Caged with the Alien Gladiators by Corin Cain
Jacky
“Wake up. Wake up. Hey!” There’s a crack like bone crunching as she snaps her fingers.
“Just two more minutes,” I mumble. I can’t be late for my first day at the job, but it was such a long voyage. If I can just sleep a few more moments, I’ll be able to impress them. Did my interview go well? It’s all so hazy and…
I bolt upright.
I’m not on a station working as a server, and I’m sure as hell not on Litika about to start work in a hotel. Kay’s sitting across from me on the other bed, a towel around her shoulders, completely unashamed in her nudity. She’s lean, with the outline of abs, feminine with deadly grace. I’m glad to have her on my side.
“What’s going on?”
“There was a knock on the door. You didn’t hear it. You were out like a light. Some Toad said we’re being presented in thirty minutes, and to look good or we’ll regret it. Fucking Toad. When I get my hands on him…”
“Look good?”
“We’re being presented to the Aurelians. Toads are fucked up. Half of them wish they were Aurelians, the other half seem to enjoy the disgust in a woman’s eyes. It doesn’t matter what we look like. Aurelians don’t care. They just care what you smell like,” she says, and I remember the Aurelian who stepped out into the main cell.
How he breathed in, tasting the scents of us, and his cock twitched and swelled.
I shudder at the thought. Kay’s got a plastic bag next to her. “I checked the room. Load of useless beauty products in this bag, bunch of dresses made for the male gaze, and that’s it.” She holds up the bag, full of lipsticks and powders. “I’ll check if anything can be made into a weapon.”
“Okay. I better go shower off. Then I’ll see what I can do with those,” I say, motioning to the bag.
“See what you can do?”
“Yeah. I look like shit right now after the journey, and I don’t want us to get in trouble for no reason. You’ve got a natural beauty to you, but I can do something light?” I’ve got a feeling she’s never used make-up in her life, and I don’t want either of us to get in trouble.
She shakes her head. “I don’t wear make-up. You sweat, that garbage can get in your eyes.”
“I don’t want us to get in trouble. Toads are sadistic fucks.”
“I can take whatever they dish out,” she says, grim.
I raise my eyebrow at her. “Who do you think the Toad Lord will suspect is planning an escape. An obedient servant who blends in, or one who fights against the rules?”
“Fine. I’ll use lipstick. It won’t get in my eyes at least,” she says, pulling out one at random.
I take it. “This one? It won’t match your skin tone.”
“What the hell do you know? I thought you were a dishwasher,” she growls, prickly. We’re all on edge, but I raise my eyebrow at her. If we’re on a team, we need to act like it. “Fine. Sorry. You probably know more than me,” she grumbles, then her eyes light up as she picks up a hairbrush.
“A brush? Your hair’s pretty short, but mine’s in tangles. Can I use that?” Kay runs her hand over the hairbrush like it’s a bizarre artifact she’s never seen before while I hold my hand out, waiting for her to toss it.
“Turn the water to the hottest and hold it under the nozzle. Try to get it malleable, then give it to me. I’m going to try to break off a piece of the bedframe. We can use the brush as a handle for a shank. If those Aurelians pick me, I’m going to cut their fucking balls open before they get a finger on me,” she snarls, reaching under the bed and testing it.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask, getting up and shaking my head in wonder.
“Not where I came from. Where I’m going. Where we’re going. Because I’m sure as hell not going to be a prize for an Aurelian or whatever other gladiators they’re fighting against, and I’m sure as hell not going to serve a Toad Lord.”
She tosses me the brush, but she botches the throw. I have to lean over, darting my hand out to grab it.
I see the approval in her eyes and realize what she was doing. She threw it poorly on purpose, testing my reflexes. I sniff, a little annoyed—I need her to treat me as a teammate. Not someone to be tested.
As I walk to the bathroom, holding the hairbrush, I feel the heft of it. Could I use it to stab someone?
Would I even graze an Aurelian before he took it from me?
I know what he’d do next. The discipline of the species is famous.
