Page 15 of Soliv Four
The jungle maze where the hunt was held occupied the biggest portion of the broadcast facility. A small bank of stadium seating sat across from the jungle maze, with the start and finish point for the hunt in the middle. The stadium where they staged both the gladiator matches, mixed martial arts, and the deathmatches were behind the seating for the hunt.
It contained two banks of stadium seats, each split for inmates and guests. The gym and sparring cages were underneath the stadium. Gladiators trained in the section where the fights took place. The men’s and women’s barracks were on the south side of the compound with the men’s building at the west and the women’s barracks on the east side south of the stadium. Outside the south side of the stadium were a running track and various exercise equipment under a clear canopy.
They walked the grounds, chatting casually. Tomak was from a military family on Drapus, a world with about a thousand more years of recorded history than Earth. He started his career at the military academy on Drapus, training as a warrior in martial arts, and ancient weapons such as swords and battle spears and modern weapons.
After establishing himself as a formidable warrior in defending a Drapus Coalition world of Azda against invasion by the Szeqart Empire, he was chosen to lead a black ops team that was the best of the best.
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Tomak and his team were the best of the best, but they hadn’t been able to figure a way to escape Soliv Four. Ships bringing new inmates came with no regularity, and only shuttles landed on the planet. Those arrivals were heavily guarded by sentries with lethal weapons. The landing pad was surrounded by a high chain-link fence that was electrified when shuttles landed.
Outside the fence was an open area, making a stealthy approach on foot impossible. The guards would cut them down if they tried. The only weapons the inmates got were blades and clubs for the games. To gain control of the landing pad, they would first need to breach the Warden’s compound at the southern edge of prison grounds. The guards lived at one end, and the warden lived at the other end. Controls for all the cameras and the barriers were inside.
Tomak figured they would need a small missile launcher to breach the thick wall. One of those tunnel diggers from the mines would get them under it, but the mines were on the other side of the planet. He and his men had brainstormed many times on how they could escape from the prison planet.
The planet was on the fringe of the Szeqart Empire. They would likely need help from off-world to escape. Tomak doubted it would come because whoever betrayed them branded them as traitors of the Coalition. In the beginning, Tomak hoped the people who knew him, who’d fought at his side, wouldn’t believe he betrayed them.
Nearly three-star orbits into a life sentence, he stopped hoping. Only now since he claimed Angie, Tomak had started thinking about it again as they walked the grounds. He mentally shook himself. Nothing had changed that could help them escape, and a failed attempt could put Angie in danger. He enjoyed her too much to risk her safety.
He was instinctively protective of her and admittedly possessive. Their budding relationship was too new to say he loved her. He certainly lusted for her. She gave him more pleasure than he could ever have imagined.
Tomak liked having her at his side as they strolled the grounds. He was still assimilating the fact that he had found his destined mate on this prison world. That was information he couldn’t share with anyone outside his team. They would know anyway because his clan rarely mated with anyone but a ‘fated.’
The other inmates wouldn’t know that, and he planned to keep it that way. He had made more than a few enemies among the gamers by besting them. Some of them would hurt Angie to hurt him.
“There are things I must tell you about life here,” he said in a low tone as they walked the grounds. “Other than this.” He lifted their joined hands. “I will never show you affection where the others can see. If the other inmates think I value you for other than your body, they might try to take you from me or hurt you.”
“And do you?” She glanced up at him with a slight frown.
“When you know me better, you will not have to ask. Finding one’s fated is the most coveted and revered achievement in Drapan society. It is a solid partnership between a man and a woman that is nurtured by their passion for one another and evolves into an enduring love,” he explained. “We are taught this since childhood.”
“That’s good to know.” She gave him a faint smile. “I honestly didn’t know what I was getting into when I signed up for a mate. I didn’t even know what species he would be.”
“The authorities on Earth let them do this to unsuspecting people?”
“I think they probably do because it is so overpopulated with a shortage of males. It’s one way to get rid of the surplus breeding age females,” she said. “I thought I asked all the right questions, and the answers they gave seemed acceptable. They assured me that my match would treat me well. But when we got to the transport ship, they made us strip naked and put us in cages. We all thought we were being sold into slavery.”
“And you think this is not?”
“Not in the sense we all thought. At least not what I expected.”
“For some, it may be as bad or worse than you thought. The rules forbid harming females, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get raped or passed around, or hit. Only a couple have been killed outside the hunt, so far, and some have landed in the infirmary.”
“What if the female doesn’t want to be with the male who captures her?”
“They have no choice but to stay with him for a moon span, about forty rotations,” he added before she could ask.
“Then what?”
“She gets put into another hunt.”
“Do males kill each other in all the hunts?”
“Not always. I did in all three hunts I ran in. Havel and his lackeys would have hurt you---if not at the hunt, later. They might have killed you before that sex drug wore off, and you would have been unable to resist.”
Angie shuddered. “I’m not xenophobic, really, but I don’t like reptiles.”
“You don’t have to explain to me,me’ara,many humanoids prefer not to breed outside their species. I have never intended to mate with any female but my fated. I do, however, regret the circumstance. We will not be allowed to have children.”
