by Dixon, Ruby
I smack his shoulder and storm off. "Forget I asked."
"I'm gonna kack up my breakfast all over your monitors if you ask me that sort of thing again," he calls after my back. "Night night!"
I head to my room, frustrated, and punch my pillow a few times imagining that it's Adiron's dopey face. Of all my brothers, I'm probably closest to him, but he's also the most irritating, unserious person I've ever met.
I should have asked Mathiras. He would have given me a straight answer, at least.
I punch my pillow again, but I'm more frustrated at the situation than at Adiron. I love my brothers. I do. I love them with every fiber of my being. Despite the fact that they're a trio of space pirates, they're the best men I've ever met. I'm eternally grateful that they've been so very good to me.
When I was ten, I was stolen from my bed in the middle of the night and woke up in a rundown space freighter with a bunch of adult women. Back then, I didn't know what was going on. Adult me now knows that I was kidnapped to be a pet—or sex slave—to be sold on the black market. The race that captured me—the szzt—work with a lot of other alien races to bring them slaves. Lucky for me, my three mesakkah brothers saw easy pickings and took over the ship. They dumped the humans off to the nearest trader and turned a profit, but they weren't interested in a child human (aka me) and so my brothers kept me for a while longer.
I think they thought I was cute, like a stray puppy.
After letting me run wild on their ship for a while, I vaguely remember sitting at Kaspar's nav station while he was on duty and distracted, and thinking that the maps that glided over the screen showing an endless sea of stars reminded me of video games from home. I started tapping things, trying to “win” the level, and when I didn't, I cussed a blue streak in mesakkah. I shocked all three brothers, who hadn't realized that I was listening to everything they said.
I had my mouth washed out with soap…and they kept me.
Over the years, we've become closer than family. Adiron, Kaspar and Mathiras have family back on Homeworld. The va Sithai name is an old, honorable one. But they don't go home much, and I get the impression their folks aren't happy with them, so they're content to stay out in space and run wild.
And I run wild with them. We're a great team. For the last ten years, the Little Sister (named after me) has been my home. The three brothers taught me how to speak mesakkah so I wouldn't have to rely on a translator, educated me in things I would actually need to know out in space, and have basically treated me like an equal despite my human status. I can change every filter in the Sister's engine, plot out a course across the galaxy, and shoot a blaster with accuracy. I can cuss in thirteen languages, play a mean game of Sticks, and eat more noodles than Adiron. I've taken over the navigation duties from Kaspar, who's happier being in charge of security and odd jobs than cooped up at the nav station all day long.
Here, I fit in. It doesn't matter that I'm a girl, or a human. My three big brothers have always made me feel welcome. Like I'm part of the team.
I know how rare and special that is, and I'm grateful. It's why I'll never leave them. They love me and I love them.
I'm lucky. I'm really lucky. Humans are considered contraband in every corner of the galaxy except the Sol solar system, where humankind lives blissfully unaware that space is teeming with aliens that dislike them (or only like them as slaves). I have to avoid notice by anyone that might drag me to the authorities, because humans confiscated by the law are never seen again.
At least other aliens only try to steal me as a sex toy.
My protective brothers are very aware that my humanity's a problem. It's why they were so insistent I learn mesakkah and nagged me about my pronunciation until I was able to speak fluently without much of an accent. My brothers don't even allow me to go without a disguise on the seediest of stations. It doesn't matter that the law won't be around—they don't want anyone else stealing me either. Every time I leave the ship, I have to be accompanied by one of them to protect me, and I'm armed to the teeth. I'm also dressed in heavy robes to hide my breasts and lack of tail, extremely tall shoes, and false horns. My face is disguised by a holo that works fine as long as no one touches me or gets too close. The holo makes me nervous, though, so most of the time I just stay on the ship.
And…even with the company of my brothers, it does get lonely. It shouldn't matter that sometimes the ship gets awfully quiet when I'm on an overnight by myself, or when they all head out to the nearest space station to spend some quality time in a cantina with space hoes. I try not to let it bother me that I don't have any female friends, or that I haven't kissed anyone. That the closest I'll ever get to romance is my stupid hand and a couple of sleazy porn vids I stole from Adiron's file dump.
