A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [14]
Her love, Jora’h, could not possibly be aware of her situation. With a single command, he could have freed her and all the other prisoners. Nira doubted the Prime Designate would ever participate in such awful schemes. He was too gentle and caring. She believed that in her heart. Did Jora’h even know she was still alive? Could she have misjudged him so much?
Nira didn’t think so. Unsuspecting, Jora’h had been sent to Theroc—obviously to get him out of the way, so he couldn’t interfere when they abducted me. The Mage-Imperator must have kept this a secret from his own son, even though she had been carrying Jora’h‘s child.
The Dobro Designate, second son of the Mage-Imperator, used the human descendants here as breeding stock for Ildiran experiments. For some reason, Designate Udru’h considered Nira the most interesting of all the prisoners, and she had suffered greatly because of it.
After she had given birth to a perfect, beautiful half-breed daughter named Osira’h—my little Princess—the Dobro Designate had kept Nira here in this awful camp, so she could be impregnated again and again, like some horrible broodmare…
Now she knelt at the edge of the austere compound, using a small tool to loosen the hard dirt around hardy, scraggly shrubs and thin flowers she had planted. In her spare moments, she tended and watered whatever plants she could find, tried to help them flourish; even the tiniest flecks of green life reminded her of the lush forests on Theroc. Though she was cut off from the worldtrees and the sentient forest mind, Nira was still a green priest, and she remembered her duties.
Though her emerald skin absorbed the daylight and converted it to energy, Dobro’s sun felt weak and undernourishing, as if contaminated by the dark history of this place. She looked up, judging how much more time she might have to herself before the next labor shift out in the excavation trenches.
The breeder camp was a sprawling enclosed area with barracks, birthing hospitals, experimentation laboratories, and crowded dwelling complexes. Prisoners went about their business, knowing no other life. Some of them talked with each other; one gaunt man even laughed, as if unaware of his plight. Human children—sanctioned offspring of the breeding prisoners—found games to play even in a place such as this. The Dobro Designate insisted on a constant renewal of purebred descendants in order to keep the breeding stock diverse and healthy. However, to Nira, it seemed as if the human spirit had been bred out of them in less than two centuries.
Even after five years among them, Nira was still treated as a novelty, eccentric and strange, a troublemaker. At least the people had stopped staring at her green skin, which was unlike anything they had ever seen. But they could not understand her attitude, why she still refused to accept her situation and settle down to her new life.
The poor people didn’t know any better.
Nira looked up as the alien supervisors put together another work crew. She tried to remain small and unobtrusive, hoping the bureaucrat kithmen would not choose her, not today. Her muscles were strong, though her mind was weary from years of difficult assignments—chipping opalbone fossils, handpicking fruits from thorny bushes, digging trenches.
The Ildirans would eventually give her an assignment—they always did—but she clung to each moment, one at a time. Resisting the instructions would only provoke the Ildiran guards to tear up her plants. They had done it several times before. She would find other ways to resist, if she could.
When Nira had first been taken captive, before the Dobro Designate realized she was pregnant, she was imprisoned alone in darkness, sealed in an unlit cell—the worst punishment imaginable to an Ildiran accustomed to constant daylight. The black claustrophobia was intended to crush Nira’s spirit, perhaps even drive her mad. The Designate needed only her reproductive