The Thorns of Barevi

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CHRISTIN BJORNSEN WONDERED IF SUMMER on the planet Barevi could possible be the only season. There had been remarkably little variation in temperature in the nine months since she’d arrived here. She’d been four months in what appeared to be the single, sprawling city of the planet when she’d been a slave, and now had racked up five months of comparative freedom tooth-and-nail survival in this jungle, after her escape from the city in a stolen flitter.

Her sleeveless, one piece tunic was made of an indestructible material, but it would not be very warm in cold weather. The scooped neckline was indecently low and the skirt ended midway down her long thighs. It was closely modeled, in fact, after the miniskirted sheath she had been wearing to class that spring morning the Catteni ships had descended on Denver. One moment she was on her way to the college campus; the next, she was one of thousands of astonished and terrified Denverites being driven by forcewhips up the ramp of a spaceship that made the Queen Mary look like a bathtub float. Once past the black maw of the ship, Chris, with all the others, swiftly succumbed to the odorless gas. When she and her fellow prisoners had awakened, they were in the slave compounds of Barevi, waiting to be sold.

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