Page 6 of Soliv Four
The present and past receded. Her mind took her to a place of calm and released the tension in her body. She could only control herself, not what was happening. Her single goal was to survive.
THREE
Angie
A new alarm sounded sometime later, drawing Angie back to the present. An announcement followed, “please exit your cell, put on the shoes, and stand in front of it.”
Angie rose to her feet as her cell door slid open. As she padded to the opening in her bare feet, she found a pair of gray slip-ons that molded to her feet when she donned them.
Two live attendants came down the corridor. One carried a line that he unwound as they proceeded. The other alien fastened a leash around each female’s neck.
Angie recognized some of the others as the humans that came from Earth with her. Apparently, her friend Jazee was not going where they were going. Angie met her sad eyes after she had been leashed, and the attendants had moved on.
“Goodbye,” Angie said, “Farewell, my friend if I don’t see you again.”
“I will pray to the Goddess for you,” Jazee said solemnly. “And myself as well.”
Four more females were hooked to the line after Angie before it started moving. A few of them asked where they were going and got swatted with a small switch. A command for silence followed that.
Led to the shuttle bay and into a shuttle, they were seated on two benches across from each other.
“We must be at Soliv Four,” Angie murmured to no one in particular. Inwardly, she tamped down the panic rising within her as she started to hyperventilate. She managed to pull herself back and control her breathing.
The shuttle jerked slightly as it moved to launch. It was a smooth entry into the planet’s atmosphere with an easy landing at the primary detention center. The official name was the Soliv Four Incarceration and Detention Center Enterprises. Everyone just called it Soliv prison planet.
They were led from the shuttle tethered to each other to stand in line on the landing pad facing a man in uniform.
“Welcome, ladies. I am Warden McKaro. My apologies for the subterfuge that brought you here. We had to do something to get more females here to keep things interesting for our fans. You are not here as punishment for any crime, but as a reward for our successful gamers.
“After you’ve had a rotation span to rest, the mating hunts will begin. We will run them every rotation until you have all been captured.”
Cheering from behind the warden drew Angie’s attention to a crowd of burly men gathered behind a chain-link fence. They shouted catcalls and indecent proposals. Some of them grabbed their crotches and jerked their hips along with the catcalls.
But there was one man who caught Angie’s eyes with his smoldering gaze. He said nothing and made no gestures; he just stared.
Somehow, she knew it was for her, and she couldn’t help staring back. It was blatantly sexual, and Angie’s nipples tightened. Heat pooled between her thighs. A slight smirk on his mouth told her he knew.
The warden had paused, raising his hand to signal for quiet.
“The contracts you signed will be full filled. You will each get your mate, some maybe more than one.” He paused to give them a smug smile. “The catch is that you will remain on Soliv Four as all of these men are sentenced to life. Enjoy the rest of your day, ladies. Please follow my officer to your barracks. Get some rest. You will need it.”
They were taken for refreshments at the women’s mess for an orientation video about the mate hunt. The hunt took place in a jungle maze of dirt paths through a thick jungle forest. The host commentator introduced the female to each of the four males who hadn’t had a woman since they arrived.
The female was given a quarter span head start before the males were released to find and claim her. The first to claim her would be her mate. Murmurs of dismay and disbelief ran through the twenty women watching their future.
Angie put her elbow on the table and laid her forehead on her hand. What had she gotten herself into?
TomakBah’rin watched his men sparring in the pit with potential opponents for the gladiator fights in two rotations. After approximately two and a half star-spans, he still thought of them ashismen. But they weren’t, at least not officially. They were numbers on the prison planet Soliv Four, betrayed and branded as traitors by someone who wanted them out of the way.
His unit was an elite military combat team that specialized in extractions on the most dangerous missions. Their last assignment was an intricate trap on a world with a totalitarian regime. They were ambushed when they reached their target without a chance to fight back. Knocked out by a stun blast, they were caged on the prison ship bound for Soliv Prison by the time they recovered.
Soliv Four was no ordinary prison planet. It was a prison run for profit by the Szeqart Empire, and many of their inmates were basically shanghaied depending on their estimated profitability. Tomak’s elite combat team certainly fit the bill. The prisoners competed in gladiator matches and mixed martial arts and other life and death games that were broadcast throughout the Empire.
Tomak wondered how many credits they paid the person who sold them out. The asset they were sent to recover was dead in his cell when they fought their way in. The stun bomb went off as they realized it was a trap.
When he and his team arrived on Soliv, they were given only two choices. They refused the games. Several moon spans in the mines underground changed their minds.
They performed as they were told, or they became examples of what could happen if they didn’t. Viewers and live audience members voted whether the vanquished should die or not.
