Ship Called Malice

by Rebecca Royce

  I bet I could fix this one and it wouldn’t need to be entirely replaced.

  “Good morning, Priscilla.” Jordan smiled at me. “Did you sleep okay?”

  They’d all asked. It was kind of… cute. “I did. Really well, thanks. Did you all sleep okay?”

  All three of them nodded. Bo touched my arm. “Feeling better?”

  “Why was she feeling badly?” River looked between Bo and me.

  “I was an ass and made her cry.”

  Jordan jumped to his feet. “What?”

  I held out my hand. “I cry really easily. He didn’t do anything wrong. I was being rude.”

  Jordan pointed at Bo. “Unacceptable.”

  “All right.” River banged on the table. “Everyone sit. Now.”

  Grateful for the end of that discussion, I took his direction and plopped down in the closest chair. I couldn’t imagine even considering not obeying River. Jordan and Bo both sat but not as fast as I had. Bo crossed his arms, and Jordan shook his head.

  It was the latter who finally spoke. “If you think you’re giving orders, Sandler, we’ll have to go over how things are again.”

  River held his hands up. “Relax. I need to get some things out. That’s all.”

  Jordan must have accepted that answer. He nodded before he winked at me. My cheeks heated. I was probably all red again. I forced myself to turn my attention to River. He was a beautiful man, and he held attention really well.

  “I’ve had some time to think about our conversation last night.” He made eye contact with each of us. “We did so much spontaneous stuff in the last few days, so out of the ordinary to us, that I didn’t react properly. I apologize, Priscilla, if I in any way made you feel unwanted here.”

  He stopped speaking, and it took me a moment to realize he actually wanted a response. “Oh, that’s okay. I… I must be a bit of a surprise. Here you think you’re rescuing someone from a kidnapping and a lifetime as a sex slave, and instead you get a girl whose own family doomed her to it. Not quite the same scenario.”

  River’s gaze hardened. “I’d still have done it.”

  “You looked like… an angel.” Jordan grinned at me. “We all saw you even before you went down. The three of us were struck dumb and that never happens to all three of us with any woman.”

  River never gave me a chance to respond. “Be that as it may”—he cleared his throat. He seemed to do that a lot. Was it some kind of nervous tic?—“I think we need to consider things, and we need to give Priscilla a way out. I would never want you to feel stuck, like you didn’t have other options. I’ve seen too much of that.”

  This conversation was way out of my depth. I wanted to say the right things and at the same time make sure I was honest in my responses. I really hoped I didn’t end up crying again. “A way out?”

  “Marriage is all about consent. All parties have to say yes, be that one-to-one or plural.”

  This time I interrupted him. “Not where I’m from.”

  “Well, it should be.” This was the first time Bo spoke since sitting. He swiveled around in his chair. “Everyone involved should get to say yes or no without feeling they have a gun to their head.”

  I really hoped Bo wasn’t currently feeling like he had a gun to his head. We hardly knew each other, and maybe we shouldn’t be married. The scene I’d made in the storage area probably hadn’t helped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with him, but it bothered me to think he might not want me.

  And even in my own head, I knew that didn’t make any sense. Okay.

  “Right, and Priscilla had no consent. She never would have. The slavers and her family took it away. She wasn’t even conscious to marry us. We need her to have some time to decide if she even likes us, wants to spend her time pirating the quadrant, or if she’d like a very different life. To that end, I read and read the intranets last night.”

  Bo leaned forward. “Have you slept?”

  “No. That’s neither here nor there.” River rubbed his forehead.

  “Sure it is. You only get to acting like king of the manor when you haven’t slept.” Bo groaned. “I hate that I know that.”

  River took a deep, audible breath. “I’m not even going to respond to that. The point here is I’ve found a safe place we could take Priscilla. It’s a place on the border of Earth space called Francesicina. It’s a small reserve where they take in women who have nowhere else to go. The planet, Zeta Four, supports the facility. This is real; it’s not fantastical. We’re going to head there. It’ll take two weeks. In that time, Priscilla, you can decide if we are what you want, and we’ll do the same with you. How does that sound? That way if the answer is a resounding no, then you have somewhere to go where you will not be stuck.”

  Jordan drummed his fingers on the table. “There will be several stations between here and there where we can make sales.”

  “Right. Then it might take us three weeks, but same idea.”

  Bo cleared his throat. “That would certainly take care of the consent problem.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  All of their gazes fell on me. I had to answer. “If everyone is comfortable with this, then I am, too.”

  “Good, then it’s settled.” River nodded before he yawned.

  Jordan rose. “I’ll go set the course.”

  And just like that, we had three weeks to know each other… or part forever.

  I made a survey of the ship. Their cargo rooms, of which there were three, were in perfect shape. They obviously cared about the condition of the goods they were selling in the black market. I wondered if everyone did or if these guys were simply more fastidious pirates.

  Other than that, the guys didn’t seem to care very much what their living spaces looked like or if it was all falling down around them. Well, they seemed to spend a lot of time working on the ship itself. The engine room was clean, and to my completely untrained ear, everything sounded as though it was running smoothly. Nothing groaned, nothing squeaked. A low, constant hum filled the air and even in less than a day awake on the ship, I didn’t hear it anymore.