Maybe that's why Sentorr's friendship is so precious to me. When I talk to him, I feel like a normal woman. Like I'm not a freak. With him, I'm sexy, bold, and confident. I'm bold around my brothers, of course, but…it's different.
I can't lose Sentorr or his friendship…which is why we can never, ever meet.
* * *
I inhale deeply, standing close to Mathiras so I don't trip over my enormous stilt-like shoes. "Ahh, smell that? I'd recognize that Three Nebulas funk anywhere."
My brother snorts and puts a hand on my shoulder. "Stay close. Hood on."
I just roll my eyes, because we've been to a hundred stations and the drill never changes. Robes on and high at the neck. Gloves over hands. No human skin showing. Holo on over my face, hood clasped over my fake horns to hide the fact that they're strapped to my head.
Oh, and when we're in public? I respond to the name Vanora. It's apparently the name of their sister back home that I've never met, who has three children and a mate and hates the thought of piracy. She'd never be out in the far reaches of space, slumming it on the docks of 3N with ooli and szzt and mesakkah everywhere. I watch with interest as a trandarian (aka lizard man) storms past in a swirl of cape, a contingent of armed a'ani clones at his side. "Someone's got important business," I murmur, my pirate's eye sizing him up.
"I'm liking what I see," Kaspar adds.
"Too many a'ani," Mathiras says in a clipped tone. "If he's got one troop with him, he'll have more."
Sure enough, the moment the words come out of my brother's mouth, another cluster of clones heads down the hall after the first, their bright red skin obvious even in the dirty lighting of the station.
"Kef it, I hate it when Mathiras is right," Adiron grumbles.
"Let's just get to our dock and meet our contacts," Mathiras says, all business. "This is my least favorite station."
"Ugliest hookers, too," Adiron adds, and Kaspar snickers.
"Gross," I chime in. "Stay classy, Adi."
"Don't make me noogie you," he says, tail flicking.
I regret the day I ever noogied him and showed him what it was. I make a face at him as the clones pass by, not even glancing in our direction.
"All of you, stop bickering," Mathiras says, pulling out his datapad. A ship nearby has just let out her passengers, and the low-ceilinged hall is currently flooding with all kinds of people of every shape and size, and we're forced to press against the wall to let them pass. Kaspar watches them with interest, but Mathiras ignores them, tapping away on his datapad. "Now that we've refueled, I'd prefer to conduct business quickly and get the kef out of here."
"No cantina?" Adiron asks, disappointment in his voice.
"No cantina," Mathiras agrees.
"You said they were ugly anyhow," Kaspar teases, his eye on the a'ani in the distance. No doubt he's trying to think of a way to overtake them and snatch the purse of their fat client. Kaspar likes terrible odds. He's as dumb as Adiron in his own way.
"You can still put your dick in ugly," I say, gesturing. "You just turn ’em around and—" I go quiet at Mathiras's glare and give him a meek look. "Just trying to be helpful."
Adiron chuckles.
"All of you, simmer down." He taps the data
pad again. "We've got two scores today if we play our cards right. Two deliveries. One's a passenger pickup at dock Twenty-Seven-B and the other's cargo at dock Two-Zed. I figure we can split up and take care of things."
"I'll take passengers," Kaspar says. Of course he would. He loves the excitement, since most of our passengers are the squirrelly sort.
"I'll go with…are they hot passengers?" Adiron asks, and we all ignore him.
"Good. I'll take Vanora with me since she's along." Mathiras doesn't need to say more. I never get to go on the more dangerous missions, and sometimes you have to bust the passengers out the hard way. I can't run for shit in these shoes, so it makes sense, but it's still disappointing.
I cross my arms. "Cargo it is. What kind of cargo?"
"Something about a shipment of Class II weaponry. I didn't get details from the Fool." He's already tucking his datapad away. "Come on."
