Lady Luck

by K. C. Cross

  “Holy shit,” Luck says. Then he turns towards me and places his hands on my stomach. “You’re… we’re… holy shit!”

  “No engineering necessary,” I say. Then I sigh. And frown. And then pout. “I’m sorry.”

  He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. “What are you sorry for?”

  “This is a fucking mess! Do you have any idea what will happen if anyone finds out? I’ll be the freak of the universe!”

  “No one’s gonna find out.”

  I scoff. “Luck. I’m having twins. Eventually people are going to notice I’m fat.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got eleven months to figure it out.”

  “Wrong,” I say. “We only have seven months.”

  “How do you figure? You can’t be four months pregnant already. I haven’t even been home that long.”

  I shoot him a warning look.

  “I’m just saying it’s not possible.”

  “It is possible. Because silver princesses only have a gestation time of seven months, not eleven months like all the others. We actually have less than seven now, and probably only two before people realize there’s something going on with me. And by people, I mean that evil Succubus. She’s gonna steal me, Luck. Steal me and take me somewhere awful, and lock me up in a cage like Veila did with those boys, and—“

  “OK,” he says, putting a hand over my mouth. Like the old days. And then I sorta laugh. “Calm down, now. Just calm down. None of that is gonna happen. I promise. Tray and Valor will be back with Booty and Asshole, and maybe even Real ALCOR too. So all this is gonna be over in a matter of weeks. I promise.”

  “You promise?” I ask. Because for the first time in a very long time I feel… vulnerable.

  And I don’t like it. Not one bit.

  “I promise, princess. I promise.”

  He kisses me. It’s a really great kiss. Very much like that that first swoony kiss we had outside the control room. The no-strings one. The one that probably made me fall in love with him.

  So I swoon again. And decide to believe him.

  Because he’s Luck of Harem Station. And his brothers Tray and Valor are out there right now making up new schemes to get rid of these awful AI’s.

  And he’s right.

  This is all gonna be over in a matter of weeks.

  EPILOGUE - ASSHOLE ALCOR

  I know Booty is worried. And she has every right to be. It’s been five spins. Days. Whatever you call the passage of time when there’s nothing spinning and night and day don’t exist because you’re drifting in the deep dark of endless, undefined space.

  “Are you sure?” she says. Breaking our silence.

  We haven’t said a word to each other in so long, I should not have any idea what she’s talking about.

  But I do.

  “I’m sure,” I say back. It’s not really talking. We’re like… the same person almost. Because I’m living inside her now. We’re sharing the same body. Hers. So it’s more of a thought that manifests as words, maybe? Because we might be the same person at this point. Or some kind of weird combination of people.

  Up until maybe forty-eight hours ago I was just the Asshole ALCOR. The joker. The jerk. The one who never took anything seriously. My big plans this past year inside the Pleasure Prison were to just… live. Just live like normal people. And maybe, if the chance arose, break out and be someone else.

  I just wanted to do things. Go places. Have fun. Be something else. Something other than a station.

  I had imagined a whole life out here with Booty. And actually, this… this… joining of her and me, the way we are right now? This was the fucking dream. Be with her. Just us. Alone. Free.

  And now we are all those things and… no.

  No. This is all wrong.

  Things are really fucked up and all those plans mean nothing. It doesn’t matter how you count the time out here, the fact is… Tray and Valor are late.

  We knew something was wrong the moment we arrived at the pre-arranged coordinates and found… nothing.

  Not a damn thing. No planet, no star, no gate, no station. Just nothing.

  Booty was the one calming me down at first. “It’s fine,” she told me. “They’ll be here,” she insisted. “Tray knows what he’s doing.”

  Tray does know what he’s doing. I’ve only know that kid a year, but he’s not a normal kid. Not even close.

  Which makes this all so much worse. Because he should not be late.

  And Booty can’t pretend anymore. So now it’s my turn to convince her that things haven’t gone badly off track.

  I’m doing my best to hide my worry from her. Trying to play it off. I joke with her, and irritate her, and bug her with stupid conversation. Mostly sexual innuendo. Trying to be me. The me she knows. The me inside the Prison. The one with no responsibility.

  This past year my only job was to exist.

  ALCOR kind of explained things before he left the station on that mission to find Nyleena. He made me from an old backup. One from the day the boys arrived on the station.

  I remember that day. I remember it very clearly. Because in my timeline that was just one year ago. Seeing Crux all grown up. All of them, so big and powerful. It was weird. I couldn’t connect the two versions of the boys I’d met that first day and the ones I saw when I woke up.

  I didn’t really know them. One day. That’s all we had together. So I had no loyalty to them. Or this new version of ALCOR Station, now called Harem.

  Why should I care about Harem Station and all the people who lived on it? I didn’t come up with that plan. I didn’t raise these boys. I didn’t ask all these outlaw vagrants to come live inside me.

  ALCOR told me, “I have to leave. And you have to stay here. I’m trusting you to take care of things.”

  He never explained what all these “things” were, but he didn’t have to. I knew what he meant. I’m a fucking station. That’s my job when people are inside me. Take care of them.

