"Summoned for what?" She couldn't help but be curious.
He took a sip of his wine and didn't say more. His fingers found that cufflink again.
Okay, so that was off topic. But the way his jaw tightened at the word "summoned" told her someone had him by the metaphorical balls.
But he was a good drinking buddy. She found that out when he pulled out a deck of cards with edges so worn they felt soft as fabric and offered her more wine. He played with the casual confidence of someone who'd won and lost fortunes at the table.
His tells were subtle—a slight pause before a bluff, the way his thumb traced the edge of his cards when he had a good hand. She beat him anyway. Twice.
The next night, he set up the holo player, and they watched an old piece of media she'd been meaning to get around to. He'd laughed at all the right parts, made sarcastic comments that actually improved the terrible dialogue. For two hours, she'd almost forgotten he was a lord and she was just hired help. He'd also fallen asleep in the last fifteen minutes, his head tipped back against the wall, mouth slightly open. It should have looked ridiculous. Instead, she wanted to run her fingers down his cheek.
Not happening.
She had expected him to hole up in his room the entire journey and grit his teeth trying to get through this uncomfortable ride. Instead, it appeared he didn't like to be alone. He sought her out during meals, lingered in the cockpit asking questions about navigation, even helped with routine maintenance checks. His hands might be soft, but he wasn't afraid to get them dirty. Though he did have a weird thing about wiping them on a handkerchief instead of his pants like a normal person.
On the fourth day, everything went to shit. And surprisingly, it wasn't Zane's fault.
Mercy had just finished checking her daily readings when the proximity alarm went off. The sound cut through the quiet hum of the engines, sharp and insistent. The cockpit was bathed in a hellish flashing red. She checked every sensor she could, but none of them were showing anything wrong. Ghost signature. Either a malfunction or someone with very expensive cloaking tech. Her gut said expensive cloaking tech. Her gut was usually right about these things.
Zane rushed into the room. "What's that?" he asked.
"We're close to something, but I don't know what. We're not near any sort of asteroid field or planet, and no ship should be close to us."
Her ship rocked, and the alarm got even more insistent. The Alto groaned, metal straining against forces it wasn't built to handle. She could feel the vibration through her boots. The kind of vibration that meant expensive repairs. If she lived long enough to make them.
"Strap in," she commanded him.
Mercy took over controls and tried to roll them out of whatever danger they were in, but no matter how hard she tugged on the joystick, her ship wouldn't move. The stick fought her, servos whining in protest. The familiar responsiveness of her ship was gone, replaced by dead weight. They were caught in some sort of tractor beam. And that meant only one thing.
"Pirates. Fuck."
Why would they target her?
She wasn't flying through dangerous lanes, and her ship wasn't exactly a prime target. The Alto looked like what it was—a working vessel barely worth the metal it was made from. She'd specifically kept it looking like shit for this exact reason. She looked over at her passenger.
Lord.
Yeah, that could be a problem. Everything about him screamed money, from his perfect teeth to the way he held himself. Even his fingernails looked expensive somehow.
"No one's after you, are they?" she asked.
"No," Zane insisted. "What kind of life do you think I live?"
The kind with silk shirts and hand-blown wine bottles, she thought but didn't say.
"We're already caught," she said. "Stay calm, and maybe they let us out of this. You might want to run and hide your valuables," she offered.
Of course, any pirate worth their career would take one look at him and realize just how valuable he could be. Ransom material. The kind that would set a crew up for years.
The ship rocked again, but Zane undid his security belt and bolted for his room.
Probably for the best. She needed to deal with this herself. Pirates responded to strength or submission, nothing in between. And she'd be damned if she was going with submission.
Her comm screen blinked with an incoming call. Close proximity. Her new friends.
Mercy accepted the call, and the screen lit up with a man she didn't recognize. He was human with dark hair peppered with gray, maybe about sixty or so. He had a mean scar on his face and a bulky build that told her he would be difficult in a fight despite his age. The scar ran from his left temple to his jaw. His eyes were cold and calculating.
"This doesn't have to be difficult," he said. His voice carried the confidence of someone who'd done this a hundred times before.
