Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (6 page)

Vega didn’t blame them, in the end, not really. They had the right of it to some extent. Any one of them could enter the Arena and never leave it. Every fight could be their last. Cursii died on the sands every game day. Only Vega couldn’t live that way. Day to day, moment to moment. He had to hold onto some kind of dream for the future, and that future would take him home.

Vega preferred the barracks this way. Silent, ponderous. He passed bunk after bunk, some with multiple people piled into one bed, some with hammocks swinging from the ceiling. His fortune in the Arena had earned him the only single bunk in the barracks, and he had maintained its occupancy for a full year now. He hoped never to leave it, unless it was to walk freely out of the Chara palace altogether.

The hallways of the barracks were silent and dark. Even the mess was quiet, the few cursii there sleeping it off on tables or benches, the soft huff of snores pervading the air. Vega walked on. The barracks were essentially looping tunnels winding around underneath the Chara palace, connecting the training yard to the slave quarters to the long walk down the lower level tunnel to the Arena itself. Vega walked the length of it, from the training yard back through the barracks towards the gate that led to the tunnel, knowing he would do it all again the next solar, and then into the Arena for real. The only sound that accompanied him was the soft fall of his own bare feet across the metal floor.

Then he heard steps behind him and stopped. And waited, letting them catch up, before he turned and in the darkness could make out the bulky, heaving silhouette of Lohar in the black.

So he wouldn’t even wait for the Arena, it seemed.

“You’re making a mistake,” Vega warned him. “You should wait until tomorrow.”

“You’re not gonna see tomorrow,” Lohar growled.

Then they both heard, from down the hall and up the stairs that led to the slaves quarters, the sound of voices. Soft, feminine.

Vega paused, listening, and heard the gate at the top of the stairs slide open and then closed again. Lohar heard it, too, and took a step back. Vega stood as he was, expecting to see one of the guards turn the corner. Instead, in the wan light of the corridor’s single overhead light, he saw the donara herself appear, having come down the stairs and turned the corner. He saw her, and she saw him, and she froze. Lohar saw her too.

What madness was this?

Why would this creature be coming to the barracks in the dead of night? And who had helped her get out of the slaves quarter? Certainly not the domina. Fraternization between the house slaves and the cursii was strictly forbidden. The stupid human was going to get herself killed, or at least whipped, if she got caught down here. Then Lohar was moving, and Vega bit down on a curse, because the big Errai cursu was bowling right for the donara instead of Vega himself. No doubt to claim a prize he certainly had not yet earned.

Vega almost just let it happen.

It was the night before the games. He shouldn’t have been wasting his energy on this kind of bullshit, whatever was really going on, because it was definitely bullshit. How the donara had gotten down here, what Lohar might do to her, and what the domina might to do them all when she discovered it. Vega knew he should’ve just gone right back to his room and pretended he’d never seen any of it. But in the end, he was not that heartless. Perhaps he tried to be in his worse moments, but he wasn’t. So he just sighed and then went after Lohar.

The donara screamed when Lohar got to her. He grabbed her, lifting her right off her feet, and slammed her into the nearest wall.

Vega caught his shoulder and yanked him back from her, driving his fist into Lohar’s face. Lohar bellowed in pain and tackled Vega, and the two of them went rolling across the corridor floor, grappling, until Vega could get the bigger cursu in a choke hold. He wrapped his legs around Lohar’s waist and his arms around his neck, squeezing tight, using enough force to slowly cut off his breath without killing him outright. It was not a personal mercy, but he knew if he killed him he’d have to pay the price of Lohar's contract himself. And that contract must have been high enough that Lohar had no hope of paying it off any time soon, or he would not have been so reckless himself.

He felt Lohar start to slump in his arms, and made the mistake of loosening his grip just by the tiniest fraction.

Lohar pulled a small knife from the sole of his shoe and reached up, slashing, and managed to slice into Vega’s arm.

