Lunar Exposure (On the Hunt)

by Shona Husk

  Lunar Exposure

  Shona Husk

  Bounty hunter Callen wants to capture Noga—a terrorist—both for the money and for revenge. But catching a criminal on the sensual resort of Decadent Moon without giving in to all the destination’s sexual pleasures is harder than it seems.

  Haliday is the darling of the media, a socialite known as much for her casual relationships as she is for her charitable donations. No one knows she hunts down criminals.

  Lust and ambition clash, and Callen and Haliday will have to find a way to work together, despite the distraction of their passionate bond. To succeed they must trust each other, something neither Callen nor Haliday is willing to do.

  A Romantica® futuristic erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Lunar Exposure

  Shona Husk

  Chapter One

  “The purpose of your visit, bounty hunter Brax?” The man with the plex screen looked at him as though he was a spore that had fallen off the nearest fungus while the security guard scanned his body looking for concealed weapons. People had breached the tight security here before by smuggling weapons through in their stomachs or butts.

  “Pleasure.” Why else would anyone come to the most expensive orbital resort that catered to every desire possible? Certainly not because the well-known environmental terrorist Noga Tindel was planning on blowing it up. Nope. He wasn’t here to stop that from happening and claim the bounty. Because if he said that, he’d be kicked off and Decadent Moon would be shut down and Noga would slip through his fingers, again.

  Then Noga would pick another target just to get the body count and prove he couldn’t be stopped. That was the way he worked. Callen knew because he’d been on the cruise liner the Solar Bird when it was destroyed, taking thousands with it, including his team.

  “Mmm, what kind of pleasure?” The man made notes on the screen as he spoke.

  Did it matter? Gambling, drugs, sex, it was all legal here. If you were into tentacles, they had it, preferred to dabble with a Ferreg, who secreted a hallucinogenic when excited, they had it. Cruise liners stopped here to let their well-to-do patrons walk on the wild side. Many had never left their homeworld before coming to Decadent Moon.

  “Sex and a glimpse of Haliday Fisher. I heard she’s going to be here looking for something short and sweet.” Callen grinned as if he meant it. Personally, he found gossip about the vacuous socialite more boring than delousing cruiser hulls—a favorite punishment of the Allied Planetary Military—but she was hotter than pulse fire and burned through men just as fast.

  “I can’t disclose who will be visiting Decadent Moon.” The man with the plex scanned Callen’s wrist and took note of his chit balance.

  If he failed to collect the reward posted for Noga’s capture, he was going to owe the chit loaner a kidney and possibly an eye. If he’d been smart, he would’ve taken a whole bunch of low-paying easy-collect cases. But he’d heard a rumor and couldn’t pass it up. After the Solar Bird incident, Noga was his.

  “You may dress.” The plex man and the security guard made a few more notes on their screens, no doubt they had already pulled data on him. Of course, there was a ten-year chunk that had been sealed while he’d served in the APM, but before that he’d been a cop, and now a bounty hunter. He played on the right side of the law. Most of the time.

  If he had to get dirty to get Noga, it would be worth it.

  He pulled on his pants and shirt, simple, loose-fitting civilian garb. He couldn’t turn up and play tourist if he was armed and in body-hugging Scale. He missed the familiar weight of body armor and weapons. Even dressed, he felt naked. He hadn’t been a civilian since he was a child.

  Part of him wished he really was here for pleasure. A few days of endless drinking and sex would certainly cool his coils. He forced out a short breath. Once he’d caught Noga, he might come back and treat himself to just that.

  Callen slipped his shoes on and repacked his bag. They had opened it up to look for concealed weapons. The thing that irked him the most was that he was a registered bounty hunter. He was allowed to carry weapons of all manner. He’d declared one pulse gun on entrance and he was already being treated as if he was a criminal. There’d be someone who sneaked something illegal on, real criminals, who wouldn’t declare.

  How in Lekithia’s bogs was a man as well known as Noga going to enter the Moon?

