The Melier (Women of Dor Nye Book 1)

by Poppy Rhys

  “Which language is it?”

  “Trade language Lotyne, Loo-Sha.” There were three trade languages; English, Lotyne and Za. Za was the worst. A language with lots of whining and mewling that some considered beautiful and elegant. Lucia considered it a quick way to the asylum.

  “I can’t read Lotyne,” she sighed, still glaring up at Soren. She could only read English, though she could speak all trade languages fluently.

  “I can, Loo-Sha,” Soren smiled and his stark white teeth against his cobalt skin gleaned down at her. Their predatory sharpness took her by surprise. His double incisors were abnormally long and thick, fitting into grooves in his jaw. The rest of his teeth looked like razors, ready to tear and render flesh from bone. She ripped her gaze from Soren’s teeth and made a mental note to keep her fingers far from his mouth. “I am able to read all trade languages, but it is difficult to vocalize them.”

  Lucia snorted. Don’t we make a pair? I can speak them, he can read them. “Great. So let’s get down to business. Help me out of this damn crate.” Her fingers reached up, that being the extent of her strength. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if he was going to help her, so she waved her raised hand around to make him pay attention. Her eyes popped open when she felt his warm, textured skin slide under her palm. The massive hand enclosed hers, gripping her wrist as well in its coverage. In the next moment, four hands were placed about her body; two around her flared hips, one along her wrist, the other along her spine between her shoulder blades. A small sound escaped her lips as she was lifted and set upright outside of the crate. All hands left her just as quickly, causing her to reach out and grip the crates edge for balance.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled and then cleared her throat. “Now, I need that wooden box in the middle.” Lucia just had this tingly feeling there was something in there she wanted. Call it her experience after five years of bounty hunting. When she got the itch in her palms, she knew she found something.

  When Soren didn’t immediately move, she gazed back up at him and caught his eyes. The slit pupils were fully dilated, causing his entire eye to turn black. The unsettling obsidian orbs made her spine snap ramrod straight. “Soren?”

  He blinked. Blinked again. The pupils slowly retracted until they were rounded diamond shapes. “Yes, Loo-Sha,” he responded and immediately turned to lift the wooden box like it weighed nothing. Setting it down before her feet, he popped the top easily and then took a step back.

  That was weird. Lucia gave him another sized up glance before sinking down to her haunches and brushing back the straw covering of whatever was in the box.

  “Eeeee!” she shrieked in excitement, vaguely noticing Soren cover his ears. She shook her fingers in front of her, squealing in delight at the contents. Tentatively, her digits skimmed the spines of the five tomes before her. “Oh man,” she breathed. “These are first editions!” The overwhelming hesitation to touch them almost had her closing the box back up. The spines were soft, made from weqna beast skin. Beasts so vicious, illusive and master predators, it was hard to hunt them at all. Their meat was a delicacy, their hides sold for thousands of credits but it was rare you ever saw them for sale. Only true warriors from the YutYut galaxy planets ever had the gall to go after such beasts and often kept their hides as show of their prowess.

  Lucia could retire if she sold these tomes.

  But I can’t sell these! They’re so precious…and they’re classic YutYut tales, at that.

  Yes Lu, sell them.

  No, she inwardly battled and whined.

  Do you enjoy getting shot at? Her inner logical self-questioned. It was hard to argue with that.

  Grrr, the bitch is always right.

  I know I am.

  “Loo-Sha?” Soren’s worried voice interrupted her comeback and she dragged her gaze from the tomes.

  “What Soren? I’m kind of busy here in a battle of wills.”

  How about I keep four and sell one?

  No.

  Three?

  Nope.

  I’ll keep one and sell four. I need at least one, damn it!

  Contemplative silence.

  Fine. One.

  Her shit eating grin of glee probably freaked Soren out, since she was still staring at him during her inner monologue. Lucia’s lips slipped back to normal as she got a grip on herself. He looked torn between saying anything more and running for his life. Lucia stood and waved a hand. “Okay Soren, let’s figure out what else is in this hold.”

  He looked immensely relieved. He must’ve really thought I was planning something diabolical.

