by Cathryn Cade
The redhead stayed at Joran’s side, her gaze on him. She too wore pants, boots and her utility vest bristled with weapons. Her short hair curled around her head.
He grinned at the two taking their bow. “Ilya, you did us proud. Dano, you ever lay your head in my lap that way again, I’m gonna to put that smart mouth of yours to work.”
The others roared with laughter. Dano fluttered his lashes at Joran. “Is that a promise, boss?”
Joran cast a look at the stocky, ebony-skinned man glowering from the edge of the crowd. “No, because come to think of it, Orson’s too good with that blade of his. Now go wipe that scowl off his face.”
Dano turned his sultry look on the other man, who jerked his chin in a silent command. Dano sauntered to him and Orson enfolded him in a possessive embrace, murmuring something to him that made the smaller man press a placating kiss to his lover’s throat.
“What about my performance?” the redhead asked.
“You were stellar,” Joran said without looking at her. “You should be on the big vids, Qala.” He rose from his seat and moved to the center of the area. With a flick of his hand, the holovid disappeared, cutting off the blond reporter in mid-phrase.
“We’re all on the big holovids now, boss,” a huge, craggy-faced man noted, his deep voice like soft thunder. “Travel Channel beams all over the galaxy. Not sure that’s a good thing.”
Var was a Space Forces veteran with a stoic demeanor and a dislike of uniforms and crowds in that order.
Joran nodded wryly. “You speak truth, Var. And in the filthiest dens in the galaxy, they’re mocking us as we speak. But let ‘em.”
“We mock them,” Qala said, jumping to her feet. “You watch—most of the galaxy will believe what that fool says about us. And meanwhile, we go on doing what we want, when we want—flying under the satcom.”
Joran shrugged. “My thoughts exactly. Most beings believe all they see, and most of what they hear.”
The diminutive Ilya flung herself onto Var’s lap with the abandon that said she knew he’d catch her. “Besides, lover, no one would ever believe I’d go for the Storm when I can have you.”
The stoic man’s eyes softened as his arms closed around her. “Now I know you’re blowin’ smoke, sweet face.”
Instead of answering with words, she kissed him, deep and wet as if they were alone.
“Loved the part where you said ‘Why am I known as El Zhazid, the Storm?’” mimicked a tall man with ragged light brown hair. “‘Because we just drift across the plains, moving here and there like the wind.’”
The crowd laughed again.
“Thank you, Haro. That was good, wasn’t it?” Joran agreed. “Always give them something that’s near enough to the truth that they can dock and think they’ve found the real bay.”
Haro rose to his feet to strike a pose, glaring fiercely at the others. “You want the truth?” he intoned. “I will give you the truth. I am called Il Zhazid, because I am like the storm, sweeping in on caravans and blowing away the best of their cargo. I leave them shaken, rattled and rolled. But I do not destroy them—no! For I am not evil, I am simply...a force of nature.”
The others roared their approval or hooted disparagingly.
Shaking his head, Joran gave Haro a shove that sent him reeling into Qala’s arms. He promptly wrapped a long arm around her and stole a kiss.
“Get off me, you skrog!” She shoved at him, her cheeks flushing.
Joran sighed inwardly. He was getting tired of their balancing act of camaraderie laced with sexual awareness, but he was not fucking his lieutenant—that would not end well. She was one of the fiercest fighters he knew, and there was no one he’d rather have at his back, but as for anything more, no.
Despite easy access to vaccinations for birth control and STIs for hundreds of years now, sex meant something more to women. It often left them expecting commitment. Males forgot this at their own peril.
He fucked camp followers, prostitutes and other women who were attractive and willing. Women who knew better than to expect anything more. He didn’t spend more than one night in a woman’s arms. He didn’t look to his warriors’ partners, because not only was that stupid, it was wrong.
And he absolutely did not fuck anyone in his crew. He’d learned this lesson the hard way after a Serpentian warrior whose temper rivaled her passions had objected to his moving on to another woman. She’d left the camp, but not before lasering his cruiser along both sides. It had cost him a massive amount of credit to have the ugly marks repaired.
