Page 33 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

“Please don’t let it be someone we know,” Aldar said, shouldering his plasma rifle and trying to make himself as small as possible in the corner behind the hatch door.

“Please let them be honest,” Demin added.

“There is no such thing as honesty where our people are concerned.” Bruwes squared his shoulders. “Try to get me back, if you can. If you can’t, run like hell.” He didn’t look at Lissa, but she knew he was talking to her when he added, “Go with them.”

It wasn’t a grand proclamation of love or affection, but it lit some of the cold fear in the pit of her belly, softening it, warming her. She didn’t want him to go through the hatch. She absolutely didn’t want to be the one handing him over to the enemy.

“What prison are they likely to put you in?” Not that she would know it if she heard it, but if things went wrong, then at least she’d have a destination to shoot for.

“There are no prisons on Me’Kava,” Bruwes said, his jaw clenching once. “Supposedly, we don’t execute criminals either.”

“But look beneath the well-polished veneer and you will find disappearances,” came the doctor’s grim voice from the ceiling.

“I hate hearing about your world,” Cory said with a slight shudder.

“So do I,” Bruwes said, and there was something in his tone that made Lissa freeze up and go cold all over again.

“Here they come,” Kelys said over the data-comm.

“Do you have sights on them?” Bruwes asked.

“No. They’ve blocked the eye outside the hatch.”

“They’re planning something,” Cory said.

“Or they just don’t want us to be able to plan something for them,” Denim reassured her.

“We Me’Kavians get our reputation as warriors for our skill at sizing up an enemy and hitting weak points fast, first and fierce.

They can’t see us, so they don’t want us to be able to see them.

It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re about to lob in a concussion grenade or, oh I don’t know…

a fumer loaded with tranqs…or a shrapnel bomb… ”

“Open up,” Bruwes said grimly. “If they throw something in, kick it out and close the hatch on them. If they don’t, stick with the plan.”

“What plan?” Vullum met his harsh stare with one of his own. “Don’t lie to me. You’re making this up as you go along.”

Three steady knocks rapped the outside of the hatch.

Lissa had never wanted to run more strongly than she did right now, and considering the week she’d had, that was saying something.

The longer they delayed, the more suspicious this would look.

She caught herself rising to panic and forced her breathing to slow.

Scavs didn’t panic. Or maybe they did? What did she know about the lives of worldless scavs?

What did she know about anything that wasn’t thousands of years old?

What was she doing here?

Cory hit the latch, unlocking the door.

Bruwes had braced her for the trick, but it didn’t come. The door opened with a hiss of exchanging air, but no toxic fumes or grenades.

She wasn’t good at lying. Standing in front of the three tall males that loomed beyond the threshold, Lissa struggled to hold herself steady, gripping her rifle tightly to prevent her hands from shaking.

She had never felt so vulnerable, but she had to remind herself that they could only see their reflections when they stared into her helmet’s mirrored face.

Even if they had her bounty dossier in hand, they’d never know they were looking at her.

Not unless they took her helmet off. As far as they knew, she was a scav, and a member of this ship’s original crew. What would a scav do in her place?

Without thinking things through, Lissa put her hand on the butt of the pistol she had holstered at her waist in a kind of hopefully intimidating gesture, then quickly took it off again before her bluster triggered an explosive response, only to realize that they hadn’t noticed.

After the most cursory of glances her way, all three of the strangers fixed their attention elsewhere.

“Bruwes,” the forward most of them said somberly.

Bruwes tipped his head. “Javan.”

“I regret having to do this.”

“Not half as much as I.”

Javan took a step forward into the hatch, but Bruwes had prepared her for that. When Javan moved, so did her feet, mirroring every step. She stopped in front of him, blocking his access.

He towered over her, and never was that as apparent as when they were damn near toe to toe and he bent his dark head to look down at her.

The hair-like quills on his head puffed slightly.

She couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or not, but she didn’t care.

She didn’t have enough presence of thought to care anything about this man.

She shifted. With her other hand, she held out her tablet.

“Ah yes.” Javan sighed. “The payment.”

“I’ve been telling them they’re far more likely to be collected than paid,” Bruwes intoned.

“Have you?” Javan sounded bored. Taking the tablet, he tapped at the screen with his thumbs. “What else have you told them?”

