Rayessa and the Space Pirates
www.escapepublishing.com.au
Rayessa and the Space Pirates
Donna Maree Hanson
Sixteen-year-old Rae Stroder lives in a hollow asteroid, a defunct refuelling station, with a brain-damaged adult, Gris, to keep her company. Low on supplies, they’ve been eking out an existence for years. Everything changes when Alwin Anton, ultra-clean, smart and handsome AllEarth Corp company auditor, arrives to find disarray. Full of suspicion, he interrogates Rae, threatening her with prosecution for theft. He uncovers the fact that she is not Rae Stroder at all, when space pirates attack.
During the attack, Rae is taken prisoner and Alwin Anton escapes in his space ship. The pirate women prepare Rae for sale on the infamous Centauri slave markets. It’s all going badly, when she is purchased by a mysterious Ridallian. Meanwhile, the space pirates are out to kill Alwin Anton because he holds the secret to Rae’s true identity. It’s a race against time to unravel the intrigue of Rae’s past to secure her future.
Acknowledgements
I’ve been at this writing gig for a long time now so I’ve stacked up a lot of people to say thank you to. Thank you to my children, Taamati, Shireen, Erana and James for putting up with me being attached to my computer almost constantly. I’d like to acknowledge the support of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild; the ACT Writers Centre; the Australian speculative fiction tribe for always being supportive; and Romance Writers of Australia and their great conference (August 2012), where I heard about Harlequin Escape. Thank you to Nicole R Murphy for encouraging me to go along. I’d like to thank Stephanie Smith, former publisher at HarperVoyager for her encouragement over the years and to Matthew Farrer who is one of a handful of people who has read Rayessa. He said he liked it. Finally, to Kate Cuthbert and Haylee Kerans, thank you for saying yes and the rest of the Harlequin Australia team for all the author love.
For Matthew, who believed
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Outpost 311
Chapter Two: The Lollydrop
Chapter Three: Alwin Anton
Chapter Four: Space Audit
Chapter Five: Identity Crisis
Chapter Six: Pirates’ Pleasure
Chapter Seven: Pirate Women
Chapter Eight: Poor Little Slave Girl
Chapter Nine: Highest Bidder
Chapter Ten: Dark Destiny
Chapter Eleven: Friend or Foe?
Chapter Twelve: A Message Delivered
Chapter Thirteen: To Be and Not to Be
Chapter Fourteen: Space Station Alpha
Chapter Fifteen: The Service Entrance
Chapter Sixteen: Gayens’ Private Suite
Chapter Seventeen: Real Clone
Chapter Eighteen: Family Found
Chapter Nineteen: Sisters & Lovers
Epilogue
About the Author
Excerpt from Legend Beyond The Stars
Excerpt from Chaos Born
Excerpt from The Danger Game
Chapter One
Outpost 311
My throat itched as I connected the power relay above my head. The torch clipped to my belt jerked light beams from floor to ceiling doing little to help me see clearly. I groaned and when I lowered my arms, knives of pain dug into my shoulders. As I wiped sweat from my forehead and eyes, I wished I was watching a vid instead of doing this. With a snort of disgust, I left the cords dangling while I took a sniff of oxygen. Then I turned the respirator off with a snap.
I breathed in the thick, gluggy gas that passed for air in this corridor and felt an ache arrive just behind my left eyebrow. That’s what you got when you lived in a forgotten, hollowed-out asteroid.
I looked up at the dangling cords and thought of Gris topside trying to align the solar sail and sighed. No choice but to get the darn thing fixed before the plants died in the hydroponics bay. Besides providing a small of amount of food, the plants converted carbon dioxide to oxygen, something the air filters couldn’t do. Even I knew that.
I stretched upwards to place the cables back in the conduit and groaned when I heard my ragged body-stocking tear again.
‘Rats,’ I said, as I eased the piece of metal plating I used for a shirt. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, new, sleek ship suit. Then, I inhaled a mouthful of air so thick I could feel it clog my lungs and coughed. There was a crackle of static and I groped for the commlink hanging off my belt.
‘Rae?’
