Harp here. So, I'm writing this before the first chapter comes out, because I just load the queue and the mediators release it on their own judgment and when they see fit. As a result, I'm not in real time. I hope you're enjoying the story and commenting. There are sixteen chapters in all. For any updates/issues/comments that can't be taken care of in the comment section, see my profile. Thanks for reading.
All characters are over the age of eighteen
Chapter Six
(Decker)
The next day, breakfast happened in silence. Adya's eyes were swollen and she refused to eat, staying close to Chione, leaning on her. Bryn had run to Persya and wouldn't leave her, flinching whenever Decker moved. Yenna's mouth was tight, her eyes darting. Chione was focused on Decker, and her eyes were all kinds of eloquent. That one didn't hold back, pissing Decker off more.
Bai was watching Dawine, who was pale, her hands shaking. His face was expressionless. She darted a glance at him and her face wobbled and she looked down, wiping her cheeks with her fingertips.
Decker was mad. He had a hangover and he was in a foul mood. They had work to do. He had to put up that idium panel on that fence Bane had torn down before Bane chewed through the temporary one and all hell broke loose. That was real. Bai was going to be busy covering their electronic trail and continuing to lay a false one for Cochrain, because that was real, too. Kay was going into town to get supplies they needed before they ran out of food and to see what the chatter was in regard to the incident at the Red Door so they didn't get taken by surprise. Those were real things they'd waited to do. Not this other crap. Singing in the meadow. He didn't know what he'd been thinking.
"There's no use trying to leave," Decker said to the women, telling them the facts in clear language so they understood this time. "There's nowhere for you to go. You've got Cochrain on one side, who'll sell you to be raped, and the town on the other, where you'll be raped for free and then probably murdered or wish you were dead. We'll be notifying the Cromwells when we get back. They'll send someone to collect the ones we don't want." The fact that the two consorts they wanted to keep weren't virginal anymore was going to help.
They were all looking down. Adya started to cry as they left.
None of the three of them said anything to each other, going their own ways. Decker would be glad when this was done. He didn't understand why he was so riled up. It was just a job, like any other. He hadn't dealt in trading live people before, that was all. It wasn't something he was used to. It didn't sit well with him.
But it would be profitable, and that's what he worked for. That's what he risked his life for. Profit. What got an outlaw killed faster than anything else wasn't poor planning or bad luck. It was imagining there was another motivations for his actions. Decker should be happy right now, pussy when he wanted it and the prospect of riches.
At the enclosure, he looped the rope, his jaw tense, pulling it tight. The whole thing would go up by itself once triggered and was movable, but it needed the first rail placed.
Hell, he hadn't made them consorts. He hadn't even stolen them first. He was blameless. Innocent, and they acted like he was doing them harm. Those women didn't belong here anyway.
The two that would stay were theirs, that was all. This wasn't a courtship. They would have been for bedding in Prime, and they were for bedding here, and he and Bai had been a lot more gentle than others on Sur would have been. He hadn't put himself at risk and expended resources in order to not only not get paid for it, but on top of that to adopt six fucking orphans. Beautiful or not, they were a liability, and he already had everything he wanted.
Soft and gentle. Soft and spoiled.
Those women didn't know anything. Everybody here had it hard and they thought that didn't apply to them. Rejecting a fine life in Prime because they didn't want to be whores. Lots of women had to be whores. It was how many women stayed alive and didn't starve. But these women would have sheets on soft beds, a terraformed environment, real food, luxuries, which is more than most even in mid-system could say. Here, they would draw every man on the frontier planets. Bringing danger and helpless to protect themselves.
Mounting the horse, he drew a line upright, pulling the rope. The idium panel released gas with a hiss, the chemical reaction starting. Cote danced and strained as Decker got off and grasped the rope and leaned back, going hand-over-hand, helping him. Persya could look at him any way she wanted as long as she spread her pretty legs for him when he wanted, with that mouth she had. Those lips, all pink and vulnerable. She was crazy if she thought he wasn't going to touch her anymore. And he wasn't saying he was sorry.
In his mind, he pulled Bryn out of her sister's arms, the girl crying. He felt that one in his chest, walking to shove the growing panel with his foot, setting it. It wasn't an entirely unfamiliar sensation he was feeling. He just had to take this calmly and think through it. He'd worked around these kinds of feelings before. That was done. He didn't look back. He'd be fine. He'd get used to it like he always had. You couldn't change the past. Fuck, here he was spending time telling himself things he already knew.
