by Carysa Locke
Scavenger Princess
Carysa Locke
Copyright © 2019 by Carysa Locke
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For my readers. You are the reason this series exists.
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Sneak Peek of Pirate Nemesis
Chapter 1
About the Author
Also by Carysa Locke
Foreword
An inner glimpse of the author mind at work: this was a story I had no intention of writing. I’ve been hard at work on Pirate Throne, as well as a couple of other works in progress unrelated to space pirates, when an opportunity came up to write a short story for a project. Ultimately, I didn’t end up joining the project, but this is what evolved from me dreaming up a space pirates short story for it.
Andromeda Jones and the other characters in this piece — which was supposed to be a short story and turned into a novella — are no one you’ve met before. But the universe for my space pirates is vast, and filled with basically endless characters I could tell stories about. That’s one of the reasons for Swag Stories to exist. It gives me the flexibility to explore ideas like this. And who knows? Maybe someday one of them will result in a whole new series.
I have no idea where Annie came from or how I ended up writing a story about a scavenger who makes her living by sorting scrap, but there you go. Sometimes the writer brain is a strange and mysterious place.
So, while I had no intention of ever writing this story, it turns out I really enjoyed Annie as an MC. She couldn’t be more different from Mercy — well, they both have trust issues, but other than that I find them very opposite personalities. And then my cover artist, Rebecca Frank, hit it out of the park with this amazing cover. It makes me wish I was writing more for Annie and her crew. At the moment, this is a standalone tale. You can enjoy it without reading a single other space pirates book. Or, you can enjoy it as extra flavoring to the overall universe. The choice is yours. I hope you all love reading it as much as I did writing it.
Chapter 1
Annie’s foot slipped as she stepped over a large piece of jagged scrap metal, the stable looking crate she’d been aiming for shifting as her weight came down on it. She fell hard, catching hold of the metal she’d been trying to climb over, the rough edge biting the palms of her hands and making her breath hiss between her teeth. Her knees hit metal, plasteel, or nanograph.
It didn’t matter which. All three littered the pile she was on and all that mattered was it bruised badly enough to bring tears to her eyes.
“Scrap!” she muttered. Annie didn’t generally use profanity, but that was one word that covered every situation, as far as she was concerned.
She held on grimly. A few scrapes and cuts were better than taking a tumble down the towering mountain of junk beneath her. She’d climbed a fair distance already, and by now she was at least fifty meters up.
If she fell from this height, it wouldn’t just mean death, she’d shatter bones and lose skin on the way down. It would be ugly, and painful.
What were you thinking, she asked herself, climbing one of the scrap summits? That’s what all of the junkers called them. Omaris was home to the Laripim Shipyards. The waste they produced piled up in mountains of scrap that junkers routinely — and illegally — scoured for items of value they could salvage or trade.
Annie made her living, such as it was, finding valuable bits in all of this waste before the Recyclers came through and melted it down.
Of course, most junkers confined themselves to searching around the base of the summits. They ventured up the heaps a few meters, but after that the climb became too hazardous. Junk moved, setting off lethal avalanches that weighed several tons.
And then there were the folyark snakes. Native to Omaris, they used to feed on the rich ore deposits the planet had once held. But Laripim had mined all of those years ago, leaving only a few small, difficult to reach deposits left. The folyark population had dwindled, but there were still plenty of the creatures making their homes in the junkyards that dotted the planet surface.
The snakes’ preferred meal was metal ore, but they were known to have a vicious bite and had injured and killed many humans since Omaris was colonized. On solid land, a person could look for the telltale glint of their bronze, sinuous bodies in the sun and avoid them. Climbing the junk made everything more difficult.
Only the desperate dared ascend the scrap summits.
Annie was desperate.
Sweat dripped down her face as she pulled herself up, ignoring the pain in her hands and the echoing sting in her knees where she’d fallen. The nights were almost as warm as the days this time of year, and despite being early morning, it was uncomfortably hot.
Don’t look down, she told herself. She planted her feet and checked that it was stable, shifting her weight back and forth and making sure none of the junk she was standing on would move. It didn’t, and she let go of the metal sheet she’d been gripping.
Pain stung her hands, bringing fresh tears to her eyes as the cuts were exposed to the air. She turned her hands over so she could inspect the damage. Blood smeared her palms and fingers, but it wasn’t deep. More concerning was the dirt smeared into the cuts. She winced. Who knew how long this stuff had been sitting out here in the elements, or what treatments it had been exposed to before being scrapped?
Well, no help for it. She wasn’t turning back now.
She’d seen something farther up the slope, and if she was right, it would bring a bigger payday than anything she’d salvaged before. Maybe enough to finally open up her own shop and get out from under Marlon’s thumb. She could stick to what she did best, mechanics and ship repairs, and never surf the junk heaps again.
