Cosmic Captor Read online

  Cosmic Captor

  Dragon Scales: Book 1

  Stella Cassy

  Contents

  1. All The Ways Life Sucks

  2. Winners and Losers

  3. Formulate a Plan

  4. Through the Bars

  5. Battle of Wills

  6. Limited Freedom

  7. Hot Dragon Sex

  8. Betrayed

  9. Epiphany

  10. Claiming My Mate

  11. Tough Choices

  12. Freedom Is A State Of Mind

  13. Fierce Female

  14. A Shot in the Dark

  15. Fighting the Good Fight

  16. Fighting In His Stead

  17. Bedside Vigil

  Epilogue

  Cosmic Captor

  1

  All The Ways Life Sucks

  ~Carissa ~

  Being a slave to the Paxian Alliance isn’t what a normal person would consider a decent life, or even a tolerable one. The Pax are made of all the stuff sane folks would consider nightmarish and crude. The greedy little milky-white aliens have huge heads, black eyes and long, spindly arms. They creep soundlessly around, using tiny suckers embedded in their hands and feet. Naturally, wearing shoes would inhibit their movement. Therefore, they are the only species in the known verse who go barefooted. It’s the kind of thing that gets noticed. The Pax also have unusual olfactory senses. Their noses are mere bumps with tiny slits in the front of their faces. They love scents that other people find repulsive, thus they are normally found hovering around garbage receptacles, latrines and other places that smell revolting. Since I’m their slave, I go where they go.

  They kidnapped me when I was still a babe in my mother’s arms. I can still remember clinging to my mother’s trembling body while the Paxian captain threatened to kill the “stowaway”. Usually, the Pax had little use for children because it took years for them to grow into useful beings and until that happened, they were assigned one small chore after another. Children were seen as a drain of resources, always costing more in upkeep than they were worth. In any event, my mother covered my small ears and somehow talked them into sparing my life. They demanded that she keep me quiet and ensure that was useful. Thus, I learned to be a slave at my mother’s side.

  Our days were spent performing difficult, dirty jobs and my mother did her best to prepare me for the harsh life ahead of us, teaching me each task from start to finish. She did most of the work while I did my best to learn and helped as best I could. Nevertheless, we were separated several years later. Once I was big enough to lift and carry, I was assigned back breaking tasks on a regular basis. No one made any accommodation for the fact that I was still a child. Among the Pax, slaves are a slave, no matter their size.

  I’ve been starved, denied hydration fluid and not called by my name more than once. There has been no shortage of abuse in my short life. One master beat me relentlessly and I have the scars to prove it. Most of my childhood was spent as a whipping girl for a princess, intended to inspire empathy in the privileged creature. Unfortunately, the spoiled girl didn’t seem burdened with such noble emotions.

  Consequently, I’ve learned to survive in places that have never seen a human. Most beings thought I was unintelligent and practically feral. After dealing with all the different masters and varying levels of abuse, it is one life lesson that stuck with me; it’s far better for people to fear you than to be seen as weak.

  Being sold from one owner to another became the only thing I could truly count on in life. Therefore, I began to dread being sold when I had a benevolent master for fear of ending up with an abusive one. On the occasions when I had a master who dealt more abuse than I thought I could suffer, my days were spent reminiscing about the kinder ones. For many years I didn’t dream about freedom, for it had slipped from my memory.

  All that changed when my last master sold me back to the Pax. Her parting words to the slave trader will be forever etched into my mind. Make that one a brooder. She’s got the innards for it. Being bred was an awful prospect for a slight creature like me because most aliens were almost twice my size.

  Secondly, I’ve met a non-human slave who’d suffered through it. I met Luana after being bought by an aquatic by the name of Da’balar. She’d been bred by our master and from her description, it was something to be feared above all things. Luana was a little larger than me and our master had coerced her into breeding and had taken the infant. She’d been traumatized by the act itself, all the medical procedures it took to ensure a safe delivery and grieved for her missing child. I felt her pain, as I held her while she cried. That’s when I truly began to hate all masters, even the nice ones, for they joined their more ruthless brethren in securing the system of chattel slavery that kept us forever under someone else’s control.

  Although I’ve had sex on occasion with other slaves of my own accord, I choose from among the smallest and most biologically similar. They were docile and though eager for the experience, they would have never have forced their needs at my expense. Formal breeding sounded like something else entirely. Masters are nearly always much larger than slaves. Whether it is the result of certain species being more dominant because of their size or the nutritional benefit they received at an early age because of being born into wealth, I do not know. From my personal experience, masters are not only larger but more demanding and care little if they inconvenience or cause pain to their slave. The thought of being forced into a sexual act with one of them terrified me, after hearing of Luana’s experience, for it bore little resemblance to the experiences I have with fellow slaves.

  Maybe I’m naive about such things, but even though sex was possible, we apparently weren’t biologically compatible enough to make babies as evidenced by the fact that I never became pregnant. This leads to one inevitable conclusion: they believe me capable of being a breeder and are confident they have the medical knowledge to ensure conception. I’ve seen them heal broken limbs in hours, replace eyeballs and all manner of other medical wonders. The thing is, they don’t always make the process pain-free for slaves. My stomach churns when I think of being on their cold medical platform with nothing to dull the pain while they prepare my body to accommodate an alien master’s breeding requirements.

