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Chapter Two

Janad looked around the ship at her fellow passengers. Passengers, ha! They were prisoners; that's what they were. These idiots may have bought the bill of goods the priests sold them, but Janad wasn't about to. She might not be all that bright, but she most certainly knew the difference between when she wanted to do something and when she was forced to do it.

The priests crawled out of their temples and gave long speeches about civic duty and everyone doing their part. A few days later armed aliens marched into the village bearing gifts and started picking and choosing all the best warriors. They loaded them into a box from which they vanished, and when they reappeared they were on a man-made space station where they were poked, prodded and injected and herded into starships like common livestock. The aliens explained that they were being transferred to another planet to fight and die in another people's war – whether they liked it or not. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they weren't making an informed decision; they were slaves.

The Reliance had traded goods with her planet for generations, and now they were trading for slaves. She hoped the priests had at least traded them for something that would help the people of her village and not just more baubles for them to horde in their temples

Janad didn't want to be a slave. She didn't care that they called it civic duty or promised financial gain for her clan members back on her home planet; she'd wanted no part of it. She was a hunter, a warrior, and she wasn't used to confined places. She wasn't even really used to walls.

They hadn't left them much choice. The aliens chose you, the priests blessed you, and you got into the box or they shot you with a weapon that spit light and bored right through your body. There was no escape, at least not realistically.

They were the chosen, promised by the priests a destiny of greatness, and so they sat here in this ship waiting to land on a world they knew nothing about. About to be forced to fight a battle that wasn't theirs. To die on a strange world for the glory of an alien power.

Look at the fools smiling and laughing. They're too stupid to realize the implications. So what if our planet isn't the most happening place in the galaxy? Who cares if we're always fighting amongst ourselves and we spend all the time we aren't fighting working? At least it's home. You just don't leave home without a fight.

Of course her attitude had done nothing except get her shackled to the wall of the ship while the rest of the "passengers" were left to roam freely.

Here he came again – the man she had taken to calling Shit-Head. She wished now that her mother hadn't forced her to learn the Reliance tongue in school. She was sure that it was one of the reasons she had been chosen as a slave. Besides, it meant that she could tell what the drooling bastard was saying.

He walked over smiling and showing a mouth full of jagged teeth in his yellow head.

"So, how's it going my little firebrand?"

"I'm just fine, Shit-Head," she spat back.

He laughed at her accent and the way she pronounced Reliance words. "You're a wild lot on Beta 4. Just what the Reliance needs to fight RJ and her band of rabble-rousers. Put them back in their place. You should relax a little. Don't you realize what you're being offered? You'll be a Reliance soldier with all the privileges that has to offer, and you don't even have to go through the ranks. It's quite an honor."

"Go use your breath on some of those idiots. Don't waste your speech on me, Shit-Head. I know what we are to you, and I know what our reward will be," Janad said. "If you get in my face again, I'll bite your nose off."

He frowned and then laughed hatefully. He ran his finger carefully down her face as if daring her to bite him. She tried and he jerked his hand quickly away.

"If you don't start singing a different tune before we get to Earth, you will be terminated," he informed her. "And it would be a terrible shame if I didn't get to fuck you at least once while you were still alive."

He thrust his hips in such a manner that she learned what "fuck" meant. It didn't take a genius to figure out what "terminated" meant, either.

"And if I'm not killed as soon as we land, I'll be sent to the front lines of your war zone, where I'll be killed. We're expendable bodies. I am a warrior; I know what you will do with us. You will send us in first to knock down their numbers before you send in your own people," Janad said. He gave her a startled look. "We're not all stupid. So save your lies for those of my people who believe the priests' lies, and kill me now if it pleases you. If you don't kill me now, I shall surely kill you first chance I get, and my people . . . You may think we are all just stupid animals, but we are not stupid animals. It is only a matter of time till they figure out what I already know. We do not like to be tricked. Turn your backs on us, and you will find that you have two enemies instead of one."

His superior called for him, and he gave her an angry look and walked away.

She felt smug for a few seconds, but her triumphant feeling didn't last long. Shackled to the ship wall with no prospects for escape, her words sounded hollow even to herself. She was doomed; they only took the shackles off to let her go to the bathroom, and even then two armed guards accompanied her. She knew she was being made an example of, and as such any attempt on her part to escape would be met with immediate weapon fire. Their treatment of her made the others sure that they wanted to behave themselves, and if they killed her so much the better. She was nothing more than product to the Reliance, and expendable product at that.

Suddenly Janad grew impatient with herself. She was giving up too easy. She was a hunter a warrior of the clan of Nond, village of Ducont, and nothing was impossible. Except . . .

If she got away, where would she go? The ship was huge; surely she could find somewhere to hide. She relaxed and started to form a plan.

