Darrock Space Port, Eastern Territory of Vestona
The view from the top of the hill gave the travellers the perfect panoramic layout of Darrock—the only major space port on the planet of Trespitania. Larna slipped down off the back of the horse. She had been in the saddle for nearly two weeks, with the only breaks being for sleeping at nights. The castle and the life of a Queen were far behind her now. She did not regret leaving them behind—even if her backside was arguing with that statement. The view was like the one she had seen when she had first arrived at the Celtrus Five Prison Colony—the place where she first met Christen. Christen was on the second horse, not too far behind Larna. She was original from Slaronia—the planet that the Loretis had taken over. When Larna destroyed the Farming Colony, Christen was one of the survivors who were transported to the prison colony by the Loretis. Christen was a tall blonde haired woman, with a fantastic figure, that would have been envied by some of the leading models in the present times. She was dressed in an ankle length dress, that covered most of her body, not displaying it to it’s full potential. Christen felt comfier in this outfit, as she had become very conscious about her body after being assaulted by both the Commandant of the prison colony and by the Duke of the Northern Territory. She wore a shall around her shoulders to top off the outfit. It was the outfit of a lady from the Victorian times almost. Larna on the other hand was dressed completely different. She had no concerns over people’s perceptions of her body. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring out over the view below her. Christen stared at her back for several seconds, before slowly walking over to join her friend.
Larna was twenty-one Erayears, one hundred and forty seven Chronoyears old. She stands five feet eleven inches tall and weighs nine stone. She had hazel eyes and auburn coloured hair, which had a white streak running down the middle. Her hair was tied into a tight ponytail, leaving just a tiny fringe down her forehead. With measurements of 36B-24-35 she had the body of a top model of the nineties. Combine her body with the fact that she closely resembles the actress Hudson Leick, and she can be classed as one of the most attractive women on the planet. The make-up that she wears just exaggerates those features to make them even sexier still. Her eyes are surrounded by a dark eye-shade and her lips are a bright red with a black surround. On the right side of her neck she had a tattoo of the Chinese for Eternal Devotion, in memory and honour of her late husband. On her right bicep she had got a tattoo of a Fox. On her left buttock was a tattoo of a black rose wrapped around a dagger, signifying her assassin background. And this assassin background was fully justified. Not only was she stunningly sexy, but she was extremely deadly too. As her martial arts background would give testimony too. Her outfit displays her slim, athletic, fit body to perfection. She was wearing the outfit she had adopted since being on Trespitania. On the top was a leather shirt. A matching leather skirt was on the bottom. It was short, just long enough to cover her buttocks, but hugs her body tightly. It shows off all of her athletic legs. On her feet were a pair of heavy-duty soldiers boots. They were batted and rough looking, just the way Larna liked them. They had a tight fit, all the way up to the middle of her shins. The outfit was topped off by a number of weapons. Two straps went across her chest. These had a number of throwing daggers slipped down into them. Around her waist was a belt. Attached to the belt were two pouches. The one of the right side had bottles of poison inside. The one of her left had throwing stars. Around her uppers arms were tiny straps with small darts in them. Around her neck was the mouth pipe used to launch those mouth darts. To finish her mercenary warrior look was the sword hanging down the right side of her body.
Christen stood beside Larna. She looked out over the space port, then around at Larna.
“Thomas was telling me a little about this place,” she started, referring back to the elderly librarian from the castle they had left behind them. “It is a rough place,” Christen continued. “Are you sure that it is the right place to go looking like some sort of warrior woman?” she finally asked, getting to the point of her long query.
“I told you before. You don’t have to come with me. Just go back to the castle and be the Queen,” Larna stated firmly.
“I do have to come with you. I owe you my life and until that debt has been repaid, you’re stuck with me,” Christen stated firmly, before walking off down the hill path, leading into the outer-rim of Darrock, leading her horse along behind her.
The contrast in technology was immense. Horses to space rockets as the main mode of transport had several hundred years history between them on Earth. Yet here they were, riding into a town like a couple of Old West outlaws going into a small outpost. Larna swung herself back up on to the back of the horse. She kicked it in the side, moving it down the path.
