Prize: A Rough Sci-Fi Romance Page 11

  When we were safely out of range from the Shadow Star, I was going to teach her a lesson in obedience. She was going to learn that her little pussy and mouth weren’t the only places I could punish with my cock. She was going to learn that her tight little bottom hole would be too.

  She’d be screaming for forgiveness as I made her come with my cock fucking that tight little ass. She’d be screaming for me until she begged me to stop and then she’d scream for me some more because she didn’t get to decide when her punishment was over.

  I did.

  * * *

  A short time later, Javier returned and informed me that Nina had been properly contained. He told me she had insisted on being placed in a cell with a few particular women and that he had complied, not seeing anything wrong or problematic with her request. He also mentioned that he had increased the number of men guarding the cargo hold, seeing as to the considerable value of the goods we were planning to sell in the near future.

  “Good work. Now let’s return to the problem at hand,” I directed. “I want an update on the status and position of the Shadow Star immediately.”

  Javier quickly got to work, and I stood by his side as he analyzed the data that had come in since he’d left his position at my order.

  “No change in energy levels or speed. Steady travel toward Kraken Prime,” he answered after a few minutes of careful deliberation.

  I’d have to proceed carefully from now on. With no outward signs of hostility, I saw no reason not to proceed with our plans to fuel our ship on the small planet.

  “Prepare to land on Kraken Prime. Don’t engage any more weapon systems until we’re safely within the confines of their planetary shield where it will be much harder for the Shadow Star to track. Should they show signs of aggression there, we’ll show them what it means to meet us in battle,” I ordered.

  My name was feared in space.

  Greyburne should be scared of it too. If he wasn’t, he was about to learn that he was very, very wrong not to be.

  Should he attack me and my men, he was as good as dead.

  Chapter Nine

  Nina

  I was pissed.

  It was obvious Vane and his men were nervous about an imminent attack, that all of them could be in danger if a battle was to come. Instead of keeping me by his side, Vane had brushed me off and imprisoned me with the other Aberrants in the cargo hold. He hadn’t even given me a chance to offer my assistance.

  I wanted to help, and he’d taken that right away from me. I felt practically useless down here. There was a very tiny sliver of gratefulness though if only for the fact that I could check on the status of my fellow humans that had been taken along with me since I hadn’t been allowed to yet. Everything else about it made me furious.

  Vane and Dr. Rackamar hadn’t been lying when they’d told me all of the Aberrants were healthy. Some even looked better than when I’d seen them last. Most important, they were all safe and unharmed. I’d insisted on being placed in the same cell as Mari and the others. Javier had relented without much of a fight and I had gotten my way.

  Mari grinned when she saw me. She faltered for a fraction of a second when she realized that I was naked, but she quickly recovered and ignored it entirely. No one else commented on it either and I was thankful for that.

  “Didn’t think I’d seen the last of you, Nina,” she had whispered when I entered the cell with her. When Javier had left and no more of the crew were close enough to hear, she moved closer to me. “So, what have you been up to these past few weeks?” she added next, her eyes twinkling with curiosity. She passed me a blanket and I used it to cover myself.

  The fabric felt rough on my skin. As much as I wanted to cover myself, the feeling of the cloth felt foreign and almost uncomfortable. I pulled the blanket closer anyway and ignored the fact that hiding my body seemed awkward to me after being made to be bare for so long. I shook it off though as I tied it around my body like a dress.

  It was time I remembered myself.

  I quietly told Mari my story, filling her in on everything that had occurred since she’d last seen me. When I finally finished, she drew back and shook her head.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “We fight back,” I answered.

  “How?” she asked. “I’ve been down here for a while now and it seems impenetrable. The cages are designed to hold much stronger beasts than us. The bars don’t budge no matter what we do. The main doors of the cargo hold have interlocking systems that engage to make sure no one gets in or out that isn’t supposed to.”

  “Everything has a weakness. You just have to find it,” I answered.

  I looked around, surveying the room. It was clear that Mari was right about the locking system and the strength of the cages we’d been put into. Outside the bars, there were a multitude of crates lashed together, a number of barrels stamped with various alien languages that I couldn’t read, as well as several large metal boxes that held God knows what. The room was full of cargo and I briefly contemplated if any of it was legally obtained. Probably not.

  I didn’t know if anything inside those containers that would help us, but it would take too long to search them all. Not that it mattered, because we would have to figure out how to get out of the cages first.

  I started to study the cages more closely. Similar to the spaceship I’d been on from Earth, Vane’s men had separated us by gender into two different sections. It appeared that there had been individual enclosures at one time, but they’d opened the dividers between each one into two big cages that were connected to each other. The cages holding the men were similar, separately them evenly between the two attached prison cells. The bars were strong, thick, and narrow enough that we couldn’t slip through them. Not even the smallest female here would be able to get out that way.

  My eyes turned upward, finding no signs of weakness in the ceiling above us. I looked down and assessed the floor next.

