Edward (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 1) (18 page)

“Go on,” the captain said, furrowing his brow and rolling his shoulders back.

“As I’m sure you’re all aware, he was a megalomaniac with delusions of godhood, a hard on for the Civil War, and a warship that could make a Taldori cruiser look like an escape pod. And then he died, which was both really great and really terrible because…” she trailed off and gestured incomprehensibly, trying to get her thoughts in order. “…okay, so, I’m from Lytos, right? And we don’t have what you’d call a comprehensive police force at the best of times. But when Strathmore kicked it, a lot of people who didn’t have the balls or blasters to stand up to him suddenly didn’t have anything stopping them from taking a piece of his empire for themselves except each other. And just like that, you’ve got rival factions going at it like pit dogs in every corner of the damn galaxy. For Lytos, it was the Rahm brothers against the pocket of the Bleeding Coffins that was holed up there, but the main body of the Coffins is on Delta so they backed off pretty quick. That was almost the end of that, but then the younger Rahm decides that this is as good a chance as any to launch a hostile takeover, and all of a sudden, everyone who declared loyalty to the brothers—which was every mother’s son on the damn asteroid that knew what was good for him—was scrambling to choose a side and fight or get the hell out of the way. Follow?”

Everyone at the table nodded.

“Alright. So. Everyone’s got to eat somehow, right? And while I’ve got nothing but respect for the girls working in the red light district, I know I don’t have the right disposition to be one of them, and no one respectable wants to hire a street rat, and I’ve got no love for the gangs. So,” Zosha shrugged, “I got good at stealing things. A friend of mine’s an information broker and every so often he’d set me up with a job, but for the most part it was just pickpocketing to make sure I had a roof over my head and food on the table. It was all working out about as well as you could expect from Lytos, but then I fucked up. See, there’s this man named Lan Doro. Greasy, but ambitious. When Rahm the Younger decided to try and take over, he jumped on board and after a little hard work and a lot of backstabbing he made it into the inner circle. Then he gets put in charge of the U4 shipments—you know, Euphoria? Gold powder? Makes you think you’re flying?-- and that’s where things start going downhill for me. You have to understand, I’d heard of Lan Doro but I’d never seen him before. All I knew was he looked like he had something valuable on him, which I guess he did. Not the good kind of valuable, though.”

Zosha paused to wet her lips.

“What did you take?” the captain asked.

“I’m not sure, entirely, but there’s a lot of numbers and a lot of names,” Zosha said. “It’s the kind of thing that could get someone in trouble with the law, even on Lytos, but the real threat to Lan Doro is that I could give it to the older Rahm. It would help him reduce his brother’s influence, but not enough to unseat him entirely, which means that little brother would still be more than capable of making the rest of Lan Doro’s life a living hell. I’ve got no interest in giving the information to anyone, but as long as I have it I could ruin him and he knows it. So my information broker friend helped me hop from Lytos, to Trios, to Dalos XI. From there, obviously, I broke onto your ship and now we’re here.”

“You have an information broker friend capable of getting you through Dalos XI’s security?” Hyde asked, eyebrow raised.

“Kind of. He paid off one of the guards to not red flag my ID,” Zosha lied. One of the many caveats of being friends with Spinner was never admitting to knowing him. Best case scenario, someone would try to get her to contact him for information. Worst case scenario, someone would hurt her to try and hurt him by proxy.

“I wasn’t aware Sixers could be paid off,” Dominic said.

“There’s always at least one in every bunch,” Zosha said nonchalantly. In her experience, it was true.
 

“So why not just give the information to one of the Rahm brothers?” Annie asked. “Surely, that would get you some degree of protection?”

“Two problems there,” Zosha replied. “The first is getting past Lan Doro. Running from him and his was difficult enough, and that was away from Lytos. On Lytos, he’s got eyes everywhere, or a friend who does. I’d have been dead in the water if I stayed. The second is that it could come back to bite me later. Let’s say I get information to one of the brothers, yeah? Well, if I get the information back to the younger one and the older one wins this little spat, then I’m one of his enemy’s people and I need to be eliminated. Same thing if I give the information to the older one. And either way, I’d be declaring a side, which I wouldn’t want anyways and which would put a target on my back. Running was easier and safer.”

