Page 7 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

Cory shrugged one shoulder. “Raided the wrong tomb, I guess.”

“Bold of you to assume they bury their dead here. You try the stew at the Salty Lady?

“Yeah, I found an adreno-enhancement implant in my bowl once. Still had charges. It was cool,” she said lightly. “Like the toy you get at the bottom of a box of cereal.”

“That is a human joke and you know I refuse to understand those,” Bruwes announced. “So, what did this nefarious archaeologist do?”

Cory arched her eyebrows at him. “What does it matter what she did, look at that price tag!”

Six thousand chits.

He studied the sum, dark eyes narrowing.

“Six thousand chits!” Cory exclaimed, a tinge of frustration slipping into her voice when he said nothing. “What’s wrong with you? On any other day, you’d happily sell me for a tenth that price!”

He tsked, shooting her a dry look. “No, I would not.”

She was the only thing of value they had on this ship. He wasn’t selling her unless he got at least enough to replace their malfunctioning jump coil.

Why would someone offer so much for a tomb robber?

He swiped the screen up, reading through the sparse details until he found who’d posted the bounty. “This is a Corporate contract.”

Cory beamed. “Exactly. And there’s a Corporate operations base on Cutirut,” she said, pointing through the Raider’s ceiling at the sky where the dusty rock this moon orbited hung like a second, dead sun. “We don’t even need a jump coil to deliver her. It’ll just take a while to get there.”

“You’re suggesting we use, what? Our docking thrusters? To propel us through space?”

“Just to the planet!”

“Woman, we could walk there faster than a docking thruster can push us.”

“Now you’re just nit-picking.”

“I’m what?”

“It’s an easy bounty and a lot of money.”

“Exactly. It’s too much money for how supposedly easy it is.” He tried to pass the tablet back to her.

She didn’t take it. “What do you mean, too much? There’s no such thing as too much money.

Oh my God, I can’t believe I have to have this conversation with you again.

Okay, look,” she huffed, not quite stifling her laugh of frustration.

“We are wanted pirates. Pirates take whatever jobs they can find.”

Bruwes didn’t need the scolding any more than he needed mating details. “Not this job. There’s something wrong with it.”

“Wrong with what?” Kelys asked, stepping through the sliding door onto the bridge.

“There’s a job for six thousand chits, and he won’t even consider it,” Cory immediately ratted him out.

“Six thousand?” Kelys paused. “That’s more than we need.”

Swiveling in her seat to face Bruwes, she pointed back to the Reaver’s engineer with both hands. “He gets it. What’s wrong with you?”

Annoyed, Bruwes punched the control panel, opening up comms between the bridge and the Medibay. “Your female needs beating again. Either you do it, or I will.”

She threw her hands up. “He only listens to you half the time. You know that, right?”

“If this is the half when he listens, you’re welcome.”

Scowling, she heaved herself up off the seat. “The sex is fantastic afterwards.” Chin up, she stalked off the bridge.

Everything always came down to sex with that one.

“I need chits,” Vullum announced as he came charging in. He almost collided with Kelys in his haste to get in front of Bruwes. “I,” he said, in barely contained excitement, “ need chits.”

His human co-pilot wasn’t the only one who needed beating.

“How many?” Bruwes drawled, as if he wanted to know.

“Ten chits,” Vullum said again, still excited.

“No.” Turning in his chair, Bruwes frowned at him. “How many?”

“Oh.” Vullum arched his eyebrows, as if wondering why that part should matter. “Two. Sisters, and they’ve got a friend. Three, really.”

Deviant. He shook his head. “Find two sisters with a friend who are free.”

Tipping his head, the science officer considered that, but only briefly. “I don’t think that’s how that works. They don’t really come free.”

“We don’t have ten chits for you to spend on sex.”

Vullum was quiet a moment, the wheels of his mind whirring so loudly that Bruwes knew exactly what he was going to say before he said it. “Want me to get a job? They’re hiring dishwashers at the Salty Lady.”

