Indentured Bride
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Indentured Bride
by Yamila Abraham
Copyright © 2016 Yamila Abraham. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. All characters depicted in this work are over 18 years old.
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Tabitha cut the ridge of a
saccus
nut with her laser and then waited for her vision to stop blurring. She separated the shell as carefully as she could with her trembling fingers. Then she tried to nudge free the malleable core. This is when things started going dark. She closed her eyes and rocked gently in her seat. If she tried to keep working she’d rupture the core. She had to wait until the room stopped spinning.
“We are very concerned about this slave,” a robot said. Its tinny voice sounded as though it came from the other end of a tunnel.
“This one was getting gene therapy.” This was her foreman Merit, and that meant the cruel alien was right beside her. Tabitha wondered why she wasn’t getting zapped with a
tr’sark
, the shock sticks all her masters wielded. Then it occurred to her to wonder why she’d heard a robot.
“Experiments on slaves are prohibited,” the robot said.
Tabitha forced her bleary eyes to fix on it. The unit was thick and black, as though made from cast-iron. One large antenna was on its boxy head. Its limbs were thick rods with visible wires and hoses.
“This was done prior to the treaty,” Merit said. Tabitha looked at her next. Her foreman was a female
Hax-Rah
, with red and purple hues on her skin. She had an overbite that made her canines stick out from her top lip. All the slaves in Tabitha’s block called the homely woman ‘Walrus’.
The robot leaned closer to examine Tabitha with its long eye-slot. “Are you saying this slave is still suffering the effects of your experiments three months after you ceased performing them?”
“Yes,” Merit said.
Bullshit.
She’d been given an injection of something that burned as it seeped into her arm that very morning.
“Slave, when did the Hax-Rah last conduct their experiments on you?”
“I don’t remember,” Tabitha said. The words were spat out quickly since hesitation would likely be a punishable offense. She glowered at the metal thing with her fading vision.
Who the fuck are you, anyway?
Merit grinned. “She doesn’t remember because it was so long ago. Isn’t that right, slave?”
“Yes,
serat
.” This time she stumbled with her affirmation. She nearly fainted onto her work station but managed to catch her own lolling head as it sank. What the fuck had they done to her? It had never been this severe before.
“She requires medical treatment,” the robot said.
“She’ll be fine in a day.”
“The treaty requires you to provide all slaves with adequate care when they are unwell.”
What treaty?
“She just needs rest. Isn’t that right, slave?”
“Yes, serat.”
“You are dismissed from your workstation. Return to your bunk.”
Damn it.
Would she be punished for getting to leave work early? Merit was probably going to give her a fire-lash the second this robot—whoever he was—left the compound.
She braced herself on her metal table and tried to stand. Her eyes widened. There was no strength in her legs. The room was still spinning and the edges of her vision were growing dark. She saw Merit sneering at her with one fang fully visible. This got her to try to walk, to obey her master’s order, but her foot wouldn’t lift all the way. She stumbled and time felt as though it grew slow. The rest of her vision filled with darkness. The last thing she saw was the concrete floor lifting toward her face.
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Tabitha woke on a mattress far too comfortable to be her bunk in the slave barracks. She looked around enough to see that she was in a hospital bed and had an IV in her arm. This wasn’t the medic station in the slave compound; there was only a steel table there, not a bed. She was still on Earth, however. The sheets, curtains, and neutral paint colors on the walls had a pre-invasion feel. That was all she was able to surmise. When she closed her eyes she drifted back into semi-unconsciousness.
The war with the Hax-Rah had been short, not even a year’s worth of fighting. She was sixteen when it all started, and Troy Bennett, the love of her life, was seventeen. Troy had protected her like an older brother at the foster home where they both lived. When they grew older their feelings changed, evolved, and love came naturally. The bond they’d formed was so strong they both knew they’d be spending their lives together. They would become family, and in turn, replace the families that had discarded them.
“Are you awake, Ms. Riley?” She registered the robot’s voice somewhere past her delirium.
“Mm-hm.” This time she couldn’t get her eyes to open.
