Bringing Stella Home (6 page)

They both fell silent. Ava rose to her
feet, keeping her arms close to her chest and her legs pressed
tightly together. Ben looked the other way.

“
The nudity is
psychological,” he told her. “They’re trying to make us feel weak
and powerless by stripping us down like this.”
And doing a hell of a good job at it, too.

Ava glanced at him and smiled weakly.
“Well, if that’s all it is…” her voice trailed off as she glanced
around the room. “I hope they haven’t hurt him.”

Ben’s cheeks burned with
sudden anger. Even if Stella wasn’t on this ship, he could imagine
her in a stinking cargo hold much like this one, naked, alone, and
scared out of her mind.
If they’ve done
anything to hurt her—

A loud clang sounded from somewhere
beyond the walls, reverberating through the floor. Bright light
shone through a rapidly opening freight door to his left, stabbing
his eyes. He squinted and peered into the light, catching sight of
several figures marching into the room. Their footsteps sounded
heavy against the hard metal floor.

Soldiers.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he
saw them haul the prisoners off one by one, starting on the far
side of the room. Awake or only half-conscious, it didn’t
matter—they took everyone without exception.

“
Oh no,” Ava said, leaning
into him so that their bodies made contact. “Where are they taking
us?”

“
I don’t know,” said Ben.
“I’ve heard, though—”

“
What have you
heard?”

He swallowed, remembering the frozen
bodies at Tajjur. “I’ve heard this is where they separate
us.”

“
Why? What for? What are
they going to do?”

“
I don’t know,” Ben lied.
He fought back his growing nausea.

All too soon, the soldiers reached
them.

* * * * *

Stella stumbled through the freight
airlock and into a spacious, well-lit room that reeked of body odor
and cheap chemical cleansers. The soldiers forced her into a
roughly formed row of prisoners, facing the opposite wall. As soon
as they let go of her, she wrapped her arms around her chest and
looked around.

She stood near the center
of a giant hangar. The drab, yellowed walls were flat and
windowless, the hardened ceramic floor grainy under her bare feet.
The opposite wall was actually an enormous bay door, large enough
to swallow the
Llewellyn.
An unloading claw dangled from the ceiling like a
monstrous hand waiting to pluck her off her feet.

So I’m on some kind of
deep-space freighter,
she thought to
herself. Judging from the design, it had to be Belarian. She’d
spent a lot of time around Belarian ships in her apprenticeship,
and knew the typical layout fairly well.

That was encouraging—it might help her
escape.

About a hundred other prisoners stood
around her, all naked, all facing the same way. Hameji soldiers in
full armor patrolled the rows, their rifles held at the ready. Even
with so many prisoners, however, the hangar bay was far from full.
She stood behind a flabby, middle-aged woman who kept glancing
nervously over her shoulder. The others around her stared at the
ground or straight ahead.

Ben,
Stella thought to herself.
Where is
Ben?
She wanted to shout out his name, but
she didn’t dare. Except for the heavy, booted footsteps of the
soldiers and a few muffled sobs and whimpers, the room was deathly
quiet.

With her arms wrapped tightly around
her chest and her knees pressed firmly together, she glanced from
face to face, searching for Ben. Heads started turning her way,
making her feel horribly self-conscious of her nakedness, but she
did her best to ignore it. Whatever happened, she had to find her
brother.

In the row ahead of her,
two places to the left, a little girl sobbed in fear, her pale face
streaked with tears. Urine trickled down her legs and formed a
puddle around her feet.
Poor girl,
Stella thought to herself.
She probably feels all alone and embarrassed because she peed
her—oh no!

A pair of Hameji soldiers dragged the
old woman Stella had seen in the cargo bay to the front of the
room. Her body was stiff and unmoving, eyes closed and mouth open.
The soldiers dropped her in the corner; her head made a horrible
thudding noise against the hardened floor.

Oh my God,
Stella thought to herself.
She’s dead.
Her knees begin to shake,
and she fought the urge to throw up.

Off to her left, a door hissed open,
and a short, silver-haired man stepped through. He was swarthy and
olive-skinned, with a sharp goatee and short, trimmed hair. Unlike
the soldiers, he wore a loose fitting robe under a lightly
decorated gray jerkin that extended down to his knees. He carried a
gun at his side, and something long and curved next to it in a
gold-embroidered holster. It took Stella a while to realize that
the holster was actually a scabbard for a sword.

The soldiers at the door snapped to
attention when they saw him. He nodded curtly to them as he passed,
followed by half a dozen younger men, all similarly dressed. From
the authoritative way he carried himself, Stella guessed he was an
officer—perhaps even a captain.

After briefly inspecting his troops,
the captain started at the front and moved down the line of
prisoners, examining them one by one. The younger officers
snickered and smirked as they followed him, touching some of the
female prisoners in ways that made Stella squirm. As they moved
along, a pair of fully armored soldiers escorted each prisoner to
the front of the hangar, clustering them in two groups at the front
of the room.

They’re sorting us,
Stella realized. As the captain worked his way
down the first row and into the second, she tried to imagine why.
The group to the left was mostly made up of women, children, and
old men, while the group on the right was almost exclusively young
men. Contingents of armed troops stood watch over both, their
weapons drawn.

Ben,
Stella thought, her heart racing in her chest.
Is he up there?
Reaching
down with one hand to keep herself covered, she stood on her
tiptoes and craned her neck to get a better view.

One of the prisoners refused to move
when the Hameji tried to march him off. The soldiers beat him
across the face and forcibly pulled him forward, but he fell to his
knees, refusing to get up. The captain gave a nod, and the nearest
soldier leveled his rifle at the man’s head.

