Escape Velocity (Off-World Series, Book 7): Sexy Science-Fiction Romance Novel Read online

  His face flushed with anger. “The hell you say. You mean they weren’t going to kill me back then? But now they’d be glad to.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s be clear. You’re saying it was a legitimate transaction.”

  “If you call selling a person legitimate.”

  He winced, and she thought she had scored a point.

  She hurried to consolidate her position. “If you really didn’t want to participate in the sale of a slave, maybe you shouldn’t have taken the job.”

  Punching out the words, he said, “My friend didn’t tell me what I was picking up.”

  “Because you wouldn’t have done it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know what kind of man you are.”

  “You’ve only been with me a couple of days.”

  “You didn’t have to give me a good meal. You didn’t have to take me to the space station to get a new identity. You didn’t have to rescue me when those men took me away. Someone else would have been glad to wash his hands of me.”

  He answered with a little nod. “But let’s get back on topic. You’re directing this conversation away from your lies. What were they exactly? You said you were a slave. Did you really spend your days cleaning toilets and other noxious jobs?”

  She looked down at her clenched hands.

  “Answer me.”

  “That wasn’t what I did.”

  He sighed. “This is like pulling out teeth one at a time. What was your job?”

  She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “I was being . . . groomed to be a sex slave.”

  ###

  Max tried to control his anger as he stared at the woman who had just made love with him. She’d started with one story and jumped to another when it hadn’t worked out. “That makes no damn sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “You told me you were given drugs to deaden your sexuality.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why in the hell would they do that—if you’re supposed to be a—party girl?”

  “They taught us technique.”

  “You mean like how to expertly suck a guy off?”

  “What I did with your penis in my mouth?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice. “But they wanted us to be innocent. They wanted the man who bought us to have the pleasure of witnessing our awakening.”

  He couldn’t hold back a string of curses. It sounded diabolical. Yet explained that way, it made some kind of perverted sense—if you were going to sell a woman to a pervert.

  “And what’s the rest of it?” he asked, sure that he wasn’t going to like the answers. “You made up all that crap about being punished for being beautiful?”

  She sat stone-still as she answered, “It’s truer than not. They hated us for being desirable in the rest of the universe while they’re stuck on Naxion, covered with bumps and splotches.”

  He dragged in a breath and let it out. “Yeah. I can see that.”

  What was he going to do now? Leap out of his chair, cross the room and throttle her? Her slave masters had probably done that for a lot less.

  He gripped the arms of his chair as he asked in an even voice, “You said you were a slave who scrubbed toilets so I’d feel sorry for you? And help you.”

  She must be struggling to keep her voice steady. “Yes.”

  “And what about my theory that most of the people on your planet catch a virus that makes them ugly? I suppose that was crap, too.”

  “I’m part of a special breeding program.”

  “A breeding program? What does a primitive civilization know about genetics?” he demanded, even as he remembered that people had been breeding animals since the dark ages on Earth.

  “Genetics is breeding?”

  “The science of breeding.”

  “I guess they know enough. It didn’t always work. Maybe the virus theory is right. Some women in the program go through the change when they mature. They’re the lucky ones. They can have a normal life. If we don’t get the beauty bumps, we’re taken away for training.”

  “And your claim that you grew up in an upper-class household?”

  “That was a lie. My father was a traveling merchant. He took a concubine who was—ugly. She wasn’t a beauty by your standards, but her skin was mostly clear, which meant she was more likely to have a girl like me. They paid him to do it. And they paid him more when I turned out to be prime stock.”

  “And that story about loving her cooking? And your singing?”

  “Singing—and learning standard speech—are part of our training. And, yes, she was also the cook in the house.”

  “Did she mother you?”

  Her voice turned soft. “Yes. She loved me, maybe because we were stuck in the same nightmare. And she was scared for what was going to happen to me, but there was nothing she could do about it.” She swallowed. “I told you my father traveled. He left us at home, and those were the best times, when my mother and I were on our own. Well, she had to make sure I kept up my studies. But we really talked to each other when he was gone. And she did teach me the skills a wife would need to run a home—in case I developed beauty bumps and could lead a normal life.”

  He didn’t let her tale of woe get him off track. “How did you come up with your elaborate story?”