“Are they hiring six?” Bruwes grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“There’s seven of us now,” Vullum pointed out.

“Yes, but one of us can make more on her back !” Bruwes leaned around Vullum to bellow, making sure the right person heard him, no matter how far down the corridor she might be.

“I heard that!” Cory bellowed back.

Looking from Kelys to Bruwes, Vullum finally asked, “So, is that a no on the job and the chits?”

Disgusted, Bruwes shook his head. “Go find something to sell. Both of you.” And leave me alone , he wished he could say, but didn’t. He was the captain; he didn’t get that luxury.

Hitting the lock again once the science officer and engineer had retreated from the bridge, he wilted in his chair and rubbed his face again. What was he going to do?

Hunt his father down and kill him—slowly—for putting him in this position in the first place. Captain for fuck’s sake, first of a motley bunch of collectors and now of pirates, banished from Me’Kava for doing the right thing, for a change.

Him. Born into royalty. Born to rule on a council, just like his father, and his father before him, all the way back to the beginning.

Shaking his head, Bruwes picked up the tablet and glared at it. He needed money. He hated having to live like this, always with something breaking down.

In the words of his Earth co-pilot, working for a living sucked.

Also, in the words of his Earth co-pilot , Suck it up, buttercup .

Switching the tablet back on, he studied the picture of the archaeologist once more.

Yeah, something was definitely wrong with this job.

It was too much money for a simple snatch and grab.

Especially on a remote mining moon. Especially , especially when he couldn’t pin a crime on her dark enough to warrant such a bounty.

What kind of trouble could an archaeologist get into that would make her hide worth six thousand chits?

No, something didn’t feel right at all.

And yet he needed the money, and she hardly looked capable of causing him too much trouble.

After all, Cutirut I was incapable of supporting human life and this was the largest and relatively safest place for a fugitive to fetch up.

Plenty of strangers drifting in and out, most of them also fugitives and used to keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.

There were only six other ships in the docking compound capable of taking her off-world— five, if that poor bastard in Olex’s garage couldn’t convince his friends not to finish scrapping his ship.

All he had to do was wait and odds were good she’d come to him.

Put a couple men out around the docks to watch the other ships, and he might increase his chances of getting to her before she picked the wrong escape vessel.

She was a woman, and an Earth woman at that, on a virtually woman-less moon with only one small town in which to hide herself. How hard could finding her be?

Lissa had a bounty on her head? Surely, she had to.

Shit, the slaver pretending to work on his ship just noticed her. As if on signal, two more slavers came down the ramp, their long easy strides taking them to the dock where they started loading what few crates of supplies they’d left in the open as an excuse to look busy and legitimate.

Their game would be to let her come to them, but if she didn’t accept their grossly discounted offer of passage and tried to move on, they were going to grab her and muscle her into their hold.

Here came Doc, strolling up the dock not far behind her. Aldar and Vullum weren’t far behind him either, which he knew the slaver captain had just noticed. The captain glanced his way, and Bruwes made sure the slaver saw him staring back, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his weapon.

The other captain smirked, pushing his coat back to show an ion cannon holstered across his chest. He wouldn’t be backing down, and he didn’t care how prepared Bruwes was to fight for this prize.

So be it.

The slavers gave up on subtlety. Dropping all pretense, the three turned and headed right for the woman, who stopped walking. There was no expression on her face as she shrugged the edges of her cloak out of the way, as if she were ready to fight now herself.

Aldar was right. She definitely had tits too perfect to be a man in padding. He could see her cleavage from the ramp.

Pulling his cannon, the slaver captain ordered her to the ground, although whether he was pointing at her or Doc, who had just quickened his pace, was hard to tell.

It didn’t matter. The captain never got a shot off, and neither did either of his crewmen—but she did.

She stretched out her empty hand in a futile warding gesture, screaming, “No!” and Bruwes really wasn’t sure what happened next, but there was a crackle and a flash and suddenly everything was flying at him—slavers, cargo, loose bits of scrap, and the whole damn slaver’s ship, which flipped and tumbled nose over tail engines to crash into the ship in the next dock.

