Claimed by the Alien Gladiator, page 5
I have to remember that Emlee is an ignorant primitive mammal. Her kind could have some bizarre mating system. “B’avur and Leefa were Espoused. Didn’t you see the gold marks on her neck?”
“I saw gold bumps. What does that even mean?”
“When Ditakians Espouse each other, they permanently bond for life as mates. The male claims the female and then she claims him in return. Then all know they are Espoused and will not engage in sexual relations with anyone else.” I touch my neck which is shamefully bare. “One mate’s death is a great sorrow to the other. Leefa keeps living for her children.”
I feel like I’m speaking to an infant. Who in the universe doesn’t know all about Espousal? Leefa would be swarmed with suitors if this weren’t so. Her marks wouldn’t stop the most dishonorable males from pursuing her as a bed partner, but she would never willingly accept them.
Leefa’s in a precarious situation, trying to support three children and keep them all afloat. The Lord of Eremipo exacted heavy fines on B’avur for some imaginary infractions, and when he was slaughtered, his widow inherited the debt. If she can’t make the payments, she will be sold into slavery, and the children would be left motherless. And they themselves would probably be stolen and sold, too.
Another unthinkable outcome is for her to become a prostitute. I’ve already seen how that goes.
When I was still a stripling, our second-best heavy fighter claimed a Smaragdine female. They had an infant by the time they tried to escape. To expiate the crime, he submitted to being placed in a Death Match as a prisoner and was killed. She carried his debt, fell into prostitution, and the last anybody heard, she died in a brothel, the fate of her child unknown.
The thought of that happening to Leefa and her children is terrible. Which is why I’ve been giving her a large part of the coin I earn.
Emlee wipes a hand over her forehead. “She looks like she’s part Smaragdine.”
“Yes, that’s obvious. But B’avur was pure Ditakian.”
“Wow, Viktor, this is a lot to take in. I totally thought you guys were together, with how nice you were with her kids and how pretty she is.”
I’m astonished by this confession. “Leefa is beautiful, but no more interesting to me than my own mother would be. She lived here with B’avur in this cell, and I’ve known all her children since each one was born.”
Emlee looks downright guilty. Was she really jealous? It makes my chest puff out a bit with pride. Maybe she thinks a little better of me now, that I’m not just some dishonorable male who forces himself on females and disregards children. Truth be told, I felt a little jealous about her when we were at the banquet. I wasn’t just annoyed with Slaga; I also didn’t like Suriat talking to her. I knew the younger fighters were all looking at her along with the Serontians and Raxu, and I was battling the urge to throw a few punches.
As for me, playing with the children has always been bittersweet. It reminds me of my own childhood when we lived in a slave compound, and my exhausted parents would still take the time to play and chat with me.
My father would play-fight or tell me stories of our home world, Kor’Ditak. My mother cuddled and smoothed me as best she could. Even in our bad living conditions, she insisted on trying to keep up some of the old ways, like trying to file down the rough parts of my crest and horns with rough rocks to make me look “civilized”, as she called it.
Then one day she was dragged away from us by the slavers, much to my father’s grief. He wasn’t the same after that. And it wasn’t more than a year when he was also taken, and I was left in the care of older, unrelated Ditakians who did the bare minimum to keep me alive. Only when I finally arrived on Barya and entered the service of House Oloran was I with people who cared – mainly D’jhago and B’avur – and by then I was too old and jaded to be one for childish games.
So that’s why I like to shower attention on B’avur’s children. They need all the love and attention they can get, especially now that B’avur is gone. The two older ones have become too serious already after seeing their father die, and their moodiness is rubbing off on the youngest.
It’s also one of the reasons I keep my vow to avoid females. What if I claimed a female and we Espoused? What if she bore my children, and then I died in the ring? I would leave a grieving widow and fatherless children behind, destined to slavery, or at least poverty and oppression. No, I can’t do that. I won’t.
I rest the back of my head on the mattress. What am I going to do, I wonder to myself. Pylus wants me to impregnate Emlee. Ditakians can only reproduce if they Espouse, exchanging the claiming bites in the throes of passion. Well, that won’t be happening. As tempting as the thought might be.
Leefa needs all the coin I can give her … but I have to buy things for Emlee now. It might be possible to bribe one of the merchants to smuggle her out, but that would require a huge amount of coin. What am I going to do?
6
Chapter 6
Emily
Viktor is quiet, and eventually seems to fall asleep, despite being in an uncomfortable position.
Leefa is not a romantic interest to him, it seems. Can I trust him at his word? The way he played with the little alien kids was so adorable, and I still have a hard time believing that a macho guy like him is capable of such kindness without ulterior motives. Bryan never showed any interest in other people’s babies, now that I think of it, despite talking about wanting kids.
From where I’m lying, I just see the back of Viktor’s head with his ram’s horns curling on either side and straighter horns or bones lying over the back of his head. All of these structures are gray but banded with a slightly brighter, more metallic silvery color. I reach my hand out to touch one of the bands, which I notice rise out a little higher than the plainer underlying surface. The band is cool and smooth. The duller-colored material in between bands feels rougher, like something between bone and antler.
