Chapter 6 #3
I am starting to lose patience with him.
We’re all supposed to be intrepid explorers.
Does he think that we are going to get to an alien world and immediately follow all the rules?
No. Of course we’re not. It’s going to require the ability to adapt and improvise and yeah, do what has to be done, rules or fucking not.
“You caught me,” I tell him. “I’m not supposed to be here.
But aren’t you glad that I am? We are way too far into this mission for that to change now, right?
Besides, you don’t actually have to tell on me.
I know you think you do, but you could show mercy.
It is an option. I could be your little secret. I could serve you, and only you…”
He looks at me with a long, hard stare that only gets harder the more I silently will for him to soften and relent. I am way too cute for this not to be working.
“Relax, guy,” I say, trying to help that process along. “It’s just a little stowaway action. All the best voyages have them.”
Flippancy is not my friend.
I see a switch click inside his mind, like I just made his decision for him.
“I’m going to have to report you,” he says.
“Right, because that’s what real men do. Turn their lovers over to the authorities.”
There’s disdain in my voice that I can’t help. It runs so deep it might actually be disgust. How could he even think of turning me in? Why isn’t his first instinct to protect me from the consequences of my actions?
“Get up,” he says. “I’m taking you to the captain now. He can decide what to do with you.”
“He can decide what to do with your balls too,” I say. “You’ve obviously turned them in.”
“You’re not going to taunt me into keeping this secret from the captain,” he growls at me. “I am an officer on this ship, and I have a responsibility to every person here.”
“Not just the ones on your dick.”
“Don’t talk about yourself that way,” he lectures. “Having sex doesn’t absolve you of responsibility.”
“It should,” I snap back. I haven’t moved from the chair.
I know they can come get me, but I’m thinking if he has to leave the room to go and report me, then I can run and hide.
The ship has a lot of places where a woman of less than average height can tuck herself away.
I’ve learned about access panels to various internal systems, too.
I could hide in the walls of this place if I needed to.
“Get up,” he repeats.
“If you want to go and tell on me, go and tell on me.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he retorts. “You’re too smart and too audacious. You’ll be gone before I get back, and we’ll have a hell of a time finding you.”
I smirk. That’s probably the nicest thing he has ever said to me. It’s really nice to be appreciated for your core traits. Maybe there is some hope for us after all.
“If you don’t get up right now, I am going to pick you up.”
“If you pick me up, I am going to attack you,” I warn him. “I’m fighting for my freedom, so maybe consider whether or not you want that battle on your hands.”
He snorts, then shakes his head at me, his hands on his hips. I wish we were having a different conversation right now.
“This could be hot, if you let it,” I tell him.
“You little…” He reaches for me and I bite him, just like I warned him I would. I sink my teeth into his hand hard enough to leave a good mark. I am not going to go easily.
“Ow, you…” He snatches me up by the back of my suit and hauls me over his shoulder. I kick and I hit as hard as I can, but he is well conditioned and it feels like my fury has next to no effect on him.
We catch all kinds of looks from crewmembers. This isn’t normal protocol. Officers don’t usually handle cleaning crew as if they’re badly behaved pups who crawled out of their mother’s whelping box.
“Let me go! The captain isn’t even going to care! What’s one more pair of hands on a busy ship like this! I’m an asset!”
“Don’t fight me,” he growls. “This is hard enough as it is. I’d rather have walked you to the captain’s office, but you wanted to do everything the hard way.”
“I did you the hard way,” I remind him.
“Don’t try to make this a joke. You’ve committed crimes we don’t have words for.”
“Stowing away definitely has a word for it.”
The captain is in his ready room. It’s guarded, which I think is weird. Isn’t everyone on this ship supposed to be friends? What are these bulky bearded men in crimson uniforms even doing? Is it for show?
“I need to speak to the captain,” Thor says. “I have discovered a stowaway.”
“One moment,” the guard on the left says, before disappearing into the captain’s room.
“So,” I say. “How’s the weather? Oh, right, we don’t have any.”
The captain’s door opens again.
“You can take her in,” the guard says. “Do you need help handling her?”
“Yeah? Do you need help handling me? Does the whole ship need protection from me?”
