Page 38 of Claim
“Shut up.Illgattoa wouldn’t shut up about owning an orc ship.So strong”—he pitched his voice to an Ajellomenes gurgle—“so hardworking.Such pretty little wings.Bah.Selling you at the Gloom isn’t going to pay for the holes in my ship.”
Mag spat ichor to one side.One of his tusks might be cracked too.“Maybe you shouldn’t have put so many holes in me.”
Another jab with the truncheon shut him up.
As he sagged in the shackles, waiting for Szakh to tire again, Mag wondered if that strength would save him—if he even wanted it to.He’d heard enough about the Gloom to dread his fate.
Powered with beauty and hope and dreams and love.
All this time, guiding theDeepWanderthrough the dust, he’d stayed his course, not by strength or diligence or pretty little wings alone.If anyone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to pin a word to his why.
But now he knew.The word for love was June.
When Szakh finally signaled two of the guards to cut him down, Mag dropped to his knees.
Maybe he wasn’t going to have a choice about saving his strength.
Szakh grabbed one of his antennae, cranking his head back to glare down at him.“You should’ve just let me take that rock you found when you had the chance.”
Mag peered up at him through ichor-clouded eyes.“It’s not too late to let me go.”
The Sauronilan captain laughed.
Like congealing runoff ejected from a refinery, buyers and sellers in the Gloom converged just beyond the outskirts of Luster Station controlled space in the abandoned depots of a partially dismantled moon.Szakh had three of his guards—with an armed fourth—drag Mag to a gutted building half buried in the barren rock.To Mag’s cynical eye, there was nothing left worth mining or scavenging—not even the five other poor wretches also shackled and already locked to a scaffold.The rusted metal frame was perched on a central platform that had once held the conveyor engine though it had obviously been salvaged long ago, leaving only the skeletal support and a few plasteel boards.
Under the only light in the room, the remaining empty stand looked just a little too much like the command dais on theDeepWanderrotting to nothing.
Mag’s bruised knees shook again as Szakh prodded him up the steps.Slavery was prohibited everywhere in the civilized galaxies.But debt and indenture were often overlooked, and anyway the Gloom made no pretense to civilized behavior, much less abolitionist enlightenment.The other prisoners watched him impassively; if they’d ever had hope, it was as long gone as the minerals on this moon.
Gone, along with most of the atmosphere.The air was almost too thin to keep him conscious, and when he stumbled on the last dark step, Szakh jerked him along with a disapproving hiss.“You could at least pretend to be tough,” he complained resentfully as the platform swayed at their motion.
He’d always pretended, Mag mused.And it had been enough—for awhile.June had seen through it, seen through him, those quartz eyes keener than lasers.Sharing with her, even just a little, had been…good.And knowing he’d never share with her again would break him like no other blow.
A spindly creature partly encased in orange threads hopped nimbly onto the stage, even its light weight sending a tremor through the rickety remains.“Let’s make this quick.”The clicks from its mandibles translated in Mag’s aching head.“Not much here to haggle over anyway.”
Squinting against the glaring light, he glanced at the other prisoners, who returned the look and passed it around like it was the last cup of cold, sour tea.Enslavementandinsults?
With the harsh illumination and the ichor in his eyes, he couldn’t make out much beyond the platform, just murmurs and glimpses of shadowy figures briefly lit by flashes from datpads.Unlike the raucous Luster auction, this was furtive; they all knew it was wrong, though six of them couldn’t do anything about it and the others didn’t care.
“Iz wantz zee big un.”
The voice that blared out of the dark was brokenly modulated by some haphazard translating device.It sounded exactly like the sort of being that would buy another being at an auction called the Gloom when everyone else was being quiet about it.
The arthropod slaver clicked.“Place your bid through your device.”
“No.Iz wantz now.”The speaker stepped half into the ring of light.
In a universe of endless diversity, the being was uniquely wrong.It hitched along on three stubby legs, trailing elaborate hoses in some sort of poorly rigged full-head respirator.And its boxy mantle was pathetically not swoopy.
But looped high above the respirator covering its face was a haphazard knot of keratin strands that caught the harsh light in a strangely mesmerizing way…
No.Oh no.What was left of his seeping ichor congealed like rotten ice in his body even as the i’lva flared with exultation.
They were here.His ship was here.
Shewas here.
The joy hurt more than Szakh’s electrified truncheon.Junecouldn’tbe here, not in the Gloom.The Sauronilans might recognize her and imprison her too.
