Read Bringing Stella Home for Free Online Page B

stumbled through the freight
airlock and into a spacious, well-lit room that reeked of body odor
and cheap chemical cleansers. The soldiers forced her into a
roughly formed row of prisoners, facing the opposite wall. As soon
as they let go of her, she wrapped her arms around her chest and
looked around.
    She stood near the center
of a giant hangar. The drab, yellowed walls were flat and
windowless, the hardened ceramic floor grainy under her bare feet.
The opposite wall was actually an enormous bay door, large enough
to swallow the Llewellyn. An unloading claw dangled from the ceiling like a
monstrous hand waiting to pluck her off her feet.
    So I’m on some kind of
deep-space freighter, she thought to
herself. Judging from the design, it had to be Belarian. She’d
spent a lot of time around Belarian ships in her apprenticeship,
and knew the typical layout fairly well.
    That was encouraging—it might help her
escape.
    About a hundred other prisoners stood
around her, all naked, all facing the same way. Hameji soldiers in
full armor patrolled the rows, their rifles held at the ready. Even
with so many prisoners, however, the hangar bay was far from full.
She stood behind a flabby, middle-aged woman who kept glancing
nervously over her shoulder. The others around her stared at the
ground or straight ahead.
    Ben, Stella thought to herself. Where is
Ben? She wanted to shout out his name, but
she didn’t dare. Except for the heavy, booted footsteps of the
soldiers and a few muffled sobs and whimpers, the room was deathly
quiet.
    With her arms wrapped tightly around
her chest and her knees pressed firmly together, she glanced from
face to face, searching for Ben. Heads started turning her way,
making her feel horribly self-conscious of her nakedness, but she
did her best to ignore it. Whatever happened, she had to find her
brother.
    In the row ahead of her,
two places to the left, a little girl sobbed in fear, her pale face
streaked with tears. Urine trickled down her legs and formed a
puddle around her feet. Poor girl, Stella thought to herself. She probably feels all alone and embarrassed because she peed
her—oh no!
    A pair of Hameji soldiers dragged the
old woman Stella had seen in the cargo bay to the front of the
room. Her body was stiff and unmoving, eyes closed and mouth open.
The soldiers dropped her in the corner; her head made a horrible
thudding noise against the hardened floor.
    Oh my God, Stella thought to herself. She’s dead. Her knees begin to shake,
and she fought the urge to throw up.
    Off to her left, a door hissed open,
and a short, silver-haired man stepped through. He was swarthy and
olive-skinned, with a sharp goatee and short, trimmed hair. Unlike
the soldiers, he wore a loose fitting robe under a lightly
decorated gray jerkin that extended down to his knees. He carried a
gun at his side, and something long and curved next to it in a
gold-embroidered holster. It took Stella a while to realize that
the holster was actually a scabbard for a sword.
    The soldiers at the door snapped to
attention when they saw him. He nodded curtly to them as he passed,
followed by half a dozen younger men, all similarly dressed. From
the authoritative way he carried himself, Stella guessed he was an
officer—perhaps even a captain.
    After briefly inspecting his troops,
the captain started at the front and moved down the line of
prisoners, examining them one by one. The younger officers
snickered and smirked as they followed him, touching some of the
female prisoners in ways that made Stella squirm. As they moved
along, a pair of fully armored soldiers escorted each prisoner to
the front of the hangar, clustering them in two groups at the front
of the room.
    They’re sorting us, Stella realized. As the captain worked his way
down the first row and into the second, she tried to imagine why.
The group to the left was mostly made up of women, children, and
old men, while the group on the right was almost exclusively