Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Read online

  And Universal Authority would be on us in a hot second, having been alerted by the searches.

  “I’m Pryor,” Sotelo says. “You’re Meshach Larsen?”

  “Yes. It’s our honor to receive you today. Before we get down to business, would your women care to join my wife Damaris for some refreshments downstairs?” Meshach makes an open-armed gesture to his right, and when I follow his hand, I realize there’s someone standing next to him. Someone my gaze must have skimmed over several times, as I studied the rest of the delegation.

  “Holy shit,” Zamora blurts out, and for once, his excited utterance doesn’t seem out of place. “I didn’t even see her there.”

  “That’s the idea.” Meshach’s patient smile says he’s used to explaining this to foreign visitors. “We’ve invested heavily in the acquisition of a nano-tech fabric that allows our women to leave their homes without suffering the unwanted attention of a strange man’s gaze.”

  “So I see,” Sotelo says, and I’m impressed with how neutral his tone remains. The “courtesy garments” Meshach’s people expect our women to wear are one thing. But this is…

  Damaris isn’t undetectable, really. Now that I know she’s there, I can clearly make out the outline of a garment shaped exactly like the ones Lilli and Dreyer are wearing. But I can also somehow see through her. Sort of. She’s a walking blur, like the slow shimmer of heat radiating off the ground beneath us, only in the vague shape of a woman. The optical illusion appears to involve a disturbance of the very light which should bounce off of her, rendering her visible to the human eye, but instead seems to be passing right through her. I can see the torso and legs of the man standing behind her, but he appears oddly wavy, seen through her nano-tech covering.

  The men of Gebose, in trying to “protect” their women from the gazes of strange men, have literally rendered them invisible. As if they don’t truly exist at all.

  “How does that work, exactly?” Lawrence steps forward, clearly fascinated with the tech, but rather than studying the garment in question, his focus slips back to Meshach, almost reflexively. As does my own. The harder I try to look at our host’s wife, the less willing my eyes are to indulge that request from my brain, until the effort of focusing on Damaris’s blurry form gives me a headache from eye strain.

  Looking at her is making me physically uncomfortable, to the point that my eyes avert themselves from her in self-defense.

  Holy shit.

  “It’s very special tech.” Pride renders Meshach’s voice in a sort of sing-song quality. “Light actually shifts its frequency as it passes through the cloth, then is shifted back into its original frequency on the way out. The same thing happens when light hits objects behind the garment and is reflected back through it, rendering anything beneath the cloth virtually transparent.”

  “That’s incredible,” Lawrence breathes.

  “And it wasn’t easy to get our hands on. But once we got a sample, we were able to reverse engineer the cloth for ourselves.”

  “Where did the sample come from?” I ask, as a familiar feeling of dread churns in my stomach. But Meshach only clucks his tongue at me.

  “I’m afraid that information is not for sale.” Nor for loan, apparently. Which explains why the “courtesy garments” for guests are made of a much less expensive material. “Speaking of which, if the women would like to adjourn, we can get down to business.”

  “We will most certainly not be adjourning,” Dreyer says, and a collective gasp goes up from our hosts. For a second, Meshach even turns his attention to her gray-robed form, which is evidently a breach of custom in itself.

  It seems someone forgot to tell us that women don’t speak in mixed company, on Gebose.

  Meshach’s men mumble their disapproval until he silences them with a sharp one-handed gesture. Another gesture sends his wife’s blurry form scurrying through the open door and down the stairs as our host turns back to Sotelo. “Very well, then. In exchange for the retrieval and safe delivery of the cargo specified in an electronic document you’ve already received, I stand prepared to offer you the ship you and your man just toured. Condition: as is. Status: nonrefundable. I believe you’ve already been over the technical specifications with Aaron. Specs on the living quarters are as follows:

  “The ship holds eight private suites and one four-berth crew dormitory space, with its own lavatory. The appliances and facilities are dated, but fully upgradable. The cargo hold is substantial and the ship comes with four two-person short-range shuttles and eight one-man jettison escape pods. The galley and lounge will accommodate your entire crew at once.”

