Brown hair, I remind myself. Cream skin.
She’s not Prenetashi, no matter how much her softness calls that deadly species to mind.
“Dhak, she’s…” Mylan’s voice contains a shudder. He’s not afraid of bioweapons or unstable cores, but even his military service has taught him to fear a beautiful woman.
I think back to the intel that triggered this operation. Smugglers transporting weapons through the quadrant. I look down again at the woman.
A weapon, indeed.
Everything about her is soft - not a hard edge to her - and veck, it’s beautiful to look at. Now I’ve processed the initial shock of her, my body’s response shifts, a primitive desire flaring in my gut.
I was only three years old when the Prenetashi people were first discovered by Vetruen explorers. The backwater little planet I called home didn’t concern itself much with Universal affairs, so even as I grew up - the situation with the Prenetashi people getting steadily worse year on year - I never really heard anything about it until the war broke out when I was thirteen. By the time I joined the army five years later, Universal attitudes to the Prenetashi had shifted. I only ever knew them as the enemy, something to fear. Not the object of desire they had been when first discovered.
But looking at this woman now, I can start to understand why those Vetruen explorers had looked at Prenetashi women and saw them as something they needed to claim for their own. I lean closer, an instinct inside me urging me to take a deep breath, to taste her scent. Even though I can’t because she’s frozen inside a cryo-chamber.
Her eyes snap open.
For a moment, I just stare down into them. Then her hands come up and meet the glass above her, panic flooding her face.
“Double veck,” Mylan says, dropping the recorder and running his hands along the edge of the plastic case.
I join him, searching for a clasp or catch that would open the case up. Inside, the woman bangs on the top, thrashing in the liquid that surrounds her. Mylan runs to the end of the box, pressing buttons. I grab my rifle, raise it, ready to bring the butt of it down as hard as I can against the case, hoping I can break it when, with a hiss and snap, the case opens from some invisible seam right down the middle of it. I drop the gun and thrust my hands into the liquid, grabbing the woman and wrenching her out.
“Is she breathing?” Mylan asks.
“Get Dantari down here,” I snap.
I drop to the floor, laying the woman down on her side. My armour makes me awkward, manoeuvring her difficult, but as I rub my hand over her back, she coughs, drawing gasping, panicked breaths. She lashes out with her hands and legs, kicking and fighting against something, barely conscious. I hold her down at arms length, not wanting her to hurt herself against the armour of my suit. I touch my un-armoured hand to her face, the curve of her cheek gentle beneath my thumb.
And in that moment, all thoughts of her as an enemy, or as something to desire, are replaced, a protective instinct surging in me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dantari come flying into the room, medical kit gripped in her hand.
“It’s okay,” I say to the woman, using the suits external speakers. I don’t know if she understands, but I say it anyway. “It’s okay. You’re safe now. We’ve got you.”
Chapter 3
Dhakhar
As soon as the Firesong docks with Xentra, I head for Low Town, leaving the woman in the capable hands of Xentra’s medical team. Most of the entrances to the lower levels of Xentra Station - what used to be the weapons decommissioning levels - have been sealed off, but there are a couple that are still useable, if you know where to look. H’Varak needs to be paid, after all, and he can’t get his money if no one can reach him.
Thought of H’Varak makes my stomach tighten, the tension that vanishes the moment I’m alone on the Firesong with my team starting to creep back in. Right now, he’s probably being informed about the woman in the medical bay, and the twenty-three other women in cryostasis. Once Dantari stabilised and sedated the woman we accidentally woke up, I had Loran look up the proper opening protocols for the cryo-chambers. Mylan and I checked through all the other boxes. Each one had a woman in it, all of them lovely, and though without DNA testing we can’t be sure, I’d bet money they are all from the same species.
Twenty four women of an unknown species. And I just know H’Varak is going to be looking for ways to use them to his advantage.
