THE PRIZE: BOOK TWO - RETRIBUTION (26 page)

“Mom! You have to eat.” Ellis shook her head.

“I could do with losing a few pounds.” She chuckled. “Living with you lot has made me soft.”

“Huh, tell that to Jimmy after you’ve thrown him around the training mat a few times. I don’t think he’d agree.”

“I’ve been away from the military life a while, so I need to get down to fighting weight.” Having eaten the protein bars before, it wasn’t much of a hardship for her, but she could see the look of distaste on a few faces. It wasn’t beef Wellington, but except for a few missing vitamins and minerals, humans could live on it, as could most humanoid species.

After the meal was over, Ellis went around the compartment and spoke to each of the groups, the girls having gathered, as humans are wont to do in situations like this. Now it was a question of getting them to work together. With nothing else to do, Ellis started exercising after clearing a space in the center of the cramped hold. She did a kata first to limber up and get her mind in the right place. Doing some of the exercises was a little difficult with the two foot chain between the cuffs, but she made do. It didn’t take long for Jenny to join her, and for once, she took it seriously. After that, they sparred; starting slow and slowly speeding up until it became a swirl of flashing hands and kicking feet. Water was the one thing the slavers hadn’t shorted them on, so there was sufficient for them to drink when they took a break.

“Where did you learn all that stuff?” one tall young woman asked.

“In the military and um, other places.”

“My name is Gwen… Military? We don’t have any military left.”

“On Earth, no. I was in the imperial military for a while.”

“What? I mean how?” Ellis shrugged.

“I joined just after the rebellion and went off world for a while.”

“Yeah, I heard that a few people had joined up with the Imperials. So what were you, a trooper or something?”

“She was a Sub Major.” Jenny put in.

“You… an officer! But you’re human.” Ellis shrugged as she wiped her face.

“Some humans became junior officers, not many.”

“She was in the Imperial Marines…”

“That will do, Jenny.” Ellis cut in. “I’m sure Gwen isn’t interested in that.” The look on Gwen’s face said different.

“Um… hey, I’m sorry I mouthed off back there. I didn’t mean any disrespect… Ma’am.” Ellis cocked an eyebrow at her as an idea occurred to her.

“I spent ten years working my way up the ranks, so I know a little about fighting. You want to get out of this shit hole?” Ellis winced inside, not wanted to expose Jenny to bad language, especially from her mother.

“Yeah, me and some others want to get out of here. You have a plan?”

“Not yet, and not until I know who’s with me and who I can trust.”

“You think any of us is going to tell this bunch of limp dick assholes about any escape plan?”

“First off, watch your language. There’s no need to talk dirty just because you can.” Gwen blushed slightly under the rebuke.

“Sorry, Ma’am.” Ellis waved it away.

“As the Marines say, keep it high and tight.”

“Yes, Ma’am. What do you want me to do?”

“Train with me for now and talk to your group. Let’s see who’s with us.”

“How long do you think it’ll be before we get wherever we’re going?”

“Several weeks unless I miss my guess. The edge of the main Empire is a long way from Earth.”

In all they trained for an hour with several others joining in a kata. To Ellis this wasn’t real exercise, but just a way to get them all acting together on command, and to work off some of their anger. After, cuddling up in a corner with Jenny, they talked about home, and what the others were doing right now.

“Mom. Do you think the slavers are watching us?” Ellis shook her head.

“I checked, but couldn’t find any working vid pickups. Why should they? This is all old hat to them. They have their routine and after a while it gets boring watching a bunch of helpless females.”

“What if one of them gets it into his head to come in and have some fun, or drag one of the girls out of here?”

“Doubt it. The Captain or boss wouldn’t put up with that. Too much risk of something going wrong, like one of the crew fancying one of the girls too much and causing trouble with the rest of the crew. There’s also the chance that one of the girls might do something stupid like trying to open an airlock, or damaging some critical equipment in an attempt to escape.” Ellis looked pensive for a moment. “Shit!” She muttered softly.

“Mom!”

“Sorry, dear. Force of habit.”

“So?”

“I just remembered. We and the slavers have a problem.” Ellis shook her head. “So will Penn… Dad if he comes after us.”

“What?”

“We don’t have any way of getting back to Earth.”

“Wait… what… if we can get a ship, or take this one.” Ellis shook her head and sighed softly.

“I need to tell you something. About what Richard and I did before we took you home.” She whispered the story to Jenny, including how they’d come to have an inlayed silver and gold platter for Sunday dinners and the two pure silver tankards with the imperial crest on them.