  Unlike on the slaver’s bigger vessel, I didn’t feel like I might fall out of the sky on Malice.

  Since I was going to stay, even just three weeks, I was going to clean this place up for them. It wouldn’t take much. I’d seen that they had wood, hammers, and screws in the storage rooms. Did the wood bring some kind of profit? I thought my parents had said, on occasion, that there were places where there was a shortage of wood. The corporations had stripped them bare. Everything that could go to Earth went to Earth.

  That was how things had always gone.

  I ran into River during my inventory of the state of the laundry facility. The counters, where presumably a person was to fold clothes, had collapsed. I wasn’t sure I could match the wood in here. I might have to make new shelves altogether.

  He carried a basket full of clothes. “Oh, hey.” He cleared his throat. “Do you need to do laundry? I can wait.”

  “Not yet. Since Bo gave me some clothes, I’m good for a while.” This wasn’t my ship, and I was basically a guest. I really needed permission to do what I’d spent the last hours cataloging. “Would it be okay if I fixed your furniture? I like to do it, and I think I could certainly contribute that way.”

  River Sandler—and I really needed to ask him if he was somehow connected to the Sandler Space I heard about occasionally or just named for it—made me want to justify my existence. I didn’t know anything about him. We’d barely spoken and yet I already felt as though I might be behind on some race I hadn’t known I was participating in.

  I wanted him to look at me with those blue eyes, and when I looked back, I wanted to see happiness in them. He should be pleased I was in the room.

  He looked at the shelf. “I guess we have let this place go to hell a bit.” He shrugged. “If you want to, go for it.”

  “Okay, then I will.”

  The ship jarred slightly bef
ore it tilted portside. River dropped his clothes and grabbed me in his arms, holding me close to him until Malice righted itself. I gasped. “Are we under attack?”

  “If we were under attack, Jordan would sound the alarm. No, this area is loaded with space junk. Some of it is salvageable and sellable. He must have seen something he wanted and stopped us to go get it. If you don’t have space legs, you don’t roll with it all that well.”

  It was right then I realized he smelled like cinnamon. I took a deep breath to really bring his scent into my lungs. He was quiet for a second, and I wondered if he noticed. I glanced up at River before I pulled out of his embrace. He had a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. I really didn’t spend very much time with men.

  I wasn’t sure I could ever understand how they thought about things.

  “Why do you smell like cinnamon?”

  He blinked, and then he grinned at me. I could get lost in that smile. “The soap I use has a touch of that scent. Is it too much? I like the smell.”

  “It’s… lovely.” I stepped back. “So how will you get the stuff out of space?”

  He scratched his chin. “Out of space? Oh, Jordan and the space junk. Come on, I’ll show you.” He extended his hand, and I took it.

  We walked together to the other side of the ship. There was a window to the outside. All I could see was the vast darkness of space. “Stand right there.” He moved so I could be in the center of the window. I swallowed. There really was nothing out there, not even any air. Space was unforgiving and never ending. Soon, the lights turned on. I heard a clicking noise, and a claw extended from somewhere on the outside of Malice. The claw traveled in front of my line of vision then vanished. A few seconds later, the clicking sounded again. This time, the claw came back holding something in its grasp. I took a deep breath. I was sure there was a lesson there somewhere about blackness and light. But, all I could think about right then was how cool it was that this ship had a giant claw.

  3

  Getting To Know You

  I stared at the device they’d pulled inside. It was about half the size of the view screen my parents had in their bedroom. We were never allowed to use it. It came up to my knees. “What is it?”

  Jordan ran his hand over the box they’d brought in from space. “It belongs on Oscar Corporation’s ships. They must have unloaded it when they were under attack by less talented pirates than us. Whatever is inside this box, it was important enough they preferred to lose their ship than this box.”

  “Whoever attacked them were rank amateurs.” Bo ran his knuckles over the top. “They probably didn’t even notice.”

  “You guys always notice?” Since they’d both touched it, I went ahead and did it, too. The metal was smooth and cold.

  River nodded. “One of us hangs back in a small shuttle and watches. They expel their precious stuff, we take it.”

  “Is it a battle? Do they fight back?”

  Jordan put his hand on my back. “Not usually. Every once in a while, they’re carrying something they know they can’t lose. Then they fight. Most of the time, these ship captains aren’t going to risk their life, their ship, or their crew for their cargo that doesn’t belong to them. They’re carriers, nothing more. They stop the ship. Let us board. Sometimes they even hand us what we want. And they move on.”

  Bo clicked a button on a small tablet, and a machine came down from the ceiling. It had a saw blade, bigger and sharper than any I’d ever seen. Instinctually, I stepped back and bumped River.

  “Sorry.” I had to get more competent moving around these guys.

  He shrugged. “No harm done.”

  Bo picked up a pair of safety glasses and put them on. “It’s going to get loud in here. We’ll call you back when we see the stash.”

  Jordan put his hand on my back and ushered me from the room. I guessed Bo and River were going to work on the box. What kinds of things were so important they had to be expelled from a ship under attack? What thing could be so important it would be worth risking a life?