Darrock Space Port was based around on single launch bay. The trading posts branched off from that one location. It was not goods that Larna was interested in though. They needed to find a pilot that would either be brave enough or foolish enough, to take them into Loretis territory. Having heard what Thomas had to say about this place, Larna knew that finding a pilot was not going to be a problem. Pay any of these rogues enough money and they would take you right to the end of existence. But, they were rogues. They could not be trusted. They would stab their mothers in the back if it gave them an advantage favourable to them personally. Larna could handle them. She was not feared of that. She had dealt with many rogues in her time before. Christen stopped pulling the horse forward. There was no need for her to still have the animal now. There would be no turning back from this place. When Larna dropped down off her mount, the horses ran off, spooked by something in the shadows. Christen pulled the shall tightly around her body, hoping that it would shield her against the rising fear that was building up inside of her. Larna loved the feel of this place. It was like back home to her. The dark streets. The tension that, someone or something, would jump out and attack in a flash. The feel of criminal intentions running through the body. Larna had not felt this thrill since she had been caught. Her hand still hovered next to the hilt of the sword, just in case trouble decided to show its ugly head. Christen looked around at all of the dull grey buildings. It was still quite early in the morning. Either this place was slow to get going in the mornings, or it always looked this dull and unfriendly. For trading post, it did seem rather quiet. Christen felt a chill run down her spine. This place gave her a really bad feeling.
“Do we have to stand out in the middle of the street?” she stammered nervously.
Larna shrugged her shoulders. She did not know exactly what they should do at the moment. She was new to this place just as much as Christen was. Christen stared at her friend closely. She could tell by the way that Larna was looking around, taking everything in with that quick glancing technique of hers, that her friend had not got a plan.
“Have you got idea where we go from here?” Christen asked, fearing that she already knew the answer to that one before Larna even replied.
“We’ve got to find a bar I guess,” Larna replied with a broad smile on her face.
The smile trying to cover up the fact that she did not have any idea where they should go. Christen sighed. Great—she thought to herself—just perfect—she sighed. It was typical Larna to go about making plans up as she went along. Larna was more interested in checking out the scenery for the moment. Back on Earth she would have been able to use the Thala surgically attached to her left wrist. The Time, History and Location Analyser accesses the Factual Historical Information (FHI) Implants that have been surgically attached to the inside of her skull. Those Implants gave Larna every single piece of data concerning people, places and events going right back to 1980. They also store STC (Space Time Co-Ordinate) numbers in them. STC numbers are made up from the longitude and latitude numbers of the place she wants to go to, along with the year, month, day, hour, minute and second she wishes to arrive in. Thought processes operate the Thala and the responses are given to Larna in her subconscious thanks to a modified FHI Implant. The only sign that Larna was using her aid, was when it appeared on her wrist. It appeared when Larna activates the operations function. When it was activated the Thala lost the power to keep the invisibility shield in operation, as it is at all other times, so no one can see the technology on her arm. Unfortunately, in this alternative Dimensional Reality, the Thala did not work. She could not transport from place to place and she could not get maps of the areas, as the Thala could not analyse the current area.
While Larna was looking around, the street filled up with a number of large men, all carrying a different variety of weapons. Most just had the plain old simple baseball bat. Others had laser guns. Larna felt slightly out of place. She was the only one relying on the old form of cut and thrust style of attack—the sword. Christen moved closer to Larna. She was scared by the sudden presence of this gang around her. The gang did not just consist of men though. Behind them, hiding in the shadows, there were a number of young ladies present too. These guys were mostly dressed the same. They wore old, dirty, military uniform, that had seen better days. Plain beige in colour originally, they were now a mud colour. One man moved forward, to present himself to Larna and Christen. The others forming a circle around them while their leader advanced. Larna got a distinct dejavu feeling as these men formed the circle. It had not just been once before that she had found herself in a similar situation to this. The large man, built like a world class bodybuilder, folded his arms across his broad chest, pumping his arm muscles up to either show them off, or to try to scare the woman in front of him. It did not work with Larna. He had a smug grin on his face, thinking that he was in charge of the situation.
“Hello ladies, take a walk down the wrong street did we?” he asked, causing the rest of his gang to laugh heartily.
Christen cowered behind Larna even more now. She had lost all of her ability to stand up for herself—which was not a surprise after what she had been put through recently. In the hands of the Duke of the North Territory, Christen had been brutally tortured, put through a procedure which was designed to break her mental spirit. She had then been locked into a set of chains and kept as a sex slave in the Duke’s bed chambers, where she was raped and mental abused for weeks. Larna knew that when she rescued Christen, Christen would not be the same woman that she had been before her kidnapping, but she did not realise that she would have lost this much guts. Larna turned to face the large man addressing them both.
