by Brooke Hodge
Jeanvia left me alone in the bunkroom to put on some clothes since I was still naked from my meeting with Williston. They’d burned my old clothes in case I’d picked up any traxian parasites. Lizards and bugs were the only thing that could thrive on that Gaia-forsaken hell hole.
I threw the blanket on my bunk and dug through the footlocker for something that would fit me. The best I came up with was a pair of tight-fitting, fuchsia-colored, knit pants and a black tank top. Had I been able to dress it up with my jewelry, it would have been a serviceable outfit but all the jewelry I had managed to steal had been sent by messenger to my contact on the outer rim space station. I had indicated which to keep and which to pawn, making a mental note of what I expected to get from it all. Assuming they didn’t just rob me blind and take off with it, of course. Most people who knew me and my family wouldn’t dare try that, though.
After dressing, I made my way down the corridor toward the mess hall. The smells coming up from the general area were better than I’d expected for a spacer outfit. From what I understood, these rigs barely kept their crew alive between outposts. The Lou Ella, however, was shaping up to be a real anomaly. As I sat down on a long bench, I surveyed the crew around me. Jeanvia and the guy from the skid, Taesoo, were laughing over huge plates of food while other crew I hadn’t met yet were either finishing up, or lining up at the kitchen window for their servings.
“If you don’t jump up there now, there might not be any food left until morning.” Williston’s voice caught me off guard making me jump. My hand instinctually grabbed for a weapon that was no longer on my hip. I tried to play it off by grabbing the bench. If the captain noticed, he didn’t show it.
“Oh!” I grabbed my chest for added flair. “Jeanvia said you had plenty.”
Williston smiled and held out his hand. I took it and swung my legs over the bench to stand. At least he was looking at me again. My mouth watered, but not for the food. What I wouldn’t give to crawl in his bunk. I bitched at myself internally. This was not the time to be letting my overactive sex drive cloud my judgement.
“We do, but Kyra only cooks when she’s scheduled to. For an advanced AI, she can be pretty bitchy.” His smile was infectious. It lit up his sea-green eyes and deepened the lines in his weather-worn face. He wasn’t much out of his early thirties, but he’d clearly spent some time on a sunny planet to get that kind of skin tone. The highlights in his close-cut, sandy brown hair suggested it hadn’t been that long ago, either.
“Oh, well, I guess it’s good I came down when I did.”
As Williston led me toward the line, I caught Taesoo staring at me. He’d pulled his hair out of his eyes with a bandana, presumably so he could see the food he was shoveling in his mouth, and I noticed he wasn’t half bad to look at either. Fuck. I was gonna have to buy me a man on Hana Rae and scratch this itch before I could get anything done. It had been far too long since my itch was scratched and that wasn’t an itch I was used to not scratching when the need arose.
“Are you okay?” Williston’s tone pulled me from my thoughts. I looked down at my arms at the red streaks I’d just put there. What a mess I was.
I rubbed my arms trying to get the scratch marks to go away. “Sorry. Nervous habit.” I wanted to smack the patronizing look off his face, but I couldn’t. Instead, I grabbed a plate and pointed toward some pictures on the display that looked appetizing. Maybe I would just eat through my hormones. The humanoid AI moved with speed and efficiency. Within a minute or two, my plate and Williston’s was piled as high with food as the others. I followed as we took our seats with Jeanvia and Taesoo. I ignored the stares I got as I inhaled my food. Slave or not, where I came from, if you didn’t eat quick, you didn’t eat.
I tried to slow myself down so I wouldn’t look like too much of a pig. “So what did you give Sotash for me?” Maybe if it was good enough, I wouldn’t owe him quite so much more for his troubles.
Jean and Taesoo glanced at each other. Williston didn’t take his eyes off his plate as he picked up another bite. “Money.”
“Wait. What? I thought you traded for me. Why would you buy me outright? No one buys slaves anymore.”
“I can’t stand slave keepers but I didn’t have the ammunition to go up against a full pod of tulaxans. It seemed like the easier choice.”
