by Stella Cassy
“What?”
“I’m taking you back there. I have been ordered to go back and secure that loan. And to return you to your owners.”
“My owner? You barbecued him, remember?”
“No. Your owner is Minapolis National Holdings. Not whatever regional manager it was you were bunking up with at the time.”
“I was not ‘bunking up’ with anyone, I’ll have you know.” She sniffed snootily. “They had very poor taste.”
The fact they hadn’t been partaking of the pleasures she offered seem to be a point of contention for her. That was strange. Not that it mattered, a slave was a slave. Even this soft, tight, cocky little one here. I wondered idly if she was good with her mouth in ways other than mere words.
Talia’s look grew serious.
“I don’t think they going to give you a loan, you know. Not after what you did last time.”
“They are cowardly people obsessed only with money. They won’t care about what I did for honor. All they care about is whether they can make more filthy lucre from us.”
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head at me, her blonde hair swaying from side to side as she did so. “If you’re going back there, they’ll probably try and catch you and put you in the arena.”
I had to laugh at that. If they put me in any arena, I would shift into my dragon form and roast anything they put before me, before turning my fiery anger on them.
“I’d like to see them try.”
The remaining working video screen on the wall lit up. It was Thrantok calling from the bridge.
“Sir. You have a call from Ranel.”
“Put it through.”
I picked Talia up and moved her to the side of the room, out of the view of the screen.
“Stay there, don’t move.”
She shrugged at me, and as I turned to return to the video screen she reached and squeezed my buttocks from behind. I peered over my shoulder at her, confused. She just winked at me. I wasn’t sure I would ever understand this little human.
On the screen, the frozen image of Ranel was waiting for me. I touched it to bring the image to life. I decided to speak first, before he started any nonsense about me apologizing again.
“We have not arrived back at Minapolis yet.”
“I know. That is why I’m calling.”
I wanted to keep this as short and sweet as possible. If it went on too long, I might snap at him, and that would be very bad for my future prospects.
“What is it?”
“I’m afraid this is a warning call. We have arrested Illion’s mother. She has been sabotaging ships in order to improve her son’s chances of success and promotion.”
“Sabotage?”
Little did he know.
“You need to get your ship serviced at the first docking station you can. We fear that your ship may be one that she has tampered with.”
I snorted, a wisp of smoke coming out from between my flared nostrils. “Your call comes too late. But fortunately, her nefariousness was outdone by her own incompetence. We suffered some serious damage, but I have everything back under control. We will proceed with the mission.”
Ranel looked startled, his eyes opening up wide and pupils dilating. I didn’t wait to hear what else he had to say. It would be pleasantries at best. Repetition of his demand for me to give an apology at worst. I stabbed at the screen to disconnect the call.
“Who’s Illion? Why is his mother sabotaging ships? And—”
“Enough. You do not need to know any of that. I need to prepare for our arrival back at Minapolis. And you need to go and wash. You can use the ablution facilities in my room.”
“Okay.”
“And stay away from where the closet was or you might get sucked out into space.”
This couldn’t actually happen as the former closet was now sealed, but it was good to put a bit of fear into her.
Concealing my smile, I headed to the bridge.
16
Talia
Talia
As prison cells go, the ship’s recreation room was a big improvement over the small jail cell in the cargo hold. There were luxuries such as places to sit, and I could even pace up and down if I felt like stretching my legs. But after my brief jog on Nort, I didn’t feel any burning desire to exercise my legs again any time soon.
There were two video screens on the wall, though one seemed to have been destroyed, and I was pretty sure who by. Disappointingly, the remaining video screen didn’t seem to pick up any of my favorite network or cable channels. Aliens have terrible taste.
After I showered, Rethryn left me in the recreation room while he went to the bridge to do Captainy things. We were on our final approach back to Minapolis.
On the video screen before me, he had, at my request, let me watch what was going on. It was more interesting than any of the alien junk the screens could show.
So I sat back on one of the benches, leaning against the table behind me, munching on a cardboard tasting ration biscuit, while I watched the proceedings. The foodstuff seemed a little less offensive now, but it may have been because my taste buds had simply given up.
“Sir, we are now approaching Minapolis,” said the first officer, whose name I learned was Thrantok.
It was like watching reality television, but with aliens — this made it seem even more unrealistic than reality television back on Earth.
“Let’s get this over with,” said Rethryn. “Bring us in.”
There was quiet on the bridge for a few minutes. While I chewed on my cardboard, I could see Rethryn staring at the large projected screen in front of him, while the other members of his crew sat at their stations doing whatever it was they did.
“Sir, I’m picking up gunships. Six of them.”
“Are they threatening us?”
“Sir… all six of them have weapons locked on to us. They’re sending a message… hold on. It says we are to surrender immediately and face trial for our crimes.”
Rethryn’s face seemed to scrunch up in rage. I was kind of glad I wasn’t on the bridge with them. His temper was a sight to behold.
