Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
7
Lyssa
I wake to another day of captivity. My world has become this rank interior, a tiny cathedral of bones. My captor roams this space and the depths beyond, lording his triumph over me. The pain of his rough punishment has slightly faded, but the shame and misery remains. I must truly be the most wretched creature in all the…
“Oh. Soup!”
I do like the pumpkin soup he makes. It’s rich and comforting, and it settles my nerves, which always burst into full effect whenever Manik is close. It’s not that I fear him. He isn’t trying to hurt me. He is keeping me safe. A little too safe for my liking.
“Your ship has stopped firing on me,” he says. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He checks his scanners and turns back to me, much less pleased than he was a moment or two ago. Manik’s facial anatomy is not consistent. He has bony cartilage that is moved by muscles to allow him to appear scary, terrifying, or holy fucking shit. Right now he’s transitioning from scary to terrifying.
“Your ship has also left orbit. Where did you send it?”
“Nowhere,” I say, expecting he won’t believe me.
“I don’t believe you.”
I am really starting to get a greater understanding of this guy.
“I told her to stop taking shots at you and do what I said. Now she’s gone. It is what it is.”
“You think your ship abandoned you? I have told you time and time again, machines do not have minds of their own. They act according to the will of the owner.”
“Not my ship.”
He turns to me, his hands on his hips and a long-suffering expression of barely retained patience.
“If your ship is gone, then it was never your ship. Tell me where you bought it. Exactly where you bought it.”
“I got it as part of a deal when I signed up for my bounty hunting credentials. There was a special. A bounty hunting token entitling me to take bounties, and a ship, all for a hundred thousand credits. It was being sold by a hunter who wanted to get out of the business. It was a really good deal.”
“A bounty hunting license is non-transferrable,” he says. “And the ship is obviously being controlled by a third party. Did you really claim two bounties before coming here?”
“Uhm. Well.”
“No.” He sighs. “You rebounded from a broken relationship into a bad deal with a shady character. I can imagine I know precisely who is behind this.”
“Reginald the Terrible.”
“Reginald the Terrible.”
We say the name at the same time.
He palms his face, as if he cannot believe I fell for this scam.
“I didn’t really think he was terrible. He gave me a really good deal,” I explain.
“He took your money and sent you to die.”
“That’s another way of looking at it.”
I bite my lower lip and try to put all the pieces of this clusterfuck together. “So that means those two who came earlier, they weren’t here to save me?”
“No,” he sighs. “I have told you this before.”
“But the insignia…”
“Yes, elite bounty hunters sometimes try their luck here. They always fail. It had nothing to do with you. The reason I saved you is you clearly didn’t know what you were doing. You were lost and you were hurt and now it is obvious that you were taken advantage of in too many ways to count.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. If the ship wasn’t mine, why did she stay and take pot shots at you until I annoyed her?”
“I don’t know. I won’t pretend to understand whatever twisted relationship you had with your ship. But I can tell you that you are as much a bounty hunter as I am a pretty ballerina.”
Well, fuck.
The guy was really convincing. He had all the paperwork.
“I signed things,” I frown, puzzling. “It seemed very official.”
“I’m sure it did. Reginald stops at nothing when it comes to scamming fools out of their coin.”
“I did… I did think it was a little odd I didn’t have to do any testing or anything, but I thought…” I don’t even know what the fuck I was thinking. I was thinking it was the quickest way to leave a miserable life of memories behind. And I was thinking I’d get to bring someone to justice, that there would be some fucking fairness in this universe after all.
“You’re not the first, and you will not be the last,” he says. “Do not feel bad. He has scammed better and brighter than you. He was part of the coup on my planet. Reginald has his fingers in every pie of interstellar chaos.”
“Oh. Right. I won’t feel bad then because I’m stupid so of course I got scammed.”
He looks at me. “I said brighter. Or were you laboring under the delusion you were the universe’s most intelligent creature?”
“Well, no.”
“Don’t look to take offense from my words when I am attempting to comfort you.”