‘Gris?’ I said into my commlink, which was taped together and had its power cell exposed.
Gris’ familiar slurred speech sounded in my ear. ‘Sail…is…up…Rae,’ he said, from the surface of the asteroid.
Gris, a towering hulk of flesh, had been injured in a pirate attack a few years before. I had nursed him back to health with the aid of the dilapidated med unit but something wasn’t right in his head. He had never been the same man again.
Often I dreamed that my life had all been a mistake and that I was actually living on a Class Five Space Station with floor-to-ceiling view ports, overlooking the rings of Saturn or the storms of Jupiter, enjoying all the modern conveniences of the 2050s. I fantasised that I had friends my own age and we hung out at the vidmovie arcade and talked about our favourite actors. I frowned as I went back to work.
I checked the alignment. The sail was slightly off, although some power was being converted by the superconductor. I checked the solar radiation levels in the hydroponics bay. Better, but not perfect.
I took another snort of air and said into the commlink, ‘Gris, can you shift the sail to the left another half a centimetre? Yep that’s it.’
I checked the monitor. The power levels were up. ‘Okay, head back now. Meet you at the control centre. I think I can scrounge up some de-moulded hard tack and a tin of beans.’
Gris’ guffaw reached me over the crackle of static. Our shared joke. The only food we had was hardtack and beans.
After replacing the ceiling panel, I walked along the hexagon-shaped corridors. I passed the signs of our scrapping operation, the gaping rents in the wall where the metal planking curled away from the bulkhead, leaving the superstructure and conduits exposed. I headed back to the control centre, taking another snort of oxygen to keep me going.
Around the corner at a junction, I paused. A curse burst out of me. I had to stop here and work out how to get back. We’d sold the signs for food. I looked for an identifier, shining the torch along the edge. The corridors linking the bay to the main service areas were out. We couldn’t afford the power or the oxygen to keep them useable all the time. Only one was safe to use. My torch revealed the squiggle dash I had etched into the rim. That was the way back to the control centre.
My head was feeling a bit fuzzy from the lack of clean air by the time I made it to the main corridor. I shoved the door to slide it back, but it was stuck. I unhitched a power cell from my belt and attached the switch cable. The door slid open jerkily. Stepping through, it slid shut as I pulled my hand and the precious power cell through. The air was cleaner here closer to the centre, and I breathed it in deeply. The headache that had begun in the service corridor would fade eventually.
Bending down, I retied my handmade boots and adjusted the shin plating over my leggings. Gris had made these clothes for me, using scrap and wiring to hold together the rotting remains of my body-stocking.
When I entered the control centre, I caught a glimpse of myself in the stainless-steel plating. My pale skin was grimy, nothing like those made up-actors in the vidmovies. My brown hair was dirty and hung limply over my shoulders. Gris had hacked it a few months ago, even so it was still shoulder length.
Bulging embarrassingly from underneath the plating were my breasts. I tried to ease them back. I wasn’t quite used to them yet. A great hole in my stocking over my midriff matched the one I’d just acquired on my right thigh. My elbows, too, poked through the sleeves of both arms, and I had various burn holes dotted down my forearms. Those were from dismantling sections of the outpost with a blowtorch. I wasn’t very good at it. Maybe next trade we could manage a real ship suit, fit for a 16 year old. For now, I had to live with what I had.
Gris bounced in. He hadn’t been brought up on the asteroid like me so he still had trouble with the light gravity. His bare chest was laced with scars and his lopsided trousers were cut above the knees. He wore a metal apron secured with wire around his waist and buttocks. It saved a few embarrassing moments for both of us. Since his head injury, he tended to undress at odd times. The ties slowed down those impulses and gave me time to exit.
Stretching carefully, I got up to open the beans and placed the hard tack on our plates.
‘Tea?’ I asked Gris.
‘Umm, yes please,’ he replied with a thick tongue.
‘You did well today, Gris. I think we’ll live a little bit longer. Though if you ask me,’ I said, plonking down in the command chair. My serving of beans swam in thin, tasteless sauce. I pushed them around the plate without much interest. ‘Not much point is there. I mean, we’re stuck here unless we want to join the pirates or illegal traders.’
