Thalia misunderstood the situation at the bar. What else did she misunderstand since coming aboard?
Desperately needing a distraction, she rattled the mop in her bucket. “The mess?”
He blinked again, pulling the utility knife away. “The automatic cleaning system broke this week. You’ll have to haul in the water in buckets. I hope you don’t mind shit,” he said with a giggle.
Naston brought her to the one door she could never open. He pressed his palm to a scanner, and the door slid open to the cargo hold.
The stench of urine made her eyes water. She coughed, covering her mouth with a handkerchief. “What the hell? Did the sewage treatment tank leak?”
Naston tossed her a mask with a small filter. “Don’t open the cages. Hose the animals down. Mop up the floor. Refuse goes down the drain. Simple enough for a Terran.”
Cages stacked on top of each other lined the cargo hold, arranged around a large drain in the middle of the floor. Alien animals she did not recognize screeched and cried and growled and called to each other. One cage held a flock of bird-like creatures that bounced from branch to branch, the talons of their back legs gripping the wooden dowels. Their front paws moved from their mouths to their round ears as they cleaned themselves. Green with white bellies, their wings fluttered. They were lovely, and it made Thalia sad that the floor of their cage was a thick layer of empty seed husks and shit.
Not in a cage but chained to a wall, an animal the size of a moose stamped its feet. Tawny with a black mane and tail, black stripes decorated its neck. A thick black stripe ran down the length of its face. She recognized it from a documentary about endangered animals she watched with Havik. Turns out Danger B loved animals, the scarier, the better.
Looking over the cargo hold again, she recognized more endangered animals from the same documentary, like the smugglers used the film as a shopping list.
Endangered animals.
That they were bringing to auction.
Fuck.
Her stomach turned from more than the stench.
Thalia approached slowly. From this distance, she could see its coat caked with mud—probably shit but she was going to call it mud—and blood. The shackles on a hoof had rubbed the skin raw.
It reared back to lash out with a hoof, but the chain jerked back, obviously programmed to snap back if the animal pulled too much. With a squeal, the animal fell to the ground.
The sound made her heart hurt. She wasn’t sure how she could get close, but she had to help the poor thing.
With her attention focused on the large animal thrashing on the ground, a paw reached out from the cage closest to her and grabbed onto the pant leg of her flight suit.
Thalia jumped, knocking the paw away. “I’m so sorry! Are you hurt?”
She crouched down, only to find that the animal had retreated to a far corner. She coughed again at the unbelievably bad smell of ammonia. Had the cages even been cleaned? How long had the animals been kept like this?
She had no idea what to do. Opening the cages was not only dangerous, but pointless. The animals would still be contained in the ship, heading toward the auction. Any chaos or confusion that resulted would give the mean-tempered crew a reason to kill the animals.
Thalia immediately rejected the idea. Maybe she could sneak in and free the animals when they reached the auction. No, the result would be more of the same. She needed to alter the course, to return the ship to the planet from where the animals had been stolen.
Except she didn’t know where that was.
And she didn’t know how to fly a spaceship.
She did know how to clean up a mess and doing that would improve the animals’ lives, albeit temporarily.
Thalia found a hose with a spray nozzle and a waterspout. She rinsed off the floor, directing the worst of the filth into the center drain. At least the ship was generous with water. The potable water was on a different supply tank than the recycled gray water used for almost everything else.
Wet and up to her knees in filth, Thalia did not hear the door open.
“Who let you in here?” Sue demanded.
Thalia released her grip on the hose’s nozzle. “Naston.”
“Lazy bastard.” Sue narrowed her eyes. “I suppose you’re some bleeding-heart animal lover and you want answers.”
“You’re poachers.”
Sue grimaced. “Nah. Smugglers. I don’t do the actual poaching, just transportation.”
“These are endangered animals. Don’t you care that you’re destroying something special and rare?”
“What did you think we smuggled, sugarplum?” Sue’s fingers brushed against the blaster on her hip.
Thalia held up her hands in surrender. “I don’t know. Overtaxed goods. Luxury cheese. Drugs. Weapons. People.”
Sue laughed, almost barking. “You didn’t think we smuggled people? There’s no profit in people. I’d have to stack them tip to tail, and there would be no way to keep the inventory healthy in those conditions.”
“People are not inventory,” Thalia said, knowing full well that other smugglers had no problem with the conditions Sue described.
“People are not profitable inventory,” Sue clarified.
“What about stasis chambers?”
“Do you want me to traffic people? Is that what you’re getting at?”
“No! No. The cages are cruel and difficult to clean. Stasis chambers seem more humane,” Thalia said.
Sue shook her head. “The tech is controlled too tightly by the military and planetary governments. Any working units you can find are ancient or cobbled together from decommissioned parts. They’re finicky and the failure rate is too high.”
Thalia nodded, remembering what the warlord had said about the backup batteries failing in the recovered chambers. “What’s going to happen to the animals?”
“I’m sure I have no idea. Whatever the collectors want: a new pet, to eat them, to fight, grind up their bones for tea, or maybe even fuck them.”
Thalia’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “So, no people?”
Something cold flashed in the captain’s eyes. “Not unless they’re profitable. I’m going to need
