by Mara Frost
Alien Space Pirates:
Sold
By: Mara Frost
Copyright © 2016 by Mara Frost
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Please note all persons portrayed are 18 years of age or older.
Table of Contents
Alien Space Pirates: Sold
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
About the Author
Chapter 1
Dani
“Worm holes!!! Worm holes for sale!! Good for 100 micro-cycles! Get your worm holes here!”
The second we landed on the Commerce Planet all my senses were instantly bombarded. The sights, the sounds…the smells…it was almost too much to take in. Once we stepped off the shuttle, even with my hands bound, I instinctually latched onto Big Blue. And I haven’t been able to let go since.
As we weave through the alien crowd - and with my eyes open so wide that my eyeballs are about to pop out - I try to take everything in. Naturally, I soon realize that it’s impossible. My brain can’t seem to process everything without me having some sort of panic attack.
But what does tickle me a little is that I can understand a lot of the things that I hear - strangely accented as it might be. Although, there’s some stuff that I don’t understand at all, which doesn’t make sense since I was shot with that translator doo-dad.
“I don’t think my translator thingy is working anymore,” I say nervously. The idea of having a malfunctioning translator node and not understanding what’s going on around me is actually pretty terrifying. I’d really like to avoid it if I can.
Without taking his ever-steady eyes off the route or the crowd in front of us, he replies, “No, it’s still working. The translator nodes only work for the languages that are in the database.”
“Uh huh, and…” I reply absently while staring at the craziness surrounding us. I can’t be sure, but I think I just saw an alien whose head is where his butt should be.
“And we are on the Commerce Planet, which is the center of trade for over 100 different galaxies. So, yes, there might be a few forms of communication that our database hasn’t identified yet.” He then adds with what I think might be a hint of sarcasm, “Sorry to inconvenience you.”
I ignore the sarcasm and keep staring and listening to everything around me. My nose doesn’t even know how to process the smells, so I’m not even going to try to pay attention to that.
A strange shiver runs up my spine as I think about all the different beings that are here…and they’re all meeting at this one planet to buy something that they can’t find anywhere else in the universe.
As if he can read my mind, he continues, “Even in all my travels, there are beings here that even I would never come into contact with if it weren’t for this planet. It’s an amazing place, but a very dangerous place.”
I nod absently while staring at a near-by vendor who looks like a giant yellow hairless mouse, but without the cuteness or the whiskers. Or the big ears. Okay, so he doesn’t look like a mouse. He just looks weird.
Noticing my fascination, the alien decides to call at us eagerly, but with his eyes glued on me and only me.
“Ooooh! What do we have here? Who is the little female you have, Truvian? Care for a trade?”
My eyes widen at the sudden attention and I squeeze Big Blue’s arm tighter. The alien’s voice is raspy and wheezy and he continues to call out to us as we walk further and further away from him.
“Don’t call attention to yourself,” he growls under his breath.
“I wasn’t! I was just…walking!”
“You’re being very obvious with your…fascination.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? This isn’t exactly a farmer’s market!”
We must have been noisier than I realized because suddenly more strange looking vendors start to notice us…and coincidentally their eyes are lit up with hungry interest. After a few moments, some start to even call at us. I look around nervously, not sure of what to do or say. In every direction I look, I find a sea of curious eyes staring at me…and strange voices calling at me.
It was all pretty unnerving right up until it crossed over into stranger danger territory when one particularly ugly creature actually decides to touch my hair. I naturally scream and pull away quickly, practically jumping on Big Blue.
And Big Blue springs into action and jumps forward like a lethal cat and growls venomously. The little alien, with its giant orb-like eyes - which are hanging off the end of two stalks - immediately recoils in apparent fear.
“Fuck,” he growls under his breath as he drags me to a nearby stand. He quickly grabs at some hanging fabric and unceremoniously throws it around me. He then wraps his giant arm around me and presses me tight against him.
“What the Hell?! Ugh, this thing smells!” I try to pull away from it in distaste.
“Deal with it. It’s better to deal with that smell than have some hungry Tarsars clawing you to pieces.”
Yep. That shuts me up. Deal with the smell? You got it, buddy.
“Was that what that weird thing with the dangling eyeballs is? A…T-tarsar?”
He nods. “When you see one Tarsar then there’s at least 30 more somewhere close by and they can get very…grabby when they see something that interests them. They like to keep souvenirs.”
I swallow and step just a little bit closer to him. Souvenirs? I don’t want to be a souvenir. That’s definitely on my list of things not to be – dinner or a souvenir.
