by K. D. Austin
Pirates of the Galaxy 1
Hidden Treasure
Too bad Hanna Seldon, the galaxy’s best hacker, can’t hack someone’s mind and make him love her. Or can she?
Tasked with tracking down the pirate hacker, Galactic Marine Lance’s programmed hatred of pirates causes him to nearly kill Hanna. Saved by pirate captain Arden Mann, who needs her talent to find an alien treasure, Hanna discovers how her hacking ability can alter minds and enhance sex. She hacks Lance’s mind making him a pirate.
As she and Lance try to recapture the treasure from a mysterious group, Hanna falls for the man who once tried to kill her. Freed from his Galactic Marine programming, Lance comes to love the pirate life and the woman who brought him into it. When Arden betrays them to keep the treasure, Lance proves his love for Hanna by saving her life.
Lance and Hanna start their own pirate band, and Hanna shows Lance how hacking can create new levels of sexual pleasure.
Genre: Futuristic, Science Fiction
Length: 59,389 words
HIDDEN TREASURE
Pirates of the Galaxy 1
K.D. Austin
EROTIC ROMANCE
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
HIDDEN TREASURE
Copyright © 2015 by K.D. Austin
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-631-4
First E-book Publication: August 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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DEDICATION
This one is for S. You are the ink to my pen.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About the Author
HIDDEN TREASURE
Pirates of the Galaxy 1
K.D. AUSTIN
Copyright © 2015
Chapter 1
Hanna Seldon just realized something. This would be a stupid way to die.
She closed the communications link with the Port Docking Authority Robot. Hanna needed to concentrate on landing the Pusher X7 Rocket on the tiny-looking landing pad below, the sort of thing she could normally do in her sleep. However, there had been nothing normal about this run. The routine surveillance had gone south almost from the moment her little pirate band had entered the Bayta system.
Her captain, Mister Starfield—some pirates chose odd names for themselves—had promised that the system would be easy pickings. A few quick hits on some overstuffed cargo ships and then they’d space out to an edge system and lay low for a while enjoying their spoils and selling what they could on the black market. She’d signed on with Mister Starfield’s band only a month before. Now she wished she had signed on with anyone else.
Somehow the Galactic Marines had been expecting them and rigged half the Asteroid Belt with explosives. Mister Starfield’s pirate band lost three of their five ships in as many seconds. From that point on, chaos ruled. GalMar ships flashed out from the debris and began decimating the remaining pirate vessels with heavy weapons that, up until that moment, Hanna didn’t even know existed.
Starfield himself had shoved her into the Pusher. “You ain’t paid enough to die with me,” he had said, laughing like a maniac. He then launched the rocket. The next minute the GalMars destroyed the pirate vessel.
Hanna’s problem now was that the rocket wasn’t designed to land on a planet. It was an illegal stealth rocket typically used to approach target spaceships close enough to hack into their internal communications. To make matters worse, the rocket had sustained damage as Starfield’s pirate ship exploded.
The final piece of trouble had arisen when she’d tried to com the Port Docking Authority on the planet below—she thought it was called Benn. She couldn’t prove it, but her instincts told her the GalMars were planetside and monitoring her communication. She’
d cut the communiqué before they could ask too many questions. She’d claimed to be a trader vessel caught in the firefight above the planet. She doubted they bought it, but had little choice but to land and try to play out the ruse.
Hanna decided to try her implant com one more time. If any other pirates still lived and were still in system, they should be able to hear her without the GalMars being able to listen in. The pirates used hacked implants to access the neural net through illegal channels. Even if the GalMars were monitoring, they should get only junk transmissions. She had little hope of finding anyone else, though.
“This is Too Seldom,” she said, using her pirate code name, which she found stupid. First, her name was “Seldon,” not “Seldom,” and honestly she found the idea of “too seldom” to be annoyingly accurate, especially when it came to her love life. “Any Stars out tonight?”
No response. She tried one more code transmission. “Twinkle. Twinkle.”
Silence. As expected, she was the sole survivor. And if she couldn’t figure out how to make this damaged rocket land on the planet, all the pirates would be dead.
“Okay, Hanna,” she said simply to hear some type of response. “You can either sit here and die or you can land this rocket and take your chances on the planet.”
The surface of the planet filled more and more of the Pusher’s view screen as it plunged into the atmosphere. The controls became less and less responsive as smoke began streaming from the console. It was no use; she was going to crash if she didn’t choke to death first.
Hanna became desperate and started randomly punching buttons. Boom! The rocket thundered toward the planet. Of course, nothing else worked, but the emergency boosters still functioned. The rocket screeched through the atmosphere.
Hanna shut them off quickly, but the landing pad was still rushing at her way too fast. As her hope diminished, the small ship bucked and slowed.
“Anticrash field engaged,” a robotic voice said over her com as the Pusher was lowered to the pad below and set down gently.
Hanna climbed out of her ship—only shaking a little bit—and stepped onto the auto-walkway that would carry her to the air lock. She tried to take some deep breaths to calm her nerves. That was harder than usual since Hanna had a micro-filter shoved up her nose. Opening her mouth meant breathing in the planet’s toxic atmosphere. The air of the planet was a brownish orange that made Hanna’s normally fair skin and auburn hair look diseased.
A small wave of relief flooded Hanna as no one rushed out of the spaceport to kill her on sight. Of course, they could just as easily be waiting inside for her. She briefly considered bolting into the surrounding port and stealing another ship, but if the GalMars were on the planet, she likely wouldn’t get it started before being blasted. And even if they weren’t on Benn, she knew they were in the system. She had no hope of escaping that way. She’d just have to try to play out her ruse and catch passage on an interplanetary vessel like a normal traveler.