“Huh,” the captain grunted. “Well, you’ve got about a minute left. Anything else you want to add?”

“I, ah…” Zosha searched for the right words that would convince the crew not to kill her immediately. “I’m good a cracking encryptions? And getting through security systems? And, well. I obviously have light fingers. I’d owe you a favor, and I promise I never meant to hurt any of you, I just needed to get out of Dalos XI.” She stopped herself from adding
please don’t kill me
to the end of that. Negotiating for your life was one of those weird things Zosha had found that it wasn’t good to look to desperate during. There was no way to tell when the person you were telling all about your five sick children would get bored and just shoot you in the head.

The captain scratched his chin and stared at her. “I think this is one of those things people are always telling me to think through.”

Dominic guffawed. “Sorry, lady, it looks like Leo blindly trusting a pretty woman that comes out of nowhere and demands a ride is something that only happens one time.”

Annie smirked and kissed the captain on the cheek. “I say we watch her while she’s onboard and then drop her when we stop to refuel. That way we get rid of her without having to kill her or delivering her into this Lan Doro’s hands.”

“Sounds good,” Captain Ingram said. “Anyone else?”

“I say we space her now,” Hyde said. “That way we don’t have to worry about watching her.” Zosha stiffened.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rick said. “I can watch her until we get to a depot.”

“Look, Rick, I’m all for you getting your dick wet, but time and place, yeah? I will personally buy you an hour with a nice girl on Gamma, but she,” he said, nodding at Zosha, “is getting of this ship
now
.”

Rick walked slowly around the table to stand next to Hyde. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”

“I’m not
implying
anything,” Hyde responded, shifting in his seat so he was facing Rick instead of the table and crossing his arms. “I’m
saying
that not all of us are willing to risk our lives for a nice set of tits. It was stupid when the captain did it—no offense, Annie—and it’s stupid now.”

“Hyde—” Rick began.

“I agree,” Dominic said quietly. “We’re smugglers, not a ferry for girls with notorious criminals chasing them across the galaxy. Besides, we need to lay low after the Edge disaster. You heard her, what happened with Strathmore turned the collective criminal underworld of the galaxy upside down. We’ve been lucky to escape the blowback this far. Putting ourselves in the path of another murder-hungry whack-job, especially for some random dame, is the kind of shit that gets people killed.”

Rick glared ferociously at Hyde and Dominic. It was the kind of look that would have had the worst men in the worst parts of Lytos scrambling for cover. Hyde and Dominic just looked indifferent.

“Captain?” Rick asked, not looking away from the two men.

“I’m thinking,” the captain answered.

“Don’t you think we owe her safe passage, in a way?” Annie murmured to him.

“Two things on that,” Hyde drawled, still looking at Rick. “The first is that is some roundabout thinking that assumes we give two shits what we owe anyone. The second is that if you’re thinking we owe her because of the reason I’m thinking you mean, then I’d like to point out that the blame for that falls on your daddy, and, if we’re talking people in the immediate vicinity, you.
We
don’t owe her anything.
You
might owe her something, if you wanna let your guilt complex take charge, but by that logic you still owe
us
. I suggest you pay it back by getting her off this ship by way of the airlock.”

The captain curled a protective arm around Annie’s waist. “Watch yourself. Annie has more than proven her worth in this crew.”

Hyde snorted. “Hate to say it, Captain, but her doing time on her back for you doesn’t help the rest of us.”

A thunderous look spread across Captain Ingram’s face, and it looked like the only reason he wasn’t jumping across the table at Hyde was the fact that it would displace Annie. Rick looked, somehow, even angrier. Even Dominic’s brow furrowed slightly. Annie, for her part, only raised an eyebrow.