We keep moving forward, but this time with his arm wrapped protectively around me, immediately making me feel more secure. In fact, before even thinking it through, I burrow a little deeper into him and press into his hard body. I’m still so shaken up by all the aliens that were calling out to me that I barely notice his body stiffening slightly against mine. But when I do, images of his hot eyes and hungry tongue suddenly flash through my mind. I growl lowly to myself and curse my damn traitor brain.
We continue to walk, but this time no one is paying attention to us, which allows me to observe more of the market. Feeling more relaxed and safe, I look around freely. And after a while, I realize that there is no break in the crowd. For as far as the eye can see, it’s just a sea of people and stands…well, aliens and stands…possibly for miles and miles in every direction.
“How big is this place? How far does this market go? There has to be a break.”
“There is no break. You saw the planet. The entire planet is the market.”
I shake my head, not understanding a word he’s saying. That can’t be. I saw the planet from above and it looked like a giant dirty desert planet. Yes, it does indeed look dirty and the sky is a bit murky and grey, but I see no expansive desert anywhere. There’s definitely no planet Tatooine here.
“That makes no sense. Where’s the desert?”
He smirks and chuckles.
“That was what you would call a holographic image. There is a projector at the center of the planet that sends out the image. Despite the fact that this is the universe’s biggest dark market, it is still a dark market. It is a widely known planet that even the Empire knows about
, but the holographic image is used to keep out those who have no business being here.”
I nod slowly. “Ah, I see. So only the seediest and most unsavory people know about this place?”
“Something like that.”
“Figures,” I mumble, and then add sweetly, “I suppose that explains why you know about it then.” I gaze up at him with a wide and winning smile.
As expected, he chooses to ignore both my comment and my “winning smile”.
“So the entire planet is a continuous market? How do you find anything here then?”
The very idea boggles my mind. I have enough trouble rifling through the sales rack at the mall, so I can’t even imagine trying to find anything in this giant alien Costco.
“Everything is broken up into sectors and quadrants and this is our sector.”
“What is this sector for?” I ask looking around, curious and fascinated.
He doesn’t reply immediately. I almost think that he didn’t hear my question, but then he replies, “Exotic Organic Acquisitions.”
Exotic Organic Acquisitions? Sigh. I guess that would be me. All of my adult life I’ve longed to hear someone tell me that I was exotic or mysterious…or even mildly interesting…and this is the one time I hear it? At a seedy alien black market? Awesome.
“I’m supposed to be ‘exotic’?”
He nods once. “Couldn’t you tell based on the reaction that you got back there? Earth is part of the uncharted territories and all undocumented life forms from the uncharted territories are deemed highly exotic…and highly in demand.”
An unsettling shiver dances up my back. For some reason that doesn’t sound like a good thing. If that meant that these aliens would treat me like the “Queen of the Universe” or…even a C List celebrity then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but I have a feeling I’m seen more like an endangered elephant with big ivory tusks rather than the Queen of anything.
“Lucky me,” I mumble, clearly showing my disgust.
As we walk, I continue to absorb as much as I can. I turn my head every which way, managing to be both fascinated and scared out of my mind. After several minutes, we run into a particularly dense crowd of people. Once we break through, I immediately see what everyone is looking at.
My breath hitches and I bite back a yelp as I look at the most beautiful…creature that I’ve ever seen - and it’s suspended in some sort of gravitational cage.
“Wh-what is that…?” I ask, sounding breathless in wonder.
Following my gaze, he sighs quietly before answering. “That is an Elemental.”
“An Elemental,” I repeat as I look up at her. I can only assume she is a “her”. She has to be a female, she’s just too beautiful not to be. First, she isn’t wearing any clothing and from what I can see, her body is not only humanoid-looking, but it’s a very appealing humanoid-looking body. But what makes her so eerily beautiful is that her entire body is covered in a rainbow of color…almost like a Koi fish.
I see splashes of blue, red, orange and white all painted across her body while her face is as white as snow and her eyes are big pools of black. And her hair looks like giant ocean waves of white.
“She’s so beautiful, “ I whisper in quiet awe.
He doesn’t reply. He just allows me to look at her in silence.
“What is she doing in there?”
“She is up for sale,” he replies stiffly. “Elementals are very much in demand as well. She is a Water Elemental and there are some who have a…taste…for Elementals such as her.”
I allow myself to process the words before the shock, disgust and fear sets in. I look up at him in horror, as if he’s the one responsible for her fate.
“What the fuck!? They’re going to…EAT her?!” I yell.
He looks away, as if trying to find something or someone in the dense crowd, but I’m sure he‘s just trying to avoid my death-ray gaze. I look back up at her, floating in her gravity cage, and I see the fear in her black eyes as she looks down at the crowd forming around her.
“They can’t,” I say lowly, my voice full of rage.
“They can and they will,” he replies evenly.
