Chapter One
Lana’s jaw was startingto ache, saliva gathering in her mouth and dripping around the sides of the ball gag strapped tightly across her cheeks. She was almost grateful for the itchy cloth thrown over her head, even though it was doing its job of making it impossible for her to see where they were going, and also set her skin on fire. Her hands were bound at the elbows and wrists with thick leather straps, and there was no way to scratch her itching neck or forehead. It was hard enough to lean forward just enough to balance between being jostled painfully against the back of the hard bench she was tied to, and falling too far forward, causing the leather straps to cut into her arms and legs.
She would not have been able to see much from the back of the transport van, anyway, but she had no way of knowing that. Her keen sense of sound and smell told her that they had crossed a body of water after several hours. The damp smell, like the inside of a full clay pot, triggered thirst in her, and fear. She had never been so far away from her home that she had seen a river. A river was a fairy tale told by travelers, and while she knew of one far to the south of their home, there was no guarantee that south was the direction they had gone.
Her heart was pounding. For many hours, she had been ready to pounce the moment she was released from her bonds. She would bite, claw, chew, and kick her way to freedom. She had been caught and exchanged several times now. Surely no one who now held her captive knew where she was from or where her family lived. Now she could escape, without bringing repercussions down on them.
But the journey grew longer and longer. The security grew tighter and tighter. The amounts of money being exchanged, which she could barely understand, became enormous. She assumed the exchanges were for large numbers of slaves; she had no idea that it was mostly for her.
The vehicle came to a halt, and her body collided with the metal cage that encircled her, though she had not known it was there. She could only feel that she was bound by the ankles, the wrists, and the elbows, and gagged.
She heard the sound of doors opening, and of an exchange in a language she did not understand. There were several human speakers, communicating with the aliens. The voices became louder and more fierce. After several minutes, the conversation was pure yelling, and then there were the sickening sounds of laser guns, and the dull thud of bodies.
Each thud sent a sickening knife of fear into Lana’s gut, and she twisted her hands furiously, trying, but knowing it was useless, to free herself. She breathed so heavily through her sackcloth that the material scratched her face with each inhalation. She could hear the others making noises of struggle; like her, they were bound and gagged.
The heavy clomp of boots and a shift of weight signaled the arrival of at least two heavy bodies in the back of the truck.
“Take the hoods off, confiscate the females. And find the Atrix.”
Lana’s heart fluttered in her chest. While she was relieved that the humans had prevailed in the skirmish outside the transport, she was also terrified by the words they were exchanging. They were almost certainly Slavers, and they seemed to be after females, which meant only one kind of sale.
To a very specific kind of slavery.
She strained against her ropes, though she knew it was futile, as the clomping boots came closer. The voices discussed which of the slaves to put in their transport, or another. At last they were near her. The hood was pulled from her head with a whoosh, and her mahogany-red hair clung to it for a moment before falling to her sweating face.
A bright light coming from something beyond the doors of the transport blinded her to all but the silhouette of the figure standing in front of her—it was unmistakably the form of an Imperial guard.
Lana’s stomach plunged to her feet. The war was real, the invasion true. And she was an illegal, as illegal as could be: an undocumented, unlicensed, untested female human of reproductive age. The reputation of the Imperial Guard was of ruthlessness, particularly for illegals.
Her knees shook as her mind raced; she would head-butt this soldier when he leaned forward to take off her restraints. It was her only chance. It might mean execution but doing nothing would mean the same thing. Might as well take the chance.
His voice was metallic, piped through a helmet, when he said, “That’s her, we have her, command, we have secured the Atrix.”
Lana didn’t know what an Atrix was, so she had no reason to start thinking they were talking about her. She figured the voice was coming through a radio, close enough to her head that it sounded like the man in front of her, and so she assumed it was in regard to something else. His laser gun was hot—she could feel the radiating heat on her cheek as he leaned forward to release her from her restraints.
She was ready, and she took a quick glance around, plotting her moves. There were only two guards, and once her wrists and elbows were free, she could head-butt this one, reach down to untie her ankle restraints, grab the laser gun, and go out shooting.
When she felt the restraints easing on her elbows, she acted. She knew enough about knots and the traders who tied them to know that the knot on her elbows was a reversekiel, which could be loosened by pushing it together, and the one at her feet required a tug of the center bight in a coiled bundle facing the back.
But she underestimated the attention they were paying to her. She made her move and managed to crack her skull with skill against the head of the guard in front of her. His helmet stopped him from being too hurt, but he stumbled backwards, giving her time to wriggle free of the elbow restraints, reach down and loosen her foot knot. She started to stand up.
But that was as far as she got. The man she had assaulted was already speaking into his radio as he stumbled backward. “The Atrix is escaping! Maneuver 12.”
And the transport was filled very suddenly with more guards than she could count, a darkness engulfed her, and she felt her body paralyzed yet again by numerous restraints and hands. She was being lifted, and then she was on the dusty ground. They set her there fairly gently, and hands continued to hold her down as she was hog-tied with what felt like much heavier shackles. Her arms and ankles were bound together, pulled toward each other by a magnetic force: the unbreakable bonds of the Imperial Guard.
“Don’t damage her,” she heard someone say. “But get her in the back and keep two on her just in case.”
And then, she was being lifted and placed in another transport, struggling and screaming into her gag, but all to no avail.
The next trip was in a shuttle, and long. A tide of panic rose and fell inside of her as she felt the vehicle lift from the ground. In all her life, she had never been in one of the sky vehicles, and she had intended to keep it that way.
Despair overtook her several hours into the trip, as an undeniable reality she must face settled over her: she was not going back home, not any time soon. Probably never. She didn’t have any idea where she was being taken, but it was being done by space transport, and so it could be almost anywhere.
A guard crouched next to her midway through the journey. The onyx-colored scales of his outer ‘skin’—the high-tech, almost impenetrable armor of the unbeatable Imperial Guard—reflected the dull red lights of the room where she was being kept.
“I am going to loosen your gag,” he told her, close to her head. “And give you some water. Do not test me.”
Lana’s mouth was so dry by then that she had no choice but to cooperate. He removed the gag, and she gulped at the air, closing her aching jaw. And then, feeling utterly helpless and quite humiliated, she sucked on the metal straw he brought to her lips, unable to do anything but drink the water greedily with her aching arms and feet bound above her.
