Chapter 3
Vessa
Vessa was shoved down on an oddly carpeted floor. Rugs and other fabric clashed discordantly, a quilt of stolen things from around the universe. Very raider-chic. After days of dragging her across the wintery wasteland, they’d reached their destination—the horde’s encampment.
When she’d come to, her hands were bound by maglock cuffs. Made with bresanium magnets, once locked and drawn together, they were impossible to get out of. The inner mechanism had to be activated from an outside device to unlock them.
Vessa was good, but not break-out-of-the-unbreakable good.
Gor Lug and the remnants of his raiding party crowded into the sturdy tent to present their stolen goods to their horde leader. Vessa’s awareness extended only as far as her current face-to-carpet positioning and the heat that filled the room, but that was all they had talked about the last day.
“Her?” the ogg asked some inordinate amount of time later. His voice was exceptionally grating.
“Make good slave," Gor Lug said. “Strong. I capture her”—Bargo, Gor Lug’s rival, protested at this—“and want for prize, Ogg.”
The brute hauled her to her knees before his horde leader.
The room spun. After days without water and food, all while being subjected to the Orcru’s brutality and the harsh elements, Vessa was not her best self.
The concussion didn’t help matters, either.
As she blinked rapidly, the room finally came into focus.
All the stolen goods from the wreck sat before the horde leader.
Her raze sword and plasma dirk were suspiciously absent, though.
The ogg was taller than the others by a good head, and thicker.
His large stomach hung over his coverings—a sign of power for the Orcru.
Red cuffs that she was certain were made of dyed hair were tied around his upper arm.
Huge, browning tusks hung over his lips.
They were in contrast with the small, dark eyes set close together in his wide face.
Vessa sighed. Was it too much of a request to be captured by hot aliens for once?
The ogg stood from his saddle-shaped chair.
Her focus caught on the familiarity of it.
His throne was a very distinct Sewarian design.
A laugh bubbled out of her throat, bringing the looming form of the horde leader up short.
Something about his shifting gaze only added to her hysteria.
He was probably used to his captives crying and begging all while pissing themselves.
Though she lived to disappoint, this was wholly uncontrollable—she was losing it. Laughter racked her sore body even as Gor Lug pushed her forward, knocking her down. Her ribs creaked in warning as he pressed down on her with his foot until she could do nothing but wheeze.
“What?” the horde leader growled in the universal tongue. At the same time, Gor Lug’s disgusting foot eased off her.
Vessa struggled to get herself on her knees again, drinking in lungfuls of air. “Your throne,” she wheezed, “is a gods damn Sewarian birthing pod.”
The ogg blinked. His mouth hung agape in confusion.
“You know, the Sewar? Ungodly amount of tentacles?” She gestured to his unfortunate throne. “You probably butchered them and stole this, but they use it when giving birth and to keep the eggs warmed beneath them. They’re passed down through generations.”
The horde leader spluttered and snorted before making a gesture with his meaty fists that was plainly a command. “Give to horde tomorrow when war party returns,” the ogg said to the others. “Soon she no laugh.”
She was hoisted up and dragged back into the cold.
Vessa’s predicament wasn’t ideal.
Her arms were stretched overhead with the wrist cuffs stuck to a bresanium anchor they had fitted to a pole. Five other identical poles filled the tent. The floor around each was stained with various kinds and shades of blood. The space as a whole held that specific odor of fear and death.
A torture tent of doom, then.
She was forced to stand on her tiptoes because when Gor Lug hung her up, he’d lifted her to do it. Her shoulders felt like they were being wrenched from their sockets, and her hips screamed like they were trying to be free of her legs. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Though she’d fought the moment they pulled her out of the ogg’s tent, killing at least one with a couple well-aimed kicks, they’d managed to put another set of maglocks around her ankles.
She was well and truly fucked.
With every passing minute, her chances of being able to escape and fight her way out dwindled.
Pits, by the time they came for her, she could be dead from hypothermia.
There was no great heater in this tent like in the ogg’s, and though the fabric was thick and sturdy, it did little to keep the cold at bay.
Damn her Seken weakness. Her people weren’t made for frigid weather.
She wasn’t certain anyone was made for this climate besides the Orcru. It wasn’t cold, it was deadly.
Find the ship on the uninhabited planet. Get the valuable items from its safe. Quick and easy, they’d said. Back in no time.
