Chapter 5 #2
I have some memories of them now, so I know it’s true that we met on a station and they sort of saved me a couple of times, but I am still really taking them at their word in assuming they’re not evil aliens.
Part of that is how attractive I find them all.
They ooze sex appeal almost all the damn time.
Even now, while Boss gets himself a bowl of wheat flakes for breakfast, I can’t help feeling a twinge of excitement.
I feel like I’m sort of getting to know them. Sharp isn’t as grumpy as I thought he was. Kronos isn’t nearly as nice as I thought he was. And Boss? Well, Boss is exactly what he seems to be so far.
“What’s on the agenda today?” I ask.
They look at one another, and I have a little flash of discomfort, as if something is happening that I am not aware of, but should be aware of.
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sharp says. “We have to make our way back to safer space. There’s a lot of conflict at the moment, and we are not being paid to take part, currently.”
“So you’re out of work?”
“Mercenaries are never really out of work, only between jobs,” Sharp says. “I imagine we will find employment soon enough. It seems hard to avoid…”
“I’ve taken a contract,” Kronos says, striding in right on cue. “There’s a Sligtonian freighter that needs escort through this space. It pays well, and will give us some reputation increase with them. We’re on thin ice. It’s time to be diplomatic again.”
If I were an animal I would growl at seeing him. My body tightens just looking at him. I am on edge, and alert for terrible things. Sharp notices the change in my posture and frowns.
“We’re not going to fucking help Sligtonians,” I say. “They traffic humans.”
“They’re not trafficking humans today,” Kronos says. “And you do not get a say. You are a pet. Do you need to be reminded of your place?”
He needs to be reminded of what a human is capable of, that’s the truth.
I slide off the chair and leave the room—or at least, try to. Sharp catches me by the collar as I try to slink away.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“Going somewhere that doesn’t have evil Sligtonian bootlickers in it,” I mutter.
“That’s it,” Kronos growls, putting his plate down sharply.
I squeak and dive into Sharp’s robes. I don’t want Kronos to get his hands on me.
“You know that wasn’t a smart thing to say,” Kronos says. “And nobody here is going to save you from me.”
“Sharp punched you in the face a couple days ago,” I say. “I don’t think everyone is on your side as much as you think they are.”
“You don’t remember us, allegedly,” Kronos says. “And yet you presume to tell me what the dynamics on my ship are?”
“Our ship,” Sharp reminds him. Oh, good. I am getting under their skins. If I can make them bicker and squabble, they will have much less chance of dominating me ruthlessly.
“Yes, our ship,” Kronos corrects himself. “We’re all needed on the bridge in the next few minutes, so eat up fast.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of him bossing you around?” I don’t address the question to either Sharp or Boss, but it hits both of them anyway. I bet they really are completely sick of his bullshit. Kronos is a captain with no real captain status.
“Alright, that is enough,” Sharp says. “You can’t stir up trouble here between us, though I appreciate the effort. Very cute.”
“I’m just wondering if everybody on this ship is happy being his bitch?”
Kronos gives me a good belt with the collar, and I can’t help but yelp. But I don’t let it subdue me. Seeing him has put me in the mood to choose violence.
“Pet, enough, give it a rest,” Boss rumbles. “You know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing? Pointing out the obvious shitty dynamics at play here?” I keep pushing the point, even though it’s not really working for me.
My guess is that I’ve tried this in the past. I’m probably going to do a lot of things that already failed in the past. No way to tell that before it happens.
“You’re trying to set us at each other’s throats. It won’t work.”
I think it will, though, because Sharp and Kronos already had a fight of some kind. So.
“I’m just saying Sligtonians are the reason I ended up here, because they steal humans from Earth. They’re bad creatures, and letting them be blown up in interstellar skirmishes seems fine to me.”
“We need to earn money, and you need to be put in your place. Is there any objection to me crating her?” Kronos asks the other two. “She needs to be safely contained or who knows what she’ll do while our backs are turned.”
“I’ll settle her,” Sharp says. “Let’s go, pet.”
“Are you going to be mean to me?”
“No. I’m going to put you in your place.”
He takes me to my bedroom, where he pulls something from the walls, a sort of table thing. It’s soft and padded, but I balk at it because the last time one of the aliens put me on some kind of device thing, I suffered terribly.
