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)
“The place is a mess,” Cadence says. “Since the captains were taken, we haven’t been able to decide on a roster. So it’s just sort of… like this now.”
There is something rueful and perhaps a little guilty in her tone. These girls know better. They know their ship should be tidy, but much like Lettie who came to the planet’s surface in order to find someone to tell her what to do, the rest of the crew seems to be in a similar state. The more I see on this ship, the more obvious it becomes that they are screaming to be taken in hand.
“This place looks like the aftermath of twenty-one twenty-firsts,” Lettie exclaims as we step onto the bridge.
I do not understand the reference she is making, but if she means it is filthy, then that is what it is. Much of the instrumentation and seating is covered in bits of things. I cannot tell what the bits of the things are, because they are unfamiliar to me and also most of them seem to be broken.
Sasha walks up to one of the consoles and clears it off with a sweep of her arm. Miscellaneous items clatter to the floor, joining their ilk.
“Here,” she says, jabbing a button. “Listen to this.”
“We cannot have hybrids on the planet,” Thorn’s voice fills the air. “They’re abominations.”
“But you have a human mate?” Avel takes his turn to speak.
“I have a human mate who will not lay. I ensured that with the doctor. She has implants to ensure she remains infertile. I love my mate, but I love this world more. I love our species more. Hybrids could outbreed native saurians within generations. This is not about wanting to harm anyone. This is about wanting to safeguard the saurian world and the saurian way.”
“But Shan’s baby…”
“Don’t call it a baby. It is a problem, and like all problems, it will be eliminated. Shan has outlived his usefulness, if he was ever useful at all. Do not forget, our vault was plundered on his watch. He has allowed Wrath’s network to grow beneath my nose, and…”
“He may not have been privy to the vault raid.”
“He should have been. That was his job. His only job. I wanted him to be my eyes and ears inside Wrath’s world. Instead, he has become even more renegade, rejected from the outlaws and now breeding in the wild like some escaped pet. You know what we have to do, Avel.”
Sasha stabs the button again. “That’s why we came. It sounded baby murder-ey, and though we don’t really like babies, we draw the line at…”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Lettie hisses.
She is trembling with pale rage, her eyes lit with malevolence.
“He thinks he has the right to threaten me, and my mate, and my child? He will regret the day he first crawled out of his egg,” she says. “This is… I will never… no.” She hands me the baby and wades through the accumulated trash covering the floor of the bridge to reach a chair in the very center. It is very obviously located in a command position. Much like Sasha, she sweeps the bits and pieces covering it onto the floor, then stands up on the seat, drawing herself up to her full height.
“I want everybody in here,” she says. “Everybody. Now.”
Sasha shrugs and hits another button. “Uhhh, can everyone come to the bridge, please? I think Lettie wants to say hi and probably show her baby off. It’s okay. For a baby.”
Lettie glares at Sasha, but says nothing. Over the next few minutes, there’s a slow trickle of a rag-tag bunch of pirates into the bridge. By the time they have all arrived, there’s perhaps a dozen in total. They seem curious as to what is going on. Some of them glance at me and the baby, but I do not seem to register as a threat to them. Perhaps because even a ten foot tall saurian with eyes as black as midnight is not very intimidating while holding a squirming, giggling baby who wants to be let down to play in the garbage.
“Thank you for coming for me,” Lettie says. “I know that must have been a hard decision.”
“Actually, we didn’t tell anyone,” Cadence says. “We just did it.”
“Well,” Lettie says. “Thank you anyway. I have something to say. I’ve spent months down on that planet. I was captured. I was made a possession. I was used. I was bred like an animal.”
A dozen eyes turn on me. The baby squeals and claps her hands.
“Shan is my mate,” Lettie says. “Not that I had a choice in the matter. He took my body and he used it for his pleasure and for the purpose of procreation.”
It occurs to me that this may not be going very well for me. I can feel anger rising in the room as a dozen unstable female pirates start to look at me as if sizing me up for a saurian hide handbag.