Empty Toward The Moon

Chapter Four

Being thrown onto a rough cut rock floor and grazing a few limbs, I finally woke up enough to know that I wasn't on my home planet any longer. The harsh lighting forced my eyes closed again as pain slashed through my head. I curled up into a ball, holding my aching brain while I squinted my eyes and looked around me from under my arms. I wasn't alone.

The cavern was a hole dug into the rock, the floor relatively flat and covered in bodies, many of whom were still unconscious. I was the only one in a grey, sleeveless rough cotton smock that itched in places that should be covered in underwear. They stole my underwear. I ground my teeth, then the voice of my home tutor and etiquette teacher reminded me that well-to-do ladies do not grind their teeth.

The people all around me were a mixture of human and alien, mostly from our allies and those who neighboured our sectors of human space. Since it was highly illegal to buy and sell any people group who had signed in partnership with the Human Alliance Space, safe to say that I was not on a planet that belonged to the Alliance. Probably a moon or an asteroid hidden at the back end of nowhere.

Many of the people who were thrown into the large containment cell woke up with dead looking eyes and expressionless faces. They had metal rings around their necks looking like high fashion chokers from the Asian sectors. Stamped into the 'v' point at the front were hieroglyph like symbols, of which only one or two were familiar to me. Pirate clans. I shivered as the weight of the situation I awoke into finally made it way into my circuit fried brains.

I'd been kidnapped and sold to smugglers, probably to be on sold to pirates or worse, pleasure slavers. The shivering grew into full body tremors as someone nearby came close enough to grab my pants. I kicked them away, trying really hard not to make a sound, not to draw attention to myself as the smugglers dropped the last of their live cargoes into the holding cell.

"This the last of it?" A rough voice asked. It came from an ugly brute standing beside the door with a lazer gun in his hands. Before he'd even been answered he randomly aimed and shot one of the new merchandise who was making too much noise. Then he and the two guys who were on hauling duty laughed at the fearful noises that sounded throughout the bay.

"Yeah, that's the last. Boss said not to kill the new stuff. He has his eyes on a young one whose not part of the usual manifest." I just knew he was talking about me. I hid my head in my arms again and pretended that my stomach wasn't rolling in time to the beat of the pain in my brain.

"Should bring a mite more creds," another smuggler said.

"Nah, says it's a ransom job. He's taking charge when he gets back from the office. I was told..." They moved out of the bay and slammed the door closed with a clang. The hsss noise sealed it shut, only the air ducts on the high ceiling gave any indication that we on a rock without atmosphere. No surface atmosphere means there would be no running from here.

I really want to go home. Roughly wiping the tears that slid down my cheeks, I checked around me again to make sure I wasn't going to get touched or hurt by anyone close by. Everyone lay or sat in their own space, twenty to thirty bodies in all. To my left was a couple of kids, probably related, huddling together by the wall. I slowly dragged myself over to huddle up nearby so I could lean on the wall and have something to my back.

Their eyes watched me without any emotion, like this was as usual for them, like they'd been held by these smugglers for a long time. They didn't have the pirate stamped neck choker that many others wore in this holding cell, and their clothing was better quality than most. The older boy was probably around my age, had dark chocolate skin, white hair and blue eyes. The younger girl had a scarf about her neck that covered most of her face up to her purple coloured eyes, leaving her blond hair in a birds nest mess. For a moment I saw a flash of something in those beautiful eyes that said they were ready to fight when the fight came to them. Then that spark was hidden again as they looked away.