by Viki Storm
But to a human female?
I’m sure what Vano and Bantokk feel towards their mates is powerful and wonderful… but what they don’t understand is that the bond would be so much stronger and more wonderful if it had been with a Zalaryn female. Humans are not a species who pair-bond like Zalaryns do. They marry and mate and sometimes do maintain the integrity of the family unit for several decades. But they do not bond the same way that Zalaryns do.
It’s like the marmalade. Some things are hard-coded in your DNA. For humans, bonding is not.
So Lia and her sister Bryn? Luckiest females on Lekyo Prime. Bantokk and Vano? Well, let’s just say I’m happy that they’re happy.
I walk to the two humans and sit down. They stare at me, obviously confused, but don’t dare give me offense.
“You speak of Captain Lia?” I say.
“How do you know?” the one male asks. He’s got one grey tooth that looks like it’s filled with unspeakable rot.
“I helped her vanquish the Rulmek host,” I say. This is no exaggeration—in fact, might be an understatement. It was my cunning computer programming skills that successfully allowed her and Bantokk to board the ship, take control of its systems, and reroute its nav-system to put it off course from Lekyo Prime. I also piloted the getaway ship, full of the hundred stinking and sniveling captives.
“Yeah right,” the other one says. He’s got bright orange hair, not unlike the tubers that grow on the cultivated farm plots in Lekyo Prime.
“Believe me or not,” I say. “I don’t care. But I do know Lia and know that she is safe.”
This is possibly an exaggeration.
Because no one on Lekyo Prime is safe.
Lia and Bantokk’s (and mine, I take responsibility) little stunt ran afoul of the Rulmek—who are greedy and evil—and the Guuklar, who are just as evil but twice as bloodthirsty.
The Rulmek desire only to fill their coinpurses. The Guuklar desire only to fill graves.
And now Lekyo Prime is under an even worse threat than before. Before, we were facing a host of Rulmek a thousand strong. We rid ourselves of that threat only to now have to face a Guuklar contingent that strong and more.
“That’s good to hear,” the orange-haired lad says.
“He’s lying,” the rotted-tooth fellow says.
“I’m not,” I say. “I only thought it fair to trade information for information. What do you know of her pilot, Pior?”
“Pior?” the orange-haired lad says. “He’s dead and that’s a fact.”
“Shut up,” the rotted-tooth fellow says. “You don’t know who this bastard is.”
“Aw lighten up, he’s Zalaryn, he ain’t in cahoots with the Rulmek or the Guuklar. And he ain’t going to cut into our business. Are you, chap?”
“I don’t know what your business is,” I say, “but probably not. I am not on Crene to conduct business. I am here for information, like I said. Lia cradled Pior in her arms as he bled out, wounded from a Guuklar attack. With his dying words, he told her about a way to stop the Rulmek once and for all. He said he’d been orchestrating some sort of underground rebellion. He told Lia he had all the means to exterminate the Rulmek and Guuklar. What do you know of this?”
“I know that I’m not telling you anything,” rotted-tooth says.
“I don’t know anything about that,” orange-hair says. “Pior never told us, and we saw him every three or four weeks. But the Rulmek did take his daughter, so that sorta gives a little credit to the story, don’t you think?”
“Shut up,” rotted-tooth says. “If Pior told Lia all this, then why isn’t Lia here asking about him? For all I know, you’re some scoundrel working for the Rulmek.”
“He’s not working for the Rulmek,” orange-hair says. “He’s Zalaryn. They don’t work with Rulmek.”
“There’s sneaky rogue Zalaryns, just as there’s sneaky rogues of every race. Enough coin and a prayer-singer will pimp out his own sainted mother.”
“I’m just trying to find out if there was truth to Pior’s words or if they were the delusional ravings of a dying man,” I say. These two humans are starting to annoy me. This is the fourth planet I’ve been on seeking out Pior’s known associates and asking about his supposed underground rebellion. Everyone’s sung the same tune: What rebellion? I never heard of a rebellion.
“They did take his daughter,” orange-hair says again. “Why’d they take her unless they were trying to blackmail him? It’s probably true, but I wouldn’t hang your hopes on anything Pior was doing behind the scenes. He was an angry man, on account of what happened to his wife. But he was too scatterbrained, too chaotic to organize anything meaningful, you can count on that. If he’d been up to something big, word would have gotten around. He was a braggart, too. I can’t picture that man keeping a secret that big.”
“Quit talking to him,” rotten-tooth says. “He could be a spy.”
“I’m no spy,” I say. “Just the poor bastard sent to find the key to a door that, I fear, is to remain locked.”
The humans look at each other, unsure what to make of that, and I leave the tavern—but not before drinking every drop of my three-coin water. I’ll be damned if I waste any of that.
Back at my ship, I check my computer logs. After Pior’s death, I sorted through all the transmissions to and from his comm-panel. I listed all his contacts and ran pattern simulation programs to find any meaningful links between the people or places he’d had any communication with. A few patterns emerged, and those are the ones that I’m following up on. Crene is a favorite spot of the Three-Star Rebels, so I have a few more people to investigate, but I’m not holding out any hope.
