by Brooke Hodge
Copyright © 2018 by Brooke Hodge
All rights reserved.
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
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.
Published in the United States of America.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Follow Brooke!
About the Author
Also by Brooke Hodge
One
As I watched the captain of the Lou Ella slash his way through the angry horde of lizard-men, I realized I was going to owe Sotash a lot more money for this job than I had anticipated. The tulax king cast an angry look in my direction as he surveyed the scene for himself. The small crew behind Captain Williston looked mildly entertained, but knowing what I knew of them from the intel I’d gathered, they were just waiting for a reason to jump in and help him. Thankfully, they weren’t needed. Not that I cared about anyone’s safety, but I’d only managed to set aside so many credits for this and the Captain was quickly burning through them.
“Enough!” Sotash called across the barren dirt field that had been repurposed as the sparring grounds. The tulax that Williston had been fighting collapsed to the ground. Honestly, I was surprised he’d made it this long but he knew he was defeated and knew what was coming next. Sotash wouldn’t have stopped the fight if he’d won. Another tulax warrior stepped up to the fallen and blew his head off with his weapon. The scaly body fell with a squishy thump.
“So, we have a deal?” Williston croaked out through heavy breaths.
Sotash glared at me again. Fuck, this was going to be expensive. “Deal.” Tulaxans didn’t speak much Standard in general, but they all knew that word. A female behind me unshackled my wrists. I rubbed at the cuts, smearing blood up to my elbow. They hadn’t needed to be so tight, but tulaxans didn’t understand the word ‘pretend’. Williston walked over to me and grabbed my elbow, never taking his eyes off Sotash. Deals with tulaxans weren’t confirmed until you were out of their weapons range.
I shuffled my feet as fast as I could, still keeping up the slave act. I didn’t want him to know my real strength until I was safely on his ship. He shoved me into his skid more in the interest in moving quickly than actually being overly rough. Captain Williston wasn’t that kind of man, but I cowered so he wouldn’t know I knew that. He winced and started up the engines. As the others climbed in behind us, Williston gave Sotash a half salute.
“Nice doing business with you again, Tash.”
Sotash’s angry roar was masked by the sudden noise of the engine as Williston punched it. I held on to the side and shielded my eyes from the dust and debris until the roof was securely latched overhead.
“Hang on tight. This is gonna be a bumpy one.” A male crew member said to me before grabbing some communication device and handing it to Williston. The guy had dark black hair that fell into his eyes, completely hiding them. I slid up into the empty seat beside him and buckled in.
“Xanda, we’re coming in hot. Have Lou Ella spooled up and ready to go in five.” Williston barked, handing the comm back to the dark-headed guy.
“Copy that, Captain. Told ya not to work with the tulaxans again.” A female voice reported back.
“Stow it, Xanda.” Despite the harshness of his words, Williston laughed as the skid bumped over the turbulent low elevation air currents.
Traxis flew past me in a blur of red hills and shrubby thorn bushes. I had never gone so fast in such a small skid and was too busy thinking of whether it was going to hold together at this speed to realize we were heading for the gorge. It was too late to scream because as soon as I thought about it, we were over the edge and I was too busy grabbing the seat beside me. I was pushed into the seat so hard I couldn’t breathe as the ground below rushed toward us at an alarming speed. I closed my eyes tight. I didn’t want to see my death coming. Why had he been so stupid to go this way?
We didn’t die, though. Williston pulled up on the controls at the last second, drilling me down into my seat hard before we turned and skipped over the surface of the narrow river beside us. The murky water made colorful arcs on each side of the craft as the oil-slicked surface refracted what little light reached it from the distant star. We followed the river’s twists and bends through the canyon still going full-tilt.
The man beside me took that moment to extricate my fingernails from his hand. Apparently, it wasn’t the seat I’d gripped on that side. I think he gave me a sideways glare, but not being able to see his eyes made that hard to tell for sure.
“No tails yet, Captain.” The female behind me spoke up. She must have noticed the fear I couldn’t hide from my face as I glanced back at her. “Torch put a bounty on the captain’s head a few minutes before we landed so we were hoping to get out before Sotash gets the word.”
“Tulaxans don’t generally like it when you blow up their cruisers. Whether they started the fight or not.” The captain smiled over his shoulder at me. A battle drone dropped in behind us and started firing at the ships now tailing us, scaring the ever-living shit out of me. I was beginning to think my intel left out a few crucial details about this crew. I threw my hands over my ears to block out the deafening roar of its guns. Small shocks rocked the skid as Sotash’s ships exploded behind us.
“Guess we didn’t have enough time after all.” The other guy quipped. His voice was almost too deep to hear over the engines and the explosions.
