by Maia Starr
"Right,” I said, remembering the sting of rejection and how it felt. But now hearing his words about why he rejected me, I looked at him in a new light. As my eyes moved over his face, he became even more attractive to me. This weredragon wasn't just all arrogance, ego, and conceit. He actually had a conscience and his beautiful, light-gray eyes were filled with guilt at this moment. He moved his head, looking down at the floor, and a piece of thick, black hair fell over his forehead. I resisted the urge to pull it back. He was actually feeling in a conflict about kissing me when he already had a bride, one that was in peril. It only made me want him more, and I also filled with guilt at the thought. Then I remembered something else, and it was something that he did not mention. Had I dreamt it?
"Did you tell me something about the way I smell?” I asked him.
"What! No, nope, I don't know what you're talking about,” he said really fast and moved away from me to the table on the other side of the common room and grabbed a bottle of water. He chugged it down really fast.
"Yes, I remember you pulling me to you, or picking me up, and then you said something about the way I smell,” I said walking over to him.
"No, you’re mistaken. Now, back to the case. I should prepare you for the environment of Sala. The outposts are small, but very dangerous. It is outlaw territory. There is no one there to enforce the laws. It is every Drackon for himself.”
I knew that he was pivoting off the topic, which made me think that I was absolutely right that he had said something about the way I smelled and that it drove him wild. But we did need to talk about the mission, and I did want to be prepared. But something he said had my attention. “How small are these outposts?” I asked.
"Each outpost is different, but there's only a few buildings and maybe 100 to 300 Drackon at each of them, always coming and going. Lots of traffic in and out," he said. Then he continued, “Why do you ask?”
"Well it seems to me, if I were a criminal that was kidnapping human females, I would take them to a bigger place. I would not take them to a small place where they would obviously stand out. Wouldn't reports come in about captive human females at these outposts? Wouldn't they be easily see?,” I asked him with my wheels turning in my mind. I was onto something.
He gave me with a startled look and put the water bottle down on the table. Then he stared at the wall and said, “I had not thought of that before. Your agency had us on track to check out the outposts to gather information. They want us to go there to do some questioning of the known criminal elements that are there. Get information from them with a little violent persuasion,” he said.
"And while we're doing that, we're wasting time. The human females are being taken somewhere, and that is happening while we're going from outpost to outpost, looking for breadcrumbs that could lead nowhere,” I said to him, walking back and forth in the room as I thought this out.
"Yes, it would steal a lot of time from us. It would be days before we found anyone that we could get information from,” he said.
I looked at him and put my arm on his, stopping him and said, “So if you were a criminal stealing human females, many of them, where would you take them in order to hide them? Mooreah?”
"No, that would be too obvious. I would take them to Riolb,” he said to me. We both looked at each other as though a light bulb had been turned on. It was dumb that neither of us had thought of this. Riolb was a known outlaw planet, not only for the Drackon race, but for other alien races as well.
"The outlaw planet,” I said to him. “I have heard of it. But as far as I know, no one at I.S.F.A. has been there.”
"That is probably why your department had us starting on Sala instead of going straight to Riolb,” he said.
"Or, the lieutenant is right and it is an inside job with the department and they are sending us to Sala on purpose, a wild goose chase. They don't want us to find the human females. They are setting us up for failure,” I said to him.
His eyes grew wide as he looked at me with acknowledgment that he thought we were being set up as well. Then he said, “We should re-route ourselves from Sala to Riolb. There is no point in wasting time on Sala. I have heard about auctions on Riolb. We could start there,” he said.
"Auctions? Like black market auctions of weapons and resources?” I asked him.
"Yes, all that stuff, but they also auction aliens. Maybe now they have started to auction humans as well,” he said.
I gasped in shock. “We need to go there!” I shouted at him as the thought of humans being auctioned off horrified me, especially women who had been captured and had no say in the matter. They had been abducted. “I will radio the department base for permission to change routes,” I said as I began to walk towards the communication well.
"No, don't bother. We need to just go there. We’d then wait for all the red tape and for people to say yes or no, and you do not know who you can trust or who is behind us in the department. You are in space now, and in space, we have to make up our own rules. That is how we have successful missions. It is just you and me, Melinda,” he said to me.
I looked at him, not knowing what to do. I knew that he was right but my career was at stake. I had just been promoted after working so hard my entire life to get this position, and I was going to defy orders. It could get me fired, it could ruin everything for my career.
Eniv walked over to me and put his hand on my arm and said, “You know deep down that this is the only way. Trust your instinct, Melinda; that is what makes you a good detective.”
"You are right. Let us go tell the pilot that we have permission to reroute to Riolb. You could guide him there,” I said to him.
"That's the spirit!” he shouted with a happy grin. Minutes later, we were rerouted to Riolb. We would have two more nights aboard the ship before arriving. Eniv took this time to teach me about Riolb. He drew maps on the board and told me about the different cities. There were two main ones. Mzech was the largest city and full of markets, criminals, outlaws, and weapons. It was very dangerous and Eniv went over it and intricate detail.