  “I got River’s okay to go ahead and fix some of your furniture. Is it okay with you, too?”

  Jordan raised his dark eyebrows. “You want to fix the furniture? We can probably get new stuff. I never think about the stuff.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “Can we see if I can fix it first? It’s really what I liked to do at home.”

  “Well, if you liked to do it, then sure.” He followed me back into the small conference room with its ramshackle table. I was going to have to take it apart to fix it, which meant I had to get tools first. I backed out of the room, Jordan following me the entire time, and finally returned to the room when I had what I needed.

  Jordan was quiet, but it didn’t feel off to have him with me all the time. I stopped and took the crystal out of my pocket. “I don’t want anything to happen to this while I work. Would you mind holding it?”

  His long fingers closed around the crystal. “Sure. We need to find a better way for you to carry it than just in your pocket. I suppose it’s too big for you to just carry around. Maybe we could shape it into some jewelry for you.”

  I shook my head. “First, I’m not sure I really should have accepted this.”

  “You should. You’re my wife.” He held my gaze, refusing to let me look down when I would have. “Don’t be uncomfortable with that. We’re all going to get there, to the place where it feels like it was meant to be and where you can hear wife without looking like you want to run away.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Jordan’s sweet belief in this whole thing working out was refreshing, and he’d read me absolutely correctly. “Okay. But please don’t do anything to that crystal. I don’t want it to ever really change. I don’t want it to lose the rawness of it.”

  If Jordan thought that was weird, he didn’t say anything, instead he simply nodded. I got down on the floor under the table to look at how it had been screwed together. It didn’t take me long to realize this might prove to be simpler than I’d expected it to be. The table might really just need some new screws and a slight adjustment. I wasn’t going to have to cut any wood at this point.

  My husband knelt down next to me. “Amazing that we don’t have a better way to do this just yet. This really has to be done by hand?”

  “No, I’m sure there are better ways to do this. On the farm where we grew up, we had to do this stuff by hand because my father was never going to pay for the right machines to come in and do it.” I grabbed the electric screwdriver—so much nicer than the one I had at home—and started. Raising my voice slightly so Jordan could hear me, I asked him an obvious question I should have voiced before now. “Why aren’t you still on your planet finding these crystals?”

  He moved slightly, no longer kneeling next to me but rather sitting straight down on the floor. “I had to leave there. I got accused of stealing, which I hadn’t done. It’s funny. As it is, I steal now. But back then? I wouldn’t have considered it. They came to arrest me. I still think about who might have taken all that gold from the overseers. It wasn’t me. But they were sure it was. Someone had named me. I’ll never know who. They’d have killed me. I’m nothing if not full of a real sense of self-preservation. I fought back. Killed a man. Then there was no choice but to run. I got to the nearest town, stowed away—which by the way, other than killing that man who wanted to take me to jail, was the first time I broke the law—and got out of there. I got caught half-way to the Space Station Miranda. The captain didn’t have me arrested. I think he felt sorry for me. Then he left me there. I worked on that station for a while until River and Bo came along.”

  While he spoke, I worked on the table until I had to take the top of it off and move it aside. He moved then to help me as though I couldn’t hold it myself. Maybe other females would have needed the help. I wasn’t one of them, but the small smile on Jordan’s face told me he really wanted to move the top of the table for me.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodde
d. “You’re welcome.”

  “How long have you guys all been together?” It seemed like it had been a very long time.

  “Twenty-years.” He shook his head. “We’re forty. Probably too old for you?”

  The thought must have just dawned on him. “I’m twenty-two. Maybe I’m too young for you?”

  He cupped the side of my face with one of his hands, smoothing his thumb on my skin. “And all of this time you’ve been sitting on a farm just waiting to be taken off where we found you. How is that possible? How could you have been there the whole time I knew Bo and River? How could that time have been your lifespan?”

  “I think technically I was two.” I knew that was an inane answer, but I didn’t know what to say.

  His grin was slow, and it moved through me. “We’re old men. Somehow, day-by-day, we got busy. We were never going to have wives. I don’t know how your father got your mother, but men from the Dark Planets don’t get women unless they do something drastic to find them. River is from a place where he could have had a wife. That didn’t work out for various reasons. I’d stopped thinking about more than casual encounters a long time ago. Yet, here you are. If I’m too old, tell me now.”

  There was nothing about Jordan, River, or Bo that looked ‘old.’ They were the most viscerally attractive men I’d ever encountered, each one of them gorgeous in a way the others weren’t. “You’re not too old, Jordan. I think you’re… I don’t have the words.” I rose on tiptoes and kissed his lips gently. “I was raised with a very specific set of skillsets. I may not be right for you. I don’t know anything about pirating or spaceships, but I can plant you some crops and clean your house.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He kissed my temple. “I think we’re going to suit just fine.” He took a deep breath and stepped back. “Now, what can we do about this table?”

  When all was said and done, fixing the table didn’t take very long at all. The chairs were a different matter. They were going to need to be sanded and painted. We had the tools to sand them on board. The paint, we did not. Jordan promised to get us some the next time we stopped at a space station.