  “I had a lot of time to figure it out.”

  He thought back to their first hours together. “You pretended that you didn’t know how to behave in normal society, but you took off your clothes to turn me on—right?”

  She gave a little nod. “And to test whether I was really. . . attractive to you.”

  “Anything else?” he asked in a voice that sounded to his own ears like ground glass.

  “The slave masters were talking about the man who bought me. Someone named Tudor. A . . . bad man.”

  His memory spun back to the scene on the station when she’d been chained to the wall. “I heard the hang-arounds mention his name.”

  “Yes. Do you know who he is?”

  “No. But I can probably find out.”

  “He’s a regular customer, and he pays well. Over the years, I heard the guards discussing him. Apparently, he gets pleasure from torturing and killing women. They assume none of the slaves he buys live . . . through his attentions. That was why I was desperate to—escape. I was sure I was headed for a painful death.”

  “Kahlad.”

  ###

  Elgin Tudor had recorded the report from Freedom Station. Then he had poured himself two shots of vintage Farlian brandy and downed them in two gulps.

  The liquor didn’t make him feel any better, but it took the edge off his fury.

  He’d barely kept himself from throwing a crystal gewgaw at the transmission. At the last minute, he’d told himself there was no point in destroying a perfectly good unit.

  He poured himself more brandy, then sipped as he replayed the message. It came from what passed for the authorities on Freedom Station.

  Two hang-arounds—known as Lomax and Kado—had been found dead in a musty storage unit in the lower reaches of the station. Either they had killed each other, or someone else had done it and made the murder seem like a fatal fight between two men who would as soon kill a friend as an enemy.

  It looked like they’d burned each other at the same time, after quarreling over stolen merchandise. Boxes of contraband were open, with the contents strewn around. And there was also the suggestion—although no hard evidence—that someone had been held captive in the room.

  And then what?

  As it happened, these were the two men Elgin had hired to look for his cargo.

  He spun out a scenario that fit the situation if you cranked himself into the equation.

  What if these two slime worms had spotted his merchandise at the station and scooped her up? But instead of turning her over for transport right away, they had decided to play a power game with
her first. Then whoever had brought her to the station had killed them and gotten her back. That was as good as any other explanation.

  He had put out a demand for information on which ships had docked at the station prior to the discovery of the bodies and after the likely abduction from Naxion. So far, the bastards who ran the place were not cooperating.

  Too bad he couldn’t force them to cooperate. And too bad there was no surveillance footage from the facility, but that was part of the insane way the place was run. They hated government interference and bent over backwards to thumb their noses at the authorities.

  He’d been lucky to get the official report about the dead men in the storage room. He’d have to rely on snitches and generous offers of credits to give him more information, but he thought there was a good chance that his merchandise had passed through there. Had anyone else seen her? When and where? How long had she been there, and what had she been doing?

  He set down his glass with a clunk as he considered that crucial question. Why would a pilot have taken a slave to Freedom Station? He could have thought to sell her—or set her free. If she was going to be freed, she’d need clothing—and official status. Probably there was someone up there who provided forged identities.

  ###

  Max clenched his hands into fists, imagining Amber’s desperation to escape. He’d fallen for everything she’d told him, and now he was in a slatload of trouble. If this Tudor guy was powerful enough to import women to use as snuff slaves, one of two things had to be true. Either he had a secret life completely under the radar. Or he had a lot of power in other areas that allowed him to subvert the law. Or both were true.

  But Max wasn’t going to fool himself. He hadn’t known it, but he’d been in trouble since the moment he took the job from Rafe, and then realized the true nature of the cargo. When he’d decided that he couldn’t be part of transporting a slave from Naxion to Danalon, it seemed he had made a dangerous enemy.

  Which didn’t change his original decision. In fact, it reinforced it. He couldn’t deliver this woman to the man who had paid a substantial sum so he could enjoy torturing her to death.

  “I have a few more questions,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Why were you dressed in filthy rags when they turned you over to me?”

  “So, you wouldn’t know what was really in store for me.”

  “And why did you have to make up a story about their going to kill me? Wasn’t it good enough to tell me what was really going on?”

  “No. Part of the transaction is to have the ship’s captain give the slave a sleeping draft to keep her controlled during transport. I needed to make sure I could talk to you and . . .”