"This is the Temple of Star. It is located at the top of the hill high over the city. If we are ever separated, meet me there. I will wait there until you show up, you wait there until I show up. That is always our meeting point,” he said, showing me on a map of where the Temple of Star was in the city of Mzech. After he went over that city, he pulled up a map of Cix and did the same. Cix was a big city as well, but half the size of Mzech. It was located on the river and was a port city with lots of illegal cargo coming in and out through the river. “Here on the Mangum docks is where you will find a small, white place of warship called morning light; that is our meeting point if we get separated.”
"Yes, I understand,” I said to him, and I was very impressed with how detail-oriented he was. He had everything prepared in a way that was flexible for both of us. He knew that anything could happen out in the field, especially the fact that we could be separated, and having meeting points was something that I would not have thought of on my own. I would have just gone in, guns blazing and asking questions, trying to find the females.
Eniv was more covert about it and it was the smarter way to go. He was not going to let me off that ship until I had everything memorized. We worked endlessly; there was no night in space to let me know that I was working through the night. I finally fell asleep with my head on the table. I felt Eniv nudging me awake. “Come, Melinda. You will be more comfortable in your bed.”
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I had fallen asleep.”
“No need to apologize. We have been working for 12 hours straight. It is good that the next 12 hours you will get good sleep because who knows when you will sleep again once we are on Riolb. It is very unsafe,” he said to me.
He pulled me up to my feet and in my clumsy, sleepy state, my body pressed against his in order to stop from falling. I looked up into his eyes and had that overwhelming feeling again, the feeling that I wanted to kiss him.
He laying down close to me his lips were only an inch from mine. He breathed sharply and my lips opened, ready to receive a kiss.
He let out a bit of an angry growl and said, “Go to sleep, Detective Katiama.” He walked away from me and I felt ashamed once more.
What the hell, Melinda? I thought to myself. Why did I keep falling under his spell every time he was only an inch away from me? It was as though I could not control my own body when he was that close. It was as if everything, and every consequence, got thrown out the window and I would sacrifice everything for him just to kiss me. It was pathetic, and something I thought would not happen again, and yet here I was, practically alone in space with him and I was doing it again.
I made my way from the common room to my sleeping bunk. I needed a good rest. He was right: I was about to enter a foreign planet that was a known outlaw planet. I would need as much rest as possible; this was all new territory for me. I slipped into bed and soon passed out. I had set my alarm for 10 hours of sleep; I would have liked 12, but 10 would have to do. I slept very deeply, and it must have had something to do with being in space. I slept deep and I slept hard, but it did not stop me from having romantic dreams about Eniv. Even in my sleep, I could not get him out of my mind.
When I woke up, I quickly showered and made my way to the flight deck.
"Only five hours until we will be entering hostile space territory. I'm going to take her off autopilot,” Rick Larson said as he walked onto the flight deck with a cup of coffee. He was the pilot and he would set the ship on autopilot so that he could sleep. It was a common occurrence on small ships with small crews.
"You are relieved of night watch,” he said to Richard Davis, the medic who would sit on the flight deck while the pilot was away, including the night shift.
"Sounds good to me. I'm gonna go get some sleep. I will set my alarm for five hours," he said as he nodded a greeting to Rick and I before leaving the flight deck to get some sleep. I felt myself growing nervous about getting closer to Riolb. I forgot that the space outside of the planet would be full of pirates and criminals.
"How are we supposed to get through the hostile space territory in order to land on the planet near Mzech?” I asked Rick.
"I've taken care of that. I have a contact that has a landing port on a base near Mzech. I have already entered the codes and a path has been made clear for us,” Eniv said as he walked onto the flight deck.
"Great, that makes my job so much easier. It is an asset to have an alien a board a human spacecraft. Especially a small and fast one like the Simeon. I'm sure many would want to steal this ship with its awesome capabilities,” the pilot said as he sat down and took the ship out of autopilot.
"That's great,” I said to Eniv, making I contact with him for the first time since the night before when I tried to steal a kiss from him. I felt really stupid about it. It was not me at all. I was a feisty Latina that did not care one inch about some weredragon. I needed to pull myself. I would no longer be giving into the temptation. If he got an inch away from me like he did last night then I would pull away. Remember, he belongs to another, I said to myself. Eniv did not make eye contact with me; instead, he gave me an order.
"Make sure you have your gear on, and don't forget everything I taught you, or are you incapable of that?” he said, stomping out of the flight deck without giving me time to respond.
He was pissed. I guess he had every right to be. I wasn't exactly being a good partner on this investigation. I was a distraction. But wait… that was not true: I was the one that came up with going to Riolb in the first place and not going to Sala at all. I was the one that set up Alfonso to shadow the guard at the port on Earth. I was the one asking all the questions and setting up the lab. I was a damn good detective, and I wasn't going to forget that.
