PROLOGUE◄CHAPTER ONE►CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER ARTWORK

Talitha felt the mud under her footpaws squelch between her digits; a feeling that was more or less the only thing she’d ever known during her twenty years of life, other than brutal Zaket suns in the skies above and the sting of the whip on her back. Slaves such as herself in the mud pits of Lathga province—the backwater of Siva—weren’t even allowed the dignity of proper clothing besides rags or loincloths to cover themselves or their lash marks. Most other slaves on Siva were at least permitted that much. In Lathga’s mud pits, they were truly the lowest of the Sivathi slave class. Even the Zuthari bulls—the robust, silicate armored, water retentive species of Siva that were used to haul heavy loads around the pits and grind the grain for the bread that fed the slaves—were treated with more dignity. They were fed better, and they certainly felt the lash of the whip far less frequently.

It was there in Lathga that simple bricks of mud, sand, water, and straw were made to construct ramshackle dwellings in the slums of large cities for the slave class and the most impoverished of the common folk. It was a bygone and dated method of material production that had long outlived its practicality in the age of spaceflight, but the fact that the process was still utilized demonstrated just how little regard the Crown of Siva held its slave population in with its unwillingness to invest in the most basic building resources.

Aside from her name, Talitha’s collar was the only thing she had that she could even come close to calling her own. It had never been removed from her neck except to be resized as she grew into adulthood, and it always felt like a burden. The code etched into the steel, T-ZN-3033133, signified her ID in the planetary slave registry. It was represented by her name initial, followed by those of her owner—the cruel, vindictive Sivathi businessman known as Zeshom Noor—and lastly with the string of random numerical code.

The girl’s golden fur was unlike everybody else in the slave class, and something she was unable to explain concretely. To be sure, her tan undercoat and the constant dirt and mud that was smeared over her body from her labor didn’t make her look entirely of noble stock, but that such a trait was apparent in her at all was an anomaly. Tan, brown, black, gray, or some mixture of those earthen tones—those were the fur colors of the Sivathi slaves and commoners. Many of the middle class also held those shades, but the additional ochre, red, white, or marble-texture blends of these and the aforementioned shades signified this or upper classes.

Then lastly, of course, there were the noble gold-furred rulers of Siva. Though their blood occasionally mixed into almost blonde or sunset tones with intermingling with the upper class, more often than not their fur shimmered pure like shining gold ore itself. They were the ones who had brought the warring Sivathi tribes from eons ago, making it dignified, pure, and into one unified, planetary banner that had withstood the test of time. From the days of wandering nomads in the desert, to the first rocket-powered spaceflights of the Sivathi race, and all the way into the exploration of the Zaket system and nearby systems, they had always ruled. And in all that time, the rigid social hierarchy of master and slave, noble and commoner, had always existed.

That being the case, it again was a shock for any outsider to see Talitha’s fur and wonder why anybody with golden fur would have fallen so far from grace and cast into the mud pits. Perhaps the better question was why she was even in existence at all? She’d heard the ‘official’ explanation from Zeshom Noor countless times before; he’d often remind her of it whenever she seemed that she might start asking questions. The golden fur that graced her body was due to a genetic mutation her mother had received aboard a slave transport ship while she was newly pregnant with Talitha, when an unexpected x-ray flare from Zaket B had blasted the vessel as it was on approach to Siva while still in the interplanetary medium of the system. It had been minor enough that it hadn’t slain any of the slaves and crew outright, but many, including Talitha’s mother, developed varying degrees of radiation sickness, practically ruining the whole stock that Zeshom Noor had set out to purchase. However, upon examination by physicians once the vessel had landed, it was seen that Talitha was growing more or less unaffected by the illness of her mother, aside from her fur mutation. Her development only hinged on the health and wellbeing of her matriarch. Thus, though her mother was treated long enough to healthily give birth to Talitha, it was obvious that beyond that, she was ruined from the genetic damage. Though Zeshom Noor swore up and down that he’d done everything he could to save her with the wonders of Sivathi science, she perished only weeks after Talitha had been born.

“I’ve got the documentation on the whole incident,” Talitha was so used to hearing from Zeshom Noor. Not that she could read it. Like most, if not all slaves, she was illiterate, and took her master’s words at face value. What other explanation could there be when it was impossible for slave and noble blood to mix?

And what documentation did he really need? The incident had really occurred, and it made for the perfect cover story about his most prized slave. He still owned several of the offspring that had been born to other parents that died from radiation induced complications a few years after their birth. The parents that would have known the truth about Talitha were long gone, and their children had been too young to learn that the golden furred Sivathi had no connection to the damaging burst of energy that had doomed their fathers and mothers.

