Chapter 6
Mara
It’s the first shore leave for our new crew, and Captain Freak Tasin is laying down the law while I enjoy watching him do it.
We’re all standing on the port outside the Psyon ship, receiving orders.
I can see how the others are keen to get into the crowd and start enjoying their recreation.
Their impatience is palpable. But Freak isn’t going to let this get messy. He’s determined to run a tight ship.
“This is the first time we’ve been off the ship in normal space together,” Freak says. “There’s some ground rules I want you to follow. First, you stay with me, heeling range. I don’t want you disappearing into a crowd and getting lost. Second. No talking to strange aliens.”
I look around behind me, then back at him with a confused expression.
“What?” He asks the question.
“I’m just wondering who the hell you’re talking to,” I say. “Because I know it isn’t me.”
Freak scowls at me faintly, the scales above his brows drawing closer together. “I don’t want attitude from you right now, pet.”
“I have been in places like this my whole life. I was seven when I started going on trade missions with my father. You don’t need to worry so much. I can look after myself,” I tell him.
“You might be able to look after yourself, but you don’t have to anymore,” he says, his tone gentler. “I want to look after you. I want to know where you are. This is for me as much as it is for you.”
The sentiment is so sweet it catches me off guard.
I feel a lump coming to my throat as tears start to fill my eyes.
I’ve not had anybody care about me in that way for a long time.
Not since my father disappeared, and even when he was around, he wasn’t this protective.
He thought I could handle myself. And I could.
So Freak is wrong, but for the sweetest of reasons.
“And I’ll whip your ass until it’s bright red if you disobey me,” he adds as an afterthought.
Less sweet.
“Boss! Come on! We’ve booked one of the combat arenas. If we don’t get there on time, they’ll give the slot away!”
The other Psyons keep the whole thing moving and save me more threats from him.
They are moving toward a large dome in the station, a place that can be hired out for events, so the signs say, or for public displays. There are posters up for matches yet to come, and some older ones for matches that have been in the past.
The ring is large and sprung, and when the Psyons jump in they bounce a little. The four of them look perfectly at home in their underwear attire. I wonder what everyone else is seeing. I feel like I am the only one who really notices they’re barely dressed.
I watch them wrestle around for a bit. Freak is able to beat them each individually quite easily, so then they start 2v1’ing him, followed by 3v1, when the former does not work.
There’s quite a crowd that forms while they’re wrestling. A lot of aliens haven’t seen Psyons in action before, and quite a few of them want to test their mettle as well.
I let my eyes drift a little.
And then I see him. In the crowd. A human. A man.
He’s moving through aliens, so I only catch brief glimpses of him as he goes. But I am almost certain I know who that is. My heart is leaping wildly.
It’s my father.
I start pushing through the crowd toward him, but it is hard. There’s a lot of aliens of various shapes and sizes along the way. A little one squeaks because I’ve stepped on it. I apologize as much as I can without losing sight of the man. He’s moving away,
“Dad!” I yell out. “Dad!”
My voice is swept away in the general cheering and hooting of the crowd as Freak continues to beat the heck out of all comers in the arena.
I end up pushing my way through, elbows and all because everyone is staring at the show and almost nobody seems to notice anything else at all. I wonder if it is a Psyon trick to do that. They’re glamouring the entire audience. Or maybe it’s just the effect they have on people. Hard to tell.
“Rude!”
I don’t hear the complaint until I am grabbed by the arm.
“You sss-tood on my foot,” he complains.
“I thought the floor was bumpy there,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I have a vague sense of what he looks like. Golden. Wearing a black coat. Lots and lots of scales and big eyes after the fashion of a gecko or similar. I keep looking past him to keep an eye on the man I think is my father. I wish he could just hear me.
“Dad!” I shout, loudly enough to make a few aliens around us look at me.
The lizard man looks me up and down, his forked tongue flickering at me as if he is tasting me on the air.
“You sss-hould be more careful about where you’re going.”
“Maybe. Sorry. I’m trying to find my dad. He’s over there…”
“Who iss your father?”
“The man who gave me life,” I explain, wrenching my arm away.
“Wait,” the lizard says, catching me with another hand. “You are with the wrestlersss, are you not?”
“Yeah!” I say. “I gotta go!”
He lets me go, and I make a mad dash through the various openings the crowd provides. I am getting so close. I can’t believe it. I was so scared that he’d leave, or blend in, and I wouldn’t be able to ever find him again, but I’d always know I was so close.