  Still, that’s not the worst part for me. The thing that really galls me and keeps me in a constant state of frustration is the thought of creating more slaves destined to suffer my own fate. Being the child of a slave, it seems a pitiful heritage to pass on to my offspring. I long for the days when the Pax thought me hardly worth my keep because now that they have discovered I am capable of breeding, they are enthusiastic about finding more of my kind. They’ve even discussed the possibility of cloning me, as eager as they are for more humans to sell. It seems humans are fetching higher prices throughout this quadrant since it became common knowledge we’re breed-compatible. I remember hearing them talk to someone on the communi-channel about humans having a flexible biology or something like that. I guess they finally figured out a use for me after all and that is nothing short of infuriating.

  Such are the thoughts running through my mind when I tighten the makeshift noose around the Tandarian’s fat neck. The alien’s sharp teeth try to bite at me, but his face is just out of range to get in a good bite. The aquatic creature’s weak vestigial fins flap around in a panic as I squeeze down on my choke hold.

  The slimeball paid a hundred credits to test me for biological compatibility. That’s nice sanitized language for rape by the way. Though I object to the unwanted compatibility testing, to be sure, somehow I find myself doubly insulted at my body being leased for such a penance. I’m worth ten times that amount and the dirty slave trader in the next room knows it.

  Make that one a br
ooder. The words whisper through my mind, even as I choke him into unconsciousness. The horror of what I’m doing hits me, causing anxiety to churn in my gut. The punishment for attacking a customer is death. Now that I’ve crossed the line, there’s no going back.

  When he goes slack against the bars, I grab his hand. It’s more like a flipper with one finger and thumb, but whatever. I force it against the scanning plate, grateful he was granted temporary access privileges to my cell. It takes all my might to hold him against the bars with one hand and wrestle his hand into position. Letting him go only when the lock to my cell disengages, I step out victorious.

  Squatting down over the prone alien, I see the Tandorian’s huge eyes staring at me. Tilting my head, I wonder for a brief second what he’s thinking, before I punch him squarely in his nearly cube-shaped head. Tandorians are yet another species with an aquatic heritage. They’re prolific in this quadrant of space as most of the planets have vast oceans. As everyone around these parts knows, those oceans spawned lifeforms that eventually evolved into spacefaring beings. This one has rubbery dark blue skin, no nose, fins running up his neck and pointed ears that lay flat against his head.

  As soon as his eyes drift closed, I quickly search his clothing for something, anything to get me the hell off this planet. A low strum of excitement builds in my gut as my hand closes around a familiar object. Two hard tugs later and the bulky key fob to a Class D spaceship pops out of his pocket. Staring down at my new treasure, hope surges in my chest. This ubiquitous black box is my ticket out of servitude and off this godforsaken planet. Wasting no time, I scavenge his credit saver which also operates as a communications device, finding nothing else of value; my shaky legs carry me towards the exit, and hopefully freedom. Where I’m going, I don’t know. However there’s one thing I’m sure of and that’s being a breeder would break me.

  Peering out into the guard’s booth, I see them ordering dinner on a view screen. My stomach growls low and angry, reminding that I haven’t eaten in two days. One guard starts moving his long spindly arms and undulating his hips from side to side. His sad attempt to mimic an exotic dancer is not lost on me. The others nod, apparently on board for hiring a dancer. Dancers are high status and have been deemed a protected class. Touching them without permission will get a man swift and stern punishment. It’s doubtful that any would agree to come into a slave trader’s den, but then again, one never quite knows what will happen with the Pax.

  Two of the three wander off. One agreed to pick up their food, and the other went on a quest to entice a dancer. Their foolish attachment to dinner entertainment is working in my favor because it will take them a while to find a dancer willing to come to a place like this.

  The moment his back is turned I spring forward and snag the pain stick he left on the console. He senses movement and whirls around to face me. Before he can get his head around what’s happening, I jab him right between the eyes as hard as I can. His white skin begins to darken at the impact site, proving that I’ve hit my mark. The Pax only have one major vulnerability. Their frontal cortex is not covered by bone like most species. His eyes widen as the severe injury I just dealt rapidly spreads through his nerve endings. The shock spreads until his brain it too damaged to function. The entire process takes less than a minute.

  Not taking the time to pick his pockets properly, I grab the bulky key fob clearly visible in his side pocket. Taking precious seconds I run his finger over the scanning plate and reprogram it for my own imprint. It’s a simple process that I’ve witnessed every time a person is given any access to pilot a ship, access to secured areas, or in my case, authority to open locked doors. Freedom is so close, I can almost taste it.

  I hope the customer’s craft turns out to be something I can actually pilot. One of my masters used me to fly miners back and forth to various mineral mines. I was locked into the pilot’s section in a craft that wasn’t space worthy, wearing a slave collar designed to explode if the craft strayed from the established route. Though it had been hot dirty work, those skills just might get me to freedom tonight.