She knew that she was different for all the wrong reasons. Her golden fur was not attributed to noble blood, and was just the result of a freak accident. By default that had relegated her here to the endless monotony that was mixing the mud with her bare footpaws. Even so, her heart screamed for something more. When the blazing binary suns set and the coldness of the desert night set in, Talitha would gaze up at the skies from her spot in the chain line she was linked to with the other slaves in their holding pens, watching as the destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and carriers of the Royal Navy flew in the heavens. They were like grand stars in their own right, as the convoys of military ships escorted the mining fleets to and from the iron-silicate moon of Gefo. The far smaller asteroid moon—known as Magofa and a mere dozen miles wide—was devoid of any extractable resources like its larger sibling, and darted across the sky several times a day, visible to the naked eye like the satellites of the early Sivathi space age.

Even though the Crown of Siva was the driving force behind her oppression, she wanted to be among the soldiers, colonists, and explorers, traversing the Zaket system or adventuring on the moons of the gas giants. Then again, there was much friction emerging regarding the continued practice of slavery on the colonies of the Zaket system itself, and on the newly established ones in other systems that were still just starting to be explored. Rumors of nobles and other Sivathi that were sympathetic to the plight of the slave class had begun to make their way around the planet. Would this ancient tradition of bondage over the enslaved accompany the newly made colonies in their founding? Right now, it certainly seemed so, as roving warbands of liberated slaves and sympathetic freedom fighters clashed with the forces of the Crown all over the planet.

With such promises of rebellion, one would have thought that Talitha was chomping at the bit to be free and join the fight. That wasn’t the case in Lathga. It was the most desolate province on Siva for a reason, where slaves were sent to have their hopes utterly crushed. It was so far removed from the rest of Sivathi civilization that there was little chance of the brewing rebellion ever making it there.

Talitha’s pace of her rhythmic drudging in the mud faltered ever so slightly as she caught the image of Zeshom Noor out of the corner of her eye, his marbled red fur catching her attention as he walked on the higher, cleaner ground of the mud pits. He often came out to visit the site and ensure things were in working order, and that there were no beginnings of insurrection. That was what Talitha surmised, at least, as the made his way from pit to pit and line to line of slaves transporting the heavy sandbags and buckets of water.

“Nobody said you could idle from your work!” the harsh voice of Ratag—one of Zeshom Noor’s overseers—shouted out. He’d taken notice of Talitha marginally slowing her pace to look at her owner. Though the bloodied zigzagged marks on her back meant that she was all too familiar with how the whip felt, and even then it still caught her off guard, causing her to fall forward and knee-deep into the mud. She knew better than to linger in a prone state, and was quick to push herself up from the mire and back onto her footpaws to avoid another strike from the taskmaster.

Zeshom Noor had caught sight of Talitha’s insubordination. That was part of the reason why he came out to the pits as frequently as he did. He was always checking to make sure his most prized possession was remaining submissive. He hated it when she made a scene on her own accord; he didn’t mind when he himself brought it upon her. He grumbled to himself as he watched her. Twenty years prior, he’d known what he was getting into. The risks far outweighed the benefits that the Crown of Siva would grant him for taking the High King’s illegitimate daughter as a slave and suppressing her noble heritage by having her forgotten in the mud pits in the most remote region of Siva. If the secret ever got out, he knew that the Crown of Siva would seize his land, or worse, put him to death at the Pillars of Purification, just like Talitha’s real mother.

Grimacing, he turned his gaze back towards the mud pits, looking down in the direction of his most valuable asset. Ratag had whipped her into submission, and at present she was picking herself up from the mud. He made his way over to the downtrodden Sivathi girl, finding himself at liberty to toy with her. Zeshom Noor got some sort of sick thrill out of teasing Talitha about the semblances of her noble blood, and he knew he could get away with it by feeding her the lie he’d concocted. He’d even falsified all the documentation about it in case the need to use it ever arose. Sivathi tradition was so engrained in class system that kept the enslaved in submission that he knew Talitha would never question his jeers. At least, that was what he thought. She’d bought into his lie about her mother dying from the solar flare that had ruined his entire purchase aboard that transport; how couldn’t she? He’d pounded it into her head ever since she was little.

“Causing trouble again, ‘Princess’?” Zeshom Noor said as he gazed down at Talitha pathetically churning the mud with her footpaws, stepping up and down. He grabbed her roughly by her collar, pulling her towards him until her face was only inches away from his. “Slacking off in your work after I give you the luxury of a life to live? You should be grateful that I treated your mother at all for her radiation sickness to give birth to you. Otherwise, in her frail state, you might have died along with her. Do you see any of the other children from parents who suffered a similar fate to your mother acting up? They suffered worse fates than you; all you managed to sustain was a little abnormality in your fur. But I don’t see Jophia causing any problems in spite of her leg, do I?”

