Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

in height. He was lean, almost to the point of skinny, but there was a lithe musculature to his arms that spoke to some steel about him. His deep green eyes studied her as she looked him over, and a sly smile twisted up one corner of his mouth. He wore a tight white long-sleeved undershirt tucked into black pants with a red stripe running down the side of his leg. A black leather vest completed his outfit, making him look vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t figure out from where.

“So you’re our stowaway, huh?” he asked, not getting up. He slouched almost sideways in the overstuffed chair, with one long leg thrown over an armrest in a pose that looked almost more uncomfortable than relaxed.

“And you’re the captain, I presume?” He’s working awfully hard to make me think he’s calm and relaxed. So why isn’t he?

“Zailés Tinbrak, at your service. Welcome to the Sniper, the fastest hunk of junk in the sector. Only ship to ever make the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. Have a seat.” He waved toward a mound of unfolded laundry that roughly resembled the shape of a chair. “Just push that into the floor. It’s the maid’s day off. Century off, really.”

This is a very odd being. What in known space is a Kessel Run? Bek’ah thought, but did as he said. She took the chair by the back and tilted it to one side, dumping a small mountain of clothes into the floor. “Sorry. I think your clothes may have gotten wrinkled.” She sat and leaned forward in the chair. “I’m sorry for stowing away, but if you’ll let me explain—”

“Are you Bek’ah Greylin?” the captain asked, his eyes locked onto her face, searching for any sign of deception.

She stiffened. “I am. How did you know my name?”

He reached over to a nearby table and picked up a tablet. He tapped the screen and tossed it to her. There was a picture of her face, along with full-body photos of her dressed in street clothes as well as her dancing attire. Underneath her face were the words WANTED FOR THEFT – REWARD. Below that was a number. A very large number. A confusingly large number, given how little revenue she generated for Corvan.

“Seventy-five thousand credit? That’s more than I’d make in ten years working at Dax’s club. Who the Hells is offering seventy-five thousand credit for me?” she asked. Gods, for that kind of money, I’m tempted to turn myself in!

“The Gritloth Trade and Salvage Company,” the captain replied, his eyes never leaving her face. “Seems they don’t like it when their property decides it no longer wants to be property.”

“Well, they can go slag themselves,” Bek’ah growled, anger rising in her throat. “They’re no more salvagers than I am a calico. You know the biggest business the Gritloth engage in is slave trade, don’t you?”

“Oh, I am very well aware what the Gritloth are,” Tinbrak said, and Bek’ah thought she heard something more in his voice than just ordinary disdain for the slave trade. This captain had personal experience with slavers, and that could either be very good for her, or very bad, depending on how well or poorly his last encounter with them went. “And no, I have not sent a message back through the Gate to Tideb telling your old friend Corvan Dax that we found you taking a little cat nap on our catwalk.” He grinned at his own cleverness, and Bek’ah just shook her head.

“Yes, yes, get it all out of your system. But let me warn you, the first racist mention of a litter box and I show you what your entrails look like.” She held up her right hand and extended a half-inch curved claw from each fingertip. “I hate digging skin out from under my nails, so let’s not go there.”

The captain’s smile widened a little, and he nodded. “Fair enough, Greylin. Now, aside from the obvious reasons, why were you running from the Gritloth?”

“Why does anyone?” she replied. “I don’t want to be a slave. I don’t want to be sold to some pervert as an exotic sex toy, or some rich doting kitslag as a cat nanny for his children. I don’t want to be somebody’s interesting bodyguard, and if I dance in a cage for Dax, it’s because he pays me, and I want to, not because somebody thinks he owns me.”

“I can understand that,” the trim man said with a nod. “It doesn’t change the fact that you snuck on board my ship without permission, and it doesn’t change the fact that you’re worth seventy-five thousand credit. That’s a lot of incentive to turn you over, my moral objections to the contrary. But I still have to ask, why so much? That’s a lot more than the going rate for a pleasure slave, and even a highly-trained bodyguard would cost less than half that. What is it about you that makes you worth that much money?”

Bek’ah looked him in his emerald eyes. “Honestly, Captain, I have no idea. I wasn’t even the prettiest girl dancing at Corvan’s place. I’d been there the longest, but I don’t bring in crowds. I don’t sell more drinks. I just dance in a suspended cage for four hours three out of every five nights.”

“Maybe I can shed some light on that, Captain,” said a bespectacled human woman who entered the captain’s quarters with a tablet in her hand. She wore a white lab coat and had long red hair pulled back into a bun with pencils holding it in place. Bek’ah always wondered at the strange stylings of species that only had hair on certain parts of their bodies. It was a little unnerving, all that exposed flesh with nothing but clothes to protect it.

“What did you find, Doctor Skarper?” the captain asked, straightening up in his chair.

The doctor didn’t slow down, just made a straight line for the buried desk, shoved an armful of clothing and