Page 27 of Rebels Rising (The Intergalactic Union #3)

Artemis

We hurried down the unfamiliar corridors and rode up an elevator that was at least three times the size of our own, which allowed us all to fit inside a lot more comfortably and we didn’t have to take multiple trips to get everyone to the top deck.

When we entered the bridge I was struck speechless by the most ridiculously high-tech room I had ever seen on a ship.

Rather than a hologram displaying our surroundings outside the ship, the walls were large screens with coloured, lifelike depictions of that gave the illusion that the room was made up entirely of windows.

There were no physical consoles but rather holographic buttons that floated around us individually as soon as we entered, giving each of us access to the ship’s controls.

The space was vast and open, no objects or pieces of furniture taking up space.

Instead, chairs levitated independently as if there was no gravity, allowing more freedom for manoeuvring amongst one another.

I was sure I would uncover even more advanced gadgets if I looked, but I wasn’t here for that.

Disappointment panged in my chest, but I brushed it off, disgust replacing all other emotions as I took in the fact that these assholes were hoarding so many technological advancements to themselves when things like this could make the Intergalactic Union so much more accessible to so many people.

The chairs alone could provide mobility to those who couldn’t walk, yet I didn’t even need to ask to know that they would remain under the scope of The Program and their military counterparts.

The extent of their greed was almost a physical blow to the rest of us.

My revulsion grew as I took in the people dotted around the room.

Lined up along the walls were an array of soldiers and scientists alike in various degrees of consciousness, all of them bound, a few of them bruised and bloody.

Those were the ones that had put up a fight, then, but we would have to watch out for all of them.

Underestimating the enemy never worked in anyone’s favour.

I scanned the faces and froze when I caught sight of three I recognised, one of them more intimately than all the others.

Demari’s soulless eyes were already boring holes into my face as I waltzed into the room like I owned the place.

Well, I technically did now, though that little secret would remain for as long as we could keep it hidden.

I smirked at him.

Their oversight was our winning card.

He scowled at my smugness, likely assuming I was gloating over their defeat.

Truthfully, hijacking their ship was easier and quicker than I thought it would be, but I wasn’t ready to let my guard down.

Not here, not ever.

There was no saying what tricks these bastards held up their sleeves, which was why I was pleased to see guards from my own crew keeping a close watch on them.

I tore my eyes away from the man responsible for making my entire life hell to inspect the unconscious woman beside him.

Colonel Granger was indeed frail and malnourished, dark bruising circling her eyes indicative of the stress she’d been under for stars only knew how long.

Her weight loss could have been from the same cause or from mistreatment by The Program.

My bet was a little bit of both.

Her hair was also cause for alarm, the strands no longer lush and smooth but stringy, greasy, and more grey than I recalled from our last encounter only a few days ago.

I wasn’t too sad about it, however, when my gaze moved onto the next woman.

She was also unconscious but seemed to be in significantly better health than Granger.

I recognised her as the scientist that had stood beside Demari during our escape from Nova Station.

Her face was slack as she slept, the wrinkles lining her features smoothed out without the presence of her scowl.

She looked almost peaceful, though I was sure that would change when she eventually woke.

I hadn’t had any personal experiences with her before, so I didn’t know how she would react to being stripped of her power and her freedom, but I was almost eager to find out.

Would she scream and fight, throwing a tantrum to get her way? I doubted it.

No, she seemed more like the type to seethe silently, patiently awaiting her moment to strike back.

A finger tapped me on my right shoulder and I jerked away before I realised it was just Henrik.

‘Can I get back to the other ship, Captain? I’m not sure I’m needed for this.’

‘He should stay, too. They should all stay,’ Tarren argued, and my curiosity swelled alongside the dread that had settled low in my gut.

‘Stay for now, Henrik. Just in case,’ I told him, and he nodded his acquiescence, moving back to take his position beside Cadmus, but the latter stepped forward to take the empty spot to my left. Bromm was on my right kept there only by our connected hands. For that reason I wasn’t willing to let go.

I addressed Tarren. ‘Okay, show us this video.’

