Indentured Bride by Yamila ‘Yaoimila’ Abraham
Cruel alien masters
have oppressed Tabitha for the last ten years.
An Alliance observer discovers that she’s been
experimented on and pulls her from the slave colony. She’s going to be granted the privilege of
becoming an indentured bride.
Tabitha doesn’t see
her new assignment as a privilege. Her
duties seem pretty clear cut, and she knows what Hax-Rah aliens are like. The last thing she wants is to be stranded on
a moon with one.
Hex-Lord Jaxil took
an isolated mission for a reason, and he never asked for a bride.
A riveting and
scintillating sci-fi romance novella by the author of Bride of the Keil
Warriors!
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Excerpt ~
Tabitha cut the ridge of a saccus
nut with her laser and then waited for her vision to stop blurring. She separated the shell as carefully as she
could with her trembling fingers. Then
she tried to nudge free the malleable core.
This is when things started going dark.
She closed her eyes and rocked gently in her seat. If she tried to keep working she’d rupture
the core. She had to wait until the room
stopped spinning.
“We are very concerned about this
slave,” a robot said. Its tinny voice
sounded as though it came from the other end of a tunnel.
“This one was getting gene
therapy.” This was her foreman Merit,
and that meant the cruel alien was right beside her. Tabitha wondered why she wasn’t getting
zapped with a tr’sark, the shock sticks all her masters wielded. Then it occurred to her to wonder why she’d
heard a robot.
“Experiments on slaves are
prohibited,” the robot said.
Tabitha forced her bleary eyes to
fix on it. The unit was thick and black,
as though made from cast-iron. One large
antenna was on its boxy head. Its limbs
were thick rods with visible wires and hoses.
“This was done prior to the
treaty,” Merit said. Tabitha looked at
her next. Her foreman was a female Hax-Rah,
with red and purple hues on her skin.
She had an overbite that made her canines stick out from her top
lip. All the slaves in Tabitha’s block
called the homely woman ‘Walrus’.
The robot leaned closer to examine
Tabitha with its long eye-slot. “Are you
saying this slave is still suffering the effects of your experiments three
months after you ceased performing them?”
“Yes,” Merit said.
Bullshit. She’d been given an injection of something
that burned as it seeped into her arm that very morning.
“Slave, when did the Hax-Rah last
conduct their experiments on you?”
“I don’t remember,” Tabitha
said. The words were spat out quickly
since hesitation would likely be a punishable offense. She glowered at the metal thing with her
fading vision. Who the fuck are you,
anyway?
Merit grinned. “She doesn’t remember because it was so long
ago. Isn’t that right, slave?”
“Yes, serat.” This time she stumbled with her
affirmation. She nearly fainted onto her
work station but managed to catch her own lolling head as it sank. What the fuck had they done to her? It had never been this severe before.
“She requires medical treatment,”
the robot said.
“She’ll be fine in a day.”
“The treaty requires you to provide
all slaves with adequate care when they are unwell.”
What treaty?
“She just needs rest. Isn’t that right, slave?”
“Yes, serat.”
“You are dismissed from your
workstation. Return to your bunk.”
Damn it. Would she be punished for getting to leave
work early? Merit was probably going to
give her a fire-lash the second this robot—whoever he was—left the compound.
She braced herself on her metal
table and tried to stand. Her eyes
widened. There was no strength in her
legs. The room was still spinning and
the edges of her vision were growing dark.
She saw Merit sneering at her with one fang fully visible. This got her to try to walk, to obey her
master’s order, but her foot wouldn’t lift all the way. She stumbled and time felt as though it grew
slow. The rest of her vision filled with
darkness. The last thing she saw was the
concrete floor lifting toward her face.
* * *
Tabitha woke on a mattress far too
comfortable to be her bunk in the slave barracks. She looked around enough to see that she was
in a hospital bed and had an IV in her arm.
This wasn’t the medic station in the slave compound; there was only a
steel table there, not a bed. She was
still on Earth, however. The sheets,
curtains, and neutral paint colors on the walls had a pre-invasion feel. That was all she was able to surmise. When she closed her eyes she drifted back
into semi-unconsciousness.
The war with the Hax-Rah had been
short, not even a year’s worth of fighting.
She was sixteen when it all started, and Troy Bennett, the love of her
life, was seventeen. Troy
had protected her like an older brother at the foster home where they both
lived. When they grew older their
feelings changed, evolved, and love came naturally. The bond they’d formed was so strong they
both knew they’d be spending their lives together. They would become family, and in turn, replace
the families that had discarded them.