She and Troy never spoke about the future, but it was certain to them both. They were able to heal from their rocky pasts together and then were able find joy through each other. He was her first time and she was his. The tenderness he showed her was something she’d remember when she felt at her lowest.
“Your body rejected a toxin you were injected with one day ago. It is being purged from you, and your fluids replenished. You should recover speedily.”
Troy volunteered to be part of the ground effort at their nearest military base. He was underage, but in the Reserves. He felt it his duty to help fight the invaders. There was supposed to be very little risk to his life. The base was only monitoring the situation in space. They could launch bombs, but that was a last resort.
“I am Diplomo. The Alliance sent robots like me to ensure that the Hax-Rah do not abuse their slaves. This was included in the terms of a treaty we signed to end fighting between the Alliance worlds and the Hax-Rah Empire. Mistreatment of slaves is no longer allowed.”
All the news agencies reported that help from Earth’s allies was almost there. The Hax-Rah wouldn’t get past the atmosphere perimeter.
“There will be no more torture. We are monitoring them now. Every slave compound and Hax-Rah outpost now has Diplomos to ensure there is no further mistreatment of slaves.”
But no one came to Earth’s rescue. The Hax-Rah descended into their cities and rounded up everyone with robot soldiers. Months later, after she was already locked into the hopeless routine of an overworked slave, she learned that all Earth soldiers who dared to stand against them had been executed.
“You will be transferred to another slave compound or to a Hax-Rah outpost.”
Troy had been killed by the invaders. After learning this, her true despair began. She’d clung to a thin shred of hope until then. Even if their world was enslaved she could still find happiness if she was with him.
“Do you have any preference on where you wish to go, Ms. Riley? I seek to grant you every consideration after what you’ve endured.”
Troy was dead. There was no hope left in the world. No joy.
No love.
“Tell me what you wish, Ms. Riley.”
“I want to be with my love.” She heard herself say it, but then wondered if she just dreamed that she had spoken.
“Love?” the robot said.
“I want…love.” She began to fade midway through the sentence. Silence followed long enough for her to drift back toward the deeper waters of her delirium.
“Oh, I see.” The robot’s voice had an echo. “Yes. Very good. I will make arrangements for you to become a war concubine.”
War…concu…?
There was an inkling of a strong reaction, but in her delirium she thought she’d be punished if she objected out loud. Ten years of tr’sark zaps, sleep deprivation, and browbeating had caused a defensive wall to build inside her. It remained steadfast, even when her mind was filled with fog. Unconsciousness was tugging at her brain, making things go murky every other second. She finally relinquished herself to its pull.
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When she next woke everything was sharp in her mind.
She sat up in the hospital bed and pieced everything together. Apparently the Hax-Rah had signed a treaty that prevented them from torturing their slaves.
A treaty with the Alliance…that’s what he’d said.
This had to be the same Alliance that had promised to send them help ten years ago. Why didn’t they just liberate them?
She placed her forehead in her hand and put that thought aside. The fog in her mind had cleared, but she had a throbbing headache. The robot had something else that was like an itch deep inside her brain.
She stiffened.
War concubine.
That’s what the robot had said right? Or had she just dreamed it?
No. She was talking about Troy and he’d misunderstood. He thought he was giving her what she wanted.
Her brow pinched as she tried to think things through. Normally getting out of the slave compound would be something to celebrate. She’d been turned into a machine by cruel masters wielding those insidious tr’sarks. Even when she was able to avoid punishment, they worked her seventeen hours a day and gave her and all the other slaves a single meal of powdery mush and then a single opportunity to take water at the communal fountain. She could never slake her thirst fully because the crime of needing to leave her station for the bathroom was a tr’sark burn on the bottom of her foot.
Thinking of it all now, with her mind well rested for the first times in years, made her shudder. Nothing could be worse than the hell she’d endured for the last ten years, right?
Except rape. Rape would be worse.
Oh, God.
Later in the day, after she’d eaten rehydrated vegetables and managed to get up and walk around, a robot and a wizened Hax-Rah man entered the room. He had cruel pale yellow eyes surrounded by deep wrinkles. His coloration was the usual reddish-purple, but with some yellowing on his forehead, likely from age. He was still gigantic, standing well over six feet with shoulders as wide as car tires.