Page 21 of Bela's Bounty
“Just…wait for me to get there, alright?”
I don’t say anything, but it seems I don’t have to.
“Okay,” Sone leans closer to the screen, “in the meantime, here’s what you’re going to do.”
“What about your bounty?” I ask, confused at how he managed to get me to agree to this so quickly.
“Bounty? What boun—oh, right.” Sone grins at me, baring a mouthful of sharp teeth. “That was a lie.”
I should have known. Sone is the sneakiestkurverI’ve ever known.
In no time at all, he’s got a rough plan hacked out. One that is much less likely to get me killed than my original plan, which was to break in, steal my female, and break out.
Rubbing at the tightness that has started up in my chest, I bid him farewell and cut the link, leaving me to the quiet of the shuttle. I don’t have a good feeling about this at all, but at the same time, it’s a huge relief to know soon I’ll have Sone at my back.
I was a fool to think I could free my female on my own. But now….
Soon I’ll have my crew at my back, like they should have been from the start. So, why won’t that niggling feeling that something bad is going to happen go away?
* * *
Bela
“Get up, lazy girls,” Elara barks before whipping my curtain open. I blink against the bright light that the curtain mostly filters out and roll onto my back. The savory smells coming from the breakfast cart tickle my nose, and my stomach growls in anticipation.
“Time to get up, Sky.”
Skylar whimpers, curling her too warm body further into mine, and I roll my eyes to the ceiling. I just cannot with this girl today. At least not before I’ve had coffee, which probably isn’t even a thing here.
“Alright!Jóból is megárt a sok,”I grumble as I push Skylar aside so I can sit up.Enough is enough.
I never met my Hungarian-born grandmother, but I remember my mother often mumbling that phrase when my sister and I were getting on her nerves.
Grabbing the thin quilt, Skylar curls up on her side, pulling it over her head. “I don’t want to go out there.”
“You’ll miss breakfast if you stay here.” I pull the blanket off both of us and then climb over her.
“I don’t care,” she grumbles, pulling my pillow over her head.
“Listen,” I pluck the pillow from her grip and toss it across the bed with the blanket, “this is a shitty deal. None of us are thrilled to be here. But for the moment, no one is hurting us. We’re being clothed and fed. So let’s just make the best of things while we try to figure out what our next move is. Alright?”
Skylar sniffs and wipes away the wetness from her eyes, but she nods.
Good enough for me.
Straightening my clothes, I stride out of the alcove without waiting for her to follow me and make my way across the room to where the other girls are gathered around the food cart. Nita is already sitting with a plate, and we nod to each other while I look over the offerings.
There is fruit and some kind of cooked grains. The green fluffy thingsmightbe some kind of scrambled eggs, but I’m not adventurous enough to give them a try.
I decide on a bowl of strange fruit and a slice of bread slathered with some kind of preserve. Then I sit down next to Nita, who is eating so quickly I don’t bother asking her how things taste. After a bit, Skylar arrives at the cart and chooses a bowl of the grains and some fruit.
After everyone’s finished eating, Cybele disappears back into her nook while Elara saunters out the door. She must have the day shift. When a shadow falls across me, I look up to see Ynez standing in front of us with a very disapproving look on her strange, pale face. With her luminescent stripes, blue lips and golden eyes, she reminds me of what an android might look like.
“Today we start getting you familiar with the species who frequent Lux,” she says, tapping out something into the tablet.
In her other hand is a round black object, a little larger than a softball. When she presses a button with her thumb, it floats off her palm and hovers in the air between us. She taps something else into the tablet, and a hologram of an orc-like creature alien appears, with heavily muscled green flesh, tusks jutting out the corners of his mouth, and small beady eyes. I quickly recognize it as a species from the auction, well, an older version anyway.
“This is aPizat,” Ynez explains. “You’ll mostly see them working as security throughout the station, but they are also frequent customers.” She taps the tablet, and the hologram spins, showing the naked image from all angles. “They have average cocks and aren’t prone to being overly possessive or violent, so they make good customers.”
