his grasp, but she would come looking for the man who had become her lover on Makros III. And he would ensnare her then, and force her to turn her affections in his direction, to submit to him, and to bear him the sons that he needed to ensure the continuation of the dynasty he was building, and to rule the domain which he was using Milla’s
property and his own wily smarts to create.

  He watched the youthful trio of slaves as they conducted the figures on the mag-lev stretchers towards a large, windowless building. The three were biddable teens, acquired during one of the forays he had made to worlds far in space and time, in order to provide the upper class people of the planet Vultaire with untraceable chattels for their brothels. However, as things turned out, the Vultairian Exalted could not purchase the shipment after all—the Federation had descended on them, brandishing their moral scruples. The way Vultaire was governed was in the process of being reformed, and the new government was not going to condone slavery; the Federation was adamantly opposed to people owning other people. He, Gorsh, would have to find other markets for the chattels; in the meantime he and Milla would make use of them. The Federation ban on slave ownership had actually been good for the business, he thought with a smirk. It kept the prices up—especially for the kind of supply he was providing these days. Untraceable as to its origins.

  The building to which he had directed the comatose prisoners to be taken was, in some ways, the heart of his holdings. It was a windowless stone fortification, known as the Citadel, so old that when he had acquired it, he had had to cement over slitted openings all around; they had been there to let bowmen shoot arrows outside from the safety of the rock. Inside, it was dug into the ground for several levels. The lowest of these levels had been a dungeon to house dangerous prisoners, and Gorsh had put it to similar use, corralling there an assortment of local opponents who had vocally and vehemently resisted the extension of his influence. These angry, unhappy people did not know it, but they had become a small, useful part of his growing empire, even in their ill-fed and filthy state; their frustration and fury helped to feed the entity which Gorsh was using to control the mental atmosphere in much of his sphere of influence.

  He made a conscious effort to not show to his minions the glee he felt as his thoughts turned to the magician who he had directing the energies of the shadowy entity which drew its strength from human discontent. This Mage was a drop-out from the school which trained the ESP-endowed men of the planet; these were not numerous, but they did exist, and were highly valued, as were the Wise Women who generally passed their skills and knowledge on to their apprentices. Unfortunately, from a Slaver’s point of view, the Shamans and the Wise Women were usually the type of folk who wanted to see a return to what they considered the glory days of Wayward, the time when the world had been a functioning member of the Star Federation, taking part proudly in the commerce of the Space Trade Lanes, and sending representatives to the Federation Government on the Space Station orbiting Lamania. The apprentice Magician whom Gorsh was sheltering—and using—was not one of those. He had left the ESP Institute because his teachers had, although they had pronounced him very adept in PSI powers (at least according to his own accounts), disapproved of his other proclivities. He liked the kind of sex which had his partners sobbing in pain—what trauma in the Mage’s early life had resulted in this preference did not interest Gorsh. He merely made use of it. He had taken it upon himself to provide the Mage with partners who had to accept whatever the man dished out; they were chattels, after all. When one girl could handle it no longer, another would simply be sent to replace her. Gorsh rather thought that the girl who was helping to conduct the comatose prisoners into the Citadel would become one of those girls, one day.

  Kati of Terra, of course, would never share that fate. The worst that would happen to her would be that she would have to contend with Milla’s jealousy—and dig a few tubers every now and then, to keep the older woman happy. He, Gorsh, would keep her with him, and take her along on his travels, partly to keep her from Milla’s wrath, and partly to enjoy her presence. She was attractive enough that he could show her off to the men he did business with, both the legitimate citizens, and the moneyed, shady operators who worked the wrong side of the Trade Lanes. And he would have her in his bed where she would grow round with the heft of his sons. The thought had him salivating—more than salivating.

  He glanced around him, his eyes alighting on one of the women in his entourage. She was a young redhead, one of Dr. Guzi’s get; the medical man had fathered her, carelessly, on one of Gorsh’s female employees. Guzi’s lack of responsibility about his own procreative powers (as well as the very existence of his rather fecund ability to sire children) had annoyed the Slaver enough that he did not much regret the fact that the man had ended in a Federation prison. He was a doctor, why had he not bothered to be implanted with the clips which prevented pregnancy, instead of depending on his partners to take precautions? He, Gorsh, had made certain that the red-headed girl had had the female version of the clips inserted into her body as soon as she had had her first menses. He had eyed her even then as a casual sex-provider for himself at times like now, when he wanted a woman badly, but it did not matter whose legs he was spreading. Since it could not be Kati, this girl would do, but he was not about to risk increasing the numbers of the Racottian redheads in the galaxy.