“Are you awake, Ms. Riley?” She registered the robot’s voice somewhere
past her delirium.
“Mm-hm.” This time she couldn’t get her eyes to open.
She and Troy
never spoke about the future, but it was certain to them both. They were able to heal from their rocky pasts
together and then were able find joy through each other. He was her first time and she was his. The tenderness he showed her was something
she’d remember when she felt at her lowest.
“Your body rejected a toxin you
were injected with one day ago. It is
being purged from you, and your fluids replenished. You should recover speedily.”
Troy
volunteered to be part of the ground effort at their nearest military
base. He was underage, but in the
Reserves. He felt it his duty to help
fight the invaders. There was supposed
to be very little risk to his life. The
base was only monitoring the situation in space. They could launch bombs, but that was a last
resort.
“I am Diplomo. The Alliance
sent robots like me to ensure that the Hax-Rah do not abuse their slaves. This was included in the terms of a treaty we
signed to end fighting between the Alliance
worlds and the Hax-Rah Empire.
Mistreatment of slaves is no longer allowed.”
All the news agencies reported that
help from Earth’s allies was almost there.
The Hax-Rah wouldn’t get past the atmosphere perimeter.
“There will be no more
torture. We are monitoring them
now. Every slave compound and Hax-Rah
outpost now has Diplomos to ensure there is no further mistreatment of slaves.”
But no one came to Earth’s
rescue. The Hax-Rah descended into their
cities and rounded up everyone with robot soldiers. Months later, after she was already locked
into the hopeless routine of an overworked slave, she learned that all Earth
soldiers who dared to stand against them had been executed.
“You will be transferred to another slave
compound or to a Hax-Rah outpost.”
Troy
had been killed by the invaders. After
learning this, her true despair began. She’d
clung to a thin shred of hope until then. Even if their world was enslaved she could
still find happiness if she was with him.
“Do you have any preference on
where you wish to go, Ms. Riley? I seek
to grant you every consideration after what you’ve endured.”
Troy
was dead. There was no hope left in the
world. No joy.
No love.
“Tell me what you wish, Ms. Riley.”
“I want to be with my love.” She heard herself say it, but then wondered
if she just dreamed that she had spoken.
“Love?” the robot said.
“I want…love.” She began to fade midway through the
sentence. Silence followed long enough
for her to drift back toward the deeper waters of her delirium.
“Oh, I see.” The robot’s voice had an echo. “Yes.
Very good. I will make
arrangements for you to become a war concubine.”
War…concu…?
There was an inkling of a strong
reaction, but in her delirium she thought she’d be punished if she objected out
loud. Ten years of tr’sark zaps, sleep
deprivation, and browbeating had caused a defensive wall to build inside
her. It remained steadfast, even when
her mind was filled with fog.
Unconsciousness was tugging at her brain, making things go murky every other
second. She finally relinquished herself
to its pull.
* * *
When she next woke everything was
sharp in her mind.
She sat up in the hospital bed and
pieced everything together. Apparently
the Hax-Rah had signed a treaty that prevented them from torturing their
slaves. A treaty with the Alliance…that’s
what he’d said. This had to be the
same Alliance that had promised to
send them help ten years ago. Why didn’t
they just liberate them?
She placed her forehead in her hand
and put that thought aside. The fog in
her mind had cleared, but she had a throbbing headache. The robot had something else that was like an
itch deep inside her brain.
She stiffened.
War concubine.
That’s what the robot had said
right? Or had she just dreamed it?
No.
She was talking about Troy
and he’d misunderstood. He thought he
was giving her what she wanted.
Her brow pinched as she tried to
think things through. Normally getting
out of the slave compound would be something to celebrate. She’d been turned into a machine by cruel
masters wielding those insidious tr’sarks.
Even when she was able to avoid punishment, they worked her seventeen
hours a day and gave her and all the other slaves a single meal of powdery mush
and then a single opportunity to take water at communal fountain. She could never slake her thirst fully
because the crime of needing to leave her station for the bathroom was a
tr’sark burn on the bottom of her foot.
Thinking of it all now, with her
mind well rested for the first times in years, made her shudder. Nothing could be worse than the hell she’d
endured for the last ten years, right?
Except rape. Rape would be worse.
Oh, God.
