A Bounty of Love (Love Between the Stars Book 1)

by Willow Walker

  “There are pressure plates on each of the steps,” he said.

  Yeva nodded and then realized in the dark he wouldn’t see it. “Yeah, I saw them. The inscription.”

  “I’m pretty sure we have to hit the pressure plates at the same time like we did when we first got in here.”

  “Which means we have to step in time...” Yeva supplied.

  “Like I said I’ve had a lot of time to think about this place but nothing ever worked for me. When I squeeze your hand like this, take a step down.” He lightly squeezed her hand, his grip was firm but not painful. It was secure. She gripped his hand with her own firm grasp. There was no way to go but forwards. She didn’t want to be stuck in here any more than he did and working together as awkward as it was going to be was the only way at this rate.

  They got into position stepping on the pressure plates that had activated the first door of the temple. Tobias squeezed her hand lightly, and they stepped down onto what should have been the next pressure plate.

  Nothing happened.

  “Wait...” Yeva said. “The inscriptions on the steps. Are they some kind of code?”

  “Maybe? The first line was ‘Two each--’”

  As soon as the words came out of his mouth, something rumbled in the maze, and she couldn’t stop herself from gripping Tobias’s hand tightly to keep herself from feeling the fear that wanted to climb up her spine.

  “You okay?” He asked again, but again she avoided the question with one of her own.

  “Do you think there’s some kind of voice activated tech involved?”

  “Possibly. I’ve got the whole thing memorized at this point. When I squeeze again, step down.”

  “Okay.”

  He squeezed, and they stepped down. “Though apart,” he said to the darkness. Nothing happened.

  “Two each, though apart...” Yeva said. The pressure plates descended, and there was another rumble below them.

  “Huh.”

  Yeva sighed. “It’s not just stepping on the plates simultaneously. This thing is built to make us do things increasingly in tandem.”

  “I’m pleasantly surprised you figured that out so quickly.”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “I don’t really want to say,” she said honestly. The Veritas making her spit out the truth.

  “Is… is it bad?”

  “No, it’s just odd.” Yeva laughed.

  He was silent for a few minutes. If their hands weren’t still clasped, she would have thought he fell off the staircase. She heard the noise of stuttering and stalled speech, and she realized he was trying to not say something.

  “What is it?” She asked.

  “Ah, screw this damned planet,” he said, and then he wiggled his fingers in her hand. “Ready to keep going?”

  He was avoiding her question. What had he been trying to say? Or not say? She couldn’t really ask him because she had been avoiding his questions too.

  “Yeah, we can keep going,” she said finally.

  He squeezed her hand, and they stepped down. Nearly in tandem they said, “Two each, though apart, together paired.”

  The plates fell in time, and somewhere in the maze something rumbled.

  She hated to admit it to herself, but she hated the dark. She hated the rumbling. It reminded her of the few months she had spent in the mines as part of her punishment for failing the mob boss she used to work for. If it hadn’t been for Beks, Yeva would still be in the mines, where darkness ruled and the ground rumbled from the concussion mines blasting at the precious minerals. She couldn’t let her fear rule her. She has promised herself, many years ago, that no matter what it took, she wouldn't let anything stop her from getting what she wanted. And fear be damned, it wasn’t going to stop her.

  They continued down the stairs until they reached the bottom. And on the last step, when they said aloud the last part of the inscription “where lies are broken”, instead of a rumble, the vines above them began to glow again. Yeva squinted up at the vines, and then when she realized that Tobias was staring at her, she released his hand and looked away.

  “Shall we?” he said, and before she could stop him, he entered the maze, and she had to follow.

  4

  There was something odd about Tobias, and Yeva couldn’t put her finger on it. He’d said he had been here a whole month, meaning as soon as he had put in the claim on the bounty he had been trapped on this planet. A whole month, alone, on a planet that forced you to speak only the truth. Even now, barely a day into her stay here, she could feel the little corners of her mind opening where she had hidden truths from herself. Her fear of the dark had been something she’d been able to ignore for years, but here she had to face it, here she was reliving the memories of a place that had been one of the most traumatic of her life. What had Tobias gone through in a whole month?

  They stepped through the first hall of the maze, where one way led to the left and the other to the right. Yeva hadn’t been able to tell from the platform above where each of them led, the vines made the paths nearly impossible to pick one over another.

  “Which way?” Tobias asked.

  “You don’t know?” Yeva asked.

  “As far as I got before was the door up there.” Tobias jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Everything else I know about this place is that there’s a source of energy at the center of the maze, and from what I can tell of the maze paths, they change every day.”

  “They change?”

  “I came in here everyday for nearly two weeks, and everytime the paths were different. I tried to map them out for a minute, but the configurations are too numerous for the amount of time I’ve had.”

  “Still, it’s impressive that you tried.”

  “You think so?” He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “Don’t let it get to your head, I just think it shows dedication to the craft.”

  “Not many people think bounty hunting is a craft.”

  “Isn’t it though? I mean it involves so many disciplines. Just in this place alone you’ve got trap finding, prospecting, puzzles, mazes, who knows what else we’ll find here. Everything we find could lead to a greater understanding of the universe around us. What if this Veritas is some kind of naturally occurring compound, or if not, then artificial. If it’s artificial then who made it, why this place?”

