Primal Planet Dragon
Primal Planet Book Two
Skylar Clarke
Starr Huntress
Contents
1. Anna
2. Mathios
3. Anna
4. Mathios
5. Anna
6. Mathios
7. Anna
8. Mathios
9. Mathios
10. Anna
11. Mathios
12. Anna
Epilogue—Mathios
Need More Primal Planet?
1
Anna
I stare at myself in the full-length mirror. It is chipped in several places, covered in finger smudges. Before we stole this one, there had been only the small ones in the two bathrooms shared between the dozen people who call this ship home.
I do my best to fix the wild tresses of my dark hair. Normally, it refuses to cooperate, and I compensate by tying it up in the least sloppy bun I can manage. Today, though, it is going surprisingly well. I manage to get it looking more smooth than frizzy, framing my face in a way that might be pleasing. As I work a wide braid through one section, weaving it with the rest of my hair, I cannot help but think that someone more optimistic might think of this as a good omen. The approaching wedding is written in the stars and Lukas and I will be happy. But the eyes that look back at me are sad and blue, and perhaps a touch frightened.
Lukas and I will not be happy.
The dress is white, as is traditional even in this day and age, and flowing. I insisted on something easy to move in. Given my lifestyle, being able to make a quick getaway has always been paramount, and I can’t imagine voluntarily wearing something that might, even for a second, slow me down. I hurriedly finish applying just a bit of dark makeup around my blue eyes. I don’t really know what I’m doing to be honest. Normally, makeup is the last thing on my mind, but there is going to be a wedding—my wedding—and like the white dress and the nearly perfect hair, a bit of makeup is traditional.
I turn away from the mirror, resisting the strong urge to grasp the nearest heavy thing and smash it to countless sharp pieces. I get this often, the sudden urge to break things; to create chaos, to mirror the feeling of dissent in my chest. My bedroom is a dump. It is larger than most on the ship, a courtesy of sorts from Lukas (just another thing for which I owe him) and though I technically share it with no one, my brother Jackson stores most of things here rather than in the small, closet-like room he chose for himself. We shared when he was younger, but when he hit fifteen, he moved down the hall for privacy’s sake. The ship itself is in disrepair, but we do our best to keep it tidy despite the junk that accumulates between the two of us. I have a habit of grabbing one souvenir of some sort from every planet I touch my feet on, and over the years, Jackson has picked up the habit too. It is one of the less harmful tendencies he has picked up since I let Lukas take us in.
I run my hands over the rickety, hand-built shelf filled with books and other treasures—the bone of a strange, unnamed creature from the lava fields of Aeonid, a rock from a moon we stopped on to make repairs, a book whose language has been indecipherable to every merchant I’ve asked so far. It is difficult to separate my things from Jackson’s, jumbled together as they are. The closet is perhaps the only place where our items do not mix together, my clothing pushed to one side and his to the other, the few warm, oversized shirts and jackets that we sometimes trade hanging in the middle or else strewn over the foot of my bed.
This ship is almost as old as high-speed space travel itself. As I sit down on the bed, I feel a spring dig into the soft part of my thigh. I ignore the discomfort as I always do, and fumble open the drawer of the bedside table, long ago broken and pieced back together with industrial glue, every time the pilot’s dodgy maneuver cause something to tip over and break apart a third, a fourth, a thousandth time. I feel the plastic edge of a photograph and tug it free.
“Whoa!” a voice says, making me jump slightly. Jackson stands in the doorway, slack-jawed.
“Shit, Jackson,” I say. “We’ve talked about knocking.”
“Sorry,” he says. “You’re the only person with an ounce of politeness on this ship. It’s hard to remember.”
“I know,” I say, voice soft, an apology for snapping at him.
He seems to catch my nervousness without me saying so, and his own face softens in turn. “You actually look kinda normal for once,” he says.
I snort. It’s high praise coming from the sixteen-year-old, who usually doesn’t bother to comment on the appearance of his shipmates, including myself, unless one of us is looking particularly grotesque.
Jackson has the same dark hair as me, and similar light-colored eyes. Where my own are a light, almost icy blue, Jackson’s are brighter and more vibrant, like the blue of the sky or the waves on a planet with tropical temperatures. It seems like just a few months ago that I was close to his age, scraping out what little living I could, when Lukas offered us a place on his ship, a place in the sky. It had seemed like an adventure, the answer to my earnest prayers. As a kid, I wholeheartedly believed in some great plan that I was a part of, and Lukas’ life seemed meant to intersect with mine.
I was disillusioned fairly quickly after my feet first left the ground, and I watched my home planet fade into a faint blue ball. It wasn’t that I didn’t love travelling. Wanderlust is something I have never been able to shake, and it is never sated, not even after nearly ten years of hopping from world to world. It is the manner in which we explore that is exhausting, that makes me yearn for something more permanent. It is hard to truly enjoy the beauty of the worlds we visit, when we are always there for one reason only. We are always there for money—however we can make it, find it, or steal it—and then, as quickly as we gain cash (or goods that are tradable for cash) we are gone, dodging the resulting police presence for weeks afterward. This never fails to fill me with anxiety in addition to the guilt. Even as a much younger girl, when I still gained some sort of fun, some sort of thrill, from such activities, I worried about the repercussions, the lives we ruined for a long time afterward.
