Defiance (6 page)

A very young
girl, perhaps no more than four or five.

Holy crap, these barbarians sold
children, too?

Disgust filled her, and she took a
hesitant step toward the child.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said in
accented English, deciding to use the common language. “My name is
Jordan
.”

She saw the little girl turn. “Are
you going to hurt me?”

“Oh no, sweetie.
I’m going to get out of here. Do you want to come with me?”

The girl nodded, her long black
hair swinging in front of her face. “Yes. I want my mommy and daddies.”

Daddies?

“I promise I’ll help you get home. What’s
your name?”

The little girl took a little step
forward, and
Jordan
’s
mouth fell open when she saw the two small black horns and golden eyes staring
at her.

“My name is
Rell
.
You’re human.”

“Oh my God,”
Jordan
said. “And
you’re
Alphan
, aren’t you?”

Chapter Six

David groaned as he grabbed his
head and sat up. She’d warned him, but he’d ignored her and now his head
throbbed. Of course, it seemed to pulse in time with his cock because even
though she’d just brained him, he still wanted her.

“David!”
Tarrn
shouted.

“In here,” he called back as he
used the bed to help him get to his feet. “Did you see
Jordan
?”

“The human
female?
She kicked me in my
flutas
and ran away.”

David swore and hurried from the
quarters. “Where’s
Laith
?”

“Went to scout
out information.”

“Call him back and tell him what
happened,” he said. He went to leave the ship, but
Tarrn
stalled him.

“You can’t go out there. You are
Laith’s
slave, remember?”

David glared at him but knew he had
a point. He nodded. “I’ll call
Laith
.”

He didn’t have to wait long.
As
Laith
rushed into the ship his eyes
settled on the cut on David’s forehead.

“What happened?”

“She escaped.”

“What do you mean, she escaped?”

“She brained me with a lid and ran
out of the ship. Does that make it clearer?”

Laith
glowered at him. “We have to find her.”

“Agreed, but I’m a goddamn slave,
remember?”

Laith
sighed. “Follow me.”

They hurried out of the ship and
into the hanger, looking frantically around. Dozens of
Xyrans
swarmed around the docks but not one human girl.

“
Tarrn
,
did you see where she went?”
Laith
asked.

Tarrn
pointed. “She went toward the market.”

They didn’t wait.
Laith
led him into the thick of people who’d come to this
station in need of ship repairs. This place wasn’t like the
Targin
Market where anything could be bought. He dodged through the
Xyrans
trying to barter for anti-gravity plating and high
performance cylinder heads, making sure to stay at
Laith’s
back like any humble slave. But no matter where they searched, it was if
Jordan
had
disappeared into thin air. Nothing looked out of place or out of the ordinary
until they came to the end of one row and David saw the back of a raider
uniform heading away from the main showroom floor.

It wasn’t necessarily the uniform
itself that almost stopped his heart. There were plenty of
Xyrans
wearing the standard issue. It was the insignia vowing allegiance to one
particular tribe that chilled his blood and left him slightly lightheaded.

Kath’s raiders were here.

“
Laith
,” he
said in low voice. “Kath’s raiders are here.”

Shock flared on
Laith’s
face. “What?
Where?”

“I saw one of his officers going
into the back, where the maintenance crew is housed.”
Laith
made a jerking movement toward the area he’d pointed out, but David held onto
him. “No. Not yet.”

“
Tarrn
told me his battle cruiser is out of commission. That he only has a small
contingent.”

“Fewer people we have to fight,” David
said. “I like these odds. But we have to rescue
Jordan
.”

“David, this gives us a very good
opportunity to kill Kath. If we go now, find him, we get the upper hand.”

David grabbed
Laith
by the lapels and yanked him close, mindful of hiding them from the general eye.
He could be whipped for laying a hand on his
master
. “You’re bartering with her life. If we fail to kill Kath, we’re
leaving her at the mercy of whoever has her. She will be sold.
For real.
And she won’t last long as a sex slave.”

Laith
froze
before reaching for him and pulling him close. His tongue came out to touch David’s
mouth briefly before
Laith
stumbled back in shock. “Her
essence is on your lips.”

“Yes,” he admitted, holding
Laith’s
gaze. “I pleasured her, but I didn’t deflower her.”

Laith’s
brow creased. “I do not understand what a flower has to do with this.”

David shook his head. “It’s an
urban reference to taking a woman’s virginity.
Laith
,
she’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met.
Responsive, beautiful, and
more than a match for us.”

“Us?
No. She’s
just a human we were going to sell.”

David shook his head and headed toward
the back rooms. “Lie to me all you want, but don’t lie to yourself. I know you
better than anyone.”

“I do not have to
lie
, David. She is nothing more than a human I will use to avenge
the death of my sister.”

“Then you’re a damn fool,” David
said before disappearing from view.

****

Jordan
studied the room where she
and the little girl were being held prisoner. She tried to concentrate on
getting out of the room, but her mind was in turmoil. What the hell was she
supposed to do with a child? It was obvious she couldn’t leave the little girl
with monsters who would sell her to even more monsters, but how could she get
the child back to her parents? She didn’t even know where Planet Alpha was!

