Chapter 9
Of course. Of course, Torian couldn’t keep the one thing she’d saved for years to buy. A starship like that? Humans might not know its worth, but aliens absolutely would. It was brimming with impressive technology—Moss alone must be worth a fortune.
And that thought stuck in her mind like a blade in skin. The hell this alien would kidnap Moss, after everything it had gone through. Before this week, Torian would die for two people: Celise, and Amelia. Today, she added a third.
This draic would never steal her new ship, her new friend.
“It’s mine,” she said firmly, almost angrily. “I bought it, fair and square.”
The draic seemed amused now—he didn’t have lips, but his mouth curled over sharp teeth in what had to be a smile. In the darkness of the coniferous trees, dappled with blue light, the amber around his dark pupils seemed to glow. “Mmm. That ship wasn’t yours to purchase.”
“It was abandoned for over a hundred years.” Torian knew the Destitute’s last owner wasn’t a draic, so his stake in this couldn’t be personal. “Is someone paying you to find it? I can pay, too. More than they’re offering. Double?”
It was a lie—she had literally nothing to her name—but she’d try anything to avoid a fight with a draic. And if he agreed … well, she’d take care of Celise, then work another lifetime to protect Moss, too.
But the draic seemed exasperated now. “Wait. A hundred years?”
“Yes?” Torian’s voice tilted into a question. “Closer to one hundred and thirty-three, based on the ship’s records.”
“A hundred and thirty-three years,” the draic repeated, deadpan. “That ship has been misplaced for a century?”
For a long-lived species like the nylarians, that was probably a blink. But most alien races lived three hundred years on the lower end, more than five hundred on the high. According to what Torian knew of them, draics were around that range.
A hundred years might seem as ludicrous to this draic as it was to Moss or Torian.
That could work in her favor.
The draic grumbled something that her translator equated to “Damn it, Dutch,” and spun on his clawed feet. He wore clothes, but not shoes—clearly, his soles were tough enough without them. As an afterthought, he called over his shoulder, “Follow me, if you please. We’ll get this sorted.”
That was the most optimistic thing she’d heard today. Torian hesitated, carefully retrieving the crumpled mass of her gun. It was completely destroyed, but at least she could dispose of it properly, rather than littering this wild space.
Carrying it carefully, she followed the draic past the woods, beyond the clearing where she’d shot him, then through the stone tunnel to the residential ring. As they entered an overgrown park, the draic cupped his mouth and shouted, “Sequelta vel Dutch-Ath! We need to talk.”
A pause.
A long pause.
Then a voice filtered overhead, singsongy: “Uh-oh!”
Torian glanced around the empty space, half expecting another draic to land from above. But this new voice was smooth and sultry, higher-pitched than the draic’s, with none of the grumbly undertones. It continued: “Am I in trouble, Zen?”
Those words were nearly a sensual purr.
Torian’s face warmed, and she averted her gaze. Even Zen seemed embarrassed. His rust-red scales flushed a deeper crimson, and his talons brushed the black ribbon tied to one of his curved horns.
Avoiding Torian’s gaze, the draic angled toward the new voice. “We have company, Dutch. A human.”
“Oh!” That changed the tone entirely, and an alien leaned over one of the rooftop patios nearby.
They had ashy skin, but looked more humanoid than most aliens.
Their eyes glowed a bright, curious cobalt, and their long hair—pulled into a ponytail—seemed to sparkle with ever-shifting hues of blue light.
It was like nothing Torian had ever seen. Her jaw dropped. She knew there were alien species outside of the common visitors to this solar system—draics and the rare tou’siil—but seeing one in person was a different story entirely. She was both fascinated and terrified.
“You were right; your ship is here. Must be parked in one of the docks nearby.” Zen crossed his arms.
“It’s my ship,” Torian reiterated.
The draic held up a hand, as if to say, One moment, please. Torian huffed in irritation, but Zen wasn’t bolting for the Destitute, and this newcomer, Dutch, seemed disorganized at best. If she could stay on the aliens’ good side by playing nice, she would.
It was a hell of a lot easier than fighting a draic, anyway.
“A human took the ship? I’ll be down. One moment!” The new alien, Dutch, was holding a dozen things in their hands—everything from mugs and plates to what looked almost like incense holders. Robbing the nylarians? (Was it robbing if they were all gone, and had been for a while? Torian had no idea.)
Either way, Dutch was carrying too much; they fumbled, nearly dropped something, and cursed in a language Torian’s translator couldn’t identify.
As the strange alien ducked out of view, Torian asked Zen, “What language was that?”
Zen sighed. “Take your pick. He cycles through dozens of them.”
Torian raised an eyebrow. Polyglots were a true rarity in human space, and generally, they worked on software patches for the translators everyone wore. Torian had tried—and mostly failed—to learn other languages, but it was a long-lost art at this point.