  Although Noga did have big enough balls to try walking through the docking portal, Callen doubted he would. Noga much preferred the soft hand until he pressed the button. No one would know he was there until it was too late. He closed his bag and sealed it with his thumb print.

  “Am I free to check in and find my room?” That was half a kidney right there.

  “Certainly.” The plex man indicated to the door. “Of course, I do recommend watching the docking of the Lunar Bird, one never knows who one might see.”

  Callen smiled grateful for the tip, even though he’d already planned to watch the docking of the Lunar Bird—the sister ship of the wrecked Solar Bird. The Lunar Bird was why Noga was going to be here, taking out both liners was a point he’d want to make. Callen had spent years learning everything about Noga. He wasn’t going to fuck this up.

  “Thanks. I will.” He had to make sure he was seen in the right places and doing the right thing. Security would be watching him closely during his stay on the Moon.

  Half a tric later, he was gazing out the window on the viewing deck, watching the docking arms embrace the liner and seal against her doors. His chest seized as a memory assaulted him. He felt the heat on his skin. Fuel and burning acid. He’d made it to an escape pod, just. Then he’d watched the filaments of firemoss float by along with pieces of wreckage. That wreckage was now a floating tomb that no one could touch. Firemoss was deadly to spaceships. It fed on the metal, and once in contact with water, it would explode, spreading and contaminating everything it touched. He blinked. The Lunar Bird was still in one piece. Nothing was on fire.

  Not yet, anyway.

  With docking complete, he moved with the other onlookers—not many, as most people were here to play, not watch liners dock—to the railing that overlooked the entrance. It had been designed to give the cameras a clear view of arrivals and luggage. Callen was sure there was a camera trained on him, but he resisted the urge to flick a finger at one just to find out.

  He watched the arrivals, looking for Noga but also for Haliday Fisher, since he had to look as though he gave a flying frag.

  Sure enough, Haliday stepped out of the docking arm and onto the deck. She smiled as a few people took photos. She was paler in the flesh. Her tri-clustered spots were a soft lilac that matched her short spikey hair, where his were dark, almost black. All natural color variations amongst the Phrial were unique to the individual—although these days people tended to laser off the markings they didn’t like, so it was an unreliable identifier.

  He was willing to bet his other kidney she’d had work done. She smiled, flashing teeth that were whiter than her dress and boots. While she wore all white, her face had been made up in red. The bold sweeps across her eyelids and brows curled near her hairline. On one side of her face, the red traced a cheekbone before coiling under an eye. No doubt tomorrow half the female population of Lekithia would be mimicking the look.

  Callen shook his head. She could be worse, at least she didn’t spend all her chits on herself. As she cleared security in a whisper of the time it had taken him, he watched her long legs. Her thighs were exposed from the top of her knee-high boots to the very short hem of her skirt. His cock hardened. Yeah, he wouldn’t mind being her next affair; he could handle being used and discarded by the Haliday Fisher.

  He’d
make a point of meeting her while he was here—because it would help convince security that he was here for a good time and nothing else. He tapped the railing, then turned away. He needed to start looking for signs Noga was on board. A shimmer of cold ran through his blood.

  What if he’d already been and Decadent Moon was already on the countdown to destruction? His breath caught for a moment as if he expected the manmade moon to be torn apart beneath his feet, but nothing happened. People spoke in dozens of languages around him; some spoke Allied Abbreviated, a simple language that conveyed the basics so different species could understand each other. Laughter and what passed for laughter. People were here for fun. Did they realize how fast it could be taken away?

  Even if he made a report and got the Moon shut down, it would be too late. With Noga, it was always too late. He swallowed and forced a smile before wandering down the corridor as if it was the best day of his life.

  * * * * *

  Haliday nodded and smiled as she made her way through security. Of course, they made the briefest of checks and treated her with respect because of who she was. It hadn’t always been that way. Even as Elchung Yem’s favorite pet, people had pretended not to see her, but then she’d been afraid to ask strangers for help after he’d killed a man who’d tried to free her. Yem had made her share a room with the corpse for sixty trics as punishment. After that, she knew she had to do it on her own.