I put down my chopsticks. I hadn’t expected to cost them real money. Maybe some ammunition or some rice, but not money. Spacers got money in battle. It was wages. It was blood. I wasn’t worth any more blood spilled. My hands were stained enough.
“I’ll pay you back.”
Williston actually laughed. I glared at him from across the table. “I’m sorry, but how is a newly freed slave supposed to pay back a hundred thousand credits?”
“A hundred thousand credits?” Jean, Taesoo, and I all screamed at once.
“Williston, you idiot.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud as I put my head in my hands.
“Call me Jason.” I kept my face hidden as I cursed myself. This was not slave behavior.
“I’ll never pay that off.” It wasn’t exactly true. I could pay that, I just didn’t want to.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it back. I just couldn’t leave you there with those lizards. Slaves don’t last long with them.”
What kind of man would spend that kind of money on a slave, just to free her? It didn’t make any kind of sense. Especially when he’d made no effort to take any compensation from me for it. Spacers didn’t behave that way. Ever.
Jean sighed. “Captain Williston fancies himself an ancient terran warrior. Always doing the honorable thing. Saving the innocent.” She looked at him lovingly. There was a story as long as time behind her stare. “You’d quicker change the stars than his mind once he sets it on doing something.”
I stood up and slammed my plate into the recycler. “Well, he’d do well to not waste his time on someone like me again. I’m not worth saving,” I hissed as I walked by.
Lying in my bunk, I refused to let the tears spill from my eyes. Once again, I’d put myself first, not thinking of the consequences. Jason put his crew in jeopardy for me, lost an incredible amount of money for me, and then freed me without even considering repayment.
Growing up as the daughter of the biggest syndicate boss in the system had influenced me more than I realized. I thought I could leave the job and all the baggage that came with it behind me. Apparently not. Yakuza enforcers, like zebras, just don’t change their stripes.
Two
I sat, sulking, on the side of the cargo bay as Jason and Taesoo worked through hand-to-hand combat scenarios. They were training because, as Jason said, they saw more combat as merchant spacers now than they ever had in the armed forces. Jason had been a Marine on Kibō Prime while Taesoo worked private security for the wealthy families on the estates of Hōfuku before they both left to run the Lou Ella.
What a stupid name for a ship, I thought as I gnawed at my fingernails. There was nothing lyrical or meaningful about it whatsoever. Even my family, which were an unimaginative bunch who preferred to keep their superstitious feet firmly placed on the ground, was better at naming their offworlding ships. The only time they were given an actual name was if it had once belonged to a great warrior or prominent ancestor, of which we didn’t have many to choose from since most of the records from Earth had been lost in the evacuation.
The Yakuza had seen a resurgence in power after the plagues and famine that struck humanity because they were the only ones with the resources and initiative to help when the governments failed to. This gained them enough money and support in the process for their own exodus ships. Ironically, they were the only ones that took on less affluent passengers and in turn saved thousands of lives, but they were also the ones who experienced the worst losses. Entire ships disintegrated into the void due to hasty craftsmanship and poor design. Lost with them were most of our families’ historical records. Over time, a new sort of legend was formed from the lips of the o
ldest left among us. It was enough to at least give us inspiration for better ship names than Lou Ella.
Of course, I was in such a foul mood not because of the name of the ship, but because they were getting to fight and I was stuck sitting like an incompetent child. In the days since coming on this ship, all I’d seen them do was eat and train. I analyzed each of their movements and had them each beat six ways to Sunday within the first thirty minutes. I bit down on my nail and tasted blood, having reached the quick. I wrapped my thumb in my shirt as much to keep it out of my mouth as to stop the bleeding. I sighed and leaned my head back too quickly, hitting it hard against the bulkhead.
Jason and Taesoo stopped what they were doing and glanced over at me. “Are we boring you,” Jason asked as he wiped his face with the shirt he’d thrown off twenty minutes ago. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just wanting to fight that had me a nervous wreck. Taesoo wasn’t wearing a shirt, either. He was taller with a slimmer, lythe body, but no less powerful. He was built for speed and gracefulness whereas Jason was all brute strength and sinuous power. Seriously, the two gorgeous men fighting like that would be enough to disturb any woman even remotely interested in the opposite sex.