“Well, if he hadn’t taken so long to haggle, we would’ve been out of the atmosphere by now. Damn lizards. I was prepared to go higher, but old Sotash is dumb even by their standards.” The captain dodged a piece of shrapnel that flew by the ship. Luckily, there were too many low-hanging rocks for any tulaxans to try jumping in front of us, but that wouldn’t last for long. We were nearing the end of the canyon. I could see the rock walls falling away ahead of us and opening into the barren stretch of dirt and rock beyond. Our little skid and single battle drone wouldn’t stand a chance against the full power of Sotash’s pod if we got out there. I wondered if this whole ruse to save my life was actually going to bring the end of it.
I was saying my final prayers to Gaia when I noticed a cloud of dust ahead. As we got closer, I saw that the dust was the exhaust trail of a massive ship going full speed across the plane.
“Drop the gate, Xanda!” The guy beside me screamed into the communicator.
The female leaned forward to yell in my ear. “You better hang on.”
“Punch it or we won’t make it!” The dark-headed guy yelled.
“I know how to fly my own damn skid, Taesoo.” Williston growled through gritted teeth.
My eyes had been closed more than open throughout our short trip. I pushed myself back into the seat as we reached the open gate of the ship. Plasma beams hummed past
my ears and projectiles struck the frame around us. Dying wouldn’t be terrible as long as there wasn’t too much pain to go along with it. I’d had enough pain in my life. The maneuver was impossible, but then there was a bump, the screech of metal scraping on metal, and the brief feeling of weightlessness before we crashed down and the gate slammed shut behind us. I didn’t move as the three jumped out of the skid and ran up the stairs at the back of what was apparently a cargo bay.
“You might want to come with us.” The female called down to me from the top of the gangway. “We’re taking off and that thing isn’t tied down yet.”
I’d been on enough ships to know how rough an atmosphere exit could be, so I hopped out and ran up. The female showed me where to sit and I got to work on my harness as everyone else worked on theirs. The captain was in a seat at the front of the room along with a thin creature with sleek, mottled brown hair and tall ears standing up on the top of their head. A hole had been crudely cut into the chair, presumably to accommodate the long furry tail that was twitching back and forth like that of an angry cat.
“Picking up strays again, Captain?” The creature trilled. Gold bangles stacked on their upper arms caught the flashing lights around the room.
“She was a tulax slave. I couldn’t just leave her.”
“Did you at least buy this one, or do we have to add theft to our growing list of crimes against the Tulaxan Kingdom?”
“Stow it, Xanda, and get us off this rock.”
“Working on it, sir.” Xanda pulled up on the flight controls, angling the ship towards the stars. My breathing hitched a little higher as the atmosphere thinned through the pano. I wasn’t used to traveling in space.
“They’re scrambling. Do we shoot them down?” Xanda asked.
The captain was silent for a moment. “No. We don’t need to put ourselves in more danger. Sotash isn’t loyal to Torch. If we can get ahead enough, he won’t waste his resources for the measly sum Torch put out. Drop the charges.”
“Yes sir.” The furry pilot typed a command and put the rear view on the screen. Five or six tulax ships trailed us as three canisters, each about the size of a shoe, dropped out the back. A few seconds later they exploded in a pop and the ships began to fall away. “EMPs successful.”
“Any others following?”
“No. You seem to have been right.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived though. The captain turned in his seat to look at me. He rubbed his eyes. “Well, I guess I need to see what kind of woman I just bought.” He stood and motioned for me to follow. I fumbled over my harness and took a cautious look around the room. Nobody looked at me, but that wasn’t new. After a worried glance at the space unfolding on the screen ahead of us, I turned and followed the captain down the hallway. He took me into a small room off the bridge and poured some kind of beverage into a glass.
I’d witnessed enough inspections to know what was coming and I wanted to appear to be a good servant. If my plan was going to work, I had to sell the rescued slave bit. Assuming my intel was accurate, I had no reason to believe I would have to sell it beyond the initial inspection. If so, my cover was going to be blown long before we got to Hana Rae. I quickly pulled my clothes off and braced myself against the chill of the recycled air, hoping I’d covered up all my tattoos.
The captain turned around and froze. He was holding two glasses. Did he actually intend to share one with me? Alcohol was not easy to come by all the way out here. Perhaps he meant it as a lubrication for what was to follow. I shivered, hoping I wasn’t wrong. The captain was handsome enough that I would gladly let him “test the merchandise” if that’s what he was going for, but the drink would be a nice bonus. Gaia knew it had been a long time since I’d had a stiff drink. Well, it had been a while since I’d had a stiff anything.
Only, Williston looked more shocked than aroused. Of course, his eyes still walked across my skin quickly from my jet black hair falling in a sheet over my breasts, down to my admittedly filthy feet, and back up to my face again, though when our eyes met he seemed embarrassed. Hmm…interesting. I tried to keep my look innocent, but it was the hardest damn thing I’d ever had to do to keep from laughing at the expression on his face. Suddenly, as if shot, the captain set the drinks down and grabbed a blanket off the tiny couch on the edge of the room. He threw it at my body. The heavy wool scratched at my skin and smelled vaguely of some kind of grass.
