Bringing Stella Home (13 page)

“
Name’s Sholpan. She’s my
new roomie.”

“
So I gathered.” She smiled
at Stella, who barely managed to return it.

“
Girl’s seventeen. Can you
believe it?”

Erdene’s jaw dropped. “No! So
young?”

“
I know. Doesn’t she look
mature for her age?”

Stella squirmed a little. She didn’t
like how they were talking about her as if she were an
object.

“
Indeed, she
does.”

“
One thing you’ve got to
say about the Hameji, they sure have an eye for beauty.”

“
I know.” Erdene turned to
Tamu and smiled again. “Well, I must be off.”

“
You’re looking lovely
today, darling,” said Tamu, apparently in parting. She slipped her
arm into Stella’s as they continued the tour.

“
The facilities are in
there,” she said, pointing to a bead curtain doorway on the
left.

“
Facilities?” As if in
answer, the sound of flushing toilets and running water came from
the other side.

“
The servants around here
would probably wipe your ass if you asked them to,” Tamu continued,
“but some things we can take care of ourselves, eh?”

Tamu roared with laughter at her own
joke. Stella laughed along too, more out of courtesy than anything
else.

“
This is the servant’s
hallway,” said Tamu, pausing to open another bead curtain and show
Stella the other side. The space was long, white, narrow, and
completely devoid of silk hangings and golden tassels. Instead, a
long counter lined one wall, complete with gray plasteel cabinets
above and below. Almost a dozen white-smocked servants milled
about, busy at their work. The smell of something sweet met
Stella’s nose.

“
Are those food
processors?” Stella asked.

“
Processors? No, darling,”
said Tamu. “The Hameji synthesize all our food from some kind of
chemical goop. It’s tasty enough to live off of, but believe me
dear, it gets bland fast. Real fast.” She stopped abruptly. “Why?
Are you hungry?”

“
No,” said Stella. She was
still much too anxious to have an appetite.

“
Suit yourself,
then.”

Tamu led her through an open doorway
offset with heavy drapes and into a corridor much wider than the
first. They passed several servants and a couple more women, both
in fluffy bathrobes like Tamu’s, though theirs were pink. Tamu
greeted the women as they passed, but didn’t slow down to
chat.

“
And here,” she said,
leading Stella through yet another bead curtain doorway, “is the
lounge.”

Stella took one step inside and froze
where she stood.

Dozens of young, beautiful women lay
sprawled out across the room on couches and piles of cushions. Some
chatted in small groups, others played board games, while still
others sat about idly chewing on nuts and fruit from ornate glass
bowls on small end-tables. A thick, pungent smell issued from an
enormous hookah in the opposite corner. Several women had clustered
around the smoking device, their glassy eyes and vacant expressions
evidence that they were all hopelessly drugged out.

Stella mentally counted the
women—thirty-three in total. Thirty-five counting herself and
Tamu.

“
Honey, your cheeks are
pure white,” said Tamu. “Is something the matter?”

“
These women,” Stella
asked, “are they—are they all Qasar’s—”

“
Concubines? Why, of
course.”

Stella swallowed. “How many concubines
does Qasar have?”

Tamu paused to think. “Well, with the
new additions to the harem since the last battle, almost
eighty.”

Stella’s jaw dropped.
“Eighty?”

“
Of course, dear. How many
did you expect him to have? Qasar is one of the Hameji’s top
generals.”

Stella slowly turned to face the room.
The women around the hookah stared back at her, their eyes
completely vacant

“
So—so many of them,” she
stuttered.

Tamu laughed. “Too true, dear. Though
when you meet him, you’ll soon see why.”

She winked in a knowing way that made
Stella shudder.

Chapter 6

Exactly three standard weeks after the
fall of Kardunash IV, Adam and James McCoy arrived home at the
Colony.

“
There she is,” said his
father as they approached within visual range. “What a sight for
sore eyes.”

“
Yeah,” said
James.

Nestled among the numerous Trojan
asteroids trailing the third planet, the small, disk-shaped space
station was like an oasis in the void. Through the vacuum of space,
James clearly made out the white buildings and green parkways that
he knew so well, even from a distance. The two docking arms jutted
out horizontally along the plane of the disk, marking the poles
around which the station made its diurnal revolutions like a coin
on a tabletop. Around these arms, a dozen starships shimmered in
the light of the sun, speckles of gold against the ebony backdrop
of space.

The sight reminded James of his first
voyage away from his beloved home—and the powerful emotions of the
subsequent homecoming. He had been barely five years old at the
time, and though the family vacation had only lasted a month, to
his childish sensibilities it had felt like an eternity. Nothing
had been able to cure him of his homesickness. Only when he finally
saw the Colony through the forward window—as he saw it now—did he
feel comforted.

Immediately adjacent to the Colony,
though, James spotted a ship much larger than any of the others.
From this distance, it could have been a deep space passenger liner
or interstellar merchant ship, but James knew better.

The ship was a Hameji battle
cruiser.

James stared at the Hameji ship with
all the pent-up fury of the last twenty-one days. It was something
that did not belong, an anomaly that should not exist—not in his
one place of refuge. He clenched his fists and stared at it, as if
by the fury of his gaze alone he could blast it out of the sky. Its
presence in this place was an unforgivable intrusion—one to which
he would never submit.

“
It’s a beautiful sight,
isn’t it?” Adam remarked.

For a split second, James thought his
father was referring to the Hameji battle cruiser. His mind reeled
with confusion and rage, but he soon recovered.

“
Yeah,” he said, his voice
small. His father put an arm on his shoulder.

“
It’s good to be
home.”