Later in the day, after she’d eaten
rehydrated vegetables and managed to get up and walk around, a robot and a
wizened Hax-Rah man entered the room. He
had cruel pale yellow eyes surrounded by deep wrinkles. His coloration was the usual reddish-purple,
but with some yellowing on his forehead, likely from age. He was still gigantic, standing well over six
feet with shoulders as wide as car tires.
The alien man stood over her bed a
moment staring at her. The robot flanked
the opposite side of her bed.
“You volunteered to be a war
concubine, correct?”
Tabitha’s throat grew tight. I was delirious. I don’t even know what that is. I never volunteered for anything.
No.
Slaves who sniveled were always tortured the worst.
Still…
“No, serat.”
“Serat is the female term!” He barked the admonishment while sending out
a dot of spittle. “You will call me, hith.”
“No, hith.” All her masters had been women thus far. She presumed that was because the men were
out conquering worlds for their empire.
“What do you mean, no? Diplomo said you should be granted the
opportunity to switch from slave to indentured servant. That’s a war concubine. It’s the only indenturement offered to your
people in the treaty.”
Tabitha blinked at him. Indentured servant, if he was using the
archaic term correctly, was something she’d studied in a history class long
ago. It had insidious connotations in
her own country’s history. This was
probably no different, but she had to ask…
“I’ll be set free eventually?”
He gave her a look of incredulous
anger. “Of course not. Where would you go? There’s no notion of freedom for humans. You were rightfully conquered and we have no
duty to emancipate any human for any reason.”
She stared at him.
After a moment he lifted his nose
toward the wall beside him. “An
indentured war concubine can be taken as a bride by her master after he feels
she’s served as concubine for an adequate amount of time. It’s his right to decide how long that time
must be. Once taken as a bride you would
still remain property of the Empire, but solely under the jurisdiction of your
master. His superiors could not remove
you from him.”
Oh.
They were offering her absolutely
nothing, just as she’d first presumed.
The alien set his acrimonious gaze
back on her. “The Alliance
demanded special consideration for slaves who would performing sexual
tasks. We granted it.”
Tabitha resisted cringing. Displays of derision always resulted in a fast
tr’sark burn on the cheek.
“I didn’t understand what I was
agreeing to, hith.”
He tipped back his head with a
malevolent grin. “Didn’t understand,
hm? Is that it now? You think you can change your mind whenever
it suits you? Forget it you little di’tak! Arrangements have already been made.”
Tabitha instinctively braced
herself for a burn. It had to be
coming. She’d committed the worst crime
a slave could—she’s shown them defiance.
“Ms. Riley,” the robot said, “what
is it that concerns you about your transfer?”
Tabitha swallowed down a heavy lump
and turned toward him. His voice,
although tinny and sometimes fluctuating in an unnatural way, was far kinder
than that of the alien.
“I don’t want to be raped.”
The alien gave a laugh and a scoff.
“You don’t have to concern yourself
with that. I am Diplomo. I will be accompanying you to ensure you’re
not mistreated.”
Her eyes widened. The robot apparently mistook this as
confusion.
“I am a different Diplomo than the
robot who was conferring with you before.”
“You’re going to protect me?” She didn’t know why, but the prospect was
causing tearful emotion to rise in her chest.
“Yes, Ms. Riley.”
She blinked and tears ran down her
cheeks.
“You still have to fuck your master,
you annoying di’tak,” the alien said.
“The rape of slaves is prohibited
by the treaty,” the robot said.
“She’s a war concubine. She knows what that means. If she’s not a stupid piden she’ll do
what’s expected without making a nuisance of herself.”
Tabitha’s heart began to race.
“Ms. Riley, if you no longer wish
to be a war concubine I will make arrangements for you to be transferred to the
slave compound in Sarasota. However, it is my purpose to ensure that you
are not mistreated by your master. If
you choose to proceed to the Hax-Rah moon outpost I will be with you, and I
will do everything in my power to keep you from undue harm.”
She eyed the robot. It had a rustic look to it, despite obviously
being sophisticated. It’s possible the
thing might be able to challenge her Hax-Rah master, but then again, she had no
idea. She wasn’t even sure what the
robot considered mistreatment. If she
was a concubine, and it’s obvious they used the Earth word so she would have no
doubt about what they meant, then she was essentially a sex slave. Would the robot really interfere if her
master tried to use her for her intended purpose?
There were too many questions. Too few answers. The only thing she knew was that she didn’t
want to go back to another slave compound.
Anything, even something as dangerous as this transfer, had to be better
than that.
“It’s fine,” she said to the
robot. “I’ll be a…war concubine.”
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