If I tried try to stab one of them and failed, he’d put me right over his lap. I close the bathroom door and strip out of the thin white clothes, eager to get them off my body. The mirror reflects me, and for a second, I have the horrible thought of smashing it to shards and using it on my wrists. Only horror awaits me in this Toad palace, and a sharp piece of the mirror would be as certain a way out as leaping from the parapets. It would be better than being eaten alive by a Bullfrog or thrown into a fighting ring while Toads bet on how long I’ll live.
I force the desperate thought out of my mind.
It’s better I don’t have a weapon, because an Aurelian would take it right from me and teach me a hard lesson. My nipples harden as I imagine that huge Aurelian grabbing me and throwing me over his lap. I try to force the thought out, but it’s got tendrils in my mind. How helpless I’d feel, his hand coming down on my ass, telling me never to try anything like that again…
My white clothes still smell pretty fresh after the three-week journey. You don’t sweat or anything in statis. You don’t even need food for journeys under a month, only requiring a few drops of water to keep you going.
I’d be a lot more comfortable in those damp clothes than the sheer dress Kay showed me. Gods. I’d feel naked in it.
But I’d feel even more naked if the Aurelians could taste my need.
“Water on. Hot,” I say, and the shower nozzle spurts as the AI responds. This is a decent cell. I was expecting to be thrown into a dungeon.
The Toad Lord wants us to be pretty little playthings to give to his gladiators. I wonder if the sick freak would watch.
The water’s almost too hot to bear, but I grit my teeth, wanting to wash off all the grime of the ship. I stepped in the groggy waters, and I take care to wash my feet.
I clean myself quickly using soap from a dispenser. Then I hold the brush to the nozzle, stepping back. “Water, hottest temperature.”
Steam fills the shower as I hold the hairbrush against it, wincing as water drips down the handle. The plastic slowly melts.
How did Aurelians get captured by Toads? What were they doing here? Are they Independent, or do they serve the Empire?
They can’t serve the Aurelian Empire and fuck a slave. They’re Independent at best, a triad that struck off on its own to make its destiny.
At worst…
They’re like the third of the species who split off from the Aurelian Empire to follow the Old Ways, when the alien species took women as pleasure toys, forcing them into submission.
Maybe they were on their way to pledge their loyalty to the Priests when they were caught.
The hairbrush material gives when I push my thumb into it. I pull my thumb back quickly, wincing at the burn. I rush out of the bathroom to Kay, not even stopping to dry off, getting the tool to her while it’s still malleable.
“Bastard thing burned my thumb!” I complain.
Kay grabs the hairbrush, wincing from the heat, and twists the top off, sawing at it with a tiny file. She gets it off quick, her biceps flexing as she rips it in two. She jams a warped piece of bronze metal into it. It sticks out about as far as my middle finger, enough to get into a Toad’s sensitive bits if you know where to poke. She rushes to the bathroom and I hear the water running—probably cold, to set it. It’s a rudimentary way of quenching newly forged metal, but it’s the only option we have.
She comes back into the bedroom, her face grim and set. “It’s not much. But it feels better to have a weapon in hand. Do you want me to fashion you something?”
I shake my head. “I’m not trained in fighting like you. It’s more likely to get taken from me and used against me than to protect me.”
“Smart. But those three Aurelians don’t need anything but their hands. Just remember. Every man has the same weak spot. You get them in the balls, and they’ll shriek louder than the woman who was entertaining them.” Her fingers curl around the hilt of her shiv, imagining shoving it in a place the Aurelians will never forget.
“Do you think…you think that woman was there willingly?”
Kay nods. “From what we heard? Yeah, I don’t think they had to force her. But that doesn’t change anything. Screaming yes or screaming no, when the Mating Rage sets in, nothing can stop an Aurelian. Nothing but a well-timed jab.”
I open the drawers. They are made of plastic, to withstand the constant humidity of Toad living areas. The tiny barred window doesn’t give us any respite, the outside air like a jungle. There’s not even a semblance of a breeze.