  He took the girl to the room at the back of his office, where he kept a daybed for this very sort of use. His office was in an ordinary building across a plaza from the Citadel, and it was bright, if not cheery, with large windows on two sides. In the back room, he quickly undressed the girl, and made use of her body; then he sent her away, ignoring the rage in her eyes. Her emotions were of no consequence, unless they could be used to feed the entity residing in the Citadel—and he was not yet ready to hand over this pretty redhead to Mosse, the Mage, although, with the attitude the girl had, that was where she would end up.

  However, he had more important things to do than to think about women, whether they were young, angry, redheads, or attractive, infatuating brunettes. The Elders of the City Government of Salamanka had been making annoyed noises about the amount of property he had taken over inside their municipality, and he had to pacify them until the time—coming soon—when he could dismiss with them entirely, because he would be in control of the whole city. He had to also look into the possibility of acquiring the Estate bordering Milla’s already enlarged one; those neighbours had proved to be a particularly pesky, interfering, same-sex couple. The two women had complained to the Great Council in charge of governing the Continent that Madame Gorsh seemed to have a lot of young people working on her Estate. What was going on there, and why weren’t the youngsters receiving a proper education, instead of labouring at menial tasks? And where had they come from?

  A few judicious bribes ought to allow Gorsh to squeeze the perverts off their land. But he had to look into the Councillors to be paid off, carefully, and decide where his funds would do the most good. The falling apart of the Vultairian connection had cut into his finances; he could not deny that. It had also made a huge dent into the mind-tangler supply on which he had depended. He cursed the day on which he had allowed a few of his trusted associates to take over the production when he had begun to make his long forays for slave-snatching, with the (unwilling) help of one Xanthus Hsiss, an Xeonsaur capable of navigating a space vessel through immense expanses of space and time. Perhaps the delegation of that part of the business had been a mistake, considering that Jac and Ric had taken most of the production to the Margolis property on Vultaire, and then had had the temerity to charge him, Gorsh, the same high price for the product as they had demanded of their other customers. He had not minded so much while the slave trade was going well, and the money had been rolling in, but things had slowed down. He would have to wait for the next slave auction to refresh his finances, and the notion of, in the meantime, depending on the funds generated by Milla’s Estate had him gritting his teeth. His wife was interfering too much in his business as it was; he did not want her asking more questions.

  Maybe he would have to find her a boy-toy to take her mind off business. Perhaps, once he had decanted the Agent’s mind, the man would have been rendered biddable enough to warm Milla’s bed. Now, that was a lovely thought! Enough to ra
ise his spirits in spite of the financial situation!

  *****

  Mikal, fortunately, was quite unaware of the plans into which Gorsh was slotting him. Instead, he and Xoraya were dealing with challenges of their own as they followed the threesome in charge of their physical forms. A psychic murk of some sort was emanating from the forbidding stone building which clearly was the destination to which their bodies were being carted.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Xoraya communicated. “It makes me feel filthy. Like swimming in tainted water, it’s unpleasant. I hope the place isn’t permeated with it, considering that we’re going inside.”

  The threesome with their stretcher-loads, had arrived at the door, where a burly guard came to unlock it for them. The heavy metal door clanged shut behind them, but the guard did not bother to lock it again—perhaps because Gorsh was no longer to be seen.

  “I think that the murk is affecting the physical people, too,” Mikal observed, while mentally evading what felt like flying strings of dirt in the atmosphere about them.

  It appeared that he was right. The trio of youngsters subsided into silence as they entered the building, their faces taking on wary expressions. However, they seemed to know where they were going. They headed for the nearest stairwell going down, their steps grown slower, reluctant. They shared uneasy glances, but did not speak.

  “They’re also out of Gorsh’s sight, now,” Xoraya pointed out. “They don’t have to put on a show of eagerly doing his bidding.”