  We already knew all of that, of course, from the ad we answered. And Sotelo and Lawrence just verified it on their tour.

  “If these terms are agreeable, we are prepared to shake on it,” Meshach adds.

  Sotelo has already signed an electronic document agreeing to the terms, but the contract is rather pointless, considering that even if Meshach were inclined to take any breach of bond to the authorities—which he would not be, for fear of having his other, less legal enterprises uncovered—they’d soon discover that the real Captain John Pryor is a gray-haired retiree who now commands a small riverboat part-time, on a moon halfway across the galaxy.

  Captain Sotelo steps forward with his alias intact and his right hand extended, and Meshach grasps it in an archaic gesture of both greeting and acceptance. “Pleasure doing business with you,” Sotelo says. “We’ll let you know when we’ve secured the cargo. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks.”

  Meshach nods. “Your ship will be here waiting.”

  And with that, we re-board our stolen medium-range shuttle and gladly raise the ramp. “Turn up the air!” Tirzah Dreyer orders as she rips the “courtesy garment” from her head and drops it into the box. There are sweat stains on her shirt, between her breasts and beneath each of her arms. “I call dibs on the shower.”

  “Is it that hot, under all that cloth?” Zamora asks as Lilli pulls off her gray garment.

  “Yes, but that’s not what the shower’s for.” Dreyer steps into the bathroom and scowls at him as she grips the door handle. “I want to wash every single molecule of this planet off my body.”

  “I call next.” Lilli sags into one of the chairs bolted to the floor behind the pilot’s seat, as Jamison sinks into his chair at the controls.

  “You should have stayed here,” Sotelo says. “It was too hot for you out there.”

  “The weather isn’t the problem.” She glares at the wad of gray cloth.

  “Here, come sit under the vent.” But instead of waiting for her to move on her own, Sotelo scoops Lilli up in both arms and deposits her in the chair nearest the vent, where he buckles her in. “Jamison, get us out of here.”

  “Well under way,” he says, as Zamora takes the co-pilot’s chair, already running through the pre-flight checklist. “We’ll be out in five.”

  “While we wait, Coleman, I want you to start tracking that cargo. The shipping information should already be loaded onto your station.”

  “On it.” I sink into the chair on the far right and swivel to face the console against the wall, where I begin reading through the documents Meshach sent, which add more detail to what I’ve already read.

  Minutes later, Dreyer steps out of the bathroom, her hair still dripping wet, but combed. She makes her way to the chair in front of the console next to mine, and with everyone buckled in, Jamison pulls back on the lever and our poor, overburdened shuttle finally lifts off of the rooftop. I turn to the viewscreen just as we break through the atmosphere and am pleased to see the swampy planet receding.

  “Good riddance,” Lilli breathes.

  “For now.” Dreyer spins to face her console. “Let’s find this missing crate, get our ship, and be rid of this misogynistic rock for good.”

  Now that we’re free from the atmosphere, Jamison gives the all clear to unbuckle, and Sotelo turns to me. “Coleman, will you go downstairs and d
ouble check the cargo? I meant to redistribute the load before we lifted off, since we’ve used most of it now, but I got distracted,” he admits, with a glance at Lilli, who has her head thrown back, letting cold air wash over her.

  “I think I’m going to puke,” she moans. “Heat and humidity are not good for morning sickness.”

  “Want me to bring up some crackers?” I offer as I head toward the hatch concealing the stairs.

  “Please. And some chocolate milk, if we still have any. I need chocolate milk.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.”

  I can hardly stand upright in our small cargo hold. My head actually brushes the ceiling with every step, which gives me a claustrophobic feeling. Still, I like it down here where it’s dark and quiet, at least compared to the crowded main deck.

  There isn’t much in the cargo hold anymore. We picked up some food and basic supplies on our only refueling stop so far, but without cash or a line of credit, we had nothing to spend but the last of the credit vouchers we found in the gun safe built in beneath the flight instruments.