The mirror calls me to face it again, and I do, putting down the aged photograph of my brother and I that I had meant to study, and examining my reflection once more as Jackson goes about tucking away the latest collection of things he has deemed worth keeping.
Jackson thinks I look kind of normal.
I huff a bitter laugh, thinking of all the things that brought me here. There is a flash of Lukas holding a gun to a man’s head, laughing at the way his hands shook as he held them in the air.
Marrying him is the worst thing I can possibly imagine, and if that it is truly what it takes for me to reach ‘kinda normal,’ then I am in no way interested in maintaining this terrible status quo.
The nausea hits me abruptly, like a kick in the stomach, as I realize that there may be no way out of this. I’ve been running with Lukas and his twisted gang of a family for so many years that anything else seems like a dream. The memories of growing up on Earth with Jackson get dimmer all the time. It was hard then—six years ago, when I was still a half-grown girl. I fought every day to stay alive, to keep my brother fed. He has always been of more concern to me than my own growling stomach. Lukas wasn’t the leader then. He was still a young man, rising through the ranks of the small group, but he was the one who offered me a place, impressed with the volume of food I could smuggle out of a supermarket beneath one thin jacket. This life is all I’ve known since I was sixteen years old, and thinking of something else is just as impossible as contemplating a life
without Jackson by my side, constantly alternating between sarcastic remarks and earnest questions.
I grip a fistful of the flowing skirt in my hand, feeling the delicate material and fighting the urge to rip it in my frustration. This has never felt right. Ever since the moment Lukas asked me, I knew there was no way out that still allowed me to remain a part of his ‘family.’ If I tell him no, I will no longer be protected. I will no longer belong to a group of any sort. But I want to tell him no.
Now that I’ve considered the possibility, I know there is no going back to the passive acceptance of before. It is funny that all it took was seeing myself in this monstrosity of a dress.
Truth be told, I should not have stayed with Lukas and his group this long. I should have stuck with them only long enough to hop to a new planet, a fresh start—perhaps picking up a few tricks of the trade along the way.
But I shouldn't have stayed.
Lukas is a bad man who does bad things, and this eclipses any small good deeds he has performed in the process. In fact, I wonder if in picking up a young girl and her brother in need of help, he has had this ending in mind all along. It is just like Lukas to do nothing good, without some sort of gain for himself in mind.
As I stand here in this ridiculous dress something hits me with dizzying clarity. I don’t want to be his.
In fact, I don’t think I want to be anyone’s.
I picture myself standing with Lukas at whatever shithole he decides to stop at next, crammed with the rest of the crew into some tiny courthouse while he pulls me close and kisses me. Pins me to the sheets of the first hotel bed he can find. The next morning, we’ll head to another planet where our names aren’t known, and find another village to rob. We’ll commit the same petty, cruel crimes for the rest of my life, and for the rest of Jackson’s. The thought of his body against mine stirs nothing within me but more nausea, as does the thought of such a life. This was only ever supposed to be a temporary fix, but six years have passed in a blink.
Six years.
I have to leave now, or I never will.
“Jackson,” I say.
“Yeah?” he says. His voice is skeptical, almost scared. I realize that he has been watching my face this whole time, seeing the thoughts flit across it.
“I can’t do this,” I say, tone edging toward frantic. It’s late in the morning. Lukas is asleep, chasing away the inevitable hangover, but he will not be for much longer. If he sees me, he won’t even have to make me stay. He will probably succeed in talking me out of leaving with a few well-said words. He is gifted with the tongue of a salesman, which was likely how he got me onto the ship in the first place.
“I have to go,” I continue. Jackson still stares, as though he doesn’t quite comprehend what I’m getting at. I grip his hand, give it a quick, pleading squeeze. “Come with me—now.”
I tell him, rather than asking him. Sixteen still seems so young to me, so many years removed. I tug him with me toward the door. The panic is so sudden and intense, that I don’t even bother to grab a pack and fill it with essentials.
“Nah,” he says, part sarcastic, part confused.
“Now, Jackson,” I order again, my voice as hard as I can make it. Perhaps it calls back to the days when he jumped to follow me without question, before Lukas, because this time, he moves with me to the door of my room and into the hallway. His eyes fill with concern, as he follows me past the rooms of the others, slowly slipping his hand from my own.
There is movement ahead, and my lower lip finds its way into my mouth, caught nervously between two teeth. I expect Lukas, but relax when I see that it is only Sami, another gang member. He is the youngest next to Jackson, and perhaps the closest thing my brother has to a friend in this bunch. I cannot afford to think about that.
I smile at him, bright as always, and he smiles back. I’ve always been rather grand at faking whatever emotion I need to project in a given situation, which may have been the exact reason Lukas was deluded enough to mistake my awkward gratitude and careful respect for actual interest.
