Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
That’s why I was not too unhappy to find myself in the presence of these outlaws. Listening to them has been incredibly instructive, as well as absolutely horrifying. They have recently come into some ore reserves which sound like they’d be valuable. I think those will do us nicely, as a starting point for recouping our time and expenses.
Having put a little distance between myself and the cursing saurians, I start moving through the undergrowth, heading away from the criminals and toward the city. I want to make contact with Sullivan and Raine. I want to let them know what the plan is. And I want to find a way to keep the ship safe now that it’s clear these creatures can see it in spite of the cloaking device. We’re going to have to find a way to operate in plain sight.
I’m thinking we use the docks. There are interstellar vessels moving through that space all the time. It’s possible the Mare could dock and I could board there, right in the heart of the city. I like that plan. It’s bold, but it could work.
Little do I know, I’ve already made a huge mistake. In wasting time thinking about my plans, I’ve taken precious attention off my senses. A flitter of movement at the peripheral of my vision is all the warning I get before I am grabbed.
“SHAN GOT ONE!” A saurian starts yelling at the top of his lungs while carrying me nearly upside down.
Shan, the one who has presumably ‘got’ me, has grabbed me by the suit over my hip. I rotate around that axis as his big alien hand grips me tight and hoists me aloft.
“It’s a female! It’s pretty!”
The saurian cheerleader continues to narrate my capture, while the saurian holding me turns me around in his grip and inspects me, though he doesn’t actually turn me around the right way. He must like the way I’m oriented, or maybe he doesn’t know how humans go.
“My feet go on the ground,” I say, helpfully.
I can’t really make him out in the low light of the night. Yes, there is some illumination from the stars and the fading light of their ill-fated weapon discharge, but it’s the kind of silvery light that washes colors out and gives way to shadow far too easily. What I can tell is that he’s a big, scaled, horned, silhouette of a creature. I also know, from being captured, that he’s strong and agile, and he moves silently like an apex predator when on the hunt.
“Quiet,” he says, his voice low but commanding.
More yelling follows, in a not-at-all quiet way. “Spread out! See if there’s more! They can’t run very fast at all!”
The saurian outlaws start beating the bushes in the hopes they will find more like me. They won’t. I came down here alone, because yeah, we’ve noticed that every time one of us gets on the planet’s surface, we get caught. I really thought I’d be the exception to that rule. Stealth is supposed to be my thing. But I guess hunting is their thing. We keep underestimating them, and that just cost me my freedom.
Wrath, the saurian overlord, comes lumbering over. Shan is still holding me in this undignified position. I feel like a fish having been yanked out of water, breathless, squirming, and afraid. This is bad. This is very, very bad. My entire MO depends on staying undetected. Pretty much all my options disappear the moment I appear.
“What is this?” He asks the question rhetorically, because he knows exactly what I am. I am the very thing he set out to take this evening. I denied him my sisters, but he’s got me in his grip. Or Shan does.
“Saw something moving in the undergrowth,” Shan says. “Picked it up. Wasn’t hard.”
Wrath lets out a snort. “These humans seem to lack survival instincts,” he observes. “Was it you, little human? Did you alert the rest of your friends to the fact we were about to shoot them down?”
It’s hard to answer questions when you’re dangling at an odd angle between two very large, very powerful alien outlaws. I resort to a small shrug, and a response given in an even smaller voice.
“Maybe?”
“Maybe? I think so. I think you have been spying, and I think you will pay for that.”
Up close, I see how scarred and rough Wrath is. He is not particularly old, I think, but he has the gravitas of an older creature in the way he speaks, and the way he holds himself. I am now more concerned about the saurian holding me. I reach up, to try to grab something from one of the many pockets on my suit, but he slaps my ass hard. I yowl at the shock of it, mostly. My suit absorbs the pain, but I still feel the energy of being punished by a stern saurian outlaw.