I felt a small sense of satisfaction at the fact that I was right though. They weren’t going to get a loan from Mister Magoo National Holdings any time soon. Rethryn’s superior, Ranel, clearly didn’t know what he was about.
“Blast it!” Rethryn slammed a balled-up fist against the surface in front of him. Luckily it seemed to have been deliberately designed to take such blows. “If I had a real ship, or a fleet, I would blast them into neutrinos.”
“Sir, I don’t see any way to approach Minapolis at the moment. Shall we withdraw?”
Rethryn’s face was dark as he slammed one fist into the palm of the other.
“For the time being we will alter our course. Thrantok, select a new destination at your discretion.”
I smirked. He didn’t like the idea of withdrawing, so he was phrasing it like they had just decided to go somewhere else. As if they weren’t afraid of six heavily armed ships blasting us out of the sky. It seemed a little silly to me. Being pragmatic was very different from being cowardly. But for the proud Drakon, there didn’t seem to be much difference.
I could feel the ship moving as the inertial dampers were put hard at work as the ship was spun around on its axis. The engines re-fired to blast us away from Minapolis and the six ships that wanted to destroy us.
“Sir, what we going to do?” asked Thrantok.
Rethryn answered him with a growl, then stomped off the bridge.
It was an interesting question. What was he going to do? I didn’t really understand what the mission was about — why were they so desperate for a loan from Minapolis?
But it was giving me an inkling of an idea.
Maybe I could use the situation to my advantage.
Rethryn marched into the rec room with a scowl on his face.
“So we’re not going back to Minapolis yet, then?”
�
�No. Not yet. I should keep you to spite them.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. I’d never been a pawn in an intergalactic negotiation before.
“It’s important to my mission, but I’m not sure that it can be completed. It’s unfair that it was given to me.”
“Yeah, impossible tasks suck. I was ordered to try and clean the entire kitchen back at the bank — you should’ve seen the place, it needed an army of cleaners—”
Rethryn was not interested in hearing the rest of what was frankly a rather dull anecdote. I don’t suppose I could blame him for interrupting me.
“Cleaning a kitchen is not the same as funding the reconstruction of an entire planet.”
“If you say so.” It kind of was the same, though. It was just a matter of scale.
After a moment of silence, he asked me, “How did you solve your cleaning problem?”
I laughed. “By getting a dragon to destroy the entire building and kidnap me.”
That made him chuckle, but he seemed to feel a need to clarify what had happened. Jerk that he was.
“You had no part in my decisions that day. It was pure luck on your part.”
“I know, I know. I was just kidding.”
“You kid too much. Everything is at stake here.”
Before we could continue, we were interrupted. The image of Thrantok appeared on the video screen, and with a single command Rethryn connected the internal call.
“Report.”
“Sir, we have left the ships behind. We are now orbiting a small moon in a nearby system. There are no immediate threats. I await your further orders.”
“Good. Let me know if anything changes.”
Rethryn flicked the screen off.
It was time to see what I could do with the situation. If I had one goal in life, it was to make it back home. And now, perhaps, I saw a way that I might be able to manage it.
“Why, exactly, do you need money from Minapolis?”
Rethryn studied me for a few moments. Usually when he looked at me it seemed that he was looking down on me, which was somewhat understandable since I was a slave and he was a ‘prince’. But there had been a few moments where his gaze had a different nuance, as if he was considering that I might be more than a fun diversion. That he might actually recognize I had an Ivy League education and the smarts to match.
Finally, he answered. And for once it wasn’t in a dismissive, mocking way. I didn’t know whether it was because he was looking for advice, or just needed to unburden himself — something he couldn’t do to his crew, since he always wanted them to be looking up to him. There was no way Rethryn would show a sign of weakness such as asking for advice.
We were the only two in the recreation room, and Rethryn went over to seal the door to make sure we weren’t further disturbed. He could speak without fear of being seen weak by anyone except me, an unimportant slave.
“Our people recently fought a war. A costly one, against the accursed Pax.”
“Furry little bastards.” I smacked the table with my hand to show my solidarity.
“You dislike them?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Of course I dislike them! They’re the ones who kidnapped me!”
Rethryn shrugged. “I suppose that would cause some dislike. But still, you met me, didn’t you?”
When I laughed in response, he looked a little wounded.
“Yes, I met you.”
“So you should be grateful to them. I’m the best you ever had!”
I slowly nodded at him. “The best Drakon I ever had.”
The fun thing about excessively arrogant people is that they’re easy to wind up and get a rise out of. And I don’t think they came more arrogant than Rethryn Hielsrane. He rumbled a growl of annoyance at my teasing, but I could tell it wasn’t a deadly one.
Of course, I didn’t want to wind him up too much though. He was my ticket home after all. Seducing him and then teasing him so much I got turned into a Talia-barbecue or Talia-mincemeat would be just the kind of mistake I would have made in my younger years. But now that I was approaching my mid-twenties, I had much better control. I hoped.
