In the first few hours, I swapped out two worn power couplings, and an atmospheric internal sensor which tied into life support.

It was weird, because everything was new, but I knew the ship layout as if I’d been walking its corridors and decks for a lifetime.  So far, I’d only run into another human slave twice, but the damned Stolavii were everywhere.  I wondered if the ship was really that packed, or if they were just keeping a close eye on the new slaves.

Every deck was made of the same metallic alloy as my room, and the ship had no… style.  It was uniform, regimented, and purely functional.  Even the diagnostics device I picked up, was an ugly metallic square, with some kind of touch display that I doubted was anything like Earth’s. 

I also asked Ann endless questions.  I learned the ship was an armed cruiser, with both plasma weapons, and missile systems for long range attacks.  There were smaller ships, scouts and destroyers, and one larger class of ship which was a dreadnought class.  I was learning a lot of information, but nothing that could help me escape, the Stolavii were ugly, but they weren’t stupid.  I imagined after kidnapping and enslaving humans from Earth for two centuries, they probably had the system down well.

I wasn’t dejected yet though.  There was always a way, I just needed to find it.

When those three hours were up, there was an announcement we were entering subspace.  That did hurt a bit as we left Earth far behind, and raced through the void between stars faster than light.  Emil was right about the food bar, I was full of energy, and I felt great, which perversely made me a bit sad.

Regardless, the only way home for me now was to hijack the ship, and I didn’t see that as a real possibility.  I could probably take out a bunch of the enemy, but even if I somehow got onto the bridge, all the systems would be locked out.  Even if they weren’t, I didn’t know how to operate it.  In the end, I’d be caught and killed.

So, I did what I had to.  I asked questions, learned, and lied to myself.  I told myself it wasn’t a futile effort.  It was a long fourteen hours, and then we returned to our quarters…

 

“Ann, I need the sonic shower, and what about clean uniforms?”

A square near the ceiling came out of the wall.

“Stand under that while dressed, it will clean you and refresh your uniform which is made of a material that will absorb and later excrete your sweat or any stains.”

Right, one body hugging uniform per slave.  Figures.

I stepped under the device, and it turned on.  I could sense a tickling vibration, but it didn’t hurt.  When it stopped I felt clean, but not refreshed.  Even my teeth.  It obviously wasn’t as good as a hot shower on my sore muscles from the day, but it was good enough to get me clean.  I imagined though, that it would cost me a year’s worth of credits for enough water to make a hot shower, so I needed to suck it up.

I was truly scared as I laid down, I didn’t think I had the personality type to repeat my day over a hundred thousand times.  More than that actually, the count would be closer to a hundred and ten thousand days, just five hundred short of that.  Three hundred years, it was insane.  Finding someone to sleep with, and be with so I didn’t go insane, suddenly sounded good.  I hated that.  Still, I could’ve used the stress relief of good sex right then.

I wanted to find someone, have a relationship, but on my own terms, not to stave off insanity.  I didn’t feel up to talking to anyone that first night either.  I’d sleep first, and then have a couple of hours to talk to people in the morning before shift.  Hopefully there were others that would do the same thing.

The most ironic part of this insanity, was that I’d given up one form of slavery to another.  My handlers back home had me on a tight leash as well, the bars of the cell just hadn’t been as obvious.  Still, I’d had a better chance of figuring out the drug than figuring out how to break out of here. 

Now that I was free of them, free to pursue connections with other humans, there was a part of me that felt like that would be giving up in this situation.  I couldn’t win if I gave up and accepted my place here.

I closed my eyes, and it was quite a while before the turmoil and questions in my mind settled, and I found sleep…

 

The ship shook and vibrated, which woke me up.  It wasn’t that violent, I wasn’t tossed out of the bed, but something was going on.  The ship shook again.

“What is that?”

Ann said, “Slaves are not cleared for tactical data.  All I can tell you is we are in a battle of sorts.  Please remain calm, and complete your sleep cycle.  You’ve only rested for three hours.”

Right, could be blown up any second for all I knew, and the crazy assistant in my head wanted me to sleep?  The battle, or whatever it was, only lasted another seven minutes.  No matter how I asked, I couldn’t get any more information out of Ann.  Did it happen a lot, was it the Isythians?  She had told me the Stolavii were mercenaries, for all I knew they’d taken out an enemy battleship, or maybe they’d just taken down a trade ship of some kind, like pirates.