  And she had.

  She’d had surgery to change her appearance, took melanin tablets to darken her skin, changed her name—not that Yem had ever used her name—everything. Now she hid in plain sight. If Haliday Fisher, socialite and philanthropist, went missing, everyone would know and everyone would care.

  The only place she felt safe was in a crowd. It’s harder to be kidnapped in public, harder still if everyone was looking at you and taking photos. But that didn’t stop her from occasionally checking over her shoulder and expecting a bullet or a pulse to her back.

  No. Yem wouldn’t kill her. If he ever worked out his rare albino Phrial was now Haliday Fisher, he’d recapture her and make her suffer. If she caught him, she’d donate every cent of that bounty to the orphanage that had been so poor they’d accepted his chits in exchange for her freedom. No child should be sold off to a crime boss for their private amusement.

  She glanced up and saw a man watching her. Oh plenty of men watched her, but the Phrial male didn’t have the lusty glint in his eye that she was used to. He looked dangerous even as he relaxed against the railing. His stare was too intense as if he was used to watching everything and analyzing it. His smile was too fixed. He was grinning for show. She knew what that was like. Smile for the fans, for the cameras, for everyone except herself.

  He looked as though he was here to gamble. A risk taker who didn’t mind the cold edge of danger pressing against his skin. If she wasn’t here to catch Noga and claim the reward, she’d have totally let him warm her bed for her stay.

  But her lifestyle cost chits and the orphanages depended on her donations, so she needed the bounty. Haliday Fisher was a convenient lie.

  She checked in and located her room. They’d given her an upgrade so she had a view of the ice planet below. It looked beautiful, the edge shimmering as the sun hit it before it fell into shadow. But the lines that crossed the planet weren’t rivers, they were canyons that could swallow ships. It was deadly. Decadent Moon had been built here because no one owned the planet below and no one lived there. It was neutral territory. She placed her fingers on the window and stared out, her gaze drifting from the planet to the sky beyond.

  Was Yem still looking for her? Would she ever be able to close her eyes and feel truly safe? Had she ever been safe? She pulled back and took a breath. She was as safe as she was going to be. And everyone would be a whole lot safer without Noga and his special brand of activism. She needed to find him and bring him in without blowing her socialite cover. Seduction and capture was her preferred method.

  Haliday changed her outfit—the white mini dress and boots were not appropriate for going to the shows or bars. The deep-red dress with no back and a skirt made up of wispy bits of nothing would be perfect, and as long as she didn’t run into a stray breeze she wouldn’t be flashing too much. She added a pair of red sandals that had ribbons crisscrossing up her calves. They looked cute, but she could run in them if she had to.

  Then she touched up her makeup. She liked that this season it was a mask, exotic and erotic. It suited her, unlike last season’s stripes that had angled from forehead to nose. The stripes had made her look as though she was a ghabra escaped from a zoo.

  With a final check of her appearance, she left her room and sauntered down to the theaters. She needed to be seen and she needed to start looking for Noga. There was always a free show running, singing, dancing—all with an edge designed to make the watchers hungry for flesh. Men and women danced on stage dressed up in feathers and sequins, their bodies on display.

  She’d had to dance and more for Yem. Her stomach tightened. But these people were here by choice. They were saving up for education or a house or whatever people did if they had normal lives. She’d never had normal. Even now, what people saw and what she was were two different things.

  She turned her gaze from the stage of lithe shimmering bodies and scanned the audience, looking for a Dooraump man. Most of Noga’s species didn’t have the chits to leave their poverty-stricken home planet and those that did rarely went back. Noga blamed the mining company who’d bought the planet for all his people’s woes and he was trying to liberate his people. A self-styled savior. While she respected his ideals, his methods were inexcusable. His wasn’t the only planet to be sold to a mining company taking advantage of a low-tech society. She could think of a handful and she’d only had three years of formal schooling.

