Page 6 of Abducting Sarah

I sat back in the cockpit and flipped the charger for the power driver. Energy surged through the lever and zapped my hand, forcing it to jerk away. I hissed at the lever and cursed, before I pulled the inducing lever, and we took off. My ship,Sovereign, was an old crusty beast and when she wasn’t happy, she told me all about it.

I sighed and patted the dashboard. “I know, girl, I know. I’ll get you patched up when we get home.”

All I had to do was deliver the human woman to Deacon, complete the foolhardy mission, get paid, and get us back home on Orhon, where I planned to surprise Treg with a doubled budget for repairs.

Sovereigndeserved more love than I had been able to afford in the past six months. As much as my plan sounded simple, I couldn’t remember the last time anything had been simple. Considering Deacon’s plan for Sarah Hollinger, rising dread filled the back of my mind.

My boss had lost his damned mind.

CHAPTER 3

Deacon

My eyes did not wish to open, but a shift in the light begged for attention. Huffing, I regretfully opened them. I had hoped I was wrong. However, the view out my window told me I was right.

I called out, “Intercom-bridge.”

Allegiant, my ship, responded through the intercom, “Bridge on.”

“Drift, why do I see the suns?” I asked.

My pilot sounded nervous. “There were some Gorrk and Doxude ships in the nearby orbit cloud, and I didn’t like the look of them, sir, and I certainly did not like how close they were coming to us.”

I couldn’t help but smile, in spite of my irritation. Drift Skir always worried. It was part of his job as my pilot, but the more important part of his job was to follow my orders. “Didn’t I tellyou we were to wait on the dark side of Halla’s orbit until my business with Jacaranda Cozz has passed?”

“Yes, but—”

“But you thought you knew better?”

He huffed. Like so many Ladrians, he had taken to using Earthen responses in conversation. I tried to avoid such disdainful behavior, but after centuries of exposure to humans, their culture had permeated my own. I supposed it was inevitable. These days, it was the eldest generations who saw human expressions as rude. Most of us could not recall a time before their ubiquity.

Drift explained, “The dark side of Halla is no place for good people to be.”

“Then, it’s exactly where I need to be.”

“But Deacon, I—wait—Sovereignis calling.” A pause, then Drift said, “Go ahead,Sovereign.”

Jacaranda’s gravelly voice rang clear, “Allegiant, we will be docking in thirty seconds. Seems our scrubber needs replacing, so we might be there a while to borrow the capacity of yours.”

I called out, “That is not a problem, Jac. Drift, prepare for docking.”

“Yes, sir.” My pilot sounded relieved.

“Deacon out.” The hushed background hissing tone of the intercom was off, leaving me with my thoughts. An unpleasant turn of events. Instead of introspection, I chose to focus on everything else. Introspection had not been my friend as of late.

Drift probably sounded relieved because he is likely thinking we won’t be here much longer. He’s going to be very unhappy after our business withSovereignhas concluded.

I stood and stretched from my neck to my tail. I loved my ship, butAllegiantwas built for grandeur only, and my muscles always stiffened when I slept on board.

I pulled on my khaki ship uniform and looked in the mirror. With each passing day, I liked what I saw less and less.Today will change that.

Today will change everything.

When I opened the door to my quarters, Jacaranda Cozz stood before me. I grinned instantly at my old friend. Taupe skin with a blue overtone, blue hair, and violet eyes, just like his family was said to have. But he broken with many Ladrian traditions. Jac liked to do things his own way. He always had, even when we were children. Being that the Cozz family were unclassed, they weren’t expected to alter their skin tone or change their hair color. But Jacaranda had marked his skin with an ancestry tattoo that ran from the base of his neck to the back of his legs. It was strange that he chose a tattoo for his skin alteration, but never tanned.

Tanning was the only socially acceptable way to alter one’s skin, and it was the only way for me to avoid earning ridicule for my family—most of my family had gloriously obsidian skin with a purple overtone. My beige skin had a pink overtone, and I had grown up filled with envy for my cousin’s skin. We all shared the same gray hair, thankfully. From our heads, down our spines, and ending at our tails.

Much to my cousins’ chagrin, my tail was longer than all of theirs, so our envies balanced each other out. Being taller than all of them helped, as well. When Jacaranda had been given to my father as a child, we were the same age, but he was so much smaller than me and my cousins that we had thought he was far younger. In the years that passed, his diminutive height became his motivation to grow stronger and faster than all of us. Some of my cousins had teased him, saying that he was not much taller than a human. They ate those words, along with some of their own teeth. No one picked on him after that.

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