Page 3 of Saved By the Alien Mercenary

Chapter 3

Brace

My room was in shambles, and I had no recollection of doing it. I was the only one with access, so it had to have been me, though. Not even the captain could enter my room without my permission—a concession he’d made for me and me alone. Shame filled me when I took in the damage I’d done. My mattress was shredded, blankets torn, and any furniture not made of metal was in splinters. The lone metal chair in my room had survived most of the carnage, but the back was twisted from my fists—a clear set of handprints visible where I’d gripped it.

I must have made a terrible ruckus, causing all this damage, so it did not surprise me when a knock came on my door. The quick, perfunctory rapping of a set of knuckles was as familiar as the destruction I’d wreaked on my furniture. I did not want to face my captain, but it was the one promise I’d made when he agreed to let me live aboard the Varakartoom. No hiding, not from him. Everyone else, sure, but not him. As he was easily forty feet long, his powerful Naga body covered in extremely tough scales, I’d felt safe agreeing to that. Even a fully fed Hoxiam would have a hard time harming a target like that.

My knuckles were bleeding, but that was the only sign of the damage I’d done. They ached, and I savored that pain as I stepped over the broken table and reached for the panel next to the door. The lights dimmed at my command, hiding some of the carnage, though I doubted the sharp-eyed Naga would miss a thing. I hated what I’d done, I wasn’t even sure what had set me off, but I was finally calm. More settled inside my pelt than I had been in days, ever since we’d started harrying ships and pirating Jalima’s cargo.

Pressing my back against the wall next to the door, I allowed it to slide open. Nobody could see me from the hallway, and I knew Asmoded would enter before he spoke. This was our ritual by now. I wondered who’d clued him in on my rage-inspired tantrum. Had the females in the mess hall heard? Had I scared them?

Asmoded slithered into my room quietly. His scales made no sound against the metal floor, his long body coiling over the debris without any problem. The door slid shut behind him, giving us complete privacy, but I did not move from my spot against the wall. Asmoded was tall, and he could rise on his tail to make himself even bigger, but I towered over him right now. I didn’t want to give him the slightest reason to think I would attack him. At that moment, there was no fight in me at all.

In the middle of the room, the captain twisted to look around. His expression was neutral—it always was—but I still felt it as disapproval. I’d messed up. I’d failed to control the rage, and it was getting worse. I’d already wrecked another batch of furniture a few days ago. This was his second visit in a week. Normally, I was the one who sought him out for a midnight talk. I wasn’t used to all this upheaval and company. Starting with Elyssa, incited by the confrontations with Jalima’s ship, and ending with the news of a pregnant human’s involvement—it was chaos. I couldn’t explain why that had been a trigger, but I felt rage begin to pound through my veins anew, just thinking about her.

Drawing in a deep breath, I clenched my fists and focused on the pain in my knuckles. When Asmoded spoke, I was ready for him. “I don’t know why, but it’s getting worse. Nearest inhabitable ice planet, you need to drop me off. I can’t keep doing this.” On the ice, I could sink into my base instincts, just be the beast and not worry about any casualties. It was the only option.

“No,” he said firmly. We’d had this discussion a million times before, and his answer was always the same. Always, I’d agreed to stay a little longer, but I knew I wouldn’t let him convince me this time.“This is because of Jalima. Any nearness to his males and his operations sets you off. It sets me off. I get it.” He didn’t get it. He was angry at the crime lord because, for the longest time, he’d believed the male had killed his mate and unborn child. He’d learned that was a lie and had been reunited with his son.

What I’d suffered at the hands of that bastard—including the loss of my entire family—had tainted my youth and given me this rage. It had forced me to be more beast than man. It was not the same. Asmoded was a male with a brain, always cool and calculating, a male with a plan. He could think of the long game, and he excelled at patience. We were nothing alike.

“I am leaving,” I said again, sweeping out my injured, swelling hand to indicate the damage I’d done to everything I could get my hands on. “I will not keep doing this. It’s too dangerous to the crew, especially now that there are females aboard—civilians.” I knew that was a powerful argument, pointing out the threat I posed to his own mate.

With a weary sigh, Asmoded caught my waving hand by looping the tip of his tail around my wrist. I growled, the fur along my shoulders rising in aggression before I could curb the urge to do violence. We’d done this dance before, and I held still as he pulled the tissue regenerator he’d brought out from a pouch at his waist. The device hummed quietly, emitting healing light as he ran it over my split knuckles. I must have broken some bones, too, because he was at it for quite a while. He did not need to tell me to offer the other hand when he was done.

He stroked the fur along my knuckles, exposing a particularly nasty cut on that hand. “You know you’re wrong,” he said, the device humming again as he began to heal the wound. “You went out on a blazing mission a few weeks ago, Brace. You went out to rescue Tass for your friend, and you were perfectly in control the entire time. You are not a danger to anyone; I don’t believe that for a minute.”

Baring my teeth, I opened my mouth to protest, but he raised a hand, and I fell silent. “The only one you are a danger to is yourself. If you would just agree to see Dravion, I am certain he could help you.” Drugs. He was talking about mind-altering medication to subdue my rage. I refused. That would only last as long as I took the pills or whatever it was that Dravion had in mind. It would involve exposing myself to a medical professional, letting him see all the scars and wounds beneath my pelt. The only place that was still all mine was the thoughts inside my head, and the empathic half-Gnorlarnx was not getting his tentacles in it.