What a sad state of affairs when the mighty Zalaryn race has to rely on humans to get us out of a mess. We can’t protect ourselves; we need some mysterious human rebellion that may or may not exist to save us.
And I’m starting to think that finding his daughter is the only way to get the real answers. Pior said that she was the key, that she’d know everything, that it was the reason the Rulmek targeted her.
I know where she is: a dismal and black planet called Greos. I was able to hack into the comm system of the Rulmek warship and find communications regarding a human female called Suse. They sold her to a factory owner, and she’s safely stashed away, manufacturing Corva coils.
At least Pior was telling the truth about his daughter being abducted.
It’s everything else that I’m starting to think was a lie.
Hands on my arms, my feet dragging on the floor. I try to walk, but my legs won’t cooperate. The weird pins-and-needles sensation in my left leg is getting worse. It’s like when you wake up in the middle of the night and your leg’s gone so gut-wrenchingly, painfully numb that it feels like a hunk of warm butcher’s meat.
There are more Trogii on the factory floor, calling a mandatory work stoppage. That’s how you know it’s serious. These bastards don’t stop the work for nothing… except to make us watch each other’s torture and punishment.
Did Vuchos really say an hour with The Blade? Well, fuck. Good thing I’ve been doing my exercises at night. It’s like deep down I knew I’d have to face The Blade at some point and would need the muscle strength.
My head is reeling from the scuffle with Vuchos, and I’m still in deep shock. I know what’s going to happen, but it feels like it’s going to happen to someone else.
I suppose that will change the second that The Blade bites into my flesh.
I think of my mother again. My hand moves reflexively to touch my locket, but I’m being carried swiftly by two Trogii, and they’ve got a death-grip on my arms. How would my mother have fared with The Blade? Probably she’d have asked if they could strap her in backwards, so that The Blade would cut her throat instead of her leg.
Well, I try to tell myself, I’m not her. I’m stronger than her. I’m going to be a legend. The Girl Who Did an Hour.
And lived to tell the tale? Hopefully.
It woul
d be a waste to be known as The Girl Who Did an Hour with The Blade and Was Taken by Consumption Two Weeks Later.
There is the crackle and pop of static as the overhead communications amplifiers are turned on. A series of beeps start to sound, like the beeps we had at school back on my home planet. The ones that told us recess was over or it was time to go home.
I look over my shoulder and watch as all the workers rise from their stations and begin to file into rows, marching morosely towards the front of the factory floor.
I am helpless to remember when it was Jora’s turn with The Blade. How we all plodded up the aisles, feet heavy with nausea and fear, the sort of reluctance when you know you’re about to see something you wish you never saw. Something you’ll never be able to erase from your memory.
His was the only time anyone was sentenced to The Blade since I’ve been here, and by all accounts—including Granny’s—it was the worst. Because The Blade worked to completion.
An hour? I think again. Can I stand it for an hour? Or am I going to sink down into the chair, like Jora eventually did, all my pride and determination replaced with desperation and despair.
That’s what did him in. Not the injury to his flesh. The injury to his spirit.
That’s what happened to my mother. Her time in the brothel, I imagine, did not injure her body as much as it destroyed her spirit.
I climb three stairs—or rather am dragged up—and I see the contraption. It’s relatively simple. A chair. A few lengths of light chain attached to a system of pulleys. And a pendulum blade descending from a wooden scaffold.
“Stand tall, bitch,” one of the Trogii says. I do my best, but the pain in my back where Vuchos stepped on me is dreadful. I can’t straighten to my full height; I’m tilted forward, like so many of the old-timers here, their backs bent from years at the workstation.
“He said tall,” the other one says, then wrenches my shoulders back so I’m standing up straight. It feels like my back is made of a pane of glass and he just shattered it with a heavy sledgehammer.
They don’t want me to stand tall for reasons of pride or decorum. They need me to stand tall so they can strap the harness around my leg.
“Hope you’re wearing a clean pair of snechos today,” the first one says, and he uses his dagger to slice my pants down one leg, then the other. He rips them away and tosses them to the ground.
That was my only pair.
But maybe after this is over, all my pants will only need one leg. I can roll up the empty side and hold it up with a safety pin, like Jora in the final weeks of his life.
I am not wearing clean underpants, as it so happens. I haven’t been clean since I arrived in this hellhole. But that’s the least of my concerns.
One of them takes my right leg into his hand and lifts it so it’s completely straightened out, parallel to the floor.
“Move back, bitch,” he says, pushing on my straightened leg. “The Blade’s going all the way to the top.”
I hop backwards, my left leg a swirling, roiling mass of hot pinpricks.
They had to pick my right leg for this. Maybe they noticed how I limped on my left one. If I was going to stand on my right leg, I might actually have a chance. But if I’m standing on my injured left one?
My mind involuntarily starts to replay visions of Jora’s time up here with The Blade.
It’s ingenious in its simplicity and diabolical in its cruelty. The offender is made to stand up with one leg straightened, the slightest bit of your heel resting on a bench. You’re strapped in, so you can’t retract or move the leg.
