Page 41 of Escape Velocity

“And your claim that you grew up in an upper-class household?”

“That was a lie. My father was a traveling merchant. He took a concubine who was—ugly. She wasn’t a beauty by your standards, but her skin was mostly clear, which meant she was more likely to have a girl like me. They paid him to do it. And they paid him more when I turned out to be prime stock.”

“And that story about loving her cooking? And your singing?”

“Singing—and learning standard speech—are part of our training. And, yes, she was also the cook in the house.”

“Did she mother you?”

Her voice turned soft. “Yes. She loved me, maybe because we were stuck in the same nightmare. And she was scared for what was going to happen to me, but there was nothing she could do about it.” She swallowed. “I told you my father traveled. He left us at home, and those were the best times, when my mother and I were on our own. Well, she had to make sure I kept up my studies. But we really talked to each other when he was gone. And she did teach me the skills a wife would need to run a home—in case I developed beauty bumps and could lead a normal life.”

He didn’t let her tale of woe get him off track. “How did you come up with your elaborate story?”

“I had a lot of time to figure it out.”

He thought back to their first hours together. “You pretended that you didn’t know how to behave in normal society, but you took off your clothes to turn me on—right?”

She gave a little nod. “And to test whether I was really. . . attractive to you.”

“Anything else?” he asked in a voice that sounded to his own ears like ground glass.

“The slave masters were talking about the man who bought me. Someone named Tudor. A . . . bad man.”

His memory spun back to the scene on the station when she’d been chained to the wall. “I heard the hang-arounds mention his name.”

“Yes. Do you know who he is?”

“No. But I can probably find out.”

“He’s a regular customer, and he pays well. Over the years, I heard the guards discussing him. Apparently, he gets pleasure from torturing and killing women. They assume none of the slaves he buys live . . . through his attentions. That was why I was desperate to—escape. I was sure I was headed for a painful death.”

“Kahlad.”

###

Elgin Tudor had recorded the report from Freedom Station. Then he had poured himself two shots of vintage Farlian brandy and downed them in two gulps.

The liquor didn’t make him feel any better, but it took the edge off his fury.

He’d barely kept himself from throwing a crystal gewgaw at the transmission. At the last minute, he’d told himself there was no point in destroying a perfectly good unit.

He poured himself more brandy, then sipped as he replayed the message. It came from what passed for the authorities on Freedom Station.

Two hang-arounds—known as Lomax and Kado—had been found dead in a musty storage unit in the lower reaches of the station. Either they had killed each other, or someone else had done it and made the murder seem like a fatal fight between two men who would as soon kill a friend as an enemy.

It looked like they’d burned each other at the same time, after quarreling over stolen merchandise. Boxes of contraband were open, with the contents strewn around. And there was also the suggestion—although no hard evidence—that someone had been held captive in the room.

And then what?

As it happened, these were the two men Elgin had hired to look for his cargo.

He spun out a scenario that fit the situation if you cranked himself into the equation.

What if these two slime worms had spotted his merchandise at the station and scooped her up? But instead of turning her over for transport right away, they had decided to play a power game with her first. Then whoever had brought her to the station had killed them and gotten her back. That was as good as any other explanation.

He had put out a demand for information on which ships had docked at the station prior to the discovery of the bodies and after the likely abduction from Naxion. So far, the bastards who ran the place were not cooperating.

Too bad he couldn’t force them to cooperate. And too bad there was no surveillance footage from the facility, but that was part of the insane way the place was run. They hated government interference and bent over backwards to thumb their noses at the authorities.

---