So much for that.
Hours felt like a small eternity as each second that passed became a greater agony. She couldn’t be certain she still had all her toes because she couldn’t feel them. Were they going to leave her in here to freeze to death?
Just then, as if she had summoned something from the Pits, the weighted tent flap drew back.
She shivered against the biting wind that was let in.
The singular helo-lamp wasn’t bright enough to light the entry.
Two pinprick eyes shone at the dark threshold, and if she were a weaker woman, it would be a terrifying vision.
“Don’t let all the cold in,” she reprimanded.
The Orcru stepped inside, his form filling the entrance. Gor Lug. In one hand he held a crude dagger, and in the other a worn leather sack.
She sighed. This didn’t bode well. “Didn’t we spend enough time together? I was really hoping I’d never have to see your hideous face again. Or smell you.”
“Ogg Braqq says you prize for horde,” he said as he approached her slowly. His gaze shifted between her and the entrance as his face contorted. “But Gor Lug the Vicious find. And if I want, I take.”
Oh, fuck no.
He sat the leather sack down at her feet. From her position, she couldn’t see what he was doing or what was held inside of the bag. Her mind flitted through possible scenarios. None were pleasant and almost all of them ended up with her dead.
A clicking sound came from below her, and before she could decipher what it was, her ankles came loose from their cuffs. Jolts of pain ricocheted through her body as she lost her balance.
Gor Lug stood up and snatched Vessa hard, wrenching her lower half toward him. While trying to save her abused shoulders, she brought her knee up hard and fast. It slammed into the underside of his meaty chin. The clack of his teeth echoed in the tent.
He pressed into her, pinning her to the pole with his weight. He lowered his lumpy face to hers. “Will stuff prize, split open,” he snarled through grunts. “Break in for clan.”
She turned her face away as spittle landed on her cheek and his rotten breath choked her. Vessa spit in his face in turn.
“Break in? I bet you can’t even see your dick when you sneeze.” She wasn’t sure how she was going to get out of this situation, but she knew one thing for certain: she wasn’t going to be touched by any of these foul creatures.
“What doing?”
Vessa jerked her head toward the entrance to find Bargo there, his face twisted with anger. She’d watched the domination games between these two play out like a bad soap opera.
“I find, I take,” Gor Lug asserted as he eyed her suit.
Thank gods she had spent an inordinate amount of money on this winter suit. It might do little against the cold here, but it was also some of the highest-grade light armor on the market.
Bargo beat a fist against his chest. “My club, my victory,” he claimed.
Vessa narrowed her eyes. “So it was you that hit me in the back of the head? Coward.”
The brute seemed unfazed by the accusation.
Orcru had very little in the way of code to live by, especially the raiders.
Honor and loyalty weren’t a part of their ideology.
Only the war Orcru, the slightly more intelligent and battle hardened, might hold such values.
For the others, as long as the ogg remained strong, they could function as a cohesive horde. Usually.
“You take when I finish,” Gor Lug offered.
Bargo snorted aggressively and stomped toward them. Two more Orcru slipped into the tent behind him—his guard dogs.
Her raze sword swung wildly from a makeshift sheath at Bargo’s side, catching her attention. “I get first!” he roared. He raised his club and brought it down across Gor Lug’s back before he could react to block it.
Gor Lug, still holding her lower half, was knocked sideways.
She was only saved from being ripped in half by Bargo grabbing her and wrenching her toward him.
But one of her legs was freed. She commanded it to move.
To kick. To fight. After the third attempt in which her numb leg only twitched, she managed enough willpower to kick Bargo in his face.
Which did nothing but piss him off. He roared, but Gor Lug grabbed her other leg before he could act on his anger. “My prize,” he growled.
“Release me and I’ll show you how much of a fucking prize I am,” Vessa hissed.
They jerked her back and forth like she was nothing but a doll. She was trying to simultaneously free herself from them and resist one of her legs being pulled too far in one direction when they both paused with cut-off snarls. The guards backed away from the entrance warily.
Vessa froze. What was it they heard?
Her heart pounded. A shift occurred like a forest falling silent.
Then something came barreling through the entrance. The gray-white form skidded across the floor. Vessa followed its path until the bleeding Orcru crashed into the first pole.
The flap opened. With lethal ease, someone else entered.
And they were holding her plasma dirk.