Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
I should have brought a lot more snackies. My bag does have some chocolate in it, but I was planning on rationing it. I do pretty well on that the first day and into the second, but eventually being cooped up like this catches up with me.
I grab it out and take a big bite. It tastes good, takes the edge off my immediate fuckup. I haven’t been on this ship for even, what, an hour, and I’m already in the pet brig.
If Rustle could see me now he’d be so fucking smug. He’d be so pleased with himself. He’d laugh his fucking ass off.
He won’t know about this, though. Not unless my employer decides to complain about me to the Alpha Core, but I doubt it. Or at least, I hope not. And Alpha Core would understand what I was trying to do. People have died trying to do what I did. Aliens have executed human spies before. I’m actually quite lucky that all that happened was I got put in a kennel.
* * *
The three days pass faster than I really expected them to. I got used to the kennel astonishingly quickly. The plastic bed wasn’t actually that bad to sleep on. Kind of comfy, actually. And getting let out every few hours meant I never really felt as claustrophobic as I thought I’d get.
“I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me,” I murmur to myself softly as the kennel door is opened.
“You made it,” the Antari guard says. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I say, doing a little curtsey.
“Turn around,” he says, one of his hands making a twirling motion while two of his lower hands hold out what looks suspiciously like a silver collar.
“Why?” I say suspiciously. “What are you trying to do?”
“You have to be leashed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pets aren’t allowed to be left unattended at any time, and right now you’re a pet, according to the ship’s manifest.”
“I’m going to meet my employer, though.”
“Yes. And the handover is done when I give him your leash. Do you have everything packed away in your bag? We won’t be able to come back for anything because the ship will be going into maintenance.”
“Uhm, yeah. I think I have everything,” I say.
“Turn around,” he repeats.
When I don’t do it immediately, he uses his upper arms to turn me around and he wraps the silver collar around my neck. It’s snugger than I thought it would be, and warmer.
“I swear to god, you make one mistake…” I mutter to myself as he puts it on.
“Indeed. The worlds you are about to inhabit are ones of great consequence. You would do well to consider your actions before you undertake them.”
I don’t know why he has taken it on himself to spend time lecturing me right now. Maybe it’s an act of kindness in his culture.
“Do you know who is picking me up?”
“Starlord Arkon Thornhall,” he says.
“Sounds fancy.”
“He is from one of the exalted houses. He has domain over vast swathes of our galaxy. You are about to become his human research assistant, apparently. A service pet, how nice.”
“I’m an employee, he’s my boss,” I repeat.
Hard to keep that front up now that I am walking along on an alien’s leash, but I knew I’d have to adapt to challenging circumstances when I signed up for this job.
“Well, a human is never really an employee,” the Antari says. “It’s a matter of classifications. And a female human has uses beyond work. There are plenty of workers in this quadrant without needing to reach beyond the stars to…”
“You’d love Rustle,” I interrupt. I know I’m going to work for a rich guy. I get it. I know he owns a lot of territory, and that in alien terms that means dozens of planets and whatnot. I’m used to that. In the sciences, we’re constantly being asked to associate with rich dudes with money in the hope we will get some of that money for our research.
This won’t be any different.
“We shouldn’t keep him waiting,” he says.
And we don’t. I am marched down one of the many gangways that extend from the ship and out into a port that would make anyone who had spent a life on Earth cry from the wonder of it all. The interior of this place is so vast it seems to me it must be a complete city. Like Athens and her ports, everything here revolves around travel and trade and you can feel it. We are somehow inside and outside at the same time, and the space overall is so vast I can’t take all of it in. A swarm of aliens are moving around this ship and others. There must have been tens of thousands of souls aboard, maybe more.
I am taken out as one in thousands, ushered through the crowd by the guard who seems very comfortable with all that is going on. I don’t know how we are not immediately lost given the way we are almost entirely swept up by the swirling mass of aliens moving from one place to another.