  No, just losing your goddamned mind.

  Ugh, shut the fuck up.

  ****

  An hour later, Lucia was sprawled over the top of a crate, fighting to keep awake as Soren droned on. The inventory was going to bring her enough credits to comfortably float for the next ten space terms, or ten Dor Nye years, at least. She yawned and stretched like a contented pet, luxuriating in her spoils. The Treps would be hoppin’ mad that she’d stolen this craft if they were still alive. Good. Hmph.

  “Loo-Sha?” Lucia cracked an eyelid open and startled at Soren’s hovering face so close to hers.

  “Soren, we need to discuss personal space. You and I have very different ideas about the bubble.”

  “What bubble, Loo-Sha?”

  “My point exactly!” Lucia pulled herself up into a sitting position, and Soren thankfully took a step backward. “We can finish going over what’s left of the inventory tomorrow. I’m beat.”

  “Who beat you?” Soren’s muscles rippled under his skin.

  “Not literally,” Lucia waved a hand. She was beginning to understand Soren couldn’t comprehend sarcasm. “It means I’m tired, wiped out, exhausted.”

  Understanding lit his features. Ding. “I am beat too.” Lucia bit the inside of her cheek to keep a straight face. The blue beasty was kind of growing on her.

  “Captain?” Wade’s smooth, synthesized vocals came through the ships hidden speakers.

  “Yes, Wade?”

  “I have reached communication with Trey, Mima and Raz. Would you like me to-“

  “Vid in command!” Lucia ordered and hopped from the crate in a mad dash to the stairs. Anticipation coursed through her veins as she shot up the steps and through the hall and galley. She grabbed the back of the command chair, stumbling in her attempt to slow down. The shield of the crafter lit up, Raz’s ugly mug coming through.

  “Lucia!” he exclaimed, a sigh of relief –she hoped- slipping.

  “Oh my stars!” Lucia replied. “I thought you were dead, for sure! Where is Mima and Trey? How did you make it out? Is everyone alive? Did the Treps get blown to smithereens?”

  “Slow down Lu,” he held up a hand. “Mima and Trey are fine, now. One of the Treps bit her and dislocated her shoulder. It was a bloody mess, and it’s amazing she didn’t lose the arm. We found the escape pods and landed on Bolnar Pan. She’s in the medical unit right now, but they said she’ll be fine in a week.”

  Lucia shivered, thinking about how painful it would be to get bitten by a Trepnil. Their teeth were like long needles in their elongated, scaly snouts. All their drool would be a festering pool of bacteria, she imagined.

  “Hey Lu,” Trey stuck his head in front of the vid, waving and disappearing again.

  “As you can see, Trey’s fine. Most of the Treps are space food. Their ship was obliterated.” Lucia felt her way into the command chair and sagged against it. “Where are you, and who or what is that?”

  For a moment, Lucia wasn’t sure what Raz was talking about until she realized he was looking past her. She leaned over the arm of the chair and noticed the slave. “Oh, that’s Soren. He was fixing the sensors when I took this craft. I’m headed to Dor Nye.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Oh, you have no idea,” Lu grinned and proceeded to tell him what most of the inventory consisted of. Of course, she didn’t say anything about the tomes she found. Let’s
just call it a finder’s fee. The profits from those tomes were going to support her until she figured out what else she wanted to do for a living, if anything at all. Maybe she’d just laze around Zar Tu’s lush resort at the capital, sipping ular fruit cocktails the rest of her days while Soren rubbed her feet. Lucia almost laughed, but her breath lodged in her throat at the winding tickle she felt at the thought of Soren’s textured, warm skin rubbing her feet and calves. Her thighs squished together.

  You’ve gone overboard, fantasizing about a blue monkey. You need a man, just like mama always says.

  It’s baboon and don’t bring mama into this. I definitely don’t need the man she has in mind for me. Lucia shivered, thinking about the pretty idiot her mother had been urging her to partner with.

  “Lu? Lu?” Raz waved a hand over the vid screen.

  “Hmm?”

  “I said I have to go, but I’ll comm again when Mima is awake.”

