Page 1 of Taken to Voraxia
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Miari
“Miari,” Svera whispers beside me, “they’re here.”
I swallow, but my tongue is paper, my throat ash. “I know.”
Sand billows up from below the Dra’Kesh ship’s great underbelly and needles my cheeks, tears at my closed eyelids, charges through holes in my tattered shirt to scrape at my skin. I bite my bottom lip so hard I taste blood and sweat slicks Svera’s palm in mine as we hope a shared hope – that Kiki doesn’t get picked again.But she’s too pretty not to. It isn’t fair.None of this is fair.
“Why are they even here?” I hiss angrily, though I already know the answer.They come because it’s fun for them. Because they can and we can’t stop them.
“Those were the terms that Mathilda and the Antikythera Council agreed to.” Svera’s answer, ever diplomatic, makes me seethe.
“We didn’t ask for this. Any of it. To be here on this universe-forsaken planet,” I whisper, haunted. “And now we’re tortured.”
Svera grimaces up at me, but I keep going, not caring who hears or the scornful glances they throw in my direction. I’m used to their derision. Beinghatedby them. Even though I try to keep it covered, my luminescent blood-orange skin glitters in the unforgiving sunlight as a constant reminder of the aliens that hunt us once every rotation.
I am the first half-Dra’Kesh baby born out of the Hunt. The first half-Dra’Kesh baby to kill their mother. One of six carried to term who did, though four of the babies also didn’t survive it. Now, left in their memory — scars of the Hunt — are just Darro and me.
Fleetingly, I glance through the crowd, trying to spot his red skin or his flickering tail. Even though he’s taller than the rest of them — even taller than me — I can’t see him now. Not that it would really matter. There is no solidarity between us.
Instead, I just see people. Humans. They —we— stand clustered together, holding our breath, watching the ship’s drawbridge slowly lower while the Deuterium engines power down.
“And just because the Antikythera Council can remember life on board the Antikythera satellite before it crashed doesn’t mean they should automatically get to make decisions for us. We didn’t elect them to lead. And the fact that they agreed to this knowing that their own families would be spared from it is disgusting.”
“Their familiesaren’tspared. Only Mathilda’s granddaughter.” Lame, she’s exempt from the Hunt. I know that in my head, but it doesn’t make the anger in my heart go away. “It wouldn’t be right to make her participate.”
“It isn’t right to make any of us participate,” I huff.
“That family has already suffered enough.”
“We have all suffered enough. And now they lead lives of luxury while women like Kiki suffer on their behalf. Over and over.” Desperation fills me that I don’t even have a right to. I haven’t been among the selection yet.
But next rotation. Next rotation Svera and I will be right there next to Kiki kneeling naked on the sands, waiting for the monstrous alien warriors to choose us and chase us and savage us in ways we don’t come back from.
I might not get picked because of the weird half-alien way I look, and Svera may not be picked because she doesn’t have the coveted dark skin that the most beautiful women in our colony do — instead, her father has the pale skin of those most commonly afflicted with sun sickness — but Kiki will be picked every time. Until it kills her.
I wince. “It doesn’t seem worth it. Itisn’tworth it. Just for the Drolax Barrier in return…”
“The planet is dangerous. You’ve seen the night monsters that prowl the Barrier’s perimeter. We’re only human. The Drolax Barrier keeps us safe.”
“Keepswhosafe? Women like Kiki? Women like my mom?”A woman I never knew. It’s incredible that, without knowing her, I can still miss her.
Svera glances up at me. Dark pupils surrounded by green surrounded by brown surrounded by green again. Eyes so typically full of light, now dim. “Mathilda and the Antikythera Council are just doing what they think is right.”
“We didn’t elect them,” I insist stubbornly, and then much quieter, in a pitch none but Svera can hear, “it should be you. You’re smart and kind and everyone loves you. It should be you who leads and puts an end to this.”
Svera just shakes her head, but before she can answer, we jump collectively at the sound of the drawbridge completing its descent and thudding down onto our colony’s packed brown sand. It sounds like doom.
The thousand three hundred some odd humans gathered — plus the one hundred and seventy-two who kneel — don’t speak a word between each another and the stark, hard world is made starker still by the silence.
Svera brings my hand to her heart where her many necklaces clatter. Marked by the symbols of those who worship the Tri-God of the ancient Earth, her pale brown fingers roam absently over a six pointed star and a cross strung on a collection of beads. She calls it her nagoom-cross, and the covering on her hair a hijab.
Dark blonde lashes the same color as the hair beneath her hijab fall over her light eyes. She begins muttering prayers in ritual and I can only hope that she’s right, and that the Tri-God is realand listening.
I flinch as the first of the Dra’Kesh emerges from the darkness of the ship and descends the ramp. From where we’re standing, he’s just a smear of red against the world behind him. Below the sand is brown. Above the sky is a cloudless, opalescent white.
“They're here,” I whisper through clenched teeth.
