“Seems you have a lot of them now.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“And these natives did this to you?”

“Actually, you remember the guy in our cell? The alien?”

“You mean the big one who didn’t talk much?”

“Yeah, he’s the one who applied the pigment. Apparently, his skills are far more than just inking translation runes for the Raxxians. I’ve got runes all over now. It’s really kind of amazing how this all works.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, I’m stronger now. Don’t get tired as easily. My sense of sight has actually gotten better. Who knows what else it’s enhancing?”

“Obviously not your hearing or you wouldn’t have been captured.”

“Touché. That bit sucks, for sure. And these Dohrags are serious assholes. But you’ve been with them a while, right? What’ve you learned about them? It looks like they’ve got you farming.”

Shalia and the other women nodded, commiserating over their labors. “They have us working fields for them. It’s not a big operation, but they have several groups of captives separated into different work details. We never interact with the others, especially not the males.”

“They don’t want intermingling?”

“No. They want us to themselves,” Shalia replied quietly.

A sour tone fell over the group and a woman with deep green hair and velvety brown skin sobbed quietly. Shalia didn’t need to say more. It was as bad as Darla had feared, and mad as she already was, she felt a new anger building inside her even brighter.

“How many of them are there?” she finally asked as the bellyful of rage settled into a low blaze.

“Can’t say for sure, but maybe twenty or thirty on the ground at any given time.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have a small shuttle that flies down to swap out crew, drop off gear, and pick up what we’ve harvested. It comes every day. Sometimes there’s not much of a transfer going on but they do it anyway.”

“Keeping to a set schedule regardless, most likely.”

“That’s what it seems. Some of the others who have been here a while think it must be linked with an orbiting ship up above, or maybe some sort of space station, but no one knows for sure.”

“And the Dohrags certainly aren’t going to be forthcoming with that information,” Darla grumbled. “So we’re pretty much stuck here without a real clue what’s going on.”

Shalia managed a tiny grin. “Unfortunately, that more or less sums it up.”

“Ugh,” Darla sighed. “Then now what?”

“Now? Now we wait for them to slide our dinner in under that slot over there. Eat as much as you can, because you’ll need all the energy you can muster, believe me.”

“I’ve heard.”

“And then we try to get a good night’s sleep and hope all they want of us tomorrow is to work in the fields.” She glanced at the green-haired girl with a pitying look. “Not all of us are so lucky.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

At sunup a loud clang snapped Darla from her fitful sleep. She’d managed to drift off eventually, but the sparse cushioning on her bunk bed had proven barely enough to spare her from the hard metal beneath it, making for one hell of an uncomfortable night.

But it had been a hard, long day, and when she did finally succumb to slumber’s warm embrace her body welcomed the chance to repair itself in preparation of whatever lay ahead no matter how unpleasant the mattress might be.

“Get up!” a brusque voice shouted as the metal door slammed open. “You know the drill. No slacking.”

A pair of guards stepped in behind him and dropped off several large buckets of some sort of slop then headed back outside. Darla caught a whiff and crinkled her nose. Shalia couldn’t help but chuckle at the newcomer’s reaction.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly what I would call tasty, but at least it’s food. Eat what you can while you can. It feels like it’s going to be a warm day.”

The women gathered up the bowls they had washed and stacked from their meal the night before and handed them out. Unlike what one might expect of prisoners, the group was respectful of one another, each waiting her turn without shoving or jostling. They were all in the same boat, and if they didn’t support one another, they had nothing.

The food appeared to be a simple puree of native vegetables. Unseasoned and barely cooked, but quite edible in spite of the smell.

“No solids, I take it?” Darla asked.

“On occasion they may throw in some imperfect vegetables that they don’t feel are up to export standards for their superiors, but no, usually this is it.”

“And no protein to speak of,” Darla noted.

“Actually, I mentioned the same thing when I got here, but I was informed by one of the old-timers that several of the plants they grow here are actually quite protein rich. It’s why several races are able to be herbivores and still grow as muscular as the omnivores.”

“If only we had that sort of thing back home, right?”

Shalia nodded. “Our world would certainly be a better one if we could reduce livestock farming even a little bit. But that is not our concern now. Now we must focus on the task at hand.”

“Which is?”

“Do what we must to survive, and keep our mouths shut and eyes to the ground.”

When the group headed out to the field shortly thereafter, Darla took that advice to heart. Not once did she meet the gaze of their overseers as they were marched out into the fields they would be working that day. The plants were growing in neat rows with enough space to easily walk between them. Different crops were separated, just like they did back on Earth. Some things were universal, it seemed.

Upon arrival each was handed a woven basket with a long strap to hang it around their neck and sent out to begin their harvest.

“Who are they?” she asked of the other group of women working nearby.

“Don’t know, exactly. I’ve seen them a few times. They occasionally work us near each other, but they don’t blend the work teams that I’ve seen. Now, follow me. You’re lucky. The plant they have us working with today is actually pretty easy to harvest. I forget what they call it, but the important thing is there’s no crouching and bending. Most of it is easy to reach.”

“You’re saying everything here is hand-picked?”

“Yes.”

Darla shook her head. “We’re dealing with people who travel in actual spaceships, and you’re telling me they don’t have machines to do this? I mean, hell, back home we can barely get into space, and we still have harvesters.”

“And migrant labor working for a pittance,” Shalia noted.

“Well, yeah. But the point is we’re a thousand times less technologically advanced as the Dohrags, so what’s their excuse?”

“Sadism, maybe? I don’t know. But I do know we have a job to do, and we’d better get to it.”

With a resigned sigh Darla began picking the crop as Shalia showed her. It was a vegetable that grew among thick, dark green and slightly prickly leaves. The harvest was deep orange in color, and similar in size to a zucchini or cucumber, but there were large bumps all over.

The only way to tell if they were ripe was by the oozing of a sticky sap from the bumps when touched. Too much ooze meant it was overripe and should be discarded. No ooze and it wasn’t ready. Their task was to find all the ones in the Goldilocks Zone. Not too ripe, not under ripe, but just right.

An older woman with blue skin so dark it had looked almost black inside the dim light of the bunkhouse moved closer to the pair, picking as she approached to avoid attention.

“I heard you asking about the harvest,” she said. “I have been here a long while now, and I have learned the Dohrags stationed at this world are nothing more than a small supply outpost. They just happen to think rather highly of themselves, but I believe they are considered a lower tier among their people.”