I catch up with the man, reach out, grab him by the arm, and swing him around. “Dad! It’s me!”
“Wha?”
The man I am looking at has graying hair and stoic features, but he is not my father.
He’s not even entirely human. He’s definitely part human in some way, but his skin contains extra ridges around the nose and mouth.
His eyes are wider and darker than full humans.
He looks at me with a surprised expression, though due to the shape of his big orbs, that could be how he normally looks.
“Sorry,” I say, my eyes getting all misty with disappointment. “I thought you were my…”
“There you are!”
I hear a rough growl behind me, and then I am physically picked up and thrown over Freak’s shoulder. He carries me through the crowd like a trophy, and unlike for me, they part for him, making his path easy.
Some massive blue alien beasts have all the luck.
“I told you one thing,” he is saying. “One thing and you refused to obey even in the slightest and most reasonable of ways.”
He’s mad. I am sad. It’s a terrible combination because he isn’t feeling me for once.
Usually he knows everything I am thinking and feeling without having to ask.
But he’s all caught up in the adrenaline of thinking he lost me and he’s turned his brain off and all he wants to do is get me safely back in the ship and never let me off again.
I know all of this without having to read his mind, because he is so obvious about it.
“One thing,” he is saying as he carries me up the ship stairs.
“One. Thing,” he repeats as he drags me into our private room.
Then he starts saying a lot more things and doing a lot more things and the repetition of that one thing phrase is something I quickly become nostalgic for.
“I told you not to leave my side,” Freak says, his palm whipping my ass too hard and too fast to allow me time or space to make any kind of response. “You were almost entirely out of the area! And speaking to strangers!”
I cry out, wanting to explain, but being unable to, and then at a certain point I don’t even care if he knows why I did anything anymore.
“I thought I saw my dad! But it was just some guy.”
His expression softens slightly, and he stops smacking my ass.
He lifts me up to face him. “You cannot run after every old man you think might be your father, pet. The likelihood of him being here is infinitesimal. We are waiting to get back a report from our network as to where he is likely to be. Until then, you really must contain yourself.”
“You’re really mean,” I complain.
He hesitates for a moment. “That may have been really mean,” he agrees, surprising me.
“I can feel the angst you’re experiencing, and how much that hope must have turned to misery when you realized you were chasing an idea through the crowd.
I’m sorry you miss him so much. But you have to obey me, pet. No matter what.”
“No matter what? What if it had been him there, though? What if I saw him and I couldn’t find him because you forbade it? Obviously I am going to go to my father if I see him. You cannot tell me not to.”
Freak scowls at me. “You’re not going to find your father ambling about a space station.”
“Why not? That’s what his job is, roaming about on space stations!
I spent months doing that with him. Years, really.
He always looked at everything to see if he was missing any opportunities.
He’d have come and looked at you lot to see if there was a chance to make t-shirts with your faces on them. ”
“Your father has a responsibility to find you,” Freak says. “It is not your job to rush about, putting yourself in harm’s way. It’s my job to protect you, and it’s his to find you. You are lost to him, not the other way around.”
My ass is burning, and that makes it a little harder to take his point on board, but he does make a good point. My father should be looking for me. Would be looking for me.
So maybe he’s right. If my father could have found me, he would have done so. He wouldn’t be walking aimlessly around a fight in an alien fairground. Not unless he’d had a lobotomy or something like that.
“Do you understand? Or do I need to spank you again?” The way Freak asks it is affectionate, so it doesn’t feel as bad as it might otherwise.
“I guess,” I say, which is deliberately not a promise. I am not going to give up on looking for my family. And if I get a chance to see him again, I’m going to take it.
Freak sighs. “You are going to stay here in our room,” he says. “You’re grounded.”
“What? Why?”
“You know why. I can’t trust you off this ship, so you won’t be getting off the ship,” he says.
“But you’re going to get off the ship. What’s going to stop me from just doing it once you’re gone?”
“Fear of being punished,” he growls at me. “If you disobey me for a second time today, I will plug your ass, spank your pussy, and then fuck that naughty hole of yours. Understand?”
My body understands that tone as much as it understands the various specifics of that very detailed threat. His teeth flash and his eyes narrow and I know that now that he’s said those things, he’s probably think about doing them.
He scruffs the hair on the back of my head and pulls me close, bending down to dominate me.
“And regardless, when I get back, you will answer to me, pet.”
“Thought I already did,” I squeak.
“I haven’t even begun,” he promises, flashing a broad and dangerous grin.