Page 5 of All or Nothing
I’d been giving myself a hard time for so long, telling myself in one moment that I was beautiful and good and worthy and then letting myself undo that in the next. But I wasn’t on Earth anymore. I had been abducted by aliens and would be fighting for my life, and having more weight to throw around was going to come in handy. Being able to resist drugs that knocked me out was going to be valuable.
Fuck, had my body beengoodthis whole time, and I’d just been too well programmed by my culture’s fatphobia to see it?
Uraka put her hands up, palms out, so I could keep practicing my punches. “Twist from the hips and shoulders, little one,” she coached, her gold eyes watching me move. “You generate more force this way, putting your body weight behind it. Picture someone you hate; it helps put fire in your spirit.”
Easy: I pictured Alex’s smug face twisted in distaste, telling me I shouldn’t wear a form-fitting dress or that I’d look so much more put together if I was blonde. I pictured my mom and the way her mouth would purse any time I’d eat anything other than salad or chicken breast in front of her. I thought of my classmates, giggling and making comments about my big butt and jiggly thighs. I pictured my doctor telling me over and over again that I must be lying about how much I was eating and exercising because I was still fat despite everything. And I pictured the little girl I’d been, crying her heart out in her room because everyone who looked at her saw too much and not enough at the same time.
I managed to hit Uraka’s palm hard enough that she staggered back a step, her muscles jumping under her olive-green skin to absorb the impact.
“Good, Joss,” she urged me, grinning. “I will make a warrior out of you yet.” Despite my lingering fears and frustrations about my situation, I beamed with pride. “Again,” she barked, getting back into position. Nodding, I returned to the stance she’d shown me.
After what felt like another hour, I was officially too tired to stand, flopping onto my abandoned cot. “You guys sure you’re good? It’s a great workout, really takes your mind off of things,” I called out to the other three females in the room with me who’d declined self-defense lessons earlier.
“Um…maybe I could try?” Ghena said in her soft rasping voice, her hands gripping the hem of her oversized sweatshirt and twisting it. She bit her full rosy lips, clearly nervous. “Um, that is, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly!” Uraka crowed, waving her up. “Were you watching what I was doing with Joss?” At her nod, Uraka smiled. “Good, then show me what you have learned.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Meat Market
XOLLEN
I HADreally, truly stepped invrakaashnow.
This wasn’t a bordello. This wasn’t any sort of establishment where one could hire a sex worker, in fact.
This was a meat market. The three gentlemen standing before me in front of a glowing holoscreen with privacy filters engaged were th'rakkans, and they were selling slaves. A pair of mean-looking yvrenii males were leaning down towards the screen and dragging the pads of their fingers along the serrated edges of their tusks.
“They’re guaranteed untouched?” one asked, crossing his thick arms over his broad chest. “How do you know?”
“We contracted top investigators to seek out these targets. Their every communication, their medical history, and our own scans have verified this. We are honest traders, sirs,” the red th'rakkan assured his potential customers.
The orange th'rak peeled himself away from the group and approached me, bowing his translucent head in greeting. “Are you interested in our wares,sir?” he hissed, his tone making it clear that if I wasn’t shopping I wasn’t welcome. He seemed very skeptical of me, his black eyes narrowed. I supposed he probably didn’t see many billieuans in his line of work.
I barely suppressed a shudder, disgusted at the thought of there being slaves here, and was torn about what to do about it. I could contact the authorities and hope that Quellor Station wasn’t being bribed by these three and would actually respond, and quickly. This was unlikely, if Quellor was anything like any other station I’d ever been on. I could just walk away, turn tail and leave the knowledge of this behind me like the not-my-business I could argue it was.
Unbidden, an image flashed through my mind of the poor souls being held in captivity, my mind conjuring the faces of my loved ones in their place, since I hadn’t seen the slaves’ faces yet. I pictured their faces twisted, haunted, warped with fear and agony, at the whims of monsters.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just walk away.
But whatcouldI do? Like most people from Billieu, I avoided physical confrontation because of its high bacterium transfer risk, but it also scared me and was something I knew I was in no way equipped to handle. I was tall and had some muscle from keeping to a fitness regimen, but I had no real strength, and even less coordination.
What if…what if Iboughtthem? I had inherited 1.5 million credits two solars ago from my uncle when he passed. I was up to a little over 3 million now with interest and the rest of my savings. It was all the money I had in the world, since I didn’t work and my parents had cut me off when I was ejected from the business program, but surely I’d be able to figure something out. Could I really leave those females behind when I had the means to help them?
“I am interested. What do you have for sale?” I heard myself say, my tail squeezing my leg harder.
The orange th'rak seemed to look me over, assessing my net worth, perhaps. I wasn’t dressed extravagantly—I had wanted to blend in while I was here, after all—but the quality of my clothing and the jewelry I wore in my ears and draped over my horns was unquestionably fine, if simple. Seemingly satisfied, the orange th'rak led me to the screen and tapped a button on his wristcom to allow me to see what was on it. The two yvrenii had moved on, and it was just me and the th'rak now.
On the screen, five portraits of sleeping females were displayed along the top, with a live feed of a cell with the same five females up and moving around. There wasn’t any sound, but it looked like the massive yvrenii female was fighting a much smaller one of a species I’d never seen before. But no—they weren’t fighting, the movements were too slow and controlled for that, and the yvrenii was gesturing, clearly demonstrating to the other female how to perform a grappling maneuver.
“What is that smaller one that the yvrenii is fighting?” I asked, curious. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her, from the sensual curves of her exposed flesh, the gritted determination plastered on her little face that gave way to shocked delight as I watched her land the move the yvrenii was showing her. It was doing very odd things to my chest.
“Human, from Earth. A planet in restricted space, very rare. Especially at this price.” One of the th'rakkans clicked a button on his wristcom and prices appeared beneath the portraits.
I whistled low, my eyebrows shooting up towards my horns. Heavenly mercy, but that was a lot of credits. Each of the three women whose races I recognized were listed at 250,000. But the humans were over 1 million each.
I had just barely enough to buy all five of them.
