Bringing Stella Home (10 page)

“
Ah,” he said. “I’m so
sorry.” His tone of voice, however, betrayed his relief.

James said nothing.

“
I remember how I felt when
I lost my first bill,” his father continued. “You win some, you
lose some—in a perfect democracy like ours, it’s only natural. It’s
all for the best.”

James felt his blood rise to his
cheeks. His father put a hand on his shoulder, but he immediately
shrugged it off.

“
We’ll be home soon,” his
father continued, choosing to ignore James’s angry gesture. “It’ll
be all right. Your mother is safe, and we’ll all be together
soon.”

“
Dad,” said James, “how
many ships does our family own?”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
How many ships? And how
much in financial assets?”

“
Well, our branch of the
family owns five ships, two of which are in port at the Colony. In
terms of net financial assets, we have about fifteen million Gaian
credits.”

Good,
James thought to himself.
That should
be enough.

His father frowned. “Why do you
ask?”

“
I need to take out my
inheritance.”

Chapter 5

Stella stood up straight and faced the
airlock door as it slid open. Another pair of soldiers in fearsome
black armor stepped forward. She cringed, expecting them to take
her forcibly by the arms and march her off like the others.
Instead, they moved aside, letting a short man dressed all in white
step through.

She frowned.
What is this?

The man gave her one look and clucked
his tongue. “Too young,” he said in an almost incomprehensible
accent. “Too young.”

“
What?” said Stella. She
glanced up at the soldiers, but their faces were
unreadable.

The little man stepped forward and
pinched her arm. “Ow!” she said, drawing back. He clucked again and
put his hands on his hips.

“
You stay still. Yes?
Good.”

Stella stood awkwardly in the middle
of the chilly airlock while he examined her, poking her stomach and
feeling her hands and arms. His round head was balding on the top,
with thick tufts of blackish-gray hair around his ears. He had a
long scowl on his face, which from the deep creases in his skin
appeared to be a permanent feature. Unlike the soldiers, he wore a
crisp white button-up shirt that stretched nearly to his knees,
like a formal smock. His loose fitting trousers were also
white.

“
Not good, not good,” he
said, shaking his head. “Need bath.”

Stella glanced to the
soldiers on either side of the doorway.
I
don’t suppose I have a choice,
she thought
to herself. For now, she’d play the Hameji at their game—with time,
an opportunity for escape would present itself.
Hopefully.

“
You follow me,” the man
said. “Understand?”

“
Uh, yeah.”

The man looked her in the eye and
scowled. Even though he stood nearly a full head shorter than her,
she still felt intimidated by his gaze.

“
Come.”

Despite his short stature, the man
took off at a brisk pace and quickly disappeared around a corner.
Stella found it difficult to keep up; fortunately, the soldiers
didn’t force-march her. She supposed that was a sign that she’d
moved up in the Hameji world.

The main corridor was only
twenty yards long—too short for the ship to be anything but a
shuttle.
So they’re transporting me
somewhere
, Stella thought to herself. If
she could break through to the cockpit, there was a chance—but no,
with the soldiers following her that would never work. Better ride
it out and see where they took her.

“
Come here,” said the
little man, motioning impatiently to an open door near the end of
the corridor. Stella followed his lead and stepped into the
passenger cabin.

From her terrifying experience on the
prisoner ship, she expected something drab and purely functional—an
empty storage room, perhaps, or a simple holding cell. Certainly
someplace more fit for cattle than for humans.

Instead, she stepped into a room as
luxurious as a private yacht. Soft, oversized blue and purple
couches lined the room, each with dozens of silk-tasseled pillows
and cushions strewn out across them. The walls were pure white with
ornate gold trim reminiscent of the old baroque style of the first
Gaian Empire. An enormous duraglass window stretched from floor to
ceiling on the opposite side of the room, offering a breathtaking
view of the starfield beyond.

Stella froze in the doorway and stared
in disbelief at the lavish accommodations. After the nightmare of
the prisoner ship, she didn’t know what to make of her new
surroundings. It felt surreal to her. The seats were so luxurious
and soft, the purple and blue colors so rich, she felt as if she
had found herself in a completely different world.

“
No good,” muttered the
man, shaking droplets of sweet perfume on her body from a small
crystal vial. “No good. Need bath soon—very dirty.”

The accent. Where had she heard that
accent before? The question had been bothering her since she’d
first heard the man speak. In an instant, it came to her: the man
was speaking Belarian. On her last voyage with the McLellan family,
the entire crew had spoken it exclusively to help her practice the
new language. The short, bald man’s accent had to have come from
some local dialect in that system.

“
What is your name?” she
asked in formal Belarian.

The man froze where he stood and
stared right at her. Stella met his gaze and smiled.

A flood of words poured out of his
mouth, only a few of which she fully understood. She could pick out
a word here or there, but couldn’t understand any phrases or
sentences. Eventually, the man noticed the blank expression on her
face. He stopped and forced a smile, composing himself.

“
You are a smart girl,” he
said in formal Belarian, slow enough that she could understand. “My
name is Engus, and I am chief cut-servant of Master
Qasar.”

Cut-servant.
The word itself was unfamiliar, but from simple
cognates she pieced together the basic meaning. The root used for
“cut” confused her at first, since it was only ever used in a
physical sense; either Engus was a servant who cut things, or else
had himself been—

Realization of the true meaning of the
word struck her like a meteor. Engus was a eunuch.

