She allowed her captor to half drag her along the corridor, wishing he’d take the blindfold off. She wanted, she needed, to see where she was going. She wasn’t sure where she was now. Was she on the station, or had she been transferred to a starship? She hoped it was the former, even though she was a prisoner. She knew where the weapons and other supplies were kept. A starship, on the other hand, would be unfamiliar territory.
The deck hummed beneath her feet as she passed over a step . . . an airlock, perhaps. She was on a starship. They’d moved her onto the freighter. And that meant . . . She shivered as she heard voices speaking unfamiliar tongues. The language was beyond her comprehension, but the tone was all too clear. They’d rape her if they could. She was sure of it. A hatch opened, followed by another and another. She was being taken farther into their ship.
I need to find a way to kill myself, she thought, but nothing came to mind. What will I do if they . . .
Survive, her own thoughts answered. Survive and find a way to fight back.
The sound of the drives grew louder as she was shoved through a hatch and pushed to the floor. A strong hand removed the blindfold, revealing a tiny cell. She twisted, just in time to see a pale-faced man retreating out the hatch. His eyes met hers, just for a second; the hatch closed before she could force herself to talk. But what could she have said to him? She was a helpless prisoner and . . .
As long as they see me as helpless, they won’t take me seriously, she told herself. The drives were growing louder. And I will find a way to strike back.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DORLAND / IN TRANSIT
Become a farmer, they said, Daniel Greenhorn thought, sardonically. Be your own boss, they said.
He turned in a slow circle, surveying his farm. Everyone said it was a farm, at least. He held title to it and everything. But it was really nothing more than a square mile of unbroken ground, which needed to be smashed up and turned into soil before anything would grow. He really should have read his contract more carefully, he told himself sourly. The vast benefits awarded to him and anyone else willing to break hardened ground into soil came with a steep price. He couldn’t walk away from his farm unless he found someone willing to take over.
And no one will, he thought, as he wiped sweat from his brow. Dorland was a poor world, with much of the population struggling to draw sustenance from a land that hated them. The original settlers had chosen to leave technology behind when they’d left Earth in search of a new idyll, and this was the price. Backbreaking labor for men and women, with a government that constantly promised everything and delivered nothing. This farm won’t be viable for years.
He looked south, towards the colony. The original set of colony elders had done a good job of wiping out records from the outside universe, but the Theocracy had blown the gates open wide and the new government knew better than to try to return the population to a state of ignorance. Daniel knew, as did many of the other farmers, that modern-day terraforming equipment would solve Dorland’s problems in a decade or two. They wouldn’t have hesitated to overthrow the government if there had been a reasonable prospect of obtaining such technology, but no one seemed to want to sell it to them. The Theocracy hadn’t cared about Dorland, and the Commonwealth . . . the Commonwealth didn’t seem to be any better.
And I have to get on with it, he thought as he picked up his shovel. The inspectors would be calling in a week or so, and they’d expect him to have made considerable progress. If they deemed his progress insufficient, they’d cut off his rations or simply send him to the penal camps. It was funny how no one had discussed that with him until after he’d signed the contracts. Anyone would think they wanted me to trap myself . . .
The sky turned white, just for a second. Instinctively, Daniel threw himself to the hard ground, cursing out loud as he landed badly. The thunder hit a second later, a dull rolling sound that echoed off the distant mountains and shook the unbroken ground beneath his chest. He looked up a second later, just in time to see a streak of fire fall from high above and plummet towards the distant town. There was a flash of light when it struck the ground, followed by a colossal fireball and another round of thunder. More followed, the sound shaking the entire colony. He heard a crashing sound from his shack, positioned at the far edge of the field. It hadn’t been designed for earthquakes. Dorland was geologically inert.
That’s not an earthquake, he told himself as yet another rumble of thunder echoed through the sky. The planet is under attack!
He rolled over and peered up at the bright blue sky. Dorland was right on the edge of the habitable zone, close enough to the primary star to be dangerously hot even though, thankfully, there was no greenhouse effect. He couldn’t see anything up there, but streaks of fire were still tumbling towards the ground. Was one of them aimed at him? He couldn’t imagine an unseen man deciding to kill him, but . . . he couldn’t imagine anyone attacking Dorland either. There was literally nothing on the planet worth taking, except perhaps the population itself. And any interstellar slavers would surely not want to kill the people they intended to enslave . . . right?
The thunder slowly died
