Page 5 of Abducting Sarah

I stared at my quarry. Honestly, she was quite pretty for a human woman. Exotic, wavy brown hair the color of her eyes. Matte ivory skin that humans mistook for white. Slender, but still shaped like a woman. Her name was peculiar—Sarah Hollinger—but most human names were odd to me.What does ‘Sarah’ even mean?She was the size of a teenaged Ladrian, small and fine. Far too fragile for the work ahead of her.

“No clue why he’s so obsessed with her,” I muttered.

Ode laughed. “That’s funny to hear, coming from you.”

“What about me?”

“The only person I know more obsessed with humans than me is you.”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall with a smirk. “You’re a human biologist, butI’mmore obsessed with humans than you? Do tell.”

“Of all the people I have ever known, who has had more missions to Earth? Who uses their turns of phrase? Who has tattooed one of their trees and taken it for his name? An ancestry tattoo, of all things!”

“Alright, alright, you made your point—”

“And how many of them have you paired with over the years? Dozens? Hundreds?”

More. “I concede that culturally, I may have absorbed a bit of their world. Butyoustudied their anatomy, their sciences. You are an expert and—”

“Which is why you hired me.” She smirked. “And Treg.”

“No,” I smiled at Treg. “I hired him because he is a gifted engineer and keeps my ship running.”

A lot of Ladrians did not associate with Gorrks because of how they looked, but his nearly formless body shape allowed him to get into all the small spaces of my ship, so I didn’t care how he looked. Not much, anyway.

“Speaking of which, the carbon dioxide scrubber, how’s that coming?”

“It needs replacing,” Treg said.

“You said that last month.”

“Because it needed replacing last month, too.”

“You can make it work, though, right? We’re not in any danger?”

Treg laughed and his body shook in every direction. “I told you we were in danger last month. Now, we are inmoredanger.”

I frowned at him. “Then what is this that we’re breathing now?”

“While you were stalking the Hollinger, I was flushing the system with Earthen air,” he informed me. “How long until we reach Deacon’s ship at Halla?”

I shrugged. “An hour, give or take once I get us moving.”

“Good. I can dock our system with his for more air, and once we get back to Orhon, I’ll be able to replace the scrubber.”

“How much will it cost?”

He closed his eyes and said, “Outside the budget, I’m sure.”

“Get a used one—”

He huffed and groused, “Wehavea used one—”

“And if we want to keep breathing, then I shouldn’t waste air arguing about it, right?” I smiled and left the infirmary.

We needed a new carbon dioxide scrubber, but I had more important things on my mind. Well, maybe not more important—breathing was technically more important than most other things for five of the six of my crew—but Deacon’s recentfoolhardiness took precedence in my head. It had been days since he told me about his plan, but I would need more than just days to be able to grasp it.

If he wanted to take anyone from Earth, it should have been Sarah’s sister, Jenny. She would have been less hysterical, I was sure of it. The youngest Hollinger was a believer in a lot of things—tarot, conspiracy theories, other things humans deemed silly. I imagined she would have been more receptive to being on board a spaceship, though perhaps I was giving her too much credit.

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