Well—she was pretty sure they came from a more primitive world than hers, but she was also certain they were intelligent.
She was counting on it.
And it transpired that her faith wasn’t misplaced … although she had her doubts even after they set the escape in motion.
There was no sneaking around, which was what she’d envisioned—crawling through old sewers or something of that nature.
They did nothing when guards were sent to fetch her, strip her, and truss her up like a prize turkey again beyond the fact that Tarik embraced her and whispered ‘be ready’ in her ear.
She was hauled away and displayed as before.
She’d forgotten in the mean time just how painful that was and she was struggling to close her mind to the extreme discomfort when the gladiators were marched onto the field of battle.
They passed under her and she struggled to meet their gazes.
Neither of them looked up, but many of the others did.
It was her first close up look at the other aliens and dismay and fear washed over her in a weakening wave.
They were all humanoid, but few of them looked nearly as close to human as the two who’d claimed her.
She hoped like hell that they claimed her again and/or had some doable escape plan in mind!
She didn’t have to wait long to find out. They’d barely assembled the warriors when they brought out what appeared to be a new group of aliens for the arena.
There looked to be a half a dozen of the same species as her guys—Hirachi—two females and four males.
They’d barely taken the field when Tarik and Kirt uttered ear piercing bellows.
Contrary to what she’d first thought, though, they weren’t merely yelling.
It might, in fact, have been the war cry it sounded like, but it was alotmore than just a yell.
Their tribesmen uttered a similar yell and to her stunned amazement, broke the heavy chains that bought them like they were made of paper.
And then the weirdest, scariest thing happened.
A chunk of the stadium simply disintegrated—the portion directly across from the Hirachi.
The audience that happened to be occupying that portion of the building screamed in mass as the structure beneath them shuddered and crumbled. Those who could leapt away. Those who couldn’t went down with the building and disappeared beneath the rubble. And everyone in the stands, after a brief pause of stunned disbelief, surged to their feet and began to fight their way out of the stadium.
Diversion complete, Tarik and Kirt surged toward her. Tarik leapt up and sliced the rope that held her as he had before, catching her and launching into a run the moment his feet hit the dirt again.
They were battered by the mad, screaming crowd, carried along as if they were caught in a rip tide at sea.
Elly was too shocked to take in much, but she noticed the moment Tarik and Kirt began to fight their way across the surging wave.
They’d arrived at the space port by then, she discovered.
Without a pause, Tarik headed for one ship among the dozen or so that were parked around the packed pebble landing site. The gangplank was down when they reached it. An alien that looked to be male had been on that plank, but he made a dash inside ahead of them—no doubt with the intention of ‘barring the door’.
Kirt was faster.
Tarik made it up the gangplank with her and they found Kirt holding the alien by the throat, his feet dangling about a foot from the floor.
Behind them came a wave of yellow skinned aliens like Kirt and Tarik—the newest slaves. They all filed down a fairly wide corridor to a room that looked similar to the cockpit of a plane.
When they’d gathered there, the women looked her over as if Tarik had slung a turd over his shoulder.
