One of the Fentons, sitting on his back with a knee between his shoulders, pulled Jai’s head back by his hair. “Not a Solof,” the woman said, examining his purple scales. “He’s Vangravian.”
“A dimari?” the Polvron said, his tone equal parts surprise and disdain. “Which of you is his master?”
“I am,” I said, not seeing any point in denying it.
The Polvron came around and got his face up in mine. I suppose he didn’t think we were much of a threat now, given that we were all unarmed and in cuffs. But he sneered as he took a look at me, then slapped a meaty hand over my visor and yankedit off. “The air is perfectly breathable,” he said. “And this should make you less inclined to blow a hole in the side of our ship. Take them off,” he snapped at the other guards, and the rest of my team promptly had their visors removed as well.
Then he stared me in the eye again, as he had at the start. “You better make sure your boy behaves from now on,” he said to me. “I’m running out of patience.”
I didn’t reply, nor did I look Jai’s way. When I’d first adopted Kade, he’d figured out very quickly what was an order and what wasn’t, and regardless of his attitude, I knew Jai was just as observant, and just as clever. I didn’t want to give him any hint that I agreed with the pirate’s order. Jai was free to do whatever he saw fit. Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about him picking a fight with the Anicrian. It had achieved nothing, and had only annoyed our captors more.
“Take them to the rear storage units,” the Polvron ordered the Fentons. “Make sure they’re locked up securely. Then track down that other group of the crew. I don’t want them roaming around my ship causing trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” the Fentons replied, then we were being led away, two Anicrians in front of us and two Fentons behind us.
The freighter was a massive ship, designed for the efficient interstellar transport of large volumes of cargo, and the walk to the storage facility was several hundred metres. I did my best to make note of any significant landmarks on the way, but the vast majority of it was bland, empty hallways, with occasional signs on doors to indicate what the rooms were for. The bulk of the ship was nothing more than storage holds, and I wondered why we were being taken to the particular one we were heading for. Perhaps they’d simply decided to keep all the captives together for convenience? Or was one part of the ship more secure than the rest? I’d never spent much time on freighters, so I knew relatively little about their layout.
But as the door slid open, revealing our new ‘jail’, I could immediately see why the pirates had chosen to house their captives here. In this part of the ship, there were a series of containment rooms, each with their own environmental controls. The large storage containers – about two metres wide and four metres long – were used to store any goods that needed particular environments that were different from the rest of the ship – cold storage for food, for example, or chemicals that needed to be kept frozen. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut, wondering whether they intended to freeze us to death.
“You, and you,” one of the Fentons said, gesturing to me and Jai. “Inside.” He opened the nearest room, which was currently empty, and shoved us both through the door, before locking it again. I immediately noticed that it was the same temperature as the rest of the ship, so presumably, there were no immediate plans to freeze us. Thank heavens for small favours.
There was a wide window at the front of the storage container, designed to allow the crew to monitor the goods inside without opening the door, and I took full advantage of it now, watching as Bryce and Carver were shoved into the crate opposite us. The next few crates seemed to be empty, but further down the row, I could see a few people – mostly humans and Solofs – who had also been taken captive. I couldn’t see all of them, but the ones I could see weren’t wearing military uniforms, so it was a good bet that these were some of the crew of the freighter.
Once we were secure, the two Anicrians left, and the two Fentons took a slow stroll up to the end of the row, then back down again. They had a brief discussion – we couldn’t hear what they were saying, thanks to the crate around us – but at the conclusion of it, one of them wandered off to guard the far end of the room, while one stayed near us.
I sighed. It was likely to be a long wait before we arrived at whatever our destination was, and I was feeling pretty shitty about having fallen into their trap. I sank down onto the floor at the rear of the crate, leaning against the wall. The movement was awkward, with my arms still secured behind my back, but I managed.
Jai gave me an odd look as he watched me sit down, then he glanced at the Fenton guarding the room again. He looked up at the ceiling, seeming to inspect each of the corners and the panel above the door. Looking for a way out, perhaps? Was he annoyed because I wasn’t doing more to try and escape?
“Something bothering you?” I asked.