“Everything. Which is exactly what I’ve told everyone else.”

Javan sighed, handed the tablet back to her, with the funds he’d just transferred showing as completed in the new ship’s account. “Exactly who is everyone else?”

“Literally,” Bruwes smiled, “everyone else.”

Pulling her pistol, Lissa jumped backwards out of the doorway as Aldar leapt out of his corner, rifle against his shoulder and pointed at the three. So did Cory, and Demin had the business end of his rifle sticking out at them through the cracked vent in the ceiling above.

Over the loudspeakers, Bruwes’s own voice began to speak.

“Congratulations. At the same time you’re hearing this, this message is being transmitted across all channels in all known languages.

Feel free to rebroadcast. I would like every inhabitant of every world, satellite and ship to hear my confession. ”

Javan’s darkening gaze snapped from the guns to Bruwes, who in a twist of his wrists unfastened his link cuffs. “What have you done?”

Smirking, Bruwes pointed to the ceiling where his voice continued to drone, “My name is Bruwes, son of Mayzon, son of Ahbel, once a prince of my people. Now my home world has put a bounty on my head, supposedly because I, ha, pose a threat to Me’Kavian peace.

’ Me’Kava isn’t interested in peace. Our diplomats make alliances while our hunters prey on your people.

From the moment we were brought into your alliance of space-faring civilizations, we have hunted you. “

All three men stared at Bruwes.

“What have you done?” Javan demanded.

“What should have been done a year ago,” Bruwes bluntly told him.

Above him, his own voice droned on. “Included with this message, you will find the coordinates of Me’Kava, a summary of the dying population of our planet, and the procedures we use when we collect our cargo…

by which, of course, I mean your women. For decades, we have attacked whenever victory seemed certain, killed your men, used your male youth for menial labor, and enslaved your women and female youth to serve us sexually and bear our own offspring.

Countless thousands, tens of tens of thousands, have died.

Countless more live in fear and pain, imprisoned until death.

In such a very short amount of time, our world’s entire economy has become dependent on slavery and we reproduce almost entirely with captives. ”

Javan’s eyes bulged. “Are you insane?! Our fleet is away, we have no defenses?—”

“Away doing what?” Bruwes countered.

“If this sounds too incredible to believe and you find yourself tempted to consider this transmission as some terrible joke, please check the information I’ve provided.

If you’ve ever suddenly lost a colony to a meteor or ion storm, you might check for unusually high levels of interphasic radiation, and if you find it, scan again.

We use metaphasic particle fields to scramble your communications and wipe out your energy cells.

It imitates a number of natural, if unlikely disasters nicely, but it also leaves a fine dusting of osmatic particles, which, having a half-life of something like thirty thousand units of interspace time, should be easily found if Me’Kava was responsible.

And I think it’s time Me’Kava took responsibility, don’t you? ”

“We’ll be slaughtered,” Javan said in an oddly flat, small voice.

“We’ll be exterminated.” He flinched, looking wildly up at the ship’s ceiling as, from somewhere beyond both of them, loud pops could be heard, underscored by a unique crackle that even Lissa recognized.

If they were meeting outside, she could just look up and see the ships as they came out of sub-space.

Pop-pop-pop. Some over here, some over there, some in close formation, others well distant and out of synch.

Not one fleet. Several. And more every second. Pop.

Javan seemed frozen, until someone within his vessel shouted, “Multiple alerts! I can’t tell where they’re all coming from! We’re being scanned. We’re—Ship bearing down on our portside! It pinged us! It knows our identity and is arming!”

Javan shoved backwards out of the hatchway. “Disengage! Shields up! Full retreat!”

Aldar slapped the lockplate, getting the hatch shut and sealed a split-second before the Me’Kavian ship detached and flushed them all out into space.

“Status,” Bruwes barked.

“Ryovian vessel coming in sharp,” Kelys snapped over the comm. “The Black Fortune is running. The Ryovians are in full pursuit, and they are firing.”

“Cory, get us out of here before they realize we’re Me’Kavaian collectors too.”

Ripping her helmet off, Lissa fell into swift step behind Bruwes. If her heart had been falling before, it was flying now, and yet that cold spot was still knuckle-deep in her gut. She had to rush to keep pace with him, but he wasn’t heading to the bridge.

“Where are you going?”