Jordan
closed her eyes and took a
deep, calming breath. She had to remember Mr. Meier’s words. Don’t panic. There
were always two avenues of escape, the first being
physical,
and she looked at the four walls holding her in. The second avenue was the
human reason, or in this case, the
Xyran
reason why
she was taken. She was trapped because someone had locked the door, so to
escape, simply eliminate the reason to be trapped. There was only one way in,
and from what she remembered, they were still on the space station. She pursed
her lips as she thought about David and
Laith
. Could
she possibly talk them in to taking
Rell
back to her
family? Remembering what she’d done to David, she wasn’t so sure.

She felt a tug on her hand, and she
looked down to see the little
Alphan
girl staring at
her with big, fearful eyes. She knelt down to stare at the child eye to eye.

“P-please don’t leave me,”
Rell
stuttered, her fear obvious.

Jordan
felt her heart crack. She
pulled the little girl in for a hug. “I won’t, sweetie. I promise. I’m just
trying to figure out how to get us out of here.”

In her head she heard Mr. Meier
tell her that sometimes things had to be done that she normally wouldn’t ever
consider, like breaking the bones in a hand to get out of a pair of handcuffs. In
order to save this child, she was going to have to compromise some of her
beliefs and values. Briefly, David’s dark head between her thighs flashed
across her mind, but she pushed it away. She didn’t have time to reminisce.

The muffled sound of voices
suddenly came through the door, and
Jordan
tensed, wondering if the
Xyran
assholes who took her were about to burst inside. But
after a few minutes, she realized the sounds were the clinks of bottles, which
let
her
know they were getting ready to drink.

“
Shh
,”
she told
Rell
and then gestured for her to come close
so they could both listen at the door. She could hear the
Xyrans
talking, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Do you understand
what they’re saying?”

Rell
nodded. Luckily, the door either wasn’t very thick or the
Xyran
assholes spoke really loudly. In any case, the little
Alphan
girl began to listen intently, speaking every once in a while.

“They’re talking about me,” she
whispered. “They’re saying how clever their leader was to break away from his
men. Better reward for all. I’m worth a lot of wealth. Oh. They’re talking
about you. How they want to … I don’t understand the word. They’re laughing,
and I think they’re saying really bad things.”

The child began to cry, and
Jordan
pulled
her away from the door to hug her again. “Why are you worth a lot of money?”

The little girl shrugged.

“Okay,”
Jordan
assured her. She took a deep
breath. She really didn’t want to do this, but she was going to have to go back
and grovel to David and
Laith
… and possibly never
see her mother again. “We’re going to get you out of here and back to your
parents. Okay?”

Rell
looked so small and fragile, probably how Jordan herself had looked when she
and her mother had been uprooted from
Berlin
.
She’d only been a little older than this girl when she’d gone to live in the
camp and had assumed her boy persona. No child should have to endure situations
like theirs.

“So … how would Mr. Meier get out
of this room?”

Jordan
sat for a long time,
thinking of different strategies and discarding
them,
until it became obvious the men standing guard were drunk, if their slurred
speech and carousing was anything to go by. And that she could work with.

She studied the equipment littered around
the room. Although she didn’t know what most of it did, she did recognize an
air compressor. The one for the camp refrigeration kept breaking, and Mr. Meier
was forever fixing it. This one looked like it was attached to an air
suppression stream for cleaning filters. An idea formed.

She told
Rell
to lie in the corner of the room and not move. Then she scoured the machinery
until she found a few broken pieces. A screw had worked once before, so why not
use several this time around?

It didn’t take much effort to take
the filtration canister off the compressor. Then she grabbed a hose off something
else and used a seal to affix it before angling the machine in front of the
door. The last thing she did was put a clamp on the hose.

Once she flipped the compressor on,
there’d be no hiding the sound so she had to make sure everything was lined up
perfectly. She looked at
Rell
and gave an encouraging
nod before grabbing the hose and dropping her collection of screws into it. They
fell to the clamped off section. She braced her legs, held the hose, and hit
the on button.

The compressor rumbled to life,
loudly. A second later, a
Xyran
came rushing into the
room. She aimed the hose and let go of the clamp, and the compressed air
blasted the screws forward with a loud pop. They found their mark, on his face,
and blood erupted. He dropped, lifeless, to the floor.

“Come on,
Rell
,”
she said, tossing the hose aside. The
Alphan
girl got
up and ran up to her. “I need you to stay right next to me, okay, sweetie?”

Rell
nodded.

Jordan
leaned down and picked up
the blasters. But just as her hand reached for it, another
Xyran
beat her to it. With a growl, he picked her up and threw her against the wall. She
screamed as her body connected with the hard, unyielding surface. He loomed
over her, his face snarling. Behind him she saw
Rell
in the arms of another
Xyran
, and for the first time,
she felt terrified. It wasn’t just about her now. She was responsible for that
little girl.

Just as the
Xyran
aimed his blaster at her, dual whooshing sounds erupted. Not only did her
captor lurch and fall at her feel, but so did the
Xyran
holding
Rell
. Right before her eyes their skin began
to change colors, fading to sickly grey.

When she looked up, she saw David
and
Laith
. And she’d never been happier to see two
people in her whole life.

Chapter Seven

“
Jordan
has delivered us a better
opportunity,” David said as they worked their way deeper into the belly of the
station. “Without her antics, we wouldn’t have stopped at this station. We
wouldn’t have known about Kath not recruiting.”

“Enough, David,”
Laith
said as he eased around a corner. “If we find Kath I
get to deliver the death blow.”