Alien Chronicles 1 - The Golden One (33 page)

But just as he reached the mouth of the alley, three patrollers in black uniforms stepped across his path. Elrabin whirled to double back, but something hit him between the shoulder blades with enough force to knock him off his feet.

Crying out, he skidded across the pavement and found himself lying facedown beneath a crushing weight. He couldn’t move. His muscles were stiffening, becoming paralyzed. Elrabin groaned to himself. He’d been stunned. He was helpless now, with no hope of moving at all, much less getting away. They had him, and he was carrying two full bags of dust. That meant death, with no appeal and no reprieve.

He was too frightened to even yelp when the patrollers reached him and dragged him upright. They patted him down roughly for weapons, found none, and pulled the bags from his pockets. Elrabin stopped breathing. The patrollers had the right to shoot him here and now. Possession of this much illegal substance marked him as a supplier.

Sometimes, though, the patrollers wanted to toy with their victims first. They might torture him. They might drag him off to prison or—

The patrollers slit open one of the bags, and black soil poured out. The patrollers stared at it, and Elrabin stared at it. He started breathing again, started hoping.

“Gods, what is this?” one of the patrollers asked in disgust.

“It’s dirt, ordinary dirt,” another one said.

The first crouched and pinched some in his gloved fingers. He opened his visor and flicked out his tongue to it. “Dirt,” he confirmed.

Relief swept through Elrabin. “Nothing illegal about carrying dirt, is there?” he asked, his voice groggy and garbled by the stun effect.

One of them struck him. “Silence!”

They searched him again, and this time one of them picked a tiny transmitter off the back of his shoulder. “Look at this. He was marked for us.”

The others swore, and Elrabin’s relief came crashing down. He stared at it, refusing to believe his own suspicions.

“A double blind,” one of the patrollers said in disgust. “We were bluffed as neat and slick as though we just hatched out of the egg. Damn.”

Elrabin backed his ears. He remembered how grouchy Scar had been today, how Scar had refused to meet his eyes for very long. Scar had planned this from the first, had set him up to be caught. That unexpected pat on the shoulder had concealed his planting of the transmitter. Scar had betrayed him, had intended to betray him from the hour he’d persuaded Barthul to let Elrabin join the gang. Elrabin realized he had stupidly allowed Scar to make him into an expendable tool—one used and then discarded.

Bitterness soured his mouth. He should have betrayed Scar first, only—

“Where did you get this?” the patrollers asked him. “Who gave you these bags? Who put this transmitter on you?”

Elrabin clamped his jaws shut and refused to answer. If he mentioned Barthul’s name here, the patrollers would take it as proof of his guilt, nothing more.

They shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth.

“Don’t be stupid,” the patrollers told him. “You’re caught, either way. You might as well talk. Protecting your partner won’t help you now.”

“I have nothing to say,” Elrabin muttered. “Carrying dirt is not illegal.”

“Working as an accomplice to a dust runner is.”

Elrabin’s gaze flashed up in mock outrage. “You can’t prove that.”

“We don’t have to prove anything. You resisted arrest. We received word a drop was going down in this alley, and out you came like a Skek. You also destroyed patroller property, and that is a Class F felony.”

“Nothing,” Elrabin said in defiance, trying to bluff. “I’ve done nothing.”

The patrollers looked at each other. “We can kill him anyway, then say it was a mistake,” one of them suggested.

“Too much paperwork involved,” another said.

The third one stared at Elrabin without mercy. His Viis eyes were cold. “Put him in the slave market. Sell him to labor and recoup our expenses that way. It’ll pay for a new sniffer and we won’t have to file a loss-of-equipment form.”

Desperate, realizing his da’s fate was happening to him, Elrabin tried to struggle, but the stun effect still held him pinned. He could do nothing but wriggle slightly. “You can’t sell me!” he said. “I got rights as a grade-two citizen. I’m free.”

“Yes, free to starve. Free to steal and cause trouble. Even hard-labor slaves eat better than you, little grade-two citizen.” The patroller flicked his fingers at the others. “Sell him.”

