Distantly, Zosha realized the man was actually very handsome. He had messy chestnut hair and striking gold eyes. He smiled down at her, full lips pulling back to reveal straight, white teeth. If she hadn’t been absolutely terrified he was about to release her into the cruel vacuum of space sans breathing apparatus, she’d have been offering to buy him a drink.
His face scrunched up when he saw the nutri-pack in her hand. “Ugh, waste-paste. Seriously, most of our food was dehydrated at some point but at least it isn’t that shit.” He smoothed his features back into that charming smile. “I meant it when I said you might as well join us, by the way.” He reached his hand down towards her, clearly meaning for her to grab it so he could pull it up.
Zosha was frozen by indecision. He seemed sincere in his offer and his smile looked genuine, but one lesson everyone who grew up on Lytos learned fast and early was that the smiling ones were the ones you really had to watch out for. After a pause, she decided that her best bet was to do what he wanted for now. She was in his territory; if he decided she wasn’t worth the effort of playing nice she was fucked.
Grabbing her bag, she reached up slowly and grabbed his hand, letting him pull her up on top of the boxes and lift her off. He was stronger than she had expected, even after she took in his solid physique. The gold-eyed man gently herded her towards the doors.
After a few steps, Zosha realized the faint whirring sound she had written off as another one of the ship’s noises was actually coming from the man. Specifically, from his pants. She squinted down at them, trying to figure out what it was. Her best guess was prosthetics, but some kinds of braces and under armor made the same kind of sound if you didn’t take care of them enough. The man turned, mouth open to tell her something, just in time to catch her glaring at his crotch. He shut his mouth and raised an eyebrow. Zosha scowled and ripped her eyes off him, focusing on the tunnel he was leading her down instead.
“I’m Richard Chapel, by the way,” he said, sounding amused. “But everyone calls me Rick. And you?”
Zosha remained silent for a moment, deciding what to do. She didn’t want to tell him her name, but her survival could very well hinge on his goodwill. Of course, she could always lie, but he said he found her because he could smell her. Who was to say he couldn’t smell lies as well?
“Zoshanna,” she said quietly. “I go by Zosha.”
“Zoshanna,” Rick repeated, rolling the syllables of her name around his mouth. Zosha tamped down on the warmth in her belly that flared to life at the sound of her name in his low, rough voice. “Pretty name. Now, nobody’s going to hurt you, unless you mean us harm, in which case I recommend going the efficient route and eating a blaster now. Otherwise, as long as you do what the captain says, you’ll likely get off this ship in one piece. Understand?”
Zosha nodded, feeling lighter than usual as her body prepared to flee despite her knowing damn well there was nowhere to flee to.
Eventually, they wound up in what appeared to be a kitchen area. There were several cabinets along the walls and in the middle was a table with various bowls and packets strewn across it. What held Zosha’s terrified attention was the people around the table.
There were three men and one woman. All the men were stocky, which wasn’t unusual for smugglers, but they had golden eyes, which was. Related, maybe, or perhaps they’d had them cosmetically altered as a show of camaraderie. Whatever the cause, Zosha decided, it wasn’t important. The only woman in the group was seated in the lap of possibly the hairiest man Zosha had ever seen. She was slender and beautiful, but her eyes were steely. Zosha assumed this was the infamous Annie.
Rick walked up behind her and clapped a hand on Zosha’s shoulder. He either didn’t notice or ignored her flinch at the contact and addressed the others. “Alright, guys, this is Zosha. I have no idea where she’s from or who she’s working for, but she hasn’t tried to kill any of us yet, which isn’t something I can say for most of the people we meet.”
“So, what,” a man with an electric blue eyepatch said in a bored voice, “we just overlook the fact that she’s a stowaway because she slightly less homicidal than expected?”
“All I’m saying is, I think we should give her a chance to explain herself before we space her,” Rick said, voice casual and smile bright like he had conversations about killing people all the time. Zosha forced herself not to shiver. Always look out for the smiling ones.
“Alright,” the hairy man said. “She’s got five minutes. After that, if I don’t like her reasons, she gets personally acquainted with my blaster.”
Rick nodded and pulled out a chair, motioning for Zosha to sit. She did so gingerly and looked up at him, at a loss for where to begin.
“Alright,” he said, putting his hand back on her shoulder, “the one there with the stick up his ass and an eyepatch is Hyde. The shortie next to him is Dominic. And that’s Captain Ingram accompanied by the lovely Annie. Now, why don’t you tell us how you wound up on the Breakwater.” His voice was as pleasant as ever, but Zosha wasn’t stupid enough to think the last bit was anything but an order.
Zosha took a shaky breath, trying to decide where to begin. “So… Captain Strathmore,” she said finally.
Rick’s hand tightened on her shoulder and Hyde choked. Annie’s spine stiffened.
