As exhausted as she was from running almost non-stop the past few days, she was too wired to fall asleep. The most she could do was even out her breathing and force her muscles to relax as she let her mind wander. She lay like that for about a half hour, feeling the tension slowly melt away from her body, when she heard the hiss of the door opening and several arguing male voices getting louder.
“…all I’m saying is, if we’d decided to run guns instead of medicine, we’d have already been paid. I could be getting a drink thrown in my face by a gorgeous broad right now,” one complained.
“Well, at least he’s realistic,” another commented, which garnered a few laughs.
“After the cluster-fuck on the Edge we can’t afford jobs that dangerous,” a new voice said. “We’ve been over this.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” the first voice said. “Annie’s making you soft.”
“I can one hundred percent guarantee that’s the opposite of what Annie makes him,” someone snickered.
The first man gave a pornographic moan. “And who could blame him? God, her ass.”
“Custer.” It took Zosha a moment to place the voice as belonging to the third man who spoke due to the fact it was suddenly much lower and much more threatening.
“What? If you’re going to hog the only woman on board all to yourself, the rest of us should at least get to fantasize about her.”
“Custer.”
“I think,” a new voice said calmly, “that we should get out of here before someone with a badge decides to double check our clearance. Custer, you stay here with me and unload. Captain, if you wouldn’t mind getting ready to take off, I’ll join you as soon as we’re done here.”
There were a few grunts of agreement followed by the sounds of footsteps.
“Seriously, though, it’s not like I’m asking for a turn at her,” Custer grumbled.
“One of these days you’re going to annoy him enough that he sends you on a long walk out of a short airlock, but only if Annie doesn’t beat him to it,” the calm voice said. Zosha decided that it was a rather nice voice, deep and smooth. Listening to it hardly made up for being tucked away behind crates of dubious content, but it didn’t hurt.
“He’s totally whipped.”
“It’s Annie. We’re all whipped.”
“Speaking of, do you think they ever…” his voice trailed off and he made a sound like a whip cracking.
“Not all of us prefer our bedmates fully armed, Custer,” the other man said, sounding slightly exasperated. “Ugh, I need your help with this one.”
The conversation was momentarily halted as the two men grunted, followed shortly by a loud thud.
“Alright, tie those down and then we’re done,” the nice voice said.
“You got it. Also, you smell that too, right?”
“Of course, but avoiding the Sixers takes precedence right now.” The other man made a noise of protest. “Leave it. Captain’s not worried and we’ve got bigger issues.”
“Well if the Captain’s not worried,” Custer said mockingly.
“Get out of here. We’ll talk once we’re out of here.”
Custer grumbled but, if the fading footsteps were anything to go by, complied.
This left Zosha, as far as she could tell, alone in the cargo hold with the man who had a voice that was probably a lot nicer than he would be if he found her. Her skin felt tight and hot and she couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to wait a situation out, or even the first time she’d stowed away, but the stakes had never been this high before. After a few minutes of the sounds of crates being belted down and heavy breathy, a second set of footsteps retreated.
Zosha lay in perfect silence, hardly daring to even breathe, until several minutes without sound passed. Slowly she let herself relax. She was struck by the urge to call Spinner and let him know she was okay but disregarded it immediately. Her suit would protect her if someone scanned for heat or life signs, but that didn’t do shit if someone heard her. Instead she focused on one of the screws in the box she was facing, letting her mind slip into a trance as she stared at it. It was a good way to keep herself from going insane at the wait without being as vulnerable as she would have been asleep.
When she came out of the trance she had no idea what time it was, only that she was hungry. Slowly and quietly, she unzipped her pack and removed one nutri-pack, jabbing the attached straw into the foil. She took a small sip, face pulling into a scowl as the bland, faintly metallic-tasting mush hit her tongue. She let it sit in her mouth for a moment to adjust to the flavor, then swallowed and began to suck down the rest.
She was about halfway through the pack when a set of footsteps approached. Immediately she froze, straw still in her mouth, and listened intently. The footsteps grew loud enough that she suspected whoever had just walked in was only a few feet away, then stopped.
Someone cleared their throat. “Um, hello?” the nice voice from earlier said. Zosha felt her blood go cold. Who was he talking to? Had someone else walked in while she was in a trance? Had they heard her? “I just wanted to let you know that we’re about to eat and that if you’d like to stop hiding, you’re more than welcome to join us.”
The panic that had filled Zosha moments earlier at the thought of someone else walking in while she was in a trance was nothing compared to the all-consuming terror that hit her now. She forced down the wave of adrenaline trying to rise in her and forced herself to think. She couldn’t take on the entire crew in a fight, and taking a hostage was tricky when she didn’t know the ship, but maybe if she could force him out of the hold she could lock herself in, or find somewhere else to hide. The ship had to land eventually, and once it did… well. She had a lifetime’s worth of practice when it came from escaping tricky situations.
“Look,” the not-quite-as-nice-anymore voice said, “I can smell you. Hiding isn’t going to work, especially on this ship.”
Zosha stayed frozen, unsure of what to do next and praying that he’d just turn around and leave. Instead, he sighed and walked up to the pile of boxes she was hiding behind. Undoing the restraints on the stack, he removed the top box so he could lean over far enough to see Zosha, staring up at him wide-eyed with a straw in her mouth.
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 turne
d, 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 said. “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 i
nformation 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.”
Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) Page 14