Talitha drooped her ears as she shamefully looked away, her tail sagging down into the mud. She gazed around at the other slaves, namely towards Jophia, the one Zeshom Noor was referring to. She was one of several others that had been born of parents that had succumbed to radiation induced illnesses and cancers. A few years younger than Talitha, she’d been born with her own deformity, a case of anisomelia that caused one leg several inches shorter than the other, inducing a wretched limp. She often found it difficult to keep up as she hauled the heavy sandbags and water, but somehow she managed to persevere.

Talitha wanted to retort, but she’d learned long ago that doing so would only incur more pain. Mustering all the courage she could, she finally faced Zeshom Noor’s gaze, looking up at him as he forcefully gripped her collar. “I am grateful for your mercy, Master,” she said submissively. She hated herself for the weakness in her tone, for not standing up to him. Something deep inside told her that she should, but she was physically incapable of doing so out of fear of what would happen.

“You only wish you were above your station with your golden fur,” Zeshom Noor said mockingly, throwing her back into the mud as he flung her down in a release of his grip upon her collar. “Consider yourself lucky to have a master as generous as me. I could have had you trampled by the Zuthari long ago, like I’ve done to others who fall short or outlive their usefulness. So get back to work! Next time you’re caught slowing your pace or getting out of line, I’ll have Ratag put you on the millstone in place of the Zuthari for a week. Would you like that?”

Talitha landed in the mud with a wet splat, the force of Zeshom Noor’s throw causing her to sink back to her knees again. It felt like another layer of oppression thrust on top of the lashings, the humiliations, and verbal abuses. Picking herself up as fast as she could so as not to draw his ire again, she resumed her work as quickly as possible. “No, Master,” she said, hanging her head low in defeat as she went about her labor. She knew that the threat carried weight. The punishment was reserved for only the most rebellious and disobedient, and it involved being bound to a large stone wheel and forced to walk endlessly in circles, grinding grain for the bread that sustained the slaves. Many who were sentenced to the millstone didn’t survive the ordeal, succumbing to exhaustion, dehydration, or simply collapsing under the weight of the labor. The next worst thing was being thrown into the Zuthari pen to be trampled to death, which at times almost seemed preferable.

“Good, I didn’t think so. I don’t need any of my slaves causing problems when the daughter of Lathga Province’s duke is scheduled to come here tomorrow and purchase some of my workers for construction of the palace her father is building for her,” Zeshom Noor said as he turned around on his heel, preparing to head back to his estate several kilometers off site. He paused momentarily in his lecturing, turning away from Talitha and making sure all the slaves nearby heard him. “So I expect only the best behavior out of all of you!”

*
Long after Zeshom Noor’s threat, night had fallen, casting the once sweltering desert into a coldness that blanketed the sands of the desolate Lathga Province with the blackness of the evening. Talitha sat sandwiched between two other slaves, their collars linked together by chain as they huddled together to try and keep warm. She hugged her knees with one arm as she nibbled on her bread, washing it down with the vitamin enriched water that helped sustain her. There was nothing else to eat with it—the gruel that often came with the bread was long gone for the day, and she couldn’t even begin to dream about getting the odd scrap of meat that maybe came once every few months, if that. It all seemed to disappear so quickly with as hungry as they all were; she could only imagine the luxury that Zeshom Noor was indulging himself in back on his estate, practically making a mockery of the deplorable state his slaves all found themselves in.

As was habit, Talitha looked up at the sky above while the rest of her fellow slaves either continued eating or tossed and turned, struggling to get comfortable and attempt to get some sleep. In the holding pens, when nobody else was there to judge her, she was free to gaze up and dream of lives that could have been, of the adventures the soldiers and colonists of the Crown were engaging in, and the limitless expanse of the Zaket system and beyond. She could only wonder what rested beyond the confines of her oppressive reality, piecing together a vision of existence that gave her even the slightest degree of hope, as faint as the twinkle of the stars far away. With as hopeless as her life was, the continual dreams that were her own were the only thing that seemed to keep her sane.

The sublight engines of the Crown Navy’s ships seemed to twinkle in time with the other celestial bodies. Each shimmering vessel captivated her imagination, every one of them a gateway to a life that had eluded her since the day she was born, watching them go back and forth between Siva and Gefo. The ships that formed the convoy lines to the shining presence of the silicate moon. The satellite was such a soft glow upon her fur in contrast to the oppressive heat of Zaket A and Zaket B during the daytime. On the nights when it was full, she felt renewed and invigorated, if only for fleeting moments of time in the grand eternity of her never-ending bondage.