I feel an icy haze wash move over me, like a wave of needles prickling down my spine. "The…what?" I'm suddenly having trouble breathing.
"What's the what?" Mathiras turns back to me, frowning.
"You deaf, dummy?" Adiron asks, reaching over to stick a big finger in my very human ear under my hood.
I swat his big hand away. "The ship," I manage to choke out. "What's the cargo ship?"
"It's the something or other Fool. Another corsair group, I think. They're offloading cargo. Didn't want the job anymore or some such."
I think I'm going to be sick.
This…is a problem.
My brothers don't know about my flirtation with Sentorr. If they did, they'd freak out. They'd worry that I'm being unsafe, or that he's taking advantage of me. Any chance I have to talk to him would be shut down immediately and I'd never get a moment of privacy on the bridge again.
I'd never get to hear Sentorr's voice again. I'm not ready to give that up yet.
I need to do something. I can't meet him. I can't have my brothers meet him because if they do, Sentorr's bound to comment about me. I have to keep the two worlds separate for a little while longer.
So I grab Mathiras's arm. "We can't. If it's the Lovesick Fool, we can't meet them. Please."
My brother narrows his eyes at me. He's silent for a long, tense moment that makes me want to squirm.
"What's wrong with the Fool? You piss ’em off?" Adiron wants to know. Kaspar just frowns in my direction.
They're all staring at me and I know they're going to want answers. Real answers.
"Zo—Vanora," Mathiras says, and his tone is warning. I know he's frustrated because he's normally the only one that remembers my fake name. That little slip is very telling. "What did you do?"
I grimace, trying to determine how much to confess. As people continue to mill about the crowded docks, my anxiety heightens. I catch a glimpse of blue mesakkah skin in the distance and see a big ugly male with a smiling human female collared and chained at his side. Kef me. That can't be a coincidence. Sentorr said his crewmates had human mates, so that has to be one of them.
"Well?" Mathiras prompts.
I clench my gloved hands, then decide to spill. "I might have a flirtation thing going on with their navigator."
Kaspar groans as if pained.
"What?" I ask defensively. I reach out and smack his shoulder. "It's just late-night talk. That's all."
"If that's all it is, you wouldn't ask us not to meet them," Kaspar returns, and gives my shoulder a light tap in response, the gentle brotherly version of a teasing shove. "Does he know…"
"My secret?" I prompt.
"Yeah, that you still wet the bed?" Adiron adds, then flings his arm around my neck, tugging on my hood. For a moment, I think he's going to noogie me again—and then he pauses, as if it just occurred to him that he can't.
"Har de har," I say, elbowing Adiron in the side. "And no, he doesn't know anything about me. Just that I'm a nav and your little sister." I emphasize the last part, letting them know that I'm not stupid enough to reveal the truth.
"But he does know you," Mathiras continues. When I nod, he exchanges a look back to my other brothers. "All right. I'll take Vanora back to the Sister. You two go and retrieve our passengers, and let's just get out of here. I'll send a comm to the Fool and let them know something came up and we won't be retrieving the shipment."
Hot, girly tears of relief flood my eyes and I sniffle, emotional. "Thanks, guys. I'm sorry I keffed everything up."
"You didn't kef anything up," Kaspar says, ever my defender. "It's no big deal."
Adiron just hugs me and Mathiras pats my shoulder.
"We're a team. All of us," Mathiras says. "If this is a job you want us to avoid, we avoid it. Simple as that."
I nod, feeling lucky to have them as my brothers.
"Let's not waste any time, then," Mathiras says, putting his datapad back into its holster in his belt. "The sooner we get off this station, the better."
Just like that, it's decided. There won't be a meeting with the Fool. There won't be smack talk (at least not yet) about me killing a job before it ever starts. No one's going to give me grief about my flirtation. I'm part of the team and because I said no, it's handled. The miserable knot in my stomach starts to unwind. Kaspar and Adiron take off, the latter giving me a squeeze before jogging after Kaspar.