It’s not the same without
Ben and Stella,
James wanted to scream.
Instead, he kept silent.

Somewhere, on a battle cruiser much
like that one, his brother and sister were probably languishing as
prisoners. If they were still alive, it didn’t matter where they
were—he would find them and get them back.

* * * * *

Ben had lost the desire to do
anything.

He sat in the corner of his gray,
featureless cell, staring at the smooth, metal floor for hours on
end. His captors had given him clothes a few days ago: drab, loose
fitting clothes full of stains and the smell of bleach. Ben knew he
should worry about the stains, but it no longer mattered to him.
Nothing did.

Only the memory of the mock execution
had any power to move him. In his mind’s eye, he watched over and
over as the woman drifted out the open airlock like a frozen
marionette. Her skin was sickly pale blue, her expression as empty
as the void between the stars. He closed his eyes to escape the
image, but the woman’s face and body became Stella’s. She drifted
slowly away from him, mouth open from her last gasps of breath, her
cheeks bloated from the depressurization, her corpse wrinkled like
a popped balloon.

Ben screamed and banged his head
against the wall until blood began to flow from his forehead. Only
the pain could dispel his waking nightmare. He returned to the
floor, but the vision of his dead sister left him with an awful
emptiness in his heart—a void that swallowed all feeling. He
couldn’t save her; not from the Hameji. They had all power in this
place.

His meals came regularly now through a
small hole in the wall, a tasteless gray goop that he barely
touched. Though his body grew frail and weak from lack of food, he
no longer cared. What was the point? Hunger was just another pain
that kept the nightmares away, and what did it matter if he starved
to death?

But the Hameji didn’t let him die.
Instead, they came for him again.

The door to his cell opened, and
soldiers lifted him to his feet and marched him out into the
corridor. He joined a group of other prisoners and together they
marched down the hall. Their stares were as blank and utterly
devoid of emotion as he thought his must be.

The Hameji herded them down the dark
corridor through an airlock to another ship—or perhaps a station.
The walls here were pocked with age and corrosion, the floor worn
smooth by countless years of traffic. The air was dusty and tasted
slightly metallic, reminding Ben of the main smelter back home. As
he followed the soldiers deeper into the complex, his footsteps
became noticeably lighter, no doubt due to the weaker artificial
gravity field.

In less than a minute, they arrived in
a large, circular chamber. The soldiers moved Ben and the other
prisoners into rows, much as they had when they’d first arrived at
the prisoner ship. Ben stood where they placed him and stared
straight ahead. A small part of him feared that this was the
end—but the larger part stood ready to welcome it if it
was.

About a dozen men in orange jumpsuits
entered the room. Under the watchful eye of the soldiers, they went
from prisoner to prisoner, connecting large black devices to their
ankles.

Gravity anchors,
Ben realized.
For low
gravity operations like asteroid mining.
So
the Hameji had tortured and broken them only to send them to a
labor camp. It didn’t make any sense, but what did
anymore?

As the men went down the line, Ben’s
eyes wandered upward. The ceiling took the shape of a flattened
dome with narrow window panes radiating outward from the center.
From where he stood, the field of view was wide enough that the
starfield was clearly visible.

Out of habit, Ben searched the stars
for the familiar constellations of his home. At one time, he had
known them all by heart. If they were anywhere near Karduna,
chances were good that he’d recognize a few of them.

He didn’t. The constellations in this
place were utterly unfamiliar.

Soon, the men came down his row and
latched a pair of anchors to his feet. When the soldiers marched
him off, his steps were heavy—heavier than he could
remember.

Not that it mattered, of course.
Nothing mattered anymore.

* * * * *

James walked with stiff legs toward
the departure gate of the Colony spaceport, each step an act of
pure will. He had no idea what lay beyond those doors, and feared,
more than anything else, what sight would meet him on the other
side.

“
Adam?” came his mother’s
voice from around the final corner. Chills raced down James’s arms;
it felt as if years had passed since he’d last seen his
mother.

“
Jessica!” his father
shouted, breaking into a run. James struggled to keep up. In a few
moments, they were through the last doorway and inside the main
terminal.

Or what was left of it.

Garbage and debris lay scattered about
the main walkway. The once magnificent mosaic in the center of the
concourse lay broken and shattered, loose ceramic tiles piled like
rubble. The air smelled faintly of smoke, while dark spots stained
the floor and walls. A few people wound their way through the
concourse, but the normally bustling terminal was emptier than
James had ever seen it.

“
Adam!” his mother
shrieked. Still running, his father threw his duffel bag to the
floor and caught her in a tight embrace. With tears streaking down
both their faces, they held on to each other as if their lives
depended on it.

James caught his breath and swallowed.
His parents seemed more frail and vulnerable in that moment than he
had ever seen them before.

It profoundly disturbed
him.

“
And James!” his mother
cried, letting go of Adam long enough to sweep him up in her arms.
She kissed him repeatedly on his cheeks and forehead, clinging to
him as if to reassure herself that he was real, that he was still
alive. His father joined them, and for several moments, they stood
embracing each other as a reunited family.

Not reunited,
James thought to himself. Ben and Stella were
still out there somewhere.

At length, they released each other.
James’s father picked up the duffel bag and fell into step with his
wife, talking quickly as they made their way down the
terminal.

James followed a short distance
behind, but was too busy staring at the scenery to pay any notice
to their conversation. Several of the arrival and departure boards
hung broken from the ceiling; one dangled precariously from a wire,
suspended only a few feet above the floor. Those few that were
still intact displayed a schedule that was remarkably sparse,
especially considering how much traffic had once passed through
this place.