They strap a harness around your shoulders, underneath your armpits, and connect it to the system of pulleys.
Then they put a chair behind you.
The Blade’s position is adjusted. It’s flush against your skin, barely grazing the surface. It can be placed anywhere: at the ankle, on the shin, above the knee. Or in my case, all the way to the top, which means just a few inches below my hip-crease.
Then the blade is set in motion. It swings back and forth, left to right. It only grazes your skin at first, nothing but a flesh wound.
The blade will remain at its set height, just slicing superficially into your skin. Unless you tire. The pulleys that connect to your shoulder harness are designed to lower the blade incrementally if your body weight starts to sag.
I remember Jora, defiant the first minute or two. “This is it?” he shouted. “I have cuts on my fingers from the coils that are deeper than this!”
But then he started to get tired. For us workers who spend sixteen hours a day sitting on a stool, hunched over a worktable, it’s difficult to stand on one leg for very long.
After five minutes, you could see the strain in his face. He was trying to regulate his breathing, but it started to get shallow and irregular. The front of his shirt was damp with sweat. He was flexing the standing leg, trying to control the shaking in his muscles. His kneecap was flexed tight, bunched and puckered as he locked that standing leg.
Then I saw it. His demise. He tried to put a little micro-bend in his knee, to give himself a second of relief. But when he bent it a quarter of an inch, it triggered the pulleys and the blade descended a quarter of an inch into his flesh.
He screamed and involuntarily flinched away, bending that standing leg even more. The blade bit down further. Blood was pouring freely, some of it flicking onto the people watching in the front of the crowd.
I was reminded of the old campfire story we used to tell about a soldier who was captured and tortured in some pit with a pendulum blade much like this. Except in that story, the man was strapped down, waiting for the blade to lower itself.
This Trogii contraption is different. It is worse.
Because when the blade lowers, it’s because you did it to yourself.
You did it with your weakness, with your desire to rest.
Jora had a burst of energy, standing up straight even though the blade was now going back and forth a full inch into the flesh of his thigh.
But it wasn’t long before he was too tempted by the chair behind him.
He sat down.
And the blade came all the way down, sawing through his leg entirely.
At that point, he didn’t even scream. I think he was too relieved to be sitting down, knowing there would be one final slice and then the pain would be over.
But it wasn’t over.
Two overseers came immediately, holding a glowing red iron square on a stick. It took me a moment to recognize it for what it was: the iron tamper we used to push down the trash receptacles. They’d been heating it up in preparation, knowing that he wouldn’t last.
They pushed the glowing iron flat to the wound on his leg, cauterizing it.
The worst part was that we were all so hungry, it smelled good. Our mouths watered at the aroma of cooking meat.
The leather straps close around my ankle and my knee. My right foot is resting on a bench, but barely any weight is diffused. Even though I don’t weigh much, all of it is being carried by my injured left leg. For the first time, it occurs to me that Vuchos crushed my back on purpose, knowing it would make the time with The Blade even worse.
Of course he did.
That’s when my worst enemy appears: regret.
Granny was right. What was this going to accomplish? They were going to win—and I helped them right along. I walked right into this, hardy har har, and now I’d never walk again.
You chose this, I tell myself, remember?
That’s technically true. After the Rulmek captured me, they kept me separate from the other slaves. They were holding me ransom, using me as leverage against my father. They said my father was conspiring against them—and that could have been true for all I knew. I barely saw my father.
The Rulmek commander took me into his private quarters and gave me a choice. While they waited for my father to pay my ransom, they could sell me to the Trogii for factory work, or they could sell me to Tos, the Guuklar w
arlord, to be a member of his personal harem.
The commander didn’t give me the option out of the goodness of his heart. I don’t think the Rulmek even have hearts.
No, he wanted something from me in return.
And I gave it to him. Willingly. It only took a few minutes, and when it was over, he let me choose where I wanted to go.
That’s how I ended up here in the factory instead of with the sadistic Guuklar warlord.
It had seemed like an obvious choice at the time… but now I’m not so sure.
They move my arms and slip the harness around my shoulders, pulling the straps tighter than they need to be. It’s hard to breathe with my chest compressed so tightly.
My leg’s already trembling, and they haven’t even adjusted the position of the blade. My back is on fire as I try to stand up straight for the harness. The second I hunch over or lean forward, it will lower the blade into the scant flesh of my leg.
On the overhead comm system, the Boss is reading the charges against me and the punishment, admonishing the rest of the workers to behold what disobedience will earn them.
Then The Blade comes out. It’s a long shaft with a curved blade at the end. They push the scaffolding so close to my face, I can smell the oily pine of the wood. Real wood. When was the last time this industrial wasteland of a planet had any actual trees growing?
I look into the crowd and see many of the eyes cast down to the floor. Others are glazed in numb horror. There is a tear going down the side of Granny’s face, and I’m surprised because I didn’t think that tough old bird had any tears left.
One of the back doors opens and I see three figures enter. Probably they don’t want to miss the show.
They lower The Blade down, and I expect it to be cold against my skin, but it’s not. It’s hot. The edge of The Blade barely skims my skin. Enough for a papercut, as Jora pronounced.