But his response was not what I was expecting. “Can they hear us?” he asked, glancing at the ceiling again, and I realised he was looking for cameras or microphones. “Or see us? I mean, aside from through the glass.”
“Not likely,” I said. “These crates are used to transport cargo. The environmental controls are monitored from the bridge, and there’d be no reason for anyone to be watching stacks of boxes.”
Jai nodded, shooting another glare at the Fenton guard. Given his training, and his trauma, he was probably even less happy about being locked up than I was.
“We’re probably going to be okay,” I tried to reassure him. “Being locked up is no fun, I know. But given that they’re keeping us alive, they’ll most likely end up dumping us on some distant planet, once they’ve escaped from the Alliance and taken what they want from the ship. Then we’ll have to make our way home from there. It’s no picnic, but it’s still a hell of a lot better than being killed. Pirates usually try and stay away from murder. Even jumping between star systems, that calls up too much attention. And it’s not only the Alliance who would be pissed. It’s any of our trade partners as well. Too much trouble for a crew of grifters bouncing from wormhole to wormhole.”
In all honesty, my description of the pirates was probably setting the bar a bit too low. I’d seen plenty of half-baked plans from people whose ship was held together with string and duct tape, but these guys seemed both too organised and too well equipped to fit the usual description of pirates. And the fact that they’d attacked a ship this size, so close to an Alliance planet – albeit a backwater one – said they were fairly confident in their ability to get the job done.
Jai grudgingly came and sat down beside me, though he was still scowling. I considered asking him what he was thinking, but decided against it. I tried to avoid invading my dimari’s privacy any more than necessary, and I suspected I wouldn’t like anything he had to say. A scathing review of our failure was hardly what I needed to be hearing right at the moment.
We sat in silence for a few heavy minutes. Jai continued watching the guard, while I simply willed the time to pass. It could be hours or days before we reached our destination, and I wondered whether we’d be given any food or water, if it was the latter. And bathroom facilities might also become an issue, depending on how long we were locked up here. With the number of hostages they’d taken, marching us all to the toilets and back whenever we needed to go would be both a logistical nightmare and a significant threat to the pirates’ hold on security.
“I found out something on Saturday,” Jai said, out of the blue, and I’d been so lost in thought that I jumped as he spoke.
“Sorry,” he apologised, and the significance of the word struck me. A few days ago, Jai would have been doing his best to make life difficult, rather than apologising for minor inconveniences.
“It’s no problem,” I told him. “I’m just on edge. What did you find out?”
Jai looked over at me, seeming to assess me before answering. “That you did not buy me.”
I frowned. The wording of the statement sent a prickle of apprehension down my spine. Was I misunderstanding him, or did he actually mean that? “You mean that I wasn’t your intended master? I know. Kade already explained that.” I’d had a brief conversation with Jai on the subject over the weekend, though I hadn’t pressed him for his thoughts on the matter. I didn’t want to stress him too much when he was still dealing with the repercussions of his original trauma.
“That is correct, you were not the man who had me trained, who originally intended to buy me,” Jai agreed, and I relaxed for a moment… but then he continued. “But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, you did not buy me at all. The Alliance found me as abandoned cargo. Along with all the other dimari in my crate. That’s why it took so long for our masters to arrive – because you weren’t asking our designated masters to come and collect us. You werefindingpeople to become our masters.” At my flabbergasted expression, Jai explained, “Dax told me. Well, no, he didn’t tell me that, exactly. But he told me a bit about slavery being illegal in Alliance space, and about how he met his own master. And when I combined that with the way you’ve been behaving – not pushing me to have sex, treating me with kindness and patience – it was very obvious that you weren’t the one who’d had me trained, but that didn’t seem to go far enough. Not if slavery is entirely illegal in the Alliance. Which, according to my comm, it is,” he concluded, holding up his left arm as far as it would go, given the cuffs around his wrists. His comm was still strapped to it.
I fixated on the device for a moment. “Put your arm down,” I said, eyeing the guard through the window. He wasn’t paying any particular attention to us. “They didn’t take our comms. Andif they knew what a military comm was capable of, they would have done.”