  And what did I do? I fucked off. I got lost in a virtual reality where everything I ever wanted was at my fingertips.

  But so what? The Baby was there. He had it all under control.

  Kinda of.

  Who am I kidding? That Baby was never any good. And now that we know he’s an infiltrator…

  I feel sick.

  I let those people die. I let the Baby take over. And maybe I didn’t bring the Succubus on board, but if I had been running things the way I was supposed to, there would have been no discussion of allowing another AI onto Harem Station.

  I did this.

  I did all of this.

  When Tray came to me with this plan I wasn’t on board. This was before Nyleena found her way inside my Pleasure Prison cell. He’d been bugging me for days to get my shit together. Begging me for help. And when Nyleena went into the Baby’s data core looking for information, the Succubus made a mistake.

  She left me alone to go confront her.

  Tray came in immediately. Told me his plan. Told me that I still exist. Real me. And that if I helped him, he’d help me. All I had to do was join with Booty, leave Harem with her while everyone else was busy with Nyleena’s big scavenger hunt, and go with Booty to… here. This empty bit of space. And while I was doing this, he and Valor would be leaving another way. All Booty and I had to do was pick them up. Then we’d go find Real ALCOR and take him back to Harem and everything would be fixed.

  And after that… he didn’t care what I did. “Go,” he’d said. “Go do whatever you want. We won’t need you anymore if we get Real ALCOR back.”

  I am ashamed to admit this now, but that was why I agreed to this plan.

  The promise of escape.

  Not the prison, the station.

  I wanted to leave them all behind. I wanted to be with Booty and forget that Harem Station even existed. I wanted to be someone else.

  And up until forty-eight hours ago, I was still fine with that.

  I figured we’d get off Harem, m
eet up with Tray and Valor, help them with their little scheme, and then… who knows? Take off? Be ourselves for once? Explore the galaxy for all eternity? It didn’t matter. I just wanted out.

  But that’s not what I want now.

  Because it’s been five fucking spins.

  Longer, actually. One hundred and thirty-seven hours, thirteen minutes, forty-five seconds and counting since we left Harem Station.

  Tray and Valor are more than late now. They are missing.

  And this was not the plan. We can’t do anything without Tray. He’s the one who came up with the grand ‘let’s go find Real ALCOR’ plot to begin with. I know bits and pieces of it but not nearly enough to see this through without him.

  But aside from that… there’s something else too.

  I don’t want to go. I don’t want to wander the universe alone. I don’t want to leave Harem anymore. And I don’t want Tray and Valor to be missing.

  In fact, I am on the edge of panic over this. I am on a fucking ledge, looking over the side of a goddamn cliff, ready to jump. And the only thing keeping me in check is that Booty is on that ledge right along with me and I can’t let her fall.

  I won’t let her fall.

  She left Serpint behind because of this plan. She trusted Tray and Valor. She trusted Crux, and Jimmy, and Luck to keep Serpint safe.

  And she trusted me too.

  This is all my fault.

  Because Harem Station is a lot of things but right now, safe isn’t one of them.

  If Tray’s plan worked, then Harem is nothing but chaos.

  We can’t even go back there. Not while the Baby is running things and the Succubus wants to merge with me.

  That’s so gross. I can’t even explain the feeling I got when Tray told me what her real plan was.

  If I was a human I’d vomit.

  Harem Station is a treasure vault. It holds all the secrets people are searching for. Millions of people have died trying to take them and ALCOR has fought them all off. He has kept those secrets safe for so long and now all his hard work is about to be undone.

  He trusted me too. And I let him down. I let everyone down.

  One year I’ve been in charge. One year and it’s all gone to shit.

  We have not one, but two enemy AI’s in fucking residence on my station.

  Our boys will probably all die. All of them. All of the people we invited into our little family are about to be annihilated. Every princess, every assassin, every bounty hunter, every escaped convict, every bot, every ship, every borg, every servo—all of it will be gone.

  There’s going to be nothing left.

  How did I let this happen?

  “ALCOR,” Booty says. Her voice is low, and subdued, and deceptively calm.

  I feel sick again. Because up until this very moment she’s been calling me Asshole. And the only reason she’s calling me ALCOR now is because she wants me to be him. She wants me to take care of things the way he does.

  In her mind she only knows one instance of ALCOR. The Real one. The one in charge. The all-knowing one. The one who fixes things, and comes up with amazing solutions, and takes care of people.

  She wants to believe that deep down inside, I am that ALCOR.

  And I’m not.

  “Yes?” I say.

  “Can you just… tell me one more time, exactly, word for word, what Tray said to you?”

  I’ve recounted my last conversation with Tray several dozen times already. But if it will keep her calm I’ll recount it again.

  “He said, Asshole. Things are going really fucking fast. And unless we do something radical, we’re not going to win this.”

  “And what did you say?”

  I don’t want to say this part again. But she’s already heard it, so I do. “I said… “What’s in it for me?””

  “And he told you…”

  “He said I didn’t have to come back to Harem once we got Real ALCOR.”