He’d yet to meet a woman who made that shit worthwhile.
The reverse—a woman who was not a warrior, who was soft and vulnerable—would be even worse. She’d cling to him, expect him to support her in all ways, instead of standing strong at his side. She’d suffocate him with demands. No, his way was best.
A blonde in a tight black top and leggings smiled at him, running one hand through her long hair, and he returned her smile. Fee, now there was the perfect deterrent to Qala—free and easy, with no expectations other than the protection of the camp and a share of their credit to buy pretty things.
He opened his mouth to call her over, and his comlink chimed. As he opened the link, his heartbeat surged. Time for some real action.
“Play time is over,” Joran told Qala and Haro. “The slave auction we’ve been waiting for? Happening tomorrow afternoon, south of here in the Pinnacles.”
“Yeah,” Haro muttered. “Time to let the thunder roll and the lightning strike. The Storm is on the move.”
Joran grinned, and raised his bottle of ale. “Let it rain.”
Chapter 2
High noon the following day found Joran doing a flight check on his cruiser. From the side, the Hawk was silver. But with camouflage imbedded in the ceramcoat finish, from the air she appeared to be nothing more than a water mirage, often seen on these deserts. Wouldn’t fool the IGSF’s new tech, but then he wasn’t usually running from them, just other pirates.
Qala appeared at Joran’s side, fairly vibrating with anticipation. He returned her look with approval. This, they could share.
“Weapons ready?” he asked, wiping his hands on a cleansing pad.
She nodded.
“All right.” He looked around as Var and Ilya approached, followed by Haro and a pair of stocky Occulans, their eye-stalks waving above their mottle brown heads. “Haro, you’re pilot. Wega, Riley, you ready?”
“Ready,” one of the Occulans rasped. The other blinked rapidly.
“All right, let’s move.”
Despite the baking heat of the summer day, many of those remaining in camp had gathered to watch them load up. A trio of teens dashed out of the trees, and two children hopped with excitement.
Joran lifted his chin to the crowd. A grizzled older man grinned. “Give ‘em hells, Storm.”
“Will do, Draz. Keep the camp safe while we’re gone.”
“Where’s Mako?” Qala asked, scanning the onlookers..
“He’s enroute back from F City,” Var said. “With the transport. Dropped off a load of goods, bringing back supplies.”
“He could meet us at the auction,” Qala suggested casually. “The transpo has plenty of room for a few warm bodies.”
Joran shook his head, already swinging through the open hatch of the cruiser. “Qala, we’re not in the rescue business. That’s the IGSF’s job. We’re there for the credit—we’re in, we’re out, we let them know about the auction after we’re safely away.”
The Storm rolled, and left others to deal with the aftermath.
***
The Pinnacles auction ring had clearly been thrown together in a hurry—it consisted of a roof system of satcom camo stretched from the mouth of a huge cave out to several tall rock columns. Under this shelter squatted the ugly, bulbous shape of a Quark O’gren transport, surplus of the Solar Wars, surrounded by a host of smaller craft.
Food and beverage stalls lined the mouth of the cave
. Smoke and steam rose to pool under the awning. The savory odors of food could not, however, cover the stench of the crowd. The hot air was rank with unwashed bodies, avarice, fear and lust.
Rough beings from several planets milled about, talking and laughing raucously, some gambling in impromptu games of chance, some attempting to peer into the big transport for a glimpse of the day’s wares.
A fight had broken out between a huge Mau and a pair of humans. The Mau ended it by tossing one of the men bodily through a slit in the tont walls around a vendor’s stall. The other man turned and ran, shoving his way through the crowd. The onlookers laughed uproariously or slunk away, depending on who they’d been cheering for.
Inside the cave, the auction ring took up the rear of the space, with a smaller opening behind it. A stage hovered several feet off the ground, and the buying had begun. A pair of Tygean females, petite and buxom, posed for the beings watching from the cave floor. The Tygers’ golden gazes were feral, wary. Both were in full mating shift, tails waving behind them.
Above their heads, a holovid magnified them in detail for the crowd. The holocams captured the catlike intensity of their gazes and the fine dusting of fur covering their voluptuous curves.
