Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (3 page)

And there were naked creatures everywhere.

Where before Alaina could only guess that these aliens had similar anatomy to humans, at least now that supposition was confirmed. And nobody had any modesty whatsoever. Men and women padded completely nude through the hallways, climbed in and out of baths together, and nobody wore a single stitch of clothing. Alaina had not thought of herself as prudish before, but there was such a great abundance of beautiful skin and naked body parts, and she wasn’t used to seeing it all. The Jiayi with their pallor and slender figures, the Errai with scales
everywhere
, apparently, and even a few helmeted Ankaa moved through the baths, naked save for those helmets. Their skin was slick and shiny and gray, like a shark’s. Alaina would have been lying, though, if she’d said it wasn’t at least somewhat comforting to know that these aliens had the same
parts
that she did. It made them a little less strange to her, and that was a gift.

She blushed when she realized most of the bathers were eyeballing the line of slaves as they walked by with some combination of curiosity and hunger in their eyes. She felt like fresh meat. Yfia bowed her head to anyone who looked at them, the gesture somehow at once elegant and obedient. Alaina was pretty sure if she tried something like that it would just end up looking like she had a twitch.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Yfia murmured

Alaina blinked, looking up at her. “What is?”

Yfia smiled. “The color in your cheeks. That’s marvelous, what a gift.”

Alaina felt her cheeks grow hotter and cleared her throat. “Um, thanks.”

Yfia nodded in approval, and they turned a corner into a wide space with several steaming baths. Then a veritable army of attendants poured into the room and Alaina found herself swarmed by three Jiayi women, all of whom insistently and hastily removed her clothes. Though Alaina had never been disrobed in public before, she had to admit these women were experts at it. Before she’d even managed to wrap her head around what was happening, someone had lifted her by the armpits, her feet off the ground, and yanked her pants and underpants right off. She squeaked, alarmed, and then heard that
tsk
sound and looked over at Yfia, who held up her arms to accommodate the attendants and smiled patiently.

“Let them do the work,” she suggested. “No one will harm you. You are too valuable.”

Alaina didn’t feel valuable. She felt violated. But once her bare feet were on the tiled floor, she didn’t put up a fight, just let them tug her shirt off over her head, and finagle her free of her bra. Then she instinctively wrapped her arms around herself, covering up her delicate bits, and stood there turning pink from her toes to the top of her head, no matter that everyone else around her was also naked. Yfia seemed not to care at all, as if she enjoyed just standing there nude, the steam curling around her elegant ankles. Alaina figured if she had that kind of sapling-thin, long figure, she might not mind being naked either. Or maybe it was an alien thing. Blessedly, they didn't stand there long. The attendants wasted no time ushering the line of slaves into various pools, and Alaina found herself walked down a set of marble steps by one of the attendants, after Yfia, and right into warm, milky water. It smelled faintly of honey, or what Alaina imagined was honey. Space honey. And it was thicker than normal water. But the sensation of it slipping over her skin was not unpleasant. She thought maybe this was what a mud bath felt like. Sort of.

The attendants entered the pools alongside their appointed slave, and Alaina was promptly dunked under the water and brought back up. Then they poured the water over her head, her hair, lathering her body with some kind of soap. She hoped it was soap. She was at least somewhat relieved that her hair was in her face, so nobody could see the scarlet blush in her cheeks, or the likely horrified look on her face as these strangers’ hands rubbed all over her body. Their hands were gentle enough, but the only hands that had ever lathered soap on Alaina’s skin were her own, and it was weirder than anything else. They dunked her head again and when she came up, they started combing her hair back from her face. She saw Yfia nearby, not even standing in the water but floating under her attendants’ ministrations, relaxed as anything.

Alaina tried to focus on her plan. Let them make her look however they liked, let them dress her and sell her to someone who would be kind, and then she’d find a way to escape. It was all she could do, holding tight to this, and she knew if she let her mind wander too far from it she would be unable to grapple with the reality of it all. Aliens, space, this was nuts. But it was Alaina’s life, and she was going to survive it all. However she had to.