He nodded towards a woman I didn’t recognise, but she was wearing one of the black jumpsuits from our ship so she was clearly one of us.

She lifted a finger and tapped on the holographic buttons in front of her until a small blue light popped up.

She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and then widened them until it was large enough to see a small, compressed image.

Her other hand rose to repeat the action on a grander scale and then she chucked it at the walls.

While most of the screens maintained their other functions, one wall was overtaken by the image of a man of ambiguous descent draped in jewels that jangled together whenever he moved.

They adorned his fingers, his neck, both wrists and arms, up and down his ears, clumps of his hair, and even his teeth.

Flanking him were two similar-looking men, also glinting with an array of multicoloured jewels and precious metals, though the first man clearly had more. A symbol of status perhaps? Either way, I knew what these men were.

Pirates.

The leader spoke with a deep, hoarse voice that spoke of how much he had abused his throat and his lungs with recreational smoke. ‘Good even’n’, good sirs.’ He grinned, revealing diamond-encrusted teeth set in gold that looked more like they were rotting than expensively bedazzled. ‘’Ere’s tha’ vid ya’ll request’d. Got a bunch o’ screamers, ‘ere, sirs. Pretty ones, too. ‘Ope ya’ll don’ mind if we ‘as a li’le nibble.’

I felt my face twist with repulsion as I watched him, but when he moved away from the video the outline of his erect cock strained against his pants as a dark spot formed at the tip, precum seeping through the thin fabric. Whatever was happening, he was getting off on it.

‘Ugh, fuck. That’s just nasty,’ Addy gagged as he moved away from the camera, hands cupping his junk as he adjusted it inside his pants.

The image shook as the perspective changed like someone was behind the camera and moving it to point at something else.

That something else turned out to be a roughly chiselled rock tunnel stacked full of cages of differing sizes.

Each cage contained multiple people.

From young children to the elderly, it clearly didn’t matter to these bastards who they stuffed inside them, but I was shocked to see more than the kids.

I shouldn’t have been, since Tarren had claimed the pirates were holding hostages.

Their features were difficult to distinguish beneath the thick layer of grime coating their skin and matting their hair.

The huddled together inside their cramped prisons, holding onto one another both with fear and likely an attempt to keep warm for they were also completely stripped naked, not a stitch of clothing or blankets in sight.

But what the camera was truly focusing on was the single woman chained up in the centre of the room, the only hostage still retaining their covered state.

Unfortunately, she was dangling from the ceiling by her wrists that were encased in shackles, the chains leading to hooks embedded in the rock.

Below, her ankles were also shackled much the same way to the floor.

The effect was that she was restrained into a star-like position, stretched so thin she wouldn’t be able to move without dislocating a limb.

She may have been covered in clothes, but they were threadbare and torn, most of it hanging in shorn strips from her beaten and bloody form.

Blood dripped from wounds I could tell were made from a variety of weapons.

There were cuts made from knives, welts and slashes clearly caused by a whip, and even chunks of her hair were missing, torn from her head so hard that pieces of her scalp had come loose with it.

A whip snapped and a moment later the woman’s back bowed, a scream tearing from her throat, hoarse and pained.

Another snap, another scream.

They seemed to get bored of that pretty quickly, however, because the leader stepped back into the frame, slowly prowling closer as the woman whimpered and begged.

‘Please, no. Please, don’t. Please, I’m begging you. Don’t do this. Please let me go. I swear I won’t tell. No, stop. Please, no!’

The sound of fabric rendering echoed throughout the room with her pleas, and the piece of shit on screen chuckled darkly.

‘You beg so good, precious.

Your tears make me so hard.

I can’t wait t’ make ya scream for help. No one’s comin’ to save you, precious girl.’

I winced at the pet name, the same one the very man whose eyes I could still feel burning holes into my back used on me.

I couldn’t stop my reaction even if I’d tried, and both Bromm and Cadmus stiffened beside me as they recognised it as well, each of them squeezing my hands reassuringly.

The woman attempted to pull away as the pirate dropped his pants to the floor and stepped out, his cock bent at an odd angle as it pointed in her direction.

Its head was bulbous and an angry purple colour, the tip glistening with thick, milky precum.