“So, without the Nav Buoys we can’t get home again?”

“Right, unless Richard can get Michael to break his rules.”

“Oh, you mean about not being able to give us any technology beyond what we can produce ourselves?”

“Right. He’d be as stuck as we are, unless he can figure a way around it.”

“Won’t any outbound ship have the information?”

“That’s true, but the moment they handshake with any imperial Nav Buoy the return route is wiped from their memory.”

“But… but… won’t the Imperials figure it out and kill the program?”

“Too late. It’s spread like a virus and keeps on spreading each time a ship asks for Nav directions. They’d have to resurvey the whole region of space to relocate Earth, and stop any interaction between the ship’s Nav computer and the Nav Buoys. Sooner or later the Imperials will figure out a way to counter the virus, but until then, neither they, the slavers, nor us are getting back to Earth any time soon.”

“So what do we do, Mom?”

“First things first. Let’s get out of this situation and we’ll work that out next.”

Once a week the shower came on at one end of the room, first the hot water, then the sanitizing liquid, then the hot rinse. The waste water was used to flush the toilet waste. They had nothing to dry themselves off with, but thankfully, the hold was warm so it didn’t take long for them to get dry again. At least the slavers wanted them reasonably clean by the time they arrived. By the third week, all the females were taking part in the exercises, doing the revised kata on command. They were nowhere near proficient or ready to get into any sort of fight, but that wasn’t the point. Ellis wanted them to act on command so if, and when the opportunity came they’d act. By the fifth week, two thirds of them were acting on command, and she thought, somewhat reliably. She would have liked to take a page out of Sun Tzu’s book on the Art of War and execute a couple of the girls as an example to the rest, as he’d done when training a group of females, but that might be going a little too far. Brow beating them wouldn’t help either and might in fact have the reverse effect. By the end of week eight she knew she had a core group of twenty girls who would act on command and she started teaching them how to disable and kill someone, even with their hands shackled. In one way that was good, as it gave them an instant garrote.

A subtle change in the engine vibration indicated they were dropping out of jump space followed by the usual momentary disorientation. Once past, the showers came on indicating they were nearing their destination, and without thinking about it, most of the girls took the opportunity to get cleaned up. Even so, the hold was getting ripe with too many people jammed into too small a space. Odd sounds transmitted through the hull followed by a loud thud as the ship docked with either another ship, or a space station telling her they had arrived wherever ‘here’ was. Either way they’d have to make their move soon, as once inside the confines of a proper holding cell their chances of escape diminished. After the shower Ellis walked around the hold and spoke softly to her core group, schooling them into the proper attitude for frightened slaves. Looking defiant or too eager would put the slavers on alert, so she emphasized the need to look submissive and beaten. A couple of the girls frowned hearing that, but grabbing two of them by the throat and banging their heads together drove the point home. An hour later the main hatch opened and two men with stun rods walked in, looking mean and arrogant. That was all the better from Ellis’ point of view. They expected to see frightened slaves huddling together, and that’s exactly what they saw.

“Alright you bitches get lined up and be quick about it.” One surly looking character shouted, waving the shock rod around. Even at this distance Ellis could tell he needed a bath among other things. An attitude adjustment was the other thing that came to mind. Ellis put on her meek, submissive face and shuffled over to get in line along with the rest. That put her a third of the way down the line, and the opportunity to see what was going to happen. This close to the other girls, she could smell the fear emanating from them, including Jenny. Ellis could well understand that seeing this wasn’t her first time in the hands of slavers.

“Stay calm, Jenny. Everything is going to be alright.”

“Yes, Mom.” Jenny shivered despite her reassuring words. All this brought back old memories, and Ellis hated the slavers for that if nothing else.

“You stay ready until I give the word, and then you let go of all that fear and anger on the closest dickhead.”

“Mom! That’s a swearword. If Dad heard one of us say that he’d paddle our rear ends.

Ellis laughed. “He’d probably paddle my rear end if he heard me say it as well.” Jenny giggled. “I can just see him trying to do that to you.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

The two men stood on each side of the hatchway and motioned the girls forward.

“Come on. We haven’t got all day to fuck around. Move it!” Even a slight touch of the shock rod was sufficient to get them moving, even if it wasn’t switched on. Ellis kept her head and eyes looking down, not wanting them to see the hatred in them.