‘Captain Stroder,’ said Gris, dropping beans from his mouth.
‘Yes, I know Dad said we had a duty to man the outpost, but he is gone now isn’t he? Let me see,’ I said, reaching down and drawing out my routine checklist from under my chair. ‘Keep the landing bays powered and functional; maintain client facilities; relay messages and astronomical data; maintain…’
I threw the checklist down and it clattered to the floor. Running that checklist was the only thing I knew. That and vidmovies and dealing with the rogue traders and the occasional pirate. I don’t ever remember going to school but I must have once because I could read…a bit.
Everything seemed so pointless. ‘What the hell.’ I ranted to the ceiling. ‘No one’s coming. Haven’t seen a supply ship since I was 14.’
‘Captain Stroder said…’ repeated Gris.
I glanced over to him as I swivelled around in the chair. He looked unhappy, so I got up and patted him on the head. He was hunched down, eating his beans on the floor so I could reach him easily.
‘Don’t worry, Gris. We’ve got nothing better to do. I’ll think I’ll take a nap after I re-watch my favourite vidmovie. Do the rounds will you?’
‘Yep,’ replied Gris, snaffling the rest of my uneaten beans as he left.
I pulled the seat cushion off the command chair and shoved it beneath the console. I crawled in after it and lay my head down. After I stretched out under the console and folded a few bits of circuitry out of the way, I angled down the viewer.
I selected A Slave’s Lament, my favourite vidmovie, featuring Del Divlan in the lead as a slave girl, slotted it in and hunkered down to watch. The opening sequence flashed up. How I admired Del’s clothes and the way she spoke. Would I ever be that grown up? I wondered. I mouthed a few of her lines, practising her accent. Eventually my eyes closed and I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Del telling her master how much she loved him.
Chapter Two
The Lollydrop
The crackling of the communication console woke me up. Still dazed from sleep, I didn’t quite recognise the sound. An indistinct voice sounded over the interference. I shook my head, dislodging my confusion and disbelief. I hadn’t heard external comms for quite a while. The voice grew louder and more distinct.
‘Outpost 311…in…read me. Outpost…’
I scrambled up and threw the seat cushion back on the chair. While rubbing sleep from my eyes, I straightened my chest plating and eased the back of my metal skirt away from my chafe marks. I should’ve undone the ties before I slept, but I had been too lazy and too tired to even think about it.
‘Outpost 311…please respond…’
I jumped. ‘Huh?’ Startled into action, I plopped into the command chair and spun around to activate the automated response and telemetry readouts.
‘This is outpost 311 receiving,’ I said in my best vidmovie tone. I’m sure Dad would’ve been proud of me.
‘Captain Stroder?’ came the surprised, posh-sounding voice.
I had to think quickly. It wasn’t a good idea to give things away too easily (especially when you didn’t know who it was). ‘Um, I’m the only Stroder here. Who are you and what do you want?’
I called up the telemetry and stared at it for a while. I traced the blip with my finger and tried to make sense of the readouts. From what I could tell the small cruise ship was still a way out but it was heading directly for the outpost. Turning the communication console off for a moment, I keyed the commlink.
‘Gris,’ I hissed urgently. ‘Gris.’ No answer. ‘Wake up, Gris. This is an emergency. We have a ship coming in. Wait.’ My eyes danced over the readouts looking for the ship’s ID. ‘Here’s the signature. It’s from AllEarth Corp. Who in hell is that I wonder?’
I reactivated the communications console. The impatient male voice was berating the outpost. ‘…are you reading me? This is Alwin Anton, representative of AllEarth Corp. Please activate landing beacon and ready the landing bay. I repeat…’
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ I began to fidget then pounced on the landing protocol checklist from where it hung on the wall. ‘Gris. What do I do? They’re looking for Dad. It’s official, not some scummy pirate. Gris?’