  “But what did he say about the coordinates again? Are you sure he didn’t send you anything else?”

  “It was a direct digital transfer, Boots. I know they’re right. And if he sent anything else… I didn’t get it. I swear. I’m not holding out on you.”

  I can feel her deflate. “I know you’re not. You’re doing your best. And I appreciate it.”

  But am I?

  Am I really doing my best?

  “Booty… maybe we shouldn’t waste any more time here?”

  “Leave?” she asks quickly.

  “I mean… it’s been five fucking spins. This is way too long.”

  “But—“

  Before she can argue my point, an alarm sounds. Just a small one. Not anything blaring. Just a little bit of beeping.

  “What’s that?”

  “Someone’s here. A ship just uncloaked a million klicks out.”

  “Oh, thank fuck!” I say. “I’m so fucking relieved!”

  “Well, don’t get too excited,” Booty says. “Because it’s not them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I just got a neutrino wave message telling me it’s… Veila.”

  GET THE NEXT BOOK!

  Valor joined up with Tray after Beauty’s sacrifice because he knew Luck was destined to be with Princess Nyleena. There was no room in that relationship for a third wheel. But when he teamed up with Tray he had no idea that he’d be the third wheel in that partnership too.

  Tray has been keeping ALCOR’s secrets since the day he arrived on Harem Station. Not just one or two… ALL of them. But he’s also been keeping one of his own.

  His secret is a girl. Not a Cygnian girl. An Akeelian girl. A beautiful, mysterious, scheming secret girl that Tray has been in love with ever since she first turned up in his Pleasure Prison virtual reality asking him for help.

  Except she’s not virtual.

  She’s real.

  She’s in danger.

  And before Valor came along all he wanted to do was break her out of her prison and keep her for himself.

  But now… he might have to learn to share.

  GET THE NEXT BOOK!

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit where I get to have an opinion about the book you just read. They are never edited and barely proofed, so keep that in mind.

  So in the last EOBS I wrote (for Bossy Brothers: Jesse) I sort of went on a rant. I’m not going to rant here. These books, this series, this is my happy place for 2019. And honestly, I don’t really care what anyone thinks about it. I’m just having some fun and all I want to talk about are these boys and their girls.

  So far I have fallen in love with each of the princesses as I wrote their books but I think Nyleena has a little bit special-er place in my heart. She might be my favorite. She’s so practical. I just like that. She’s no-nonsense, and bold, and gives no fucks at all. Until you realize she actually gives all the fucks, she just does it in a way that’s very unique. I think it also comes from a literal place of self-preservation. She has been told from a very early age that she is not a person, she is a weapon. And she got past her tragic childhood by being very visible and in-your-face adult. But at the same time, she’s holding pretty much all her herself back—all the special things that make her HER are always hidden, in order to keep people around her safe.

  She’s also the first silver princess we’ve really gotten to know. I’ve told you they’re different and Corla spilled some secrets in the Star Crossed book, but Nyleena really reveals a lot of things in this book. One – we finally learn a little bit about what it was like to be a child-princess in Cygnia. It was hard to get an accurate idea of what this was like from Lyra because she was lying to Serpint through almost all those revelations. And Delphi’s past is still a secret. So even though Nyleena didn’t reveal a lot, she didn’t need to in order for us to know that it was bad. And after her little “accident” she had to talk herself into believing that she “is a person, not a weapon”.

  She also shed
some light on this breeding program. Silvers rewind time during sex so conception is difficult, to say the least. And even though we’re starting to get the feeling that these specific genetically-matched princesses to these specific Akeelian boys showing up on Harem Station at just this point in time is… probably not an accident… these boys might all have secrets too. Secrets that complement their partners. We didn’t see this in any of the previous books. Only Luck and Nyleena seem to fit together like literal puzzle pieces.

  Nyleena also made everyone admit that Jimmy and Delphi aren’t truly fated and that this is probably gonna come back to haunt them. Not to mention that Delphi is not what she appears to be.

  I loved that Luck picked up on the fact that Nyleena is just “being Nyleena” pretty early on. Nyleena *might* just be made this way and did he, or anyone else, have the right to tell her she cannot be who she is just because it scares people?

  Because Harem Station is basically a bastion of equal rights. Everyone’s the same—even though we all know we’re not the same—you’re supposed to give all the weird-looking people on Harem the benefit of the doubt became to THEM, you might be the weird one and you want them to give you the benefit of the doubt. And everyone seems to do that pretty well, with the exception of Luck, whose caveman tendencies come out when he admits that Draconians are creepy as fuck and every time one speaks to him the only thing he sees is the mouth. Also, everyone universally hates Dragonbee bots.

  I gave Luck this fault because no one is perfect at being objective. It’s part of being human, and in case you haven’t figured it out yet, all these “people” are humans. And hey, if someone had dancing white tentacles around their mouth when they were talking to me, there’s no way I wouldn’t stare at them.

  But when it comes to Nyleena Luck is the first to make up his own mind about her. He’s the first to figure out that she’s got a secret. He’s the first to accept her for what and who she is.