I followed Eniv out into the hallway in my anger and said, “Excuse me! Commander Handor! I did not deserve that! Without me, you would be on Sala right now going from outpost to outpost on useless questioning sessions that lead you nowhere. Without me, you wouldn't have someone on Earth looking out for our best interests shadowing that guard! I am a damn good detective and I know how to investigate. I am experienced in the field, many years in the city of New York. Yes, I know that Mzech and Cix are more dangerous, but I have yet to prove myself there. You have no reason to treat me like this. Check your disrespect at the door when we get off the ship, because I'm not going to put up with that shit!” I said as I moved past him down the hall and into the common room.
He did not follow me. I’d showed him. I smiled at my reflection in the glass of the window as I stared out into space and could see the planet of Riolb in the distance. I was back. I was my feisty self and he was not going to take that from me, the arrogant prick.
I stared out the window at the King Jarith Rykor and yellow planet with marks of green that I assumed were rivers and small oceans. The space around the planet had small dots, and I assumed those were aircraft. There were a lot of them. It was very unnerving, like going into shark-infested waters. I stared at the beautiful planet, enjoying its splendor. Just because the population were outlaws did not mean I could not find the beauty in this planet. It was no fault of the planet that it was populated with scum. I could still enjoy the fact that I was going to an alien planet, the first one I would ever stop on, and I was excited to see everything that it had in store.
I was sure that cities would be vibrant and unusual. I smiled knowing that I was about to have an experience of a lifetime, and I was going to do it while doing something that I loved. I was here to solve a crime and to help the women, if we could find them. This was my responsibility and I was going to do it or die trying. If I was going to die, dying after being in space and seeing a whole new planet was a good way to go, if you asked me. At least I would know that I had lived and that I had died trying to save others, women who were being taken advantage of. It made me swell with pride and it filled me with motivation and the hunger to deal with the criminal scum bags that were doing this in the first place. I was ready. I was primed. I grabbed the maps that Eniv had shown me and looked over them in the last few hours, imprinting every single detail that I could into my mind.
"Here,” Eniv said as he walked into the common room. I narrowed my eyes at him, not ready to be polite to someone that was being so much of a jerk.
"What?” I said as he piled on coins onto the table. They were a metallic green. “Is that…?” I asked, picking one up.
"Yes, it is magenta. It is the best currency to use here on this outlaw planet. We will need it. We will buy communication devices that work on the frequencies used here. We will use it to bribe others, and of course to eat and drink, possibly shelter if we get too far away from the ship. Take it,” he said coldly.
"Thanks,” I said stuffing them into a zippered pocket and closing it back up. I had heard of the alien currency called magenta, but had never actually seen or touched it. It was thrilling to me.
"We're entering the airspace. Rick wants us on the flight deck and strapped into our seats,” he said to me. As soon as he said it, I ran over to the window and looked out. We were very close to other aircraft, but there was no hostility. I expected to see ships firing at each other and we would have to dodge blaster fire. But it was nothing like that. It was just like watching sailboats out in the marina waiting for their turn to come into port. The planet of the Riolb took up all the space in the window. Now at this range, I could see the land masses and the water elements; it was beautiful. I sighed as I looked at it.
"Let's go,” Eniv said to me. He was right: I couldn't stay here staring out the window. I could do that from the flight deck and I should follow the pilot’s orders. Our lives were in his hands at this moment. A few seconds later, we were all strapped into our seats and Eniv was on the communication wire telling someone on the other line a series of numbers and letters.
"This is Commander Handor of the Special Intergalactic Forces calling Base Master Courvelle,” he
said.
"Commander Handor, you're all set. Please verify your code,” the voice said.
"Code BV18F," Eniv said.
"Code is cleared. Coordinates are sent to you now. This is your landing point. You are clear for safe passage,” the voice said. We all looked at each other and smiled. We watched as aircraft around us seemed to let us through. It was some sort of blockade. I was grateful. Soon we were entering the atmosphere quickly, with bright red King Jarith Rykor and yellow burning around us until we slowed and were flying over the land mass and with a large populated city coming into view. My mouth fell open as my eyes focused on what I saw.
"There, you see that hill over there, Melinda?” Eniv pointed.
"Yes, that is the Temple of Star. Our meeting point,” I said to him. He nodded his head.
"Coming in for landing,” Rick said as he looked at Richard. Richard nodded in agreement. As I looked over the city, there were very tall spires that reminded me of temples in India, but these spires went hundreds of feet into the sky, like skyscrapers in New York. They were massive and beautiful. Below, the city sprawled out and there were many markets and booths. It was very crowded and crawling with all sorts of alien species. I could see a few Drackon in the air as they flew in dragon form. It took my breath away to see such unusual sights. “It is all so beautiful… enchanting,” I said under my breath.