Low Town is its usual riot of activity and colour. Normally, I like to take my time walking through, talk to a few people. My role as Captain of the Law Enforcement unit for Xentra may officially only extend to serving the residents of H’Varak’s sleek overworld, but as far as I’m concerned, I work for the people of Low Town as well. Almost all of them were displaced by the war, refugees from planets or sectors where the thick of the fighting occurred. I fought for people like them in the war, but when it ended, the fledgling Protectorate - scrambling to replace the power vacuum left behind by the Vetruen Empire - had bigger things to worry about than what became of them. The army might have mostly been stood down, but people like those living in Low Town still need someone fighting for them, so that’s what I do.
Today, though, I slip past the gaggle of kids playing kickball along the narrow streets, raise a hand in greeting to the woman hanging bedsheets in the path of one the the large air recyclers, but don’t stop to chat. Just head straight for the offices and residence of Tapharanix.
The house AI that admits me is a clunky one that speaks in fractured Universal. It has neither the smoothness nor polite grace that house AIs are usually programmed with, but it’s a sign of Taph’s wealth that he can even afford one. Most of the houses down here are built from old ship parts and don’t have the infrastructure to take an AI. The bulk of Low Town’s populace is made of Junkers, and while there’s a living to be had bringing in dead boats, taking them apart and selling off what has value, it’s not a good one. At least, not by the standards of galactic norms. The people of Low Town would argue that the trade off for relative poverty was the freedom to live how they want and I get that. The Vetruen Empire might have fallen after the war, but the core systems haven’t shaken off their influence yet. Laws change, but the entrenched beliefs of the populace don’t follow quite so quickly. The people of Low Town may be in the unfortunate position of paying a Vetruen despot for the right to their freedoms to live, but they’re used to that. They’ve been doing it all their lives.
“Captain Dhakhar,” Taph says when I arrive at his door. “I presume you’re here to thank me. Another raid gone well? H’Varak kissing your posterior with vigour?”
“H’Varak only kisses ass that’s above his own. And no, the raid did not go well.” I pull out my comm and pass it to him. “You said weapons, Taph. Weapons.”
I watch closely as Taph’s orange eyes first widen, then narrow. Surprised, then. As surprised as we had been.
“I think you’ll find I said a ‘dangerous’ cargo,” Taph says, his tail flicking from side to side behind him. “You assumed that meant weapons, because you’re the kind of bonehead who hears the word ‘dangerous’ and immediately thinks of something that fires lasers out of one end.”
When Taph arrived on Xentra, he positioned himself quickly as a broker between Xentra Low Town and Upper Xentra. He makes sure H’Varak gets his rent and cut of the profits, while also making sure that repairs and supplies Low Town need are provided in exchange. A necessary role within the community, but not one that wins the person filling it many friends - something I suspect suits Taph just fine, given his tendency to be an asshole at every available opportunity.
But, asshole or no, there’s a reason I work with Taph. He doesn’t just trade money, he trades information. And when it comes to that information, Taph invests all of the few scruples he has. He’d cheat you at cards, leave you to pick up his half of a bar tab and sleep with your partner without blinking. But Taph has built his empire, his wealth, his entire reputation on being the man who knows t
hings. The Low Towners can resent him all they like, but they have to trust him to be fair with their money. Without that trust, he’d have been booted out of his ‘office’ a long time ago. Taph built that trust by ensuring that when a Xentra engineer needs parts, they know which Junker to go to, or when a Junker has a bad encounter with an unscrupulous crew, that I hear about it. When it comes to knowing things, Taph is always careful, thorough. His surprise tells me he was this time, too, and the reality of our situation has caught him off guard.
Taph curls his fingers round my comm, drawing it closer, his brow furrowing in a way that makes the bioluminescent markings on his face glimmer.
“Where’s she from?” he asks.
“We don’t know yet. Almost certainly an unregistered planet.”
“And I assume she was not the only one.”
“Twenty-four, all told. All women.”
“All tiny and pretty like that one?”
