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Chapter Nine
Ree
Ordinarily I’d have been disgusted by such crude behavior, but the look on Nye’s face made me choke back a laugh. Seeing him struggle with his desperate desire to make Kaal pay for what he’d done while weighing the loss his pocketbook would suffer if he inflicted any injuries on the alien gave me a new appreciation for my fellow prisoner.
Maybe Kaal wasn’t as dumb as I thought. Despite our captive state he’d found a way to get revenge on the human for betraying him. Though it hadn’t hurt him, Nye had been humiliated in front of his men. The story would soon spread throughout the Federation’s troops. From now on, he’d be an object of ridicule. Everywhere he went he’d hear snickers and whispers behind his back.
I’m not sure what Nye would have done next if a tall, rail-thin figure hadn’t appeared in the doorway. A navy blue dress uniform hung from his gaunt frame.
“Warden Starn. Greetings. Commander Nye delivering the prisoners.” Nye kept his distance from the warden, probably hoping he could hide his urine-soaked clothing.
“Welcome, Commander. It isn’t often we have such a high-ranking officer escorting our new arrivals.” Starn nodded but made no attempt to shake hands. Though his words were polite, his manner held a hint of disdain. I suspected he’d arrived in time to witness Nye’s humiliation.
The warden stepped aside, ushering us inside the compound. “So... this is the infamous Aria DiMello.” His voice was low and surprisingly deep coming from such a scrawny chest. “I’ve heard about you,” he declared. “The rebel heroine. The brave soldier they say will step up to take her father’s place leading the Insurrection. We’ll see how well you leadmyband of miscreants.”
He sized me up while I did the same to him. Starn’s face was as thin as his body, with hollow cheeks, a sharp nose, and narrow lips that curved downward, giving him a perpetual scowl. His skin bore a grayish pallor. Not surprising, given the conditions on the asteroid. Burning gases coming from the fissures created a dark cloud hovering over the artificial atmosphere, blocking out most of the light from any solar system the asteroid passed.
Nye said the warden ran a profitable gambling enterprise betting on the lifespans of his prisoners. One look around told me Starn’s greed must be boundless. No amount of money would make me agree to accept a post on this hellhole.
Then it struck me. Maybe greed alone didn’t keep him here. The posting may have been as much a punishment for Starn as it was for his prisoners.
Our eyes met. Despite the stifling heat, a shiver ran up my spine. I revised my theory. Maybe it wasn’t greed or bad conduct that put Starn here. Something in his cold eyes told me he had an appetite for cruelty. One he could satisfy here without fear of repercussion. No one would prosecute him if a prisoner died or was injured. That was expected on Zibaru.
He gave me a slow once-over from head to toe, lingering on my breasts, then on my pussy, as though he could see right through my clothes. His eyes lit up with a lecherous gleam.
I had a feeling the danger I faced from Warden Starn was worse than from any of his prisoners.
He motioned to two of the helmeted guards. “Take her to the medical block. She’s been on an uninhabited, primitive world for months—and then with this filthy savage. Gods know what diseases or parasites she may have picked up. I want her thoroughly cleansed before I get near her. And warn that beast Rigo that he’s not to sample the goods.”
“Yes, sir.” They led me away. Behind us, I heard Starn make a comment that was met with a round of raucous laughter.
The helmets had a reflective plate covering the faces of the guards, making it impossible to establish eye contact or forge any kind of personal connection with them. So as they marched me along, I examined my surroundings.
The complex was built against a sheer cliff several hundred feet high that towered over it on one end. A thick stone wall rimmed the other three sides of the compound, with only the one doorway serving as entrance and exit, as far as I could tell. A warren of shacks backed up to the wall, built of scrap metal and piles of rubble. Some of them were studded with tips from the vicious stone spikes, facing outward so no one could get too close.
At the far end of the compound a row of windowless buildings built of the same gray stone as the wall flanked the lower portion of the cliff. A raised platform stood in front of them. The shacks formed a ragged half-circle around the platform, with a large open area in the center.
The rocky surface of the asteroid served as the floor of the compound. Here and there, more flame-spouting fissures provided an eerie reddish light. Dark figures lurked around the shacks, barely discernable in the perpetual gloom. As I walked by them, I heard grunts and low murmurs.
The farther we went into the compound, the more shadowy figures I saw. They began to form a band behind us, keeping their distance but following. The sounds they were making got louder. Raw, animal sounds. The kind of sounds you hear when a man is fucking you hard and rough. Sounds he makes right before he shoots his cum.
I walked faster, afraid the guards might abandon me to the ragged mob trailing us. When we neared the platform, the noise level rose even higher. I saw a handful of wooden structures atop the platform. Benches, upright posts, a t-shaped cross. All with ropes and manacles attached to them.
The crowd stopped in the clearing in front of the platform. We went on around one side of it to a building at the end of the row. One of the guards used a palm scan to unlock the steel door on the building and we went inside. Once the door closed behind us, the sounds from the crowd faded to a menacing low hum, like a swarm of angry wasps just before they attack.
Ahead of me, flickering torches lit by the same burning gases spouting from the fissures in the ground provided dim light to a long corridor chiseled from solid rock. It looked like the entrance to hell.
My footsteps dragged as they prodded me down the passageway. The guards stopped at a thick wooden door in the side wall. One of them knocked and the door opened. I half expected to see the warden appear dressed in a red cape, sporting horns and a forked tail.
Instead, a giant of a man wearing a dull brown one-piece garment barely large enough to cover his massive frame stood inside the doorway. Tattoos covered his bald head, a maze of geometric figures connected here and there by jagged lines. His dark brown eyes were vacant and his arms hung loosely by his sides.
The guard on my right pulled me forward. “The boss wants this one cleansed.”
The giant shuffled forward and looked me up and down. His eyes lit up and he gave the guard a childlike smile, showing gaps where several of his front teeth should have been. His nose was crooked, as though it had been broken and poorly reset. I looked closer at his head and realized some of the jagged lines on his head were actually scars.
“You brought me a fresh one!” He sounded positively gleeful.