“We didn’t walk down the wrong street, because we don’t know which is the right one,” she snapped back sharply, bringing a surprised look on to the large man’s face.
“It would seem we have a warrior woman here,” he exclaimed, moving his eyes up and down the skimpy outfit that Larna was wearing. “If that’s the case then she has definitely walked down the wrong street,” he finished while drawing out the baseball bat from behind his back.
“You know,” Larna said, turning to glance down in the direction that the large man was looking. “That’s the second fucking mistake you’ve made in the space of a couple of minutes,” she explained, confusing everyone in the group. Larna went on to elaborate even further. “The first was calling me a lady—” she paused while turning her head back to fiercely glare at the big man, “—because there is no way I fit into that category,” Larna snapped back like the true rattlesnake that she is.
“Really,” the big man said with a sigh. “And what was the second mistake?” he asked curiously, now more intrigued by this young woman instead of threatened.
“You underestimated me!” Larna barked back.
The big man was sent crashing down to the ground on his backside with a hand movement that was quicker than any of the others could see. Larna had punched him in the nose with the palm of her right hand, in a rising punch movement. The force of the blow had been so great, that the mans nose had been sent right up into his skull. Larna stepped back, clicking into her martial arts stance as she did. Her stance slipped into place as normally as you would stand. She stood right side on. Her right hand flexed at waist height in front of her. Her left hand was doing the same next to her face. Her knees were bent and she was up on her toes, ready to make either a defensive or offensive move, whatever was required. Normally, in martial arts training it was best to look composed, and not be in a stance, however, Larna favoured the other approach. As a woman, it would make her male opponents laugh to see her, thinking that she was pretending to know what she was doing. That gave her the immediate advantage. The big man was still sitting up on the ground. Blood was pouring down his face. The rest of his gang was laughing at the sight. When the big man flopped down flat on his back, they stopped. One bent down on his knee beside his leader. He checked his leader over swiftly.
“I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed as he rose back to his feet. “The bitch has smacked his nose right up into his skull!” he finished in disbelief.
Larna’s eyes flashed around at every single member of the gang, wanting to get a clear picture of all of their reactions to that news. It meant she could read which ones were going to attack. And, to prepare for them.
Three men came at her at once. They were determined to make her pay for killing their leader. Larna sighed. People could be so stupid sometimes. She despatched the first with a swinging right-footed rising kick, going from left to right, across his face. The momentum of her kick spun her around to face the second man. She simply ducked under his attempt to hit her with his swinging baseball bat. The swinging bat instead hit the third man coming to attack her. It hit him across the chest. Larna now bolted back to an upright position, wrapped her arm around the second mans neck, bending him backwards, so that his body was bent forward in front of her. With a vicious upward movement, she snapped his neck. When his body went limp, she let him drop down to the ground at her feet. The third man was still left on his feet. She moved across to him now. With both hands she grabbed the front of his uniform. She went down into a backward roll. Planting her right foot into his chest, she used the roll to flip the man right over the top of her. He crashed down hard on to the ground. Larna immediately rolled over on top of his chest, resulting in her almost sitting right on top of him. She smacked her left-fist down into his face. His head bounced up off the ground, before rolling to the left. Larna rose to her feet now. On the way up she withdrew the sword from her right side. She slashed through the air, making the blade send out chilling whooshing sounds. She turned right around, bringing the sword up under the man that had checked on his leader. The tip of the sword was positioned right under his chin, just touching his throat.
“You make one move mate and this blade will slice and dice you into small pieces!” Larna growled the warning through gritted teeth.
“What do you want?” the man trembled, seeing no option, but to go along with this crazy woman before she killed what was left of the gang.
“If you don’t want me to do the same to the rest of your men, and believe me, it would give me great pleasure in making large men like yourselves come crashing down, you’ll tell me exactly what I want to know,” Larna expressed, leaving the blade of the sword poised under the mans chin.
“What do you want to know?” the man enquired like an obedient servant.
“Where can we find a pilot?” Larna asked instantly, getting right to the issue.
“That depends on how much you want to pay and where you are wanting to go,” the man replied, answering her question with a couple of his own.
“That’s for me to know and you to forget about,” Larna snapped angrily. “Just tell me where they normally go to relax. I can select an appropriate person from there,” she finished with confidence.
“They hang out at the Rough Diamond. It’s a saloon at the far end of the port, not far away from the docking bays. That’s normally the place to head if you want to find a job,” the man explained, acting like a maps-to-the-stars seller.