Not that she wasn’t good at junking. She seemed to have a sixth sense for where to find the best scrap, and she had an uncanny knack for unearthing choice pieces that fetched good coin. She’d only seen a glint at the top of this heap this morning, but that tiny glimpse had filled her with such a strong feeling that here she was, risking life and limb to reach the summit.
With renewed determination, she started her climb once more. She was tantalizingly close now. What had once been just a hint of blue-green shining in her pocket scope had become a recognizable shape lying amidst a tangle of tubing just a few meters higher. Straight, hexagonal sides. A tapered, faceted top. Translucent, deep teal coloring that shimmered in the sunlight with a beauty that took her breath away.
There was no doubt. It was a drive crystal, patented by Laripim in hopes of upending the ship building industry and replacing ship fuel as a power source. Hard to believe the stunning jewel-like material was manmade, but everything she’d heard said it was the product of Laripim R&D, the making of it a closely guarded secret. But it conducted and stored energy unlike any substance known in the galaxy. Rumor said it cost a fortune to develop, and only a handful of ships had even been fitted with it. The crystal was just out of the market testing phase. A few fancy commercials had started going out across the holo-vid networks, and preorders were starting to roll in. There was a waiting list.
Even a damaged piece would sell for a high price, since every rival shipyard in the galaxy would pay to get their hands on it.
; She couldn’t imagine how a chunk of the stuff had come to be thrown out like trash, but if she could retrieve it, that crystal could buy her, well, anything she wanted. She just had to keep Laripim from finding out she had it, keep Marlon from getting his hands on it, and get it to the markets without getting robbed.
No problem.
She blinked sweat from her eyes as she continued to climb. Anxiety and fatigue weighed her down. Her hand trembled as she found another handhold and took another careful step.
If only she’d gotten some sleep last night, but the dreams had plagued her again. They weren’t bad dreams, really. In fact, sometimes she never wanted to wake up. But she always woke tired after a night dreaming of them.
Her princes. That’s what she called them. Because there were three of them, each of them handsome and impressive, just like a prince out of a story.
Arcus, tall and lean, with long hair so white it gleamed like silver. He was a pilot. He had a weakness for sweets, and he was always making jokes. His blue eyes danced with laughter, and she yearned to see him smile at her.
Payne, a complete contrast to Arcus. He kept his black hair short. He was moody and quiet. His frame was bigger, with more dense muscle, and he was always in armored clothing and carrying half a dozen weapons. He looked like the mercs she’d seen fly into the spaceport, except he was gorgeous. He had the kind of face that was so beautiful it didn’t seem real. His dark eyes were framed by thick lashes, and there was something about them that set her stomach fluttering.
The last was Dante. She wasn’t exactly sure what he did aboard their crew — because they all served on the same ship in her dreams — but in his own way he felt just as dangerous as Payne. He was always dressed in something beautiful that looked tailored to fit him. Like the others, he kept himself physically fit, and his dark hair was cut in a way that looked stylish and flattered his lean face. Of the three, he looked the part of a prince the most.
She’d had dreams about them for at least three years. It was embarrassing, really. Who had the same dreams over and over? No one else she knew. She’d mentioned it once, to Salla and Jens when the three of them were taking apart a landslip engine.
Not specifically, but casual, like “Do you ever dream the same things?”
Jens had laughed, his huge belly shaking. “‘Course,” he’d said. “Don’t we all? Dream of fallin’ into a pile of hard coin and gettin’ off this rock.”
“No, not like that. I mean real dreams, when you sleep. About places you’ve never been and people you’ve never met. But they seem real, and you dream them the same every time.”
Salla had given her a worried look, her eyes enormous behind the scanner goggles she was wearing. “You havin’ nightmares, Annie?”
Both of them knew Annie had escaped something bad in her past. Around here, no one asked too many questions. No one wanted to delve into dangerous secrets, or pry into painful memories. Everyone had their own demons.
“No.”
Salla stood up, hands on her hips. She lifted the goggles from her eyes until they pushed back the wild gray curls on her head. “Only time dreams are the same is when they’re not dreams at all, but memories. Usually of somethin’ bad.”
Annie had shrugged it off. “It’s just something I read,” she said.
Jens made a derisive noise. “That’s why them stories ain’t worth your time. Nothin’ but nonsense in ‘em.” Jens was suspicious of anything you couldn’t learn with your hands, and he always laughed when Annie spent time reading.
Well, she dreamed the same things over and over. And in her dreams, she was with her three princes, protected and loved, and the four of them flew all over the galaxy together.
It was nice, dreaming about them. But frustrating, too. Because none of them really existed, she’d probably never leave Omaris, and just having one man in her life who cared for her was unlikely to happen, much less three.
It was also hard how tired she was the next day. Not just a little tired, either, but exhausted. As though she’d stayed up all night after a long day of hard work. It made things like climbing a scrap summit a lot harder than it needed to be.
Well, maybe not harder. Just…more dangerous.