  A month ago, our little shuttle belonged to a corporate spy who intended to sell Tirzah Dreyer and Lilli Malone—a genetically modified soldier and a woman carrying another such soldier’s baby—to a competing company eager to take a shortcut to marketable genetic manipulation. Lucky for us, that spy came prepared to defend himself and to live on the run for a while, if his mission went bad.

  It did go bad, of course. Because we killed him and took his ship. Unfortunately, the preparations he made for Dreyer, Lilli, and himself won’t last much longer under the burden of our larger crew.

  There are two food crates strapped to the wall of the cargo hold, alongside two supply crates. Both supply crates and one of the food crates are empty, but even with half its contents gone, our one remaining food crate weighs a ton. The sign on the side warns that it takes two men to lift one of the chests, even when it’s empty.

  I am no normal man.

  I lift the empty food crate off the left-hand stack and strap it to another section of the wall, to even out the load. Then I open the chest containing our remaining food, and I rifle through packets of dehydrated prepackaged meals until I find a canister of powdered milk with artificial chocolate flavoring. There are only about two scoops left, but with any luck, that will be enough to sate Lilli’s craving, for the moment. I grab the canister and a sealed tube of crackers, then I close the crate and give it a good tug, to make sure the weight is still stable in its current position. Satisfied, I head for the stairs.

  Then something moves on the edge of my vision.

  As I spin toward the odd movement, I draw my pistol, squinting into the shadows. The small cargo hold is empty, except for our crates, which are strapped to the floor against the wall. There’s nowhere to hide down here for anything larger than a rat.

  Unnerved, I head for the stairs again, still on alert.

  A soft, muffled sneeze echoes from somewhere behind me, followed by a startled gasp. Pistol drawn, I spin again and slam my left elbow into the panel against one wall. Light floods the cargo hold from overhead, and now I see what I couldn’t before.

  There’s a subtle shimmering against the left-hand wall, not five feet from the food crate I was just digging through. Beneath the shimmering, I see a pair of soft-soled gray slippers.

  Fuck.

  “I know you’re there,” I say. “Take that nano shit off so I can see your face.”

  “Please don’t shoot.” Her voice is soft and almost melodic, in spite of the fear echoing through it. That odd translucent shimmer seems to…shift. Then her ankles appear out of thin air, above those little gray slippers. Her calves are slim, encased by snug gray fabric, as are her thighs and the generous swell of her hips. Her waist is defined by a black band peeking beneath the hem of a snug gray top made of the same material.

  She pulls the rest of the cloaking garment free in one final motion, and I find myself staring at the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Holy fuck.

  I elbow another wall panel, and when the static clears, I say the only word I can manage to the rest of the crew listening from the main deck. “Stowaway.”

  But the word echoing in my head as I stare across the cargo hold encompasses a much simpler—if terrifying—thought.

  Mine.

  2

  GRACE

  “WHO ARE YOU?” the man asks, but I can’t answer him. He’s holding some kind of canister and a tube of crackers in one huge hand, and his other is pointing a gun at me. Yet the weapon has nothing to do with my sudden speechlessness.

  The problem is that he’s looking at me. Right at me. Direct, penetrating eye contact.

  No one’s looked right at me in more than three months. Not since the day Damaris opened the cryo-pod and hauled me out of it, shocking me awake before my lungs had a chance to purge the sedative I’d been breathing for who knows how long. She didn’t ask who I was. She just pulled me out of the pod and left me shivering naked on the floor, letting the other women gawk at me while she dug some clothing from a box.

  I couldn’t speak then, either. Not even if I’d wanted to. My throat was too dry from breathing canned air. I was disoriented and terrified. I had no idea where I was or how I got there.

  This man is staring at me like the women did that day, but also not like those women. He doesn’t seem angry about the fact that I exist. He’s looking at me like Meshach looks at Damaris, when he thinks they’re alone. When they’ve forgotten I’m there, because I’m not allowed to speak or to take off my modesty sheath, even when I’m in the house. Even when there’s no one else there but family.

