I grab my favorite books, ingredients for some dessert, almost all of my clothes, and the few pictures I have of me and my mom before she passed away. I smile as I place the picture on top of my clothes, tracing my mom's smile and how happy she was, even at the end. One last smile, one final middle finger to my apartment and the amazing view of the brick wall of the building next door, and then I'm out front of the building waiting for the transport to arrive.
two
Sloane
The transport drops me off at the shipyard, where everyone is milling about, minding their own business. My driver points me in the direction I need to go, and then I push through the crowds of people, aliens, and others in the direction of the docked ships. I've never been up to the shipyard because I've never had a reason to. No point in paying for transport to bring me up here if I have nowhere to go except back down to Earth.
Now, I'm enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells. It's like a shopping mall, in a way. There are lots of small stores selling clothing, food, and other items someone might need but not want to go all the way planet side to get.
There are also so many different species up here. I'm surprised since this isn't even a very large station, but I've seen some aliens I don't even know the name of. I mean, that's most of them since there are hundreds of species in the Intergalactic Alliance alone. Still, I thought I was pretty well-researched when it came to alien species, and it's clear now that I'm not.
As I make my way through the crowd, I almost stop and get a delicious-smelling snack from one of the small vending booths. I stop myself, thinking I don't want my breath to smell when I meet the aliens I'm about to be servicing for the foreseeable future. The vendor's snacks smell like garlic and chili, and that is not the smell my breath needs when I'm trying to be sexy. At least not for the first time.
I'm just about to tell myself that I'm completely and totally lost when I see a tall, yellow alien woman holding a sign with my name scrawled across it. I narrow my eyes at her, taking in her appearance and trying to decide if she's friendly or not.
She's tall, for starters, at least a couple of inches over six feet. Her black hair is tied back in a bun that sits between two horns that spiral upwards in dark peaks. Her frame is slight, but I've learned that doesn't mean she isn't strong.
I've seen a few aliens who I thought I could take in a fight, which definitely proved to me I could not. Okay, maybe not an actual fight, but more of a tussle-in-the-sheets kind of thing.
She wears dark cargo pants that hang loosely from her hips. Her stomach is visible because the white tank top she's wearing stops a couple of inches above her belly button. There's a holster wrapped over her shoulders, but I can't see behind her for what it's holding.
She notices me eyeballing her and points to the sign with a finger on her six-finger hands. I nod, accepting that I'm the woman she's looking for. She beams at me and runs to wrap an arm around my shoulder.
"Sloane Parker, human crew," she says it like she doesn't know I'm actually the pleasure crew, which means Via may have already made this so much more difficult than it needs to be. "I'm Essa Bylath, Haventh crew."
I clear my throat, staring up at the yellow woman that I am now realizing is more of a golden color. Her skin seems tosparkle under the light, and it's strange to see skin that sparkles. "Actually, I'm pleasure crew."
Essa stops moving. Her smile seems to twist into something more akin to the way a cat might look at a mouse before it's caught. Her thin tail with a little poof of black hair at the end wraps around my ankle. I startle, not realizing that she has a tail to go along with the rest of her appearance. My reaction doesn't seem to phase her in the least, though.
"Via told me she was sending the human crew and the pleasure crew. I assumed she meant they were two different people." Essa looks me up and down in an assessing way like I did to her.
I'm wearing a loose pair of pants that make my ass look good and a t-shirt with a low v to accentuate my best feature—my boobs. I know what I'm joining this crew to do, and I have no issues with it. Being under Essa's scrutiny is making me feel embarrassed, though.
Well, it is until her smile grows, and she turns back around. "They're going to lose their minds."
I take a moment to register her words as she starts to direct me toward a spaceship. "In a good way or a bad way?"
"Which would you prefer?" Essa asks, her brow cocking in a way that tells me she's genuinely curious.
Now that her tail is wrapped around my ankle, she's let my shoulder go and is walking in front of me. She looks back every once in a while to make sure I'm still there, even though her tail is locked on me.
With her a step or two ahead of me, I can see all the weapons secured to her body. A blaster on her right hip. The blades on her thighs and the sword on her back. The muscles in her arms flex when anyone moves too close to us, and it's clear she's one of those species that's stronger than they let on. It's not scary, though, not when she only seems to be watching out for me. It's comforting since it seems she's taken to me in an instant.
I narrow my eyes at her, wondering if maybe I can convince her to give me a blaster even though Via says I'm not allowed. I don't even need one, but there's something about being told I can't have something that only makes me want it more.
"No blasters for the pleasure crew," Essa says as she notices me looking at the blaster on her hip. "Now, do you prefer they lose their minds in a good way or a bad way? We need to know this before we go in because if you want good and I go for bad, things could end up being no fun for anyone."
"Good," I answer before she gets another second to think I could want it to be bad.
We're moving straight toward a ship docked in the loading bay. It doesn't look like much from the outside. In fact, it looks a little rusted over and beat up. I'm hoping the shoddy appearance of the ship is because this crew works undercover as smugglers. Because I really don't want to die on a rickety ship on my first adventure off Earth.
"I want them to lose their mind in a good way. I want this job."
Essa stops again, throwing her head back to laugh long and hard. When she sees the seriousness on my face, she laughs even louder. This time, she grabs her knees and lets the laughs take all the air from her. She laughs so loud and for so long that someone from the spaceship we're approaching comes out.
The male looks pretty much human, but he's wearing leather and furs like he's from a more primitive time period. His blond hair is pulled back into a bun, and his beard is trimmed. He has swirling, intricate blackwork tattoos covering his arms, legs, and torso. They might be his skin markings since quite a few alien species have decorative markings on their skin instead of having to tattoo them like some humans do. One of his hands is on his blaster, and the other is on his hip like he's unsure what he's supposed to do right now.
I hate that I'm already a little disappointed if that's one of the males I'm here to service. I'm a fan of the more alien-looking aliens. If I'm going to sleep with someone who looks human, he might as well be human at that point. Unless, of course, he's packing something fun in his pants.