  A single large grate on my side of the cage captured my attention. It looked fairly heavy duty, but the screws around the edges were rusty and at least a couple were missing entirely. I stood up and wandered nonchalantly over to it, kneeling down and looking at it more closely. It appeared that there was a large tunnel underneath, perhaps a part of the ventilation system. I turned my head and tried to see where it went, but I couldn’t see much into the darkness below. I took my hand and held it over the grate, feeling a draft of air caressing my fingertips. That meant it had to go somewhere. That it wasn’t just an open room of some kind beneath us.

  “We may be able to get out from below,” I muttered quietly. “We’d just need something to get these screws out and then we’d all have to work together to lift this thing when no one is watching.”

  “I’ve got just the thing maybe,” Mari said, her voice sly.

  I turned my head and watched as she flipped a small dagger in her hand.

  “Clever girl, where’d you get that?” I asked, unable to stop myself from grinning.

  “I learned from watching you,” she winked, and I snorted back a laugh.

  “I stole it from a guard when he wasn’t paying attention. The one that brought you down here in fact,” she added a moment later.

  “Indeed,” I answered, smirking with amusement.

  Over the next several hours, Mari and I strategically placed women around us to conceal the fact that we were working on removing all the screws from the grate. The work was slow and frustrating at times, but eventually we were able to loosen them all. After that, we finished the work with our fingers. Mari pocketed all of the screws, just in case we’d need them later.

  After the work on the grate was completed, we had to bide our time until the guards stationed around us were distracted or left entirely. I watched them quietly from the corner of the cell. They seemed impatient and uneasy, shifting their weight from side to side as though they were waiting for something to happen next.

  The ship shuddered a number o
f times and I assumed that we were preparing to land on Kraken Prime, like Vane had planned for some time now. He must have decided that it was safe enough to stop and fuel the ship, even though there was a threat of another pirate vessel not far off. The guards tensed and a number of them left the room, leaving only a skeleton crew to guard us.

  Vane’s ship rocked back and forth as it settled onto the surface of the new planet. When it finally came to a complete stop, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “All hands on deck. Engage cargo locks and man the perimeter. Possible hostiles within range. Encounter on ground likely,” a feminine robotic voice ordered overhead.

  “Finally. I thought we’d have to stand here forever,” one of Vane’s crew muttered. His crew mate agreed, nodding his head rather enthusiastically.

  After several more minutes, the cargo hold had emptied, leaving us Aberrants alone and entirely unsupervised. Vane might be captain of this ship, but he’d made a mistake. He’d underestimated me and I wasn’t about to stand for that. I would teach him that I wasn’t a woman he should ever misjudge.

  “Move,” I said quietly, using my hands to direct the others toward the exit route. All the women in my section of the cage gathered about the grate and knelt down, gripping the heavy steel with our fingers.

  It took all of our combined strength to move the metal lattice. I grunted as I used everything in me to lift the heavy thing and when it finally came free, we shifted it to the side so that it didn’t fall back in its place. With a deep breath, we pushed it across the floor, again and again until we had opened it enough for us to slip down below.

  Mari led the way and I insisted on the others slipping below before I followed. The Aberrant women entered one by one and I watched. The others still imprisoned in the three other cells watched and I looked back at them.

  “I’ll come back for you. I won’t leave you behind,” I said firmly, ensuring that I had spoken loudly enough for them all to hear my words. A woman with blue hair in the connecting cage met my eyes and nodded curtly. With a nervous breath, I jumped down below into the tunnel and followed the others. It was dark, with only small windows of light from grates above us that broke through the shadows. It wasn’t large enough for us to walk through, so we had to crawl through the path on our hands and knees. We wandered some way up and down several floors before we found another grate that was pushed open just enough for us all to slip out of the ventilation system.

  The women looked to me to guide them through the ship. I took a moment to assess my surroundings, quickly realizing that we weren’t far from Dr. Rackamar’s office. The time I had spent with Vane had made me familiar with much of the layout, so I quickly directed Mari on how to reach the exit hatch. She listened closely and when I was finished, she lifted an eyebrow.

  “You’re not coming with us,” she whispered.

  “I have to free the others,” I answered softly, and she nodded.

  “I would have done the same,” she replied before turning away. The rest of my cage mates followed her in silence, their expressions revealing their fear. I watched them turn the corner before I climbed up the stairs and followed the path back to the cargo hold. I didn’t meet a single person along the way, which surprised me. The main floors seemed to be abandoned and I absently wondered where everyone was. By the time I made it back to the doors to the hold, I wasn’t even checking around corners or making an effort to conceal my steps.

  The heavy steel door was locked tight, but I’d seen the code that Javier had typed into the keypad. Amateur. I grinned as I quickly entered the six-digit numeric password, before I heard the locks disengage. The door slowly slid open and I made my way inside.

  My next obstacle would be figuring out how to get the cages open.

  “She’s back,” a male voice said.

  “I didn’t think she would return for us,” another female said, her voice disbelieving.

  “I said I would, so here I am,” I answered.

