The Outworlder Read online

  The Outworlder (Book I in the Silesia Trilogy)

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  THE OUTWORLDER

  Book I in the Silesia Trilogy

  By

  S.K. Valenzuela

  Published by SisterMuses at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2014 by S.K. Valenzuela

  Silesia: The Outworlder Original Publication © 2011

  Cover art by J. Leigh Bralick Copyright © 2014

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by SisterMuses, Inc.

  P.O. Box 142401

  Irving, TX 75014

  http://www.sistermuses.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, existing locations, or real people, living or dead, are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-941108-10-9

  ISBN: 1941108105

  For my husband, Frank

  And for my children

  True love isn’t just for fairy tales.

  Chapter 1

  Something was wrong with her vision.

  Sahara tried again to open her eyes. Something had made her wake early, before the sedation drug had worn off completely. Everything was a blur of hazy shadows and light refracted into all its colors. She could only just make out the line of bodies in front of her, their arms pinioned to the walls of their cages by chains.

  The ship around her shuddered, and she felt herself lifted off the floor and dropped against the chains holding her own arms. The bodies in front of her lurched and swung weirdly. There was no sign that anyone else was awake.

  Sahara struggled harder against her own blood. She needed to wake up. Adrenaline was helping her now, counter-acting the heavy narcotic.

  Something was wrong, horribly wrong.

  A strange and acrid smell assailed her and dragged her reluctant senses into sharper awareness.

  What is that? What is it?

  Her muddled brain struggled with recognition, but her body didn’t. She coughed, fighting to find clear air. And then she knew.

  Smoke.

  The ship lurched again, suspending her in free fall for a few hideous seconds. She crashed against her chains, harder this time, and the link connected to the bracelet around her right forearm snapped. The heavy fetter banged against the side of the ship and her arm hung limp at her side. In another moment the grinding pain registered, and the feel of slick blood soaking her sleeve.

  From somewhere near the front of the ship came a vague bleeping noise. Even as she tried to focus on the sound, a pulsating red light in the mid-ship gallery distracted her. She blinked rapidly against the blur of her vision.

  Wrong. All wrong.

  Her full consciousness returned with another surge of adrenaline, leaving no other thought in her mind except escape.

  If she could get to the window in the gallery, she might be able to discover what was happening to the ship. She braced her feet against the inner wall of her cell and pulled against the chain holding her left hand. It fought her efforts, each link clinging tenaciously to the next. A string of curses welled up inside her, but she swallowed them in a lump with the tears of fear and frustration that were gathering in her eyes.

  She tried once more, gripping the chain in her hands and leveraging all her weight against it. As her weight grated her palms against the metal links, something warm and sticky began trickling down her arms. Her hands were bleeding. Gritting her teeth against the burning pain that followed, she wrenched the chain back and forth.

  It was no use. She flung the chain away and pounded her bloody fists against the cell wall.

  When she had exhausted her fury, she leaned her back against the wall and slid down to huddle on the floor. She rubbed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her free hand, panting a little. A sudden dazzling light flooded into the ship, like sunlight, but flickering violently.

  Not sunlight, she told herself. Fire.

  Without warning, she slammed into the ceiling of the ship, feeling as if she had left her stomach somewhere below. They were plummeting into God only knew where, out of control and far too fast.

  The ship lurched again and the flickering light dis-appeared. The next moment, something exploded. Shock waves rolled along the sides of the ship, flinging Sahara back to the floor. The chain that held her left arm broke and she hit her head against the heavy cage that divided her from the prisoner in front of her. Smoke billowed down the length of the ship.

  Coughing and gasping for air and ignoring the throbbing in her head, Sahara pushed herself to her feet. The cage door hung crazily on its hinges, leaving her just enough room to squeeze through. She stumbled into the corridor and half-ran, half-slid down the cell row to the gallery window.

  Spread out below her, and growing more clear and larger with every passing second, was a desert world. Endless rolling hills of sand stretched out in every direction, and Sahara felt relief wash through her.

  Praise to the powers, she thought. At least I’m on the right planet.

  Another explosion rippled through the ship, and Sahara stumbled against the gallery wall. The beeping from the flight cabin came louder and more insistent now, but still she heard no voices.

  Where is the crew?

  She glanced back at the other prisoners hanging in their cells in the prison bay behind her. They were all still sleeping. The sedation drug wasn’t scheduled to wear off until they landed at the labor camp.

  At this rate, they won’t wake up at all, Sahara thought. We’re all going to die when the ship smashes into the sands.

