Demon’s Dream (High Demon #6)(42)
Author: Connie Suttle

"Reah, at great risk to herself, suffered a personal attack and other indignities at the request of the ASD, in order to obtain valuable information for the Director and Vice-Director of the Alliance Security Detail. After that, when she found they intended to bring their own controlling brains online in order to dominate both Alliances, she destroyed them, while saving nearly seventy women from being sold into slavery. You see, that’s what was happening. These criminals intended to enslave all of you. Each and every one. Oh, they started by selling pretty girls they targeted at Stellar Winds, but it was scheduled to go beyond that. The blackout was their doing, my friends. Reah destroyed their comp-brain before it could go farther than that. And those women? They owe Reah their lives. Don’t take my word for it, however. Mr. Marolla has interviewed some of them. I’ll let them explain what they saw during that terrible time." Ildevar smiled and the location changed.

Four women sat in comfortable chairs inside Hild Marolla’s studio. The "live" caption showed at the bottom of the screen. They were being recorded right then.

"I know how difficult this is for all of you," Mr. Marolla said. "But if you could, please tell me, in your own words, what happened."

"I was kidnapped from work," one of the girls said. "I’d gone to Stellar Winds about six moon-turns ago. I had no idea they’d marked me." The others were nodding; their experiences had been similar.

"I was kidnapped from my apartment," another said. "From a clothing store," the third said. The fourth and last one had been taken after visiting her parents.

"They transported us back to Stellar Winds, but we were taken in cages to a huge underground cave there," the first one said. "We were fed once a day and allowed to visit a restroom twice a day, in shifts. We were kept there for days, allowed a bath every fourth day and taunted and ridiculed."

"How large were your cages?" the journalist asked. I nodded when they said six blocks by six blocks. They weren’t large and it was difficult to stretch out in one. "So, these were uncomfortable, to put it kindly," Hild Marolla said.

"There was nothing kind about the cages or our captors," one of the girls huffed. "We thought that was bad, but then the day of the full moon came. We four, along with several others, watched while they brought the white-haired woman in. We recognized her right away when they ran those awful videos. They were making fun of her, as if she didn’t suffer, too. Her cage was loaded onto the ship, just as ours were. We weren’t frightened at that moment, but we should have been. We thought they were just moving us. We were wrong. The ship landed us on the small moon nearby, inside a landing shield. There our cages were unlocked, men came in who turned into terrible monsters and we were assaulted and raped. Many of us required medical assistance afterward. The white-haired woman became very sick. I saw two doctors come to visit her cage afterward." The girl wiped tears away.

"And then what happened?" Hild Marolla asked gently. Another girl took up the story. "Two eight-days later, we were loaded into another ship. We were all frightened, this time. We remembered what had happened before. This trip took longer. Several clicks. I know now we landed on Cloudsong."

"One of the worlds where the core was drained by Zellar," Hild Marolla nodded. "What happened after that?"

"We found out that buyers had come. For us," another girl wiped her eyes. "They came and rattled our cages. Touched us in intimate places. We were all afraid. I could see, too, the huge, round things built in a corner of the castle. It looked like old photographs I’ve seen of castles, anyway. Several men were fussing over the round things, and several men and one woman, who seemed to be in charge, were talking excitedly about them. I was too far away to hear everything they said, but I did hear them say that it was coming online tonight."

"This was the night of the blackout," Hild Marolla explained for the audience’s benefit. "Fortunately, we have obtained vid images of part of what happened in that throne room of Cloudsong’s deserted castle. I’ll show the images, and if you’ll explain what we’re seeing?" Hild asked. The girls nodded. A vid-screen lit up on an adjacent wall and I gasped. How had they gotten these images? How? I didn’t know they existed. Teeg gripped my other hand, now. I was going to have to watch this, as painful as it might be.

The auction was about to start but prior to that, Dantel Schuul had made a big speech before flipping the switch to the brains, effectively taking over everything in both Alliances. And that’s when I made my move. My decision had been made and I was committed.

The camera angle switched to one overhead, as I turned to my smaller Thifilatha, escaped my cage and began soaking up the sun’s rays through a hole in the palace roof. You could see the transformation clearly as I made it. As soon as I’d gathered enough energy, making my scales glow brightly, I aimed my hands at the brains, exploding them one by one. Chaos then broke out inside the castle’s great hall, and I was fired upon. I refused to run or remove myself from the doorway—I’d been protecting the girls inside.

Dantel and Nedrizif were now commanding an army of Greater Demons, who moved to attack. I was only thing that stood between sixty-seven helpless women and slavery or death. That’s when I changed to my larger Thifilatha. I could imagine the gasps around the Alliances as they watched a small, white-haired woman first become a six-foot Thifilatha, and then when things became desperate, become a fifteen-foot Thifilatha, golden and glowing.

I was pulling energy from Cloudsong’s daystar as quickly as I could at that point, while Greater Demons fired all kinds of weapons at me. The more solar energy I pulled inside, the less effect any of them had. And then Dantel Schuul and Nedrizif were screaming at them to attack. All the Greater Demons turned into those foul creatures and rushed at me. They winked out of existence when they hit my scales.

At that moment, I sent energy toward the last of the brains, blowing it to bits. Everyone was knocked to the ground by the explosion. I went to my knees, it was so powerful. Dantel Schuul screamed at the slaves there, ordering them to attack after the last of his Greater Demons had died. The images died too, when everything in the Alliances went into massive blackouts.

"The ASD arrived shortly after that, but if it hadn’t been for that woman, we’d have been killed or sold. I don’t think we would have lived long," the first girl said as the others sobbed. "So many died that night. If that poor woman needs therapy now, I can certainly understand. We’ve been in treatment since the ASD brought us home."