Viktor shifts a little. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking at your head bones,” I say.
“It’s called a crest,” he says, and reaching a big hand back, gently takes my hand and sets it on the mattress. “Since you don’t know any better, I’ll tell you that it’s considered rude to touch a Ditakian’s crest or horns. Unless one is closely related or a sexual partner.”
I sit up, feeling a little chastised. “Hey, you let Leefa’s kid touch your head!”
“That’s different. He’s very little and doesn’t know any better.”
Oh crap, was I touching Viktor intimately? I was just curious about his head. But I guess that was like touching somebody’s hair. I should have asked first.
“Sorry, Viktor.”
He stands up and walks around a little bit, rubbing at his neck. I feel bad that because of me, he has to sleep on the floor. Next time I’ll give him the pillow. No wonder the thing is huge and made of tough fabric. Ditakian heads need a lot of cushioning.
“Why can’t you pronounce my name correctly? It’s V’kator.” He scratches at himself, even a little at the back of his kilt.
“Gee, I dunno, maybe because I’m a completely different species? And you can’t say my name right either. It’s Em-ih-lee.”
“It should be M’Lee,” he says with a sort of glottal stop between the “em” and “lee” syllables. “Emlee is close enough.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Viktor means something like a winner in a fight. Victor, as in victorious.” Internally I spell his name Viktor because these Ditakian aliens strongly emphasize the hard consonants of their language.
He regards me with fiery eyes and a hint of a smile, the tips of his fangs showing. “I like that. Winner. Thank you for giving me a good name.”
“Do you want to sleep in the bed while I stand up?” I offer. In reality, I wouldn’t mind if he crawled into bed with me. Only because he’s so warm, and it’s a little chilly under the threadbare blanket.
“No, I will sleep as I have before,” he replies, and sits back down again. I give him the huge pillow, which he doesn’t want to accept, until I promise to use my old dress as my own pillow. He leans his big crest-and-horned head against the pillow and falls asleep again. I scoot just a little closer, only so that I can get a little of the warmth radiating off his big body. No other reason.
* * *
I manage to doze off a little myself when I feel the bed shifting. Viktor has gotten up again. He paces around the cell a while, until I finally decide to ask him what he’s doing.
“I’m trying to decide what to do with you,” he answers.
“Oh? Are you in charge of me now?” I say, layering on the snark to hide my trepidation.
He gives me an exasperated look. “I’m not in charge of myself, as you may have noticed. I’m trying to figure out how I can help you.”
“What are my options?”
He wanders over to the bed in a falsely casual stroll, and lowers his voice. “The Raxu say there are free places beyond the city-states, where no one is a slave, and the land is unspoiled.”
This piques my interest. “How do I get there?”
“That’s the problem. Nobody escapes from Broken Stone Arena.” He sits on the floor and sighs heavily.
“Are there other options?”
“No good ones. Maybe a Serontian lord would take a special interest and buy you from Pylos.” He shrugs his big shoulders.
“I’d rather not be a slave.” This has been bothering me the whole time. How am I on a planet of aliens who can obviously travel between solar systems, but they also have slavery and bloody gladiator fights? “Is slavery everywhere?”
“No, not in Paxus Space. Not on my species’ home world, Kor’Ditak.” Viktor looks off in the distance. “And even this planet has free places, if you believe the rumors.”
“Then how did you come to be a slave?” I’m terribly curious now.
“My parents were taken in a raid on a colony and put to work in a slave compound. I was born in that place.”
“That’s terrible!”
“It was even more terrible when I saw my mother taken away. She was sold. My father was a broken male after that. Then he was sold, too.”
“And you never saw them again?”
“Never saw them, never learned where they went. I have no idea if they’re still alive.”
My heart goes out to him. “So, you’re basically an orphan?”
He pauses a moment, as if waiting for the translator to catch up. “Yes.” I start to say the usual “aww, I’m sorry”, but I’m interrupted when his big head swivels so he can look directly at me with his fiery eyes. “I don’t want your pity. At least I didn’t come from some backwater primitive planet.”
“Hey! At least my backwater planet doesn’t have widespread slavery! I mean, not in modern times, anyway.” I get up and walk to the bars, staring at the wall of the hallway. “And my parents died when I was ten, so I am an orphan, and I will pity myself if I want to.”
I can feel his eyes burning into my back, but he doesn’t say anything. “My folks died in a car accident when I was at school. I was sent to go live with my aunt and uncle, who already had two kids. They were okay, didn’t starve me or anything, but I didn’t get a whole lot of love either.”
I remember trying to do anything to get their attention and affection, like cleaning the house and walking the dog, but I never really got their interest. At school I was always the eager beaver, the suck up, the one who passed out papers for the teacher and cleaned the classroom. The other kids disliked me for it, and I had a hard time making and keeping friends. When I started working at jobs, it was the same thing, always working too hard and annoying my coworkers.
Years later, during some half-hearted therapy, the counselor told me I was the “forgotten child” in the family dynamic. So, any time I had a boyfriend, I was desperate for attention. Too desperate. The same old pattern happened with Bryan. I always tried to do nice things for him, and he hardly ever noticed. But he sure noticed when I was working long hours. Or when I got jealous.