“No, I’m fine. It’s just that you two have the poorest form of any trained killers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
They both laughed at me. The bastards.
“Oh yeah? Well why don’t you show us how we can improve?” It was the first time Taesoo had spoken to me since the skid ride. He held his arm wide, indicating I should join them on the mats. His box-shaped smile bared all his teeth and I wasn’t sure if it got me hot or pissed me off.
I didn’t hide the slow, dangerous smile that spread over my face.
“Don’t mind if I do.” I pushed myself up and stepped between the two of them. I took the hairband off my wrist and quickly braided my thick hair. It fell in a heavy rope down my back.
“Who do you want first?” Jason asked. Oh, Gaia, what a double entendre.
“I’ll take you both.” Oh look. I made it better.
Taesoo laughed again. “Well, this should be fun.” Oh honey, please stop so I can focus.
I bit back the hormones I was barely hanging onto and reached for Taesoo, grabbing his shoulders and rotating my body so that my butt was against his crotch which put his top-heavy body off balance enough for me to throw him nearly a meter. I tried not to laugh at the incredulous look from Jason as Taesoo fell into the throw so he could roll his body and pop back up. I’d caught him off guard once, but it wouldn’t happen again. I realized too late that they’d just been playing around with each other all this time.
Jason leaned into a defensive stance while Taesoo launched a counter attack. His movements were quicker than I’d anticipated, but after a few light hits to the face, I adjusted. The asshole was holding back! He probably assumed I’d got a lucky break catching him off guard. One thing that had been my saving grace in more than one fight in my life, though, had been that I was a small, pretty girl. No one ever expected that I’d been raised in a dojo since I was old enough to stand and had the shit beat out of me on a regular basis by my “brothers” until I was strong enough to finally fight back.
I let Taesoo hit me a couple more times until he got close enough, tensing my muscles as he did. Finally, I released the energy I’d held onto, hitting him with my shoulder and hip to knock him off balance. Elbow to the face, knee up to the stomach. Elbow down on the back of his head. Leg sweep to take him down.
Jason jumped in then as Taesoo collected himself. Tae was mad and Jason liked to punch. I blocked his punches with little effort, sweeping my feet around to keep him in front of me. Tae jumped back in. He wasn’t holding back anymore. Jason was apparently trained in some form of Eskrima, which was good for close combat with a weapon. It used a lot of upper body movements, which seemed to work well for him. Tae was apparently using some bastard form of Taekwondo. I tried not to laugh at that. So, in effect, Jason was attacking my upper body while Tae went after the lower half. I tried not to laugh at that, too.
I switched to Jeet Kune Do since they were crowding in on me. I focused in on small movements that required little space. Jab to the throat, deflect the arm down, block the kick, elbow up. Rotate, punch, rotate, drop, elbow to the inner thigh.
It felt good to train again without trying to hurt someone. Of course, training hurt, but that’s what body hardening was for. At least there I wasn’t trying to kill anyone. I could just relax and let my muscles move from years and years of experience.
“Stop!” Jason cried out. Uh-oh. The look on his face said I’d let the cat out of the bag. Taesoo had his hands on his hips, taking in deep, greedy breaths and looking like he either wanted to kill me or fuck me. It was hard to distinguish between the two sometimes. Of course, I was pretty sure Jason was considering the airlock right then.
“Who are you?” Jason’s voice was low and steady. It had been a test.
“I had to train to keep from getting killed.”
“Bullshit. That level of training doesn’t happen overnight and no one with your ability to fight is going to stay captive for long. So. Who the fuck are you?”
I sighed and rubbed my sore shoulders. It had been longer than I’d thought. I was going to hurt in the morning. “I’m a girl who needed a ride. I mean you and your crew no harm. You have my word.”