(It made her distantly sad, mostly because she’d always wanted to chat with Amelia in her native tongue. But Amelia’s language wasn’t easily identifiable—it had a rougher dialect with nuances Torian could never seem to place.)
(Anyone who could speak dozens of languages must be a fucking genius, as far as Torian was concerned.)
But the alien who skidded out of the apartment didn’t look like a genius. For one, his hands were still full of kitchenware, except now he’d set a glass bowl over his glimmering blue hair, which seemed to exasperate Zen, based on the draic’s raised eyebrow ridge.
Dutch was taller than an average human, thin in stature, with facial features that resembled Torian’s, but were ever so slightly off.
His nose was flatter, his lips thin and wide, and he seemed delighted to see her, if his tone was any indication.
“A human indeed! Female, young. You must be a child!” Dutch pivoted to Zen.
“They’re very short-lived, you know. This one can’t be more than thirty years. ”
“I’m aware,” the draic rumbled. “Why is there a bowl on your head?”
“Nowhere else to hold it. You have room on your ship, don’t you?”
Torian wanted to protest stealing from this time-touched memorial—but considering she was holding the crumpled remnants of a gun she very nearly used to destroy the space station, she didn’t have much to stand on.
Zen sighed with his whole body. “I used to. Now my cabinets are getting full.”
“This is a nylarian heritage site,” Dutch replied, with a sly tone that said he’d won.
He hadn’t. Zen bared his teeth, although it seemed more frustrated than threatening. “Don’t pull that on me. That ship is also a heritage site, and you lost it for an Empress-burned century.”
Dutch seemed confused. Zen removed the bowl from his head, and underneath, his hair was flashing faster with very subtle strands of blue. “A century? No, that can’t be right.”
Torian, meanwhile, pieced together what this meant.
Unless he’d had some ancient claim on her ship, Dutch was the missing owner. Moss said they were all gone, so she’d just assumed the elusive owner had followed his kind. But no—this was a real, living nylarian.
Panic made her splutter, “It doesn’t matter how long it’s been. I bought it. Legally, it’s mine.”
Dutch looked at her now, and it was almost dizzying. For a breath, the space station seemed to still—the leaves stopped rustling, the critters ceased chirping, and everything narrowed to this odd alien.
“You may have bought it,” Dutch said, his lips tilting upward. “But my dear, I built it.”
Then it was true.
She looked between the aliens, shoulders sagging, her tone defeated. “You’re a nylarian.”
“The very last,” Dutch said proudly.
Torian couldn’t keep the accusation from her voice now. “Where were you for the last hundred years?”
Dutch lifted his eyes to the dome overhead, mentally counting. “Zenthielutos, we’ve been dating, what…?”
“Fifty-six years,” Zen replied.
Torian swallowed a cough, wondering how that worked.
None of her business, she supposed.
“Fifty-six years. Yes!” Dutch tapped one long, thin finger to his chin. It caused him to lose his precarious hold on two more plates, and they clattered to the ground. They weren’t wood, but some kind of crystal—ultra-strong, clearly, since they didn’t break. “Oh, blast!”
“Let’s put the dishware down for a minute. We’re wasting this human’s time, and her lifespan is already short.” Zen spoke gently, taking more things from Dutch’s arms. He cast a secret wink at Torian, like they were coconspirators.
She grimaced. “It’s not like I’m going to keel over—”
“No, no, he’s correct.” Dutch waved a hand, dumping everything else he’d stolen into Zen’s waiting arms. The draic began piling things on a nearby park bench, with clear organization for easier transport later.
“Time is such a fickle thing. Okay. Fifty-six years. Fifteen before that trapped in the mining tunnel on Asteroid 9D23. The escape pod fiasco was … two. My inauguration as the god of Yarlo took quite some time…”
Zen added, “Don’t forget when you stole that artifact and sat in jail—”
“I hardly stole it if I’m the artist!” Dutch interrupted. “Wrongful imprisonment. But then again, all imprisonment is the easy way out, isn’t it? Lazy—” He finished the sentence with another word Torian’s translator couldn’t manage.
Torian pointedly cleared her throat. “I’m going to make it easier on you. It was over a hundred years. I found it at an impound lot on Colony 13.”
“Colony 13!” Dutch exclaimed. “Why are all the human space stations so similar?”
“You could have written it down,” Zen said, as if he was enjoying this.
“Made a note. And, you know, not told me in a panic that it was stolen, handed me a tracker, and begged us to find it. Because it sounds to me like this human acquired your ship fair and square, and I think you lost your rights to it after the first … ehh, fifteen years.”
Dutch picked up a small sculpture from the bench where Zen had stacked everything.
It was a family unit—if Torian squinted, it almost looked human.
The figures were tall, and a child hugged three parents.
“Be that as it may, I cannot relinquish my hold on that starship. It houses a very dear friend of mine.”
Before Torian could object, a familiar voice spoke over a nearby loudspeaker:
“Curious. My databases catalogue a very different definition of ‘friend.’”