EPISODE 6

Unlikely Savior

The sound of the door opening came again.

“The hell,” the first Sekaran said, surprise in his voice.

The second lifted his hands off her shoulders. “No one’s supposed to be here. It’s late shift,” he said.

The Sekaran commander stood at the door. He looked none too pleased. He had no helmet, but his rank markings on his armor were ones Anais clearly remembered. He had a laser-repeater in his hands, pointing it at his soldiers. “Fools!”

“Sir!” the two Sekarans inside said. They moved away from her as quickly as they had come upon her, standing at attention.

Anais couldn’t believe it. Had she been saved?

“This is the sheikh’s property. You would dare defile it?”

“We were just checking on the prisoner,” the first Sekaran said.

“You know the rules. The prize of the hunt is always returned to the sheikh. He will get first bid on her before the other nobility can take her. If she is no longer a virgin, she’ll be worthless. Why would you ruin this property?”

“That’s not—"

“Silence!”

The room echoed with that word, and the two guards said nothing.

“I cannot have this kind of insubordination within our unit. You both are a disgrace to Eltu,” the Sekaran commander said. He quickly aimed his laser-repeater at one of them and fired.

The Sekaran’s head blasted to bits. His body convulsed a few times and collapsed on the floor.

The second Sekaran attempted to run toward the commander, as if to try to fight him. Before he made it halfway across the room, three laser bolts vaporized his torso. The rest of him fell to the floor. His body smoked, smoldering from the damage done. The burning flesh smell made Anais gag.

The commander shook his head, lowering his weapon. He moved and kicked at his soldiers’ bodies, ensuring they were dead. He paid her no heed. Why would he? As he had said, she was property. As much as the two men had just frightened her, the worst might be yet to come.

“Eltu bless them. Lead them to the next life. Give them the reward for their service,” the commander said. He reached for a comm device on his belt, unhooking it, and speaking into its mic. “Ry’ik here. We have two dead in cargo bay four. Will need clean up and disposal.”

He stopped to look at her, frowned, and then spun on his heels and left again.

Anais sat there in shock for a long moment, staring at the dead bodies in front of her. She couldn’t believe what had just transpired. The pure disregard the commander had for his own men’s lives was almost more horrific than what they’d been about to do to her. The Sekarans were a cruel and terrible people. And she was going to be a slave to one of them.

She curled up on the floor and sobbed until no more tears would come.