Page 57 of Igid's Bounty
There’s no help for it. I pause to calm my breathing when I reach the wing I want before slowly easing the hidden door open. The hallway is empty. My steps are hurried as I creep to the end and peek around the corner.
I’m about halfway down the hallway when the sound of raised voices has me pressing my back to the wall and looking for cover. When I hear the sound of a door sliding open farther down the hall I’m trapped in, I dive for the doorway across from me and then praise whatever entity might be watching out for me that it’s unlocked. The room is dark, and no one screams that I’ve just barged in, so another notch in my favor. I block the door so it stays open just a crack, and I’m able to hear what’s going on in the hall.
“Hurry it up!” I hear Kurrahstka growl before the sharp sound of flesh slapping flesh, followed by a feminine yelp and then soft sobbing. “Oh, shut yer mouth before I really give you something to wail about.”
My teeth clench and my hands tighten to fists, but I stay hidden behind the cracked door. Eventually, two green Pazits march by, followed by two much smaller human women. One has long black hair twisted into hundreds of little braids and dark flesh. She is holding her cheek with one hand and wiping tears from her eyes with the other. The other female is even smaller, with a tangle of brown hair that sticks out from her head. Her skin is a strange pale shade, somewhere between Treto’s female and this dark one, with strange almond-shaped eyes that flash with anger.
When she’s even with the door I’m hiding behind, her head snaps to the side, and her eyes widen. For a moment I swear our gazes meet, and I suck in a sharp breath.Does she see me?Her steps falter, but she quickly catches herself and turns to face forward once more.
I can practically feel the rage radiating off her in the span of the dozen or so steps it takes her to pass me by. Letting out my held breath, I turn so my back is to the door. When I close my eyes, I replay the way she looked at me, even though there’s no way she could have seen me. Not the way I saw her.
Using the hidden tunnels, I follow the females to the same docking bay I left my shuttle in. Keeping to the shadows, I wait for the Pazits to get the females on board before I risk getting closer. The thought of hijacking Kurrahstka’s shuttle comes to mind, but without knowing how many of his men are on board, not to mention the alarm that would surely trigger, I don’t wish to die and take them with me.
Instead, I finger the small tracking device I’ve had in my pocket since we left the decommissioned station. It was something I pieced together in a matter of moments from an old Universal Positioning System I found while I was rebuilding the shuttle.
I turn the small disc over and over in my hand as I force myself to walk past Kurrahstka’s ship.
Just act natural…
You’re just walking past on your way to your own shuttle…
I purposely get close enough to the shuttle that I have to duck under it, and that’s when I carefully, and hopefully not suspiciously, give the underside a pat—leaving the tracker behind.
It’s nothing fancy. If they do a scan for bugs, it will be easily found. So my hope is that they won’t have any reasons to search.
With my tracker placed, I hurry to my shuttle, where I pull up the tracking program I designed while Brox was busy flying. As I line up behind Kurrahstka’s shuttle, I link the tracker to my program, just as it exits the pleasure house. For a moment, nothing happens. But then… a blip. Then another.It’s working!
When it’s my turn to leave the dock, I go in the opposite direction. The tracker should still work, even during hyper, so there isn’t much for me to do except for monitor it and follow at a safe distance.
Which brings me to the next part of my plan.
I comm Brox first. But I don’t tell him the truth. Not all of it, at least. I just give him enough to lead him on a bit of a wild goose chase because I know if he and his goodly bounty hunters get involved, they’ll take the wild-haired female, and I’ll never see her again.
So instead, I decide to get my own crew together.
Leaning back in my seat, I start scrolling through my comm. Most of my contacts want me dead on sight, but there is one male I might be able to convince to help me—if only because he hates Kurrahstka more than anyone I know.
I ran with Adrazellfor a short time when I first struck out on my own. Long before I was infected by greed, drugs, and sex. He was also my first victim on the road to my downfall. I haven’t spoken to him since I left him—much like Ternir left me—on a deserted moon. But if anyone has the information I need, it’s him.If I can find him and then persuade him not to kill me.
My eyes wander to the red blip that represents Kurrahstka’s shuttle, and I replay the way the female with the strangely beautiful eyes looked at me in the hallway.
Soon, little one,I promise her.I’ll free the both of you. But you? You will be mine.
To be continued…
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