Page 8 of Alien Peacock

The distance to the green ship increases quickly. I get the computer to set up the hyperspace journey to the Maranar system. “Never said you were. All right, we’re out of their range. For their sake I hope they won’t follow us. Then we might have to kill them.”

“There’s nothing to gain,” Cerak points out. “It would take them out of their way for no particular profit.”

The computer beeps and shows the Ready icon. I push the button, and the ship jumps to hyperspace.

“I hope they think as rationally as you do. Anyway, we’re closing in on the Archmagus. I should think of something to say when we find him.”

“You don’t think simply being your charming self would do it?”

“Your sarcasm will be the end of you, Cerak. Never mind. I’ll think of something myself.”

Outside, hyperspace is making its usual confusing patterns of light and darkness, making the brain doubt itself.

I lean back in the seat as well as I can, making it creak dangerously.

That female… there was something about her. A defiance that wasn’t just for show. It went deeper than that. She was scared, but not petrified even when confronted by big Krunku. There was the spark of a warrior in her.

Why was she there in the first place? On a space station that’s famous for being a nest of lowlifes and thugs? She had tried to hide her face, but the glimpses I got were… agreeable. She was out of place, far too delicate and somehow pure for that place.

“Perhaps that’s how the Earthlings do it,” I mutter to myself. “They make you think they’re harmless, and then they betray you.”

Cerak turns his top towards me. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Keep flying.”

My crotch swells at the memory of the shapes under her flowing garments. I could see no Mark on her, or a sign of one— damnedvoid, am I still thinking about her?

I grunt in annoyance and quickly get to my feet. “I suppose we have to clean up whatever’s tumbling around back in the lounge.”

“‘We’ meaning me, perhaps?” Cerak sighs, a strange thing for a trash can to do. “Or are you using the royal ‘we’?”

I stretch, making joints crack. “Do I usually treat you like a servant, Cerak, ordering you around?”

“You really don’t. I sometimes wonder about it. I mean, you must have grown up in some really fancy circumstances. And yet you never behave like the spoiled brat you almost certainly must be.”

“Well, you never behave like the trash canyouclaim to be.” I make my way back to the lounge. The light comes on when I enter. It’s a small, comfortable space with a low couch and a table. In a warship like this, everything is fit for purpose, and nothing is superfluous.

And I spot nothing that’s loose. But the scent of that female keeps teasing my nose, stronger now.

“Have to check the cargo hold,” I mutter to myself. But there shouldn’t be much in there.

I step over to the gravity discontinuity at the back of the lounge and walk up the wall, opening the hatch in the ceiling as if it were a door. The cargo hold is dark, but the smell of the female is even stronger here— “Void!”

Something moves in the darkness, and I barely have time for an intense curse before I’m being slapped around the ears and something hard is poking into my stomach.

“This gun is loaded,” a thin voice says.

3

- Maeve-

I make my voice sound growly, and the alien freezes for a short moment. Then he simply grabs the gun and me and drags me out of the cargo hold. I stick to the wall by some trick of the artificial gravity. The alien towers above me, and the blood freezes in my veins when I see that it’s Arelion.

His yellow eyes shoot lightning as he grabs me by the robe and tosses me out of the small field of perpendicular gravity. He gives me enough sideways momentum to make me land on the couch with a muffled “oof”, raising a cloud of stale dust. As I scramble to get to my feet, he walks down the wall, comes over, and grabs me again, pulling my face up to his as my feet dangle in the air.

“I see now that the rumors are true,” he growls with a lethal coldness in his deep voice. “Earthlings will take advantage of anyone.”

I spot my fighting stick, stuck to the wall high up where I can’t reach. “I don’t know what you mean.”

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