AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She captured a picture of his ship in her viewfinder. The more she looked at it, the more her curiosity grew. “What is your trade?”
A note of friendliness entered his voice at last. “I can trade anything. Parts, information, improvements. Or an evening of entertainment… which, if your friend is going to be a while, I would be eager to provide.”
Oh, fuck.
“Was that a pickup line?” she asked.
A single, cold chuckle burst from him. “Maybe? You’re curious, aren’t you? Our ships are alike. I’ll wager we have a few things in common, but I’m more interested in the parts where you and I differ.” The last remark was as dry as a desert. Flat and almost accusing. She hoped he was only referring to their gender differences and not something else.
“I promise you, I’m as boring as it gets,” she said. “Get me started talking about my computer and I will not stop. People have filed restraining orders on me for info-dumping.”
“That wouldn’t bore me. But you’re obviously brushing me off so I’ll see myself out.”Finally. “Oh—about the earpiece you wear—your other language shows through.”
She stilled.
How the fuck did he know she was wearing a translator?
“There’s an update that will fix it,” he said. “I can send it.”
She tapped her fingers on her console. She didn’t trust him. “I don’t know…”
“I do. It’s going to invite questions—inconvenient questions. I’ll do this.” He slapped his hands on something. “Here. Install it yourself.”
A red notification said that some alien file now lived inside her computer, ruthlessly shoved under the root directory.
“What the fuck,” she blurted in disgust. “Don’t inseminate my ship, you freak.”
He coughed once. “I’m not going to address that sentence. Take it or leave it. Your friend returns. Bye, map girl.”
She deleted the file at once, kicking off an anti-virus scan while she was at it. Her computer suddenly felt… dirty.
“Lucca, you alright?” Caligher was back.
“No, I’m not alright!”
“What?! What happened?”
She spread her hand over her face, taking a breath. “I mean,I’mfine. It was just a bad interaction. Do not recommend.” She could no longer suppress the full-body tremble. Her mind was a catalog of all the parts of that exchange that could come back to haunt her. “I got a picture of his ship.”
“Send it over.”
“Okay…” She was shaking. A lot.
After a few seconds, Caligher’s words came back and chilled her to the bone. “Lucca, this is the pirate we’ve been hunting.”
“Really?!”
A new lens fell over the conversation she’d exchanged, boiling down to ‘Your other language shows through.’A fresh wave of terror gripped her. “Honestly, this one might be too big for me,” she said. “We talked for maybe a minute and I’m pretty sure he was trying to hack my ship. Another minute and he would have succeeded.”
“But youfoundhim,” he reasoned.
“More like he found me.” She didn’t want to find him again. Not at all. Not one bit. “He commented on my lack of guns.”
“The pirate doesn’t know you have me. This is a chance to take him out of the skies. His ship will be worth so much!”
Lucca didn’t share whatever confidence Caligher snorted every morning. Caligher saw riches and glory—Lucca saw a list of frightening ways to die.
But he was fixated, and he promised that they could hide their presence and take the pirate carefully. After a good amount of badgering, he got Lucca to point her ship in the pirate’s direction.
