Sureblood

by Susan Grant

  Praise for national bestselling author SUSAN GRANT

  THE WARLORD’S DAUGHTER

  “Her latest Tale of the Borderlands…is passion and adventure as only Grant can provide.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  MOONSTRUCK

  “A gripping, sexy new series! I could not put it down!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter

  “This is a can’t-put-down read that draws you in from the first page and doesn’t let go until the tension-filled final chapters. Moonstruck is terrific. I highly recommend it.”

  —Linnea Sinclair, RITA® Award-winning author of Games of Command and The Down Home Zombie Blues

  HOW TO LOSE AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL IN 10 DAYS

  “This is Susan Grant’s best book to date! She took one of the most dehumanized assassins and actually humanized him, and what a great job she did! Whew!”

  —Kathy Boswell, The Best Reviews

  “For readers who want strong heroines and sexy alien hunks, [Susan Grant] is definitely still the go-to author.”

  —The Romance Reader

  MY FAVORITE EARTHLING

  “Susan Grant writes heroes to die for!”

  —USA TODAY bestselling author Susan Kearney

  “I loved this book! I can’t rave about this novel enough. From an arranged marriage to royal espionage to saving Earth, this is not a book to be missed!”

  —Sylvia Day, bestselling author of Pleasures of the Night

  YOUR PLANET OR MINE?

  “One of the best books of the year!”

  —New York Times bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson

  “Wow! This book just has everything and I found myself laughing out loud; [Susan Grant has] a real gift for comedy.”

  —USA TODAY bestselling author Lindsay McKenna

  “The pacing is so effortless and the humor awesome! But most of all? [Susan Grant] has the romance totally nailed. I love their chemistry, and there’s something very sweet about them, even though it’s totally hot, too.”

  —Deidre Knight, bestselling author of Parallel Heat

  THE SCARLET EMPRESS

  “Exhilarating…adrenaline-filled…shocking twists and turns keep readers enthralled.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The Scarlet Empress offers a thrillingly pointed reminder of the cost of freedom and the continuing sacrifices required of those who value liberty.”

  —Booklist (boxed, starred review)

  THE STAR PRINCESS

  “Witty dialog, well-developed characters, and insightful explorations of cultural and class differences and political intricacies abound in this funny, sexy story.”

  —Library Journal

  SUSAN GRANT

  SUREBLOOD

  Dear Reader,

  On February 5, 2008, in Sacramento, California, a three-year-old girl was rushed to the hospital after being found unconscious. Medical personnel could not revive her, and she was pronounced dead. Her mother’s boyfriend was charged with the murder. The tragic story of Valeeya Brazile haunted me, even more once I read that this three-foot, thirty-one-pound dynamo had such a joyous spirit, despite her violent home. So when it came time to name my female pirate captain, I knew there could be only one choice. Through Sureblood’s heroine, Valeeya Blue, a little girl lives on, strong, free and brave.

  Fly high!

  Susan Grant

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Huge thanks go out to Tara Parsons, Tracy Farrell, Ethan Ellenberg, Lisa Richmond, Pat Meyer, Cindy Feuerstein, Carolyn Curtice, Rae Monet, Linnea Sinclair and George Meyer. And I can’t forget Sarah Calder, whose winning bid won her the namesake of a pirate clan, the proceeds of bidding going to charity.

  To moms—

  past, present and future.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE CREW OF THE Varagon pursued their prey across a notorious region known as a graveyard to all but the pirates who lived there. Today there would be no escape for the old freighter trying to sneak away with a cargo full of stolen ore.

  Blue clan’s ore, Valeeya Blue thought and yanked her weapons belt snug around her hips. Trespassers and thieves, they were. This was her people’s home, not theirs. With a swell of possessiveness, she took in the sight of a million suns glowing fiercely behind a swath of bleak and rocky worlds. The Channels. It was a breathtaking sight even now, years after she’d first taken to the stars as a teenage apprentice.

  The mineral riches on the asteroids were what outsiders found so bloody attractive about the place, zelfen ore most of all, coveted by the galaxy’s two warring factions to strengthen battleship hulls and other war machines. For the chance to thieve what they’d normally have to buy at sky-high market prices, these outsiders were willing to risk life and limb…and space pirates like Val.

  “Eyes on me, Blues!” Her captain, Grizz, pushed through the crowd and stopped in the center of the bridge. His body armor and everyone else’s was etched into an intricate, individual pattern. Tattooing the protective plates was considered good luck. The better the art, the better the luck. Whether the myth bore out over time, nobody wanted to say, but no one ever went out undecorated. As a newer raider, Val’s was still a work in progress, only hinting at what she hoped it would someday be: a depiction of the wind—wild and free, like her.

  Grizz thrust his hand at a magnified image of the freighter. “Look at that old crate, sailin’ through our lands as simple as you please!” he bellowed over the sound of outraged yells. “Well, she miscalculated, thinkin’ no one would come after all that zelfen she took without askin’.” His eyes glimmered. “Nezerihm’s gonna pay well when we hand it back to him.”

