Taking Tilly (12 page)

Torin marched up to the door alone,
certain they would not open the hatch if he came with a squad of
men.

A servant opened the hatch.

“
I wish to speak to your
master.”

“
He is in the torture
chamber entertaining himself with his new slave,” the servant
responded. “You will have to come back in an hour or
so.”

If he had said anything else, made any
other excuse, Torin might have been content to wait to launch the
attack. Fear erupted inside him, however. He tried to tamp it with
the reflection that the bastard had just paid a large sum for her
and was not likely to do anything that would mean permanent damage,
but he was singularly unsuccessful.

In any case, he was a man of
action—not negotiation. He pulled his pistol with one hand and
grabbed the servant around the throat with the other. Lifting the
man clear of the deck and using him as a shield, he stepped inside
the ship and began firing as he acquired a target.

Kane, Max, Aron and Lucien leapt onto
the gangplank and pounded up it. Bursting into the main receiving
area at almost the same moment, they followed suit, shooting down
anything that moved.

Satisfied when it seemed they had
taken down all opposition, he split the men in pairs and sent them
to look for other threats and turned his attention to the servant.
“Where is the chamber?” he growled.

The man had been hit. Blue blood was
gurgling up his throat. He coughed and lifted a shaky hand to
point. Torin dropped him and strode briskly down the
corridor.

He did not have to go far to find
Tilly.

He followed her screams, breaking into
a run when he recognized the sound as belonging to
Tilly.

The cat-man was sprawled on a couch
with a human female attached by the mouth to his cock when Torin
burst into the room, but it took no more than a flickering glance
to determine that it was not Tilly. Tilly, he discovered, was
chained to crossed posts in the middle of the room being
mechanically fucked.

Uttering a roar of rage, he flew
across the room to her, searching for the releases on the manacles
and the control for the electronics.

Kane, who’d been directly behind him,
strode to the cat-man, shoved the woman off his penis and lifted
him from the lounge by his neck, snapping it like a
twig.

It sounded like a twig snapping to
Tilly.

She was thoroughly disoriented and
confused to discover that it was the commander releasing her and
gathering her up. It seemed more unreal that real—almost like a
dream. She supposed that was why she was able to speak directly to
him when she’d been afraid to before, worried she would say the
wrong thing and the consequences would be deadly.

“
My sister. Emily. Don’t
leave her. Please.”

Torin looked down at her in
consternation when she passed out and then glanced around the room,
but there was only one other human present.

Kane lifted the woman by her neck and
studied her face. “I think this must be the one.”

“
Good. Let us get the fuck
out of here before the others decide to seek justice for the
bastard.”

It seemed unlikely, but one never knew
what might happen in that place. They might have to fight their way
out if the others decided to use ‘justice’ as an excuse to relieve
them of their spoils.

They discovered once they reached the
gangplank once more that they need not have concerned themselves.
Three of the other ships that had come for recreation or to barter
had already taken off and the occupants of the others were heading
to their ships as fast as they could run—inspired, no doubt, by the
gunfire they’d heard on the cat-man’s vessel.

Shrugging, Torin and his squad formed
a defensive shell around the women and headed to their own ship.
Torin was not completely easy, however, until they had gotten
aboard and locked the ship down.

Actually, he was not easy then. Tilly
had not regained consciousness.

He hesitated and then headed to the
cell she had occupied before. Nothing would please him better than
to have her in his bed, but she did not belong only to him. She was
the property of all that was left of the Merkdar people.

When he had settled her, he went to
retrieve a nano-suit, placed it on her belly, and activated it. The
readings were promising despite her prolonged faint. The nanos
reported mild damage from electrical burning that could be repaired
completely and in a relatively short time.

To his relief, the nanos also reported
that the life-form growing in her belly was still alive and
unharmed.

Leaving Tilly to the care of her
nano-suit, he returned to the bridge.

There was no sign of the sister.
“Where is the female we captured?”

The men exchanged uncomfortable
glances.

“
She is not much like her
sister,” Kane responded. “She has either been conditioned to enjoy
the sort of pain that cat-bastard enjoyed inflicting or … well,
Tilly said that she had followed her little sister to that place
where we captured her. It seems to me that she has reacted
viciously because she was just where she wanted to be. She is
furious with Tilly for ‘ruining her life’ and made threats of
violence against her sister.”

Torin frowned and studied Max
thoughtfully. “She can be retrained, although it may take time. She
will have to be left in the dark for a while, I think, to
contemplate her situation—the nano-suit should hood her. And then
we will teach her to please Merkdar men and she will have a place
among our people.”

Kane studied his commander
thoughtfully for several moments. “I have given some consideration
to your suggestion. I believe that you are right and the women
would be more welcome if they are breeding when we arrive with
them—but there are only two. Would it not be … safer to collect a
few more?”

Torin thought that over.
On the one hand, he did not especially care for the idea of taking
Tilly anywhere near her home world. It seemed too risky to him,
that they might lose her and it could be disastrous all the way
around. They might not lose her per se but might run into strenuous
efforts to prevent them from stealing more women and then they
would be risking their lives
and
the lives of the women and the child.

