CHAPTER 1
Zed
“I WANT A REFUND!”
When an Aberk is angry, their voice can be heard across an entire constellation. This one is so mad that without hearing protection, my head would be exploding through the phonetic wiring implanted in my ear.
“This human bites! You’re fortunate my genitalia is capable of regenerating, or you would have a suit on your hands, flarkr!” Flarkr is an insult which combines all insults and narrows them to a very sharp point designed to skewer the character and self-confidence of the recipient.
“I did warn you not to put your soft parts near her sharp end, sir.”
“She took my shuttle and left the planet. I paid you one million credits for this human, and she’s cost me more than ten times that amount in the three days I’ve had her. I. Want. A. Refund.”
“No refunds. Store policy. Very sorry.”
He lets out a roar of rage which is probably doing intense property damage to everything unsecured in this town. Then he begins to threaten me.
“I am going to kill you, Zed. I am going to kill you, travel through time before you died, kill you again, then travel back through time to before the day I killed you that time, and kill you a different way. You are going to spend your entire life being killed from this day until your birth. Do you understand me, ZED!?”
* * *
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the universe, not very long ago…
Ava
“At all times, no matter what the circumstances, stay on the Earth side of the Horsehead Nebula.”
That warning rings in my ears over and over as I am carried, bound hand and foot, with blood trickling from the corner of my mouth and a headache like none I have ever had before. Massive, clawed hands have hold of me without regard for possible injuries or damage they might incur. I am being carried like a lump of meat, and in this moment, I feel like one. Thank god for shock making me go numb in the aftermath of…
“You’re supposed to land, not crash.”
That’s another piece of advice from the academy I seem to have ignored. I got too used to the autolanders at the Authority space docks. Anybody could land those. A mouse in a wheel could land there, and several have. Landing on an alien planet is difficult. There’s atmosphere, and weather, and in my case, a pretty fucking big tree.
I can see the remains of my shuttle being picked over by green-skinned alien beasts. They’re humanoid, but only in the loosest sense of the term. Two arms, two legs, a head, and the ability to speak. The bar for humanoidness is low. Intelligence is somewhat optional. This species is in no way civilized, that is for absolute certain.
“Human.”
The beast that looks down at me has piss-yellow eyes and two massive fangs emerging from the lower part of his jaw, curling up over his upper lip. His head looks like it was fashioned from a rock. It’s massive and angular, with a heavy brow ridge and wicked dark slashes of hair to mark them. His nose is scaled along the topside, flared wide at the nostrils. All the better for him to scent me with.
He is muscular. Not like a man might be muscular if he spent a lot of time in the gym. He is muscled the way a wild predator on a savannah is muscled.
The note on the map I stole from the surveillance room had this planet marked as being inhabited by wild trolls. I’m no longer sure why that attracted me so much. One of them has just ripped the black box out of the cockpit—and stuffed it into his mouth. I watch in dismay as my only lifeline to Earth is pierced by fangs, then thoroughly crushed and masticated by a row of big flat teeth along the back of the jaw. They’re omnivores, I muse to myself, my inner scientist coming out even through my terror.
“HUMAN!” He thunders the word as if I am supposed to have some prepared response for a brutal alien who just threw me to the ground and almost dashed my brains out on a rock. I don’t think he meant to hurt me. I just think he didn’t care if he did.
“Yes. Hello.” The words just sort of blurt out of me in a polite kind of way. I don’t know how I’m supposed to talk to aliens who have never seen humans before. This is a first-contact kind of situation. I never thought I’d have the honor. Now I wish I didn’t.
He displays his manhood. Ten inches of throbbing, green-veined flesh. There is both intent and motive in that cock. I gulp, wondering if the obvious is about to happen. They were never exactly specific in the academy as to what happened if you were caught on one of these wild planets, but I think I’m getting the picture really fucking quick.