“
Sit, sit,” he said,
reverting to broken New Gaian.

Stella glanced around the room and
gingerly lowered herself on the nearest couch. The cushions gave
way, enveloping her in a softness so inviting she almost forgot the
rough burlap tunic chafing against her skin. Even the guards kept a
comfortable distance from her, standing at the door. Still,
something seemed vaguely disturbing about this place. Her
separation from the other prisoners, the extravagant luxury of the
shuttle, the high-ranking servant sent as an escort—it made her
feel uneasy.

I’ve got to get out of
here,
she thought to herself, struggling to
conceal her growing anxiety. With her thoughts once more centered
on escape, her eyes gravitated to the starfield in the window.
Despite the amazing view, it took her several moments before she
found anything resembling the familiar constellations of
home.

Just as she found one that
could have been the Snake, the sound of groaning metal came softly
through the walls. The stars spun wildly as they undocked and
maneuvered away from the Hameji prisoner ship, momentarily
disorienting her. She looked for any sign of
Kardunash IV—
any planet at all—but saw
nothing but stars and empty space.

As she stared out the window, a
strange feeling came over her, as if her body were turning inside
out. The sensation was all too familiar. It started as a mild
stomachache, but soon turned into a severe, disorienting dizziness,
followed by an instant of total blackness, as if the universe
itself had blinked.

The shuttle had just made a jump. If
Ben was back on the prisoner ship, he might be light-years away
from her now.

“
Where are we going?” she
asked, her voice shaky.

“
Master’s house,” Engus
said in broken New Gaian. “There. You look.”

He pointed out the window at an
enormous ship, long and tapering at the forward end like a missile.
From a distance, it could have passed as a deep space passenger
liner, but a close examination revealed several additions. Extra
rooms bubbled outward, some containing gun emplacements, others
antennae and other instruments. Though this may have been a
passenger liner at one point, it was definitely a warship
now.

Ben,
Stella thought frantically to herself.
Where are you?
As the Hameji warship
loomed close outside the window, a terrible, heart-wrenching
feeling told her that she wouldn’t find him here.

They docked. Engus motioned to
her.

“
You come,” he
said.

* * * * *

Play the game,
Stella told herself as she followed Engus through
the airlock. She just had to keep her eyes open and wait for an
opportunity to escape. She could do this.

The shipside airlock was unusually
narrow; Stella guessed it had originally been a utility airlock for
exterior maintenance work. Considering how they’d put in towards
the battleship’s stern, that made sense. Why they had taken her in
this way instead of through the main docking bay, Stella had no
idea.

The soldier’s boots rapped sharply on
the hard metal floor of the airlock. Engus keyed the inner door,
and it hissed open.

“
You come,” he
said.

The moment Stella stepped through the
doorway, a thick, sensuous odor hit her noise. It smelled like
perfume mixed with something else too pungent to mask. The air was
warm and humid; the moisture clung to her skin and made her feel
sticky.

To her surprise, the soldiers stayed
behind. She wondered why that was, until she saw a handful of wires
poking out of the wall where the airlock’s access panel was
supposed to be. Whoever had modified that door had designed it to
work only one way.

Like a cage.

She followed Engus down a corridor
unlike any that she had ever seen. Red and pink silk draped the
walls, their vibrant colors immediately attracting her eye. Golden
tassels dangled from the ceiling, tracing geometric patterns in
their design. A shaggy pink carpet covered the floor, tickling her
bare feet. Yet for all the lavishness of the place, she couldn’t
help but notice how kitschy and overdone it all was. The décor felt
like a caricature of something feminine. The colors were too
bright, the smells too strong—even the shaggy carpet under her feet
felt too sensual.

She didn’t like it.

Engus glanced over his shoulder and
clucked disapprovingly. “Come!” he said. She walked a little
faster, folding her arms as she followed him.

They passed a handful of other men,
all in button-up white shirts like Engus’s that extended well below
the waist. Their clothes were so crisp and immaculate that Stella
felt out of place in her burlap prisoner rags. The men bowed to
Engus as they passed, and stared openly at Stella. Even though they
were only servants, their stares made her anxious.

If they are
servants,
she thought to herself,
why are there so many of them? And who are they
supposed to serve?
For a moment, she
wondered if Engus was taking her off to become a servant, too, but
she soon dismissed the idea. All of the servants were
men.

She saw women soon enough,
though.

As they rounded a corner, a tall,
dark-skinned girl walked past them in the opposite direction. Her
skin was perfectly smooth, her body shaped like an exotic
hourglass. Her hips swung from side to side as she walked, jingling
coins along the fringes of her clothing. She wore a skimpy,
two-piece dress, the fabric all but transparent, leaving nothing to
the imagination.

Stella stopped and watched in horror
as the girl sauntered away. An awful, sinking feeling ate away at
the back of her mind as she realized.

“
You come,” said Engus,
pointing impatiently to a bead curtain draped over an open
doorway.

I just need to stay here
long enough to find a way to escape,
Stella
thought to herself as he parted the beads and led her
through.
I won’t be here
forever.

The shaggy carpet ended at the
doorway, replaced by a white and blue tile floor that extended up
the walls. The air inside was practically steamy, and mosaics of
fruits and vines lined the walls and ceiling. In the corner, she
saw the foggy glass pane of a shower unit.

“
Take off,” Engus
ordered.

Stella’s body instantly grew tense.
She gave him a puzzled look, pretending not to understand what he
had said.