Vega hissed, his hold tightening again until Lohar was thrashing about but unable to land a second blow with the knife. This time, Vega did not relent until he could feel the big cursu’s pulse begin to slow in his throat, against Vega’s forearm. He only relented when Lohar’s head bowed forward and all the fight went out of his limbs. With a furious roar, Vega released him. Lohar hit the floor, unconscious. Vega slid back, climbing to his feet, and winced when he checked the cut on his arm. It was deep —blood streaming down, dripping off his fingertips— and it hurt. It would have to be tended to before the games, and it might slow him down.

“Stupid bitch,” he growled at the donara, who was huddled against the wall by the stairs. “What the hell is wrong with you? What are you doing down here?”

In a matter of minutes, he knew, the guards would come.

Her scream, the sound of their fight, and the simple opening and closing of the gate at the top of the stars would have alerted them to inappropriate movement in the house.

The girl cringed further against the wall when he approached.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he barked. “But you’ve put us all in danger!”

“I was trying to escape,” she said shakily, lifting her head to look at him. There were tears staining her cheeks. “I was trying to get out of the palace.”

“Through the
barracks
?” Vega stared at her. “There’s no way to get out of the palace through here. Only the tunnel to the Arena.”

“Fuck,” the donara cried. “Fuck. Fuck. The girl lied to me. The cleaner. She said this way led to the sanitation bays.”

Vega rolled his eyes. “You are as stupid as you look.” Then he bent down and just grabbed her by the arms, pulling her to her feet. “Get up.”

She tried to shake him off. “Let go of me. I’m not
stupid
.”

“When they find you down here,” Vega snapped. “The domina will have us all whipped for your disobedience. Do you understand that? She
owns
you. And me. And every other slave in this palace. And the fault of one is the fault of all.”

She looked at him, surprise plain on her face. And he was startled to find that she was even prettier up close than he’d thought when he’d seen her from the training yard. In an uncommon, alien way, she was gorgeous. Peach skinned with pale freckles dotting her face and soft gray eyes, the color of a morning mist at home or a spring rain cloud. Her face was framed by pale hair soft as the sunwheat his father’s farm had harvested every year. He let go of her, discomfited by finding so many shades of his home world in an alien, startled by finding her so appealing.

“I didn’t know,” she stammered.

“No, it’s clear you know practically nothing,” he muttered. He looked down at Lohar, trying to figure out a way to spin this that didn’t land them all on the blocks in the market, or worse.

“You’re hurt,” the donara said quietly. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yes, I know. Shut up. I’m thinking.”

“Here.”

Vega looked at her again, watching with no small amount of bafflement as she reached down and gathered up the skirt of her gown, then proceeded to tear it to shreds. He had no idea why she was rending her dress until she came close and looped the fabric around his bicep where Lohar had sliced it, tying it tightly, and staunching the blood flow. Vega blinked, watching her use yet more torn fabric to continue wrapping the wound.

“Are you some kind of healer?”

“Something like that.”

“And this works on your planet?” He frowned.

She frowned right back at him. “Well, it’ll stop you bleeding, and you didn’t seem to be able to do that on your own.”

“Of course not,” Vega scoffed. “By the grace of the domina I would be brought a med droid.”

“Your only doctors on this thing are robots?”

“Certainly. Living hands can’t be trusted to save anything.”

“Wow.” She shook her head, and Vega thought he saw frustration in her face, but she finished dressing his wound and then stepped back from him.

He eyeballed the dressing and had to admit it was almost as good as a droid’s. Of course, a med droid would not have used pieces of a slave’s skirt, but he supposed he had to admire her ingenuity if nothing else. Wait. Admire?

They didn’t have time for this.

He focused on her eyes. “Any minute now, the guards will burst in. When they do, don’t move and don’t speak. Just agree to everything I say.”

“What are you going to say?” the donara asked.

“I’m working on that.”

“But what if they don’t believe you?”

Vega glared at her. “I’m respected in this house, even by the domina. They’ll believe me, but only if you corroborate the story. And if you fight, or protest, if you say anything at all, they’ll think you're guilty.”

“But—”

“Because you
are
guilty,” he said firmly. “And I am not. So let me do the talking.”