“Sami,” I say, giving him a shy nod.
“Damn,” he says, with a low whistle. “You clean up good, Anna. Lukas is gonna flip when he sees you.”
“Thanks,” I say back, ducking my head so that he cannot see the sheen of nervous sweat rising on my forehead. As we pass in the narrow hallway, it is an easy thing for my hand to pull the blaster from its too-loose holster at his hip. I don’t use a blaster often, preferring to get by on threats and theft without actually needing to hurt anyone, but I know enough to flip the switch quickly to stun. It happens too fast for either he or Jackson to stop me. The force of it knocks Sami back into the wall, head thumping against the metal, before he slumps to the floor. I am not particularly large or tall, but I work hard on the ship and work hard on jobs. Though I avoid most of the work that might result in overt violence, it still leads to lots of hauling things around and plenty of running.
My arms and back are strong, and I have only a little trouble locking my hands beneath Sami’s arms and hauling him to a nearby weapons closet. Jackson holds the door open for me as I shove the unconscious body inside, but his face is drawn and it is the only help he lends me.
“Sorry, Sami,” I whisper, closing the door, and anxiously adjusting my grip on the blaster with one hand, while I grip Jackson’s sleeve with the other, and pull him along the short distance to the escape pods. We’re lucky not to meet anyone else. I hear no noises but the pilot fiddling around in the cockpit at the other end of the ship.
I press the button to open the doors, heart increasing its rhythm in my chest, like a bird trapped in the cage of my ribs, and watch it open with relief. I’ve made it. All I have to do is climb inside. As I take the first step, Jackson yanks himself away. The force with which he does it causes him to stumble back unsteadily. His blue eyes, almost the same as my own, are narrowed in hurt and anger.
“No!” he says. His voice shakes a little, but still manages to be frighteningly loud on the deafeningly quiet ship. “Absolutely not.”
It’s as though he’s just now realizing what I intend and can’t quite reconcile the logic of my decision. He crosses his arms before his chest, and plants his feet as firmly as a soldier on a battlefield refusing to run from the first wave of enemy soldiers. I feel, for a just moment, a sharp flare of pride at the determined set of his jaw, but it vanishes as I realize that my chances of convincing him to budge are very small. Jackson is just as stubborn as I am, if not more so.
“Jacks,” I say, eyes darting to the open door of the pod, ears straining for the sound of approaching feet. “Please. Don’t make me do this alone.” It is only while I say this that I realize I have never truly been alone.
His eyes bore into my own. He doesn’t move. “You do what you want. I like it here.”
I feel my face crumple a bit, lips trembling with a mix of anger and grief. My hand clenches tight around the blaster in shock at his words, and he snorts at the sight of it. “Are you gonna shoot me?” he asks, perceived betrayal plain in his voice. He sees this as me leaving him behind, not the other way around.
I don’t bother with an answer, the pain of his decision making my throat close up too tightly for words. I step forward and press the blaster into his palm—I think there is another in the pod—fighting the urge to hug him goodbye, to grip his arm again and pull him with me.
“Wait as long as you can before you tell Lukas,” I say. “Shoot the blaster at the wall even,” I offer. “He won’t be angry if he thinks you tried to stop me.”
“I should try to stop you,” he says. “This is home.”
“It never has been,” I say. Both our voices are wrecked with frustration and tears that won’t come. I step past him, switching my path to the single person escape pod, and step inside. As the doors close between us, he is already turning away.
I know my fair share about ships. It’s the only way to keep safe if you live on one. A few quick touches of m
y fingertips to various buttons, and I’m blasting away from the scrap heap of a ship I incorrectly called home for six years.
I sit on the small seat, buckled in tight as I hurtle through empty space, bound for whichever planet is the closest. Probably nowhere willing to lend a hand to a traveller stupid enough to quite literally jump ship with nothing but the clothes on her back. With any luck, I can sell the dress for enough to tide me over for a while. I’ll make up the rest with stealing, same as I always have.
Jackson will be fine. If he’s learned anything from growing up in such a way, it’s how to survive, but then again, he’s never had to do it without me.
In the distance, I spot a ship much larger than the one I just escaped. Normally, I would be glad to see it, hopeful that it might pick me up and drop me at a station guaranteed to be safe. But as I look at this ship, I realize that I very much want it to ignore me.
The window I look from is small, but I can see the spiky exterior, meant to be intimidating as well as to damage anything it happens to crash into. The cannons mounted on both sides give me some clues as well. My own pod is so tiny against the vastness of space that they are unlikely to notice me, but I hunker down anyway, paranoid that somehow my small movements in the window will draw attention. The last thing I need is the attention of an alien warship. This sector contains some true scum and villainy, of which Lukas is only a small part.
He is a thief and a crook who gets off on causing fear and misery, but there are far worse things to be.
As I gather my long skirts beneath me, trying in vain to find a comfortable position, I find myself wishing I’d brought a change of clothes above all else.
Primal Planet Dragon_A Science Fiction Alien Romance Page 1