Chapter One

Achelle peered out of a small, circular window as the limping spaceship finally docked for repairs at an ancient space station that proclaimed itself Ploice Two in flashing blue block letters. The seal on the circular port door opened with a hacking cough that turned into a wheeze, allowing the stale, sanitized air from the ship to mingle with the thick, polluted air from the station. The resulting smoggy smell forced Achelle to hold her breath until she was out of the port and into the connect tunnel.

The ship hadn’t stopped at a station for over a month so Achelle and her fellow travelers, all exhausted, appreciated the opportunity to disembark—even for a few short hours while one of the ship’s engines was repaired. She watched their wan faces and stiff frames as they shuffled like the walking dead into the busy station’s vibrant shopping ring.

As happy as she and the other space-fatigued passengers were to leave the limping ship, they didn’t have the energy to explore and mingle with what had to be thousands of other travelers from dozens of foreign planets. Shoulders sagging, they found what they needed, made their purchases and shambled back to their tiny rooms onboard.

Achelle forced herself to remain alert, tucking her chin into her small chest so the long neck and too-large eyes that she’d inherited from her Rane father would not set her apart from her mother’s people, the humans she traveled with. She forced her feet to do a slow slip and slide on the station’s shiny walk surface while her heart pounded out a fast and furious rhythm made for running.

Unable to hear due to an industrial-sized exhaust fan whirring a few yards away, Achelle glanced over her narrow shoulder, checking to see if anyone followed her.

Ploice Two was the lucky station she fixed her hopes on now. On the last six stations, the only available positions were strippers and prostitutes. Achelle had nothing against the women who took such positions, but just weeks ago she had promised her prostitute mother on her deathbed that she would not follow in the family tradition. This was why she needed to find a way off the damn ship and away from the obsessed captain who had become increasingly difficult to fend off.

Flattening herself against the knobby side of a low, fluorescent-yellow building, she watched with narrowed eyes as two greasy crewmen from her ship sauntered into the one blue-black bar crammed in among the expansive yet polite shops. No way was she going into that waste of space. She could smell the bitter scent of gut-rot alcohol and the bleak smell of cheap latex and lubricant from her hiding place across the wide walk.

She rubbed at her watery eyes. After so much time on the spaceship, which employed low, energy-saving lighting, it felt as though the bright, fluorescing illumination on the station was searing her retinas.

After counting down from ten, she peered around the corner, anxiously holding her breath until her lungs burned. Finding the way clear, she took a breath and waited for a small human family of four to draw near, then stepped in behind the father and blended, pretending to be the eldest daughter as she decided where to go next.

The squat, spherical clothing store up on the right was as good a place as any. She pictured herself walking inside the bubble-shaped building, head held up, hands folded calmly in front of her, a confident smile plastered on her otherwise desperate face. She would impress the owner with her sales experience, energy and intelligence.

As she approached the wavering shield doors, her chest tightened and her hands began to shake. So much rode on her finding a job. Last sleep cycle, she had barely escaped the large, grasping hands of the infatuated captain to run and hide the rest of the remaining five sleep hours in a tight cubby in the grungy children’s play area on deck two.

She shivered in fear just thinking about the towering, muscular man who she’d evaded only through desperate speed and frantic inventiveness. When he’d gripped her arms with bruising force and pulled her against his bulging-muscled body, his pale, blue eyes had flashed with fixated arousal, as if he was possessed or suffering from space madness.

Gods, she missed her mother…and had counted on her far more than she’d realized. Her mom was world-wise and vicious as venom. In her childish innocence, Achelle had believed her mother would always be there for her, that she would never have to fend for herself. They had planned to make a new life—one where her mom would have a respectable job and Achelle could finish her education—on a newly founded planet at the edge of the galaxy. To lose her one family member unexpectedly had left Achelle in an almost comatose state for thousands of light-years. Until, that is, the captain expressed his false regret and forcefully “offered” his protection if she took a new position as his sexual companion.

Yeah, screw that. Achelle would rather jump out an airlock than jump in Captain Grab-Ass’ bed.

A metallic chirp sounded when she breached the transparent shield door and walked in to the trendy clothing store called Spaced. The inside was small and the clothing shelves mostly empty. She appeared to be the only customer. With a sigh, she approached the purchase station and waited for a curvaceous redhead to acknowledge her.

With a sniff, the woman turned and looked Achelle up and down with bored, unimpressed eyes. “Something I can help you with, Mar?” she asked, using the common, polite term for “Miss” when her body language and voice were anything but polite.