That seemed to silence her, finally. She closed her mouth and looked down, nodding, and Vega found himself frustrated because he didn’t want to upset her, but he had to take control of the situation while there was still any small part of it he
could
control.

And not a moment too soon.

Seconds later, the lights in the corridor flickered on, bright and blinding, and he heard the gate at the top of the stairs open once more. He pushed the donara back against the wall, putting himself between her and the guards, and Lohar’s prone figure on the floor. Guards streamed down the stairs in their red and gold armor, surrounding them, plasma rifles drawn. Vega put his hands up, head bowed low in supplication. He was relieved to see the donara do the same, and when he sank to his knees, she followed him, until they were both on their knees and bowing before the circle of guards.

Then, as Vega had both expected and hoped, he heard the more delicate footfalls of the domina herself as she came down the stairs, walking through a gauntlet of guards. Behind her, the yellow-scaled cleaning slave Nyssa. Vega knew the slave was ambitious, and he was unsurprised to see her. She must have been the one who told the donara that she could escape through the barracks gate, hoping she would get caught, killed. Anything to get her out of the way so that perhaps Nyssa could take her place. It was clever, but it hadn’t worked. This would gain the donara no favors with Nyssa, but at least she was still alive.

Vega risked lifting his gaze when Domina Lennai stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She was looking right at him, and there was fury in her eyes. But when she looked at him, some of that fury ebbed, and Vega thought there was a chance. He was the favorite. He knew he was the favorite, and he could use that.

“And just what troublesome
madness
is going on down here?” the domina demanded.

Alaina knelt with her head bowed, watching Lennai’s feet come to a stop in front of her and the violet-eyed gladiator who’d saved her. Her mind whirled with thoughts, not the least of which having to do with him. It was the same gladiator, or, she supposed,
cursu
, that had been staring at her when she stood on the balcony with their domina. The only one who had
not
seemed interested in winning her through the games.

Her hands shook.

It wasn’t every day two aliens fought over her, after all. She spared a glance towards the other alien’s unconscious figure sprawled across the corridor floor, and then she risked lifting her eyes just enough so she could see the yellow-scaled girl’s toes. Nyssa. She must have sent her the wrong way on purpose, and Alaina wasn’t going to fall for that again. Assuming she made it out of this episode alive. It also just reinforced all of her previously conceived notions about people, any people, on any planet, in any part of the universe: they all sucked. Nobody was just naturally kind. Everybody was in it for themselves.

“I’m sorry, domina,” the gladiator was saying. “Lohar attacked me, hoping for a better spot in the games if I was wounded. The donara was at the top of the stairs and I begged her to come help me. She’s a healer.”

“A healer?” Lennai stopped in front of Alaina, and she looked instinctively up at her. “What kind of healer?”

Alaina blinked. “An EMT.”

“What does that mean?”

Alaina glanced at the gladiator’s profile, but his eyes were still low. She looked back at Lennai. “I’m an emergency medical professional. Not a healer. Not exactly a healer. More like a...patcher…”

She had no idea how to explain what she did for a living to people who used robots for doctors.

Lennai looked at the gladiator again. “And she did this, Vega?” She indicated the makeshift bandage Alaina had made out of the pieces of her dress.

Vega nodded, and now at least Alaina knew his name. “Yes, domina. She seems very resourceful.”

“It was so lucky,” Nyssa piped up, “that I was here to let her into the barracks, domina.”

Alaina glared at her in spite of herself. Nyssa looked calmly back at her, the corner of her mouth turning slightly up. The expression was at once pleading and threatening, and Alaina was struck by the girl’s ability to convey both in a single look.

“It was,” she finally said, through clenched teeth. “Very lucky.”

Lennai looked at Lohar on the floor. “And is he dead?”

“No, domina,” Vega said quickly. “I would never kill another cursu. Certainly not one of House Chara in these halls. I only defended myself.”

“Small miracles,” Lennai sighed. She gestured at two of the guards who went to the fallen gladiator and started dragging him down the hall. Then the domina looked at Alaina again. “So not just a pretty face, it seems.”