  “Ore stealers!” Val added her yells to those of the other raiders. With zelfen’s value soaring, the mine owner had started paying out lucrative bounties for the return of plundered ore. In exchange, the pirates left Nezerihm’s assets alone, unlike the old days when his family’s riches were at their mercy. The days when the pirate clans were united and mighty, and the Nezerihms were not. Val couldn’t imagine the clans holding sports tourneys and yearly gatherings, even intermarrying, but once upon a time they did. Clan elders like Grizz and Malta and even her parents recalled those times. These days, pirates didn’t even trust each other let alone outsiders. They squabbled, jostled for power and practically stole food off each other’s plates. Things had gotten so bad that Val wouldn’t be surprised if a rival clan showed up today to crash their raid. Bring it on. The crew of the Varagon was ready. Aye, and she was ready. She gave her armor one last tug.

  The raiders began to stomp their heavy boots, calling for the beginning of the raid. Grizz’s eyes warmed but held on to a deadly glint as he took in the sight of his crew. “Blues! Are you ready to go a-raidin’?”

  Battle cries and boot heels thundered in the confines of the ship. Val’s blood thrummed with anticipation, and also a wee bit of fear. “You need som
e fear,” her clan-leader father had always told her. “Some. Too much paralyzes you, and too little makes you reckless. Arrogant.” Conn no longer went out on raids, having lost a hand years earlier, an injury through another raider’s recklessness. As eager as Val was to leave the Varagon and help collect the booty, she rechecked her gear. Where the breather hose connected to her nitrox cylinder a disc was loose. She tightened it with an O-clamp. She didn’t need something like suffocation distracting her from the pleasure of a good raid.

  “Cap’n!” a deep, husky female voice cried out over the thunder. The noise ebbed a fraction as Grizz stalked to where Val’s skiff commander, Malta, kept watch for other clans’ jackals. The woman perched like an ornery, aging forest raptor in a chair on the bridge, her unflinching gaze on an array of screens. Her competence proved Val’s belief that not all girls were content being dirt-bound back on Artoom tending the home fires. Like Malta, Val wanted to raid for her clan and have the best bloody time of her life doing it, too. “Looks like we got company,” the woman told Grizz. “Calders, maybe. But my money’s on them Surebloods.”

  Matching the woman scowl for scowl, Grizz swore as he drove a hand through his graying dark brown hair. It fell around his shoulders as he leaned over her muscled arm. “That’s their way—the greedy bastards—hanging back like that. Using the asteroids as cover. Looking to steal what ain’t theirs to take.”

  Boos and jeers told what the crew thought of that news. The pirates of the Sureblood clan were their chief rivals.

  Malta enhanced the faint signatures. Then she nodded grimly. “It’s them, all right. Surebloods.”

  “Raid crashers,” the crowd roared.

  “We were here first,” Val muttered. The Surebloods had no right to the freighter. First come, first raid: it was one of the first laws of piracy. Once skiffs attached to a ship, any other comers were supposed to back off. No matter how contentious the relations between the clans, no one broke the rule.

  Except, apparently, the Surebloods.

  “First come, first raid is the way we pirates operate,” Malta was grumbling. “But here they are, elbowing their way in. And they have the gall to accuse us Blues of doing the same to their raids.” Malta shook her head. “You’d think the death of their clan leader would have mellowed them, but the son’s set them on a path his sire never did.”

  Dake Sureblood. Stars above, did the man’s arrogance have no limits? For someone not much older than she was, he’d sure gotten far in stirring things up. Thanks to him, their two clans were ready to come to blows. He was a thug, like the rest of them Surebloods. Built huge like forest giants, they were barely literate and drank boar blood for breakfast! That was what she grew up hearing, transfixed by the stories Nezerihm confided on his visits to Artoom, especially when they plied the mine owner with moonshine.

  Furious, Grizz pushed upright and faced his seething raiders. “They want this prize, but we’re gonna beat them to it. Those good-for-nothin’ Surebloods and their upstart boy captain were too slow this time. We got here first. There won’t be anything left worth picking over by the time they show up. Blues! Let’s go a-raidin’!”

  The cheers were deafening as Grizz called out orders above the bedlam. “Launch the skiffs!” A thwump-thwump sound signaled the first two boarding craft detaching from the Varagon. The skiffs looked tiny as they soared away across the void. When amongst the asteroids, skiffs were virtually undetectable. More would follow, a swarm of them. They’d hide until it was time to attack. Sneaking in from the rear, they would use the vessel’s own openings to gain entry. They’d be inside before anyone raised the alarm.

  Reeve, one of Val’s skiff mates, stepped next to her as they waited their turn to launch. “Hope that old crate don’t fall apart like a birthday pop-box when we bust through.”

  “She just might.” Val grinned, remembering a long-ago birthday celebration: her with a wooden rod gripped in tiny hands and the thrill of sweet treats showering down from a shattered pop-box. “And if she does, we’ll take their booty as easy as candy.”

  The rest of the raiders were just as vocal in their contempt of the broken-down hulk that dared steal their ore, adding their insults in language that got more and more colorful.