There was no way to know, and Ann had a point.  It worried me, not knowing, but I also had no control over the outcome, or what happened, so worrying about it was a useless emotion.  That wouldn’t stop me though, I might have been raised as a ruthless assassin, but I was still human.

I tried to get back to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut off.  It was a serious risk to life that my psyche hadn’t come to terms with yet.  Finally, I decided to rub one out, and that relaxed me enough to allow further sleep, although I missed my vibe.  I just hoped there were no cameras in my cell.  I snickered at the idea of the galaxy net having voyeuristic peep alien slave porn.  It sounded ridiculous, but I knew if humans were in charge, that would so happen.

 

The next morning, I tried to make a few friends, but there were a lot of depressed and apathetic people in the room.  I didn’t want to bother Joseph and Emil again either.  I’d like to say I wasn’t as out of it as they were, and I didn’t think I was, but I was hardly burgeoning with hope either.

At least it was a start, there were fourteen males, and nine females in our section including myself.  I wasn’t sure if there were other slaves or slave quarters on the ship or not, or if there were other species present on the ship.  So far, I’d only seen the Stolavii and humans aboard ship. 

From what I could work out, Joseph and Emil had been slaves for over two centuries, and they were the sanest two in the room.  Nine of us had just been taken, the other eight looked shell shocked still.  The other twelve had been here more than five but less than fifty years, and looked haunted.  Tomorrow, I’d make more of an effort to get to know them, but there was a part of me that didn’t want to bother.  None of them would try to escape, and they had no knowledge I needed, which was the knowledge to escape.  Even if they did, they couldn’t share it without getting caught by our assistants, who no doubt reported every word spoken.

It wasn’t that I viewed them as pathetic or not worth the trouble, even the ones that seemed to have completely lost heart, I couldn’t really blame them.  I refused to go that way, if it came down to it and I lost all hope of escape, I’d commit suicide by homicide, and take as many of the fuckers with me as I could.  It was just that getting to know my fellow human captive slaves, and forging connections, felt too much like giving up.

Then I ate my wonderful breakfast, lunch, and dinner bar, and started my shift.

The first job I got was replacing a data node on the life support network.  In short, it was responsible for controlling and communicating with internal atmospheric sensors throughout most of deck four.  I interfaced the portable diagnostic tool, and ran the most thorough diagnostic, which would map out part of the system, not just diagnose the failing node itself.

Ann said, “That level of action is not necessary.”

I frowned.  The truth was I’d planned to do this a lot, to learn how the ship worked.  A download cost a lot of credits, but learning the hard way by studying schematics and how the systems worked and interacted on the ship would help me learn it the hard and long way, just like back in a school with a lab, or the way I’d been studying chemistry in my basement.

My goal was simple, learn enough about the ship to figure out what I could do.  If not escape, then to do as much damage as I could to these kidnapping bastards before I died.  I already knew I couldn’t handle doing this for three hundred years, it would break me.  Oh, the human will to live could take a lot, and at least I wasn’t being tortured, but if I gave up I wouldn’t be me anymore.  I’d be a shadow, like the people I’d seen this morning.  Figuring out a way to sabotage life support seemed like a good goal toward that end.

Of course, I couldn’t exactly tell Ann any of that, she’d report my ass and I’d get spaced.

“Is it forbidden?  Humans are curious, the intelligent ones even more so.  Learning the science behind the systems will keep my mind engaged, and keep me mentally healthier.  Sure, it isn’t as fast as a download, but its free, and it isn’t like I don’t have the time to learn things the long way.”

All of that was true, I’d long figured out that Ann would be able to detect even the smallest of lies, I imagined that the millions of little Nano-bot health machines in my body could easily track my pulse, respiration, perspiration, blood pressure, and other indicators of lying.  I’d have to be very careful.

She replied, “It is not forbidden, but you will be watched closely for any attempts to subvert the ships subsystems.”

I asked in a surprised tone, “I thought I already was?”

Ann didn’t answer, which was answer enough for me.  I finished up, and it looked like the last person to replace this node didn’t lock it down properly, and it was shaken loose in the battle enough to cause the connector to have intermittent problems.  I took care of it, and then logged it in the computer.  I hoped I didn’t just get another slave into trouble.  High technology or not, it was still electronics, and sometimes you just had to reseat the card so to speak.

