Chapter 17
“Turn around,” a gruff voice said from behind me. “Slowly.”
I holstered my gun while I still had my back to whoever was behind me, and then I put both hands up to show I wasn’t armed and did as they asked. I spun around to face them as slowly as I could but as soon as I was facing them, all I could focus on was the gun pointed right at my forehead. I could have probably reached out and swiped the weapon from the slaver’s hands, but when I looked beyond the gun to the person holding it, my interest was well and truly piqued. So, I decided to ride this one out and see where it took me.
“Alright,” I said. “I’m not trying to start any trouble.”
“Really?” the alien scoffed. “So, that’s not my friend’s body down the hall?”
“Well, there does appear to be a body down the hall,” I said as I peered down the corridor at the guard I had killed just moments ago.
“Did you kill him?” the alien asked.
“No,” I said and pointed in the opposite direction. “I came from over there.”
“From the command floor?” he asked in confusion.
“Yup,” I said.
“What about my friend?” he asked.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I replied. “But I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
“So, you didn’t kill him?” the alien asked.
“No,” I replied and shook my head. “He was like that when I got here.”
“No?” he pressed.
“No,” I said.
He stared at me for a moment. He had three eyes, though it was hard to tell which ones were focused on me. At least one of the orbs was always in motion, though maybe that was just a sign that he was nervous.
He clearly didn’t believe a word I was saying, and I didn’t blame him. I was the only other person in the hall, and his friend was mysteriously dead on the floor a few feet away. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together, and I wasn’t trying very hard to convince him, either.
I was just curious as to how the conversation could go and what information I might be able to glean from him if I played my cards right. I was surprised that he seemed interested in keeping the conversation going because he clearly had no idea how the hell I had managed to get onto his ship or what I was doing there and what, if anything, he was supposed to do with me.
“I’ll take that,” he said as he took my gun from my attachment point.
“Be my guest,” I replied, since I knew that it wouldn’t fire without my finger on the trigger.
“What’re you doing down here?” he asked.
“Catching up with old friends,” I replied. “Although I have to say, the conditions they’re living in are deplorable. I don’t know how you can expect to make any money if the goods are damaged.”
“Alright, enough of this,” the alien barked as he pushed the gun against my forehead. “What are you really doing here?”
“I snuck in here because your guys took my guys,” I said honestly. “And then I killed your friend and some others while I tried to find the people I was helping.”
“You just… snuck in here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “It was actually really easy. You should probably up your security.”
“We aren’t really used to people trying to break into the ship,” he said. “It’s normally the other way around, and they’re the ones trying to leave.”
“Understandable,” I said and wrinkled my nose at the smell of the cells to prove my point. “My turn to ask a question. How’d you know to expect us at this exact time and place?”
“I’m not answering that,” he scoffed.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s not like I’m getting off this ship alive, is it? What’s the harm in telling me?”
The alien stared at me for a moment while it debated whether or not to talk, and then he leaned in as though he was some busybody housewife that was about to discuss the mundane gossip she’d overheard.
“Alright,” he said with a smug smile. “We follow the Karaak’s movements as closely as we can without them noticing. Then, we wait just outside the planets that they destroy and round up any survivors that make a run for it.”
“Jesus,” I sighed under my breath.
“Most of them actually come willingly,” he said. “It’s better to be here than to be one of the last few survivors standing on a burning planet.”
“I don’t know about that,” I replied, and that earned me another jab in the forehead with the gun.
“Plus, we got a tip that the Kytrans would be here,” old blabbermouth said before he could stop himself.
“A tip?” I pressed. “From who?”
“Melion?” another voice bellowed from the stairwell.
The alien in front of me practically jumped out of his skin and stepped closer to me. He hurriedly took out some handcuffs from a utility belt he had around his thick waist and glared at me until I produced my wrists for him. I watched him snap the rusted cuffs on. It was almost cruel to see the proud expression on his face while he did it because I knew I could break the cuffs with one quick flick of my wrists if I wanted to.
