Page 1 of A Redemption for Ulrek

Chapter 1

Delaney

Delaney pulled her wheeled luggage through the Reka 5 docks, smiling as she turned her face to the gentle breeze that cut through the sweltering late summer heat. Today was a new day, a fresh start, and it was one she welcomed.

Today, she was starting her dream job on one of the sleek, shiny, state-of-the-art…well, actually, she didn’t know what type of ship she’d be on. She looked around at the hangars, some with their doors and roofs wide open, showing…warships? Really? She dug into her pocket to check her comm.

Yup, this was the right place. She hadn’t realized the job was on a warship. That must be why they’d started her salary negotiation so freaking high and then tacked a little extra hazard pay on top. She’d thought the hazard pay was simply because it was up in space.

That was okay, though. Reka 5 and the outer planets were going through a time of peace, had been since they’d beaten back the Dominion two years ago.Life here was good.

It would have been even better if Delaney hadn’t been stuck with her husband.

Delaney wasn’t sure she’d ever really loved Craig to begin with. They’d shacked up simply because they were two lonely souls on a new planet, a galaxy away from home. She’d been desperate then, still terrified of Tallean males. They were huge and had fangs and giant toe claws.

The females had fangs and toe claws too, but they were smaller and much less prone to violence. Certainly nothing like the hulking beasts the males were.

When she’d first arrived at Reka 5, they’d told her that the Tallean men here would respect a human marriage and keep their distance from a married woman unless she happened to be their mate. So she’d made the deal with Craig.

They’d used their first paychecks to buy the gaudiest, tackiest ring they could find, and she’d worn that cheap-as-fuck thing on her finger like some sort of Tallean male repellant. Pastor Jim, the only human officiant on Reka 5 at the time, had married them that very day.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Delaney realized her mistake early on when Craig became more and more controlling. She stayed because she was too afraid to leave, and she also couldn’t afford a place of her own. She’d become isolated: over the years, she’d drifted away from friends she’d made in her early days on Reka 5. They probably wouldn’t even remember her now.

Enough. Delaney was done being a door mat. She was done tiptoeing on eggshells and catering to the asshole’s whims. Today, she’d leave all that behind.

She’d taken that course, telling Craig that it would help her earn more at her current job. And when the opportunity came up for a position managing the greenroom on board a ship, food and board included, with amazing pay, she signed that contract faster than you could say boo.

By the time Craig realized she was gone, she’d be squirreled away on her new spaceship home. Maybe she’d even get one of the Tallean men on the crew to take a picture with her on his lap and post it as an update. She grinned to herself.Thatwould give Craig a fucking aneurism.

She took a deep breath as she looked at the imposing battlecruiser in front of her. This thing looked scary. Usually, battlecruisers didn’t have greenrooms; they focused mainly on heavy firepower and speed, sacrificing things like comfort and entertainment for those inside. Maybe she was at the wrong ship.

She rechecked her comm. Yup. This was it: theNew Horizon.

The ship was impressive. The hull gleamed in the Reka 5 sunlight as if someone had spent hours polishing it. It was clearly very well taken care of. According to the job listing, it had a mixed Tallean-human crew, but unlike Craig—who still had a hate-on for the aliens they shared a colony with—Delaney had no issues with that now. She’d been working alongside Talleans for years and had gotten to the point where she thought the guys were kind of hot.

She couldn’t believe she was about to start work on an honest-to-goodness spaceship. Sure, she’d been on them before. That was how she’d gotten here. Reka 5 wasn’t her first non-Earth planet either. She’d visited several back when she’d been a Dominion slave.

Delaney had been lucky; they’d put her to work in one of those large chain hotels catering to those who made their fortune near the edge of Dominion space. Sure, they’d worked her to the bone, but at least she hadn’t been gifted to a Dominion captain. Those were the worst. Monsters, every last one.

But that was all in the past, just like her life on Earth. Now, she was a Reka 5 colonist through and through. She’d fought, literally gone to war, for this colony, and it was home.

She looked at the ship again and realized there was no name on the actual hull where it should be. There had been, but someone had removed it. She squinted at the faint outline. There on the side of the ship, etched in by sun exposure, was the word…wait…Revenge? Really? She could read just enough of the alien glyphs to do her job adequately but still needed her comm to translate sometimes.

A human man who looked to be in his late thirties was polishing the area and erasing the lingering traces of the name. TheRevengesounded familiar, but Delaney couldn’t figure out where she’d heard it before. Maybe theNew Horizonhad moved hangars, and she was at the wrong ship after all.

The man noticed her and slid over a partition, hiding what was left of the ship’s name. “Ho! Are you here for the greenroom technician position?”

“Yes. I think. Hi. I’m Delaney.” Okay, so shewasat the right place. She stuck out her hand for a handshake. It wasn’t the custom here, but old habits died hard.

The man wiped his hand on his pants, getting it as clean as he could before shaking hers. “Gavin. I’m so glad you’re here. Our last technician retired, and we don’t really have anyone onboard who is good with plants. Half of them are dying. And I’m being generous when I say that.”

“The recruiter mentioned it was in need of some TLC. Bad enough that they warned me I might have to start over.” She was up for the challenge. Anything to leave her mess of a life behind.

Delaney had started out in one of Reka 5’s many greenhouses doing grunt work. Trim this, water that, move this over there. But this job was an actual career. She’d be managing a ship’s greenroom, the jungle that produced oxygen and purified the air of top-tier Tallean ships.

One planetary orbit on theNew Horizon,and she’d make enough to get a place of her own, not just a rental. She wouldn’t need to shack up with another asshole. And hopefully by then, Craig would’ve forgotten all about her.

That was very likely, considering she’d found out a few weeks ago that he was cheating on her. She’d welcomed the news. It was the final nail in the marriage’s coffin. It was what she’d needed to move full steam ahead with her plan.

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