Finally, Annie was within arm’s reach of the crystal. She anchored herself by grasping hold of a huge chunk of plasteel jutting out of the pile next to her, and then reached up a hand to try untangling the mess of tubing wrapped around her prize.
She wrapped her hand around a length of it and pulled, but it was stuck fast. Of course.
She took a careful look around, but didn’t see an easy way to free it. The crystal itself was wrapped so tightly in the stuff she was amazed she’d even seen it from all the way down at the base of the junk pile. No way she was getting it out without work, and it was going to be hard to get the leverage she needed with one hand.
She took a minute, thinking.
Up here, the ever-present miasma of the lower city faded. No choking smells of shula weed, smoking furnaces, the burnt metal of the shipyards, and unwashed bodies. The air was almost clear. She could even smell the salt of the ocean. She took a deep breath, letting the wind cool the sweat on her skin, enjoying the way it ruffled her hair, trying to tug it free of the braid she’d pinned to her head this morning.
She realized she could even see the ocean from up here! In the distance, she caught the glitter of the rising sun reflecting off a huge expanse of blue. She’d come out early this morning, hoping to beat the other junkers to anything valuable. Now her early morning paid off as she watched the sky bleed orange to streaks of violet over the endless length of the sea. It was beautiful, and she let herself enjoy the moment, clearing her head.
But she couldn’t take more time than that. She was tempting fate just by being up here. The sooner she extracted her crystal and climbed down, the better. It wouldn’t be long before these stacks were full of junkers.
Focusing back on the tubing, she sighed. If she couldn’t untangle it, maybe she could cut enough of it away. Reaching down to her boot, she pulled out the knife she kept in a special sheath there. It was a daitonic blade, honed from a single piece of the volcanic substance found only here on Omaris, sharper than any other known material and as strong as titanium. The blade would never need sharpening, and would outlast her lifetime.
It gleamed like glass in the sunlight, a rainbow of color swirling in its depths. She was still indebted to Marlon for it, but it was an indispensable tool in her profession. She’d cut through nanograph with it, and every other ship material she’d come across.
Carefully, she reached out and cut at the tubing, sawing at it as best she could from her position. It didn’t take long. The first length of tubing parted, and she started on the next. Looking it over critically, she estimated she’d need to cut through at least eight or nine pieces before she’d be able to dislodge the crystal, and she’d have to be careful the closer she got.
She didn’t know if her knife could damage the crystal, but odds were good.
She continued cutting, keeping her movements slow, even as the arm anchoring her tired. She couldn’t afford a mistake after coming this far. She cut five, six, seven lengths of tubing, each one parting and revealing more of the translucent blue-green crystal.
It was her own fault. She was so focused on cutting the next piece of tubing, and the next, on watching where the blade of her knife cut, that she missed the telltale scrape of scales on metal, the light warning hiss.
When the snake struck, it went for her forearm. She jerked back in the seconds before it moved, not even sure why she did it until she saw the shimmer of bronze, the dart of the snake’s head as it missed, coiled, and struck again.
This time, it went for her leg and there was nowhere to go. If she jerked aside, she’d tumble down the scrap summit for sure. Rows of razor sharp teeth tore through the heavy canvas of her work trousers like they were paper, sinking into the meat of her calf. Her breath left her lungs as pain turned her visio
n white.
Blindly, she stabbed down with her knife. She felt it cut through something, but the blade was so sharp she didn’t know if she’d hit the snake or scrap. She cut again, and again, each time the blade sinking into something. Finally, the snake’s mouth released her leg. She screamed as the teeth tore free of her flesh. Panting, she waited, her heartbeat hard in her ears, too loud to hear anything else. She strained, listening for hissing, or the sound of scales scraping across metal.
Her vision finally cleared and she could see again. The snake lay limp over the scrap. Blood splattered everywhere. Hers, the snake’s. The creature didn’t stir, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more of them.
Frantically, she scanned the scrap all around her. Nothing moved. Her crystal lay gleaming amongst the tubing she’d cut. Waiting for her.
Sobbing, she cleaned the knife with mechanical, automatic motions. She was shaking so badly it took her three tries to sheath the knife back in her boot. It was only by the will of the Mother that she didn’t cut herself in the process.
She tried to look at her leg, but what she saw made her lightheaded. Better to get down off this mountain first. She ripped a length of material from her ruined trousers and wrapped it around the wound as best she could. It wasn’t much, one handed and balancing on this mountain of junk, but it would have to work for now.
She had to force herself to move. Releasing the death grip she still had on the plasteel, she crawled forward, sure at any moment another of the creatures would strike at her.
Foolish, she told herself. Folyark snakes didn’t actually like the taste of humans. They didn’t eat meat, they ate metal. When they attacked, it was because they were startled, or defending their territory. She could feel blood flowing down her leg, into her boot despite her makeshift bandage. Oh, it was bad. Already her leg felt weak, pain screaming through her with every movement.