The Outworlder
Authors: S.K. Valenzuela
Book I in the Silesia Trilogy
By
S.K. Valenzuela
Published by SisterMuses at Smashwords
Copyright © 2014 by S.K. Valenzuela
Silesia: The Outworlder
Original
Publication © 2011
Cover art by J. Leigh Bralick Copyright ©
2014
This book is available in print at most
online retailers.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by SisterMuses, Inc.
P.O. Box 142401
Irving, TX 75014
This book is a work of fiction. Any
references to historical events, existing locations, or real
people, living or dead, are used fictitiously. Other names,
characters, places, and events are the creation of the author, and
any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or
dead, is coincidental.
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ISBN 13: 978-1-941108-10-9
ISBN: 1941108105
For my husband, Frank
And for my children
True love isn’t just for fairy tales.
Something was wrong with her vision.
Sahara tried again to open her eyes.
Something had made her wake early, before the sedation drug had
worn off completely. Everything was a blur of hazy shadows and
light refracted into all its colors. She could only just make out
the line of bodies in front of her, their arms pinioned to the
walls of their cages by chains.
The ship around her shuddered, and she felt
herself lifted off the floor and dropped against the chains holding
her own arms. The bodies in front of her lurched and swung weirdly.
There was no sign that anyone else was awake.
Sahara struggled harder against her own
blood. She needed to wake up. Adrenaline was helping her now,
counter-acting the heavy narcotic.
Something was wrong, horribly wrong.
A strange and acrid smell assailed her and
dragged her reluctant senses into sharper awareness.
What is that? What is it?
Her muddled brain struggled with recognition,
but her body didn’t. She coughed, fighting to find clear air. And
then she knew.
Smoke.
The ship lurched again, suspending her in
free fall for a few hideous seconds. She crashed against her
chains, harder this time, and the link connected to the bracelet
around her right forearm snapped. The heavy fetter banged against
the side of the ship and her arm hung limp at her side. In another
moment the grinding pain registered, and the feel of slick blood
soaking her sleeve.
From somewhere near the front of the ship
came a vague bleeping noise. Even as she tried to focus on the
sound, a pulsating red light in the mid-ship gallery distracted
her. She blinked rapidly against the blur of her vision.
Wrong. All wrong.
Her full consciousness returned with another
surge of adrenaline, leaving no other thought in her mind except
escape.
If she could get to the window in the
gallery, she might be able to discover what was happening to the
ship. She braced her feet against the inner wall of her cell and
pulled against the chain holding her left hand. It fought her
efforts, each link clinging tenaciously to the next. A string of
curses welled up inside her, but she swallowed them in a lump with
the tears of fear and frustration that were gathering in her
eyes.
She tried once more, gripping the chain in
her hands and leveraging all her weight against it. As her weight
grated her palms against the metal links, something warm and sticky
began trickling down her arms. Her hands were bleeding. Gritting
her teeth against the burning pain that followed, she wrenched the
chain back and forth.
It was no use. She flung the chain away and
pounded her bloody fists against the cell wall.
When she had exhausted her fury, she leaned
her back against the wall and slid down to huddle on the floor. She
rubbed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her free hand,
panting a little. A sudden dazzling light flooded into the ship,
like sunlight, but flickering violently.
Not sunlight
, she told herself.
Fire.
Without warning, she slammed into the ceiling
of the ship, feeling as if she had left her stomach somewhere
below. They were plummeting into God only knew where, out of
control and far too fast.
The ship lurched again and the flickering
light dis-appeared. The next moment, something exploded. Shock
waves rolled along the sides of the ship, flinging Sahara back to
the floor. The chain that held her left arm broke and she hit her
head against the heavy cage that divided her from the prisoner in
front of her. Smoke billowed down the length of the ship.
Coughing and gasping for air and ignoring the
throbbing in her head, Sahara pushed herself to her feet. The cage
door hung crazily on its hinges, leaving her just enough room to
squeeze through. She stumbled into the corridor and half-ran,
half-slid down the cell row to the gallery window.
Spread out below her, and growing more clear
and larger with every passing second, was a desert world. Endless
rolling hills of sand stretched out in every direction, and Sahara
felt relief wash through her.
Praise to the powers
, she thought.
At least I’m on the right planet.
Another explosion rippled through the ship,
and Sahara stumbled against the gallery wall. The beeping from the
flight cabin came louder and more insistent now, but still she
heard no voices.
Where is the crew?
She glanced back at the other prisoners
hanging in their cells in the prison bay behind her. They were all
still sleeping. The sedation drug wasn’t scheduled to wear off
until they landed at the labor camp.