After the soap, the attendants scrubbed her with a harsher sponge until her skin was pink and raw, and she ached all over. They didn’t seem satisfied until she was wincing away from them, making little pained noises every time the stroke of the sponge slid over her back or arm or shoulder. Then, finally, they relented, walking her up and out of the pool. They patted her dry with soft towels and ran some kind of comb through her hair that dried even as it de-tangled it, until her pale blond hair fell soft and clean down her back. Then finally they lifted a dress to spill over her head.

The fabric was soft and sheer and white, and Alaina couldn’t decide if she felt more or less naked with it on than without. It didn’t really cover anything, just gave the impression of trying, but when Alaina looked around she saw all the other slaves were dressed in the same manner. At least it was something, a fragile, barely-there veil between her dignity and all these alien eyes.

Her body was not like the other aliens, even slightly obscured beneath the dress. The Jiayi were all tall and thin like Yfia. The Ankaa were either shorter and squatter, or big and hulking, with seemingly no form in between. Alaina had full breasts and round hips, and that delicate gown illuminated every dip and lift and curve. But Yfia had said she was exotic, and so she hoped that would be enough to get her purchased by someone who would be gullible enough to believe she wanted to be theirs.

When all the slaves were dressed, they were lined up again. Alaina saw Yfia far ahead of her in the line, but she couldn’t get to her. She was disappointed; Yfia was the closest thing to a friend she had in this world, and she’d hoped to hold onto her for a little longer. But Alaina was used to being on her own, and she wouldn’t let the lack of allies stop her. Then the line started moving, and the attendants herded them out of the baths through a huge, open portcullis that started to lower as soon as the last of them had passed through. The line of slaves snaked along, led around corners and down another corridor, and then finally up a set of stairs.

At the top of the stairs the attendant took Alaina’s arm, and it was for the best because Alaina tripped over the hem of her gauzy dress when she saw what awaited them: the Market. Through the pillars of the bathhouse — and Alaina realized this must have been the rear of the bathhouse itself — a bustling business center sprawled. A veritable city within the space station itself, and rising up in the distance a set of four towers Alaina figured must be the Arena.

Throngs of people crowded the market, all the way up to the steps of the bathhouse, and Alaina saw slaves, dressed as she was, being led up onto a dais, then onto blocks, and people were just shouting out amounts. Then the slaves were dragged off the blocks, and they disappeared into the crowd. Alaina felt her heart rate kick up towards panic at the idea of being put onto one of those blocks. But the attendant didn’t turn her towards the dais. Instead, she led her down another corridor.

And there was Yfia, right ahead of her.

Relived, Alaina made a little hissing noise at the Jiayi woman’s back. “Yfia. Where are they taking us?”

Yfia’s white antlers turned as her head did, and she smiled when she saw Alaina. “Ah, as I thought. We are being taken to silent auction, for the high families. They do not sully themselves in the common crowd at the blocks.”

“So this is good?”

“It means we will go to a high family. And we will be sold at a much higher price. If we are sold, of course.”

Right. If they were sold. If they weren’t, Alaina imagined she’d be scrubbing the bathhouse pools or maybe she’d even end up scrubbing new slaves herself. That appealed to her less than being scrubbed. Alaina peeked around Yfia and saw there were three more slaves ahead of her in the line. So only five of them were being put up for bid for the high families, whatever those were.

They were led into a room, and Alaina’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the window. As before, on Rua’s ship, just the sight of the universe turning all around her was astonishing. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing it. And she’d almost been able to forget they were on a space station at all. But there it was, all that black and all those stars twinkling along, tiny pinpricks of light on the dark fabric of a galaxy Alaina had no name for. Except she knew that it was far away from the Milky Way. And far away from Earth.

The attendants lined them up side by side in front of a long curtain separating

one half of the room from another. The carpet was soft beneath Alaina’s bare feet, and other than the window and a pair of lamps attached to either wall, the room was empty save for whatever awaited them on the other side of the curtain. Alaina looked down the line to see Yfia, two more Jiayi, and one female Ankaa, judging by the faint outline of breasts and the smaller, stockier figure beneath the gauzy dress. She wondered if they had hair beneath those helmets.

