The Lion and the Mouse
Cosmic Fairy Tales
Emmy Chandler
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Acknowledgments
Cosmic Fairy Tales
Also by Emmy Chandler
About Emmy
Copyright © 2019 by Emmy Chandler
Editing by Daisy Copy Editing.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.EmmyChandler.com
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1
Syrie
The whine of a motor burrows into my brain, dragging me sluggishly into consciousness. Alarm pings through me, and my heart races. My eyes fly open, but I can’t see anything.
This isn’t right.
I blink, but nothing changes. This space—wherever I am—is completely dark. And…hard. I’m sitting on a hard surface, and my hip and shoulder feel bruised, as if I’ve been lying here for a while. As if I’ve been repeatedly jostled against the surface from the motion of…
The ship. I’m on a ship. Or a shuttle.
Yes, a shuttle. I can’t see anything, but this space feels small. Confined. Because the sounds bouncing back at me from the walls don’t have far to travel.
Why am I on a shuttle? Where am I supposed to be?
My brain feels like it’s enveloped in a fog. As if I’m lost in the quagmire of my own thoughts. My head hurts. I feel like I need to throw up. And I’m dizzy. But the fact that I can’t remember where I’m supposed to be worries me as badly as all of my other symptoms combined.
I’ve been drugged.
I push myself upright, and my arms tremble. Nausea washes over me again while I wait for my eyes to adjust, but there’s nothing to adjust to. There’s truly no light here. There's no breeze, nor any steady, soft whistle of air from climate control. There's no sound, other than the soft whirr of the engine. When I feel around on the floor, I discover there's nothing to touch except the cold, hard metal of the solid surface beneath me, and the—
The bars.
Shit.
I'm in a cage, on a ship. No, on a shuttle.
As my head begins to clear, true fear starts to set in. I’ve been kidnapped. And oddly, with that realization, I gain a measure of calm.
This is not entirely unexpected, considering my family’s high profile. Considering the money and the political influence that comes with it. And the possibility of a ransom.
I’ve had training for this. I took classes with my friends, when we were teenagers, because the children of the extremely wealthy will always be targets. Because forewarned is forearmed, etc… And for a while, I accepted all of my parents’ over-the-top attempts to keep me safe—until I realized that what they were really doing was keeping an eye on me.
Tracker implant in my armpit? Redundancy tracker implant in the fleshy part of my left thumb? Full-time guard detail? Personal shuttle and pilot, who cleared my travel plans with my parents?
Those were all just ways my mother and father had of keeping me under their thumb. Making sure I was living up to expectations. Bringing only accolades for the family name. Which I can kind of understand, considering that my brother’s wild youth was a constant embarrassment for them both.
But eventually, I realized there was a reason he went wild in his late teens. He was fed up with the constant surveillance.
I got fed up with it too, but I like to think I handled it better than he did. I figured out how to hack my trackers so that they broadcast a remote signal, cloning whatever coordinates I want my parents to receive. I realized that my guard detail can’t afford to rat on me for ditching them, because they’ll lose their jobs and get blacklisted in the private security industry. Which means that my real vacations can last as long as I stay one step ahead of the bodyguards and keep sending fake tracker signals to my parents.
I don’t go off the grid very often. Only when I really need a break. And nothing has ever gone wrong before—until now.
Fortunately, I’ve trained for just this kind of event.
I take a deep breath and shift to sit cross-legged in what feels like the center of my cage. Deep breathing exercises will keep me calm and help me think clearly. Whoever my kidnappers are, chances are good that they only want a ransom. If they have two brain cells to rub together, they won’t hurt me, for fear of endangering their payday. Well, they won’t kill me, anyway.
They’ll make their demands. My parents will pay, and this will all be over. That’s what the experts taught us. Stay calm. Cooperate. Assure your kidnappers that they will be paid. And everyone gets a happy ending.
I lay my hands palms-down on my thighs, and the familiar feel of my pajama pants is an unexpected comfort. They’re soft and stretchy, and they still feel clean, like they were when I went to—
Bed. I'm supposed to be in my bed. Relief floods me with the return of that nugget of memory.
Wait, no, not my bed. I'm supposed to be asleep in my suite, on a long-range cruise ship on the way to… whatever beautiful, remote location I selected. I can’t even remember which one I chose, and that’s not because of the drugs. It’s because the destination wasn’t important. All that had mattered when I booked the trip under a fake name was that I would be alone, with no guard detail. No parents. No brother. No professors, classmates, or...
It's not that I didn't appreciate the trip my parents gave me as a college graduation gift. But I’d needed a few days—okay a few weeks—when no one knew where I was. Where I didn't have to be accountable to anyone for anything. I’d needed a break. A little privacy. So, two days ago, I shook my guard detail and took off, with every expectation that a few weeks later, I’d let them know where to pick me up, as usual, and my parents would be none the wiser.