I reach across and tap on my comm, pulling up the other pictures. Taph’s frown deepens as he scans through.
“I think we can make an educated guess what they were taken for,” he says, his features twisting into a snarl that makes me like him a little more. “Vecking people trafficking, and from an unregistered planet. Have we learned nothing from past mistakes?”
I think of H’Varak and his cronies and the irony that they, like the people of Low Town that they hold in such contempt, have chosen to live out here so they have the freedom to live how they want. Which, for them, involves getting as close to the ‘good old days’ of the Vetruen Empire as they possibly can. If they’ve learned anything from past mistakes, they don’t care about it enough to change their ways.
“Some people are prepared to overlook almost anything if it gets them what they want,” I say. “Which we can assume in this instance is profit. If there are people prepared to steal them, there are people prepared to buy them.”
“Probably some sharp-faced Vetruen prick who misses his slaves and sex toys.” Taph cuts me a look. “What’s H’Varak’s play on this?”
“I don’t know, but he’ll find one.” I think about it for a moment. “He has to tell the Protectorate. Has too.”
“Ah yes, the Protectorate, the shining beacon of hope for a better Universe.”
“They’re not perfect,” I say. “But they are trying to do better.”
Taph just scoffs. “‘Trying’ being the key word in that sentence. Aren’t you living proof of that? If they were doing better than trying, decorated war hero Captain Dhakhar wouldn’t be stationed all the way out on Xentra, would he?”
“Perhaps I like it here,” I say, trying to keep my voice neutral.
“Perhaps you like the company,” Taph says, gesturing to himself.
It’s my turn to scoff. Taph just grins. At least he knows he’s an asshole.
“I’ll review everything I’ve got,” he says, tail still flicking idly behind him. “And I’ll do some digging too, see what I can find out.”
Mylan is keeping watch outside the room where the woman we rescued is being treated, staring through the one way glass as the nurse checks her vitals.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Fine. Doctor R’Shaad had a look at her.” A small smile curls at the edges of his lips. “Fortunately for her, she was still unconscious.”
“No damage from us waking her up, then?”
“No,” Mylan says. “R’Shaad actually went as far as commending Dantari for keeping her sedated. Said she’d done the least incompetent thing someone of her limited training could have managed.”
I whistle. “High praise from the doctor. I hope you managed to stop Dantari trying to take his head off.”
Mylan smirks. “There was a little snarling, but she otherwise kept her cool.” He nods to the woman. “They have to let her wake now. Dangerous to just put her straight back into cryostasis while the sedative Dantari used is still in her system. They’ve taken bloods for a DNA check, too. They’re running her against the UP databases now, see if she’s from an identified system.”
“I hope she is, for her sake.”
If we know where she comes from, there’s a good chance we can get her home. Even if UP protocol means we’d have to wipe her memory and leave her to fend for herself once she got back, it’s better than the alternative - never seeing her home again.
“Do you…” Mylan hesitates a moment. “Do you find her a little… unnerving?”
I look through the glass. She has some colour in her skin now that she’s no longer freezing cold. A soft blush of pink across her cheeks. I think of how it felt to touch her, even through the protective layer of my bodysuit, and the same tug of desire pulls in my gut.
“A little,” I say.
Mylan opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it again as the door at the end of the corridor hisses open, and Tesson H’Varak strides through it. He’s followed by a clutch of giggling women - all of them Vetruen like H’Varak. Before the war, you wouldn’t have seen a Vetruen outside of the core systems, except on business. Now, there are pockets of them all over the place. Almost all of Upper Xentra’s population are Vetruen, living like the war never happened. I’ve learned to push the anger down, to deal with them all with a patient smile.
The women are dressed, as they usually are, like they’ve just been pulled away from some lavish, decadent party. So many frilly details, so much sparkle. I’ve been told all my life that this is what beauty is, that this is what I can’t have but should want all the same. And yet I’ve never looked on any Vetruen woman and felt the same desire I’ve felt for the woman in the hospital bed.