The drawers are filled with sheer dresses in random sizes. There’s not even underwear. “Ugh. They want us to feel like harem girls on Colossus,” I complain. The harems of Aurelians are a hot topic of gossip on stations.
Every day I spent working, I imagined buying a ticket to human sectors for the protection and opportunity it promised.
Some of the women I worked with had a different dream. Scraping up the money to get to Colossus and hoping to be chosen by one of the ravenous alien warriors triads. Some sent holo-vids to the Aurelian Empire, hoping to be picked by a triad and getting an all expenses paid trip to the rest of their lives. I guess the thought of being one of a hundred women is better than the thought of scrubbing dishes for the next fifty years of your life.
I throw Kay a light dress. “This will look good on you,” I say, and she rolls her eyes.
“I want whatever will make me look bad.”
“I don’t think you could make anything look bad.” I shrug. She pulls it on in a hard, jerky movement, then jumps up, striding back and forth in our prison. When she gets to the wall, she twists, turning and stabbing out so fast it makes me gasp. “Good mobility. This will do.”
She’s even put on the lipstick I suggested. As long as we do as the Toad Lord says, we won’t get punished. More importantly, we won’t draw attention. If we’re going to have a chance to escape, he can never see it coming.
I grab a thin comb and get to work on the tangled mess that used to be my hair. I wince every time I pull through a knot. I heard that in the fancy statis-sleep beds, they have a hairdresser come before you wake. You get out of bed looking and feeling refreshed and ready.
Money really is everything in this fucked up universe.
I put on some lipstick and stop there. I’ll be presented, but that doesn’t mean I need to make myself up like a harem girl just begging for attention. I pick a yellow dress, so sheer you can plainly see my body through it. I try not to imagine the Aurelian staring at me while I wear it, his eyes roaming up and down my exposed body. I wish I had a body like Kay’s, strong yet feminine, but maybe my invisibility to men will pay off.
“Maybe I should find something ugly,” I sniff, searching through the drawers for anything less transparent.
I put on the yellow dress and Kay is staring at me with hard eyes. “It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, Jacky. I told you. Aurelians care about the scent. And I saw that one breathe in. He tasted something he liked. What one of us he smelled…he’s going to claim.”
I shudder, remembering how the huge beast’s nostrils flared as he tasted us. How his cock twitched and filled, before he went back to the bedroom to ravage the moaning woman.
I sit down hard, the enormity of the situation pressing in. Kay paces, thinking out loud. “What I want to know. Who are these three? They looked young to me. Maybe mid-two-hundreds. Still in their mandatory hundred-year service, if I had to guess, or deserters who went their own way. We have to hope for the first.”
“Why?”
She stops, her intense brown eyes staring straight into mine. “Because if they’re deserters, they’re going to join up with the Fanatics.”
My mouth dries.
If they’re Fanatics, they won’t even see us as people. Fanatics follow the Old Ways.
Fanatics want to own every human woman they see.
I start as the door hisses open, instinctively covering my body up. Kay jumps forward, peeking her head out, looking left and right. “There’s a Toad waiting. Just one. Could be more around the corners.”
I’ve seen what she can do to a single Toad once she gets a weapon in hand.
“Do you think they’re going to punish you for what you did in the ship?”
She laughs as she peers out, but there’s no mirth to it. “No. All they found was a pile of bones and a satisfied Bullfrog. He probably won’t even report it. Toads are cheap.”
She turns to face me. “I know I said if we get to an auction, we’re done for, but I don’t see another option. If I kill that Toad, there’s a dozen more. We need information. Keep your eyes peeled. Find something useful. Anything. We could be stuck here for a while, and we’re going to need an angle to get out.” She talks at a fast, practiced clip, like she’s debriefing soldiers.
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Hurry up!” comes the croaking yell echoing down the hallway. The Toad speaks in Common and we step out, along with the row of women filing out from each side.
I have no choice.
We’re about to be presented to the brutal alien warrior triad…
And they’ll decide which of us to claim as their prize.