  “Okay!” she squeaked, waved and shut down the comm.

  Lucia jumped at the sound of a low groan. Leaning back over the arm of the chair, she noticed Soren closer than he was a few minutes ago. His eyes were black again. It freaks me the fuck out… “Sor-”

  “I smell you, Loo-Sha,” he ground out, his straight nose with its slightly wider nostrils flared repeatedly as he scented the air. It dawned on her that Trepnil ships only ever had males on them, aside from any captures the Treps might get their hands on. Soren’s probably never been around a woman or female anything.

  “Soren…” she started out slowly in a warning tone. She squished her thighs together again when her eyes dipped to the straining appendage at the juncture of his suit. Lucia shot up out of her chair like a lightning bolt, keeping the command chair between her and Soren as a safety precaution. “Control yourself,” she bit out in her best assertive tone.

  Slowly, his pupils retreated back to their regular shape and Lucia dared not look to see if anything else on his body went back to normal. “Now,” she calmly said. “I’m going to get some sleep. You should too.”

  Carefully skirting Soren, Lucia went back through the galley and swiped the panel to the sleeping quarters. Upon entering, she turned around to swipe it closed and came face to belly button-less blue man. Baboon. Alien. IT! “W-what are you doing?!”

  “I am going to sleep, like Loo-Sha said to.”

  “Oh no. Oh-ho-ho-ho no. Not in here you aren’t.” And of course, he was inside the bubble again. She could hardly take a breath without his musky scent stuffing her head. She clamped a hand over her nose to prevent her body from incriminating her further. Pointing toward the door, she squeaked “Out!” The nasally sound of her voice was comical, but Soren seemed to heed it well. Lucia strode across the room to pull the blanket off the bed and shove it into Soren’s chest. He of course, didn’t budge. The last thing she saw was his confused face as the door slid shut.

  ****

  I have a name.

  He stared at the cabin door.

  I have never had a name before. I do not remember having a name.

  He blinked once, twice. A strange sensation plagued him, as if something was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t remember.

  Waking to enslavement is all I remember.

  He was not meant to think, only do.

  I am slave 892. I am a number. I do not have a name.

  He turned his head, searching the blank wall as if it had his life story written on it. But it wasn’t true anymore. He wasn’t just slave 892 any longer.

  Soren. I am now Soren.

  She honors me. Loo-Sha.

  He had never seen a human before. At least, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a human. Did all humans look like her?

  She is my new owner. She is strange. She seems… kind. Why is she kind?

  It made him nervous. He was afraid to think it wasn’t a trick or manipulation of some kind.

  Why does her scent make me burn? Her scent does strange things to my annex.

  He had a thought once. Weeks ago, while alone doing maintenance on the Trepnils ship. He’d wondered what he was. He did not look like the Trepnils, he did not look like any other slave. So he had accessed an informational database through the ships artificial intelligence. It scanned him and he learned about his species, about what he was and where he came from. He still couldn’t remember. When Commander Ta’Ra’Enn had found out, he received fifty lashes.

  He was not meant to think, only do.

  I touched her. She let me touch her. Loo-Sha.

  He’d never touched another being. Slaves didn’t touch one another. Slaves didn’t touch their masters. He wondered if all humans allowed touching.

  She makes painful noises with her throat but she seems happy when she does this.

  Why does she do this?

  The sound she emitted when she found the tomes hurt his ears so badly, he had to cover them. She excited easily and over strange things.

  Soren lay down outside of the cabin door, covering himself with the blanket his new owner had given him. She is kind, he repeated in his mind. Closing his eyes, he drifted to sleep wondering what ‘the bubble’ was.

  Chapter 3

  A groggy groan followed by a yawn pushed past Lucia’s lips, tripping the cabin sensors. The yellow tinted lights slowly dimmed awake, creating a soft glow in the otherwise very cold and clinical room. She tossed the sheet aside and steadily got to her feet. The nightmare she’d had left her in a sweaty mess. Treps chased her, captured her and started feasting on her while she was still alive and thrashing. I could feel their needle teeth scraping my bones. A small shiver shook her shoulders as the realization registered of how close yesterday’s call really was.