I spent the next five minutes while waiting for my next assignment, studying the circuit layout.  It was triple redundant, with the nodes in separate sections and far apart, which would make any kind of attempt at sabotage very difficult from a hardware standpoint.  Of course, I didn’t have access to engineering, or the software, so it was all I had to work with.  I was determined to learn the other systems too.

Perhaps more importantly, I needed to get to know the Stolavii, social engineering had its place, and I’d be a fool to treat them like dumb red apes.

 

It was several hours later, when I got a job in one of the large cargo bays that had an external loading door.  Like a landing bay but smaller, meant to take crates and shipments directly into the ship from the outside.  One of the power couplings had died.

I went down to deck thirteen, and over to the port side.  There were two Stolavii on either side of the door.  Unlike the others, these wore some kind of metal armored suits, they also had side arms on their belts, and rifles over their shoulders.  Except, I didn’t think they fired bullets.  Probably lasers, plasma, or some other high-tech shit.

One of them held up a hand as I got close, and I stopped.

“What are you doing here?” the Stolavii growled out.

I said calmly, even if I was shaking on the inside, not only with fear, but with an unreasoning anger.  I needed to get it under control, before the bitch in my head ratted me out.

“Engineering sent me, bad power coupling.”

It/he/she growled.  I couldn’t really tell beneath the armor.  I’d learned Stolavii females were a little bit thinner than the males, but that was the only real difference I could see.  I was sure there were other indicators if they were naked, but I wasn’t eager to find out.  Point was, in the metallic armor I couldn’t tell the sex, only the ones in uniform could I perceive the difference.

It looked away and said, “Engineering, this hold is designated off limits to slaves temporarily, why did you assign the human to repair the power coupling?”

Whoever it was in engineering said, “All my crew are on damage repair, the captain demanded we restore full weapons and shielding capability as soon as possible.  I can’t spare one of them right now, did you check its access authority?”

It?  I ground my teeth angrily, even though I was guilty of the same damned thing in my head just a few seconds ago.  So, sue me, I wasn’t perfect.  Hypocritical thinking was the right of every human after all.  Still, it made me modify my thoughts a little guiltily.  I’d think of the Stolavii as a guard until I knew the sex, or some other neutral term that wasn’t the word it.

The guard must have done something, maybe his assistant talked to mine, since Ann was my security pass in this place.

The guard grunted, “Very well, but I’ll be putting this on my report.  Skirting regulations is never a good idea.”

The guard faced me, “Not your fault.  We have some… temporary guests from the battle last night.  They are locked in this compartment.  You will not look at them or speak to them, and I’ll be accompanying you for your safety.  Do you understand these instructions?”

“Yes.  Umm, is there an honorific involved?  Second day.”

“I am sergeant Jirian.  You may call me sir.”

Interesting, I should have realized, all I had to do was say sir and Ann would translate it into the proper honorific in whatever language the receiver spoke.  Or at least, his artificial assistant would.  I also assumed that sergeant was just a similar rank from Earth’s military, he wasn’t really a sergeant.  It was important to remember that even translations from my artificial assistant wouldn’t be exact, and subtleties along with bad assumptions could cause miscommunications.

“Thank you, sir,” I said back. 

Jirian turned and opened the landing bay door, he’d told me not to stare, but for about two seconds I couldn’t help myself.  Luckily, I didn’t stare long enough to bring Jirian’s ire.

There were four new races in there.  One looked like a bug, compound eyes, six legs and two arms, segmented body, and clearly exoskeletal.  The second looked a lot like humans, but were at least seven feet tall, and had four arms.  Their legs were incredibly thick as well, which made me wonder if their world had a high gravity.  The third species was Saurian, it was humanoid, but clearly reptilian with dark gray and green scales.

It was the fourth species that took me by surprise.  They looked human in almost every way, except they had light blue skin, and dark midnight blue eyes.  The three of them were between six foot two and six foot five.  One had very light blond hair, the other two were dirty blond.  They were also very well built, incredibly muscular, and… hot.  Nipples tingling hot.  I blushed at that thought, suddenly unsure about my no alien sex rule, and finally ripped my gaze away and walked over toward the wall with the access plate.