But for now, I wanted to play along. My capture would provide the perfect distraction while Rayne freed the prisoners on the lower level, and as an added bonus, I would get access to the command level without having to sneak around. I’d learn what I could and then open the airlock so the ships could leave. Oh, and I’d take out Melion and as many as the slavers as I could.
“Melion?” the voice said again, and a moment later, another slaver appeared around the corner.
Tweedle Dum had apparently come to join Tweedle Dee. When the two of them came to stand next to one another, I could clearly see that they were related. In fact, I was pretty sure they were brothers. Each of them had bald heads, three eyes, hairy bodies covered in worn, sweat-stained clothes, and the same clueless yet mean expression on their faces.
“Over here Nelion,” Melion said to his brother.
“Melion and Nelion?” I chuckled. “Seriously?”
Melion shot me a murderous glare, so I held my cuffed hands up innocently.
“Blame our mother,” Nelion sighed in regard to the names as he arrived in front of us. “Brother, who is this?”
“This… thing broke into the ship,” Melion said. “It claims it killed some of the crew to rescue our cargo.”
“This thing?” Nelion scoffed as he looked me up and down.
Granted, Melion and Nelion were about my height and twice as wide, but I knew I could run rings around the lumbering idiots if I wanted to.
“It killed Graff,” Melion replied and pointed to the body down the hall.
“Oh,” Nelion said. “That’s sad.”
“Yeah,” his brother replied. “Anyway, we should take it to Seelan.”
“Is that your leader?” I asked.
“He’ll gut you for killing his crew,” Nelion suddenly snarled. “He’ll cut you open, and we’ll have your insides for dessert.”
“Well, thank you for that lovely image,” I said.
The two brothers looked unsure about what to do. I realized it was my lack of resistance that was the issue, so I suddenly turned and started to jog down the hall.
The two slavers lurched after me and grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Nice try,” Melion said with a triumphant smile on his face.
“Darn, you got me,” I sighed dramatically.
“Come on, brother, let’s take him upstairs,” Nelion said eagerly.
“If you insist,” I said.
“What are you doing?” Francine asked.
“Just going with it,” I replied through a fake smile and gritted teeth.
Melion and Nelion looked at one another in confusion. They had no idea why I was being compliant, but they were too dumb to be suspicious. Besides, the thought of eating my innards apparently sounded too good to pass up, so they wrapped their sausage fingers around both my arms and started to march me away from the cells.
I turned back to the girl in the cell and winked at her before the brutes dragged me away. I tried to add a thumbs up as well, and for a moment, I thought I saw her smile.
She disappeared from view a few steps later, and as we neared the end of the corridor, I found myself in front of another staircase. The two brothers practically carried me up the steps. In fact, my feet basically didn’t touch the floor until we reached the landing, and even then, my footsteps were few and far between.
“I can walk on my own, you know,” I sighed, but I eventually stopped my attempts to touch the ground.
“We’ll definitely be allowed into the feast now,” Melion said over my head to his brother.
“I hope so,” Nelion replied. “It smelled excellent when I walked past earlier.”
“So, that’s where you were,” Melion grumbled. “And there I was doing my job patrolling the second floor while you were off sniffing the meal.”
“I was protecting the kitchens,” the brother blustered.
“Protecting,” Melion scoffed. “It was lucky I was doing my job properly, too, or else I wouldn’t have caught this thing.”
“I have a name,” I said.
“Who cares?” Nelion snorted as he looked down at me. “And what are you? I’ve never seen anything like you.”
“I’m human,” I replied.
“Never heard of them,” he sniffed.
“I’m kinda the only one who’s got the hang of space travel,” I said.
“Too bad you’re not gonna survive long enough to tell the rest of the humans about it,” Nelion sneered.
They had taken me down another hallway and made a beeline for a set of double doors at the end of it. The layout of this place was weird. It was more like a castle than a spaceship, and I guessed that just stroked their egos even more. We passed a number of doors with signs I couldn’t read on them, but Francine informed me of what each of the plaques meant.