Decker pushed the gate closed, keeping an eye out around himself for Bane because he didn't have a sat-reader anymore. Why? Because that sweet-assed bitch with the pretty eyes had made him drop it.
She curled up on her side, her shirt ripped, her hands over her face. In all the tension in his gut, he felt a stab. He shook his head. He didn't know what was wrong with him. If it weren't for them, those women would be figuring out how to live being raped every day by men who wouldn't have bothered getting them ready for sex, who wouldn't have treated them any better than animals, gang raping them until they were dead. Fuck, she had no idea what most men would have done to her here.
Her face peered down from the loft, dropping hay on him, her laughter floating down. Dammit. Decker shoved the knife in his belt and walked, getting on his horse.
He met the other two men, all of them quiet and foul.
At the house, when they arrived, she was on the porch, Bryn at her side. It pissed Decker off to even look at Persya, thinking about the fact that he'd spent his whole day thinking about her.
She walked to him, her face tight as he dismounted. "We tried to stop them."
"Who?" he said, turning around and getting back on, Bai and Kay still on their horses.
"Lily and Yenna. Yenna said she was going to make sure the Cromwells didn't want them anymore."
They were supposed to go back virginal. The perimeter alert sounded. Decker looked down at his watch. Dammit. He looked at the other two men. "Northeast. Straight to town."
Bai threw himself off the horse and went inside, coming back with the shotgun as Decker mounted his horse. Dawine trailed out behind Bai, hovering in the doorway. He mounted his horse, leaving without looking at her.
Decker pointed at Persya. "Nobody else leaves, you hear me?"
That stubborn look came on her face, her chin coming up.
He rode closer, leaning down. "If you try to run, when I catch you, I'll put stripes on your ass with my belt, girl, and I won't bother to make sure you enjoy it like when I spank you."
"I hate you," she said, her face getting red. She whirled around, going back into the house.
Decker watched her go, his jaw clenching. Hate him. Of course she hated him. It was an entirely appropriate emotion. He'd deal with her when he got back. Right now, they had twenty thousand dakas about to become nothing, a third of their profits if those women got what they wanted, not to mention getting themselves murdered to death. He turned the horse, running him to catch up with Bai and Kay.
After that, he and the other men rode the horses at a canter, a rough group, the horses blowing. It would take them an hour in this direction to get to the northwest edge of his land and the perimeter alarm had already gone off. Town wasn't that far. Those women were going to run into someone, and probably before the three of them could get there.
When they got to the perimeter, it wasn't difficult to track two women on foot. The land was still good here, the wasteland not far, and then the town. It was going to be dark soon.
The first hint they'd caught up with Yenna and Lily was the smoke from a campfire in the distance. They made for it. When they got closer, the second clue was Lily, who exploded out of the rough brush to their right stark naked and screaming the way they did, loud and piercing, scaring the shit out of all of them. She was hauling ass.
Cote reared up and Bai's horse bolted before he got it under control. Lily disappeared again on the far side of them, her screaming slow to fade in volume. From the direction she'd come from came the sound of men laughing, getting louder.
Bai got off, running to catch Lily before she disappeared into the far hills. He and Kay dismounted and drew their guns, the first man who'd been chasing Lily showing up, a beard and a filthy face and greasy hair.
The guy slowed and stopped. His smile faded, panting, and then his face got even uglier. "I found her. She's mine."
"Can't keep what you can't hold onto, asshole," Kay said, firing.
The shot echoed, loud. In the distance, Lily screamed, probably not making the fine distinction between Bai and her attacker when Bai caught up with her. Her real attacker flew backward, his head rocking, a hole in it, directly between the eyes. Decker sighed. Kay didn't really have a middle ground.
The second man to show up slowed, Kay's gun aimed at his chest. Kay's eyes were cold. Decker had met Kay in Rocher prison. Kay had been in for murder with some other evil things spattered on top, doing ten years when Decker first met him, and he'd turned feral with it. He was useful, a ruthless fucker, good for killing people. He was also a sodomizer of men. None of them talked about it.
Hearing a woman yelling, Decker ran toward the sound. Yenna, he imagined. And yes, there was the fire. And yes, there was Yenna. Predictably, her pants were down and she was on her back. A man was on top of her and she was screeching and clawing for his knife because after she got what she wanted, she was going to try to kill him and take his gun and kill the other one and save Lily.
