I feel like I died, too. I’ve certainly lost my identity. Conan the Aurelian Warrior has been replaced by something primal – and I can feel in the auras of my battle-brothers that they’ve succumbed to those feral instincts as well.
We’re all on edge, and we all have the same feeling of impending doom. There are so many risks facing us now.
Too many risks.
We’re just four days of skipping orb-shift travel away from the Aurelian Empire, but it might as well be a thousand. On the periphery of the Empire, the rule of law is gone. I’m no longer bound by the very same laws I’d spent my life respecting – the laws I’d even recently committed to enforcing during my hundred years of service.
But all that is behind me now. When my blood-brothers and I fled from certain death – from watching our comrades be slaughtered all around us – we all experienced the same phenomenon.
Ego death.
Everything we’d been taught was ‘right’ had suddenly been flipped on its head. Our commander’s bravery wasn’t noble – it had just got our entire company killed. His pride wasn’t admirable – it had instead sent us into an engagement we couldn’t possibly have won. This notion of nobility, of ‘right’, had turned out to be a curse. All the tenants of the Aurelian Empire – everything we’d been raised to hold dear – had been revealed to be just empty promises; ringing hollow in the desolate brutality of the universe.
I’d followed Evander’s command to run without a thought. He is the leader of our triad – it was his call to make – but to my shame, I didn’t even question it.
I’m grateful to still be alive – but I’m glad that call will not be my burden to bear. I felt a deep guilt for abandoning the rest of our unit, but I was at least following orders. Evander made that decision – and he must feel the weight of it tenfold.
I breathe in deeply and center myself. There’s no use dwelling on the past, and Evander’s leadership is not in question. Just look at the deal he just negotiated with the humans in this sector. He made it sound real. He made them believe him.
The sub-coms suddenly light up. The channel is crackly and full of static, relying on a radio signal.
Evander responds to the signal: “Go.”
“We agree to your terms.” It’s the humans that Evander was negotiating with. They sound confident – arrogant, even. “The coordinates to land are 56009-2329. There’ll be a warehouse. Please turn weapons signals off before you land.”
“Agreed.”
There’s a pause. Then the human continues. “There is another matter. Sir Peter Paradooli is an esteemed member of our high society. He wishes to extend an invitation to an auction he’s holding. Now that you are no longer… constrained by the rules of the Aurelian Empire, he wondered if you might wish to… trade in the more exquisite pleasures of the flesh.”
My heart beats. Not a one of us has tasted a human woman before. It’s only after their hundred years of service to the Empire that most Aurelians have the means to start building the vast harems of human females for which our people are famous.
Infamous, even.
“Perhaps,” Evander muses non-committedly. “We’ll consider attending.” Then he presses the button on the comms unit to cut transmission.
Conan’s hands are shaking. “You’re seriously considering attending? This auction he spoke of – to invest in the pleasures of the flesh. He meant slavery, Evander. We can’t fall so far. We’ve gone Rogue – we’ve abandoned our hundred years of service – but there are still standards. We’re not slavers.”
Evander turns to us both as he pilots towards the atmosphere.
“We make our own destiny now, brothers. The rules of the Empire no longer bind us – and they no longer stand in our way either.”
“But to turn our back on what’s right, Evander. What’s decent.”
“We decide what’s right and decent now, Conan – and then we enforce it. This is a planet of slavers and criminals – and we must at least appear to condone their ways.”
Conan’s face contorts into a snarl, but Evander holds up a reassuring hand.
“We must appear to condone it,” he growls. “But then we will tame this planet. We will make it ours – and then it is up to us to decide what’s right, and what’s unforgivable.”
The sincerity in Evander’s eyes is clear, and Conan nods – getting it.
Evander isn’t suggesting that we abandon all sense of right and wrong, and embrace the darkness that other Rogue Aurelians have done.
But in order to make a future for ourselves, now that our past is left burned and smoldering behind us, we might have to appear to be sympathetic to those whose morality disgusts us.
After all – you can’t cut the head off a snake unless you get within reach of its fangs.
4
Ashley
Danielle is quivering. Her bright red curls tremble. I wish there was something one of us could do, but we all feel the same horror. All twenty of us girls are waiting in a room that I’ve never been allowed in before. It’s furnished in rich mahogany – it feels and smells like old money. All twenty of us – hand-selected women from Peter’s staff – are standing aware that very soon, we might be sold into slavery.
The door of a side room opens and Tracey, one of Peter’s newest acquisitions, steps out.
She’s changed. She’s been beautified – adorned with clothes and makeup that have turned her from a possession to be looked at to one that invites to be touched. I recognize the treacherous fabric of the light, orange-colored pleasure dress she wears; fabric that hugs every contour of her body and teases inexorably.
The beautician responsible – a woman in her forties with long, ebony hair that gleams in the firelight of the room – points towards me next. I freeze at the
