Page 1 of The Alien's Stolen Rebel

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RACHEL

“Lord Frax has selected you for the honor of being his bride.” We’ve all heard horror stories about bad proposals, watched the holovids, had a guilty little laugh at the poor girls ambushed by some terrible surprise with a ring. It never occurred to me that mine would be worse than anything I’d seen online.

Half an hour earlier, I thought I was safe in my cabin aboard theClarke’s Dream,headed home to Mars after a stint as a terraformer on Praja. In that half hour, a Chrichri hive-ship attacked theDream, captured it, and demanded me by name. To my horror and disappointment, the crew handed me over without a fight. I couldn’t blame them for giving me up, but it would have been nice to have seen a bit of resistance.

So now I stood, flanked by two of the insectoid aliens aboard their hive and facing the Akedian woman who’d announced my ‘engagement.’ Tall, slender, andsleek, she wore a space suit with the helmet off. Her short, fashionable, precisely styled haircut made her look like a professional, an accountant or something, rather than a pirate. Someone, I hoped, who would listen to reason.

“This is a mistake, okay? It’s not me your Lord Frax wants, it can’t be. I’ve never even heard of him,” I said, trying to sound calm. Shouting wouldn’t do me any good, and there was no way I’d fight my way out of this. The Chrichri warriors flanking me could tear me limb from limb, and even if I somehow got past them, where would I go? The Chrichri undocked from theDreamas soon as they dragged me aboard their hive.

The Akedian didn’t reply. Instead, she grabbed me by the jaw to hold my head steady and pointed a scanner at my eyes. It beeped, and she nodded briskly.

“No, you’re precisely who we’re looking for. Rachel Adelaide Day, daughter of Heston Day. In good health, unhurt, of breeding age. Capital! I’m Ellara Vri, Lord Frax’s wedding planner. It’s a pleasure to meet and work with you.”

And kidnapper, I added silently. Now that’s full-service wedding planning. Ellara would, I decided, have fitted in with some of the Earth girls I’d met on Praja. The same superior look, the same attitude, the same smugness. Though in fairness to the Earthers, at least they hadn’t literally treated me like cattle.

“My father can pay whatever you need?—”

She cut me off with a smirk. “No, he can’t. Put thatout of your pretty head—you won’t talk or buy your way out of this.”

We’ll see about that.

Over the next days,I learned that Lord Frax wasn’t some dashing alien rogue or a heroic, brooding badass. That had been my last, desperate hope, dispelled the moment I arrived at his space station fortress and saw the bodies he’d left floating in the void to greet new arrivals. Placed where they’d be visible from any incoming ships, they were a warning and a statement.

Hundreds of petty warlords sprang up in the chaotic aftermath of the Uplink War, grabbing what territory they could by force and fear. Frax, I realized, was one of them, as brutal as the rest. Maybe worse.

Caliban Station was an old Vehn outpost, designed as a military base on the edge of their empire and abandoned when the empire fell. The decades since had not been kind to it, but it still had a shadow of the majesty of old. Great intersecting rings looped around a central hub, more than half of them wrecked by accident or weapons fire, and no one had bothered to even try addressing the damage. There were holes large enough for spacecraft to fly through, but the station still functioned.

As if to give scale to the damage, enormous shipsdocked at every working port on Caliban. Some of them were warships, others converted civilian vessels with guns bolted on. They ran the range from sleek, well cared for military ships to barely airtight hunks of junk, but there were a lot of them. Mars’s navy couldn’t compete, and I wasn’t sure Earth’s would be up to the challenge, either. Anyone who could pull this much firepower into one place was more than a minor warlord.

Ellara spent the last part of our journey schooling me on etiquette and getting me into a wedding dress, which I had to admit was gorgeous. She was good at that part of her job, apparently.

When the hive-ship docked at Caliban, I expected to be greeted by the man who’d had me kidnapped, but no. Ellara led me out in my wedding dress, and straight to a balcony from which I could see the alien crowd gathered below.

“Wave to your guests,” Ellara told me. “The formal ceremony will be tomorrow, but this is a chance for them to see the lucky bride.”

“Tomorrow? So soon?”

“We cut it fine, I know, but luckily I pulled it all together,” Ellara said, as though I should be relieved by that rather than horrified. Before I could respond, something caught her eye, and she abandoned me, shouting something about a floral display.

Shaken, I looked down at the guests. Some I recognized from the news, warlords and criminals nasty enough for news of their exploits to go galaxy-wide.The ones I didn’t know fitted in with them perfectly, and I presumed they were all much the same. They looked up at me, pinned in a spotlight, but no one acknowledged me. Frax’s court viewed me as an object he’d had won, not a person to interact with.

He hadn’t even greeted me yet, but Ellara had made sure I wore the wedding dress she’d had ready for me. All dressed up, without even an acknowledgement of my existence from the alien who’d had me kidnapped. My blood boiled, and I clutched the railing tight as I fought down my emotions. Anger was more dangerous than fear.

Guests kept arriving, and I did my best to pay attention to their faces and, where I could catch them, names. It probably wouldn’t do the slightest bit of good, but at least it was something to keep my brain engaged. The guest list was like a who’s-who of the sector’s criminal underworld, and that meant I could pretend to myself I intended to sell this information to a bounty hunter.

Realistically, even if I got out of here, I’d do my best to forget any of this had happened.

But keeping mental notes kept me from going mad from the combined rage and boredom, and that made it worthwhile. In the back of my mind, I kept alive the faint hope that I’d spot a potential ally, as unlikely as that was.

On the promenade below, a Chrichri commander moved slowly through the crowd of guests, a tally etched into its thorax counting the slaves it had sold.Several hundred, if I read it right. A tall, spindly Liil in the formal robes of a Guildfather from the Guild of Criminals and Allied Trades expounded on the virtues of drugs for taming a ‘feral’ workforce to a small audience who struggled to look interested. A warlord from a species I didn’t recognize, with blue-green scales and a mouth like a moray eel, strutted along the promenade. At his heels scurried a pair of slaves, looking terrified and lost.

My heart sank as I realized none of them looked out of place here. As awful as they were, they fit in perfectly. I’d find no help among the wedding guests.

Except…one man stood out against the rest. There was an unusual energy to him, alert and expectant, his gaze moving constantly. Not with the nervous, brittle attention of the various bodyguards, all waiting for someone else to make the first move. No, this man was watching for something else, had a secret no one here knew. There was a hint of amusement to him, like he was playing a clever trick on his host.

Or I’m imagining it. How much can I really read into the body language of an alien I’ve never met? He has a body worth reading, though.It was a joke, but also true. Tall, muscular, and handsome, he cut a much better figure than the other guests. Silver skin, shining bright as any mirror, gleamed in the lights shining from high above, making it hard to see all the details. That only made him more desirable.

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