At this rate, they won’t wake up at
all
, Sahara thought.
We’re all going to die when the ship
smashes into the sands.
She staggered her way to the flight cabin as
quickly as she could, trying to tell herself that there must be a
logical explanation for the crew’s silence. But with every step she
took toward that ominous beeping, the cold knot in her gut
grew.
She pushed open the heavy door to the flight
deck and looked inside.
Empty.
Panic nearly suffocated her.
She propelled herself into the cabin and
stared wildly around at the controls. A red light above the
captain’s seat was flashing. She took a step closer. Read the label
beneath the light.
Escape Pod Launched.
Every pulse of the indicator drilled the
words into her.
Escape Pod Launched.
The crew had abandoned them. Something must
have malfunctioned as they’d prepared to enter the planet’s
atmosphere, and they had bailed.
Sahara vaulted into the captain’s seat. She
didn’t know how to fly, but if she was going to die anyway, she
might as well give it a shot. As she hauled back on the steering
control, it shuddered violently in her hands. She strained harder
against it, fighting it with all the strength she could muster.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she ground out
between clenched teeth.
Then she heard a horrible noise, like metal
ripping. Alarms were going off all around her now, pulsing in the
smoky air and inside her head.
There was nothing more she could do. As she
fought the controls, trying to bring up the nose of the ship before
it plowed into the sand, a hoarse cry tore itself from her chest.
The horizon line appeared in the window—at least they weren’t going
to do a nose dive. But she didn’t have much time now. She jammed
the controls as best she could, then left the cabin and ran up the
steeply sloping aisle to her cell cage. One of the chains was
almost free, and she grabbed at it and pulled, bracing herself
against the wall. She heard another ripping noise, and the ship
convulsed like a living thing being torn apart. The ring popped,
the end of the chain clattered on the floor, and Sahara slid back
down the aisle to the flight cabin, dragging the heavy metal behind
her.
She twined the chain around the steering
control, pulling it back as tightly as she could and then threaded
the end through the metal bars reinforcing the cabin wall. It was
pathetic, but it was the best she could manage. After one last
sickening look outside, she ran.
Crouched down in her cell, her back to the
front of the ship. Buried her head under her arms.
Impact.
The force flung her against the back wall of
her cell. She rolled into a fetal position as the bodies of the
prisoners in front of her came detached from their chains. They
slammed against her metal cage, ripping it out of the wall. With a
horrific crash the window in the gallery exploded, showering shards
of tempered glass and sand all over the cabin. The ship scraped
along the ground, ripping open its underbelly.
The cage was coming down. It would have
crushed her, but one edge caught on the ring that had held her
right arm chained to the wall. Bodies fell all around her.
A blast of sudden heat and fire tore the ship
in two as the fuel tanks underneath the gallery ruptured and
exploded. The back half of the ship rolled over, flinging Sahara
first against the cage, and then back onto the floor.
It rolled again. Her head slammed against the
cage bars, and her vision went dark.
When Sahara finally opened her eyes again,
everything was still. She lay on her right side on the floor, her
left arm, bloodied but no longer bleeding, curled over her head.
Her head ached, and when she rubbed her hair out of her eyes, it
felt matted and sticky.
Hot, bright sunlight poured through the
gaping maw where the gallery had been. Mangled and partially
charred bodies littered the passage. The sight and stench of it all
made her retch.
When she could breathe again, she forced
herself to stand, staggering over the bodies and twisted metal
wreckage toward the sands outside. She tried to climb down the
outside of the ship, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Her foot
slipped and she fell. When she hit the sand, she tumbled and slid
down the side of the massive dune created by the ship’s crash
landing.
It was so hot.
Sahara lay in the sand, shaking and crying.
She had no sense of time, no sense of place. Under her flimsy gray
prisoner’s shirt her skin prickled painfully, blistering under the
sun’s intense rays. She stopped crying and lay still, forcing her
mind to focus on the individual grains of sand before her eyes so
that her limbs could relax and regain their strength.
Her breathing gradually deepened, and she
allowed the warmth of the sun and the sand to surround her until
she felt she was almost one with them. At last, with a deep breath
that brought her fully back into the present moment, she sat up.
Grains of sand sprinkled down from her shirt and her face onto her
long, bloodied fingers.
There seemed to be nothing but sand and sun
for as far as her eyes could see. She stood up and clambered back
to the top of the artificial dune. Still nothing. No sign of man or
beast, no matter which way she turned. A surge of terror threatened
to overwhelm the relaxed calm she had just managed to collect for
herself.