“That’s not what I meant.” He rubbed his eyes again.
I decided to speak up, suddenly afraid he was upset enough to cast me out. “Do I not interest you, sir?” Had I been wrong about his orientation?
“No, no. I mean yes. I mean…fuck…” He ran his hands over his face. I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping it would still appear like something a slave would do in that situation. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Gaia, please don’t let me end up with mercs.
“I just meant I’m not after that. I didn’t negotiate you for…that.” He motioned over my body with both hands. “Let’s start over. I’m Jason Williston. What’s your name?”
“Fuyumi Matsako.” My first name was common enough, but everyone knew my family name, so I used the fake one.
“Nice to formally meet you, Fuyumi. I’m the captain of this ship. From this moment forward, you are free.”
Williston must have accepted my relief as gratitude. It was, just not in the way he obviously thought. He picked up the drinks again and motioned for me to sit beside him on the couch. I did so cautiously, still keeping up the ruse. I just had to keep it up until we reached the station. He handed me a glass two fingers full of a brown liquor. I took it all at once.
“Whoa, careful. That’s some strong stuff.”
I didn’t even wince. “We had stronger stuff than this on my last ship.” I spoke without even thinking. Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.
“Oh yeah, what ship was that?”
I scrambled to remember my cover story. “The Belhaven.”
Williston actually paled. The Belhaven’s reputation had a very long reach. The entertainment ship catered to a very specific, and very disturbed, clientele. I would drink another hundred bottles of Captain Williston’s stuff if it would take away the memories of what I’d had to do there. I’d been there, but never as a slave. Being a slave on that ship would have actually been preferable.
“My God. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” I meant it. Williston filled the glass again, but I paced myself on the second one. He didn’t need to know I probably had a higher tolerance than him. I might not have had to do the things I implied I did, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a past that would send even the toughest spacer running for the stars. Pasts like mine drove you to find some kind of vice as a distraction. Drinking was one of mine.
As I stole another glance at the captain, I realized this ship might offer more than just safe refuge. I chastised myself for wondering what might lie under his uniform. That particular vice needed to be kept under control because my taste in men was exactly what had got me into this situation to begin with.
Williston called up the female from the skid to show me to my new quarters. He still wouldn’t look me straight in the face again. Had I not been pretending to be a broken-down slave, I would have found it humorous. I would have picked on him for it. What did it say of me as a person that my first instinct was to pick on someone for being decent? Of course, I wasn’t really a person at all, was I? I was still reeling from that little revelation anyway, so I pushed it out of my mind and paid attention to the woman.
“You’ll sleep on the top bunk on this side,” Jeanvia was saying, “and the top bunk on that side is mine. Stay out of Xanda’s stuff over there.” She pointed to the end of the room that had a single twin sized bed. Apparently, being the Second in Command got you some perks on this ship, but not many. My room on Marimon had been twice this size and richly appointed. I couldn’t help but miss my bed. It was going to be hard not to
miss living like a queen, but it was worth it to escape. Besides, I just had to put up with it until Hana Rae. Then I could meet up with my contact and get out of this system entirely and get my feet back on solid ground where they belonged. Maybe even into a decent bed.
“Meals are served in the mess down the corridor to the left,” Jeanvia continued. She’d asked me to call her Jean ‘like Sean’. “The Captain upgraded our AI on the last stopover, so she’s pretty good with just about anything you want. I hope you like fish, though. We keep tanks on the ship rather than paying the price for remeat. If you want that shit, you’ll have to wait for Hana Rae.”
I shivered. ‘Remeat’ wasn’t the commercial name for the clone meat product most terrans ate, but it was an accurate epithet. I looked up at the red head, almost forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to know where the ship was headed. “Hana Rae?” I asked, using my most pathetic voice.
Jeanvia’s features were strong and angular. She had skin so pale you could almost read through it and though I guessed she was in her mid-forties she didn’t have a single wrinkle. Her skin still glowed like a twenty-year-old’s. Hearing my artificial fear, though, even her edges softened. “Oh. Don’t worry, we won’t be there long and you don’t even have to leave the ship.”
Oh yes I do. I smiled shyly up at her. “It’s okay. I learned how to handle it. I’d like to be of some help.”
She looked down on me with that ‘oh honey’ look I’d seen so many times on people that underestimated my small frame. It usually preceded at least a broken nose or, at worst, a broken neck. “That’s sweet. We’ll see if we can find something for you to do, then.”
I liked her a lot more about five minutes ago. Instead of busting her face in for her condescension, I reminded myself of my new place and smiled bigger. Just two weeks, I told myself. Then I’m really free.
