It’s normal. All of this is normal, I tell myself as I scrub.
I try to forget that I totally choked.
I try to forget the awful, awful look on the ooli’s face. His terrible words. “I’m going to kef you up.” I know he wouldn’t have been kind to me. I know if the tables were turned, I’d probably find myself servicing an entire pirate ship instead of just cleaning one. I’d be enslaved again, forced to suck alien dick for my meals. Again. It’s not an existence I want to return to. Being part of the pirate crew is a thousand times better.
I just…need to actually be part of the crew.
I wring out the sponge in my hands and apply fresh water and cleaner to the walls. The smell is acrid and not unlike cat piss, which amuses Adiron to no end. He doesn’t understand why I can’t stand the stink of cleaner and loves to joke about it. Actually, he just loves to joke, period. He’s a good guy and a good friend.
But he’s also got a big mouth, and I know he’s going to tell his brothers all about how I couldn’t pull the trigger. How I froze up instead of taking action to save my own damn life.
And Kaspar and Mathiras are nice enough, but something tells me they won’t understand. They’re going to start thinking I’m a liability. I don’t know what will happen to me if they do. I breathe through my mouth, thinking hard. Is it…is it time for me to seduce one of the brothers? To use my body to try and ensure my place here?
Not that this feels like home. I feel isolated and alone here as much as I have anywhere else, but the meals are decent and no one’s forcing me to sleep with them, which makes it the best place I’ve lived in six long, long years.
“Uh. That’s a problem,” I hear Mathiras say over the comm link, interrupting my morose thoughts.
“What is it?” Adiron asks. “I’m still on the bridge. There’s a safe here I’m trying to crack open—”
“Come here and take a look,” Mathiras says. I can’t tell from his tone of voice if he’s troubled or not.
I sit back on my heels, listening and waiting.
After a moment, Adiron whistles. “That is definitely a problem.”
“Magnificent,” Kaspar says. “I’ve never seen one this close before. They go for a fortune on Three Nebulas Station.”
Something growls, sounding like a wildcat, and I freeze.
“Kaspar, get the kef away from that.”
“We can’t leave it. It’s worth a fortune.”
“What are we going to do with THAT?”
“Feed it?”
“Very funny.”
The brothers’ voices run together, all sounding similar from the tinny comm and the fact that they’re talking over one another.
Something howls again, the sound dangerous, and there’s a scuffle.
“Should we get Sophie?” one of the brothers asks. Mathiras, I think.
“Might be our only choice.”
I wipe my hands on my jumper, worried. Only choice for what? I don’t know what they’re talking about and it makes me nervous. I can pipe up and ask, interjecting over the comm, but I feel like I haven’t earned my place here, and the last thing I want to do is irritate them by jumping in. So I sit and wait, curious to see what’s going on.
Sure enough, Adiron jogs through the docking tunnel a moment later, waving me over with his gun. “We need you. Come on.”
They need me?
Me?
This is a first. It also fills me with a flush of happiness. How long have I waited for someone to say that? For me to be important?
“What’s going on?” I ask as I get to my feet and follow behind him. I’m nervous crossing over to the enemy ship, but if the va Sithai brothers are fine with leaving the Little Sister for a bit, I guess I can be, too.
“We found something worth a lot of money,” Adiron tells me, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I’m following. He crosses into the other ship, and steps over destroyed machinery, heading down a narrow hall. I try not to look too hard at the wreckage, afraid of seeing dead bodies. I keep my gaze focused on Adiron’s broad back, letting him lead the way. These were bad guys, I remind myself. They would have killed me.
It doesn’t make it any easier to step over a lump that had once been someone, and I swallow hard. I’m really not cut out for this, but what other options do I have? What’s left for me if not this?
I hear the angry, terrifying growl from somewhere up ahead. It sounds like a wild animal—a very large one, and I worry this is exactly the “expensive” thing that they’ve found. Which makes me wonder…why do they need me? “Um, Adiron?”
“It’s caged. Don’t worry.”