  If she was Noga, she wouldn’t be here watching people enjoy living. He was too angry for that, too bitter, even though his people had made progress in the five hundred years since the sale. In another five hundred years, the Dooraump would probably be doing fine—history told her that. How could a primitive, illiterate society be expected to suddenly jump up to light-speed?

  On the other hand, she understood slavery, and the mining giant was paying the Dooraump people a pittance to work in the mine. She never usually struggled with a job, but this time she was. Carefully, she pushed aside the reasons why he did it and looked at what he’d done. Looked at the body count, the chit tally and wreckage left behind. They were things she could despise, they were things she had experienced first-hand. Lekithia had been ravaged by war, millions of children left without parents. The APM had stopped the bloodshed, but her homeworld still struggled. Despite her job, she hated violence, even if it was a means to an end.

  She looked at her hands, her painted nails and the slight webbing between her fingers. The only reason her planet tolerated celebrities was because they brought in foreign investment and their incomes were highly taxed. She never dodged a tax bill or tried to shrink her income. She paid and donated. Even if her chits were a drop in the ocean, she was making a difference—and the scum she rounded up were helping. She liked to think of it as the criminals giving back to society.

  If she was Noga, where would she go?

  Or rather, who would Noga be pretending to be? Her gut said he wasn’t here for pleasure. He was all about business. He needed chits as much as she did. It wasn’t cheap to blow things up and attack a mining giant on a regular basis. Yet she doubted he’d be in any of the monitored meeting rooms. No, he’d be in a bar.

  A particularly brilliant specimen of male Helvelet took the stage, his horns thick and curling down to his cheekbones. His muscles caught the lights and the tiny slip of silk he wore didn’t hide the size of how male he was. Her tongue darted over her lip. She’d had a Helvelet once, damn near ripped her in two, but it had felt good—handing the donation to the hospital had felt better and she thought of him every time she went there. She lingered a moment to
watch the man move. His body was in perfect rhythm, pulsing and gyrating. If she’d have been wearing panties, they’d have been wet. As it was, she could feel moisture slicking between her thighs and her nipples peaking against the delicate fabric of her dress.

  She didn’t need the distraction, no matter how pretty or how well he danced. She was here to hunt. Nothing more. She took a last glance at the Helvelet, now joined on stage by a female. There’d be a lot of trading in flesh after this show—but then that was the idea. With a sigh, she left. There was no need for her to linger.

  The Moon was well laid out, not to segregate species but to make it easy to mingle with ones who had compatible body parts—not that anyone minded if one crossed over into something else. Personally, she preferred the mammalian levels. While she knew that Icavaris were brilliant fighter pilots, she couldn’t get past the eight legs and exoskeleton. They were too alien and reminded her of bog spiders—mind you, they probably looked at her and thought she reminded them of lunch.

  Different species also had slightly different gravity and air requirements, and while the changes wouldn’t kill her, they could leave her short of breath or feeling very sluggish. Noga wouldn’t be on those floors either. He preferred to mix only with his own species.

  She drifted in and out of a few bars, another show, drink in hand as if looking for just the right place to relax and unwind. A place with the right music, the right people, the right atmosphere. If someone stopped her, she smiled and was polite. There’d be some story about how Haliday was taking time off after helping rebuild a school that had been bombed years ago. Sometimes the media made her a darling for helping, other times they slammed her lifestyle. But no one ever turned down her chits and the media never missed a story, as she was worth too much to the rebuilding effort.

  In the Aqua Bar, she hit the jackpot. A Dooraump was talking to a man of a species she didn’t recognize, his orange skin almost glowed in the blue lighting. She let her gaze slide to the Dooraump, the heavy brows and deep-set eyes that made his species perfectly adapted to the hot, dry conditions of his planet made him look shifty. His eyes were hidden in shadows and she couldn’t be sure it was Noga. She knew he’d had work done since his pictures and bounty were posted. She’d need a sample to check against his DNA—that could only be faked at great expense and pain.