Wrage (Galaxy Gladiators #11) - Alana Khan Page 0,68

slaps my cheek with such force my head ricochets to the side and back. I again wonder if this is a dream as blackness descends.

~.~

Shit. I think as I return to consciousness. I’d hoped my stunt would work. I didn’t want to wake up. I’m not built to be anyone’s slave.

I’m lying on a couch in the living room where I made my suicide attempt. My cuts are bandaged and six laser pistols are aimed at me. The room vibrates as the ground shakes, glass tinkling in the chandelier overhead. A small earthquake?

“Sir,” one of Ryone’s snakelike guards calls, “she’s awake.”

My captor stalks into the room, now dressed in a different silken jacket, blood-red this time. Leaning over me, he slaps my cheek so hard white dots dance in my field of vision.

“If I hadn’t already paid more than you’re worth, I would have let you die. As it is, I’ve got a creative means to bring you to heel.

“I’m going to throw you in the mine where you’ll be used by whoever wants you. It’s a pity, when you emerge your . . . working parts will never be quite as tight as I enjoy. But you’ll be compliant.

“It won’t be all fun and games for you, I’m afraid. In addition to your nightly duties servicing the entire unwashed crew of miscreants and barbarians, you’ll be expected to mine your share of green salt ore. Since you’re going to need that left arm to produce the ore I demand, I’ve had ny staff doctor you with medication and cover your arm in plas-film. I expect full production or you’ll taste the guards’ lash for every dextan you come up short.

“The radiation from the ore will take years off your life, but that’s of no concern to me. It takes years off the end of your life. You’ll be long gone from my household by then. I guarantee if you make it out of the mine alive you’ll return above ground a much more cooperative pet. Perhaps even eager.”

A guard prods me out of the well-appointed living room and outside into the gusting red sand that stings my flesh. I trot to keep up with the contingent of six armed guards escorting me on the three-hundred yard walk to the mine.

My mind searches in vain trying to figure a way to escape as I force down the terror that clenches every muscle in my body.

Escape is futile. The guards clearly got the message I’m to be kept alive, I’ll just be beaten and forced to work under even more of a handicap.

There are a few males outside the mouth of the mine pushing heavy carts filled with iridescent ore.. They’re all filthy and thin, wearing loincloths—and they’re looking at me like I’m a feast. This isn’t the guards' first time at the rodeo and they’re egging the males on.

“New meat,” one of them says as he pokes his laser between my shoulder blades. “May the best male get the first taste.”

Taste? Does he mean that literally? Are these minors cannibals, or is the guard talking about sex?

“Don’t kill her. Ryone wants her back in one piece,” the guard amends.

Okay, so they won’t eat me. Maybe this is worse—it will be torture. It’s okay, I tell myself. I see pickaxes. I’ll find a way to end my misery soon enough.

The guards haul me to the mouth of the mine and push me inside with a rough shove and some filthy speculation about what these animals are going to do to me.

Once I’ve crossed from the weak sunlight into the shade of the mine and am stumbling down the steep ramp leading deep into the soil, males of all sorts converge on me.

There must be twenty of them circling me, arguing, getting ready to fight for first dibs on me. Most are humanoid, some are different colors with vastly different facial features, but they all have two things in common—the look of unbridled lust in the shine of their eyes and the sneers on their lips.

“I get her first,” a big one says. His mouth makes grunting sounds, but the subdural translator my abductors implanted behind my left ear turns his words into English.

“We’ll fight you for her,” two hideous males with gaping holes for mouths say as they square off in front of the first guy.

A loud noise, somewhere between a grunt and howl echoes up from deep in the bowels of the earth.

“Slag,” one of the uglies says, his tone