Page 3 of Beast Unburdened

The other Krektar were chiming in, all shrilly ordering for the Beast to get on his knees. He wasn’t obeying though, a rebellious fire in his green eyes. When Farn raised the remote for his pain collar the huge male bared his mouth full of teeth and growled deep and low. Then on the sides of his arms sharp looking blades fanned out and the blades growing out of his skull flicked upright, adding a good foot to his height.

The growl had clearly been directed at Farn but when I flinched back from the ferocious display those green orbs settled on me again. I had a feeling of keen and even calculated intelligence. The next moment he focused on Farn and his pronged stick and in a move so fast I couldn’t follow he’d yanked Farn right up against the bars. One fist had a hold of the stick and the other was wrapped around Farn’s throat.

There was a moment of stunned silence from everyone and then a cracking sound that would probably echo in my dreams for a long time to come. The Beast tossed Farn’s body away from the cell with a contemptuous flick of his thick wrist; making it look effortless to throw the six-foot-tall Krektar right at my feet. He grinned then and for a sick moment, I wondered if he thought he’d just given me a gift.

The next moment the cellblock broke out in utter chaos. The other slaves imprisoned were hooting and yelling, stomping their feet in applause for the Beast’s act. The other Krektar were yanking me back, shrieking in anger and fear, and then there was the Beast’s roar of victory.

Until it ended when one of the Krektar, Frek, the scrawny one, found his pain remote and pressed the switch, dialing it all the way up to max. The Beast stared at my face the entire time his body convulsed from the pain coursing through his nerves on the highest setting. Unlike with the anthracite doctor who’d collapsed to his knees after a minute; the Beast stood his ground against that pain for long minutes. A huge, immovable bulwark against oppression it seemed to me.

Eventually, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed, his body hitting the metal floor with a thud so loud I felt the vibrations of it shake up through my own legs. And they wanted me to mate with this creature?

Frek was ordering the other two to push me into the cell, it seemed that despite Farn’s death by broken neck and his initial resistance to this plan he was going ahead with it anyway. A click of a button on one of their wristwatches (much like a smartwatch) and several bars to the Beast’s cell lowered into the ground.

“Get in!” yelled one of the two whose name I didn’t know. I thought the two might actually be twins, or clones, they looked so identically ugly. A wave from Frek’s hand with the pain remote, just to warn me what they’d do if I didn’t obey and I found myself squaring my shoulders, raising my chin, and stepping over the Beast’s collapsed body into the cell. Fake it till you make it right? I told myself and my quaking knees.

The bars rose up behind me with a definitive snick.

Chapter 2

Ziame

Something was different today, everyone on the block knew it. There was restless pacing from some of the cells and angry muttering coming from the winged Tarkan. We knew the day-cycles by the way the lights in the hallway dimmed or flared and we filled our time with training for the arena in the ship’s gym. Today our escort hadn’t come, they’d left us to rot in the cells for the entire cycle.

We’d docked, I had heard the changes in the engines as they’d idled down. We all had but nobody had been taken from the cells for a fight, they hadn’t warned us that one was coming up. We were supposed to be headed for Xio for a round of gladiator matches, by my count still at least seven cycles out.

Then, after some hours the engines had roared back to life and we’d resumed our flight. Were we still headed for Xio? Was I doomed to fight again in seven cycles? I hadn’t moved from my meditative pose yet but the restlessness was getting to me too. I found myself pacing my cell, slightly larger than that of the others, back and forth while my long tail swished behind me in frustration.

I needed to calm down, it wouldn’t do to betray my ploy. As long as they thought I was a stupid mindless beast I knew they’d slip up around me again and again. Say things I shouldn’t be hearing, maybe leave out a complex tool I shouldn’t know how to use. I snorted in anger, my fire-starter clicking in my throat, sure how long had I been keeping up that ruse? Going on three years?

Flicking out my tongue I caught the scent before any of the others did. Female, tasty and sweet. Damn it what were the Krektar up to? Had the slavers brought on some female for their own sick games or were they going to involve one of the males on the block? My hearts pounded in my chest, I hated seeing the suffering of the females in this world.