But this time…
This time I don't know what went wrong. I don't know where I am, how I got here, or how long I’ve been here. Someone must have recognized me, in spite of the sunglasses and hats. The casual clothes. Yet all I remember is going to bed in my suite, and now—
Light flares overhead, blinding me. I blink against the sudden glare, trying to make my eyes focus, but all I can see is the inside of an empty shuttle. Well, that and the cage I'm sitting in.
It’s cube-shaped and sturdy, made of shiny, probably light-weight metal bars set at one-inch intervals. The gaps are too narrow for me to get more than my hand through. The floor beneath me is a solid sheet of the same metal, and it’s cold, except where my body heat has warmed it. But that’s not the real problem.
The real problem is the man standing right in the cockpit doorway, his face covered by a black mesh mask, which completely obscures his features. Though I can't see his eyes, I'm certain he's looking at me.
"Hi. Hey, thank you for turning on the light," I say. "I really appreciate that."
Translation: I am calm and grateful. I am no trouble. I represent no threat.
"My name is Francesca Montgomery." Surely he already knows that. Surely that's why I was taken. But I'm supposed to humanize myself to my kidnapper. I'm supposed to force him to think of me as a real person, ra
ther than just a payday, so that he isn't tempted to hurt me while he waits for the ransom. "But you can call me Chesca. That's what all my friends call me."
Translation: We could be friends.
"Anyway, I swear if you send my parents proof of life, they'll give you whatever you want. In fact, we have a private hostage negotiator on call, for just this kind of occasion. I can give you her contact information, and she can take your bank account number and facilitate a smooth transfer of—”
The man turns to face an interactive panel on the wall to his left. He taps the menu, then he places his whole hand on the panel. It lights up, confirming his command, and an instant later, a new sound rumbles softly from beneath me. That rumble is the slow opening of a panel in the floor of the shuttle, just a couple of feet from the edge of my cage.
Air rushes into the empty cargo hold, roaring in my ears. Whistling where it’s forced through narrow cracks around the sliding panel. My pulse spikes faster, and vertigo overwhelms me as I stare through the widening hole in the floor. This can’t be good.
“Hey!” I have to shout to be heard, ignoring the flutter of fear in my stomach. “Seriously, whatever you’re thinking of doing, it really isn’t necessary.” And what he’s thinking of doing seems alarmingly clear, considering that a hole approximately the width of my cage is opening in the floor of the shuttle. “Our negotiator won’t ask you any personal questions and she won’t insist on an in-person exchange. We won’t even report this. All anyone wants is my safe return. My parents don’t care about the money, and I guarantee you they are standing by, ready to pay.”
Actually, they probably have no idea I’m missing. And my guard detail probably has no idea that I’ve truly disappeared this time.
“Hey,” I try again, sitting up on my knees so I can wrap my hands around the bars. But I have no idea whether or not he can understand me. “Let’s talk about this!” My voice battles with the roar of airflow, and I can feel my hard-fought-for calm slipping through my grip. The classes didn’t prepare me for this. Where’s the logic behind dropping me to my death, when you can’t ransom a corpse?
“There is literally nothing in the galaxy I can’t get you. But if you kill me—and make no mistake, that’s what will happen if you drop me through that hole—my parents will stop at nothing to see you die a slow, painful death.”
I’m not supposed to threaten him. I’m not supposed to beg for my life, nor am I supposed to do or say anything that could put myself in greater jeopardy or feed his obvious need to be in total control.
But he’s not supposed to throw me out of a moving shuttle! And if he’s willing to do that, then nothing I learned in class is going to work on this particular kidnapper.
I can’t even tell that he can hear me.
“Please!” My grip around the bars tightens until my knuckles creak. “Just turn this shuttle around and take us right back through the atmosphere. Then call in your demands. You’ll have me off your hands in no time, and you will be a very wealthy man. You’ll have more credits than you could spend in three lifetimes.”
Surely that’s what he wants. Why else would he have taken me?
A thunk echoes through the shuttle as the panel settles into its new position with just its lip still visible, a foot beyond the edge of my cage. I can see the surface of the planet beneath us now, as it moves steadily by. It’s carpeted in distinctive bluish-green trees that are spiky and leafless. As if the branches are all naked.
My heart tries to break free of my chest. I know those trees. There are only two planets in the entire galaxy where those grow, and neither of those planets is…hospitable. Not for me, anyway.
As I fight hyperventilation, breathing deeply in the violent gust from the hole in the floor, the man heads back into the cockpit and sits in the empty pilot’s chair. There’s no one else in there, that I can see. It’s just the two of us. Which means I am completely at his mercy.
The shuttle begins to slow until it’s hovering in place, directly over a clearing in the weird bluish-green forest.