Her hands and knees had mostly stopped shaking. Hanna figured it would be normal for anyone who’d just been caught in a battle between the GalMars and some pirates to be a bit shaky. Hopefully, the Port Authority wouldn’t think too much about it if Hanna seemed a little jittery, assuming they’d bought her story, which she still doubted. Feeling a little more in control of herself, Hanna passed through the air lock door. It sealed behind her, and she heard the whoosh as the toxic atmosphere was pulled out and clean air cycled into the chamber.
Hanna turned and took one last look through the porthole at the landing pad behind her. Giant robotic arms had already grabbed her little rocket and were moving it to the refueling depot. Another set of robotic arms was moving a massive freighter from its storage hangar to the launching pad. That’s when Hanna saw the ship that had been hidden behind the freighter.
Her heart leaped into her throat, and her stomach shot down toward her knees, and she cursed. “Bova!”
Chapter 2
From his vantage point inside the spaceport terminal, Sergeant Lance watched the anti-crash field snare the badly damaged Pusher and land it safely. He looked away from the transteel window and adjusted the ridiculous shirt he wore over his enhancement suit. How the top brass thought this costume store pirate getup would fool anybody was beyond him. In his opinion, he would’ve done better to remain in uniform and approach the suspected pirate playing off the lame cover story she’d given ground control. He’d argued it briefly but seen this wasn’t one of the times when his opinion counted. They wanted him to play pirate, so he would play pirate.
The shirt and pants made him angry, though, and he wasn’t sure why. Anytime he had to deal with pirate scum, he had this problem, and now he was dressed like one. Lance spun and slammed his fist into the metal locker behind him, crumpling the door.
“Calm yourself,” he said, taking a deep breath. When his heart slowed to its regular rhythm, Sergeant Lance turned back to the window. He was just in time to catch the suspected pirate disembarking. Lance wished more pirates looked like her. Would make capturing them much more pleasurable. Even in the puke-colored air, the young woman’s auburn hair stood out. Lance could only imagine how much more striking it would be once she entered the spaceport, and did not have to wait long to prove himself right.
The potential pirate entered the air lock, and as the scrubbers traded Benn’s toxic atmosphere for clear, clean air, Lance was provided his first unobstructed view of the woman he’d soon call prisoner. Although she was a pirate—Lance had less suspicion about that than did his superiors—and he could feel the anger rising in him again, another part of him appreciated how her battered flight suit hugged her petite frame, accenting her breasts, which were the perfect size in his opinion. As his CO had always said, “more than a handful is just wasted.” His appreciation for her figure was complete when she turned to look back the way she’d come and gave him an eyeful of her round ass.
“Too bad she’s a pirate. What a waste.” Lance pushed aside his appreciation of the young woman’s physique. He didn’t have time for such distractions; this pirate would be good for one thing only, information. Once he got the intel about the local bands from her, his orders were clear.
“Time to get to business.”
Chapter 3
Hanna stood in the air lock, frozen in place, as useless thoughts ran through her head. Her instincts had proven accurate once again. The Galactic Marines were on the planet. She wanted to run back to Pusher X7 and burn space away from here until she ran out of fuel, but the Pusher would never leave this world on its own. Even had it not been damaged, it didn’t have the engines for escape velocity.
She felt trapped but had no choice but to continue with her cover story. She’d been in tight spots before. Anyway, she’d been with Starfield’s band only a short while. It was likely the GalMars wouldn’t have intel on her identity as a member of his group, and thanks to her hacking expertise, she had a cover identity.
Still, Hanna was terrified of stepping through the air lock door into the station proper. The place could be crawling with marines. They could be checking everyone. Her implant should allow her to pass a scan, but she hadn’t had to test it yet and didn’t feel like finding out the hard way that the GalMars had countered the implant’s fake identity.
She stared at the terminal. It was waiting on her to punch the button to open the inner air lock door. Hanna hesitated with her finger over the button.
“Like Dad used to say, ‘Pee or get out of the sani-station’,” she said to herself, and realizing that standing here only made her look suspicious, Hanna hit the button. The inner doors of the space terminal opened slowly before her. She vainly tried to control her breathing and stepped out of the air lock and into the warmth of the main station.
“Welcome to Benn, the galaxy’s premier provider of iridium, deuterium, and other rare and valuable resources. We are bringing the future to you,” intoned the robo-announcer positioned by the door.
Hanna had ju
mped at the unexpected voice and tried to cover herself with a quick cough. Ignoring the rest of the announcement, she removed the filters from her nostrils and took a deep breath of the clean air of the terminal. That warm breath helped her start to relax.
“I can pull this off,” she said under her breath.
That’s when a striking figure stepped out in front of her. Hanna didn’t know the man, but she’d recognize the look anywhere—tall, well over six feet, and broad like a wall, with short-cropped dark hair and a face that looked like it had been forged from steel. He could have stepped right off of a recruiting poster for the Galactic Marines. However, he wasn’t dressed like a GalMar. In fact, if he hadn’t stood so straight and appeared so rigid, she could’ve believed he was a pirate by his dress—at least a low-budget holovid actor playing a pirate.
Besides his loose-fitting pants and stereotypical ebony blousy shirt, the man had one other feature that caught her attention, his eyes. They blazed at her like a supernova, clear and bluish white. They were the most captivating eyes she’d ever seen. And if she weren’t pretty sure this guy was really a GalMar, she’d have found them beautiful.
Hanna tried to simply sidestep the man, nodding her apologies for being in his way, but the massive probable marine moved with a grace that belied his size and swiftly grabbed Hanna’s arm. He had a grip like a crusher robot. Hanna wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hanna Seldon? I’m The Lance. I was Mister Starfield’s contact in system. What happened up there?”