Viktor joins me at the bars. “It is sad to hear that you lost your parents as well.”
“See, you have something in common with this primitive mammal.”
He rests his forehead against the bars. “I do, after all.”
“And after I finished high school and became an adult, I tried out for medical school. It was too competitive, so I became a paramedic instead. That was my job, responding to medical emergencies and disasters.”
He gives me a blank look, so I try to explain further. “A job is a type of work, profession. Like your job is being a gladiator, and D’jhago is a trainer.” Viktor nods, so I continue. “We’d get a call and travel in an emergency vehicle to the scene, offer medical help, and transport patients back to hospitals. Kind of like being a first-line healer.”
“Did you enjoy it? Your job?”
“At first I loved it, but it got pretty stressful. I didn’t mind the long hours and low pay so much; it was all the blood from shootings and stabbings …” I shudder involuntarily. As a paramedic, I tried to compartmentalize these unpleasant scenes, but would often have nightmares and flashbacks in the following months. “When the call went out for the journey to Proxima Centauri, I applied on a whim, figuring that there’d be a lot less violence on a spaceship and then a colony. They accepted my application and that’s how I left Earth.”
“And now you’re here, forced to watch more violence.”
“Yeah.”
Viktor seems about to say something, but a guard shuffles by in the hallway. The Raxu barely seems to notice us, or anything else. Some of the guards are like that, I realize now, almost like zombies.
“What’s the deal with these guys? They seem off.”
Viktor mutters in a low voice. “Many Raxu are addicted to various intoxicating substances. How do you think the Serontians keep them in check? Not by paying them adequately, I assure you.” He knocks the back of his hand against the bar softly. “The population here is enslaved, oppressed, exploited. The environment has been devastated. The Raxu are given cheap drugs and alcohol to keep them from rebelling. And entertainments like the gladiator fights.”
“Are Serontians like this everywhere? Evil overlord dickheads?”
He laughs. “The most common insult for them is egghead, but I like your word too. No, it’s said that in Paxus Space, Serontians are a more pleasant people. I’ve heard that these Serontians on Barya and other Kastra planets are suffering from insanity. They have broken with their species, preferring to live as dominating lords over lesser sapients. They call themselves the Synexian Consortium.”
“Huh. So are they kind of LARPing here? There’s so much anachronism.” Viktor gives me that blank look again. “I mean they’re playing at ancient history, it seems like. Low and high levels of technology mixed together.”
“Ah. Yes, they enjoy that sort of thing, pretending to be living in some long-ago civilization. But also, out here in Kastra Space, there are many problems with viruses, rogue artificial intelligences, and nanotech. With so many dishonorable Serontians around, it’s to be expected. Plus, there’s dust from their mining operations. All this makes it difficult to keep robots and machinery functioning properly. Organic servants and beasts of burden are easier to maintain.”
It takes me a while to process some of the words he uses, but I figure it out eventually. The rogue Serontians have fucked themselves over while fucking up this planet. But they’d rather keep to their shitty ways than live in a more orderly and egalitarian world. Great.
7
Chapter 7
Viktor
The sun beats down on us as we train. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, since the Ditakian home world is a hot one and Ditakians enjoy heat. Today, the weather is irritating me.
It doesn’t help that I slept sitting up on the floor, with my head propped up on the bed. I would very much like to sleep in my own bed, but Emlee needs it more than me. She likes to tire herself out with fussing and cleaning, and she won’t stop, or let me help.
In the old days under Theios, he made us clean our cells as part of our discipline. Noncompliant fighters would have themselves and their cells hosed down in one go. Slaga got that treatment pretty often.
But Pylus doesn’t care how our cells look, so we don’t care either.
I have to admit, my living space now looks nicer, but mostly because Emlee is there. I try not to look at her when she works on the floor, contorting herself into various positions. I tell her to stop, as the cleanliness of the cell doesn’t matter to me. But seeing her round rump sticking up under the thin fabric of the gown is hard to ignore, and I have little incentive to get her out of that delightful position.
What distracts me even more than the sight of Emlee on all fours is her scent. She emits a complicated fragrance, from her head to her toes, and the one from between her thighs is especially intriguing.
I can’t forget the taste of her when I kissed her. My tongue wants to lick the rest of her, to discover all the interesting flavors of her body.
All of her is attractive, in every way. Even her head-fur, which she calls hair. Though it seems a troublesome thing to deal with. The Raxu females sometimes braid the long sections of fur on their bodies, but it’s mostly not on the top of their heads where they can’t see what they’re doing.
Emlee’s hair has a nice smell to it. I could spend hours just taking every little section to my nose, inhaling deeply, discovering all the notes and nuances of the fragrance.
A rock-hard fist slams into my mid-section. “Wake up, iron fool,” Slaga says. I barely dodge his other fist. “How’s the cunt on that mammal?”
He’s knocked the wind out of me with a single punch, but I pivot and jam a fist up into his throat. Mogrim males have a few weak spots, and I know them all. He’s lucky I just punched his throat.