Of course, they had risked their own
many times in the past—they were soldiers—and most recently when
they had captured the Earth women, but he had been considering the
good of the many outweighed the good of the few—and they, the many,
were in desperate need of supplies for their fledgling
colony.

Was that still the case? Or could it
be said that the one that was the hope of a future for them was
more important?

On the other side was the point that
Kane had made. And it was just as valid.

If they arrived on their new world
with only two women—and those two were not Merkdar—they would not
be cherished as the few Merkdar women were, would not have the
consideration for their safety and comfort that might make a
difference in their survival.

It would be safer, he finally decided,
to risk capturing a few more. They could bribe the men at the
places they had visited before and it would lessen the risks. They
would cloak the ship and wait until their prey walked into their
trap, beam them aboard and move to the next trap. If it worked as
before, they would not be in one place long and could collect a
good haul to take back to the new colony.

A dozen would be more comfortable
odds, he thought. The men would not feel the same sense of
desperation and frustration. They would be able to expend
themselves on a woman—even if it was an alien woman—at least once a
month and those were tremendously better odds than they had
now.

It seemed to him that it
was likely that there would be outrage from the men in general if
anyone even
tried
to dispute their right to keep the women.

“
I do not like that we
would be taking our women into danger when Tilly is already
breeding, but I agree that it would be safer in the long run. We
will keep both women locked in their rooms until we have made the
raid and processed the new women. I would not like to take a chance
on either of them escaping. And I do not feel like we would want to
have to retrain Tilly—which we might have to do if she is exposed
to others of her kind before they have been
conditioned.”

The decision made, they set a course
back to Earth to collect another group of women before heading
home. They would use the time between the pickup there and the
supply pickup to train the women and, if any proved difficult or
unsatisfactory in any way, they could use them to barter for more
goods when they stopped for supplies for the colony.

Chapter Fourteen

Tilly recognized the cell that had
been hers for weeks on end as soon as she opened her eyes. What
confused her was how she’d gotten there. And why she was once more
wearing the nano-suit.

It was almost as if none of the things
she thought had happened actually had, but she knew better. They
had landed on an alien world and she had been sold and found her
sister and been tortured by that horrible creature!

She bolted upright at the thought of
her sister.

After a moment, though, she remembered
that they’d taken her sister, as well—the commander.

He’d come after her. The question was,
why?

He’d taken her to start with to sell
her and he’d sold her.

Were they more like pirates, then,
than simply slave traders? Not even that honest? Taking women
captive, selling them, stealing them back to sell again?

She didn’t think she would care except
she didn’t want to be sold again.

Of course, the alternative was staying
with the commander and his crew … at least until they got tired of
her and sold her for good.

Or worse.

She considered that, but regardless of
what they’d done, she didn’t believe they would harm
her.

The problem with that was that they
had jettisoned several of the women during the
processing.

Well, she didn’t think any of them had
actually done it, but the equipment had damned sure been programmed
to dispose of any of them that were found to be
defective.

She could argue that the poor things
were dead already, that it had only been a matter of time and that
the quick end had been far more humane than allowing them to die
slowly, but maybe they’d wanted those last few days!

She shook the thought. There was
absolutely no point in judging them or dwelling on it. They weren’t
human and they had no reason in the world to care and every reason
not to want to be bothered with something—product—they couldn’t
sell.

She couldn’t have done such a thing to
a dying animal—let alone a human—but that was her. And the truth
was there were probably plenty of humans that could have and would
have done just the same.

Human traffickers selling other humans
into the sex slave trade were far worse, preying upon their own
kind and ….

Well, worse.

So she thought she could probably
count on them growing tired of her at some point and hopefully
selling her rather than shooting her out a porthole.

There was no getting around it. That
cat-creature had given her a whole new outlook on the alien giants.
She was grateful to be with them instead of that
creature!

And she was grateful they had rescued
Emily.

She didn’t think Emily would
be.

That
thing
had turned poor Emily’s
mind!

But maybe—hopefully—Em would come to
look at it as a rescue and not hate her for interfering with her
life.

At this point, she thought Em did hate
her for it, unfortunately, but she still felt better because she
knew Em was better off and in less danger.

She couldn’t take Em home, but thanks
to the alien slave trade she’d managed to recover her
sister.

Getting up at the sound of food being
delivered, she ate and then headed into her bath, hopeful that she
would be allowed out—and possibly to see Em.

And if not—well she was more than
ready to show her gratitude to the men for reclaiming her and
rescuing her sister.

And the beauty of it was
that she was once more in the control of the nano-suit. She could
be grateful and submissive without having to actually
be
submissive.

* * * *

Despite the assurance of the nanos
that it was completely safe to have intercourse with Tilly, Torin
found he was uneasy about it.

He thought a good part of it had
nothing to do with that at all, however, was not fear that he would
disturb the child and risk losing it.

He had drank the juice of the
kirkberry and that had led him into stupidity.