Not only was Gefo in its full form on this particular evening, but even the insignificant Magofa had its own part to play in the expanse of the skies above the Latha Province. A bright flash suddenly emanated from around the small asteroid, which appeared as little more than a fast moving dot in the air. Quickly emerging from behind it, several streams of plasma and gauss fire emerged as fast traveling points of light that exploded against the deflector shield of a Crown Navy destroyer that was escorting a troop transport nearby.

The sudden and unexpected burst of artillery fire, as minuscule as it appeared from Siva, didn’t even catch the attention of the tired slaves down below, except for Talitha, whose eyes were glued to the spectacle playing out. She’d observed the cosmos from her isolated spot in this backwater for years, and had never seen an actual skirmish play out. To be sure, there had always been reports of them happening with pirates and freedom fighters in settlements far away from Siva and in neighboring star systems, but that such a thing was transpiring here had come as a shock. Was it possible that the rumored struggle between the forces of the Crown of Siva and those that espoused cries for freedom had now taken to the space directly around the planet as well?

Talitha widened her eyes in wonderment as the ambush played out in front of her. She didn’t even make a sound, not wanting to share the show that was unfolding with anybody else in the chain line of slaves. The troop transport began to peel away from the protective radius of the destroyer as the attacking frigate that had been hiding behind the asteroid moon of Magofa began its pursuit, perhaps eager to capture and board the vessel for its supplies. There could be little doubt that precious military hardware was aboard, and the troops occupying it would be fighting tooth and claw to protect it. Whether the ambushers were pirates or rebels, Talitha could not know for certain.

On paper the destroyer should have been more than a match for the small frigate, but it had been lying in wait in the shadows of the asteroid and had caught the larger ship completely by surprise. More fire from the frigate’s gauss cannons completely punched through the deflectors of the destroyer as the troop transport attempted to escape. The frigate was hot on its tail, intent on keeping the destroyer subdued with a constant barrage of fire as its slow firing gauss weaponry completely ignored and weakened the integrity of the deflectors and inflicted minor hull damage. The real damage came from the plasma artillery, and though of a lighter caliber aboard the frigate, was enough to pass through the holes in the shields and cause massive damage to critical subsystems and hull integrity.

In a matter of minutes, the destroyer had been completely crippled and had become little more than a smoldering, disabled wreck. Its navigation systems unable to support itself, it could only sit there and burn while the frigate continued its pursuit of the troop transport. It had generated a fair amount of distance between itself and its pursuer in the time it had taken the frigate to deal with the escort, but now all the ambushing ship’s guns were pointed straight at the defenseless vessel.

Talitha continued to watch as a superheated jet of greenish plasma shot forth from the frigate, tearing a massive hole in the side of the troop transport as it seemingly began to lose control, just as the destroyer had. To her surprise, however, the vessel did not pursue it any further, and simply turned away, heading back towards the wreck of the destroyer. Perhaps they’d intended to board it and commandeer its supplies and hardware, but why weren’t they?

She didn’t need to remain confused as to why the frigate had given up the pursuit for too much longer. On the opposite side of Magofa, a few additional destroyers that had been escorting a nearby mining fleet had peeled away to try and come to the aid of the smoldering wreck that was quickly breaking apart over the orbit of the asteroid. The frigate that had attacked had woven its way into the ever expanding debris field, hoping to remain hidden from the searching Crown ships.

The whole ordeal had lasted not more than fifteen minutes, but it had given Talitha an experience she wouldn’t soon forget. Though she’d always harbored her dreams of being in the cosmos among the soldiers and colonists, it gave her a slight bit of satisfaction to see the mighty vessels of the Crown Navy being ambushed and torn asunder by gauss and plasma fire. It was like striking back at Zeshom Noor and everything that anchored her to this life of oppression in a way that she would never be able to.

The troop transport, far less protected than the destroyer, was already as crippled as its escort, and its bow careened in the direction of Siva, desperately trying to keep itself oriented for a crash landing instead of burning up in reentering the atmosphere, lest its precious cargo of men and material be destroyed. To Talitha, it looked like a comet streaking across the blackness.

The young Sivathi couldn’t even begin to fathom how significant this little skirmish would be in her life. Like she’d done so many times before she placed her hopes and dreams upon it, as she had bestowed upon countless shooting stars since she was a child. Maybe, just maybe, this time her wishes would come true.