Page 56 of Havik: Warlord Brides
“He doesn’t like you,” Naston said.
“I get the impression that he doesn’t like anyone.”
He blinked, a slow grin spreading on his face. Up close, his lavender complexion appeared washed out. The harsh lighting showed every scratch and smudges of oil on the decorative horn caps. His teeth were brown, and his breath had the yeasty smell of beer. Delightful. Drinking on the job.
She filed that nugget of intel away. Another advantage of being the invisible cleaning person was she saw all the crew’s bad habits. They might put up a good front with the captain around, but she saw their true natures. Every one of them was a selfish, conniving bastard who would slit the other’s throats if there was profit to be made.
“Oh,” she said, not able to keep her sudden revelation to herself. “Someone already knew about your allergy. It wasn’t an accident.”
She hadn’t saved his life. She interrupted his murder.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get her before she gets me,” he said.
There was only one other “her” on board: the captain. Thalia should not have been surprised. Sue bragged about murdering the old captain to gain the ship. What did Sue gain from Naston’s death? Insurance money, or just the satisfaction of taking a life?
Thalia misunderstood the situation at the bar. What else did she misunderstand since coming aboard?
Desperately needing a distraction, she rattled the mop in her bucket. “The mess?”
He blinked again, pulling the utility knife away. “The automatic cleaning system broke this week. You’ll have to haul in the water in buckets. I hope you don’t mind shit,” he said with a giggle.
Naston brought her to the one door she could never open. He pressed his palm to a scanner, and the door slid open to the cargo hold.
The stench of urine made her eyes water. She coughed, covering her mouth with a handkerchief. “What the hell? Did the sewage treatment tank leak?”
Naston tossed her a mask with a small filter. “Don’t open the cages. Hose the animals down. Mop up the floor. Refuse goes down the drain. Simple enough for a Terran.”
Cages stacked on top of each other lined the cargo hold, arranged around a large drain in the middle of the floor. Alien animals she did not recognize screeched and cried and growled and called to each other. One cage held a flock of bird-like creatures that bounced from branch to branch, the talons of their back legs gripping the wooden dowels. Their front paws moved from their mouths to their round ears as they cleaned themselves. Green with white bellies, their wings fluttered. They were lovely, and it made Thalia sad that the floor of their cage was a thick layer of empty seed husks and shit.
Not in a cage but chained to a wall, an animal the size of a moose stamped its feet. Tawny with a black mane and tail, black stripes decorated its neck. A thick black stripe ran down the length of its face. She recognized it from a documentary about endangered animals she watched with Havik. Turns out Danger B loved animals, the scarier, the better.
Looking over the cargo hold again, she recognized more endangered animals from the same documentary, like the smugglers used the film as a shopping list.
Endangered animals.
That they were bringing to auction.
Fuck.
Her stomach turned from more than the stench.
Thalia approached slowly. From this distance, she could see its coat caked with mud—probably shit but she was going to call it mud—and blood. The shackles on a hoof had rubbed the skin raw.
It reared back to lash out with a hoof, but the chain jerked back, obviously programmed to snap back if the animal pulled too much. With a squeal, the animal fell to the ground.
The sound made her heart hurt. She wasn’t sure how she could get close, but she had to help the poor thing.
With her attention focused on the large animal thrashing on the ground, a paw reached out from the cage closest to her and grabbed onto the pant leg of her flight suit.
Thalia jumped, knocking the paw away. “I’m so sorry! Are you hurt?”
She crouched down, only to find that the animal had retreated to a far corner. She coughed again at the unbelievably bad smell of ammonia. Had the cages even been cleaned? How long had the animals been kept like this?
She had no idea what to do. Opening the cages was not only dangerous, but pointless. The animals would still be contained in the ship, heading toward the auction. Any chaos or confusion that resulted would give the mean-tempered crew a reason to kill the animals.
Thalia immediately rejected the idea. Maybe she could sneak in and free the animals when they reached the auction. No, the result would be more of the same. She needed to alter the course, to return the ship to the planet from where the animals had been stolen.
Except she didn’t know where that was.