I also felt self-conscious, they were all glaring at Jirian, all of them except the light blond blue skinned hunk who was staring at me with narrowed eyes.  Ann had told me the Isyth Empire was made up of four races, and these four races had been on one other ship until the battle last night.  Had our ship taken one of theirs last night as a prize or something?  Or was it a skirmish between governments?  Impossible to know for sure, and I knew better than to try and ask Ann, or one of the aliens.

I popped the panel out, and set it aside, and then ran diagnostics.  Of course, I could see the problem, the power node was missing, and at a guess, it was the current guests that had taken it.  Still, the diagnostics would tell me why.  There were other intact power nodes, for the lights, heat, and life support.

When the diagnostics came back, I studied the schematics and power flows, and the answer was obvious.  They’d pulled the node responsible for powering the cargo bay’s airlock door, and tractor beam loaders.  Except, triple redundancy, it wouldn’t prevent them from being spaced if someone on the bridge decided to do it.  I imagined all it would take was someone in engineering engaging the secondary or tertiary systems, which they hadn’t done yet for some reason.

Maybe to make the captives think they succeeded, until the last moment?  But if that was true, why send me to repair it?

Why would they attempt this, unless they were expecting a rescue of some kind, which might trigger their deaths?  Wow, speculate much Lori?  Maybe they were just hungry, and the bug thing likes the taste of power modules.  In other words, I needed to reel in my imagination, there was no way to know or guess.  That had just been wishful thinking, rescue, go away with the hot blue dude, and allow him to claim his reward from my body, which he’d richly deserve.  Sounded like the beginning of a cheap torrid fantasy to me.  I have to admit, romance books were a guilty pleasure of mine.

It also sounded good, but this was hardly the time to fantasize about sex, no matter how sexy the hot blue male aliens were.  Besides, why the hell would they save me?  I could only depend on myself.

I was also out of sorts because I didn’t see a way of not betraying the truth, not that I owed these beings anything.  Except, we did have the same enemy, and the last thing I wanted to do was aid the Stolavii against these people.  Unfortunately, I had an assistant in my head who was also a controller and a spy.  Chances were, she’d already done it long before I stopped staring at the empty slot for the node.

“Sir, I need to run down to stores and get a replacement.”

It was a waste of time I thought, not to have the spare part with me when I went to check on a broken system, but I had to verify through diagnostics something was truly broken, before the stores would allow me to access and remove a replacement part.  Given that the earlier life support network node wasn’t bad, and had just been loose, I supposed it wasn’t a completely stupid system.

Jirian said, “Be quick about it.”

“Yes sir,” and I jogged out of the room and down the hallway.

Ann said, “You didn’t report it had been taken.”

I replied caustically, “That’s your job, isn’t it?  Security and tactical matters are not a concern of slaves, except for following the rules of course.  In fact, I never should have been in that room and wouldn’t have been, if there wasn’t damage to the ship last night that took priority.  So… why would I need to report it?  I figured you already had, and it isn’t my job.  Technically, I shouldn’t even know about it.”

At least I knew why the light blond blue alien had narrowed his eyes at me like that, he knew they were about to be busted.  How they’d expected to get away with it was beyond me, unless they expected to get rescued before engineering got around to it?  No, no wishful thinking.

Ann said, “You are angry.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.  That sounded far too much like an accusation, when I was just trying to stay out of it, and let you handle that part.  I’ll get over it.”

Ann replied, “I apologize for being unclear, it will take some time for me to get to know your personality and preferences.”

That made no sense, “Unclear in what way?”

Ann said, “It was not an accusation, more a request to know why.”

“I see.”

I walked into the bay that held power couplings, nodes, and EPS lines.  Ann did something to access the container, which popped open at my approach.  At least, I assumed it was Ann doing it.  I pulled out a spare power node, and the container automatically closed itself.  I didn’t feel like jogging anymore, but I did walk quickly, just in case Jirian was monitoring to see if I was obeying his command to hurry it up.

The ship shook, and then an alarm went off.

I started to run back.  Maybe it was desperate, maybe it was wishful thinking, but if I had any chance to escape this would be it.  I couldn’t do it alone, but with the Isythians on board I’d have allies, I hoped.  I’d force the Isythians to take me if I had too.  Plus, I was pretty sure they were screwed without my help, as limited as it might be.  A switch in engineering would repower the door, and I was sure the bridge could flush them all into space after that.