Valentin looked over at her in disbelief. She is upset and scared, he thought.
The woman representative returned her look with one of disbelief. How could she not know his full title? “You mean, Val, the Outcast, Commander of the Nage Horde is who you are husband stealing at this very moment?”
“Yes, that’s right, now goodbye,” Ellie said curtly and ended the conversation.
Another chime but this time it was a message. “What’s that?” Ellie asked and looked around for the button which would allow her to read the message.
Valentin was handcuffed so he couldn’t just push the message to display it but explained, “It’s a toll for leaving the planet. Just ignore it. I’ll pay it later.”
“There’s a toll?”
“Yes, the Empire takes as much as they can get out of travelers,” he smiled. “Keep flying. You’re doing well.”
She looked over at Valentin and returned his smile, feeling for the first time since they got in the transport almost calm. “How do we get to your planet or wherever we are going?”
Valentin instructed her to set in coordinates to rendezvous with the Song. Then they were quiet for some time both lost in their own thoughts about what they were doing.
“What was that?” Ellie asked as the whole transport just shook and then again.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
“I haven’t done anything,” Ellie said defensively, looking at the controls in front of her with her hands up as if that would stop the booming sound.
“No,” Valentin agreed quickly. “We are being fired on. Don’t worry the transport’s shields will hold until we reach my ship. My guards are firing back, they just got a lucky shot in. This transport is built for battle… short ones anyway. Open a channel to the Song.”
“I don’t know how. How do I take the handcuffs off? You need to take over,” Ellie said frantically.
“No, I’m not abducting you. I’m not making this null and void. We’re so close, Elloisa. I’m not going to let any slimy Octopods ruin this.”
“Octopods!” Ellie screamed. “No, take over, they’ll take us as slaves!”
“Calm down. Look at my other transports attacking them. My guards won’t allow them to board us or blow us up. I assure you, their vessel, which is only a scout, is nothing compared to the Song which is on its way, now press the red icon on the third column fourth row and then press the large ship button.”
Ellie quickly obeyed. Soon they were on an RVM with an Alliance looking man about Valentin’s age. He had longish hair that hung around his shoulders, but he wasn’t of slave class because he wore popular galactic jewelry and black clothing, not green. Ellie didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter Valentin took over.
“Lon, we are being attacked by Octopods. No doubt it’s Sherill.”
“Right,” said Lon touching something on his console Ellie and Valentin couldn’t see.
Then to Ellie’s surprise he just ended the RVM, “Were we cut off?”
“No, he knows what to do. I can’t order him, or I break the husband stealing protocol and he’s clever enough to know that you don’t know what to say. Don’t worry, the Song will be here shortly.”
Ellie was terrified. She kept looking out her window for any sign of the Song, but she only saw his other transports making passes around the strange Octopod ship firing on each other and other transports avoiding their general area now. “Why aren’t any Imperial ships coming to help us?”
“I’m an Outcast and none of us are Imperial except for you. No one knows your real status now until Admiral Jei declares it. No Alliance ship will get involved without his word.”
Ellie was annoyed with that answer. She distracted herself by looking at the ships on the radar in front of her. “Why are they attacking us in the first place? Is it because I’m human?” Ellie had heard horror stories of what Octopods did to human women.
“Don’t worry,” Valentin assured her, “They won’t take you. And if makes you feel any better their prime objective is me. I purposely ruined some of their merchandise last year.”
“Why would you do that?”
Valentin looked at Elloisa, blue eyes meeting blue eyes, “Because they had human women and one of my captains, who is now dead, trafficked them. Illegal women that you might have met when you were transported aboard the human ship the Diablo.”
“We were their merchandise?” Ellie asked, paling at the realization that had her mother not interceded she would have been sold to Octopods. She thought of those other women she had traveled over with. All like her, hoping for a better future in the Empire. She sadly began to remember their faces and their dreams that they had all whispered to each other on their long voyage over.
“Yes, my captain was supposed to infiltrate you all into the Empire, but since your mother had caused a ruckus he had to wait and feeding and housing all the women would have cost UCs, so instead he sold those women to the Octopods,” Valentin decided that he would tell her the rest of the details another time.
“What did you do? You said you ruined their merchandise. I don’t understand,” Ellie asked in a whisper. She didn’t want to believe that she might have just agreed to marry a man who was a murderer of human women.
“Elloisa,” he looked at her seriously. “I didn’t want those women to suffer and I couldn’t save them. There was no price at which the Octopods would have returned them.”
Ellie was quiet just waiting for him to continue. Tears in her eyes from anger and her own stupidity for naively just leaving with him. Possibly throwing away her entire future in the Empire based on her hormones. She felt like a fool.
Valentin realized she was not going answer, so he continued, “I gave the order to have those women from the Diablo poisoned. They fell asleep and died painlessly.”
“Did they know the food was poisoned before they ate it?”
“No, we couldn’t take a chance that they wouldn’t eat it,” Valentin shook his head solemnly. “They had not yet experienced what it would be like with the Octopods. We were all concerned that they would be subjected to the worst possible and long drawn out deaths, so we took the choice away from them.”
“You killed them without a choice?”
“It was mercy,” Valentin defended himself. “You naïve humans came out into this side of the galaxy on the false hope of getting to the Empire for a better life. You were ignorant of the dangers that could befall any of you. Even now, you didn’t even research who I was but just came with me on instinct alone.” As soon as he said the words, he regretted them because he knew that it wasn’t her fault she had not researched him. No doubt, Alliance doctors had used their influence to put a block on her mind so that she would not seek him out in the GC database.
“Are you saying I’m stupid?” Ellie couldn’t help it, she slapped him. And then surprised by the sting on her hand, she slapped him again.
The slaps didn’t hurt, and he welcomed them for what he had done to the human women and the way he had to tell her now in this rushed way about it.
The transport shook violently again. Purple lights began flashing. Valentin looked at the controls, “We have more company. I do need to take control of the transport, or I’ll lose my guards and I’m not willing to do that today. But before we do that, cut our comms so that the Empire can’t see inside the transport.”