Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
The website takes a moment to think about my answers, a circular cursor whirling on my screen for a maddening length of time.
PASSWORD INCORRECT
CHANGE PASSWORD
I let out a very nasty swear word and only barely stop myself from throwing the tablet on the floor and stamping on it. Repeating the process works, but I can see on the ridge of the horizon, another raiding party is starting to swarm. Some of them seem likely to make it through my increasingly porous defenses.
I’m in.
WELCOME TO THE INTERGALACTIC AUCTION HOUSE. BUY AND SELL ANYTHING, INCLUDING YOURSELF!
This is not legal in a lot of worlds, but this world is my world, and I say that it is okay here. There are two options now, two broad categories to choose from.
BUYERS
SELLERS
My cat, Buttface, darts across the keyboard in a ginger streak and knocks a glass of water onto the floor. I curse, but when I turn around, there’s a form ready and waiting for me to fill in. When I glance over the screen, I see that the Growlers are really starting to make some headway in destroying the crops I harvested last spring and had set out to dry, devouring my precious food supplies. If they don’t kill me, I will end up starving.
I put my details in as fast as possible, price I’m willing to pay, all that good stuff.
YOU WILL BE INFORMED AS TO THE RESULTS OF THE AUCTION WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. BE PREPARED TO RENDEZVOUS FOR DELIVERY.
Alright. Twenty-four hours, and I’ll have a big, mean alien here to help me.
“I own a farm,” I tell Azlan. “My family has been farming an asteroid for several generations, way back from when my great, great, great grandmother left Illinois, which is a place on Earth, or was, before, well, the events happened. Anyway, that farm is being invaded by Growlers, and I’m the last of my family’s line, so there’s nobody to help me slay them, unless you count Buttface. I’m outnumbered.”
Azlan listens to me, folding his big, furred arms over his chest. Each of those muscular limbs is thicker than my entire body. He is so much larger than any single entity I have ever been in contact with before. Now I am standing in front of him, I do wonder what I was thinking. How am I going to control him? He could snap me in two if he wished.
“So you need someone prepared to destroy a horde of invading Growlers.”
“Yes.”
He gives a curt nod, as if that’s nothing to him. “Let’s go.”
“Really?”
I can barely believe he’s agreed to this so readily.
“Under one condition,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“You understand that I own you.”
I think about that for all of a second. I should probably devote more time than that, but I am in a hurry, both to get out of this illegal slave trading haunt and to get back to my family farm which could very well be in ashes by now.
“Sure. Whatever. My ship is this way.”
“So is mine,” he says.
We start to walk back toward the harbor and the docks, where all the ships belonging to customers are berthed. I did not pay too much attention to the other vessels when I arrived. I was far too nervous about obtaining my alien.
“Are we going to take separate ships? I suppose we could.” I’m babbling, really, very nervous about the potential outcomes of this strange alliance. I thought this would be a more formal arrangement. I thought I’d feel in control. I don’t feel in control. It’s literally impossible to feel like I am in control when in Azlan’s presence. He has an easy majesty and aura, a certain bearing that makes me feel every inch the flat-footed primate descendant I am.
“We’re not going to take separate ships. We will take mine, and I will put yours in my tractor bay.”
I have to wonder how big his ship is for him to make that assertion so confidently. I might be able to tow another vessel, but I don’t have a tractor bay. That’s a high spec feature, and nothing about my ship, or me, is high spec.
“This is me,” he says, stopping in front of the biggest ship in the docks. This isn’t the sort of place that attracts cargo transports or military ships. This is a place where people dock fast ships with getaway capacity. Most of the craft here are either old bangers like mine, or super sleek speeder-type craft, the kind that can cover a light year in the time it takes to sneeze. They’re all clad in radar rejecting material, so they shimmer and shine with faint outlines, just barely visible to the naked eye.
Azlan’s ship is like none of those ships. It is an incredibly large and interestingly angular golden craft, sitting proud in the harbor with a nonchalance that belies its majesty. Everybody knows space craft have to be mostly smooth in order to not have bits break off during atmospheric entry and exit, but somehow his has a great Leonid figurehead on what I am going to imagine their ship builders probably call the prow. It’s a ship that speaks to wealth, power, and incredible ostentatiousness.