Thalia swallowed the lump that seemed to have lodged itself in her throat but complied.
Sue continued speaking as she slid the comm unit into a pocket. “It’s really fortunate the way you fell in my lap. I had a whiny little man—Toddy, Timmy, something boring—to bring to the auction. He owed my boss a lot of money, but some idiot paid me twice what Tommy was worth. You’re just pure profit.”
Thalia was wrong. She had never put her plan into action. She had been bait the entire time.
Chapter 15
Thalia
After mucking out the cargo hold, Thalia spent the next two days locked in Paadric’s old cabin. She tried to keep herself from thinking about the dead man but went through a closet and drawers full of mismatched, oddly sized clothes. Perhaps there had been a Paadric once and his weight might have fluctuated enough for the various sized flight suits, but not his height. This cabin seemed to be the dumping ground of all the belongings from Sue’s deceased crew members like some space-age Bluebeard.
Thalia would have read the hell out of that book. Living the reality? Not so much.
She organized the wardrobe into piles that represented the deceased. Some were obvious, like the very tall flight suit or the one with the generous waist for a belly. Most of the garments were drab, practical blues and grays, but someone had enjoyed bright bursts of color. The bright hues went into their own pile. It was a twisted type of puzzle, but it kept her from worrying about the auction and Havik.
He knew she didn’t ditch him, right? When they parted—not that she knew it would be their last words together—she was going to get a drink, not run away with smugglers. Joining a smuggler crew had been the plan she pitched, so she seized the opportunity when it landed in her lap.
She was dumb. So dumb.
The original plan to use her as bait was simple and had fewer opportunities for things to go sideways. It wasn’t flashy enough for her, not as exciting as going undercover like in a book, and Thalia had been certain she knew best. Well, now she was Bluebeard Sue’s captive, so that showed how much she knew.
She hoped Havik grokked that she did not abandon him, and she hoped that the tracker worked as intended.
Havik
An unplanned, haphazard collection of derelict ships had been welded together to form a station. The sprawling mess filled the viewscreen.
“It is an ingenious design. The ships are fully functional, separate for travel and reassemble when they reach their destination,” Ren said.
“That explains why we’ve never found an operational auction site,” Havik said. On the rare occasions they received coordinates, they arrived to find empty space. He had assumed the auctions took place on individual ships or massive luxury cruisers, with a new location for each new event.
He did not imagine that the station itself disassembled and moved itself in a swarm of a dozen ships.
They picked up encoded messages a day ago. Ren easily cracked the encryption and continued to monitor transmissions for several hours now and knew that an auction of various live specimens was scheduled to take place within an hour.
The event had a catalog, which disgusted Havik to no end. He scrolled through the collection, recognizing a dozen endangered animals, one famously stolen work of art, a lot of one highly toxic and controlled substance, a plant thought to be extinct but valued for its medicinal properties, and a handful of beings. The beings did not warrant as lavish of a description as a millennium-old vase but were written to be “good for breeding.”
Disgusting. If Thalia were part of that listing, he’d tear the makeshift station apart with his bare hands.
He had alerted the Judgment and the nearest authorities about the auction. The Judgment was too far away to arrive swiftly, but the warlord sent fighter ships and a raiding team. Soon, when those forces arrived, the rich collectors who thought themselves above the law and smugglers who fed their greed would be in custody.
Anticipation zipped through him as he checked his weapons again, making sure they were fully charged and secure on his person. He and Ren had conducted raids before, but not on this scale and not supported by a clan behind them.
“Ren, is the comm operational?” he said.
“Yes. For the third time, it is operational,” Ren replied over the comm. Equally suited up for combat, Ren wore a helmet with a black visor that masked his face.
No other recourse remained but to wait for reinforcement. In the confusion of the raid, he would find Thalia. She would be safe.
And he would never let her out of his sight again.
Thalia
Glasses removed and blindfolded, Sue marched Thalia from her cabin. Recognizing the hiss of an airlock, Thalia assumed they transferred to another ship or station. More marching, followed by cold metal of scissors ripping off her clothes. Thalia tried to fight but it was impossible while blindfolded.
Naked and vulnerable, she tried to cover her most sensitive bits. That didn’t last long before unseen hands pricked and poked her. She shouted and tried to fight off her assailant but that earned her a jab with a shock stick.
“Good female. Stand still. Let me see you,” a rough voice said before slapping her ass. “A bit scrawny. Are you sure the female is fully mature?”
“She’s an adult,” Sue said.
Thalia turned to the sound of the woman’s voice. “I’m getting out of here, and I’m going to kill you,” she vowed.
“Oh, darling, you’ve never killed anyone. You don’t have the guts.”
Probably. Stealing property or money was one thing. Taking a life was on an entirely different level.
“Don’t let me find you,” Thalia said. “My alien is going to tear you apart limb from limb, and he’s going to make you suffer.”
Sue laughed. “I’m going to miss your smart mouth. Don’t let your new owners beat that out of you.”
Before she could think of an appropriate