  “Well, when you put it that way... ” He was staring at her again, but this time there was a smile on his face. “Let’s try this way.”

  Tobias turned on his heel and started down the left hand path. Yeva only hesitated for a minute before following after him.

  “When I was a kid, I dreamed every day that I would be a grand adventurer. One of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy.”

  “Isn’t that every kid’s dream?” Yeva asked. She wasn’t trying to be snarky about it, but it came out that way.

  Tobias frowned but shrugged then nodded. “I suppose. I think I knew that too, because all the kids in the o--” he stuttered over a word. “the town I grew up in had the same dream.” He flinched as if something was hurting him. “But you know what, I was one of the few kids to get out of that place. I actually did it. I didn’t just say ‘I want to be a bounty hunter’ I found out what I needed to do and did it. Every night I studied the guild guides. I trained. I learned how to at least read the common languages.”

  Yeva watched him speak, and, for the first time really, noticed how attractive he was. It wasn’t that she hadn’t found him attractive before, it’s just up till now, she hadn’t really cared. He had just been another person between her and her goals. But for now they were in this together, and now she began to see him as something else. Objectively she had acknowledged that he was an attractive man, but now she was seeing past the vid tales of a rude, cold man in it for the glory, and saw the man beyond all that. There was always a measure of truth in what tales crawled through the grapevine, but she wasn’t see
ing any of the coldness here that she thought she would see. Yeva was good at getting a sense of people. It’s how she survived as long as she did as a solo bounty hunter. She had learned who to trust and who to keep at arm's length. In the world of bounty hunting trust wasn’t an easy thing to come by. But already they had walked hand-in-hand down a staircase in the middle of the dark, and now they were walking down the halls of a mysterious maze. She may fear the dark, but she had no fear of this man, especially knowing the constraints of the Veritas around them. He had promised that he would not betray her, and she, in turn, had agreed the same.

  Of the few partnerships and relationships she’d had over the years, trust was the hardest thing to guarantee especially after being hurt time and again, and right now, she honestly felt like she could trust Tobias Hawk.

  Suddenly, he stopped, and Yeva nearly ran right into him. They were at a dead end.

  “Crap, I had a good feeling about that one.”

  He was about to turn and head back, but Yeva grabbed his arm and pointed to the dead end wall. There were two tiles set into the wall hidden between a shift of leafy vines.

  Yeva pushed the leaves aside, and underneath the words written in Uuet said “Speak your truth”

  “Truth, huh?” Tobias asked.

  The maze rumbled and behind them a slit opened in the floor, and a wall slammed up between them and the rest of the maze, trapping them in a little space next to the dead end.

  They both looked at the sudden wall and back at each other. Yeva grimaced. “This just gets better all the time.”

  “Ah, adventure.”

  Yeva leaned against the wall and sighed. She was tired. They’d been down here for nearly two hours, and she just wanted to sit and rest. They had ten more hours to get out and for her to shut off the distress beacon. She didn’t want to bring Beks all the way out here, but if they didn’t get out of here she wasn’t sure the two of them were going to survive.

  Tobias sat down next to her and patted her arm companionably.

  “You’re right. Let’s rest.”

  The temple was clearly an inanimate object, but if there was tech involved, it might have smarter traps and triggers than normal ancient temples. It seemed to know exactly where it needed them to be for it to trigger the next phase of whatever journey it was taking them on. Yeva tilted her head back and stared up at the glowing green plants. They appeared to glitter in the dark, like they were the light of stars caught in the drift of an atmosphere.

  “That’s a nice way to think about it,” Tobias said. Yeva started and eyed him. Had she spoken aloud?

  He smiled at her, and there was a deep kindness in his brown eyes. She felt her heart thump uncomfortably and quickly looked away. She was not having a crush. She was NOT having a crush.

  “What will you do with all that money?” Tobias asked, watching her carefully.

  Yeva stared at him and considered her words carefully. This planet may encourage and even force the truth from people but she didn’t have to compromise truth for a little misdirection.

  “I have a--” the Veritas was trying to make her say ‘debt to pay off’ but instead she was able to change it to: “a thing I need to buy.”

  His eyes narrowed at her, but then he shrugged. “Fine, play circles around the truth. I was just trying to make conversation.”

  “I don’t want to make conversation, Mr. Hawk.”

  “Call me Tobias, please. If we’re going to get stuck here, we might as well get to know each other.”

  “Fine, what are you doing with the money?”

  “I have a thing I need to buy.” Tobias grinned impishly at her.

  “Alright, alright. I get it.” Yeva said and threw a loose bit of broken vine at him. It smacked him on the chest, and he pinched it between his fingers and wiggled it at her.

  She was content to just sit and think about the problem in front of them. It said speak your truth. But what truth did it want? Truth could mean many things to many people. And to this semi-intelligent temple it could mean something entirely different.