At the crack of the shot, Stella
jumped, and her whole body started to tremble. Several of the other
prisoners cried out and fell to their knees in terror. Someone was
screaming—after a few seconds, Stella realized that it was her. She
clapped her hands over her mouth and stared in horror at the sight,
momentarily forgetting her own nakedness.

The man’s head was blown in half just
above the nose. Blood and brains had splattered all over the
prisoners immediately behind him, and several of them were shaking
uncontrollably. As the soldiers dragged the body to the left
corner, the prisoners in that group shrieked and edged away. Thick
red blood smeared liberally across the grainy ceramic
floor.

Oh my God,
Stella thought to herself.
Everyone in that group is going to die.

Soldiers went up and down the lines,
forcing the prisoners back to their feet. The Hameji captain
continued as if nothing had happened. In a few moments, he arrived
at the little girl.

Stella froze where she
stood.

He didn’t even stop. With a flick of
his wrist, he gestured to the left. One of the soldiers took the
girl by the shoulder and led her off, ignoring the trail of blood.
As if sensing the danger she was in, the girl screamed and curled
up in a ball on the ground.

No!
Stella nearly screamed.
Don’t shoot
her!

The soldier didn’t. Instead, he
scooped the girl up and carried her to the group of prisoners,
dropping her unceremoniously to the floor. One of the older women
wrapped her arms around her, giving her the comfort Stella longed
to give.

It took Stella nearly a minute to stop
hyperventilating and regain something of her composure. Even then,
she didn’t have much dignity to regain; to the Hameji, she was
little more than cattle to be sorted and slaughtered. Naked,
defenseless, and surrounded by strangers, she was powerless—utterly
powerless.

The captain had started on her row
now, making his way towards her. She stared straight ahead,
squeezing her knees a little tighter. Out of the corner of her eye,
she saw him send a young, black-haired man to the right, a short,
plump woman to the left. He barely glanced over the old man before
sending him with the rest of the condemned.

Then he stopped at her.

She held her breath and stared at the
floor as he looked her up and down. With one arm over her chest and
her free hand covering her lower half, she still felt horribly
naked.

At a slight gesture, two soldiers
stepped forward and pried her arms away. Stella resisted at first,
but the soldier on her right hit her across the face with the back
of his gloved hand. The force of the blow nearly knocked her over,
but a quick slap on her butt forced her upright. Her cheek stung
and her eyes began to water, but she knew that the soldier could
have struck a lot harder.

She stood up straight now, fully
exposed to her captors’ view. The younger officers gathered in a
half circle, snickering as they ravished her with their eyes. She
held her breath as the silver-haired captain stepped forward and
began to feel her with his bare hands. With all the consideration
of a rancher examining his cattle, he poked her stomach, pinched
her breasts, squeezed her thighs, and felt the girlish muscles of
her arms. It took all her effort not to cry out and shrink away
from him.

Satisfied, he stepped back and
conferred with the man on his right. As they talked, Stella wrapped
her arms around her chest and covered herself again as best she
could. To her relief, the soldiers didn’t stop her.

What now?
Stella thought fearfully to herself.

The captain issued a command, and the
soldiers took her by both arms and marched her off. A bolt of sheer
terror surged through her body, but they took her past the group of
condemned prisoners to the door on the far side of the room,
stopping only briefly to wait for it to open.

It suddenly struck her that she might
never see the room again. Energized by sheer desperation, Stella
kicked out with her feet and looked frantically over her
shoulder.

“
Ben!” she screamed,
shattering the silence of the hangar. “Ben—shout if you can hear
me!” The soldiers started to drag her off, but she planted her feet
and struggled against them as hard as she could.

The soldiers were much too strong for
her, however. Within a few seconds, they forced her through the
doorway and into the corridor beyond. Behind them, the door hissed
shut.

Stella’s lip began to quiver, and
tears came to her eyes. Annoyed by her defiance, the soldiers were
a lot rougher with her now than before, twisting her arms so hard
she almost felt they’d break. That wasn’t why she cried, though—she
cried because her brother hadn’t called out to her.

Now she knew she was alone.

* * * * *

Ben squinted and blinked as the
soldiers marched him into the empty hangar bay. The air reeked of
bleach and disinfectant, mingled with other smells much more
putrid. He felt something soft and squishy between his toes;
glancing at his feet, he realized he’d stepped in a puddle of
vomit.

The soldiers marched him to the back
of a large group of prisoners, all standing in rows and columns
facing the closed hangar doors in the front. Soldiers in black
liquid-plate armor patrolled the room, their guns at
ready.

There are too many people
here to be from just our ship,
Ben
observed.
I wonder where the others came
from. Maybe Stella—

“
Christopher!” Ava screamed
from behind him. One of the prisoners—tall and muscular—spun around
at the sound of her voice. He broke from the crowd and started
running toward her.

The soldier on Ben’s right let go of
him and moved to intercept Ava’s husband, even as two other
soldiers ran at the man from the other direction. Christopher
barreled into the first soldier, knocking him to the floor. To
Ben’s right, Ava thrashed about, trying desperately to break free
from the soldiers that held her.

Her husband made a mad dash, but the
other two soldiers reached him before he could get to her. One of
them clapped a gloved hand on his shoulder, while the other swung a
black baton at his head. The weapon made a terrible cracking noise
on impact, and the man stumbled and fell. Ava screamed, but the
soldiers ignored her as they savagely beat him.