“Go on,” the captain said, furrowing his brow and rolling his shoulders back.
“As I’m sure you’re all aware, he was a megalomaniac with delusions of godhood, a hard on for the Civil War, and a warship that could make a Taldori cruiser look like an escape pod. And then he died, which was both really great and really terrible because…” she trailed off and gestured incomprehensibly, trying to get her thoughts in order. “…okay, so, I’m from Lytos, right? And we don’t have what you’d call a comprehensive police force at the best of times. But when Strathmore kicked it, a lot of people who didn’t have the balls or blasters to stand up to him suddenly didn’t have anything stopping them from taking a piece of his empire for themselves except each other. And just like that, you’ve got rival factions going at it like pit dogs in every corner of the damn galaxy. For Lytos, it was the Rahm brothers against the pocket of the Bleeding Coffins that was holed up there, but the main body of the Coffins is on Delta so they backed off pretty quick. That was almost the end of that, but then the younger Rahm decides that this is as good a chance as any to launch a hostile takeover, and all of a sudden, everyone who declared loyalty to the brothers—which was every mother’s son on the damn asteroid that knew what was good for him—was scrambling to choose a side and fight or get the hell out of the way. Follow?”
Everyone at the table nodded.
“Alright. So. Everyone’s got to eat somehow, right? And while I’ve got nothing but respect for the girls working in the red light district, I know I don’t have the right disposition to be one of them, and no one respectable wants to hire a street rat, and I’ve got no love for the gangs. So,” Zosha shrugged, “I got good at stealing things. A friend of mine’s an information broker and every so often he’d set me up with a job, but for the most part it was just pickpocketing to make sure I had a roof over my head and food on the table. It was all working out about as well as you could expect from Lytos, but then I fucked up. See, there’s this man named Lan Doro. Greasy, but ambitious. When Rahm the Younger decided to try and take over, he jumped on board and after a little hard work and a lot of backstabbing he made it into the inner circle. Then he gets put in charge of the U4 shipments—you know, Euphoria? Gold powder? Makes you think you’re flying?-- and that’s where things start going downhill for me. You have to understand, I’d heard of Lan Doro but I’d never seen him before. All I knew was he looked like he had something valuable on him, which I guess he did. Not the good kind of valuable, though.”
Zosha paused to wet her lips.
“What did you take?” the captain asked.
“I’m not sure, entirely, but there’s a lot of numbers and a lot of names,” Zosha s
aid. “It’s the kind of thing that could get someone in trouble with the law, even on Lytos, but the real threat to Lan Doro is that I could give it to the older Rahm. It would help him reduce his brother’s influence, but not enough to unseat him entirely, which means that little brother would still be more than capable of making the rest of Lan Doro’s life a living hell. I’ve got no interest in giving the information to anyone, but as long as I have it I could ruin him and he knows it. So my information broker friend helped me hop from Lytos, to Trios, to Dalos XI. From there, obviously, I broke onto your ship and now we’re here.”
“You have an information broker friend capable of getting you through Dalos XI’s security?” Hyde asked, eyebrow raised.
“Kind of. He paid off one of the guards to not red flag my ID,” Zosha lied. One of the many caveats of being friends with Spinner was never admitting to knowing him. Best case scenario, someone would try to get her to contact him for information. Worst case scenario, someone would hurt her to try and hurt him by proxy.
“I wasn’t aware Sixers could be paid off,” Dominic said.
“There’s always at least one in every bunch,” Zosha said nonchalantly. In her experience, it was true.
“So why not just give the information to one of the Rahm brothers?” Annie asked. “Surely, that would get you some degree of protection?”
“Two problems there,” Zosha replied. “The first is getting past Lan Doro. Running from him and his was difficult enough, and that was away from Lytos. On Lytos, he’s got eyes everywhere, or a friend who does. I’d have been dead in the water if I stayed. The second is that it could come back to bite me later. Let’s say I get information to one of the brothers, yeah? Well, if I get the information back to the younger one and the older one wins this little spat, then I’m one of his enemy’s people and I need to be eliminated. Same thing if I give the information to the older one. And either way, I’d be declaring a side, which I wouldn’t want anyways and which would put a target on my back. Running was easier and safer.”
“Huh,” the captain grunted. “Well, you’ve got about a minute left. Anything else you want to add?”
“I, ah…” Zosha searched for the right words that would convince the crew not to kill her immediately. “I’m good a cracking encryptions? And getting through security systems? And, well. I obviously have light fingers. I’d owe you a favor, and I promise I never meant to hurt any of you, I just needed to get out of Dalos XI.” She stopped herself from adding please don’t kill me to the end of that. Negotiating for your life was one of those weird things Zosha had found that it wasn’t good to look to desperate during. There was no way to tell when the person you were telling all about your five sick children would get bored and just shoot you in the head.
