Chapter 5CamilaBerus

Chapter 5

Camila

Camila stayed quiet as the crew congratulated Roxy and Ckzarr on their mating. It seemed most on board had seen it coming and it had only been a matter of time before the two of them got together.

When the fight broke out, Cami had panicked. They were guests on the ship, and she was worried Rehden's action—picking a fight with one of the crew—would end up with both of them being sent out the airlock. Her goal to Survive Another Day would be super fucked if that happened.

That fear had been the sole thing driving her to get in between two angry Talleans, even though she'd never done anything like that before. Her actions had shocked her. Maybe it was being around Roxy, and the other humans, like Dex.

She was sure Ulrek was the type of captain who ran a tight ship and felt very lucky they'd only gotten a few strong words. She was just glad Ulrek hadn't blamed her for the fight.

A shrill alarm from the ship's system had Camila's body tensing up. With everything that had happened in the last few days, her nerves were already frayed, and she wasn't sure she could handle another emergency. Her eyes darted around for a place to run and hide.

Had the bounty hunters caught up with them? Were they being forcefully boarded?

One of the human men whose name she hadn't gotten yet checked his comm unit and announced that they had several severed connections on the ship. He'd gotten an alert for one earlier and had been going to check it out when the fight had distracted him. The ship was now freaking out because more severed wires had been detected.

Cami's imagination immediately pictured the ship failing while she was on it. Not good.

Ulrek sent one of his crew to check on Rehden in his room and ordered the man who'd just spoken to find the problem and fix it.

Roxy must've noticed how stressed Camila was. She turned to her and said, "Don't worry. Everything will work out. It's probably a false alarm. Why don't I get you settled in?"

Cami followed the other woman to her room.

"You never told me you worked for Ulrek of the Stellar Fortune ," Cami said when they were alone, trying her hardest to keep her tone of voice conversational and not accusatory.

" Formerly of the Stellar Fortune ," Roxy clarified. "He is no longer Dominion. And this is the Revenge . Well, on paper, it's the New Horizon , but it's been the Revenge for so long that we all still call it that." Roxy sent her a look that begged her to understand. "Not a lot of people know this, but Ulrek's a changed man these days. He's been helping the outer planets stay out of the Dominion's clutches for the past two years. I've seen it personally. We've intercepted multiple slave ships and freed the captives on board. We've disrupted arms deals and even raided ships with human breeders."

Cami had heard of Dominion-owned facilities where they bred human slaves to be more subservient. Her previous owner had threatened to sell any misbehaving female to such a facility. To hear proof of their existence didn't surprise her. What did surprise her was the reverent way that Roxy spoke of Ulrek.

Had the monster who'd taken so many humans from Earth really turned over a new leaf and helped free other captives? And was it perhaps because of this mate of his?

"We usually bring the humans we find to Reka 5," Roxy finished.

Cami brightened at that. She'd heard of that colony. Every slave had.

Reka 5 was a mixed colony of humans and Talleans, most of whom had been escapees once. She wondered if the ship could take her there instead of dropping her off at New Rhea with Rehden.

"As long as you're on board, Rehden can't make you do anything against your will," Roxy said slowly and carefully, as if reading her thoughts. "We'll space the fucker if he tries. And you don't have to leave the ship when we get to New Rhea if you don't want to. You can stay on board. Ulrek meant what he said: as long as you're on his ship, it's his rules. Those words weren't intended just for Rehden; they were for you, too."

Cami nodded, letting the implications sink in. This was it. Her big chance at freedom. The one she'd risked life and limb for.

"But what would I do after?" Cami wasn't like Roxy. She couldn't face down alien pirates and bounty hunters. She couldn't shoot a blaster, or man a ship's guns. She didn't have any useful skills for a spaceship at all. She'd been a data entry clerk by day and a stripper by night. There wasn't anything she could do to help unless they had a lot of data to input really quickly.

Roxy shrugged. "We'd drop you off at Reka 5, and they'd get you set up as a new colonist there. If that's what you want."

Cami's eyes lit up. "You'd do that?"

"Of course!" Roxy's smile was genuine.

"Then—yes," Cami decided. "That's what I want."

Berus

Berus stared as Gavin, their human mechanic, handed an adorable, furry creature about the size of a dragus runt over to Roxy. When had that thing snuck on board? And why wasn't Gavin investigating all the disconnected wires that had the ship's alarm blaring earlier?

Roxy had called everyone for an ad hoc crew meeting. Usually these meetings were held in the common room, but she'd requested they meet on the bridge instead. She had a serious look on her face that was a little at odds with her mussed up hair, which looked like Ckzarr had recently had his way with her.

He most likely had.

"I need a favor from everyone," she said.

"What is it? Speak." Ulrek was never one to waste time.

"I need your help to get Cami to Reka 5 safely, without Rehden on her heels. She was free of him when Ckzarr and I met her, and I don't think it's fair that she should get stuck with him again. I promised to get her to Reka 5, and I'm doing it one way or another, even if I have to fly her there myself."

Berus was sure Roxy meant it. She was the get-stuff-done type and wouldn't hesitate to take one of their shuttles and get the other human there herself once they were close enough.

