Beloved Traveler by Janet Miller

Author:Janet Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Twelve

Sonja opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t. The light, dim as it was in the metal room around her, hurt her eyes. Not that it surprised her that her eyes hurt. Everything else about her body ached, limbs, tongue, and the tip of her ears, so why shouldn’t her eyes ache as well?

Hell, even her teeth hurt.

Of course she knew what it was. Anyone ever exposed to the business end of a stunner had suffered from the same symptoms, the result of over-stimulated nerves jerking on muscles not used to being jerked quite that way. Sonja had been stunned frequently enough in the past to know the symptoms even if she didn’t immediately recall how the stunning had happened.

Well, so much for her brilliant plan to walk into the village, slip into a pile of women being taken and allow herself to breathe enough gas to fall asleep. Oh, no, she’d been spotted by one of the men carrying weapons. She barely remembered a shout of

“One’s getting away,” before her muscles all cramped at once and her head seemed to explode.

She tried opening her eyes again and this time managed to keep them that way, the pain receding as she looked around and realized she’d managed her goal after all.

This wasn’t how she’d planned on getting on board the slaver’s ship, but it had its advantages. The after-affect of being stunned wasn’t a pleasant experience, but she’d woken up faster than she would have with the gas. Strapped around her into the tightly packed racks of narrow bunks were the bodies of women, unmoving and obviously still unconscious.

When she and her sisters had been gassed she’d estimated they’d been out for at least several hours, while stunning only worked at the most for an hour. It would be several hours before anyone would expect the women to come to and so they most likely not check on them.

It was even possible that they’d forgotten that she hadn’t been gassed at all and so they wouldn’t expect anything from her for a while. If she could get free of the straps binding her to the bunk, she might be able to get loose on the slavers ship before anyone noticed she was missing.

The straps were tight but had some give. Sonja managed to work her hand down to her belt where her knife should be. And wasn’t, which didn’t surprise her. It was too much to hope that the slavers would be so stupid as to not take her weapons away.

However, her boots were still on so maybe they weren’t infallible. Working with the slack she’d already created in the straps Sonja twisted until she was on her side, one arm and hand stretched behind her. She bent her left knee so her foot came close to her hand. It took some work, some twisting and for a while she thought she might dislocate her shoulder in the process, but in a few moments she felt the heel of her boot brush the BELOVED TRAVELER

Janet Miller

82

tips of her fingers.

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