A crackle of static and I could hear him. ‘Ummph,’ groaned Gris into his commlink. The sound of him waking up flooded through the centre. He must have bedded down in one of the service conduits, probably on the other side of the air filters where it was warm. ‘Gris here. What…is…it Rae?’
‘Gris, thank god,’ I said, grateful to hear his mumbling. I scanned the checklist. ‘Ah, power up landing bay Alpha, quickly. We have official visitors. Then get up here and help me find the protocol sheets for official visitors—or was it for emergencies?—that Dad stashed away’
‘Visitors?’ he said, slowly enunciating the word. I could picture him, standing slack faced, mouth agape as he said it.
‘Yes, god dammit. Real visitors. Maybe they’ll have real food.’ I snapped off the commlink. I hoped that Gris understood what I was saying and would go and ready the landing bay.
I leant over the console and tried to get my bearings. Lights were flashing all over the place and displays were projecting three-dimensional images of the ship approaching in front of my face. I was shaking so hard I nearly tipped out of my chair. I had to get a grip. Clearing my throat, I opened a channel to the incoming ship.
‘Welcome to outpost 311, Mr, er, Anton. Landing bay Alpha is at your disposal. The Lollydrop will find all services available,’ I said in the same vidmovie accent I’d used before, though with a bit more polish. I flicked off the switch and mumbled to myself. ‘Except fuel, supplies, amenities and every other goddamn thing it’ll want.’
Gris entered while I was rummaging through Dad’s records. He’d been an old-fashioned man, keeping paper books as well as storage wafers.
‘Pirate,’ Gris grunted. I knocked my head on the cupboard I was leaning into and groaned.
‘Ow,’ I said as I rubbed my wounded noggin. I pulled myself out and bounded to my feet. ‘Really, Gris, you think he’s a pirate? His ship signature is genuine, matches the auto update we had two years ago. Look,’ I added with a smile. ‘I’ve never heard of a pirate that would call himself ‘Alwin Anton’ have you?’
Gris scratched his groin and thought for a moment. ‘Ah, no,’ he said slowly.
‘It’s not Rusty Claw or Cleaver the Curry Eater this time. This AllEarth Corp guy talks like his ship suit shrank a while back.’
Gris held up a hand and frowned. ‘Captain say you
nice little girl. Speak nice.’
‘Sure. I can speak nice, when you’re my main company and the only other freaks that come here are criminals with weird names. If it wasn’t for you, Gris, I’m sure they would have sold me on the Centauri slave market ages ago.’
I reached up, standing on tippy-toes, and scratched behind his ear. His sagging face split with a grin. I really did love him and it brought tears to my eyes just to think of how much. ‘Now, enough of that. Do you remember where Dad put those notes? The emergency ones?’
Gris’ face went blank, his grey eyes glazed. ‘Notes?’ he replied.
I pouted and stared into space. The sounds of the monitors tracking the Lollydrop’s berthing were like little daggers digging into my flesh. I thought I was going to stress out completely until I suddenly remembered my little-girl stash.
Edging under the main console, I pulled aside the cabinet door. This was where I used to keep my mementos, broken doll bits, a piece of my mother’s uniform and a pile of papers. I drew out the papers and shook dust off them. A vidmovie disc dropped down. I bent down to pick it up and gave the title a quick glance. I scrunched my face up. It read Second Class Humans-Clone Revolt. ‘What’s this some kind of documentary? I turfed it back into the cabinet and rifled through the rest of the stuff. A couple of papers were infantile drawings that I flicked in the direction of the cabinet. Then on the next page were Dad’s hand-written words, ‘Rae, in case of emergency, follow these steps.’
‘Here it is. Gris, you’d better head down to the landing bay and switch on the lights and air. Make sure all of the side passages are sealed so that he can only come here. I’ll join you shortly.’
Gris nodded and headed out the door. I climbed up to the main console and checked the displays. The Lollydrop looked cute and sleek, unlike a hobbled-together pirate ship. It would be another 15 minutes before our visitor docked, enough time to get a few things done. I quickly read through my father’s instructions. I read them again just to make sure, then stuffed them under the seat cushion and sat on them. All the while, I was trying to understand how I was supposed to follow them.
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