Thor carries me into the captain’s ready room while I mock the very concept of everything that is happening. I’m just a girl on a ship. It really shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
“What’s going on here?” A voice that sounds exactly like it should belong to a captain, belongs to a captain.
I can’t see him because my face is angled down toward Thor’s incredible ass.
I give it one last smack, because what the hell.
I am now entering a level of fucked I have never been before.
I used to think I had discovered all the levels of fucked I would ever reach, but I’ve outdone myself.
“This is why the computer is reading an extra soul on board. It’s because there is one. This is Selene Weltheim. She is not on the ship’s manifest, and I believe she stowed away.”
“Can she speak for herself, or stand on her own two feet?”
“Not without being feral in the extreme, sir.”
I hear what might be a chuckle.
Thor puts me down when the door closes behind us, and I face the captain.
“Hello,” I say, smiling at the man, who has a fantastic silver dappled beard and head of hair. It’s hard to tell what else he looks like because when you have a lot of hair and a lot of beard, most of the face is swallowed up by it.
I am really hoping that someone will find me charming and take pity on me. That tactic has worked before, and I hope like hell that it will work again, or I am seven different kinds of fucked.
“This officer says you’re a stowaway. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I say.
He looks at Thor. “Take her to the brig.”
Well, that was not the audience I had hoped for. There were no questions, no fascination with how I did it, not even a ‘well done,’ or a ‘how dare you.’ Just a swift, decisive, er, decision.
“No!”
As Thor picks me up again, I kick out and knock a cup of coffee over into the captain’s keyboard. Good. I hope some of the letters stick forever now. I hope he spends half his life hitting backspace because the typos will make him look inept if he doesn’t.
“Wait,” the captain says.
Thor pauses. I pause in my flailing, too.
“I won’t have her going like that,” he says. “Get that maintenance uniform off her.”
Thor follows orders, stripping me down to my panties and a bralette. I feel practically naked in front of these two strapping authoritative men. A little tingle of fear runs through me.
“Kicking and wriggling when you’re being taken to the brig for the crime of stowing away is not acceptable,” the captain lectures me. “You’re a criminal. You’ve committed a…”
“Crime,” I say, finishing his sentence. I know it will annoy him, but I am pretty annoyed myself.
At this point, the captain takes a paddle down from the wall. I didn’t notice it was there. I certainly didn’t notice the sign above it that reads very simply: Ship’s Discipline.
“Hold her over the table,” the captain says. “I think a little old-fashioned discipline is in order for this old-fashioned crime.”
Oh, no. Oh, absolutely fucking not.
“If you were on a traditional vessel, this would be a cat of nine tails. You’d be half-flayed for the nerve of creeping aboard and taking passage you weren’t entitled to,” Captain Hakon says. “As it is, you can go to the brig sore, and having learned a lesson about lashing out when corrected.
“How old is she?” he asks Thor, not me. Why talk to me. It’s not like I’m right here and have access to information like that.
“Twenty, I believe, sir,” Thor says.
Sure, we can go with that.
“An insolent pup, one who can learn a few lessons,” the captain says. He’s older than my father would have been if he were still alive.
“I’m fucking Selene Weltheim. Don’t you dare put your hands on me.”
“Ivar Weltheim’s pup,” the captain grunts. “Got his sense of self-preservation too.”
“Go fuck yourself,” I curse, immediately enraged by the reference to my father’s passing.
There are those who say it was an accident.
And there are others who insist it was nothing of the kind.
The powers that be declared it the former and anyone who said it was the latter had not a leg to stand on.
I hate thinking about what happened to my dad.
My father was one of the founders of the city, but he refused to become a rich man.
He stood in the way of progress, and he taught me to be an obstacle whenever I could be as well.
That’s one of the reasons why selling the land belonging to our family was such a betrayal.
He would have wanted us to keep it for future generations.
While I’m thinking about that, I’m getting pinned down over the captain’s desk.
Thor holds my upper body down, while the big man takes a hefty swing and lands the paddle against both of my cheeks with a loud clap that results in an immediate ache and sting.
I wail immediately, and not just because I know they want to hear that sound, because they are big men who feel insulted and the only way to make themselves feel better is to hurt me.