“Now that wasn’t that hard was it,” Larna expressed, withdrawing the sword slowly.
The gang took that as their cue to scatter in all directions, dragging their wounded comrades with them with no care for the pain that they were going through. Larna waited until they had all disappeared before turning to face Christen. Christen had a—thank you for telling—expression on her face. She could not stand the way that Larna planned these things at the last moment and did not think to inform anyone else what was going to happen. But, she could stay angry with her for long. Those tactics had saved her from the Duke’s crucifix. The two women walked off down the street, towards the place called the Rough Diamond. Larna just hoped that the pilots that they found inside were not as bad as the name of the place suggested that they would be.
Two men stood in the shoulders of one of the alleyways coming off this street. They were just minding their business, until Larna and Christen walked passed. Then the taller of the two men saw them. He had long blonde hair, tied into a pony tail. But, no one would have called him ladylike. He was built like a tank. That was also his name. Perhaps because no one else could think of anything else to call him. Unfortunately for the guy, he did not have the greatest intelligence level in the galaxy. In fact, he had quite the opposite. That was why he had a partner. Instantly, as if in a trance, Tank moved to the end of the alley, leaving his partner wondering what on earth was happening. The other man was a lot smaller, with a much slimmer, less muscular build. He was the brains of the operation and planned everything out for Tank to carry out. He had short cropped brown hair and even wore circular spectacles. His small size though, did not give any indication as to how ruthless this man could truly be. For he had a wicked street as wide as the Mississippi River. The smaller man had a name that sounded more like it came from Earth than from the other side of the galaxy in a different Dimensional Reality. Neel Elliott was his name. Neel stared at Tank’s back—it was very hard to miss. One minute they were discussing where they went from here, the next Tank was walking away from him in a trance. What had got into the man—Neel pondered to himself. Tank lent against the right hand wall of the alley, staring at Christen and Larna’s backs as they walked away from him. Neel moved up to the his partner, then peered around the side of the building at the two women walking away from them.
“We haven’t got time for your fancy with the ladies,” he stated firmly.
“But they’re not just any ladies,” Tank replied curiously.
“What have you heard about them that I haven’t?” Neel asked, furious to think that his dumber partner would have the jump on some useful piece of information.
“You know about them too. It’s just that you weren’t paying attention to the street,” Tank explained swiftly, trying to calm his partner down slightly.
“What do you mean?” Neel asked, peering around the side of the building again to get another look.
“We’ve hard the rumours about the two women being held by the Duke in the Northern Territory,” Tank started briefly. “Those two fit the description give to us,” he finished bluntly.
“Tank, listen pal, you’re not the smartest cookie in the jar. There is no way that that woman in the leather was responsible for the actions that we’ve heard about. Look at her,” Neel stated, trying to talk his partner out of thinking such a stupid thing. “She is far too sexy and stunning to be capable of throwing a grown man, like the Duke, off the top of a building into a load of burning gun powder barrels. Please,” he finished with a sigh.
“But what if it is them?” Tank asked curious to find out what his partner would do then. “I mean, we did hear tell that they were heading in this direction. And we haven’t seen anyone like them around here before,” he stated filling in all of the facts.
Neel had to agree with that. They had not been around Darrock before. If they had, they would surely have come to meet before now. Neel would have made sure that he had met two lovelies like that personally. He glanced around the side of the building once again.
“I guess we follow them and find out if they are the ones responsible,” he said, just wanting to make sure that they were not giving up on the chance to make a fortune.
“And if they are?” Tank asked, still trying to find out what they were planning on doing with them. “I mean, there is that large bounty on their heads being offered by the Loretis,” Tank finished, pointing out a fact that Neel was quite fully aware of.
“Tank, leave the thinking to me would you. There is no way that we would trick them, capture them, then hand them over to the Loretis for a miserly two hundred space credits,” Neel stated firmly, not believing that Tank would even think of such a thing. “I know of a man who would give us at least ten times that value to have such a large bargaining chip in his possession. When we get them under our full control, we’ll take a little trip to see the Trader,” he finished, a broad smile coming on to his face as he thought of what the Trader would probably do with the two harlots.
Tank did not get the joke, but smiled anyway, just like the dumb oaf that he was. Without wasting another second, the two men swung out from the alleyway to start tracking after Christen and Larna.
While trying to find a ship to transport herself back to Earth, Larna falls prey to a trader, who sells women to a mining planet that must be mined by women. She finds herself held a slave in the underground tunnels, forced to work for food and for survival.