Page 3 of Stealing Mercury
“You left his ship for a job with Reliable?”
“My father is dead.” No need to mention the rest of his crew had left her behind, stranded her on a backwater planet.
“Ah.” He punctuated the singular sound with a quick lift and dip of his chin.
She could feel more questions coming, but she couldn’t let him get to the questions she couldn’t answer. “I took the same tests as the academy grads and I have more flight hours than any academy pilot my age.”
“Samantha’s logged hours on dozens of ships, Mr. Owens.” Sevti patted the man’s shoulder, smile gone impossibly wide. “I can assure you I’ve seen her pilot ships similar to your stellar-class courier.”
It had been part of upgrading her license to avoid paying local port pilots to maneuver their ship in and out of the Class Two ports. She’d logged the hours through her father’s connections... and not one of them had lifted a finger to help her after his death. Not until Sevti.
Samantha held Owens’ gaze. “Your ship will be safe with me.” She carefully avoided any mention of the cargo.That, she would not be keeping safe. But her assurance seemed to satisfy Grande Owens.
He threw his chin and chest out like a bird strutting to impress. “Roma isn’t corporate. We’re a privately held company and most of us started out without the proverbial silver spoon, so your background is no concern here. I’ll leave Mr. Allandson to show you to the ship. I—”
At first, Samantha’s mind couldn’t process the sound that drowned out his voice. Her brain told her it had to be an animal howling, but as the sound swelled into something haunting and mournful, she knew it wasn’t an animal at all.
Her confusion must’ve shown on her face because Grande Owens laughed. “That’s our Dogs.”
“Dogs?” Her voice came out weak and horrified, because she knew, knew in her bones, they weren’t talking about the kind of dogs that ran around on four legs.
Another howl echoed in the hollow space of the hangar. At the far end, a loading crew in red Roma jumpsuits maneuvered three large cages across the dull gray floor plating and into position alongside the courier ship. The hangar lighting glinted off the crude metal prisons that looked more like low-tech jail cells than animal containment crates.
Arena Dogs.
That’s what the news vids had called them. But her scan of the news feeds hadn’t prepared her. They hadn’t included vid of the gladiators known as the fighting Dogs of the RomaRex Arena.
She couldn’t see them well from across the hangar, but she could clearly see they were men. Men locked in cages and shipped as freight.
A new ache started in her chest. They were men, and they were her cargo. Living, breathing, cargo. Bronze chests left bare, dark hair past their shoulders, heads thrown back, the thick columns of their throats working to make those haunting howls.
“They’re out of sorts today. Their handler says they’re melancholy about being separated from their mate, but I’m not convinced.” Owens spoke from near her shoulder. He’d shifted to stand at her side, looking over the hangar like a feudal lord surveying his land.
“Their mate?”
He chuckled again, a sound she was coming to despise. “They have this odd practice of sharing their females. They have quite a complex social structure. We weren’t expecting it from this mix of DNA, but...”
Samantha didn’t follow any of what came aftersharing their females. That thought stopped her overwhelmed brain. Her head wanted her to be appalled, and shewasappalled that he talked about them as if they were nothing more than animals, or a science experiment, but her reaction to what he was saying could be more aptly described as... fascination. Fascination and guilt. While she stood there captivated by the raw emotion in their howls, they were imprisoned and suffering.
Her stomach churned, and she knew she was in over her head. She wanted to ask why Roma was calling the men Dogs. Why they’d put them in cages. Why the men with her weren’t freaked out by the howling that was scrapingherinsides raw.
By the time her brain re-engaged, Owens had gone and Sevti was leading her toward the cages.
The weight of his hand on the center of her back urged her forward. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to prepare you more. Even scrambled messages are risky.”
“Messagesare risky,” she hissed. “What part of thisisn’trisky?” She knew her outrage at the whole situation was bleeding into her voice and they needed to keep quiet, but she’d heard the change in his tone. His earlier calm had been icing over a sticky, stressed center.
“They’re slaves, Samantha. We’re helping them get to freedom.”
She lowered her voice. “I know the Alliance denies citizenship to the non-earth races, but slavery?” They were still walking toward the hellish looking cages. The loading crew had temporarily disappeared through a door markedCrew Only, but the workers in their crimson uniforms could return at any moment.
“They’re genetically engineered fighters. You’ve heard of the Arena Games?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just continued on in a rush of words. “Roma wanted gladiators, only better. Stronger. Faster. More lethal. They force them to fight. To slaughter each other. They’re considered property of The Roma Company.”
“How is that—”
“They claim they’re a result of a genetic manufacturing system, property. And they used enough animal and non-human alien DNA to get the Council of Earth Allied Planets to declare them non-human... animals.”
Samantha didn’t exactly have one hundred percent human DNA herself. She shuddered at the idea of being deemed non-human just because her grandmother had been Cerrillian. It was bad enough to know she’d lose her pilot’s license if anyone learned what her father had done—butslavery. She fought the urge to tug at her sleeves, to make sure the distinctive bands of color along her arms stayed covered. She was a mixed-breed on the wrong side of the Alliance-Gollerra border. Why had she thought this risk worth taking? “Why haven’t I heard of this? I thought the gladiators were—”