  My hand reaches out to snatch his blue cloak, even as I instinctively survey my surroundings for signs of danger. Seeing nothing alarming, I wrap myself in the thick, foul smelling fabric. At this point, I have but one goal in mind. Escape the slave pits and get the hell off this godforsaken planetwhere beings are bought and sold like common beasts of burden. The commi-channel is flooded with advertisements touting Valon Six as the place where anyone with enough credits can purchase the slave of their dreams. Few make it down to the skeevy underbelly of the slave pits. That privilege is reserved for rough outlaws and others without a conscious. Most customers only see us once we’ve been cleaned up, our injuries quickly healed and we’ve been garbed in garish flashy clothing. I and thousands like me know the how the whole system is just one lie built on another to convince normal people that slavery is not all that bad. To hell with Valon Six and the sick assholes who keep the whole system going by purchasing people like me.

  Shocked by my own actions, I move stealthy through the maze of corridors. Since the slavers almost never took me from my cell, it’s difficult to find my way out. I quickly duck into dark corners when footsteps draw near, intent on avoiding recapture.

  The realization that I’ve killed tonight and might again before dawn claws at my conscious. I’ve never killed before today. Having watched more fighting than I care to in the arenas, it would be a lie to say I’ve never seen bloodshed and death. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be the one dealing death it. Everyone knows the penalty for a slave turning on their keeper. Punishments for lesser crimes such as refusals to obey are dealt out in the privacy of the slave pits. It can range from being publicly humiliated to lashes. The guards are good at figuring out what each individual species despises most then using it as a punishment. The atmosphere is usually jovial, with the guards shouting out encouragement and suggestions to those tasked with meting out punishment. They would make a great production of spanking my naked bottom like a naughty child, since humans don’t like to be naked, to feel pain or to be treated as children. The small timid aliens with an aquatic heritage hated having their fins squeezed. Therefore, the guards often deal damage to these delicate areas in the form of squeezing, burning or cutting them if the slave’s transgression had been more serious.

  Since my current crime is punishable by death, I’ll be hung in the city center and tortured to death. A huge grouping of Pax will be recruited from nearby homes and businesses to watch me suffer for my crimes. Since the general population isn’t wealthy enough to own slaves, they aren’t used to seeing a person mistreated. Therefore, I doubt they’ll enjoy the spectacle. The last time I witnessed Paxian justice being served upon a slave, the crowd was quiet and solemn.

  My hand clutches the key fob, reminding me of my one chance at freedom. Finally, moonlight catches my eye out an opening near the ground. It leads to some kind of room filled with trash. I wiggle through a huge drainage opening into the dark star filled night. I get my bearings and then immediately make my way for the huge flat paved area where all the ships land and take off. The entire situation seems a bit unreal.

  Standing on the quiet tarmac, I know before I activate the fob that it’s likely to be a piece of space junk. All class-D craft are old and barely space worthy. Taking a deep breath, I slide my finger over the activation plate. The smallest and most pitiful piece of crap on the tarmac lights up for me. The oblong craft is composed of copper colored metal. It has more than a few dings and has been patched with different kinds of metal in several places. It’s much larger than a standard shuttle but it can’t have more than an engine room, cockpit and three or four other modest rooms. Frowning, I see it’s only got five of its eight pieces of landing gear are down, so it might not be all that stable to board through the main entrance. This has to be the sketchiest ship I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing.

  I make my way to the craft as quietly
as possible. Because rousing any real notice might lead people to investigate. Under this smelly cloak, I’m wearing the rags of a slave and the control collar I couldn’t manage to remove no matter how hard I tried. Even a half smart person would be able track the two key fobs back to Tandarian I knocked out and the guard I killed in order to make my escape.

  I manage to sneak on board using a secondary hatch on the underbelly of the ship. Locking and double checking the doors, I sit in the control room staring at the console. Taking stock of what I’ve got to work with gives me hope that it might not be so bad after all. All the fuel rods are charged and firing. The flight controls are calibrated and appear to be fully functional. I turn off the transponder, so I can’t be tracked and pray for the best. Cautiously starting the engine firing sequence, the ship rattles to life. No one can see me, I remind myself when I realize I’m making enough noise to wake the dead.

  Feeling the craft jerk repeatedly, I worry that I won’t break atmosphere in the small rinky-dink vessel. This planet has one land mass, and it’s a gigantic den of iniquity where every being is looking for some justification to enslave another being. In order to survive another day, I must escape before they realize I’m gone and activate my collar. As unsafe as this lift off is, it’s my only chance. I either have to take it or subject myself to being a breeder for whatever species has enough coin to pay my asking price.

  Taking a deep breath, I hit the button for lift off. The tiny bucket of bolts begins accelerating upwards and I count the seconds until I break orbit. Once the shaking dissipates, I realize the worst of it is over. “Carissa my dear, you will live to see another day.” Gratefully setting course for the nearest refueling station, I let the autopilot take over.