When the other males caught the scent a few minutes later there was low talking among a few of them. Some angry growling from the Tarkan whose species was matriarchal like my own. Yeah, I got it buddy, I wanted to rip and shred and kill in protection of the unknown female too.

The screaming started not much later, high and fierce and heartrending. They were hurting the female and it didn’t sit well with any of us here. “Fuck,” growled the Sune through his fanged maw, clutching at the bars with his clawed hands. Behind him, I could see his plumed tail ripple and split, an anomaly even among his own race.

Pacing back and forth I growled low and angry, and when the screaming halted every single male held his breath. Listening intently. Did she live? As she screamed again a second time I figured she was getting translator tech installed without sedation, the barbaric assholes. How could they do this to a defenseless female?

Her voice gave out halfway through that second time and some of the males here flinched when that happened. “Did they kill her? Or did she pass out?” the Sune male growled in concerned frustration. None of us had an answer so nobody said anything.

The next while was hard, I wanted to know badly if she lived or not. In my three years as a slave owned by the shadowy crime lord Drameil, I had to learn how to steel my heart to these kinds of things. Yet this time it tore at me far more than it should. She smelled too soft, too sweet, I told myself. She wasn’t like a Lacerten female, armed with toxic venom and a fire-starter. This female smelled utterly defenseless, it wasn’t right to hurt such a creature.

When the cellblock opened I retreated into the shadows more. Relief bathed my features when I saw Farn and three other Krektar escort a human female inside. She lived. She walked proudly on shiny black stilts, she held her chin up high despite her fear. Her dark skin gleamed in the low light; she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

Tiny and delicate with curves that made me salivate and the hair! I couldn’t believe the hair, it wasn’t like any I’d ever seen before. So wild, so fierce and curly it haloed around her delicate face like a cloud of the softest black, I wanted to sink my clawed hands in it so badly my palms itched. Shit, I was becoming a degenerate like these damn Krektar if I could have such lustful thoughts about a harmless human female like that. She couldn’t fight back, she’d be so easy to dominate, to pin down.

They were headed right for my cell, passing the other males one after the other. The Krektar were debating her charms and shit, they were clearly about to throw her into my cell. They wanted me to rape and impregnate this female. Stars no, never. If there was ever a time to fight for freedom it was now when I had a female that needed my protection.

Farn was ordering me into the light so that she’d be able to see me. I didn’t want to, because I knew I looked monstrous to her. She had clearly only just come from a stasis pod, she’d never seen aliens before, hadn’t gotten used to all our variations. Seeing me would terrify her.

But I had to get it over with, she’d see me eventually, I needed to win her trust. I wanted her to see me and not fear me, to see me and see safety and protection. Surely my fearsome appearance would evoke that? Once I’d gained her trust?

Still, I found my ears drooping at the horror on her features. It hurt, to have this female fear me, to find me appalling to look at. I was a Lacerten in his prime, I was strong and skilled and my horns had been the envy of my peers back home. I had a certain pride too, I was considered handsome before I’d left to explore the universe. Not out here though, as a gladiator, I was called an ugly beast and jeered at even as they applauded my deadly attributes.

I had to think fast now though. Since they’d moved us from the Caratoa, the slave ship they’d been transporting us on to Xio, to this rust-bucket there had been considerably fewer guards. We all knew the Caratoa had been attacked by pirates and the ship had been too damaged to continue despite winning the fight. This pirate ship we were now on, housed us in improvised cells. There were many weaknesses to exploit this cycle and I had far more to fight for now.

When Farn tried to strike me a second time I grabbed his shock-stick, yanked him to my bars, and snapped his neck in a single move. There, one less guard to deal with when I escaped. I threw his lifeless body down the hallway, dismayed to see it land right at the pretty female’s stilt-clad feet.

I knew the next moment they’d punish me with their pain collar, knew they’d hurt me until I’d pass out. Which was perfect, it would give the female a moment to acclimate to my presence while I wasn’t so threatening. It would give us both time where the Krektar wouldn’t expect me to get to it right away.