“That was the captain’s quarters,” she said as we passed one doorway on the left. “The next is a control room.”
“That might be where I need to go to open the airlock,” I whispered.
“What?” Melion asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just clearing my throat.”
“The other rooms are the crew’s shared rooms,” Francine continued as we passed some more doors.
“Mmhmm,” I said and masked it with a cough.
As we drew closer to the double doors at the end of the hall, the sound of voices started to get louder. The two brothers’ pace started to slow as though they were reluctant to interrupt whatever was happening.
Eventually, we came to a stop just in front of them, and then each of the brothers looked at one another expectantly.
“Go on, then,” Nelion said.
“After you,” Melion replied.
“You found it,” the first one argued. “You get to open the door.”
“Fine,” Melion sighed.
He reached for the door handle, and I noticed that his hand trembled slightly. He let out a shaky breath and pulled the door open, and the sight I found myself staring at was nothing at all like I had expected.
It felt like I had just been dragged about six hundred years back in time to a Medieval banquet that happened to be on a spaceship. There were three long tables that ran the length of the room, and then there was one shorter one at the opposite end of the room where I assumed the captain and the higher-ranking crewmates sat. There were about a hundred aliens gathered around the tables, and every last one of them was talking, laughing, and scarfing down every morsel of food in sight.
The slavers were different species, and yet they all had such similar characteristics that I could hardly tell them apart. They wolfed down the food like wild animals, they were all scarred or missing bits of their bodies, and all of them had an evil glint in their eyes that not even the darkest sunglasses could have hidden.
The food they had tucked into was some kind of large animal that had been spit roasted and then slammed onto the table with its limbs stretched out wide. The heathens ripped the meat from its bones and gnawed on it, and I just had to hope that they’d killed the poor thing before they’d started the cooking process.
However, what drew my attention were the slaves that had to serve these evil beings. The slaves were in bad shape, just like the prisoners I’d seen. Most still had their wrists cuffed together, though the chains were longer so the servers could carry the food and drink. I gasped when I saw a Lilacron emerge from a doorway at the side of the room with a plate piled high with some kind of vegetable.
Melion hadn’t been lying when he’d told me that the slavers went around picking up the leftover survivors from the Karaak’s attack. Apparently, they had visited Lilacron at some point, too.
The two mouthbreathers dragged me down one of the aisles toward the main table at the head of the room. In the dim light, the slavers’ faces all looked meaner, thanks to the shadows that lived in the lines and scars on their faces that made their scowls look deeper. As we passed the tables, the crew members would stop their feasting so they could watch us go past.
I felt like a zoo animal because of the way they looked at me, although as Nelion had pointed out, these assholes had never seen anything like me before, so I was like a zoo animal to them. I wondered what would happen if I suddenly broke into a song and dance routine like the alien gut buster in Spaceballs, but I pushed that thought aside when I saw the alien in the middle seat at the high table look in our direction.
He lounged lazily in a throne-like chair, but when he saw me, he sat up out of interest. He was an ugly son of a bitch, that was for sure. He had burgundy skin and bulging muscles, and as we arrived just in front of the table, he stood up to his full eight-foot height and revealed the four strong, spidery legs beneath his torso. An air of strength and danger oozed from every cell in his body, and I could see by the look in his eyes that he didn’t care who he killed. He just loved the feeling of throttling the life from some creature.
He leaned over the table, and the other higher-ranking crewmembers beside him leaned in, too, and it looked like some kind of intergalactic version of the Last Supper.
“What is this?” the leader asked.
I looked up at both of the brothers, but neither of them wanted to be the first to speak. I could understand why because this guy was terrifying, and I suspected that he wasn’t any kinder toward his crew.
“Speak!” he demanded, and even I felt a shiver run down my spine.
“I found him on the second floor, Seelan,” Melion said.
“You?” the leader scoffed.
“Yes…” Melion replied and quickly looked at the floor. “He’s been killing our guys, Seelan. He was with the Kytran fleet and took out three of our ships.”