“Is this like Kronos’ device?”
“No,” Sharp says. “It’s not. Come and lie up here.”
I hesitate, but then I do as he tells me.
Fighting him is only going to result in more pain.
He doesn’t say that, but it’s in the air.
I crawl up on the table, and try not to squirm too much when he starts strapping me into place, face down.
They run over my midsection mostly, not arms, which is good because I am pretty damn tired of being restrained by these aliens.
It’s like they can’t trust me without knowing I can’t move.
“Why do you have these?” I ask, pulling at the straps.
“Because you were always naughty.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Quiet,” he says, running a hand down my back in a soothing manner. “I don’t want to have to do the same things that Kronos did to you. I am trying to be more civilized where you are concerned. This doesn’t have to be painful.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No,” he says, chuckling.
“I want you to stay here,” he says, massaging my shoulders and back, legs and even my butt.
My body finds his touch to be familiar. I know that because I relax immediately and sink into a state of relaxation and ease.
He is making me feel very cared for and very tended to.
Almost makes me want to do what he wants.
Almost.
“I can’t be stuck to a board the whole time you guys are fighting aliens,” I say. “That’s no fun.”
“You’ll be safe and comfortable, and if the ship gets into any danger…”
“I’ll be stuck.”
“It’s this, or a cage. I can assure you, you do not like the cage.”
“I don’t?”
“You loathe the cage.”
He says it in a way that strongly implies I’ve been in the cage before and I really don’t enjoy it. I can imagine hating being confined, though being bound isn’t really all that much better.
It’s not fair, is it, that they know me better in some ways than I know myself.
“Who are you?” I ask him the question in a kind of probing, sort of silly voice.
“That’s not the question you really want to ask. The question you really have is…”
“Who am I?”
“You,” he says, “are trouble. That is all you really need to know about yourself. Now, I want you to stay in this room until we have finished our escort mission. Please. For me.”
I almost do what he asks. I swear I do. But the temptation to see if I can wriggle out of the bonds is too high, and about twenty minutes after he leaves, it turns out that I can.
And then, though I could make absolutely any other decision, I go to the bridge. I have my reasons.
Sligtonians are one of the very few aliens I know not to like. They’re slave traders. They abduct humans. And frankly, right now, I’m looking for a fight.
I sneak onto the bridge and stay quiet at first. They are clearly tracking another ship, which is on screen and very much Sligtonian in appearance.
It has green and yellow stripes and a sort of penis and balls appearance to it.
The balls in the rear are where they keep their cargo.
The thick head is, well, I don’t know. At any rate, it looks ridiculous.
At first, I’m afraid the whole mission is going to go smoothly and nothing very terrible is going to happen to them.
I have a real sense of satisfaction when I see them start to come under attack as three ships with red and gold spiky protrusions zoom out of the dark ether.
They surround the Sligtonian ship and start threatening them.
I know this because the audio is piped right from the Sligtonian ship into ours.
“Come to a halt and prepare for boarding, Sligs! We’re taking your stuff.”
“It’s our stuff, and you can’t have it,” the Sligtonian captain responds. “We have guards.”
“How many guards?”
“Enough?” The Sligtonian captain really doesn’t seem that confident.
“We’ll take our chances,” the robber captain says, slightly less intensity in his tone. “Pull over, or we’ll start shooting.”
And then they start shooting.
“You have them locked?” Sharp asks Kronos. Sharp is the navigator and captain. I actually think this ship is technically his, if I had to guess. Kronos and Boss are on the weapons systems.
“Mhm.”
“Take them out.”
The ship takes one shot and one of the three vessels explodes like a cylinder of baking powder being crushed by an unseen cosmic hand. Apparently we are very well equipped with intense fire power.
“Want to try that again?” The Sligtonian captain asks the question quite smugly. He’s far too comfortable with this situation. I don’t like it.
It takes a moment for the space pirates to reply. When they do, it’s not a male voice that comes over the speakers. It’s a female. And she seems pissed.
“My boyfriend was on that ship,” she says.
“And we were trying for a baby. Now I’m going to have to find someone else to mate with.
Do you know how inconvenient that’s going to be?
Do you know how hard it is to find a man worthy of breeding with?
And you wipe him out like he never mattered at all because we were trying to steal a few trinkets from a few space slugs? ”