Star Fire
A Total-E-Bound Publication
www.total-e-bound.com
Star Fire
ISBN # 978-1-78184-813-5
©Copyright Buffi BeCraft 2013
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright October 2013
Edited by Amy Parker and Sarah Smeaton
Total-E-Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2013 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a
heat rating
of
Total-e-burning
and a
sexometer
of
2.
This story contains 71 pages, additionally there is also a
free excerpt
at the end of the book containing 10 pages.
Star Runners
STAR FIRE
Buffi BeCraft
Book two in the Star Runners Series
If you can’t trust your horoscope, who can you trust?
Ever meet that special someone and feel like you’ve known them forever? Well, Sasha Tran’s horoscope is seriously off course. Between being hijacked by pirates and possessed by a two-thousand-year-old spy hell-bent on a mission, her day is not exactly going as planned.
Waking up to a sexy ex from the distant past—not
her
past—poses its own set of problems while they race the clock to keep her newfound planet from annihilation. Possession, reincarnation… Sasha barely has time to adjust to being both herself
and
an ancient kick-ass spy. One thing is for sure—having the sexy warrior Kiev ride shotgun is bound to blow her heart to the corners of the galaxy.
Dedication
For Lee. Thank you for the challenge…and the calls.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmark mentioned in this work of fiction:
Dante’s Inferno:
Dante Alighieri
Chapter One
Julian Horoscope, day forty-one—
Career opportunities sometimes fall out of the sky. Keep your head up so that you do not miss your next big break.
Lucky in love. The Day of Lovers. Look for a new interest on the horizon.
“Hobbs! Don’t do this!” Sasha Tran fought the slim, steel restraint binding her wrists. She damned the creator of the near-indestructible programmable rope to hell. The engine exhaust blasted her cropped hair into her face, colouring the world with red ribbons of betrayal. Cliché, perhaps, but she’d never suspected her second-in-command of mutiny.
Hobbs shoved her to the edge of the loading ramp, which had never been intended to be used as an old-fashioned pirate’s plank—as in ‘walk the plank’. Her ship,
Fortune
, hovered several kilometres above the surface of a backwater, no-name planet in the Frontier, far outside GI space. Hobbs knew better than to break the strict Galactic Interdependence first contact regulations.
Obviously, a spaceship—
Fortune—
would
no doubt cause a stir among the primitive locals. If they were found out, the GI would levy severe fines on Northern Star Trading, the first Earth-based company to make intergalactic inroads across civilised worlds. Sasha had finally left behind the stigma that hovered over independent traders. Reputable business owners looked askance at indie captains. Too often a hopeful contact sneered down his nose saying, ‘I don’t do business with skids’, while slamming the proverbial door in her face. The term skid covered that special hellish place right above pirates and pickpockets. Legal work was hard to come by and having morals kept a person from the illegal jobs. Nope, she wasn’t going down that plank or losing her commission without a fight.
Her second-in-command, Hobbs, was a freaking hulk of a man, born and bred on the farming moon colony of Ludd. While she was no stranger to the gym, the massive man’s arms were bigger than one of her thighs. Hobbs could have easily tossed her off the deployed ramp. But no, the traitor was trying to salve the shreds of his conscience. That much was written in the nervous sweat beading across the folds of his furrowed forehead.
Sasha stupidly glanced down. Her stomach lurched. Fuck, it was a long drop. She dragged her gaze from the forest below and blinked away the stark mental image of being impaled on the stalagmite-like trees.
She tried once more to reach through Hobbs’ butt-ugly, dispassionate expression to the decency she’d always credited him with. “C’mon. This isn’t you. You’ve been at Northern Star for over twenty years. You
mentored
me—helped me get this captaincy. Selling out to pirates when all you’ve ever talked about is your retirement bonus?” A flicker behind the sickly yellow rings of her second-in-command’s irises filled her with hope. His gun wavered a bit as the survival pack slid from his shoulder to his big, meaty hand.
Naïve, stupid hope fluttered in her chest.
He shook his head, dashing her optimism. The thin wisps of hair covering Hobbs’ sloping forehead stood straight up as the furnace-like waves of exhaust beat at them. Behind him, the pirates fucking stealing her ship snickered. Hales, the slime she’d thought she’d kicked off at dock almost three weeks ago, saluted.
Fucking snake.
Sasha’s eyes narrowed. She’d scream at the intruders, but they wouldn’t hear anyway. She could barely make out what Hobbs was muttering over the roaring engines and wind. “Sorry, Cap’n. It’s either you or me, an’ I need the money.” He tossed her a survival pack, barely waiting for her to clutch the bundle in the crook of her restrained arms, then gestured to the edge of the open ramp. Below, trees whizzed by in a green blur. “You’re too honourable for the likes of their leader. You’ll fuck up the sale.”