CHAPTER
•EIGHTEEN

With its engine rumbling loudly, the transport lurched and veered through sluggish traffic. Other newer, sleeker transports passed it on all sides. Their cargo was secured beneath opaque bubbles, sometimes with force fields shimmering over them for extra security. The Gorlican slaver’s old transport, however, had cheap crates stacked behind the driver’s seat, while in the back cargo area, wire mesh served as sides and top.

Wedged between several bodies and the side of the cargo hold, Ampris gripped the rusting mesh and stared bleakly at the passing streets. Any chance to leave the palace was rare. Ampris had always been curious about the city, wondering how many people lived in it, and what they did all day. From hints and passing comments, she realized that common folk must lead lives far different from those at the palace. But today, she took little interest in the sights around her.

The transport flew down one block of the famous Zehava—the richest shopping district of the galaxy, renowned for its floating walkways and multileveled shops containing priceless wares of every description—before a traffic monitor blew a siren and warned it off.

Accordingly the transport veered sharply away and lumbered through less affluent, more industrialized streets. Traffic congestion grew steadily thicker. Horns blared at slim racing skimmers that flitted illegally in and out, narrowly missing the slower litters and transports, and creating havoc as they went.

Ampris turned her head to watch a pair of them dart by, racing for a few meters only to separate to avoid an on-coming transit module. Horns blared again, then the skimmers were gone, leaving only a curling wake of jetted exhaust behind them.

Israi would have admired them. Of late she had mentioned that she would like to have a skimmer of her own, something small and sleek. She had said that perhaps she would even teach Ampris to fly it.

Now such plans were like smoke, vanishing before they could be grasped. It was impossible to believe this was happening. Ampris kept telling herself this was reality and no dream, but it was too awful to comprehend.

An elbow dug into Ampris’s ribs, prodding her from her thoughts.

“Look!” said a jeering voice in the slave patois. “It be the pampered pet herself. Ain’t so pampered now, be you?”

Ampris turned around to meet the scornful eyes of an Aaroun male. Striped in shades of beige and brown, he held his right hand cradled protectively against his midriff. A clumsy splint and bandage covered the appendage.

When he caught her staring at it, he lifted his hand and waved it under her nose. She caught a sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh.

“Won’t heal, will it?” he said. “Had me a good spot in the gardening corps. Did, till a scythe near cut it off. Now I’m useless. Cripples can’t work. Some high-and-mighty Viis lord or lady might see me and be offended.”

He stuck his furred face close to Ampris’s and glared at her. His breath stank of meat. “What’d you do, you, to make offense? Threw you out with the rest of us garbage, didn’t they?”

Fresh sorrow welled up inside Ampris. “It’s a mistake,” she said. “They have to relent.”

He drew back and bared his teeth, while some of the others laughed bitterly. “Have to relent,” he said, mocking her. “Relent? What kind of uppity Viis word is that, you?”

Ampris said, “It means to—”

He nipped her ear, and someone laughed.

Shocked, Ampris stared at them.

The Aaroun leaned closer. “Don’t teach me nothing, you! Got no place over me, now. Be garbage like the rest of us. You learn to keep quiet.”

Looking at their hostile faces, Ampris trembled and resisted the urge to rub her aching ear. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her. As for the others, now staring at her, why did they all look so angry and bitter? Why did they resent her? She wasn’t to blame for their troubles.

When she said nothing, did nothing in response, the Aaroun bared his teeth again, looking more scornful than ever.

“Fancy
pet
,” he said, making the word sound dirty and vile. “But you be pet no more, you.”

“Yeah!” put in a Kelth female, so old one of her eyes had filmed over and her muzzle had turned gray. “No more pet you be, eh? No more fancy food. No more fancy treats or fancy clothes or fancy life, no!” She laughed gleefully, her one good eye glittering with malice.

Ampris stared at her, then at all of them. “Why are you all so angry at me?” she asked. “I’ve done nothing to any of you—”

They roared and surged toward her, making the transport dip to one side. Pummeled and bitten, Ampris crouched low with her hands folded over her head as protection.

“Done nothing, that be right,” the Aaroun male said.

“
Lazy pet!” the old Kelth added.

“Never worked a day,” said someone else.

“Never known a kick in the ribs,” said a fourth voice.

