Read Bringing Stella Home for Free Online

right, a wrinkled, elderly woman moaned as she sat with her
back propped up against a crate. Unsightly bruises covered her
arms, and her wrinkled breasts sagged almost to her
waist.
    “ Ben?” Stella said aloud,
unfocusing her eyes to avoid seeing anything else she didn’t want
to see. “Ben, are you there?” Answer
me!
    No one did.
    He’s not
here . She took in a deep breath and tried
to calm herself. The metal floor was so cold on her skin, and the
draft in the room made her shiver. She considered standing up and
walking to the edge of the room where she could be out of the way,
but that would attract too much attention to herself—better to stay
where she was.
    They were prisoners—that
much was clear. But how had they gotten here? She vaguely
remembered the freighter—what was it called? The Sierra Vista? The hold of
that ship had been similar to the room she was now in, except
larger and better lit. She remembered fleeing there to escape the
Hameji—she distinctly remembered the nuclear explosions shining
through the windows of the shuttle. Then the gas, the screaming,
Ben holding her, and darkness. Then this.
    The Hameji, she thought to herself. They stripped off my clothes and left me here. Had they done anything else to her while she was
unconscious? She shivered, and not just from the cold.
    Carefully keeping herself covered, she
mentally checked every part of her body. Aside from the soreness,
she seemed uninjured—no broken bones, no scars or open wounds. She
did have a few bruises though, mostly around her wrists and elbows.
How she’d gotten them, she didn’t know.
    Had her captors abused her? Raped her?
Probably not—she imagined she would hurt a lot worse if they had.
Then again, she’d never had sex before—she didn’t know what it was
supposed to feel like normally, let alone when it was
forced.
    She shivered and hugged her knees a
little tighter. What were they going to do to her her? Her stomach
felt light and fluttery, and her breathing came short and quick. A
nauseous feeling rose in her stomach, and she started to
panic.
    Stop it, she told herself. Stay
calm. You’re still alive. You can make it through this. She closed her eyes and took a deep
breath.
    A door hissed open behind her; it must
have been a freight door, because it flooded the room with light.
She squinted and covered her eyes. From behind, she heard heavy
footsteps. She squeezed her knees a little closer to her
chest.
    Gloved hands seized her
roughly by the arms and lifted her off the floor. She shrieked and
tried to cover herself, but her captors’ grip on her arms was too
firm. Is this it? she wondered. Are they going to rape
me? A jolt of fear shot through her
body.
    She stumbled and tripped as they
half-dragged, half-marched her into the blinding light.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Ben woke with a terrible pain in his
side and the disconcerting realization that he was naked. When he
opened his eyes and glanced around the dimly lit cargo hold, he got
a much worse shock—Stella was no longer with him. He sat up at
once.
    “ Stella?” he yelled, his
voice reverberating off of the cold metal walls of the unusually
large hold. Several people glanced up in his direction, but Stella
wasn’t among them.
    He took a deep breath and tried to
fight his growing panic. He’d heard stories of the things the
Hameji did to their prisoners. Most were just speculation—no one
had ever escaped from the Hameji—but at Tajjur, a passing Imperial
frigate had discovered hundreds of bodies floating in deep space.
When the bodies were identified, it was discovered that no more
than two or three had been on the same ship at the time of their
capture.
    That did not bode well for him and
Stella.
    He rose clumsily to his
feet and scanned the room, ignoring the pain in his side as best he
could. The room held maybe fifty to a hundred other prisoners, all
naked like himself. The Hameji hadn’t bothered separating the men
from the women, but that was