Achelle lifted her chin and smiled. “Hello. I’m looking for a sales position and—”

“Sorry,” the woman interrupted, sounding anything but. “We don’t have any openings. If you come back at the beginning of traveling season, we might have a position available.”

Right. As if Achelle could simply wait around for three months. The woman was either an idiot or unkind. “Can you tell me if anyone else is hiring on the station?”

“Misty’s had an advert up last time I dined there. It’s the restaurant in the four-hundred curve of the ring.”

Well, at least I have a lead, Achelle thought as she left Spaced and quickly walked away. Realizing she wasn’t blending, she forced herself to slow to the same speed of the foot traffic and refused to look over her shoulder as the crowd flowed like a humanoid river down the metallic bed of the walkway. Overhead, in blazing block letters a sign read Three Hundred Circle.

Not far to go, she thought, blinking at the bright sign and promptly tripping over a squat, rusted-out trash bot.

The bot, no bigger than her head, righted itself on crooked legs, lifted its angular head and spit a greasy, green residue all over her slim ankles and old shoes. She kicked the bot away from her but the sharp-smelling slime worked like acid, eating through her skirt and shoes to burn her skin.

“Hey!” shouted a short man with an oblong head full of tangled hair. Unshaven and gruff-looking, he stood in front of the shield door of a ship strip-down shop that was pretending to be a repair shop. “That bot’s private property. If you damage it, you’ll pay for repairs.”

Not wanting to draw more attention to herself, Achelle bolted into a nearby alley to jerk off her shoes and rip off the bottom of her worn skirt. She threw them away from her, panting with pain. Raw chemical burns festered on the tops of her feet, her ankles and the tips of her fingers.

Stupid bot…stupid her for tripping over the damn thing. Trash bots used an acidic fluid to decompose the trash they ingested and didn’t hesitate to use the fluid in self-defense protocols. Never mind the fact that the little bot belonged to ship thieves.

Back on Earth, she’d seen a team of four thieves strip a stolen ship of all its valuable parts in less than five minutes. Then they had made themselves disappear without a trace.

Too bad she couldn’t do the same. Gods, she sucked at this furtive, stealthy crap. Grimacing at her bare ankles and feet, she groaned.

“I look like space trash,” she complained to herself. “Now no one will want me.”

Yet she had no choice but to keep going. She checked left and right before leaving the alley, then walked with purpose through the busy three-hundred curve of the ring. Long minutes later, the four-hundred curve sign hovered overhead.

She slowed to check the name of each establishment. At last she saw a small sign that said Misty’s in understated silver letters. There was no green hiring symbol—a humanoid with one hand raised and one by its side—beneath the name though. Maybe Misty’s was too high class to advertise an open position that way.

Before she could step through the blue-tinted shield door, a tall man with sharp features stepped out and looked her over, his eyes lingering on her torn skirt and bare feet.

“This establishment requires a standard of dress that you do not meet, Mar,” he said in a crisp, condescending tone. “Please return when you are properly attired.”

He turned his narrow back, dismissing her, but Achelle let her anger take her by the hand. She stepped around the man and glared up into his sallow face.

“I’m looking for a job and was told Misty’s might have an opening.”

The corners of his nearly lipless mouth lifted ever so slightly, as if he were amused. “You were misled, Mar, but even if we did have an open position…” He cleared his throat, glancing down at her burned feet. “We would be unable to offer a position to…you.”

He lifted his gaze to meet hers and smiled openly, revealing four rows of oblique, serrated teeth. “Perhaps you should check with the local brothels? They are located on the eight-hundred curve—on the opposite side of the ring—and are always looking for new bodies to fill their beds.”

Achelle stepped back from the arrogant Krahs male but refused to drop her gaze. She waited until, with a lift of his thin eyebrows, he lost his toothy grin, broke eye contact and went into the restaurant. Then she walked away. She might be naïve about, well, a lot of things, but one thing she did know was never to turn her back on a Krahs whose teeth are showing.

An itching between her shoulder blades told her that the Krahs male was watching her through the cloudy shield door—at least she hoped it was him and not the captain.

When she and her mother had started the journey, Achelle had been excited to meet people of other races, maybe even Ranes. She was half-Rane after all. She had their same larger-than-human eyes and longer-than-human neck. But the more people she met, the less she wanted to know.

With a forced show of pride, she lifted her chin, fisted her hands at her side and marched toward the upper hundred curves of the ring. So what if the brothels were located in the eight hundreds. She was sure there were plenty of other respectable jobs to be found there as well, and she wouldn’t let some Krahs snob keep her from looking.