“You’re sure about that?” Darla asked.

“Dear, I have been here many cycles. One hears many things when they become regarded as part of the scenery.”

Darla mulled that over. It was akin to how she’d been treated when she worked as a waitress. Unless you were actively engaged in taking an order, people acted as if you weren’t there. And oh, the things she’d heard.

“If that’s true, then we’re being held by a bunch of glorified farm workers with oversized egos. Hell, they’re probably passing off what’s supposed to be their work onto us when the bosses aren’t looking.”

“That I cannot say. But to address your other query, no, they do not possess any farming technology that I have ever seen. Just their weapons, some basic equipment for the compound, and the shuttle flying back and forth to the orbiting workstation.”

“It’s not a ship?”

“No. More of a distribution facility. Ships do come to resupply in orbit, but those would be transport haulers, not war ships.”

“Do you know how often they come?”

“No, they have never spoken of that within earshot.”

Darla’s mind was racing. Here she had believed they were dealing with a crack squad of commandos on detachment from their battle cruiser in orbit when the reality was these were nothing more than logistics grunts who had aggrandized their roles to the extreme. And if there really was no war ship orbiting above, how many Dohrags were actually here?

“Are you sure there aren’t any real commando types?” Darla asked.

“I do not know for certain, but not that I know of. Just a group of workers and their overseer.”

“And up on the station?”

“The rest of their ranks and the commander.”

“No one else?”

The woman thought a moment, a dark shadow flashing across her gaze. “Captives have been taken from time to time. They said they would be shipped out to work other planets, but we all know that is not always the case. What exactly happened to them no one can be sure, but there is a possibility some prisoners are still up on the supply station.”

A crackling weapon blast hit the ground beside them, spraying up dirt.

“No talking!” the Dohrag guard shouted. “Get back to work!”

The women shared the briefest of glances then set to it, not wanting to anger the man any further. It was going to be a long day, that was for sure, but as they worked, Darla’s mind drifted elsewhere.

I hope Heydar is okay.

Across the camp, her alien lover was indeed okay, though shirtless and drenched in sweat. The guard crew had tasked him with lifting massive containers of produce and loading them onto a transport vehicle to prep for the next shuttle’s arrival.

Before that, the Dohrags had forced him to push a farming plow like an animal, even though it had a perfectly functional power supply. His powerful limbs had managed to find the strength to accomplish the task, but only just.

But this wasn’t about them needing him to do the work. At least, not all of it. This was about tormenting the new prisoner until he dropped. It was all a game to his captors, and one of their favorites, but so far Heydar had kept up with their ever-increasing challenges.

His runes, while appearing more or less the same as those possessed by the men guarding him, had one thing about them different from the others. The pigment he had received to touch up and shade them over the years had been from a different variety of plant. Rare. Strong. And, fortunately for him, undetectable when mixed with the regular inks.

Had the Dohrags realized just how powerful their captive actually was, they might have put him down then and there just to avoid the slightest chance of an incident. As it was, they were simply running him all over the compound as a beast of burden, carrying heavy loads with little respite.

Heydar averted his eyes and kept his mouth shut, quietly doing as they directed him, carrying out the tasks as slowly as he could without drawing suspicion. He was not as tired as he made it seem, and after making a show of needing to catch his breath from exhaustion a few times, the guards began to think of him as a lesser man.

It was exactly what he wanted. With their caution waning around him, so too did their lips loosen. They didn’t talk about much that would be of use to him, but that wasn’t his main goal. The important thing was that in their attempts to wear him down, making him carry such heavy loads all across the compound, they were inadvertently providing him with the next best thing to a guided tour. And they were beginning to underestimate him.

Heydar grunted and strained, looking entirely focused on the task at hand, when in reality he was taking careful mental note of everything he saw. Every troop, every storage point, every weapons depot, and every potential weak point.

By the time the afternoon break rolled around he had a near complete map of the entire Dohrag compound in his head.

“Eat,” the guard said, throwing him a few unwashed vegetables with a cruel laugh.

Glistening with sweat from the sun’s relentless heat, his muscles fully pumped from his labors, Heydar brushed them off and ate. His body readily absorbed the nutrients with joy, trying to replenish itself enough for the second half of the day’s work. He would be okay, for the time being. How many days of this he could maintain, however, was another question entirely.

He felt eyes on him. Not close, but near enough. Movement across the field caught his peripheral vision and he turned his head. Darla was staring at him as she picked some sort of plant. A surge of relief flooded his body knowing she was okay. The look in her eyes told him she felt the same way.

She felt a little more, actually, despite the less-than-ideal situation. Seeing him like that, shirtless, muscles swollen from work, his body shining and slick with sweat, was enough to give Darla a little tingle between her legs in spite of herself.

As if by mutual agreement they broke their stare and turned back to the day’s tasks, but now with a little happiness in their gut. Something to look forward to. If they survived.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It went on like that for three days. Three days that felt like an eternity of manual labor, leering stares, and restless slumber. Even with the runes Heydar had so carefully drilled into her to support her body in this stressful time, Darla was nevertheless utterly wiped out by the end of each day.

But come morning, the power focusing pigment that was now part of her had done its miraculous work, and she woke restored and ready for another round of hard labor.

As for the pigment and her runes, she had been so busy the first couple of days that she hadn’t even noticed the new lines and patterns the ink was making on her body of its own accord. It had formed new runes entirely without direction, and she had no idea what they meant.

With Heydar segregated away from the women, she couldn’t ask for his expert take on what they were. Nor could she touch his muscular body—something she found herself longing for even as her exhaustion washed over her from head to toe. One thing was certain; no matter how tired she was, in that regard her body was primed and ready for him, almost aching with need in spite of herself.

As she bathed away the dirt and sweat of her hard labor at the end of the third day, Darla felt the stare of one of the women in their work group before she even saw her looking at her. The woman was one of the quiet ones she hadn’t connected with. Wiry, with elongated digits, dark purple skin, and coarse black hair. She was middle-aged, or at least Darla thought so. It was hard to tell with alien races, and for all she knew this woman’s lifespan could stretch out centuries rather than decades.