Read Online Bride of Death by Viola Grace - Free Book Online Page A

it launched, but Hinlior felt the change in the environment the moment that the pulse struck.
    “Confirm clearance?”
    “They are down.”
    General Hinlior lifted his fist again and called forty of his men with a simple gesture. The ship opened, and they stomped out to retrieve the fallen bodies of the last trespassers on their world.
     
    * * * *
     
    Saloa hissed and tried to move against the metal holding her in place. She had been prepared to die tonight, but she had not been prepared to be pinned to the ground like a bug.
    The dark figures approached, and she glared up at the man standing over her via her face shield. Another figure ran some kind of scanner over the guard to her left before he turned to her. Whatever the machine told him got him excited.
    The man staring down at her jerked his head toward the man who was babbling, and whatever the man with the scanner said, it decided something. The first man hauled her up and flipped her over his shoulder. Her suit was dead, and she was running out of air.
    The man carrying her walked swiftly back the way he had come, and aside from the strange silver markings on his back and shoulders, she couldn’t see anything.
    Her vision faded to black as she gasped for air and consciousness fled.
     
    The whirring of saws and grinders brought her awake with a gasp. Her faceplate had been sliced open and that was where her oxygen was coming from.
    Four men were working on her armour and pulling it away from her limbs, one by one.
    “What are you doing?”
    Two of the men glanced at her but kept cutting. One spoke over his shoulder, and a man on the far side of the room got up and walked out.
    Her left side was coming free quickly, and a moment later, her right arm and leg were exposed to the air.
    She was wearing a thin lining suit, but it was nearly transparent. When they cut loose her helmet and pulled it free, she craned her neck to glare at them. They ignored her and finished a cut on her torso that cracked the breastplate of her suit wide open. The waist and hips came away, and they pulled her free of the shattered pieces of her battle suit.
    Saloa sat up and looked around. None of her men were nearby. She was alone and wasn’t feeling too optimistic about her chances.
    She looked down at the floor, and it was about a foot further down than it should be. Either she was shrinking or this race was pretty tall.
    She was alone in the room, so she hopped to the ground and took a few steps toward the only door she could see. She had almost reached it when it slid open.
    A man in a black battle suit came in, and she backed up. The faceplate tilted toward her, and she stiffened her spine and straightened up with aggression. His suit had silver marks on it, and she was wondering if he was the same warrior that had hauled her in.
    He spoke, and it was with a careful pronunciation. “Your species has females in combat.”
    She blinked. “Of course. Doesn’t yours?”
    “No. You will be held as a prisoner of war.”
    “Where are my men?”
    “They are being held separately. Are you intimate with them?”
    She recoiled and would have slapped him if he weren’t armoured. “Of course not.”
    “Where are your people?”
    “They left. They were ordered to leave, and they left.”
    He leaned in until he was inches away from her nose. “They left you behind.”
    “There were children born, so the ships’ holds were full. We volunteered to stay behind.”
    He stood up. “I have your quarters ready. Come with me.”
    She blinked. “That is it? No torture?”
    “Why? It was the land we wanted. Over two hundred years ago, we bio-formed this world, and we had to wait for it to settle. Your kind settled on it before we were ready to move our own colony to the surface. We had to make sure you were gone.”
    He spoke as he walked through the halls, and she was the next thing to naked, but she followed him anyway.
    The deck plates were cool, but her bare feet had been over worse. He