Tears begin to blur my vision as I try to pull away from him, although it’s proving to be a bit difficult given that my wrists are still bound together.
“No! This is all wrong and you know it!” I yell back, still trying to pull away from him and in the process forcing the cloth that was covering my head to fall down.
“You’re a monster! Just like everyone else here! I always knew…I always hoped that there was life out here in space, but I thought you guys would be more advanced in the way that it counts...I thought you would be better than us…better than humans! But I couldn’t have been more wrong!”
Without realizing it, a circle of onlookers start to form around us. My asshole captor comes towards me and tries to bring me in closer to him again, but I yank away from him and continue.
“You’re worse than humans! And you want to know why? All you people managed to develop all your fancy trinkets and advanced technologies, but you didn’t move forward at all! You’re all just bunch of cavemen monsters with fancy toys,” I scream.
The crowd begins to get closer and closer, and I don’t even notice. I’m too busy screaming at him to notice the freaky aliens that are staring at me like a rack of lamb.
But I do notice that Big Blue looks like he might pop a blood vessel in his head. His nostrils are flaring so badly that it looks like he might inhale one of the smaller aliens that are standing close by.
“Come. Here.”
“No! Bite me!”
I hear the hissing and cackling noise behind me exactly one second before I actually feel the wet slimy sensation slithering up my neck.
And I scream.
“Yessss…thisss sssounds like a good idea.”
I snap around and I see an octopus-face man staring at me as one of his tentacles reaches for me. I scream again - like a guttural-from-the-pit-of-your-belly kind of scream.
My natural inclination is to pull away, but I think I’m too freaking scared to do anything but scream some more, so that’s what I keep doing. Fortunately, Big Blue is capable of doing more than me.
“Fuck,” he growls as he steps in front of me, putting himself in between me and the guy who wants to eat me. He then grabs one tentacle with one hand and then proceeds to punch the octopus-face man unconscious with the other hand.
Dumbfounded by how quickly it all happened, I blink and then blink again. I look at the unconscious alien and then I look up at Big Blue, his blue face now a very angry shade of purple. He glares down at me and I’m not totally certain if his rage is directed towards me or the unconscious alien.
The crowd around us quickly dissipates as he shoots a warning gaze at everyone, silently telling them that he will fuck them all up one by one if they even think about coming any closer.
Without saying a word, he reaches for my shroud and covers my head and then grabs me and brings me under his arm. And I don’t put up a fight. Not even a little. My spirit was beaten a little I think when I saw the woman in her floating cage. I think I saw myself.
I quietly steal a glance back up at the poor Elemental and I see her looking at me…with a sad smile on her face.
A small tear falls down my face as I turn away.
***
Dakhar
Fuck. That was close. Too close. How could I allow that to happen? That was such a novice mistake. This human is screwing with me. I need to get rid of her or else we’ll both be dead soon.
That scene she caused was almost too much.
Yes, it is unfortunate that the Elemental was captured. Like live ships, Elementals are beings that transcend all others in both mind and body. Their entire race represents the basic foundations of the universe – this one in particular represented water. It’s rare for them to be captured, but when they are, they bring in enough money to last the poacher well over a year, or even longe
r if you choose to not live like the fucking Emperor.
It sickens me to think what will become of that Elemental, but making a scene or even attempting to stop the auction would have done nothing to stop the trade of Elementals. So there’s no point.
No point at all.
Without realizing it, I tighten my hold around the little human female. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t say anything. The last encounter with the crowd must have shaken her up because she hasn’t put up a fight and has remained completely quiet while we walked through the crowd. Good.
After we walk in total silence, weaving in and out of the crowd, we finally reach our destination. I look up at the surprisingly pristine but heavily fortified building in open disgust. In a sea of seediness, the building stands out as almost looking respectable. But I know it for what it is – a den for corruption and a higher level of illegal activity.
There’s a reason why I always avoided this part of the market. But now there’s money to be made.
I feel the little human shiver and shrink under my arm. I look down and see her gazing up at the building with poorly concealed fear.
My jaw clenches as an uncontrollable feeling of anger washes through me. She is always full of spirit and irrational anger and seeing her like this makes me feel…irritated. I have no idea why, but the idea of her being frightened makes me want to break something.
I quickly bury this feeling and push forward.
“Come,” I say lowly. Again, she doesn’t put up a fight and walks forward.
Once we reach the entrance, I pull her away and I instantly feel her absence as she steps out of my grasp. I ignore this too. Stupid human is fucking with me.
I lower her shroud and bring out her bound wrists to make them visible.
“From this point on, you must walk openly as my prisoner.”
“How is that different from before? Sure, whatever,” she replies, but it lacks her normal fire.