Even while doing the rituals I was familiar with, my mind flickered to Dana. I needed to sleep, needed to rest and recover, but all I could wonder about was if she was okay, if she was dealing with the Caterri or if they were fighting her spirit. Dana was a fierce warrior, although she was human, and I hoped they would not beat that out of her. It was simply part of what made her who she was.
I curled into a ball to protect as much of me as I could, a knife close at hand, and focused on drifting off to sleep. It was not easy, and when I did finally sleep? It was with an image of Dana’s face in my mind.
2
Dana
The worst part of hanging out with the Caterri was all the time for self-reflection. I had plenty of time to think about how charging into the fray with a spear was probably not my best decision ever. Did I regret it? No. I’d seen the Setti surrounded, the way the Caterri treated them like objects instead of people, and it had short-circuited my sense of rationality. I knew too much what it was like to be taunted by someone who got off on the fear they caused in their victims. My stepfather liked his alcohol, and when he was drunk, he liked to make my mother cry. When she wasn’t around, he’d go after me. He never hit me, or her, but words could do just as much damage as fists. Bullies were bullies, whether they were here or on Earth.
I’d also realized that the Caterri were just as bad as N’Ashtar had made them out to be, if not worse. It wasn’t that he was traveling to tithe a breedable female because he thought it was a good idea, it was because he didn’t have a choice. If they refused, it was more than likely the Caterri would treat them the same way they did the Setti. It didn’t take a genius to see that he wasn’t thrilled with the choice, either. That I understood less. He was their ‘prince’, the son of the chief. If anyone had the power to make change, he did.
Then there was the whole fact his tribe was very low on fertile females, mostly because of the whole tithing thing. He didn’t have an exact timeline for how long it’d been going on, but it had been long enough that it was all he knew, which wasn’t good for the tribe. I’d admit, I had been hella dubious of his intentions at first. If they didn’t have many females, then the main reason he was talking to me was pretty obvious, right? I was a walking vagina. But the more I talked to him, the more I had realized there was something else underneath it all. Not that I would do anything about it, because I was leaving the planet as soon as possible. Yup.
If I kept thinking that, certainly I would believe it at some point.
Not that I thought all of my crew would be leaving with me. O’Rrin was N’Ashtar’s best friend, or so I’d gathered, and he was obviously affectionate to Hetta, the astrobiologist of the ship we’d been on. When they had mentioned the Setti, I had thought they were this planet’s equivalent of cattle. Huge, dumb creatures that provided nourishment for those who needed it. But the Setti we had come across were anything but. Instead, they were bipedal, self-aware people who had been screaming for help in a way that needed no translation. And the N’Akron had been ready to avoid it completely! The thought still made rage burn through my veins, even days later.
But Hetta had said no, had been prepared to fight for them, and O’Rrin saved them and killed the Caterri, no matter the consequences. And the consequences had been dire. O’Rrin had been poisoned, and another troop of Caterri had hunted us down and kidnapped me. All because we’d saved a group of sentient people from suffering at the hands of another.
Well. We hadn’t. I’d stood back and watched like the other humans, a fact that made bitterness taste sour in my mouth. I had trained my body and my mind to be a weapon back on Earth, having a black belt in judo and karate because, let’s face it, humans were assholes. While my drunkard of a stepfather had never touched me, this had ensured that he wouldn’t ever try. Yet I’d watched them fight and stood back like I was a damsel in distress, too afraid to do something.
Fear was a pointless emotion, one that served to make you weak and vulnerable. I never wanted to be vulnerable again, didn’t want to be seen as weak to anyone who might take advantage of it. I was strong. I could take care of myself, and anyone who wanted to argue could go jump off a bridge.
That was why I’d grabbed that spear and raced forward, determined to not need protecting. Except it turned out I had, which was how I’d gotten my ass kidnapped and was now surrounded by creepy, leering bug-people. Just my freaking luck. The trio that had grabbed me had quickly raced back to a small cart-like hovering thing, watched by several Caterri that seemed smaller in stature. Kind of like the servants to their master, or a squire to a knight. Except these servants still held power over me. As we traveled, their oily smiles slid over me and the malice that glinted in their black eyes was hard to miss.
We’d walked without a break for countless hours, enough that the suns rose in the sky and beat down on us. At least I was wearing clothes, because at that point, it was the little things that made it tolerable. Except then the weird-ass Caterri started racing off in different directions, some with something that looked suspiciously liked aerosol cans and others
