One shot and I’ll kill another sentient being.
The alien—the ooli—locks eyes with me and my arm shakes with a mixture of terror and dismay.
I…I can’t do this.
Oh fuck, I can’t do this.
I make a squeaking sound in my throat as the ooli marches right toward me and snatches the gun out of my grip. “Looks like the pirates have a pet,” he croaks at me and the look on his face turns to one of pure evil. “They’re not going to like what I do to you.”
I tremble, frozen in place. “Get away from me.”
He makes a strange, growling sound in his throat. “I’m going to kef you up—”
From behind the alien, a muscular, blue arm appears around the frog-man’s throat. I watch, unable to move, as Adiron puts his blaster to the ooli’s head and fires. There’s a splatter of green liquid on the walls of the ship and the scent of cooked meat, and I want to vomit.
“I’m starting to think you’re not cut out for this lifestyle, little one,” Adiron teases, a wild grin on his broad face.
I’m starting to think he’s right.
2
SOPHIE
I scrub at the walls of the Little Sister, cleaning blood and ooli goo off of computer panels. All’s quiet on the other side. We’re still docked with the other ship, hours later, but the fighting is done. The other crew—slavers and cutthroats returning from a prison rendezvous—have all been disposed of. It should bother me, knowing that people on the other ship just got killed by my friends, but I’ve grown surprisingly jaded about some things.
There are no good guys on this end of the universe. Everyone’s out for himself, even the va Sithai brothers.
So I clean the walls of the ship, try not to think about where the green goo was before, and listen to the brothers chitchat over the comm. It seems that we’ve caught this particular band returning from some place called Haven where they dropped off some drugs. There’s no cargo to be found, just a lot of traceless credits, and the brothers joke about that even as they strip expensive parts out of the enemy ship. This feels routine. I know from past experiences, they’ll cobble what they can from the other vessel for salvage or re-sale, and then the other ship will be scuttled, abandoned and her computer disabled, and it’ll disappear into deep space. Problem solved.
It’s normal. All of this is normal, I tell myself as I scrub.
I try to forget that I totally choked.
I try to forget the awful, awful look on the ooli’s face. His terrible words. “I’m going to kef you up.” I know he wouldn’t have been kind to me. I know if the tables were turned, I’d probably find myself servicing an entire pirate ship instead of just cleaning one. I’d be enslaved again, forced to suck alien dick for my meals. Again. It’s not an existence I want to return to. Being part of the pirate crew is a thousand times better.
I just…need to actually be part of the crew.
I wring out the sponge in my hands and apply fresh water and cleaner to the walls. The smell is acrid and not unlike cat piss, which amuses Adiron to no end. He doesn’t understand why I can’t stand the stink of cleaner and loves to joke about it. Actually, he just loves to joke, period. He’s a good guy and a good friend.
But he’s also got a big mouth, and I know he’s going to tell his brothers all about how I couldn’t pull the trigger. How I froze up instead of taking action to save my own damn life.
And Kaspar and Mathiras are nice enough, but something tells me they won’t understand. They’re going to start thinking I’m a liability. I don’t know what will happen to me if they do. I breathe through my mouth, thinking hard. Is it…is it time for me to seduce one of the brothers? To use my body to try and ensure my place here?
Not that this feels like home. I feel isolated and alone here as much as I have anywhere else, but the meals are decent and no one’s forcing me to sleep with them, which makes it the best place I’ve lived in six long, long years.
“Uh. That’s a problem,” I hear Mathiras say over the comm link, interrupting my morose thoughts.
“What is it?” Adiron asks. “I’m still on the bridge. There’s a safe here I’m trying to crack open—”
“Come here and take a look,” Mathiras says. I can’t tell from his tone of voice if he’s troubled or not.
I sit back on my heels, listening and waiting.
After a moment, Adiron whistles. “That is definitely a problem.”
“Magnificent,” Kaspar says. “I’ve never seen one this close before. They go for a fortune on Three Nebulas Station.”
Something growls, sounding like a wildcat, and I freeze.
“Kaspar, get the kef away from that.”
“We can’t leave it. It’s worth a fortune.”
“What are we going to do with THAT?”
“Feed it?”
“Very funny.”
The brothers’ voices run together, all sounding similar from the tinny comm and the fact that they’re talking over one another.
Something howls again, the sound dangerous, and there’s a scuffle.
“Should we get Sophie?” one of the brothers asks. Mathiras, I think.
“Might be our only choice.”
I wipe my hands on my jumper, worried. Only choice for what? I don’t know what they’re talking about and it makes me nervous. I can pipe up and ask, interjecting over the comm, but I feel like I haven’t earned my place here, and the last thing I want to do is irritate them by jumping in. So I sit and wait, curious to see what’s going on.
Sure enough, Adiron jogs through the docking tunnel a moment later, waving me over with his gun. “We need you. Come on.”
They need me?
Me?
This is a first. It also fills me with a flush of happiness. How long have I waited for someone to say that? For me to be important?
“What’s going on?” I ask as I get to my feet and follow behind him. I’m nervous crossing over to the enemy ship, but if the va Sithai brothers are fine with leaving the Little Sister for a bit, I guess I can be, too.
“We found something worth a lot of money,” Adiron tells me, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I’m following. He crosses into the other ship, and steps over destroyed machinery, heading down a narrow hall. I try not to look too hard at the wreckage, afraid of seeing dead bodies. I keep my gaze focused on Adiron’s broad back, letting him lead the way. These were bad guys, I remind myself. They would have killed me.
It doesn’t make it any easier to step over a lump that had once been someone, and I swallow hard. I’m really not cut out for this, but what other options do I have? What’s left for me if not this?
I hear the angry, terrifying growl from somewhere up ahead. It sounds like a wild animal—a very large one, and I worry this is exactly the “expensive” thing that they’ve found. Which makes me wonder…why do they need me? “Um, Adiron?”
“It’s caged. Don’t worry.”
Well, now I really am worried. What the hell? My body breaks out into a fear-sweat as we head into the large, nearly empty cargo bay of the enemy ship. Sure enough, at the far end of the large bay, Kaspar and Mathiras stand, hands on weapons, talking quietly. They’re in front of what looks like an enormous square box, and as we approach, the entire thing shakes and rattles and the creature roars its outrage again.