Bringing Stella Home (5 page)

Ben,
James thought despairingly to himself.
Stella—I’m so sorry.
His eyes burning
with tears, he clenched his teeth together and balled his hands
into fists.

No,
he told himself.
They’re not dead.
They
can’t
be!

* * * * *

For nearly a minute, Ben hardly knew
where he was or what he was doing. Sweaty bodies pressed against
him on all sides, battering him with unintentional blows as
everyone pressed toward the airlock at once. He shoved his way
through the panicked crowd, taking care not to let go of Stella’s
hand.

He held onto her until they
passed through the freight airlock of the
Sierra Vista
.
The corridor opened up significantly, allowing them to move
much faster
. Together, they ran with the
others down the dim, windowless hallway.

“
Will we be safe here?”
Stella asked, keeping pace.

“
Not here,” said Ben.
“We’ve got to get deeper.” He didn’t tell her that if the Hameji
boarded them, no place would be safe.

The
Sierra Vista
was a mid-size sublight
freighter, built for cargo, not for passengers. The walls were dark
and drab, made from industrial grade durasteel. The air was chilly,
and the halls below decks were barely more than oversized duct
work.

They followed the crowd into a large,
dimly lit cargo hold. Except for a few large boxes and piles of
crates strapped against the far wall, the room was empty. A few of
the frightened refugees pulled up some loose crates to sit on, but
most remained standing, still in shock.

This was the end of all they could do,
Ben realized. Either the pilot got them out, or they’d all die—or
worse.

“
Come with me,” Ben said,
leading Stella into an empty doorway where they could speak more
privately. He stopped and turned to face her.

“
If the crowd panics again,
I want you to stay calm,” he told her. “We can’t do anything about
the Hameji, so there’s no sense worrying about that. Just stay
calm, and stick with me.”

She nodded, frightened but
comprehending.

The ship lurched, throwing them both
against the door. Ben staggered and leaned against the wall for
support. It felt as if somebody had tilted the room, and everything
was falling towards the side. Most of the boxes were secure, but
those that weren’t slid across the room, smashing into the
passengers who were struggling to stay on their feet.

An engine burn,
thought Ben.
A pretty
heavy one, too.
But they hadn’t turned off
the artificial gravity for it—that was odd. Was it because of the
passengers they had in the hold, or because they were in a
hurry?

As if in answer, a loud clanging noise
sounded on the level above, followed by a rush off footsteps, a
muffled explosion, and the sound of gunfire. The engines shut off,
and the floor stopped tilting.

“
Oh my God,” said Stella.
The passengers had heard it too, and started screaming.

Boarders.

The gunfire grew louder. Ben stared at
the ceiling in mortified silence, listening to the battle through
the cold metal walls. His legs weakened, and he clenched his teeth
in fear and frustration. In the main hold, the other passengers had
begun to panic; he put out his arm to protect Stella from the worst
of it.

“
What’s going on?” she
asked. “Why—”

A strange, greenish gas poured out of
the ventilation shafts, filling the room. Everyone tried to run out
of the room at once. Stella grabbed onto him and held on tight. He
covered his mouth with his shirt and motioned for her to do the
same.

All noise faded as the green mist
filled the cargo hold. It smelled sickly sweet, like synthetic
petroleum. Around them, the world started to spin—slowly at first,
but growing steadily faster. In a few moments, everything but his
sister was little more than a blur. He held onto her, afraid that
she would fall into the void if he let go.

This is not the
end,
he told himself.

The last of his strength ebbed, and
the world turned black. All of his fears faded except for one—that
whatever was to come, he wouldn’t be able to protect his sister
from it.

Chapter 3

When Stella woke up, she was stiff,
sore, and completely naked.

Her eyes flew open and she immediately
wrapped her arms around her body, curling up on the cold steel
floor. Though she felt the cold air stirring against her bare skin,
the room was silent—stuffy, but silent. Moving slowly, she eased
herself up to a sitting position and pulled her knees up to her
chest, covering herself as best as she could.

The room was dark, the only
illumination coming from a caged bulb in the center of the ceiling.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim greenish-yellow light, she started
to make out her surroundings. The room looked vaguely like a cargo
hold—smooth metal walls and floors, berths for crates and
containers, long scrape marks that could only have been made by
heavy machinery. At least that explained why the room was so cold.
She hugged her knees a little tighter and shivered. A faint buzzing
sounded in her ear, but she wasn’t sure whether it came from
somewhere in the room or just from the dizziness in her head. She
made out a number of strange shapes scattered across the floor.
They were too lumpy to be crates, but—

One of them moved. She realized at
once that they were people, unconscious and as naked as she
was.

She yelped in surprise and scooted
away. As she did, her hand struck something soft and fleshy. She
turned and caught sight of a fat, hairy man, completely
unconscious, lying on his back. The sight made her cheeks burn with
embarrassment, and she scrambled quickly away from him, only to
bump into a younger man—definitely a man. He groaned and rolled
over as she carefully edged away.

She shuddered and closed
her eyes.
I hope Ben doesn’t see me like
this.
The thought no sooner entered her
mind than her eyes flew open again.

Ben! Where is
he?

“
Ben?” she whispered. In
the silence, her voice sounded as loud as the roar of an engine. To
her right, a wrinkled, elderly woman moaned as she sat with her
back propped up against a crate. Unsightly bruises covered her
arms, and her wrinkled breasts sagged almost to her
waist.