  Lucia swiped the door open and continued rubbing the sleep out of her eyes when her toes caught on something heavy and she pitched forward. On instinct, her arms threw themselves in front of her to help break the fall as she went down with a squawk of surprise. The mass under her grunted as her knees slammed into it and Lucia pushed herself up to turn her head.

  “Soren!” she exclaimed in bewilderment. Her legs were still draped over his chest and he looked just as shocked as she felt. “What are y- did you sleep there, outside my door?” His lower half was draped in the blanket she’d shoved at him last night, so he must’ve.

  “Yes, Loo-Sha.”

  Lucia lifted herself the best she could, her foot accidentally slamming into Soren’s cheek as she grappled for leverage. He grunted again and she was acutely aware she didn’t have on any pants. They were extremely uncomfortable last night, and while she’d slept like a baby outside of the nightmare, she suddenly wished she’d soldiered through it just to have her pants right then. As it was, she was left in her underwear and the dirty black tank she’d been wearing for three days now. This can’t be my life!

  Just as Lucia was to her knees and turning to face Soren, the ship lurched and they both went sliding across the shiny gray floor in a squeak of skin against polished surface to slam into the wall. It was Lucia’s turn to grunt. Soren’s heavily muscled body squished against her, essentially body slamming her and they both crumpled to the floor in a tangle of blanket and limbs.

  “WADE!” she screamed as best she could after sucking back some oxygen that had been flattened out of her on impact. Her small hands pushed at Soren’s body, trying to disentangle herself from him and the blanket. “What the hell is going on?!”

  Whack.

  Soren’s tail slapped her face as he moved to his feet. Lucia batted it away and stood abruptly, holding the wall for balance.

  This isn’t happening. I did not just get slapped by a tail!

  You did. So did.

  “Warp failed, captain. Ship is being hailed by Trepnil craft.”

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit!” she chanted and ran to the command room. “Wade, what galaxy are we in?”

  “We entered Rumka galaxy two hours ago, captain.”

  Rumka, Rumka, she wracked her brain, trying t
o think of which planets were in that galaxy and which ones were safe. “Wade, find the closest planet to land that has treaties with the Intergalactic Coalition.”

  “Yes, captain.” Lucia’s fingers tapped on the small table beside the command chair as she refrained from pacing. She figured the Treps would pursue her, but in the back of her mind, she had hoped they’d let it slide or think she was unimportant. “Planet Sanru has multiple treaties with the Intergalactic Coalition. Planet atmosphere is compatible with humans. It is five minutes from our current location.”

  “What about Melier?”

  “Sanru is compatible with Melier, captain.”

  The relief she felt was quick and replaced by a sense of urgency. “Set coordinates for Sanru, Wade and be ready to throw up shields and autopilot on my say. Connect comms with Trepnil ship, but not vid.”

  “Yes captain.”

  Lucia took a few calming breaths, rolled her shoulders and waited. Her nerves hackled when the Treps grating language blasted through the ships comms. If she never heard another Trep for the rest of her life, it would still be too soon.

  “You have something that belongs to me, vermin.” The voice was unmistakable.

  Ta’Ra’Enn.

  ****

  Soren schooled his features into a mask of complacency, as was his place. A slave wasn’t meant to think, or feel. Only do. The voice of his former master reminded him of this.

  Commander Ta’Ra’Enn is alive. He is not dead, as Loo-Sha said.

  He would be lashed for letting Lucia take the craft. He might be put to death, but not before they would make him watch as they ate the small human.

  Soren tried not to feel. His body shook with fear, not for himself, but for her. He wanted to tell her to run, and if not run, to walk off the ship into space. It would be less painful than what Commander Ta’Ra’Enn would do.

  I am a slave. It is not my place to advise. Only do.

  I should not feel, but I am afraid for Loo-Sha.

  ****

  Lucia turned to look at Soren. She felt the tension radiating off of him, even if his expression was blank. She couldn’t just hand him over. He’d probably be beaten or killed, all because he happened to be on the ship when she’d taken it.