“No!” I shout, still unsure whether or not he can hear me, though the rush of air has eased, now that we’re no longer moving. “I see what you’re planning, but just because you drop me into a clearing doesn’t mean I’ll survive.” And I have to believe I’m meant to survive, because if he wanted to kill me, he could have just bashed me over the head while I was unconscious. Or shot me in my sleep.
Instead, he put me in a cage and flew me halfway across the galaxy. Which has to mean he wants something from me. But what that something is, if it isn’t a ransom, I can’t begin to fathom.
With the shuttle hovering where he wants it, the man in the black mask leaves the cockpit and walks past the huge hole in the floor as if he isn’t worried about falling out. He rounds the back of my cage without a word. Then he begins to push.
“No! Please!” I spin around and stare out the hole just as the front of my cage is pushed over the edge. I expect it to tip over—for me to go tumbling out, headfirst, cage and all—but the cage moves smoothly enough that I realize it’s on rails. He pushes again, and my heart begins to pound painfully against my sternum. I clutch at the sides of the cage, and though I know it will do no good, I brace my feet against the front row of bars.
Which is when I realize I still have no shoes, but that the soles of my feet are covered with a thick layer of a gel-like protective substance. Like the stuff people paint onto their feet for a day at the beach, so they won’t burn their soles on the sand or the concrete. Only this feels sturdier than beach-grade protective foot gel.
“Please. Please reconsider this,” I beg, twisting to look at the man over my shoulder. But he keeps pushing, and now my cage is suspended halfway over the opening. He’s seriously going to drop me to my death. Only…why protect my feet, if he’s only going to kill me?
One more shove, and my cage is centered over the hole, suspended on rails I can’t see. The man steps back, and my pulse rushes so fast now that it’s a roar inside my ears. Drowning out everything else, including the soft whine of the shuttle’s engine. The man rounds my cage again to activate the panel built into the wall, behind the cockpit. He taps through another menu, then he turns to look at me as he plants his entire palm on the screen.
The screen glows, confirming another command, and something clicks beneath me, sending a shudder through the floor of the cage. The whole thing bobs for a minute, bouncing me just hard enough to send another painful spike through my pulse, as the rails beneath me prepare to retreat.
A padded restraint pops up from one side of the cage and swings between two of the bars to clamp down over my thighs, latching itself between two of the bars on the other side. Pinning me to the floor of the cage. Then the entire shuttle disappears, and I’m suddenly falling. Plummeting toward the surface of the planet.
My hair flies up, and I grip the bars to keep my arms from doing the same thing. I try to scream, but the rush of air steals my breath before I can use it. All I can do is brace myself with a grip on either side of the cage. And pray.
The ground rushes toward me, the bluish-green landscape gaining definition as it comes closer. No, as I come closer to it. I’m about to hit the ground. I’m going to be crushed by the impact.
Then, suddenly, the cage’s descent slows. As the rush of air fades from my ears, I hear a softer whooshing sound coming from below the floor of my cage, and I realize that something beneath me is arresting my fall. I’m not being executed after all. Not by this drop, anyway.
As adrenaline surges through my veins, setting my nerve endings on fire, the cage around me slowly, almost gently settles toward the ground. Right in the middle of the clearing. Through the bars overhead, I see the shuttle fly away, the hole in its floor already closed.
I’m alone on the surface.
God, I hope I’m alone on the surface.
There are trees all around me. Towering over me. The ground itself is made of a dusty gray soil that doesn’t loo
k like it would be fertile, yet it clearly lets these trees grow tall and broad, their branches reaching toward the reddish sun.
I remember these trees. They look just as odd to me now as they did eighteen years ago.
I can’t tell yet whether the sun is rising or setting, and I know nothing about the geography of this planet, or the length of its days, or anything else. What I do know is that these trees are native to Fetoja, but they also grow in one of the bio-domes on Ratera III, thanks to my family’s extensive planetary engineering efforts. And while I could be on either of those two planets, based on the trees, the flora isn’t the only feature of this landscape that I recognize.
I know this soil too.
The native soil of Ratera III has been changed by the engineering efforts in each of the bio-domes, of course. Using microorganisms, and transplanted flora, and many other techniques I don’t really understand. But there’s no way to truly replicate the soil from one planet on another. Or from one part of a planet in another part of that same planet. And I know this soil. I woke up covered in it, once, when I was four years old. I had it clogging my nasal passages and caked in open wounds.
I know exactly where I am.
I’m in the fucking alien preserve—the zoo planet my family owns. I’m on the surface, at the worst possible time. Fortunately, and likely not by accident, I’m in one of the bio-domes that can support human life.
A rustling noise comes from my left, and I spin, squinting into the flora to try to find the source. However, even without leaves, the tree branches are dense enough to hide just about anything that lives in the forest. At least I have this cage. At least nothing out there can get to me. Nothing bigger than the inch-wide gap in my bars, anyway. Not that that will keep me from starving to death.
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