  She staggered her way to the flight cabin as quickly as she could, trying to tell herself that there must be a logical explanation for the crew’s silence. But with every step she took toward that ominous beeping, the cold knot in her gut grew.

  She pushed open the heavy door to the flight deck and looked inside.

  Empty.

  Panic nearly suffocated her.

  She propelled herself into the cabin and stared wildly around at the controls. A red light above the captain’s seat was flashing. She took a step closer. Read the label beneath the light.

  Escape Pod Launched.

  Every pulse of the indicator drilled the words into her.

  Escape Pod Launched.

  The crew had abandoned them. Som
ething must have malfunctioned as they’d prepared to enter the planet’s atmosphere, and they had bailed.

  Sahara vaulted into the captain’s seat. She didn’t know how to fly, but if she was going to die anyway, she might as well give it a shot. As she hauled back on the steering control, it shuddered violently in her hands. She strained harder against it, fighting it with all the strength she could muster.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

  Then she heard a horrible noise, like metal ripping. Alarms were going off all around her now, pulsing in the smoky air and inside her head.

  There was nothing more she could do. As she fought the controls, trying to bring up the nose of the ship before it plowed into the sand, a hoarse cry tore itself from her chest. The horizon line appeared in the window—at least they weren’t going to do a nose dive. But she didn’t have much time now. She jammed the controls as best she could, then left the cabin and ran up the steeply sloping aisle to her cell cage. One of the chains was almost free, and she grabbed at it and pulled, bracing herself against the wall. She heard another ripping noise, and the ship convulsed like a living thing being torn apart. The ring popped, the end of the chain clattered on the floor, and Sahara slid back down the aisle to the flight cabin, dragging the heavy metal behind her.

  She twined the chain around the steering control, pulling it back as tightly as she could and then threaded the end through the metal bars reinforcing the cabin wall. It was pathetic, but it was the best she could manage. After one last sickening look outside, she ran.

  Crouched down in her cell, her back to the front of the ship. Buried her head under her arms.

  Impact.

  The force flung her against the back wall of her cell. She rolled into a fetal position as the bodies of the prisoners in front of her came detached from their chains. They slammed against her metal cage, ripping it out of the wall. With a horrific crash the window in the gallery exploded, showering shards of tempered glass and sand all over the cabin. The ship scraped along the ground, ripping open its underbelly.

  The cage was coming down. It would have crushed her, but one edge caught on the ring that had held her right arm chained to the wall. Bodies fell all around her.

  A blast of sudden heat and fire tore the ship in two as the fuel tanks underneath the gallery ruptured and exploded. The back half of the ship rolled over, flinging Sahara first against the cage, and then back onto the floor.

  It rolled again. Her head slammed against the cage bars, and her vision went dark.

  When Sahara finally opened her eyes again, everything was still. She lay on her right side on the floor, her left arm, bloodied but no longer bleeding, curled over her head. Her head ached, and when she rubbed her hair out of her eyes, it felt matted and sticky.

  Hot, bright sunlight poured through the gaping maw where the gallery had been. Mangled and partially charred bodies littered the passage. The sight and stench of it all made her retch.

  When she could breathe again, she forced herself to stand, staggering over the bodies and twisted metal wreckage toward the sands outside. She tried to climb down the outside of the ship, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Her foot slipped and she fell. When she hit the sand, she tumbled and slid down the side of the massive dune created by the ship’s crash landing.

  It was so hot.

  Sahara lay in the sand, shaking and crying. She had no sense of time, no sense of place. Under her flimsy gray prisoner’s shirt her skin prickled painfully, blistering under the sun’s intense rays. She stopped crying and lay still, forcing her mind to focus on the individual grains of sand before her eyes so that her limbs could relax and regain their strength.

  Her breathing gradually deepened, and she allowed the warmth of the sun and the sand to surround her until she felt she was almost one with them. At last, with a deep breath that brought her fully back into the present moment, she sat up. Grains of sand sprinkled down from her shirt and her face onto her long, bloodied fingers.

  There seemed to be nothing but sand and sun for as far as her eyes could see. She stood up and clambered back to the top of the artificial dune. Still nothing. No sign of man or beast, no matter which way she turned. A surge of terror threatened to overwhelm the relaxed calm she had just managed to collect for herself.

  She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath. Tried to get a feel for the place. Clarity, where was clarity?

  Her eyes snapped open.

  There had been a whisper, or something like a whisper, and the vaguest sense of someone she had never seen before in the depth of her mind. She was shaking all over again and she didn’t dare close her eyes for fear it would return. And yet, she had learned something from that whisper.

  A direction.

  East.

