Page 41 of Soliv Four
“What if they gang up on us?”
“It could be a problem. I have some plans. Let’s get to the track. Emon has news. It won’t get us out of the hunt, but we’re getting out of here one way or another.”
There were many grim faces in the training field the next rotation, especially among the couples. Tomak was pretty sure he wasn’t the only male trying to comfort his sobbing mate after management’s big announcement. The bastards had them by the balls.
Now they understood the purpose of showing that gruesome holovid a couple moon spans back. The mines could be a death sentence for the females, who had been illegally diverted by a fraudulent alien brides’ program to become prizes for the prisoners.
Because of their hunt the next rotation, Tomak wasn’t required to work out. He and Angie came to the field for a few laps of the track with his team. Their mates joined them, and they chatted while jogging at a leisurely pace.
“If we can’t get the crystal we need for space, we have to go somewhere else on this planet,” Tomak told them.
“There’s a perfectly good ship sitting in the Warden’s compound. We’ve broken into more secure places than that before,” D’aktan suggested.
“We could,” Tomak said, “but every patrol ship in half the galaxy would be after us. We don’t even know the coordinates of this place.”
“Nobody does. They are encrypted and programmed directly into a ship’s navigation system, and it erases when they get here,” Emon said.
“Could we swap crystals with his?” Angie suggested.
“We’d have to get past thirty armed guards, dozens of drone cams, and a coded security system,” said Tomak. When we were on missions to places like that before, we had state of the art weapons and tech.”
“We haven’t even salvaged enough weapons to go around yet,” said Coraz.
“They’ve gone too far this time,” said Tomak. “We have to get away from here.”
“I’ve found the specs for the crystals in the FTL of the evac unit. I still have my hammer and some of my chisels from the mines.”
“We all smuggled a few raw crystals out in case they might be worth trading. You think you might be able to cut one to specs?” asked Tomak.
“I want to try.”
“Do it,” Tomak agreed. “Is the evac ready to fly, without the fifth crystal?”
“We did an engine check, and it seems to be ready to go.”
“They have announced a schedule for the couples hunt, but they only notified those involved,” said Tomak.
“J’garinand Praxus are getting female hunts, and Lazko is scheduled for a couple hunt,” said D’aktan.”
“Which female?”
“Roxie,” said Lazko.
“Does he even want her?” asked Tomak.
“He wants to get her away from Grug.”
“Have you watched them together? She’s afraid of him, and she has bruises that make me think he’s hitting her,” said Lazko as he joined them. “I think she likes me. She watches me when she thinks I don’t see.”
“But she is not your fated.”
“I don’t care. I never believed I would find my fated mate. That is my fate. Roxie came here like Angie, expecting a mate who would respect and care for her. Grug is not that.”
“Then I wish you well,” Tomak said. “I could not have guessed that my fated mate would have come from a star system so far from our homeworld. I was about to just choose a female I favored when Angie arrived.”
“The expansion of the course into the crash sites will delay our attempted launch until there is a break in the hunts,” Tomak said, addressing the team. We might as well take our pleasure where we can find it.”
“Things could get ugly here if what I heard was true,” said D’aktan. “They are bringing in another fifty or so thugs from the mines at the end of the moon span.”