"Oh, there's no need for that," Dex said. "I'm willing to help. That asshole treats her like shit. Do you notice how her entire body language changes the second he walks into the room? I bet he's responsible for every bruise and scar on her body."

Berus gritted his teeth at the mental image of that waste of space touching the little human female with soft brown eyes and silky, fluffy hair. "I do not think he will let her go easily," he observed.

"He will not," Ulrek agreed. "Not given the possessiveness he's displayed toward her already."

"We could just—how do you humans put it— space him," Berus suggested.

The males present, human and Tallean alike, all murmured their assent, except for Emil, who said it was too barbaric. The females agreed with him.

"I can offer to buy her from him," Ulrek said.

"I doubt he'd be willing to sell." Berus said, scowling. "I looked up what I could on him. They have him pinned for a large shipment of missing weapons. He claims he's innocent but ran off before the trial, liquidating most of his assets to fund his escape. If he was willing to sell her, he would've done so already."

"Okay, then why don't we just force him off the ship at New Rhea and then take off with Cami still on board?" Roxy asked.

"We need to stay in New Rhea long enough to get supplies for our med beds," Tahra said. "You all keep getting injured, and those things don't run on air."

"That ass will cause shit for us in port for sure," Dex said sourly. "I say we waste him before he causes trouble. He might have left the Dominion, but he still reeks like Dominion scum to me."

"I should mention…Cami doesn't actually belong to him," Tahra said cautiously. She held her hand out. "I know, I know. Medic/patient confidentiality and all that human shit, but I'm not human, and you should know. Cami has an identifier chip. I decided it was best not to remove it until we got somewhere safe like Reka 5. It still lists a merchant named Uctarr as her owner."

"That's the one who lost the arms shipment," Berus said. "I remember the name from the report." It angered him that Cami had a chip listing her as this merchant's property.

"So Rehden can't strong-arm us with the law of ownership," Roxy said. "If he tried, the chip would show that she belongs to someone else, and he's just as guilty. That's great!"

"We can trick him, pretending we're going to release Cami, until he's off the ship," Dex said. "Then we yank Cami back and shut the door in his face."

"And if he doesn't leave, I'll make him," Berus said, liking the idea of having an excuse to give him a reason to run.

Ulrek looked at his mate, who was nodding fervently. He sighed, "All right, it's a plan. But we'll need to call in a favor from my contact at the port. He knows who we are, and those bounty hunters are still on our tail."

"And I'll contact the vendor for the med bay supplies to put our order together ahead of time so we can grab it quickly," Tahra said.

"I want someone watching Rehden at all times on the ship. And one of you females need to let Cami in on our plans so she's ready if we run into any trouble."

And so it was agreed: they would separate Cami from Rehden at their next stop on New Rhea before taking her to Reka 5. Berus wasn't sure he wanted to drop her off there at all.

He eyed the furry creature in Roxy's arms again curiously. "Since no one else is asking," Berus said, "I will. What is that?"

The creature bared its teeth, surprising Berus with its prominent fangs and sharp teeth. The creature was cute, but those teeth looked killer.

Roxy grinned at them and then held the cute creature up in the air. "This is Nibbles. According to the handwritten notes we found on the planet, the miners called them Tunnel Verlaks. Ckzarr and I befriended this one in the mining tunnels. We know it's a carnivore, and that it gets really big and scary. That's about it."

Big and Scary? That thing? Berus kept his serious doubts to himself.

"We suspect it came in on Vhast's shuttle," Ckzarr added. "He landed near the mining station and led a few of the bounty hunters around on foot. When they set the building on fire, Nibbles probably ran out to look for cover and ducked into his shuttle."

"We're going to need to order more meat or keep some tepins around to feed it until we can return him home," Roxy said.

"Whoa. Does that mean we'll be coming back to this sector of space soon?" Gavin asked, sounding delighted.

Berus knew why their mechanic was so excited. In their haste to rescue Roxy and Ckzarr from the planet, they'd left behind an old abandoned Dominion warship filled with antique technology. The tech wasn't useful for their missions, but it was worth a lot to the right collector. Also, the robotic warriors, or "mechs" as the humans called them, were every young male's wet dream.

Berus had himself imagined controlling one when he was young, in fact it had been one of the reasons he'd joined the Dominion army—as well as his family being poor and no longer able to feed him. Too bad the robotic warriors cost a lot to run, and the Dominion had scrapped the project by the time he was old enough for the program. But it wasn't like a common grunt like him would ever be allowed in one even if they'd kept the program running.

Meanwhile, apparently Earth had similar technology in their fictional work, and the humans on board had been just as excited to find the robotic suits as he.

Ulrek grinned. He was the only one of the crew who had been inside one of the units prior to the discovery of the abandoned ship. His father, Ulren, had owned one, a gift from the Dominion. "Don't worry. We'll return for the robotic warriors."

Emil, the communications expert, cleared his throat. "Thought you guys would like to know that our bounty hunters just left the area. They poked around at the edge of the asteroid field but didn't come in."

The Revenge had been hiding just inside, waiting for the tail to leave.

"Good. We will wait a little longer just in case this is a trick, and they're expecting us to show ourselves," Ulrek announced. "But if they continue on their course and do not return by the middle of the next light cycle, we will start for New Rhea."