  She started walking, still hugging herself. A sudden chill washed over her, and her head began to pound. She tried to lick her parched lips, but she had barely enough saliva to swallow. As soon as she had moistened her mouth the harsh desert sun desiccated it again.

  Whose voice was that? she wondered as she stumbled through the hot sand. I must have really hit my head when the ship crashed! Or maybe…. She frowned and shook her aching head. No. No! I must have just hit my head.

  She smiled a little, repeating those comforting words. I must have just hit my head. That’s all. I hit my head. It will pass. It will pass.

  Like a knife stroke, a shard of her vision flashed into her mind. Two eyes, glimmering silver, and something between a warning and a promise in their depths.

  She stumbled and fell.

  That wasn’t head trauma.

  “Then I’m going crazy,” she muttered, picking herself up. “Maybe it was those cursed deep-flight drugs. Maybe waking up too soon messes with your mind.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the hulking pieces of the prison ship, black against the glaring silver-blue of the sky. The shadows from the wreckage groped toward her across the sands as the sun sank lower.

  The realization made her hesitate. Would it be better to go back to the ship and spend the night in its shelter, rather than continue venturing into the unknown emptiness in front of her?

  She entertained the thought for about five seconds, and then she remembered the carcasses strewn all over the inside of the cabin. She shuddered and gulped against a sudden wave of nausea.

  “Can’t do that,” she rasped. “Can’t go back. Must go on.”

  She kept walking, and walking, and walking, but still there was nothing but sand. Sand, and more sand. And the sun. Finally she passed out of sight of the smoking wreckage of the prison ship, but now she had no way to gauge her progress.

  She staggered forward a few more steps and twisted her ankle. A croaking cry tore from her parched throat as she sprawled into the dazzling golden sands. The tiny grains were like so many stones, each one tearing at the skin of her face, hands, and arms, skin already raw from the crash and the burning sun.

  She pushed herself into a sitting position and pulled her leg in front of her to examine it. Gingerly she probed the joint and winced. Not broken, but most likely sprained. She flexed it and tried to stand. If she was careful not to put too much weight on it, she could make a go of it.

  She limped along again, still bearing east. The sun and the sand were cruelly hot. Her thin gray shirt clung to her back, wet through with sweat. After a few more paces she staggered to a stop. She had reached the top of what seemed to be a ridge of dunes that undulated in a sinewy curve to the north and south. Her path lay straight down the slope, due east.

  “Though why I should listen to some stupid voice in my head, I don’t know,” she croaked.

  Her voice sounded loud and strange in this empty country, and her lips hurt when she moved them. She forced her tongue over them, but the more she licked them the worse they felt. They were so badly chapped from the sun and the desert wind that they felt three times their normal size.

  She started cautiously down the
slope, putting as much weight as she could on her left foot. On the level, limping had worked, but here on the slope it was impossible. She didn’t get more than two feet before the sands shifted beneath her and she fell, tumbling all the way to the bottom.

  Her eyes burned with pain and frustration and she pounded the sand. She couldn’t even force a few tears to soothe the dryness of her eyes. What was the good of escaping that cursed ship if she was just going to die in the desert anyway? She shoved herself upright and tried to collect her nerves. Falling to pieces now wasn’t an option.

  A small sliver of shade from the dune behind her cut across the blinding ocean of sand, and she scooted into it to rest for a while. The cool absence of the sun was like a long drink of water, and she leaned against the slope at her back. The sudden change of temperature made her shiver a little.

  She scooped up handfuls of sand and let them trickle through her fingers, too exhausted to think. Her flimsy shoes were in shreds, so she pulled them off, wincing as she tweaked her injured ankle. The soles of her feet were burning from the heat of the sand, so she dug her toes into the sand, trying to comfort her skin in the gritty coolness.

  How long she sat there she couldn’t tell, but gradually she became aware that the patch of shade in front of her was larger than it had been. She stopped pouring sand, stared up at the sky for a moment, and then gingerly got to her feet. The sun was setting.

  “Time to go,” she mumbled.

  Her muscles were stiff now, not just sore, and her body felt so heavy. She didn’t make it ten paces before she fell again. Her legs would no longer hold her upright, so she crawled, dragging herself along for what felt like ages.

  It was nearing dusk now, and there was still nothing ahead of her but sand. Her muscles trembled, weak with dehydration and heat exhaustion. She could go no further.

  She stretched out on her stomach, her right cheek on the sand. Strange clouds of sand began to swirl around her and she watched them blankly. They were mesmerizing, those little whirlwinds, dancing between the sky and the ground and red with the glow of the setting sun. As she watched, they began swirling more and more violently, and soon it was not a dance, but a frenzy.