“I see,” Seelan hissed, and then his white, alligator-like eyes landed on mine. “So, you’re the one who has been causing me all this trouble?”
“Guilty,” I replied.
“And you thought you could just walk in here and kill my men?” the leader snarled.
“I didn’t think I could,” I said. “I did.”
That clearly touched a nerve, as he suddenly scuttled over the table with his four legs and landed right in front of me. The two brothers immediately let go of me and ran out of the line of fire. Seelan reached out with one arm and looked like he was about to throttle me, but then he thought twice about it.
Instead, he started to slowly walk around me in a circle, and I could feel his eyes as they washed over every inch of my body. I couldn’t tell if he was just taking me in or if he was seeing if I could fit in the oven, but either way, it was the most uncomfortable I’d ever been. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves while I waited for the Captain’s judgment.
Eventually, he arrived back in front of me and bent down so that his face was just inches from mine. The two slits he had for a nose widened as he took in my scent, and then he opened his mouth to reveal his very sharp teeth.
I turned my head away slightly as the smell of the meat he had been eating escaped from his mouth, but he grabbed my chin and turned my face back toward him. I heard something clink, and I looked down and saw a set of keys hanging from a chain around his neck.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see everyone watching us, from the other officers right down to the lowest slave. Nobody dared to even move in fear that they would suffer Seelan’s wrath instead of me.
“You are lean but strong,” he said.
“Thanks, I try,” I replied.
“You do look delicious,” he hissed hungrily.
“I think you’ve got plenty of food already by the look of it,” I said.
“I suppose we do, for now,” he replied, and then he stood up to address his minions. “This one should fetch a hefty price at the market.”
All the slavers cheered, and all the slaves bowed their heads out of sympathy.
“How about we give you a trial run?” Seelan said.
“A trial run?” I asked.
“We are going to sell you as a slave to the highest bidder,” the captain said. “Let’s see if you’re worth selling, or if we are going to have another feast tomorrow. It’s up to you.”
“Well, if I had to choose, then not dying would be my preferred option,” I replied.
“He wants to serve at my feet,” Seelan jeered, and all of his crew cheered again.
I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes at his declaration, though what I really wanted to do was tell the bastard to go shove it.
Seelan made a clicking sound with his tongue, and one of the slaves closest to us came running over. It was the Lilacron. He looked sad to see me, and then he noticed the suit I was wearing, and a look of recognition flashed in his eyes.
“You,” Seelan said to the Lilacron. “Take this thing into the kitchens and give him something to do for the next course. I want to see if he can perform his duties properly.”
The Lilacron nodded and gestured to me to follow him.
Before I could follow him, Seelan grabbed me by the neck and picked me up so that our faces were level. I pulled against his hand, but he held strong.
“You put yourself in this position,” he hissed. “You’re nothing now. And if you fail me, you will die.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” I managed to force out.
He dropped me, and I landed on my feet in front of him. I massaged my neck while I followed the Lilacron toward the door to the kitchen, but I turned back for just a moment and set my sights on Seelan.
It wasn’t me who would end up dead after this. It was him.
I followed the Lilacron into the kitchen along with the rest of the slaves, who had been dispatched to fetch the next course. I heard the chatter start up again in the next room as soon as the door swung closed behind us, though the rest of the slaves quickly ran to their stations without so much as a sympathetic look.
Well, except for the Lilacron, who grabbed me by the arm and pulled me aside.
“Do you want to tell me how you’re in possession of a Lilacron suit?” he asked and pointed at my protective suit.
“One of your AIs came to my planet and brought me to Lilacron,” I whispered. “It was destroyed by the Karaak before we arrived, but I helped to save some of your people. They’re safe on the Frumentum Colony for now, but it won’t be long until the Karaak return. I’m trying to find a way to beat them before that happens.”
“Then why are you on board this ship?” he asked.
“That’s a long story,” I replied. “But I have someone on board that’s trying to free the slaves. So, I need to keep these guys distracted so she can finish helping them.”
“I see,” the Lilacron replied.
“I’m Will, by the way,” I said.