The captain scratched his chin and stared at her. “I think this is one of those things people are always telling me to think through.”
Dominic guffawed. “Sorry, lady, it looks like Leo blindly trusting a pretty woman that comes out of nowhere and demands a ride is something that only happens one time.”
Annie smirked and kissed the captain on the cheek. “I say we watch her while she’s onboard and then drop her when we stop to refuel. That way we get rid of her without having to kill her or delivering her into this Lan Doro’s hands.”
“Sounds good,” Captain Ingram said. “Anyone else?”
“I say we space her now,” Hyde said. “That way we don’t have to worry about watching her.” Zosha stiffened.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rick said. “I can watch her until we get to a depot.”
“Look, Rick, I’m all for you getting your dick wet, but time and place, yeah? I will personally buy you an hour with a nice girl on Gamma, but she,” he said, nodding at Zosha, “is getting of this ship now.”
Rick walked slowly around the table to stand next to Hyde. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything,” Hyde responded, shifting in his seat so he was facing Rick instead of the table and crossing his arms. “I’m saying that not all of us are willing to risk our lives for a nice set of tits. It was stupid when the captain did it—no offense, Annie—and it’s stupid now.”
“Hyde—” Rick began.
“I agree,” Dominic said quietly. “We’re smugglers, not a ferry for girls with notorious criminals chasing them across the galaxy. Besides, we need to lay low after the Edge disaster. You heard her, what happened with Strathmore turned the collective criminal underworld of the galaxy upside down. We’ve been lucky to escape the blowback this far. Putting ourselves in the path of another murder-hungry whack-job, especially for some random dame, is the kind of shit that gets people killed.”
Rick glared ferociously at Hyde and Dominic. It was the kind of look that would have had the worst men in the worst parts of Lytos scrambling for cover. Hyde and Dominic just looked indifferent.
“Captain?” Rick asked, not looking away from the two men.
“I’m thinking,” the captain answered.
“Don’t you think we owe her safe passage, in a way?” Annie murmured to him.
“Two things on that,” Hyde drawled, still looking at Rick. “The first is that is some roundabout thinking that assumes we give two shits what we owe anyone. The second is that if you’re thinking we owe her because of the reason I’m thinking you mean, then I’d like to point out that the blame for that falls on your daddy, and, if we’re talking people in the immediate vicinity, you. We don’t owe her anything. You might owe her something, if you wanna let your guilt complex take charge, but by that logic you still owe us. I suggest you pay it back by getting her off this ship by way of the airlock.”
The captain curled a protective arm around Annie’s waist. “Watch yourself. Annie has more than proven her worth in this crew.”
Hyde snorted. “Hate to say it, Captain, but her doing time on her back for you doesn’t help the rest of us.”
A thunderous look spread across Captain Ingram’s face, and it looked like the only reason he wasn’t jumping across the table at Hyde was the fact that it would displace Annie. Rick looked, somehow, even angrier. Even Dominic’s brow furrowed slightly. Annie, for her part, only raised an eyebrow.
“Hyde, you thrice-damned son of a pox-ridden—”
“I’m ten minutes late to the family meeting,” a familiar voice said from right over Zosha’s left shoulder, “and you all are already trying to kill each other.”
If Zosha had been a little less involved in the conversation in front of her, maybe she would have hear him approach. But she was, and she didn’t. As it were, she found herself in a situation where there was, suddenly, a person who could potentially harm her close behind her in a situation where her nerves were already thrumming with fear and anxiety. She’d stopped getting into situations like this as often once she began to truly excel at thievery, but the scenario was a familiar one, and she reacted the way she usually did. With a startled yelp, she turned in her seat and drove her elbow directly into the mystery person’s groin.
The broad blond man behind her went down with a pained gasp. Zosha had leapt out of her seat and hopped back several feet before his knees hit the ground. The entire room was silent apart from Zosha’s breathing, heavy from shock, and the groans of the man on the ground.
Dominic and Hyde looked at each other for a moment, then turned to the captain.
“Alright,” Hyde said. “She can stay, but only until the depot. After that, if I ever see her again, I reserve the right to break her in half.”
“Fuck… you…” the man, who Zosha assumed was Custer, gasped out.
The captain relaxed. “Good to know you’ve seen the light. Annie, can you show her to Rick’s quarters? I need to talk a few things over with the rest of the crew.”
Annie nodded and slid off his lap. She walked to the door and Zosha followed, stepping carefully around Custer.
“I’d apologize for Hyde and Dom,” Annie said as t
hey walked down a hallway, “but I can’t blame them for worrying about the repercussions of letting you live, so I’ll say instead that I hope you prove them wrong.”
Clay (BBW Secret Baby Bear Shifter Romance) (Secret Baby Bears Book 4) Page 33