  “Shut your traps!” Grizz glared at his rowdy crew. “She ain’t a Coalition warbird, and don’t look like much, but keep your eyes open and watch your backs—and your fellow raiders’. I’m of no mind to bring any of you fools home in bio-sacks.” His scowl deepened. “Not everything that looks easy always is.”

  The warning sent a coil of unease spinning through Val. It wasn’t so much what he saw out there, she realized, but what he felt.

  Never argue with your gut. When skill can’t carry you and your luck runs out, your gut keeps you alive. Grizz had told her that and so had her father. Whether her instincts were as good as theirs remained to be seen. She liked to think she had something of her sire in her besides his grin and golden eyes.

  “Don’t listen to the old man, Val. He’s worried for nothing.”

  Val sighed against clenched teeth at the voice belonging to the one raider she tried to avoid: Ayl, the stupid sot. She heard the hushed clank of his armor and the scuff of his boots as he inserted himself between her and Reeve, who threw the man an annoyed glance before making room. “You’d be smart to mind him, Ayl. The captain’s been busting hatches since before we were born.”

  “Maybe that’s too long.”

  “Think you can do it better?” she challenged.

  “Oh, I know I can.” His sly, dark gaze crept over her armor as if looking for a way in. “The same goes for a lot of other things. You know that, Val.”

  His smile was brilliant, his posture confident with a bit of swagger. The clansman well knew his many charms and used them, notoriously, to his advantage, fooling even her. He’d cheated on her the eve they first slept together, hopping from her bed to Despa’s within hours? The humiliation still stung.

  Why out of all the ships did Ayl have to be reassigned to the Varagon? Before he arrived, she’d easily avoided both him and Despa on Artoom in between raiding sorties and all was well. Here, it was impossible. Yet, she knew the answer: at her father’s behest Grizz trained the best and brightest, the future leaders of the clan. As the firstborn son of a high-ranking, respected clan captain, Ayl was on track to be one of them.

  “Let’s talk,” he said at his smoothest. “You and me. Later.”

  “Like Grizz said, we’ll be celebrating later in the bar. You can talk to me there.”

  “I meant just us.”

  “There’s no ‘us.’ You made sure of that.”

  Sighing, Ayl scrubbed his glove over his face. Then he dropped his hand, looking as if he wanted to touch her arm, then seeing the look in her eyes decided wisely against it. “Despa seduced me. I told you. I didn’t want to sleep with her.”

  Val snorted. “Same old story.”

  Even Reeve smirked at the lame excuse, coughing out a laugh.

  Ayl looked as if he wanted to deck the raider but held back, his words to Val low and firm. “You’re not just any clan female, Val. It’s your duty to make a marriage alliance. Your duty as Conn’s daughter.”

  “You’re right about that. I’m not just any female.” She shoved her dozer into her holster, securing it, tempting though it was to use it on Ayl to shut him up. “I’m a raider. My duty’s here.”

  “So is ours,” Reeve said pointedly. “She’s getting ready to raid, Ayl. Leave her be.”

  “This, especially, isn’t your business,” Ayl hissed with an edge of contempt, making it obvious he hadn’t forgotten that Reeve’s parentage wasn’t as impressive as his own. The clans had a hierarchy on and off ship. Only some like Ayl openly acted on it. A sign of his insecurity, Val thought.

  “Aye, it’s my business,” Reeve argued. “It’s my skiff mate you’re distracting. She’s supposed to watch my ass and me hers. And since when do I take orders from you, Ayl? You aren’t my command
er, and you aren’t her man. I think she’s made that pretty bloody clear. Or do you need me to help explain it?”

  Val tapped Reeve’s armored bicep and shook her head. Her skiff mate went silent, but with bitter reluctance. Like the Blues and the Surebloods, one of these days he and Ayl were going to come to blows. But it wouldn’t be today if Val could help it, and not before a raid. The men needed to burn up their energy on thieving merchants, not each other.

  Ayl turned to her. “I’ll say one more thing, Val. Eventually you’ll have to give up raiding.”

  “Like hells, I will.”

  “Even Conn said so.”

  She froze. “You talked to my father?” A few raiders glanced over at her appalled tone. In the back of her mind was ever the worry her father would disapprove of her being a raider. She wanted to give him no opportunities for second thoughts.

  “I made my intentions known to him, aye.”

  “What—what did he say?”

  Ayl cleared his throat. “That’s between me and him. All I’m telling you is that it’s time—past time, actually—that you thought of your future.” He looked her up and down. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  “And aging every second I waste talking to you about this.”

  “Val! Ayl! Get the bloody hells over here!” Grizz jerked his hand at them, a summons to the bridge, and turned away before Val could read his expression.

  Busted. Swearing under her breath, she dropped her conversation with Ayl like a hot stone. How much had Grizz heard? Or Malta? Would they think her flighty and weak or a flirt and tell her father? A thundering heartbeat of acute embarrassment drummed in her ears. It was all her fault for letting Ayl pull her into a silly argument in the middle of prepping for a raid.