“Lifion,” he replied. “Nice to meet you. Well, I suppose I should show you what to do next then.”
“Sure,” I replied as I studied the rest of the slaves. “Damn, they’re in sorry shape.”
“They tell us we’re lucky because we survived,” Lifion said. “I don’t think very many of the slaves would agree with that.”
“Will, Rayne and Bob have successfully evacuated the lower floor and have loaded all of the prisoners onto the ships inside the hangar,” Francine said. “They have made their way up to the second floor, but they need a key in order to open the cells.”
“Yeah, I saw the cells,” I replied. “I think I know where the key is, but it might take me a few minutes to get it.”
“Are you still in communication with your AI?” Lifion asked hopefully.
“Listen,” I said as I turned to him and the rest of the slaves in the kitchen. “Listen up!”
The slaves turned toward me slowly, like they were afraid someone in the dining room would come in to investigate, but the volume of chatter outside in the banquet hall remained loud enough to drown out what I was saying.
“I have a plan to free all of you,” I said. “My team has already evacuated the bottom floor and are working their way up.”
Most of the slaves stared at me in disbelief, but there were a few smiles as well, and one woman even sobbed a little.
“I need you to do something for me,” I continued.
“I don’t know…” another slave said reluctantly and glanced toward the door. “They’ll kill us all if they think we’re going to rebel.”
“Just tell us what you need,” Lifion said and glared at the other slave.
“I just need you to stay in the kitchen while I go back out there,” I said. “Don’t come out until I tell you. Got it?”
“But we’ll be in trouble,” one slave said.
“You can’t be in trouble if they’re dead,” I replied. “You’ll be free.”
“You’re going to kill all of them?” a woman gasped.
“I am,” I said. “But I don’t want you getting caught in the crossfire.”
“Are you sure you do not need help?” Lifion asked. “I would gladly--”
“No, it’s better that I do this alone,” I replied and shook my head. “And this could get ugly.”
“We’re in,” one of the slaves who was missing an eye said, and several others nodded. “I can’t take it here much longer. We’ll make sure no one else leaves the kitchen.”
“Good,” I said as I picked up a jug of some kind of liquid. “See you on the other side.”
I turned to the doorway, pushed it open, and walked back out into the banquet hall.
The slavers turned to watch me again, though the conversation and eating didn’t stop this time. Seelan had a gleeful look on his face as I walked over to his table, and he smirked as I began to silently fill each person’s goblet with whatever was in the jug.
“How the mighty have fallen,” he eventually announced, and that earned him a false laugh from the crew. “Serving at our commands like the little slave you are.”
I didn’t reply. I just focused on pouring the drinks with my still-cuffed wrists and made my way slowly toward him.
“Not talking?” Seelan jeered. “I think someone’s disappointed he got caught.”
Another fake laugh came from his subordinates, and I let myself look around like I was suddenly humbled. I noticed Melion was still lurking beside one of the tables, though he looked disappointed that Seelan hadn’t praised him more for catching me. I noted that my gun was still in his belt while I filled the next glass, and then I was next to Seelan himself.
I leaned over the table with both hands and started to pour the liquid into his goblet. He watched me closely, and then I felt his hand land on my shoulder in a predatory way as he leaned forward. I turned to look at him as his heinous face stopped just centimeters from my ear.
“You’re mine now,” he whispered.
“No, I’m not,” I replied.
Then, I stood up straight and poured what was left in the jug on his lap. For a moment, Seelan was stunned. The room went silent. The tension in the air was enough to knock the wind out of everyone’s lungs.
Then, he looked up at me, and his white eyes were filled with fury. He opened his mouth and bared his sharp teeth as he started to stand.
But I’d had enough of playing along. I broke the cuffs around my wrists as I pulled my arms apart, and then I slammed the jug into the side of Seelan’s head. It left him dazed long enough for me to rip the keys from around his neck, but I had only just made it over the table when his enormous shadow enveloped me. I spun around to see the spider-like beast standing over me.
“Kill him!” he screeched.
And then everyone came running at me at once.