Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62128 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
We’re also going to do what we can to fill the ship’s coffers. That’s why I’ve been tailing these outlaws. Listening to them has been incredibly instructive and absolutely horrifying. They have recently come into some ore reserves which sound like they’d be valuable.
I start moving through the undergrowth, heading away from the criminals and toward the city. I want to try to hit the next rendezvous point as fast as possible, but that might not mean I’m safe. The outlaws can see the ship, and that means we’re going to have to find some way to operate in plain sight.
I’m thinking we use the docks. There are interstellar vessels moving through that space all the time. It’s possible the Mare could dock and I could board there, right in the heart of the city. I like that plan. It’s bold and it’s workable. Yeah. That’s going to be the method I float once they come back into communication range.
A flitter of movement at the peripheral of my vision is all the warning I get before I am grabbed.
“SHAN GOT ONE!”
A saurian starts yelling at the top of his lungs while another saurian carries me nearly upside down. He grabbed me by the suit over my hip and I’ve rotated around that axis as his big alien hand grips me tight and hoists me aloft.
“They’re down here?”
“It’s a female! It’s pretty!” Mr Shouty keeps shouting.
The saurian holding me turns me around in his grip and inspects me, though he doesn’t actually turn me around the right way. He must like the way I’m oriented, or maybe he doesn’t know how humans go.
“My feet go on the ground,” I say, helpfully.
I can’t really make him out in the low light of the night. Yes, there is some illumination from the stars and the fading light of their ill-fated weapon discharge, but it’s the kind of silvery light that washes colors out and gives way to shadow far too easily. He’s a big, scaled, horned, silhouette of a creature. All I really know about him is that he’s strong, and agile, and he moves silently like an apex predator when he is on the hunt.
“Spread out! See if there’s more! They can’t run very fast at all!” Wrath issues orders.
The saurian outlaws start beating the bushes in the hopes they will find more like me. They won’t. I came down here alone because yeah, we’ve noticed that every time one of us gets on the planet’s surface, we get caught. I really thought I’d be the exception to that rule. Stealth is my thing. But hunting is their thing. We keep underestimating them, and that just cost me my freedom.
“This will be the first mother of hybrids,” he says. “You caught her, Shan. She’s yours to breed.”
Fuck. Me.
How the hell did I get myself into this mess?
Not that long ago…
A big, purple saurian with magnificent flowing dark hair flies past the ship with our captain in his arms. He swoops and soars, and damn near collides with us. He can’t see us, on account of we are invisible. But we can see him, and if he does that again we’re about to see him smeared across the ship.
“De-cloak!” I shout at the navigator.
“I’m not going to de-cloak! He’ll see us!”
“That’s the fucking point. He almost slammed into the hull. If Sullivan dies on our watch because we hit her with an invisible spaceship we’ll never forgive ourselves!”
“They’ll all see us if I de-cloak. I’m moving the ship.” Maria’s hands move over the controls unsteadily. She’s drunk again, and not the every day kind of drunk that some of the crew have going on, where you can’t really tell and frankly, they’re improved by it because at least it means they stop shaking for a bit. She’s the kind of drunk that makes her waver over the controls, her body swaying as she tries to desperately remember what each of them do.
“We should never have been this low.”
“Shut up. I’m moving the damn ship.”
“Not too high, we need to stay in visual range!”
“How can we stay in visual range when these things have wings and fly into us! We’ll use the cameras.”
“That’s what I meant, not eye visual range. Camera visual range!”
The deck is absolutely bursting with bickering. The Mare was never like this when the captains were around. Sullivan would have made a decision without asking anybody and executed it herself if necessary, and Raine would have beat the hell out of us if we’d tried to be this chaotic in her presence, either before or after the mutiny. We need at least one of the captains back, preferably both, because we are not going to survive if we don’t get some leadership going here.
Casey is sitting in the captain’s chair, one leg slung over the arm rest, a bowl of brightly colored cereal loops cradled loosely in her hands. Every so often, a little milk slops over the side unnoticed and drains down into the fabric.