She quickly sealed it up, grateful for the breeze passing through the small windows airing out the chamber.
A further search revealed a grating on the ground, and above it a water spigot flush mounted to the wall about waist high. It took a few tries to figure out the alien operating mechanism, but she got it soon enough. Darla stuck her face under the stream and drank deep, savoring every drop. She didn’t know if it was fresh, but she was so parched she didn’t care, and if the new runes were doing their job, she should be able to drink slightly stagnant water with no ill effects.
Sated, she shut off the water flow. For all she knew it could be a limited supply and there would be no sense in letting it run, though she could use the several buckets lining the wall to catch it. The containers were rather grimy though, and even with the runes protecting her digestive tract, the thought of drinking out of them was anything but appealing.
With a resigned sigh she flopped down on the nearest bunk and pondered this new twist of fate.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she wondered.
It wasn’t until sunset that she would get anything resembling an answer.
The door to the structure clanged as it was unfastened from the outside and a dirty gaggle of females representing a wide variety of alien species shuffled in. Once inside, the door closed and locked behind them.
Without hesitation they all began shedding their clothes with the exhausted movements of those who had just spent a day hard at labor. Darla marveled at the collection of tattoos and runes adorning their diverse bodies. So many different races, all different builds, colors, and morphologies, but Heydar had been right, everyone in this galaxy bore the runes in one way or another.
A few of them collected the buckets and filled them up while the others gathered around. Small towels appeared from somewhere and were dipped in the water, the women washing the day’s grime from their skin as best they could.
They were all so caught up in their relief that no one noticed Darla sitting quietly. But Darla noticed them, and in particular one woman. A woman she recognized. A woman from the Raxxian ship. A human.
She was a little bit shorter than Darla, with smooth caramel skin and shoulder-length curly hair. She had been a bit heavier when they’d met, but she had become leaner during her brief stay with their captors. Hard labor had clearly taken its toll.
“Hey!” she called out. “You were on the ship. Shalia, right? I’m Darla.”
The woman looked up at her, only mildly surprised to hear another human speaking in the room. In all likelihood she was just too tired to react.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, then turned her attention back to scrubbing the dirt from her aching limbs.
“What do you mean?”
“The new one. Yeah, I remember you.”
Darla rose to her feet and crossed the room. “How did you get here? What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened? We fucking crashed on this God forsaken planet. That’s what happened.”
“You made it down in one piece, obviously.”
“Obviously. We hit hard, though. The ship busted open and there was a small fire, but the important thing was we were free. At least, we were for about three hours before these assholes came and grabbed us.”
“Were there others?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Do you know where they are? We’ve been trying to find other survivors.”
“No idea. People took off running when we hit the ground. The ones who were able to, anyway. Amazing what motivation can do to numb pain.”
“They ran but were hurt?”
“Listen, the Raxxians who were in our section of the ship when it crashed were dazed, but that wouldn’t last for long. So a bunch just ran. The guards came to quick enough and chased after them. They left one behind to watch over us, but then we jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire when this whole new set of asshole aliens came along.”
“What did the Raxxians do?”
“The one guarding us died almost immediately. We heard shots in the distance so there must have been a fight. So far as I can tell, the Raxxians were outnumbered and outgunned so they retreated. The rest of us were taken prisoner and marched here.”
“Where are the others now?”
“A couple of men were killed when they tried to overpower one of the guards. Idiots. The rest of us wound up here. They stripped us and separated us. I was put here, along with Garalla, Fetza, and Nivonk,” she said, gesturing to three of the alien women. “They were on the ship with us too.”
The three looked up from their bathing and nodded an exhausted greeting, then continued their bath.
“They wound up in the same compartment as me during the chaos right before we crashed. What happened to the others, I don’t know.” Shalia sized up Darla with a curious look. “You’re clean.”
“Relatively speaking.”
“What happened to you?”
“A native tribe took me in. They’re good people. They provided shelter and food without hesitation. They live a pretty off-grid life, though. No tech to speak of.”
Shalia nodded, sizing up their group’s newest member for a second time since her abduction by the Raxxians.
“You have ink now,” she noted. “Doesn’t even look like it’s peeling.”
“Oh, yeah. That. The pigments they use here are from some kind of special plants that are connected to the power from the sun. It’s like what the Raxxians put behind all of our ears on the ship, but much stronger.”
“Seems you have a lot of them now.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“And these natives did this to you?”
“Actually, you remember the guy in our cell? The alien?”
“You mean the big one who didn’t talk much?”
“Yeah, he’s the one who applied the pigment. Apparently, his skills are far more than just inking translation runes for the Raxxians. I’ve got runes all over now. It’s really kind of amazing how this all works.”
“How so?”
“Well, for starters, I’m stronger now. Don’t get tired as easily. My sense of sight has actually gotten better. Who knows what else it’s enhancing?”
“Obviously not your hearing or you wouldn’t have been captured.”
“Touché. That bit sucks, for sure. And these Dohrags are serious assholes. But you’ve been with them a while, right? What’ve you learned about them? It looks like they’ve got you farming.”
Shalia and the other women nodded, commiserating over their labors. “They have us working fields for them. It’s not a big operation, but they have several groups of captives separated into different work details. We never interact with the others, especially not the males.”
“They don’t want intermingling?”
“No. They want us to themselves,” Shalia replied quietly.
A sour tone fell over the group and a woman with deep green hair and velvety brown skin sobbed quietly. Shalia didn’t need to say more. It was as bad as Darla had feared, and mad as she already was, she felt a new anger building inside her even brighter.
“How many of them are there?” she finally asked as the bellyful of rage settled into a low blaze.
“Can’t say for sure, but maybe twenty or thirty on the ground at any given time.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have a small shuttle that flies down to swap out crew, drop off gear, and pick up what we’ve harvested. It comes every day. Sometimes there’s not much of a transfer going on but they do it anyway.”