“You overheard Mandy and the other females talking, didn’t you?” Asmoded continued mildly. He wasn’t looking at me, just finishing up the heal job on my hand, his movements brisk and impersonal. I liked it that way, I didn’t need any coddling. I always appreciated how direct the captain was when he spoke to me, no fear. That made me feel more in control, too.

I nodded because it was true. Hearing the females talk about the human they had retrieved from this latest ship of Jalima’s was what had set me off. I recalled it much more clearly now, but I’d already been struggling all morning.

“You’ll be happy to know that she is unharmed, as is her unborn young. And I doubt Jalima even knows of her existence; she is not involved.” I wasn’t quite sure why those were the words he left me with. I didn’t know why he thought I cared about some unknown pregnant female I’d never met—and would never meet.

“Next ice planet, we’ll talk,” and then he was gone.

***

Ruby

Sitting on the soft bunk bed inside the small private quarters, I tried to adjust my thinking to the new situation. I was not a prisoner, apparently, but I also wasn’t free to return to the Finix. In my book, that made me a captive anyway. If I wasn’t suspected of having dealings with Jalima—according to these mercenaries—why were they keeping me here?

The four women had treated me well, though. They’d taken me to the doctor aboard the ship for a quick medical check-up, and I’d been assured that my baby was in good health and growing at normal rates. He felt big to me, and what had seemed like little flutters I could mistake for gas had begun to morph into definite kicks. I was elated about that part. He was a strong boy, and feeling him move made it real. It made me feel less alone.

“I guess I need to start thinking about a name for you, little one,” I murmured out loud. That made my mind flash to the male I was certain was the father. A Kertinal I’d picked up in a bar at the Yengar Station in a moment of weakness. I hadn’t sought him out with the intention of getting pregnant; I had not thought that far ahead. The only reason I’d gone to the bar in the first place was because I’d been lonely. He’d seen through my disguise and hadn’t ratted me out. Out of everyone there, he’d been shockingly intelligent and educated—speaking thoughtfully, and handsome, with his amethyst eyes and the purple lines that crisscrossed his black skin. I’d even enjoyed the proud jut of his horns and had discarded the warning signals on them: the notches carved into the sides that indicated kills. He’d had a dozen of them.

A one-night stand and a few weeks later, I was hanging over the edge of my toilet, puking out my guts. I knew what a huge risk I was taking by keeping a child whose father I didn’t even know beyond that single night. Worse, I’d picked him up from a bar on a spaceport known for its lawlessness and criminal activity. Yengar Spaceport was the place to be for slave auctions, and I’d taken a stupid risk going out there with a cloak as a disguise and little else. My baby’s father hadn’t turned me in, but there was no doubting the fact that he was a crook himself.

My stomach rumbled, and though I was well past my first trimester, a wave of nausea followed. From the start of the pregnancy, the nausea had only hit me at night. Morning sickness my ass, I felt right as rain most of the day. Until I lay down to sleep, and nothing so far had made that go away. I hoped it was a side effect of the baby having mixed parentage, but I couldn’t be sure. The doctor on the Varakartoom was the first one I’d seen, and he had no answers for me. I was his first Kertinal/human pregnancy, so all he had to go on were my readings.

I suppose it was no surprise that a doctor from a mercenary outfit had no clue. He probably hadn’t assisted in a single birth—and had no desire to do so, either. There was a reason he worked for mercenaries. Yeah, there really was. The male had been half Grolarnx—a most fearful combination. I hadn’t even known that the dangerous, feared species was capable of producing half-breeds like that. I had only trusted the doctor as much as I had because his other half was Aderian, and those were universally considered the best doctors in the Zeta Quadrant. Not only that, Aderians were gifted with empathy; they hated violence of any kind.

When the baby gave me another firm kick, the nauseating feeling in my stomach escalated. I was close to puking and hurriedly stumbled into my private lavatory. A luxury I didn’t have aboard my own freaking ship, where I had to share the head with my two crew members. Once I was done, I washed my face with cold water and rinsed my mouth thoroughly.

“Fine, I got the message. I’ll hunt down some food for us,” I said to the still-kicking baby inside my belly. He was as restless as I was, but was he always that way in the evening and I’d just never felt it before? My words seemed to quiet him down at last, or maybe he’d just exhausted himself with that little tap dance.

My quarters opened quietly and without a problem, proving that the crew’s welcoming committee hadn’t lied: I was free to move about on the ship. They had placed me in quarters right next to the mess hall, so I’d only have to turn the corner to find them. Good thing, because this ship was a maze, and every single hallway looked exactly the same. Everything was black and gloomy, and only the number of doorways varied from hallway to hallway. I didn’t think I’d ever manage to find my way around here, and it was so freaking huge, too. The Finix only had two narrow hallways and the pathways above the hold to check on the cargo. There was no way you could get lost on my cargo ship, even if it was the same size as this Battle-Class Cruiser.