  I strode purposely over to the two cages of Aberrant males and stared at the lock. I knew there wasn’t any sort of traditional key and there wasn’t a numeric keypad like I had used to get into the cargo hold. I’d watched Javier open the cage using his finger on a small scanner and I mimicked his motions, swiping my own just like he had. A buzzer sounded and I quickly pulled my hand away.

  “It won’t work with human DNA. It’s programmed to recognize the members of the crew and no one else,” one of the men in the cage said. “You won’t be able to get us out that way.”

  I looked around and bit my lip, coming up blank. I didn’t know how else I’d open the cages.

  “This place is heavily reinforced, almost like a mini fortress within the ship. It’s running on its own power grid, likely as an added safety measure to protect whatever cargo Vane and his men take. You find that power source and kill it, then the cage doors should open on their own,” he continued.

  “Where do you think that source is?” I questioned, turning to look at the boy who was speaking. His skin was a dark caramel color, his eyes a brilliant light green.

  “Likely at the back of the room far away from the door. There should be some sort of kill switch, I would think. There’s also probably another escape hatch somewhere around here, in case they lost whatever battle they had engaged in and needed to abandon ship right away,” he responded.

  “How do you know these things?” I asked.

  “I grew up in sector five. My father was an engineer for the Intergalactic Trading Fleet. He taught me much of what he knew, especially in the design of battleships. They weren’t exactly like this one because it’s been heavily modified to Vane’s preferences, but they’re similar enough,” he replied.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dex,” he said.

  “Nina,” I said, then added, “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” he grinned. I nodded and turned away, focusing on my mission of breaking the other Aberrants free just like I had done with Mari and the others.

  I quickly made my way back to where Dex had thought the power source would be located. I looked along the wall and saw nothing though. Crossing my arms over my chest, I studied the wall more closely. It was made of several panels of sheet metal that appeared to be quite thick. With a furrowed brow, I ran my fingers along a number of them, but nothing happened. I chewed my lip and took a step back, looking back and forth along the entire wall. It all looked the same. There was no panel that I could see anywhere.

  In several places were piles of crates. Some of them were covered in dust and looked like they hadn’t moved for months. Interestingly though, there was a box that looked like it had been pushed aside at a haphazard angle. When I looked more closely at the floor, I could see a line in the dirt that suggested it had once been pushed against the wall. I walked over to that spot and traced my fingers along the metal.

  I pressed firmly against the panel once and I heard something hum behind it. The metal slipped open and I took a step back, watching as it revealed an electrical panel complete with blinking blue lights and several multicolored wires connecting various ports together. There weren’t any labels that indicated what any of them were for.

  “Can you see this, Dex?” I called out, turning back toward him and moving aside slightly as to not block his view.

  He leaned against the bars, narrowing his eyes as he tried to see what I was looking at.

  “I recognize the panel. It’s been modified slightly from what I’ve seen before, but the main power switch is on the upper left. Disconnect the wires to that one, and it should power down the systems keeping us locked in here,” he answered.

  His knowledge was extraordinarily useful, I thought to myself.

  Quickly, I turned back and followed his instructions. There were three wires ported into the cartridge on the upper left, so I disconnected them one by one. Once I had finished, the port blinked bright red several times before going out completely. The lights overhead went out and I hear
d the telltale sound of the locks disengaging on the cages. The doors to each one popped open. Dex pushed open the door and the rest of his cell mates followed.

  The second cage of men poured out, along with the remaining women. I grinned with victory as they joined me.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Dex exclaimed and I nodded.

  “Don’t have to tell me twice,” I answered, opening the door to the cage I had broken us out of not long ago. I suggested that they continue down the tunnel, as some time had passed, and I didn’t know if Vane’s men had returned to the ship quite yet.

  Dex was the first one to go down into the tunnel. The others followed as quickly as they could, but it took some time for all of them to funnel beneath. I waited and adjusted the blanket around my torso, ensuring it was tight and still sufficiently covered my nakedness beneath it.

  “It looks like we’re almost too late, but there’s one piece of the precious cargo still left behind,” a deep gravelly voice sneered. I stilled, not recognizing it. I leaned back on my heels and turned my head toward the cargo hold entrance, not knowing what to expect.

  It was most certainly not one of Vane’s men.

  It was an alien species I didn’t recognize, not that it mattered. He was huge, probably about seven feet tall and even though the door to the cargo hold was very large, he filled it. He was wearing a gray velvet coat with cream-colored lace at the edges, black pants, and dirty leather boots. To top it off, he was wearing a black leather hat with a rather obnoxious plume of feathers on the right side. His skin was a scorched orange, marred with jagged scars across every square inch. His face was hard. His eyes black. He looked dangerous.

  And he wasn’t alone. There was a number of men behind him that I didn’t recognize either.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked, gritting my teeth with nervous tension. I stood there in the cage alone. The other Aberrants were below. I could see Dex’s green eyes peering up from below. He’d waited behind in order to ensure that I’d follow.