It's just me and Mathiras. He gives me a long look, then gestures back down the way we came. "Let's go back, shall we?"
"Yep," I tell him, a little too eagerly.
I turn and take his arm, just like the mesakkah lady I'm supposed to be. We step back onto the automated walkway and start zipping down one of the many cramped tunnels of the station, leaving the starboard-side docks behind—and the Fool.
As we glide past, I catch a flash of blue skin and horns on the opposite walkway and automatically turn. The breath catches in my lungs as I recognize the hard, solemn face and that pouty mouth.
It's Sentorr, and he's more gorgeous than I ever thought he'd be. There's something about his physical presence that's harder that I imagined, and more virile. His hair's shorter than it was in the photo, cropped to regulation length as if he's about to head off into service with Homeworld troops. And his horns…god.
They could give a girl fantasies, those horns.
I sigh dreamily, craning my neck as he whizzes past. He doesn't notice me watching him, his head bent over his datapad. He's beautiful…and he can never be mine.
I'm surprised at how much it hurts to realize that.
SENTORR
I wait by the Fool's cargo bay doors, sitting atop the crate of plas-rifles and stare down at the notification on my datapad.
Change of plans. Can't take job. - LS
That's it. That's the only notification I get. The Little Sister isn't coming. Zoey isn't coming.
They were here on the station, and I missed them.
I don't know if I feel disgusted or disappointed. Zoey knew I was going to be here. Hell, I threw up that cargo suggestion just to make sure that her ship'd be here at the same time mine was. When Mathiras va Sithai accepted the rendezvous, I felt elation because I knew that Zoey would be on the station. It'd be inevitable that we'd meet. I don't even mind losing out on a crate of expensive rifles—my share of a botched job a few runs back—just because it means I get to see her.
For her crew to cancel on me at the last moment tells me one thing and one thing alone: Zoey doesn't want to meet me. She either got scared and backed out, or had no plans to meet me at all, ever.
Hopelessly, I gaze around the busy cargo bay of 3N. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll wait a few more minutes and a pretty female mesakkah with a smoky voice will make her way around a nearby ship and it'll be her after all. That it was a big misunderstanding and she'd never leave the station without saying hello to me first.
That she wants more from our clandestine friendship than just a few dirty words.
But no one ever comes.
It seems all of the feelings I have for Zoey are one-sided. If she cared a
nything at all for me, she'd have been here.
The realization's like a knife in the gut.
3
ZOEY
I wait almost a full day before I decide to send a comm request to Sentorr. It's not a good sign that he hasn't even sent me an offline message. Normally my private chat logs are full of notes from him over the course of the day, and I feel the lack of them acutely.
He's avoiding me deliberately.
It's my own fault. I pulled a jerk move, bailing out. How rare is it that we happened to be at the same station at the same time? He must have burned a ton of fuel just to be at Three Nebulas Station at the same time I was there, and I was the dick that was too cowardly to show up. I feel rotten about it, but I know it was the right thing to do.
Sentorr wouldn't understand that I'm human. He'd be disgusted. Betrayed. I'd lose him either way. At least this way, his mental image of me is still a pleasant one. In his eyes, I'm just a mesakkah woman playing hard to get. I'm not a gross human.
Feel sorry for me.
I don't want to feel sorry for him. I want him to love me even if I can't have him. Irritated, I swipe at my eyes before opening a comm link at my station. It's late at night and I'm alone on the bridge, as usual. My brothers, thank the stars, didn't give me shit when we got back to the Sister. Maybe they realized I was feeling fragile and left me alone. Bad enough that I cost us money and disappointed them.
Sentorr doesn't pick up my connection request.
Pissy and frustrated, I send it through again. And again. I know he's on the bridge. He's like me—he practically lives there. After five tries with no response, I give up on the connection request and change it to an audio request—the interplanetary dashboard version of a phone call.
Immediately, he picks up.
"Sentorr?" I ask, even though I know it's him.
"Feel like talking now?" His tone is bitter. "I'm rather busy, Zoey."