He stepped closer and she tried to pull away, but she was stuck.

That didn’t stop her though when his hands napped out to dig his fingers into her bare breasts, one of the only parts of her body that hadn’t already been decimated by their abuse.

When he rubbed his cock against her core she let out an anguished scream, the sound burning with fury and injustice.

She pulled even harder against her restraints, but they were too strong for her to break.

Instead, a sickening pop sounded as both arms were yanked from their sockets, her shoulders now disfigured as her screams turned into agonised cries.

And then, with a malicious laugh, the evil son of a bitch drove himself home with one thrust, pinning her onto him while tears steadily tracked down her cheeks and her cried petered off.

She’d passed out, but the fucker kept thrusting, grunting into her neck before he bit down and marked her with his teeth.

When he pulled away, his lips were painted red with her blood that dripped down his chin, and his tongue lapped it up, grinning lecherously at the camera.

A child whimpered in the background and that was what finally broke me.

‘Turn it off,’ I ordered, my voice deceptively quiet despite my inner turmoil.

‘Captain, it’s not over…’ Tarren began, but I cut him off.

‘I said, turn it off.’

‘The end is important, Captain. Why don’t I just skip it?’ he offered instead.

My nostril flared, a small show of my distress leaking through. ‘Fine.’

The video skipped to a part that focused solely on the pirate again. There were various sounds of anger from my crew, but I ignored them to listen to what this fucker apparently needed to say.

‘Alexander Hironimus. Stand down, or your sister ‘ere gets more of my seed, and this time it’ll be down ‘er throat and up ‘er ass,’ he laughed maniacally.

‘What…’ Xander breathed out, horror and terror bleeding through his expression as the video panned back to the beaten, unconscious woman still dangling from the chains.

The camera moved closer to give us a clear view of her entire body starting from her toes, all of which were broken, moving up her legs to a bloodied centre, the skin of her torso peeled back grotesquely in too many places to count, lingering on her dislocated shoulders, until it finally came to rest on her face.

‘ No… ’ Xander choked out. ‘No, please, no.’

I took a closer look at the woman and though I couldn’t see much past the swelling on her face distorting her features, I could picture what she’d look like beneath it all.

The image was a familiar one, to more than just me and Xander.

She was a famous singer whose songs I heard on a regular basis throughout the Intergalactic Union. This woman was Amarantha Hironimus, Xander’s younger sister.

The man in question bellowed out a roar of pure rage and turned his agonised fury on the line-up of our enemies against the wall.

I watched as his eyes clashed with Demari’s, his face twisted into a primal sort of wrath that promised retribution as he stomped over to the scientist that had caused us all some sort of pain and suffering and planted his fist in his face.

Over and over he wailed on him, beating him down into the floor while those around him woke up at the ruckus and tried to scuttle out of the way.

‘It’s still not over, Captain,’ Tarren informed me sullenly, the emotion one I never thought I’d see from him.

I turned away from where Xander moved onto the next scientist and began pummelling them one after the other, Addy hovering nearby as she watched on carefully with tears tracking down her cheeks.

My attention moved back to the screen where the video was still playing, only it wasn’t Amarantha that was in frame now.

Instead, the camera panned over the dirty faces of those in the cages. One by one my fellow friends and crew members gasped in horror as they recognised their loved ones.

Reece crashed to his knees when the camera settled on an emaciated Terran woman clutching desperately, fearfully, to a Yu’Rom male, two words a mere whisper on his lips. ‘Ma… Pa…’

It dawned on me then.

We had believed that their loved ones were safe from The Program if we didn’t contact them.

It was why Urman moped about most days since he was unable to contact his fiancé and missed her dearly.

The same could be said for the others, but we had be so wrong.

The Program had abducted their loved ones and were holding them as leverage to ensure our compliance. But as I took in the wet cheeks and laboured breaths of my friends I was sure of one thing.

They still believed they had us by the balls, but they’d fucked up. They had no idea we were coming for them, and they were going to wish they’d never been born before we were done with them.

It was time to rain hell on our enemies and stamp them out once and for all.

To be continued…