One of H’Varak’s women blinks at me now, her purple eyes wide as she gazes at me, mouth slightly parted, hip jutting out to the right. I wonder if she realises that in her attempt to appeal to me, she’s actually imitating the form of Prenetashi women - angling her straight body to simulate curves, parting her thin lips as if they’re plump and sensuous, trying to widen her narrow eyes. Part of me feels sorry for her. Vetruen women watched their husbands, their partners driven wild with lust for the women of an otherwise unremarkable, unsophisticated race. Just because of how the Prenetashi women looked. Vetruen women would have to be utterly unfeeling not to have internalised some of that.
Still, she’s not trying to make me desire her because she wants me. She’d never desire someone like me. It just irks her that I don’t desire her. My sympathy only extends so far.
“She’s as beautiful as R’Shaad said,” H’Varak says, his eyes on the woman behind the glass.
I watch the Vetruen women for their reaction, see them bristling.
“She’s not very colourful,” one says with a sigh, tugging at the neckline of her dress, as if to draw H’Varak’s attention to the swirling yellow and orange pattern there. “Plain, boring.”
“And her clothes…” another adds.
They giggle again, but H’Varak is staring through the glass still, his fingers tapping against it. H’Varak always taps when he’s thinking hard, taxing his brain to think about something other than himself. Mylan’s eyes dart from H’Varak’s hands to me and back again, and I know he’s wondering the same thing as me - exactly how is Tesson H’Varak going to twist this situation to his advantage?
“DNA checks are complete,” H’Varak says, turning to me. He always looks at me with aloof contempt, letting me know I’m someone he’d prefer not to deal with. “She’s from a recognised species. Human.”
“Never heard of them,” I say.
“No.” H’Varak’s gaze wanders back to the Human woman. “And I can see why the Protectorate wants to keep the species quiet. They don’t have anything… extra, you know. She’s harmless.”
Most species have some sort of trait or characteristic that gives them an advantage on the Universal playing field. If the Human woman is just as she looks - smaller than average, soft, beautiful… It makes her even more vulnerable than she already was.
“If we know where she�
��s from, we can return her and the others to their home,” I say.
H’Varak waves a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes,” he says. “But we have to let her wake first. I see no reason why we can’t give her a tour. Show her the wonders of station living. Before she has to go home.”
“She’ll have her memory erased by the Protectorate,” Mylan says, voice cold. “She won’t remember any of it.”
H’Varak says nothing, but I can guess what he’s thinking. I clench my fist, adrenaline making the scales across my chest harden. If H’Varak or his groupies notice my movements grow stiff, they don’t show any sign. Mylan glances across at me, and I can see he’s close to the edge of his temper, too. Mylan who is the most calm, the most mild of all my crew.
A nurse bustles into the Human woman’s room, cutting through the tension. He checks her vitals, then sits on a chair beside her bed.
“Time for you to wake up now, sweetheart,” he says, voice low, but firm. “Sedative should be out of your system by now and the doctor needs to check you over.”
He takes her hand, patting it gently at first, then just holding it. There’s a collective flinch from the Vetruen women, their faces twisting into matching expressions of disgust, even though the nurse has gloves on as per Vetruen regulations.
The woman’s eyelids flutter and she moves, turning her head towards him.
“There we go,” the nurse says, his tone encouraging. “Come back to the real world and we can get introduced.”
I glance sideways at H’Varak. I have to think of a way to stop him taking advantage of the poor woman. Have to find some way of protecting her. I walk a fine line, working for the likes of H’Varak. He knows the old Vetruen Empire prejudices give him an advantage over me - that no disciplinary board would believe me over him. I’ve made my peace with that, found ways to moderate his behaviours and strike a balance between Upper Xentra and Low Town. It’s meant letting things slide that I don’t want to, twisting my moral compass to fit new shapes. But it’s always been fairly low level stuff before.
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