A Vulpean skated above the crowd on a hovie, his beady gaze on the crowd, his oily voice amplified as he extolled the virtues of the two slaves. “Not one, but two fiery Tygeans to warm your sleeping pod. Both in full mating shift, thanks to their recent arrival from Tygea, where the female moons are in ascendance. Ver-rrry lusty, they are.”
Bidding was brisk. Buyers held devices in their hands that signaled the amount of credit they were willing to spend.
To the rear, a small group of prisoners huddled under heavy guard. A Barillian female’s keen of despair, fluted from the tall pipes atop her lavender head, cut through the rumble of the crowd and the auctioneer’s strident voice. One of the towering Mau guards struck the Barillian, and her mourning ended with a squawk of pain. The stench of fear emanating from the cowering group heightened.
A Mau was readying the next offering, a pale Pangaean, green hair wrapped around his throat, slim body shivering despite the heat.
Joran glided through the crowd, his stride relaxed, a man with no apparent intent and all the time on this world. Over his leathers and vest he wore the long cape favored by travelers here, of dull shaded gray-green. The hood was pulled forward to shade his face from the glare of the hoverlamps.
He was not the only one so garbed. On an illicit occasion such as this, many preferred to remain anonymous. And there were those who wanted to pry their identity from them. Spy bots zinged through the crowd, tiny holovid cameras revolving like disembodied eyeballs. Occasionally the tiny orbs ventured too close to their prey and were struck down, to fall from sight in a shower of sparks.
The crowd was edgy, eyeing each other and the guards. Many hands or paws hovered near weapons. An Occulan’s eight eye stalks waved, each in a different direction. An Indigon stood, pale face grim under his ebony hair, a space cleared around him as he used his mental powers to hold others at bay.
Qala walked just behind Joran, also hooded. As his second in command, she would be as easily recognized as he.
“The Pinnacles,” she scoffed, voice too soft to be heard by others, but as clear through his comlink as if her lips were at his ear. “More like the space dregs.”
She was not wrong. The place was full of bottom feeders of all kinds.
Off to their right, Var strolled on a parallel path, one arm around Ilya. The small blonde had her hood thrown back. She surveyed the penned prisoners as if searching for just the right new servant. The two Occulans were moving into position near the stage.
If necessary, Wega and Riley would cause a disruption, a decoy for the attention of the guards. This was a mean, ugly lot—Maus, a few Gorglons and even Ingoes, the scum of the galaxy.
“Quark, they have a lot of captives,” Qala said. “Should have alerted the IGSF to just raid this event in mid-auction.”
“Qala,” he reproved in the voice of a patient teacher. “If we did that, we wouldn’t leave here with anything but a memory and probably some laser burns. All hells would break loose if the the IGSF showed up now. This crowd has more credit than smarts.”
“The epaulets aren’t gonna be here in time to save many of these slaves,” she said. “This lot will scatter like rats soon as their fighters are sighted coming in.”
“True,” he agreed, clocking the next batch of prisoners being herded from the maw of the transport behind the auction ring. “But they’ll rescue some—they can track ships a long way out. And if we make it unprofitable enough, this gang will have to move fast to make up their losses, which gives the eppies a better chance of catching them.”
All InterGalactic Space Forces officers had epaulets of service on their crisp flight suits, admired or derided depending on the observer. Since Joran and his crew cruised on both sides of the law, he appreciated the IGSF, but steered clear when he could. They took the fun out of so many activities.
“We could call them sooner.”
“No,” he repeated. “We can’t. Too many for us to save. And we’ve got to make a living—we can’t live on sunlight and water. Thirdly, I’m not risking a stint on Deep Six for someone I don’t even know. IGSF finds us here, they’ll figure we’re part of it. We hit the slavers where it hurts, in their credit accounts, maybe we’ll convince them to go into a new line of work. That’s our contribution.”
“That won’t help these poor captures.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to stop looking at them, if it was going to make her heart bleed. He kept his own gaze on the crowd, the guards, any place from which trouble seemed likely to spring. And if something uncomfortably like guilt rapped at the locked portal of his conscience, he held it at bay by remembering that he’d escaped a life in the gutter and so could others, if they fought hard enough.