“Or how it hurts, goin’ without that supper.”

They went on hurling accusations at her, and their rough, angry words hurt. The slaves closed in on her, dragging her upright and pounding on her again.

Growling in her throat, Ampris tried to fight back, but there were too many of them.

Then the transport lurched to a violent halt that threw several of them off their feet. The Aaroun male landed on top of Ampris, his heavy weight nearly squashing her.

She grunted and flailed, but he took his time getting up and made sure he stepped on her fingers and kicked her in the process. Curling up in pain, Ampris lay on her side while the others were herded off by Gorlicans. Their cruelty left her dazed. All she wanted to do was hide from everyone and be left alone.

But Gorlicans wearing stained leather jerkins over their torso shells and masks came stepping inside the cargo hold, their eyes glowing yellow as they shouted at her in ill temper. Using their long staffs, they prodded Ampris upright and sent her staggering down a loading ramp and into a narrow chute at the rear of an assorted group of slaves. There were four times the number that had been on her transport.

Ampris tried to hang back from anyone she recognized, but the Gorlicans kept prodding her hard with their staffs, snapping and grumbling at her as they forced her into the group.

Everyone was shoving and pushing, packed too close in the chute, shuffling forward yet unable to move fast enough to avoid the staffs and shock-whips of their handlers.

Bruised and jostled, Ampris concentrated on keeping her balance. She was afraid if she fell down she would be trampled to death.

Behind her another load of slaves came rushing down the loading ramp and into the chute, packing her in even more tightly. Her fear increased, but there was nowhere to go except forward.

Gorlicans stood lined up on either side of the chute, poking the slaves through the slats. Other Gorlicans paced overhead on a metal catwalk, their bootsteps making the mesh ring out.

The noise was deafening—all shouts and confusing commands. The stench nearly choked her. She had never smelled such filth in her life. Dust hung in the air like a fog, choking them, and the handlers kept shouting and pushing, confusing Ampris and making her panic.

A shock-whip lashed across the shoulders of a slave jostling next to her. Ampris heard the sizzle of impact and smelled his singed fur and flesh. The slave yelped and dodged sideways into Ampris, nearly knocking her down.

She grabbed at the slats of the chute for balance, but a Gorlican on the other side of it snarled at her and rapped his staff across her fingers.

Pain flared through her hand, and she snatched it back, whimpering. Cradling it against her stomach, she fought back her tears. It felt broken, the pain pulsing fire in the delicate bones of her hand. Thinking of the Aaroun gardener who’d been so bitter over his infected hand, Ampris gritted her teeth and flexed her fingers. So her hand was not broken, but, gods, how it hurt.

A staff thudded against her shoulder biades. “Move on!” came the command, and Ampris shuffled forward.

Ahead, the Gorlicans were opening small gates in the sides of the chute. With whips and shouts, they sorted through the jostling slaves, dividing them by size, breed, and age.

A staff struck Ampris in the back again, driving her forward with three others, but almost immediately a gate snapped across the chute in front of her, blocking her path. The yells increased in volume, and the slaves with Ampris milled around her in growing confusion.

“Her! Her!”

A Gorlican stood over her on the catwalk above her head. He poked his staff down to tap her on the shoulder. Ampris glanced up and froze in her tracks.

“Tell me what you want me to do!” she yelled in exasperation.

He didn’t answer. The handlers on the ground thrust their staffs through the sides of the chute, separating the other slaves from her.

The gate blocking the chute snapped out of the way, and Ampris was prodded forward.

She ran, panting for breath and hearing the shouts of triumph. The gate slammed quickly behind her, cutting her off from everyone else.

For a few seconds she was alone in this section of the chute, alone except for the Gorlican who ran along the cat-walk overhead, keeping pace with her easily. He was chanting something and tapping his staff on the mesh above her. The noise and rhythm jangled her nerves. She wanted to scream at him to stop.

Instead she halted abruptly, letting him run a few paces ahead of her. Gasping for breath, she whirled around and tried to run back the way she’d come, but the Gorlican overtook her in moments. His shock-whip lashed out ahead of her, sizzling and snapping centimeters from her nose.