“
Ben?” Stella said aloud,
unfocusing her eyes to avoid seeing anything else she didn’t want
to see. “Ben, are you there?”
Answer
me!

No one did.

He’s not
here
. She took in a deep breath and tried
to calm herself. The metal floor was so cold on her skin, and the
draft in the room made her shiver. She considered standing up and
walking to the edge of the room where she could be out of the way,
but that would attract too much attention to herself—better to stay
where she was.

They were prisoners—that
much was clear. But how had they gotten here? She vaguely
remembered the freighter—what was it called? The
Sierra Vista?
The hold of
that ship had been similar to the room she was now in, except
larger and better lit. She remembered fleeing there to escape the
Hameji—she distinctly remembered the nuclear explosions shining
through the windows of the shuttle. Then the gas, the screaming,
Ben holding her, and darkness. Then this.

The Hameji,
she thought to herself.
They stripped off my clothes and left me here.
Had they done anything else to her while she was
unconscious? She shivered, and not just from the cold.

Carefully keeping herself covered, she
mentally checked every part of her body. Aside from the soreness,
she seemed uninjured—no broken bones, no scars or open wounds. She
did have a few bruises though, mostly around her wrists and elbows.
How she’d gotten them, she didn’t know.

Had her captors abused her? Raped her?
Probably not—she imagined she would hurt a lot worse if they had.
Then again, she’d never had sex before—she didn’t know what it was
supposed to feel like normally, let alone when it was
forced.

She shivered and hugged her knees a
little tighter. What were they going to do to her her? Her stomach
felt light and fluttery, and her breathing came short and quick. A
nauseous feeling rose in her stomach, and she started to
panic.

Stop it,
she told herself.
Stay
calm. You’re still alive. You can make it through this.
She closed her eyes and took a deep
breath.

A door hissed open behind her; it must
have been a freight door, because it flooded the room with light.
She squinted and covered her eyes. From behind, she heard heavy
footsteps. She squeezed her knees a little closer to her
chest.

Gloved hands seized her
roughly by the arms and lifted her off the floor. She shrieked and
tried to cover herself, but her captors’ grip on her arms was too
firm.
Is this it?
she wondered.
Are they going to rape
me?
A jolt of fear shot through her
body.

She stumbled and tripped as they
half-dragged, half-marched her into the blinding light.

* * * * *

Ben woke with a terrible pain in his
side and the disconcerting realization that he was naked. When he
opened his eyes and glanced around the dimly lit cargo hold, he got
a much worse shock—Stella was no longer with him. He sat up at
once.

“
Stella?” he yelled, his
voice reverberating off of the cold metal walls of the unusually
large hold. Several people glanced up in his direction, but Stella
wasn’t among them.

He took a deep breath and tried to
fight his growing panic. He’d heard stories of the things the
Hameji did to their prisoners. Most were just speculation—no one
had ever escaped from the Hameji—but at Tajjur, a passing Imperial
frigate had discovered hundreds of bodies floating in deep space.
When the bodies were identified, it was discovered that no more
than two or three had been on the same ship at the time of their
capture.

That did not bode well for him and
Stella.

He rose clumsily to his
feet and scanned the room, ignoring the pain in his side as best he
could. The room held maybe fifty to a hundred other prisoners, all
naked like himself. The Hameji hadn’t bothered separating the men
from the women, but that was good, because if Stella was on the
ship, there was a good chance he’d find her.
And if
not
?
Ben tried not to think about
that.

He stepped carefully around the other
prisoners as he searched, averting his eyes where possible,
ignoring what he saw when he couldn’t. Several of them were
bleeding, and some lay in their own vomit. The smell of human
excrement was thick in the air. He covered his nose and breathed
through his mouth.

“
Stella?” he called out
again. “Stella, are you here?”

“
Who are you looking for?”
a black-haired woman asked, sitting against the wall with her knees
tucked tightly against her chest. The light was dim, but she
appeared to be in her mid-thirties. From her accent, Ben guessed
she was from one of the Lagrange settlements at Kardunash
VII.

“
I’m looking for my
sister,” said Ben. “She’s about half a head shorter than me with
brown hair down to her shoulders.” As he talked, he discretely
covered himself with his hands and averted his eyes so as not to
stare directly at her. She showed him the same courtesy.

“
Which ship were you on?”
she asked.

“
We were on a ferry shuttle
at Kardunash IV when the attack happened. A passing freighter took
us in—the
Sierra Vista
, I think.” As if it mattered. “Then the Hameji boarded us.
That’s all I remember.”

“
I was on a small
freighter—the
Winter
Aegis
.” A tremor in her voice made him
glance at her face. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes wide—both signs
of shock.

“
What’s your name?” Ben
asked, leaning against the wall.

“
Ava,” she said, turning to
face him. “Yours?”

“
Ben.”

She nodded. “I’m looking for someone
too. My husband. Have you seen him?”

“
What does he look
like?”

“
He’s tall, short black
hair, in his early thirties—though I guess you can’t tell in this
light.”

“
No,” said Ben. “I haven’t
seen anyone like that—not that it means anything.”

“
I guess we’re on the same
starship then—literally
and
figuratively.” She laughed at her own joke, but
tears soon streaked her pale, frightened face. Ben felt an urge to
reach out and comfort her, but hesitated, worried that it would be
too unseemly of him.