Starflight (Starflight, #1)(75)
Whatever they’d been eating, there wasn’t enough of it.
“Picked up your distress beacon,” the captain said, making sure to open his jacket and display both pistols. “Might be able to transport your injured. How many are there?”
One person stepped forward and answered in a man’s deep timbre. “None. At least, not anymore. The last one bled out a few days ago.”
“Survivors?”
“What you see here.” The man hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Plus fifty more in the dugouts.”
Now that Solara paid attention, she noticed a few shelters excavated from the hillside behind the group, basically caves made of dirt. A small fire crackled in the center of camp, smoking a few strips of meat into jerky. Sudden movement caught her eye, and she spotted a mud-streaked child poking his head out of his cave to study her. The whites of his eyes grew when they met hers, but someone quickly snatched him out of view.
“If you want transport to the next settlement,” Captain Rossi said, “we can probably arrange it.”
“Thank you, friend,” the man replied with a coolness that negated his words. “But we’ll stay and rebuild. There’s only a month till harvest, and the crop looks good this year. It’ll get us through the winter.”
“What will you eat in the meantime?” Rossi asked. “I don’t see any livestock.”
The man indicated the long red strips dangling over the fire. “We just butchered our last steer. The meat’s well preserved.”
“Will it be enough?”
One bony shoulder lifted in a shrug. “If not, the slave traders will come around soon. They always do. Our weakest will fetch a bushel of grain per head.”
“You would sell your own people?” the captain asked, not sounding surprised.
“Better a life of servitude than death by starvation.” A spark of inspiration lit the man’s eyes, and he added, “We have widows. And orphan girls. They’d make excellent traveling companions for your crew. If you’re willing to trade—”
“I don’t deal in flesh.”
The man looked taken aback, as if insulted by the quick dismissal. He tipped his dirty head and studied each of them in a way that raised the hairs at the back of Solara’s neck. Then his gaze returned to the captain’s pistols, and he asked, “How many are in your crew?”
Solara’s pulse throbbed with fear because she knew what the man was thinking. Slave traders would pay a lot more than one bushel of grain for her, and an even higher price for a strong boy like Doran. She sensed the man sizing them up, calculating how many shots the captain could fire before he succumbed to an attack. She rested a hand on her knife hilt, but even armed, they were no match for a group of sixty.
On a whim, Solara rolled up her shirtsleeve to display her tattoo. “More than enough,” she blurted. “Considering who we are.”
Eyes went wide, and the group leader retreated a pace. As an outcast himself, he obviously recognized the symbol for the Brethren of Outcasts and knew its implications. Anyone bearing that mark belonged to a network of ruthless fighters. To provoke one was to provoke them all.
Doran caught on quickly and displayed his own wrist. He looked down his nose at the group and said in a menacing voice, “You’ve heard stories of Demarkus Hahn, the pirate chief with fists like sledgehammers. I’m the man who laid him flat and took his bride.”
To validate his story, Solara gave a tight nod.
“He may rule the quadrant’s inner circle,” Doran went on, “but the fringe belongs to me. All Brethren in this realm will answer to Daro the Red.” He cracked his knuckles and cocked his head to the side in a flawless imitation of the pirate lord. “Or else challenge me now, before these witnesses.”
Nobody volunteered.
“We have no quarrel,” the group leader said, taking another backward step as he lifted both hands in supplication. “Let’s part as friends…and allies.”
After pretending to think it over, Doran nodded as if he’d done the man a favor. Then they climbed inside the shuttle and didn’t look back.
Late that evening, when the Banshee was locked up tight and the rest of the crew slept in their bunks, Solara stood in front of the bedroom mirror and unfastened her braids with cold, clammy fingers. She couldn’t stop picturing the bones that had protruded from the settlers’ clothes, or the way their hollow eyes had made them look more like scarecrows than human beings.
Would a year on Vega do the same thing to her?
Yes, she realized. If someone doesn’t sell me first.
The captain had warned her about this months ago, but she’d stubbornly clung to her dreams of independence and belonging—of being revered for the calluses on her palms and the grease under her fingernails. There was no freedom here—not really. She’d just traded one form of oppression for another. Whether on Earth or on Vega, her life would never be anything more than a bare-knuckled fight to survive.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away and focused on Doran’s reflection in the mirror. She could tell his mind was somewhere else, too. He sat hunched on the edge of the bed, resting both elbows on his knees and staring at his hands. They were nice hands, strong and rough from months of labor, but she doubted he was really seeing them.