The power of that sonic blast hit Bruwes like the snap of a Correction Rod, striking the entire front of him all at once.

His quills flattened in spite of his surprise, and his skin stung.

It nearly knocked him off his feet, and he was damned lucky that was all it did.

As the dust settled and his vision cleared, he could see the slaver’s ship and its unlucky neighbor seemed to have actually fused together from the unknown force that had struck them.

Suddenly, the six thousand chit price tag made sense.

Just as suddenly, he realized it wasn’t anywhere near enough.

The wisdom of breaking into a run and heading straight for her didn’t strike him as ridiculous until he did it.

She snapped around to stare at him, the lingering horror of what she’d done to the slavers vanished in a blink, turning her facial features to stone.

Had she raised her hand, he knew both he and his ship were every bit as likely to go flying, but she didn’t.

A twist of irritation tugging at her mouth, she turned and tried to run instead, stopping abruptly when she almost collided with Doc, who stumbled to a stop directly in front of her.

An experienced collector, the gentle doctor was more accustomed to dealing with unconscious victims, and that showed in his split-second of indecision before he grabbed her shoulders.

“You will come with us,” he told her sternly.

Small wonder Cory required constant correction.

The woman didn’t even bother raising her hand, but she did scream, a completely baffling, “Don’t kill him!” just before she blasted Doc, Aldar and Vullum, who were running up to help, all off their feet.

The power of that hit Bruwes like another rod strike, though not as intensely, as she sent them tumbling like weeds back up the dock. People in the street beyond were shouting and running, and still even from that distance, she knocked several of them down too.

Every fine quill on his scalp prickled, feeling the crackling rawness of the powerful energy that exuded from her as she turned to size him up. She could end this easily. He couldn’t afford to die, nor could he afford the repairs of having his ship flipped like a toy.

She raised her hand, taking aim, and he just reacted.

He punched her the instant he reached her, his knuckles clocking her jaw, snapping her head back on her shoulders. Just as quickly, he caught her in his arms as she fell, crumpling unconscious. Panicked heartbeats counted out the nanoseconds as he basked in the wonder of just having won.

He couldn’t believe he was still standing. He couldn’t believe the power housed in the tiny body draped over his arm. He couldn’t believe he’d just captured her, either. She was his now.

From the rubble of broken crates, a slaver groaned.

If he didn’t get her secured on his ship somewhere, he wasn’t going to have her for very long. Not if they came to, and definitely not if she did.

“Ow,” Vullum groaned, holding his head as he pushed himself slowly to his knees.

Bruwes checked to make sure all three of his crew were moving, and then, picking the woman up, tossed her over his shoulder.

It kind of felt like old times, hauling her unconscious aboard his ship.

Unlike old times, however, they no longer had the stasis chambers in Medibay.

Necessity had transformed the once infamous collector’s ship into a vessel with every square inch now converted into a hold for non-living cargo, with the only exception being the single-man cell in Techbay for bounty prisoners.

Given what he’d just seen in the docking compound, he had no doubt she could blast her way out of that hold, and continue blasting right through his hull, for that matter. How was he going to keep her—or rather, himself and his crew—safe until he got her to the nearest Corporate payout station?

Striding aimlessly through the corridors of his ship as he sought out a good place to house her, he ended up in his quarters. Taking the linkcuffs from his belt, he dropped her face down on his bed and cuffed her hands securely behind her back.

“Sedative,” he ordered through the comm, while ransacking his few belongings for a shirt he could tear into strips. He promptly blindfolded her.

His hand planted between her shoulders, his knee in the small of her very slender back, he had a moment to again marvel at the power so small a human body could hold before Doc Demin arrived with a sedative. He didn’t breathe until it was in her.

How hard could it be, indeed, and it wasn’t over yet. He had her, yes. Now he just had to keep her long enough to get paid.