They shuffled out, and down a short passageway and into another larger cabin where more men waited. This one was long and narrow so all of them could stand in one line. After they entered three more men came in, one pushing a cart with a stainless steel tray on top. Even without looking, Ellis knew what it contained. She’d seen it before. She shivered and pushed down on her urge to attack. This wasn’t the moment. In all there were eight men in the room, some armed with shock rods, the rest looking tough and surly. One or two had knives on their belts and those were the ones Ellis concentrated on. She didn’t really need them, but it would help if she could get her hold of them. Richard had taught her well in how to use knives in a fight, and having seen him take on the Thrakee in the pyramid she knew how effective they could be.

“Alright you lot, strip.” Hesitantly the girls complied as one of the men with a knife went down the line cutting clothes where needed. Ellis held onto herself as the man reached her, keeping her eyes down as he cut the arms and shoulder straps of her bra. A couple of the girls sank to the floor, sobbing in fear, not that they stayed that way as they were dragged to their feet and told to stand there, coupled with a lot of slapping until they complied. In all, Ellis saw the guards were sloppy and way too arrogant, but not unexpected. They’d done this so often they didn’t see the girls as a threat. Ten men holding fifty young women in place with nothing but fear and a few shock rods was stupid, but then again she’d never credited slavers as being intelligent.

“I can see we need to get a few of these bitches shaved.” The de facto leader laughed as he walked down the line. “But first off we need to get the back of their necks shaved. Get to it.” He called over his shoulder.

Ellis kept her head down and looked sideways seeing two men grab the first girl and force her to bend over. While one man held her the other shaved the back of her neck with an ultrasonic shaver. Ellis knew what was coming next, the implant. She shivered, knowing what that meant. Once the implant was attached to the base of the skull, the girl would be turned into a mindless robot, helpless to do anything but what she was ordered to do. Ellis had seen it before, even participated in the process herself with troopers convicted of capital crimes. They were turned into living robots, trapped inside their own skulls and nothing more than conscious observers to what happened to their bodies. For most it was a living nightmare of endless toil in the mines, or clearing up toxic waste. Any dirty work that ordinary slaves wouldn’t do. Their lives from then on were brutal and short. For the girl with implants it was a nightmare of endless sexual abuse in some whorehouse or worse, a torture house.

“Get ready, Jenny.” She whispered. Either way, Jenny would never suffer at the hands of these, or anyone else. If necessary she would kill Jenny before she let that happen again. The two men came to her next, one grabbing her by the hair as the other one walked behind her.

“Come on bitch; get your fucking head down.” Ellis resisted, hearing the first girl scream as two men held her while another jammed the implant into the back of her neck.

“I really hate it when someone calls me a bitch.” Ellis murmured.

“What did you say, cunt?” The man put his face right up to Ellis, and she could smell his foul breathe.

“NOW!” Ellis yelled as she snapped her head forward.

The blow caught him right on the bridge of his nose, snapping his head back as blood spurted out of his nostrils.

“Oh fuck!” was all he got to say before Ellis kicked him in the balls. The man behind her attempted to grab her as the rest of the girls exploded into action. Individually they weren’t that effective against powerful, grown men, but as a group they overpowered them, each going down in a screaming, kicking, clawing heap. Spinning round, Ellis caught the second man across the chin with her clenched hands, knocking him backward. She followed that up by wrapping the chain around his neck and jerked him forward. Now off balance it was simple to use his weight against him, and she slammed him into another man coming at her with a shock rod. As they went down, Ellis snapped the first mans neck before stamping on the throat of the other. As she un-wrapped the chain from around the dead man’s neck, another knife wielding man came at her, and even as he thrust towards her, she sidestepped and wrapped the chain around the wrist of his knife hand and dragged him around in a circle. Now off balance he couldn’t stop himself from spinning until Ellis slammed him head first into the bulkhead, smashing his skull. Grabbing the knife she turned and went for the man struggling with Jenny. She was holding her own for the moment but her strikes didn’t have the power to put him down. Ellis ended it by slitting his throat, screaming in rage as she did. Giving Jenny a quick kiss she turned and jumped into the melee of bodies, stabbing and cutting as she went. In some way she emulated Penn, slitting throats and stabbing quickly before going onto the next, never stopping to get into a fight, or give the other side time to get set. At last she stopped, panting for breath, her chest heaving, body was tingling from the adrenalin rush, eyes blazing with fury. Jenny looked at her, this naked, blood covered Valkyrie she called mother. There was nothing soft or gentle about her now, the hands that had caressed her hair and cheeks so gently were now covered in blood. If she thought she loved her before, now she did with all of her young heart. That was who she wanted to be when she grew up. She sobbed in pride and rushed over to wrap her arms around her, unmindful of the blood. Ellis wrapped her in her arms and hugged her tight.