“Hyde, you thrice-damned son of a pox-ridden—”

“I’m ten minutes late to the family meeting,” a familiar voice said from right over Zosha’s left shoulder, “and you all are already trying to kill each other.”

If Zosha had been a little less involved in the conversation in front of her, maybe she would have hear him approach. But she was, and she didn’t. As it were, she found herself in a situation where there was, suddenly, a person who could potentially harm her close behind her in a situation where her nerves were already thrumming with fear and anxiety. She’d stopped getting into situations like this as often once she began to truly excel at thievery, but the scenario was a familiar one, and she reacted the way she usually did. With a startled yelp, she turned in her seat and drove her elbow directly into the mystery person’s groin.

The broad blond man behind her went down with a pained gasp. Zosha had leapt out of her seat and hopped back several feet before his knees hit the ground. The entire room was silent apart from Zosha’s breathing, heavy from shock, and the groans of the man on the ground.

Dominic and Hyde looked at each other for a moment, then turned to the captain.

“Alright,” Hyde said. “She can stay, but only until the depot. After that, if I ever see her again, I reserve the right to break her in half.”

“Fuck… you…” the man, who Zosha assumed was Custer, gasped out.

The captain relaxed. “Good to know you’ve seen the light. Annie, can you show her to Rick’s quarters? I need to talk a few things over with the rest of the crew.”

Annie nodded and slid off his lap. She walked to the door and Zosha followed, stepping carefully around Custer.

“I’d apologize for Hyde and Dom,” Annie said as they walked down a hallway, “but I can’t blame them for worrying about the repercussions of letting you live, so I’ll say instead that I hope you prove them wrong.”

“Thank you, I think,” Zosha said. “Although I’m a little surprised you’re sticking up for Hyde after what he said.”

Annie laughed. “What, the comment about my back and whose sheets it’s been on? I’m more than used to that. If there’s one thing I’ve found that holds true in every corner of the galaxy it’s that when a man gets riled up and there’s a woman involved, inevitably her sex life is going to be used against her. I’m important to this crew and Hyde knows it. God knows those boys have spirit and muscle by the score, but I’m the one that can plan out the best place to apply that. If I was really insulted, I’d make sure to get back at him, but once he cools down he’ll feel bad about it, in his own way.” She stopped in front of a door and started to punch in a code. “This is Rick’s. He and Leo fly this bird in shifts, so he’ll probably be down to get some rest as soon as their little meeting stops.”

The door whooshed open and Annie gestured for Zosha to walk inside.

The room was plain in a way that made Zosha tense. It was all shiny metal and bolted-down furniture. Logically, she knew that all space ships has rooms like this, but on Lytos rooms like this were for people who needed to be able to get a little rough and clean up quick. Apart from a shirt tossed over the back of the desk chair and papers strewn across various surfaces, it was tidier than Zosha had come to expect from a single man’s living quarters. She dropped her pack and kicked it into a corner, then hovered awkwardly, unsure of what to do next.

“So, ah…” she started, more than a little on edge. All the nerves and anxiety and fear had gone from a broad, frenzied tidal wave of emotion to something like a tightrope in a void; it was compact now, and focused, and despite it being smaller then before it was still the only thing she could focus on without losing balance. Less of a bruising pain and more of a precise cut. “What did you mean when you said you owed me? I don’t think I’ve ever met any of you before, and I don’t do much business with smugglers.”

Annie tilted her head one way and then the other, mulling it over. “You said you were caught in the crossfire of an internal conflict caused by the ripples that Strathmore’s death caused,” she said finally. “If that’s true, from a certain way of looking at it, we owe you because we’re the one that caused those ripples.”

It took Zosha a minute to realize what she was saying because of the sheer impossibility of it. “I think I’m interpreting that in a way you don’t mean,” she said faintly.

“If you’re interpreting it as me telling you that we’re the ones who killed Strathmore, then congratulations, you’re on the right path,” Annie said, calm as you please, like she hadn’t just told Zosha she was at least in part responsible for shaking bits of the galaxy apart at the seams.