  Not that they’re my family.

  This man is beautiful. Tall and dark and broad—bigger than any of Meshach’s men—with glittering golden eyes and a scalp sheared of all but a short dark stubble. He’s so pretty that my hands want to reach for him, just to see if he’s real. But he’s looking at me like Meshach looked at me when he burst into that room full of women who all gasped and tried to cover themselves while he “examined his purchase.” As if I were a juicy slab of meat he wanted to devour.

  In my entire life, Meshach is the only man who’s ever looked right at me—until today. His gaze was a shock, back then. A violent, greedy invasion. But this man…

  This man…

  My heart beats too hard, forcing too much blood through my veins, too fast. I know the look in those eerie golden eyes. That is the look of a man who can’t control himself. A man who will take what he wants, without noticing the damage he’s done until he’s sated.

  So…he’s a normal man. Despite his extraordinary size and beauty.

  Damaris was right. It isn’t safe for a woman to be seen by a man she doesn’t belong to. I’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the blazes of hell.

  I want to pull the modesty sheath back over my head, to shield myself from that golden-eyed gaze, but I’m afraid that any sudden movement on my part will trigger sudden action on his. There’s no one to protect me on this ship. No guardian shielding me from an entire planet full of men, to reserve me for one in particular. And that risk—the lack of a guardian—seemed worth taking, when I thought I could go unnoticed as a stowaway. That I could just hide in the cargo hold and sneak off the ship at the crew’s first stop.

  But now…

  Static echoes from a small panel on the wall. “Repeat, please, Coleman,” another male voice says. “Couldn’t quite make out what you said.”

  Coleman. This man is Coleman, and Coleman is huge. In my admittedly limited experience, the bigger the man, the greater his potential for violence. Which means I need to keep him happy. According to Damaris, keeping a man happy means discovering what he wants and giving it to him.

  Unfortunately, the solution is also the problem.

  “What’s your name?” Coleman holsters his gun, convinced, evidently, that I am no threat to him. Which is accurate. “I’m not going to hurt you.�
� He kneels slowly and sets the canister and crackers on the floor. “No one here will hurt you. I just want to know who are you.”

  I have no reason to believe him. I’ve committed multiple crimes by sneaking on board this ship. And I’ve uncovered myself, exposing my face and body—well-known triggers of a man’s lustful and potentially violent nature.

  A woman with no modesty deserves what she gets.

  Damaris says that at least twice a day. But it’s too late now, so I lick my lips and swallow to wet my throat. Then I tell him the same thing I told Meshach when he grabbed my chin and made me look up at him, the day his wife pulled me from that cryopod. “My name is Grace, and I’m eighteen Earth-standard years old. I was born in a convent on the planet Theron and raised among women of tireless virtue.”

  Surprise registers on his strong, sculpted features. “Well. That’s more information than I expected. Wait, Theron?” The man—Coleman—frowns. “You’re not from Gebose?”

  “Not originally.” My fingers clench around a handful of the modesty sheath. I should put it back on. He hasn’t demanded anything of me yet, but that’s probably because he’s still trying to determine who I belong to. “Please—”

  The ship lurches to one side, and I stumble, thrown off balance. I grab the crate to my left, and it shifts, pinching my finger against the wall of the cargo hold. With a cry, I jerk my hand free and blink as a drop of blood wells from the broken skin on the end of my left index finger.

  “Let me see.” Coleman steps forward, frowning at my hand, and I can only take half a step backward before the wall stops my retreat.

  “Please don’t send me back there.” I fumble with my uninjured hand for the stolen credit vouchers hidden in my pocket. “I…I can pay for my passage.”

  But he isn’t listening. His nostrils flare as he sniffs the air in my direction, then he reaches for me faster than I can follow the movement. He jerks me forward, and the next thing I know, my arm is stretched between us, my hand nearly a foot above my head. My finger enclosed by the warmth of his mouth.