* * *

She hollered till Shit-Head and another man came to take her to the bathroom. As the shackles came off she hit Shit-Head in the face with her fist. Then she spun, hitting his friend with a roundhouse kick in the knee joint that took him down. She took off at a dead run for the door. As laser fire struck all around her she ducked under the two guards who had run into the doorway, rolled across the floor and rose into a crouch. Quickly she checked the hall in both directions before she jumped to her feet and started running. A stray shot hit one of the guards who had run into the doorway, and they were all screaming at each other over whose fault it was, giving her a few seconds when their attention was everywhere but on her. She used the opportunity to run down the hallway she had entered. She had no idea where the hall went, but at least it was away from the angry guards who were now chasing her.

Somewhere someone turned on a siren; she had never heard anything like it before, but she knew it meant trouble for her. Knew that the sound was alerting more guards that she had escaped. She had to find a place to hide, and she had to find it quick. But the ship was not like the forest around her home, and hiding places were few and far between. She saw an open door and ran into a room filled with bunks. The ceiling was made of tiles, and Janad realized on examination that some of these opened. She saw one that looked loose, jumped up shoving it through easily. She hung onto the edge only a moment before she pulled herself up into the space and closed the tile. Just in time – a troop of guards ran past below her.

The space was small, only about two feet tall and four feet wide. The length of it was filled with service cables and junction boxes, and was so long she couldn't make out the end. To make matter worse, the tiles were made of some flimsy material that wouldn't support her weight, so she was forced to straddle the tiles and crouch on the thin metal braces the tiles set in to keep from falling through the ceiling. It certainly wasn't the most comfortable hiding place she had ever found. It was small, and the dust made her head hurt, but it would have to do till she could find something bigger.

She smiled as she looked at her surroundings. It wasn't the forests she was used to, but it was a forest of sorts. As long as she kept her wits about her she could stay alive. Maybe she could even get back to her planet and try to tell the others what was really happening. Of course she wasn't sure how they were going to stop the Reliance.

* * *

Within a few days she knew the guards' patterns, and she could get around the ship with little or no problem. She couldn't read their language, but there were pictures beside the words that were easily read. Not too hard to figure out which areas were restricted or dangerous. No problem finding bathrooms or the kitchen. She sneaked food, went to the bathroom whenever she needed, and she was only nearly caught once. Janad was actually enjoying herself; in a strange way this was the most exciting time of her life.

Then one day there was a lot of noise followed by some jerking that almost knocked her off her perch in the service area. Then the ship was still. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew they had stopped.

She watched from a hole she had drilled in a tile with a piece of wire as first her people and then the Reliance personnel left the ship. Hours later, having heard no further signs of life, she was sure that she was alone. She came out of hiding slowly and carefully and started to check out the ship, fearing a trap. With any luck they'd take this ship back to her planet with her stowed away on board. She'd sneak off the ship into the vanishing box, and once on the surface of her planet she would warn her people of the Reliance's plan.

Of course the real problem was that her people already knew about the Reliance's plans and were more than willing to go along with them because the priests had convinced them that they were performing the will of their God. Which of course they were because this is what he had said he wanted them to do. Janad wasn't at all sure that their God was really any sort of god at all. Of course she couldn't tell her people this, or they'd rise up and kill her as a blasphemer. Perhaps she was naive to think she could save her people. Perhaps she had better worry only about getting off this damn ship and back on her own planet. Perhaps she had better make saving her own ass the priority.

She found food and water, and had an entire ship to explore. It truly seemed that all she had to do was play the waiting game, and then the metal rolling things appeared. She saw one coming from the end of the hall and ducked into cover just in the nick of time.

She wasn't really sure what it was, but she gathered from its movements that it was, like herself, a hunter. It was box shaped and rolled on wheels. It also had metal arms and hands that looked more like claws. She had no doubt it could do some real damage if it got a hold of you.

Her village, in fact her whole planet, was primitive in many respects, but they'd all seen the space ships, and they'd seen the Reliance equipment. She knew what a machine was. She didn't know how it worked, but she knew what it was.

This one was a hunter that didn't need to sleep or eat. It was much harder to get around the metal rolling things than it had been to sneak around the Reliance soldiers.

The soldiers had given up even looking for her after a few hours, apparently deciding that as long as she wasn't doing any harm, hunting for her was simply more trouble than it was worth.

Not so the metal rolling things. They were hateful and relentless. She became convinced that they somehow knew she was on the ship and looked for her constantly.

It had ceased to be fun.

She lost track of time because she got very little sleep. What sleep she did get was filled with horrible nightmares. She was fortunate that the clumsy metal boxes, like most machines, made noise when they moved. It was the only warning she got. In her efforts to stay out of the claws of her metal demons she went all over the ship. She even tried to get off, but the doors would not open, and when she punched the buttons the metal things immediately came to where she was, and she was running for her life yet again.

She began to believe that she would never leave the ship. At least not alive.

 

 

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