“Yes, yes, I’m just kidding. You’re very…” I reached under the table with my bare foot and ran it up his surprisingly soft thigh. “…very good.” And he did have an almost magic little dragon down there. The way it could expand and contract in waves inside me was otherworldly. Literally.
“That’s better.” He almost smiled. “Now, of course we were victorious in our war. But our victory didn’t come without cost. We need resources to rebuild. Resources our planet lacks, and in order to secure those resources, we need funds.”
Rethryn’s mood seemed to darken as he said this. As if the idea of paying for things was anathema to him.
“And Minapolis is the only place you can get them?”
“To get them legitimately, we believe so. They are the bankers to the universe. Or at least our corners of it. If we were at our full strength, we could simply liberate the resources we need from weak planets. But, as I said, the war was costly. And we need the resources now. To rebuild our weapons of war, for one thing.”
“What if,” as I said it, I leaned across the table, so our faces were just a few inches apart, “what if, there was another way to obtain the resources you need. Gold is valuable, right? And other minerals…”
“You know somewhere that has not yet been stripped bare? How could you? Did you overhear something while working at the bank?”
I giggled innocently and ran a hand over his surprisingly soft cheek. Every time I touched him, my mind expected him to be hard and scaly like a cavern wall, so the softness of his scales was always a pleasant surprise.
“No. Remember I told you my father was like a merchant of sorts? He has been involved in some very big international trade deals. Ones that made my family rich beyond most people’s imagination.”
“Rich in money, but not in blood and honor!”
“Yeah if you say so. Though my father is actually seen as quite honorable too. But not bloody. Definitely not. We don’t like that. Except one of my cousins who’s a doctor, I guess he must not hate it too much.”
“And your father will be willing to deal with the Drakon?”
“Hell yes,” I said in a brazen lie. I knew no such thing. “The first intergalactic business deal in the history of humankind? Even if it goes sour, it will let him make a mark in the annals of business that no one will ever be able to surpass.”
“Yes… if that is how your planet determines honor, then perhaps I could understand.”
“And hey, what have you got to lose? The bankers on Minapolis aren’t going to give you your loan anytime soon. Not without arresting you first.”
“It’s not my loan, if it was up to me…”
“Yeah, yeah, you’d go rob someone, you said it plenty of times. But you do want the money, right? I mean, you’re not exactly going to get promoted to a proper spaceship without it, are you?”
Rethryn opened his mouth as if to argue that this was a proper spaceship. But he and I both knew this small craft wasn’t exactly the Hielsrane dream.
“Fine. We shall go to Earth and speak to your father and the king. Though I warn you, if they speak to me in as insulting a manner as the Nortians on Minapolis did, their fate will be even more gruesome.”
This wasn’t the ideal moment to explain that, actually, Earth didn’t have a single king and that we had hundreds of different nations and cultures. I’d get to that later.
“I’m sure they’ll be polite.”
That was yet another thing I wasn’t sure of at all. But I wasn’t overly worried. The important thing had been achieved: I’d found a way back to Earth.
17
Rethryn
Rethryn
The closer we got to Earth, the stronger both sides of my mixed feelings grew. On the one hand, what kind of Drakon takes advice from a human slave girl? But on the other, if her planet
was as rich as she said it was… perhaps the whole incident on Minapolis could be forgotten. Perhaps I would be hailed as a hero and savior of the Drakon race if I returned with enough riches.
Our ship slowed to approach speeds as we approached the Sol system. I brought Talia on to the bridge so that she could explain their diverse array of worlds.
If this all worked out, my theft of the human slave would look like incredible foresight on my part.
“It seems you have several sizable planets in your people’s system.” I stared at the visualization of them that Thrantok had put onto the large display screen in front of us. “But I do not understand them.”
Talia looked at me, confused.
“You don’t… understand them? What, planets?”
Perhaps I was expecting too much of a slave girl to realize what I was getting at. But then again, she claimed to come from a princess-like background so she should have received at least some education.
“Yes. Look,” I pointed at the screen. “What is this planet?” I pointed at one with an interesting set of rings around it, which would have been perfect for setting up weapons systems to target either incoming enemy craft, or anyone on the planet below who forgot how to be polite.
“That’s Saturn,” she said confidently. Then her face scrunched up in thought. “Or maybe Jupiter.”
In relation to the sun, and by the makeup of its component parts, I came to a startling conclusion.
“How do you live on it? You would need to expel a lot of effort to maintain suitable living structures in such a hostile environment.”
“Oh, no, we don’t live there, silly. Remember, I’m from Earth.”
If anyone else on the ship called me silly they’d be out the airlock before they’d had time to finish bleeding from the wounds I’d inflict on them first. But it seemed different coming from her.
“So which of these planets do you inhabit?”
This time when she spoke, it was very slowly and clearly.
“Earth.”