Page 39 of Infala: Bonded to the Enemy
Shalia felt like she might throw up as fear surged in her gut. It would be so easy for them. Just the pull of a trigger and poof, her life would be over. But fate, it seemed, had other things in mind.
“We can’t,” the guard said, though he clearly liked the idea. “The commander was clear. Have her work. She’s our only captive until the next ship from the fleet arrives. Then we’ll have a new supply. For now, like it or not, this one’s supposed to live.”
The Dohrag let out an exasperated grumble. “Fine. Lock her inside. We’ll deal with it when we get back to the station.”
They shoved their prisoner into the ship and sealed the hatch.She wasn’t going anywhere. But at least she had a little down time to herself, and she made the most of it, leaning back and taking a cat nap. Sleep when you can, her father had always said. It was a habit he’d picked up in the military, but the words held true for anyone in a stressful situation. You’d never know when you’d get rest, so grab it while you could.
It was early afternoon when the sweaty men popped open the rear and loaded in their meager haul. They weren’t good at this, it was plain to see, and much of the produce they did manage to gather was either damaged or overripe. Once the crates were aboard, the men filed in and flopped into their seats, tired and ready for a hearty lunch. One that Shalia would probably have to prepare when they got back, unless Valin had tasked one of his men to prepare it today.
As soon as they reached the landing deck, it became quite apparent that was not the case.
“You, get to the kitchen and get to work. You’re late, and we’re all hungry,” Grallox said the moment Shalia stepped out of the shuttle.
“She tried to run,” the guard informed his superior. “We stopped her, of course.”
“I’d damn well hope so. She’s just one female. How could you let this happen?”
“It wasn’t our fault. It’s just?—”
The man snapped to attention, the others following suit as soon as they saw what he was looking at. Commander Valin had taken time from his schedule to come down to the landing bay, and he did not look amused. He glared at Shalia, but despite the look of rage in his eyes, she still felt a little twinge in her belly in spite of herself.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he growled at her. “Go. Prepare the men’s food.”
She hustled off without a word. The commander then turned his attention to his underlings. More specifically, to the crates theywere unloading. Shalia could hear him shouting at them as she exited the hangar.
“This is going to rot, you fucking imbeciles! We can’t put this with the other produce, or it’ll spoil the whole lot of it. This is useless!”
“But, Commander?—”
“Shut your godsdamned mouth,” Valin growled. “Take this slop and blow it out the airlock. You go back down there and bring me back something we can use.”
“But lunch?—”
“You can eat in the fields. It’s food, isn’t it?”
The men grumbled, several looking over at Grallox to see his take on things. He kept his mouth shut, wisely, but was enjoying seeing the commander upset his underlings. Snatching command from him would be easier with every slight he committed against them. Grallox gave a slight nod, almost imperceptible unless you were looking right at him.
“As you wish, Commander,” the lead guard said. “Okay, you heard the commander. Back on the shuttle. We’re going back down.”
21
“You are a distraction to this crew,” Commander Valin said, his displeasure quite clear. “My men would not have made so foolish a mistake if you had not been distracting them with your pathetic attempt to flee.”
After lunch he had taken Shalia to one of the many cargo staging areas located just off the landing bay and was showing her personally what he expected her to do. Normally, the commander himself would not be doing this sort of thing. It was underling work. But with so many of his crew on the surface re-doing their earlier job after so epic a failure, he found himself even more shorthanded. Fortunately, having climbed his way up the ranks the hard way, he knew every job on this station from actual experience.
Shalia hefted a crate and moved it to a stack of similar containers, though why they didn’t just arrange them like this when they first loaded them into the space was anyone’s guess. Certain aspects of this operation seemed to be done a particular way not because of a specific logic behind them, but rather because that was the way it’d always been done.
She shoved the crate until it locked into place with the others. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“I’m serious. You forget, I’m the one who’d been working in those fields before this all went down. I even told them specifically that the stuff was overripe, and they ignored me.”
“My men are trained?—”
“Trained to harvest?” she asked with a grunt as she lifted another crate. “Or are they trained to stand guard while the rest of us do the actual work? I mean, if we’d picked the stuff your guys told me to collect back when the camp was up and running, we’d have been soundly thrashed for it. They did not mess around when it came to that sort of thing.”
“And those men are now almost certainly dead, thanks to your rebellious friends.”
