1: Zariah
I fear the feds are onto me. Two of them sit in black tactical gear in a booth against the window wall of the spaceport bar. They steal glances in my direction. One is human, the other an olive-hued Retterwan with scales that ripple like waves of little plates of armor when he looks at me.
I’m trying to protect lives, but they won’t see it that way.
My ship is parked in a dark, desolate part of the galaxy that most won’t bother entering because it’s too dangerous. It’s empty at the moment and biometrically coded to me so no one can steal it while I await my shuttle to the Alien Bride Race.
I’m sure the feds are wondering where my ship is. They love an excuse to poke around in things that aren’t their business.
Unfortunately, if I let people or aliens get one foot into the door of my life, they want more, want me to tell them secrets I don’t have the answers to. They want to find my father’s stockpile of stolen goods.
But I’m not that person anymore. I haven’t been for over a decade. With him finally gone, I thought I was off the hook. Yet since his death, I’ve been hounded more than normal. I’m only out in public for a short time, but I have no doubt someone will recognize me from the bounty hunters’ catalog on the darknet.
I down the last of my Supernova, a sweet, milky, minty drink I’ve never tried. I usually stick to cheap beer because my cover operation, hauling dry goods between planetary systems, doesn’t pay much. I wanted to celebrate my upcoming vacation and toast my mother’s memory with something she’d like.
“You want another?” the bartender asks. He’s a spotted Halthidori, green on orange, one of the few species I do trust in this universe.
“Can’t afford it. Just water and those mozzarella sticks.”
After a moment, he sets a beer on the counter beside a basket of fried food. “On the house, Zariah.”
“You don’t have to.”
He smiles, exposing his long black teeth, as he turns to take someone’s order at the other end of the bar. “Someone has to watch out for you.”
“Thanks, Jaaka.”
Exhaustion grips me, and it becomes a fight to eat the best food I’ve had in a week. My knuckles are streaked with gear oil between the splits. I doubt any alien royalty or warrior will consider me a prize.
What would we even talk about? The bulkhead door that likes to stick shut, the igniters I have to replace every month, or the freeze-dried food I live on? But this is what I’m stuck with for living a mostly honest life—a fourth-hand old StarBuster Cargo Transport.
My father would be ashamed if he was alive, but I never gave two fucks what he thought after he turned me into free labor, mopping up the ship after a battle gone awry and a machine to haul his precious crates of stolen goods from one ship to another.
A memory of the last treacherous gauntlet of spiked pillars he made me run to collect a bag of unique augmentation chips flashes through my mind.I escaped, but no one sees it that way.
I check the credits in my account via my wristband, wishing they’d increase, but they haven’t changed except for the Supernova charge at the bar. Jaaka gave me the shipping contractor’s discount.
I need this vacation. I can’t keep going on like this forever.A week of free food and a safe place to rest sounds pretty good to me, but I know it’s only free because of my mother.
Does she really expect me to marry some dude I barely know?
The idea of giving up my life, my crucial undercover job, to be someone’s mate is not something I’m ready for. I may never be. But she was good to me. She tried to protect me from Branthor, the man who took whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted.
She sacrificed everything for me. I can’t justify disregarding what she requested, even if the idea of giving up my body in exchange for safety makes my skin crawl. I’m not into disrespecting the dead, not when I know how hard her life was in our refugee camp thanks to my piece of shit father.
Maybe no one will pick me, and I’ll win a million credits.
That thought makes me smile a little, but I don’t believe it’s possible. If I think about it too much, that hope will turn into expectation. And that’s a dangerous mindset when trying to survive transporting goods in deep space. I have to stay alert.
Distress calls turn into back stabbings. Navigation help becomes a raid. That’s just how things are on the fringe of Sol Federation territory, where they don’t patrol, and communication satellites are few and far between.
So now I trust no one, and I just keep my head down, pretending I don’t hear their calls. Out there, bounty hunters and pirates are always trying to find any way they can get inside my father’s vault.
But I don’t know shit.
My fingers tremble as I hold my mother’s last gift to me. Paper feels strangely smooth and delicate compared to the metal crates and starship parts I usually handle. In her final days, she spent everything she had on me.
I don’t want it. I had zero plans of searching for a man, least of all an alien, to start a family with when ours was broken.