“Well, that’s the first thing out of your mouth that I’ve believed yet.” Jason rubbed his hands over his face and into his hair, standing it up on end. He focused those eyes on me again and it was like getting caught in the eye of the tempest. It was peaceful in the middle, but all rage and passion at the edges.
He stepped closer and pointed his finger an inch from my face, knowing full well I could snap it off if I wanted. “You do not leave my sight until my crew leaves Hana Rae. You try anything and I’ll put a blaster between your eyes. You got me?”
I held my gaze steady. It wasn’t the first time I’d been threatened by someone like that, but I had no doubt he wasn’t just blowing wind. Oddly, though, I was happy to have everything out in the open. Well, mostly everything.
Three
Jason wasn’t kidding when he said I’d be by his side every second. I was surprised he didn’t make me stand in the head when he took a shit, too, but thankfully he handed me over to Taesoo when he was otherwise “occupied”. I sat in my designated chair with my legs drawn up to my chest and my hair loosely spilling over them to look a little less dangerous. Of course, they’d seen me fight, so their best plan of action was just to keep me away from any sharp objects and anything that might go ‘boom’. I didn’t blame them. Knowing what humans were capable of, even if I was human, I’d be wary of me too.
I heard Jason’s heavy footsteps on the metal grating of the bridge and waited for him to start barking orders at me. We were an hour outside of Hana Rae but he wouldn’t be meeting his buyers until the next morning. He had yet to tell me what he was going to do with me until then. I thought about making a run for it once we were on the station, and I doubted he would try to stop me, but the Information Officer in me was curious about who his buyers were.
I felt him behind me. I knew he was staring at me without even having to check the reflection in the front pano. It was currently showing trajectory patterns instead of the forward external view. They wouldn’t need to see outside until we got closer to the station.
“Come with me. I need to pack.”
“Can’t I just stay here with TaeTae?”
“Don’t call me that.” Taesoo cut his eyes at me.
I smirked despite myself.
“No, you cannot. He needs to start prepping for docking and you would be a…distraction.”
I huffed. Like they hadn’t been distracting me all this time? Regardless, I slid out of the chair and headed toward his quarters. “Oh Captain, my Captain.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Huh?”
“That’s a poem about the d
eath of a great leader.”
I stopped and turned, lifting an eyebrow.
“What? I read.”
I chuckled and turned back around. “Sorry, I just assumed you were simply another brain-dead killer.”
“You know what happens when you assume things, right?”
“Better than you think. But, then you’re already an ass, so what does it matter?”
He snorted behind me.
I sat on his bunk and watched as he threw in random clothes, toiletries, and weapons. I wondered how he was going to get some of them past the security on Hana Rae. Of course, their security wasn’t so much about keeping the creatures on it from killing each other as much as it was about keeping them from disrupting business.
“So what are you going to do once we’re gone?” He asked, pulling me out of my daze.
“You mean besides cry myself to sleep?”
“Oh, I’m going to miss that biting wit of yours. Too bad you showed it too late. This,” he waved his hands in my general direction, “is a lot more entertaining than the slave you were pretending to be before.”
“So you knew I was lying the whole time?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
I laughed ruefully.
“Besides, you didn’t cover up all your tattoos as well as you thought you did. Taking your clothes off was a risky gamble.”
“You’re a good actor. I thought you were going to test out the merchandise before you got all nervous at the sight of a naked woman in front of you.”
“It was cute watching you size me up. I considered it for a minute, but I wanted to see how far you’d play your little ruse.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You would sleep with a woman just to call her bluff?”
“Honey, I’ve slept with women for a lot less than that. Besides, you wouldn’t have fought me off.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” My heart hitched up a few notches, betraying my attempt at haughty and aloof. Jason put his hands on the mattress on each side of me, bringing his face inches away from mine. My breath caught in my throat. I looked down at his lips, fighting against my body’s desire as his tongue flicked out then slipped back in. He caught the bottom lip with his teeth. Damn if my breath didn’t quiver thinking what I wanted him to do with that tongue.
