Page 23 of Survivor
Larcen had stepped away, a finger pressed to the spot behind his right ear as he rattled off what I assumed was a food order.
I looked to Jaron. “I don’t get it. You guys are pirates, right?”
Jaron’s mouth turned down. “Most of the time.”
“We take a sabbatical for the gauntlet,” Larcen said. “A month of respite from pillaging. This here is our port.”
“Braker isn’t retired?”
Jaron snorted. “Like hell. You don’t retire from the business. You live it, and then you die in it.”
“And are all pirates like you?”
Jaron grinned. “Handsome and sexy?”
I arched a brow. “No, cybornex.”
His face fell. “No. Just us. We’re the last of our kind. The rest of the crew are an eclectic bunch.”
So, they pillaged and then spent a month encouraging people to fight. “I don’t get it. He ordered a hit on my guys … To protect me? Why? Why does he care?”
There was a deep silence which red-eye broke with a ragged sigh. “Elena. That was her name. A one-percenter like you. Trads dumped her on a mining asteroid, just fucking abandoned her like trash. The asteroid wasn’t even manned by living creatures. Machines mined the ore and shipped it out. If we hadn’t landed there to liberate some of the ore, she’d have perished.”
“Fucking feisty, she was,” Jaron said.
“Braker lost his heart to her,” Larcen continued. “Elena was good for him. She was one of us. And then she was gone.”
Elena … a one-percenter, like me? “What happened?”
“We stopped off at a spaceport to grab supplies,” Jaron said. “Elena liked to cook, strange dishes from Earth. She had the damn kitchens in the main ship kitted out to her liking.”
“That stuff she made, the stew …” Red-eye shook his head with a fond smile on his face.
“Delicious,” Larcen agreed.
Jaron cleared his throat. “Anyway, we left her with her spice list. We were supposed to meet back at the docks, and she didn’t show.”
“Snitches picked her up.” Larcen’s tone was bitter.
“We had no idea why,” Jaron said. “No idea Athions would want an infertile female abandoned by the Trads. But they did.”
Red-eye picked up the story. “Braker went nuts. He pulled all the strings to get communication with the Athion government, even offered his service to get her back.” His lip curled. “They turned him down. So, we infiltrated. But we were too late.”
My hand flew to my mouth because I knew what was coming.
“We found samples of blood, hair, and a video chip containing her final moments. She was emaciated. Skeletal. Strange sores covered her body and her hair … she was gone. A month and they’d turned her into the living fucking dead. Braker watched them euthanize her on the video clip.”
My eyes burned, and I blinked back tears. “They used her and killed her.”
“Yeah, and that’s exactly what they’ll do to you if they get their hands on you,” Larcen said. “So, you better be sure about your guys.”
Poor Elena. And this was what had been in store for me if the guys hadn’t changed their minds, if we hadn’t connected the way we had.
I took a shuddering breath. “I am. I’m sure. We just need a ship, that’s all.”
The lift opened, and Tide stepped in. “Rogue.”
I rushed toward him, and he wrapped me in his arms. “I’m okay.”