“What sale? What are you into, Hobbs?”
He didn’t answer her question, but she thought she glimpsed a bit of guilt flicker in his yellow eyes as he bent to pick up an antique, olive-green parachute pack. Guilt was good. Guilt was
real
good when the asshole in question was about to throw her off her own ship.
“Remember that online course on classic Earth and Damor literature last year?” Sasha leant forward, her voice loud and hoarse from the fury burning in her chest. She’d only taken the damn lesson because Hobbs had wanted a study partner. Who actually studied crap like the similarities of
Dante’s Inferno
versus
Nede’s Abyss
? “I hope in hell, you’re frozen ass-upwards. And I hope that Satan himself takes you up on the offer. Ninth Circle of Hell, traitor. Tenth if you count the Abyss.”
The stout, brutish man paled. The course had appealed to Hobbs at his foundation. Ludds were inherently superstitious and he’d loved pointing out how all human races had parallel belief systems.
“Because that’s where you’re headed. Can’t get any lower than that, you bastard.”
She glanced at Hales, who was leaning with loose-limbed nonchalance against her freight as he exchanged betting money with a guy who reminded her of an old tom cat. Earlier following the same feline around the ship had led her to Hales’ reappearance, rousing her suspicions enough for her to seek out Hobbs. Her second had tried to fob her off with a lame story—then had put her in this predicament. She had no idea what planet the cat-person had originated from, or what species he was, but the speculative gleam in all the pirates’ stares was universal.
Replacement co-pilot, indeed.
Sasha glared at them collectively. The sudden frequent crew replacements Hobbs had made while Sasha had scouted the two habitable planets had been strange enough. But when her co-pilot, had abruptly resigned, stolen a precious life pod and skipped ship, Sasha had wanted answers. The miraculous arrival of the furry co-pilot this far out of civilised space had been too coincidental.
The cat-person curled a lip, showing white fangs to Hales. It flattened its ears and commandeered a stack of plastic-wrapped freight to sit on. Silk and spices, which
she’d
worked a deal for in the Abassanian market, outbidding even the infamous kith traders. Colonists and citizens alike would pay out of the ass for the aphrodisiacs and romantic shit from the ‘Planet of Love’.
There were other expensive items on the route she’d cultivated for the Northern Star Trading Company, but the planet Abassan was her prize. It had been the jewel that had got her
Fortune
and bumped her pay grade to a primo level. It was a hard blow to see pirate ilk in charge of her sleek, efficient ship. She’d rather have seen it in the clutches of the mysterious, polygamous kith—at least they were honest in their ruthless pursuit of a trade contract.
The dreadlocked, bucktoothed pirate beside Hales grabbed his crotch, his leering face telling her how he’d like to help her stay on board. He waggled his tongue at her obscenely while Hobbs strapped the olive-green parachute to her back and around her waist. She recognised the style—it had definitely seen better days. She wanted to point out that the damn thing had leg straps too, but wasn’t giving anyone in this crowd a reason to reach between her legs.
Sasha focused on Hales’ short, unmoving dreadlocks instead of his hand rocking his crotch as he flicked his tongue at her. Disgusting.
Bastard. I’d rather jump without the parachute than let you touch me,
you dickless wonder,
she thought. Sasha’s arms might have been tied, but her hands were free. Head held high, she shot him a full middle-finger salute, barely choking down her anger as the pirates cheered.
Bucktooth flung out his arms, as if to say, ‘anytime’ while his horny pirate buddies yukked it up with catcalls and jeers of, “Oh, you want it, baby!” and “GI whore!” Hales was the loudest, followed by his buddy with the rat-tailed hairdo.
“Jump and you have a chance, Cap’n,” Hobbs told her, stepping backwards. The thick line of his jowl was unyielding. “You won’t with the crew.”
“They’re not my crew.” She spat, the spittle landed on her ex-second’s boots. Sasha silently berated herself for being too caught up in her exploration and losing control of her command. The ‘crew’ howled with laughter, the sound mingling with the wind.
Wrapping her last shreds of dignity around her, Sasha jumped.
The rope binding her wrists loosened flying up and disintegrating into the engine. For a heart-stopping half second, she thought she’d be sucked into the machine, but the wind blasted her sideways as the ship powered up to leave orbit. The tree spires rushed at her, interspersed with sharp, jagged, reddish rocks.