Then the attendants left and closed the door behind them. None of the slaves were bound, Alaina realized. No one expected them to fight back, or even to try to run. Which meant that they were so good at putting a stop to that kind of thing that it never happened. Or maybe nobody ever really tried. Alaina knew it wasn’t worth the effort yet. Even if she’d gotten out of this room, the space station itself was such a mystery to her, she’d never have been able to find a way off it. So she stood, hands at her sides, beside Yfia, and waited.

After what felt like forever, but couldn’t have really been more than a few minutes, the curtain began to move, withdrawing to one side of the room and folding neatly up against the wall. About a dozen aliens lounged on low couches, and standing in front of them all was Captain Rua. He extended a hand, displaying the slaves, and smiled.

“Welcome to the auction, your graces,” Rua said, flashing his white teeth at them. “We will begin with Amat Riglor, a fierce Ankaa warrior.”

Alaina tuned him out as he began to describe the other aliens in the line. She looked from alien to alien, attempting to sort them out.

There were several Jiayi like Yfia. But unlike Yfia, they all had tall, twisting, sharp-edged antlers instead of small ones. They seemed to be in pairs, and Alaina couldn’t tell if they were all of the same family or not. Probably different, because each couple wore different colors of purple, blue, or green.

Then there were several Ankaa, and Alaina thought they must have been mostly interested in acquiring gladiators. They all wore armor like the Ankaa on Rua’s ship, but this armor was chrome and black, highly polished, and looked much better made. The Ankaa were there for fighters, Alaina decided, and likely wouldn’t spend their money on her unless they wanted someone to polish their armor, maybe.

The last group of aliens, and the ones closest to where Alaina stood, were Errai. Several men Alaina thought must have been bodyguards of some kind, all in black and gold armor, standing behind one sofa where a girl lounged in a dress almost as sheer as Alaina’s. She sprawled with one arm on the back of the sofa, looking bored, watching as Rua moved down the line of slaves. She was beautiful, too. Her hair was a vivid red, not like the red of Earth’s humans, but fire engine red. She was pale-skinned, save for where evergreen scales wound over her arms, over her collar bone, disappearing beneath her shimmery-gold dress. While Alaina was staring at her, she looked right over, and their eyes met. Alaina blinked, surprised.

The girl blinked back, an eyebrow arching slowly.

“And this is Alaina, the only human on the ticket today, arriving all the way from my home planet, Earth,” Rua was saying.

Then Alaina realized that not only was the Errai girl looking at her, but
all
of the aliens in the room were. She did her best to stand still and promptly lowered her eyes, wanting to seem meek and obedient. She couldn’t be elegant in it like Yfia, but perhaps if she at least looked harmless enough, it would inspire the other Jiayi to want to purchase her.

“Alaina has no Arena training,” Rua said. “But as you can see, she is a very fine specimen all the same. This color, her hair, is
blond
. Very desired on Earth. She would make an excellent bed slave.”

Fuck you, Rua
, Alaina thought, jaw tightening. What a prick.

“Please enter your bids for each of our offerings today on your tablet, and once the auction has closed, your treasures will be released to you.”

The rear door opened, then, and the attendants returned. One of them took Alaina’s arm and walked her into the corridor, but she managed to throw a fierce glare over her shoulder at Rua as she went. He looked back at her, smug.

The attendant pulled her one way down the corridor, and Alaina realized that another attendant was taking Yfia in the opposite direction.

“Yfia?” Alaina called, alarmed. Was this it? Would they ever see each other again?

Yfia looked down her arm at Alaina and smiled. “Best prayers for you, human child,” she said. “I hope I see you again.”

And then Yfia’s attendant led her around a corner, and she was gone.

Alaina was placed in a similar room to where the auction had happened. Carpeted, with furniture low to the floor, and a pair of wide windows. It was like a lounge, Alaina thought. Without Yfia to explain it, Alaina was rather at a loss. Maybe this was where slaves waited to serve new masters. Or where people just kind of hung out after a bath. She had no idea. But once the attendant left, she was too anxious to sit.