He wasn’t the savior of the weak, he was a man who saw what he wanted and took it. And since he took it from fat catamounts who earned it climbing on the backs of those who were weaker, this bothered him not at all. Okay, not much.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll save the ones we can—or even better, we’ll let the IGSF do it. If you see any buys you especially don’t like, put a tracker on them and feed it to the eppies.”
“As many trackers as I want?”
“As many as you want. Now can we get back to business?”
Joran eyed a pair of huge Maus hovering on either side of a portly male, a small female at his side. They stood near a side entrance on the far side of the cave. A gold cruiser gleamed through the aperture behind them. Showy and fast, the kind purchased when credit was no object, and excess was.
He pulled an occule from behind his ear and fitted it to one eye. The unit flickered and then zoomed in on the group, leaving Joran bracing himself against the sensation of being sucked forward through the hot, smoky air. He blinked rapidly and regained his equilibrium.
The Maus were armed to the teeth. Joran had expected that. He was more interested in the male in their protection. Part Serpentian, from the golden hue of his skin and the slant of his hooded eyes, but his fleshy build and the lines of self-indulgence in his jowly face said part human. His silver hair was combed into a gleaming swathe high on his head, and diamonds and iridium winked on the comlink embedded in one ear.
When he spoke, he gestured with a hand glittering with jewels. Giving a command, which he clearly expected to be obeyed instantly.
Loathing curled hot and dark in Joran’s gut. The man was everything he despised—smooth and sleek, wealthy off the suffering of the weak. The kind of slime that rose to the top, until someone like Joran sliced him right off his lofty perch, the blade striking where it would hurt the most—in his credit accounts.
“Found our slaver,” Joran said, gaze still on the group. “Setting a few spybots on him. And, Qala, that big gold cruiser is a great place for one of your
trackers. Just don’t let them see you plant it, or we’ll have a firefight on our hands. They’ll drop you without a qualm, and then I’d have to kill them. Rather let the IGSF have them.”
“They’ll never even see me,” Qala promised. She slipped away.
A woman stood at the slaver’s elbow. She was striking, if a man favored Serpentians and heavy cosmetics, which Joran didn’t. Her auburn hair was elaborately dressed, and her yellow cape was lii silk, emeralds adorning the comlink in her ear, and hanging around her throat. She stood like a lovely statue, her face a mask of glimmering makeup. The slaver’s mistress, he guessed, bored by the whole thing and no doubt wishing she was a million cliqs away from here, spending the man’s credit.
At her elbow stood a young man who even Joran had to admit was beautiful, slim and golden skinned with dark hair curling about his head and shoulders. He wore only a yellow loincloth, and a heavy gold collar. His face was expressionless, his luminous gaze empty of emotion. A slave.
Joran looked back at the slaver himself. He stood, legs apart, one hand hooked in his elaborate leather belt, a drink in the other, smirking as he surveyed the scene.
Joran sent a link with the man’s image, and then waited.
‘Name: Mulos Vadyal,’ a voice said in his ear. ‘Goes by: Midas Vadyal. Origin: Serpentian and human. Occupation: owner of Pleasure Palace casino. Primary residence: Pleasure Palace. Criminal record: 2 counts theft, 1 count unlawful imprisonment, 5 counts rape. Sentenced to three years enforced labor, served 2 months. Released on full pardon.’
A full pardon, right. This meant judges or prison officials had been paid off.
The hot thing in Joran’s belly coiled tighter. He let it, feeding off the familiar fire, letting it build. Jagged-edged, painful yet strangely comforting. He and his rage were symbiotic, and had been since he was a boy in the cold, wet, dirty alleys of New Seattle, Earth II. And he’d been channeling it in this fashion since he could remember, too.
It had only let him down once, when he tried to save a younger boy, Creed, from the filth that held him captive. Logan had to rescue both of them. Although his older brother had never uttered a word of criticism, being held down, roughed up and threatened with torture and death, when he’d wanted to be a savior had been a humiliation that burned Joran so deeply the flame still drove him.