  “I was raised in an orphanage.” Tobias said suddenly. Yeva was caught off-guard and looked at him. His eyes were distant, and he was staring at the wall like it revealed his entire story to him. “My parents left me there when I was six years old. They told me that they would return some day. But they never did. There were tons of places my parents could have left me, but they left me on some backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. It was a poor orphanage, and the only reason the person running it kept us around was because it paid his bills and let him live a life of extravagance. I was told that if I was good, I would get a family. And every time one of us was passed up for a younger, or better cared for, child somewhere else, he just told us it was because we were terrible children.”

  “Finally I was adopted, but it was just the same thing over again. I was just a means to an end. The source of a government paycheque.”

  “I was abandoned by everyone I ever loved or tried to love, and every time it happened, it hurt. And every time it passed, I felt my heart harden. What you probably heard about in the vids isn’t all false. I was mean, I was cold, I was intentionally alone, because if I didn’t let anyone in, no one could hurt me. I had one mission, one thing that drove me. My love of the hunt. At first I went into it to prove something, I went in hoping to prove to the galaxy that I wasn’t some useless, cast-off child. And then later, I fell in love with it. The hunt, the chase, the mystery. It was something beyond my past that no one could touch. There was a beauty and a power to being able to roam the galaxy chasing dreams. And finally one day, I decided that I didn’t have to prove myself to anyone, except for the children out there like me. I want to use the money I gain to buy the adoptions of the kids at my old orphanage and to give them a good home where they won’t be seen as worthless.”

  Yeva was stunned.

  Yeva didn’t have a single moment to digest what he said before the floor opened up underneath them, and they fell down a metal vacuum tube. The air pushed and pulled them until they were a tangle of body parts, and unceremoniously the temple spat them out just beyond the treeline.

  Yeva pulled herself free and shook the confusion away. “What the hell just happened?”

  The ground beneath them shook and a deep rumble emanated from the temple.

  “Ugh… I think it’s... ” Tobias looked at his armband. “Yeah, it’s resetting. I didn’t realize it would reset while we were in there, but I guess that’s a precaution against squishing anyone.” Tobias waved a hand at the metal tube that sank into a mess of vines until it disappeared.

  “It’s getting late, maybe we should start again in the morning when we have more time?”

  Tobias stood up without looking at Yeva and headed back towards his ship. Yeva sat on the ground and watched him disappear into the trees. He had just spilled his guts, and she was at a loss for words. She hoped he didn’t think she would laugh at him for that revelation. Yeva would be the first to admit she had a bleeding heart, and since there was no possible way that he had lied to her on this planet, he had just stuck his neck out there so they had a chance at getting the bounty.

  She picked herself up and turned off the timer for the distress beacon.

  5

  Yeva had barely gotten into her ship, kicked off her boots, and slipped into her more comfortable--but functional--sleeping outfit when a loud knock on the bulkhead nearly startled her out of her skin. Yeva peered through the rearview port and saw Tobias standing forlornly in a wash of light from one of her parking floodlights.

  Yeva opened the gangplank and peered down at the man. “Tobias? What’s the matter?”

  His face was a mask of exhaustion. He sighed heavily. “The vines decided to drag my ship into a dirt pit. It’s half encased in the ground.”

  “What?”

  “I’m too tired to deal with it, can I sleep on your floor or something? Just for tonight.”

  “Uh...” Yeva eyed him suspi
ciously, but the defeated tilt to his shoulders was pitiable. “Fine, come in.” Yeva moved back into the ship and closed the gangplank behind him. She sat on the edge of the booth chair when he was inside. Deva-class ships were solo runners. They were meant for one or two people to inhabit. Beyond the cockpit there was a small common area with a table, and a booth for sitting, a kitchenette, a small storage area, and the rest of it was the engine and an escape pod. The common area converted over to a double bed, and the kitchen area folded into the wall to allow for more walking room. She hadn’t yet gotten around to converting the table and booth into a bed, so Tobias sat at the other end of the booth and rested his head in his hands.

  “Is it unsalvageable?” Yeva asked after a minute.

  “Probably.” Tobias’s voice was muffled into his hands.

  “What changed?” Yeva asked before realizing that she already knew what his response would be.

  “You.” he looked up and saw her face and shook his head. “I don’t mean that you caused this, or to put the blame on you. This place is odd, it reacts to changes, to people, its own environment. Ever since I landed on this planet, it’s like it’s been waiting for something… or someone. And as soon as you got here. Things started changing. It’s like you said in the temple. It requires two people to maneuver through the place.”

  Yeva got up and opened one of the cabinets of the kitchenette. “What strange species or culture created a place like this?” She pulled out two mugs, some malva mix and started some hot water boiling in her kettle.

  “I’m not sure, but they certainly are creative. Thank you.” Tobias accepted the mug of hot malva. He finally started looking around the interior and noticed the poster next to the cockpit entrance. “You like Galaxy of Battles?”

  Yeva glanced back at the poster and felt her face go hot. “It has its charm.”

  “I’m not going to lie, well, I can’t lie, ha. I have all the vids at home.” Tobias tried to hide a sheepish grin behind his mug.

  “Do you? Do you have the unreleased episode?” Yeva’s excitement took over any attempt to act cool about the show.