  “And get me on your side?” he finished for her.

  “Yes,” she answered in a low voice.

  He was silent for long moments as he thought about the nasty details she’d shared.

  He saw her lower lip quiver, then firm. “Are you going to turn me over to him?” she asked in a voice he could tell she was struggling to hold steady.

  “No.”

  He watched the relief wash over her face.

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reasons I wasn’t going to do it in the first place. I accept a lot of cargo—but not slaves.”

  “And what happens now?” she asked.

  “That depends. The first thing I need to do is find out who this Tudor guy is.”

  “How?”

  “You’re sure you were going to Danalon?” he asked.

  “That’s what I thought, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Okay, we’ll assume he lives there.”

  He called up the comms connection in his cabin, then accessed the ship’s main computer, conscious of Amber sitting on his bed, watching him.

  “This Tudor guy, do you know his first name?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad it can’t be easy,” he muttered as he opened a database.

  Still, he found out quickly that Tudor was not a common last name, which argued that the guy might not have been born with it.

  “How many people did you find?” Amber asked.

  “There are fifteen here.”

  She looked like she thought they were facing an impossible task. “That’s a lot.”

  “But four of them are dead.”

  “Okay.”

  He ran his finger down the screen. “And six of them are women. Unless I hit a dead end, I’m going to assume that a woman wouldn’t be buying a series of expendable female slaves.”

  She shuddered. “I hope not. And the guards talked like he was a man.”

  He drilled down into the remaining five men. One was a mechanic at the spaceport. One was currently off planet on a mining expedition. One was a clerk in the office of Human Services. None of those would have had the credits to regularly import women unless they had a secret source of income. Another thought struck him, and he stopped short.

  His expression must have changed, because Amber leaned toward him, alarm registering on her face. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her he was wondering about how this guy was getting rid of the bodies.

  His lips set in a grim line, he went back to the men named Tudor. The fourth was in long-term senior care. Unless he was faking the address, that wasn’t him.

  His fist clenched as he zeroed in on the last guy. He turned out to be the Deputy Director of Planetary Resources. Elgin Tudor.

  Max whistled through his teeth.

  “Did you find him?” Amber asked.

  “It looks like it.”

  She got off the bed and came to stand beside him as Max brought up a more detailed screen of information—starting with a holo of a middle-aged man with jet black hair that must have been dyed.

  His nose was hawk-like. His lips were so narrow they almost didn’t exist. His features looked like they had once been sharp, but his jawline had just begun to sag.

  “He’s sixty,” Amber murmured.

  “Yeah. And his skin is pale, as though he spends most of his time indoors.”

  He studied the look in the light eyes. He seemed both smug and watchful, as though he was evaluating the operator who had snapped the holo.

  “You’re sure that’s him?” Amber asked as she peered at the image.

  “I can’t be sure. Let me do a quick read on the other guys.”

  He went into the details on the other men. Two were married to women who had also shown up on the list. And all of them except Elgin lived in modest to underclass surroundings.

  Max went back to the prime candidate and saw Amber staring at the words floating below the man’s picture, her lips moving as she sounded them out. “Deputy Director of Planetary Resources. He’s in the government.”

  “If that’s him.”

  “And the authorities allow him to . . .?” Her voice trailed off.

  “It’s obviously illegal. But it looks like he’s in a position to cover up anything he wants.”

  “So, the government is corrupt.”

  “On some levels.”

  “You said the space station wanted to get out from under . . . Federation rule. And the same for colonists who fled into the swamps.”

  He gave her a direct look. “On Naxion, do you think the men who raise women to be slaves are doing it with government approval— or are they running a criminal operation?”

  She thought for a moment. “I can’t be sure, but I think it must be illegal.”

  “Why?”

  “You saw the way the sellers met you. They weren’t exactly operating in the sunlight.”

  “Yeah. I guess people will push the limits of what they can get away with—if the money is worth the risk.”

  Max went to another site—not something official from the government but a safe place where men and women who operated at the edge of the law could exchange information or put up warnings about people and places to avoid.

  Did
Tudor know about this secret location for exchanging information? Did he check in occasionally to find out what was being said about him? Or about his enemies, for that matter. Max had no way of knowing for sure, but he figured he’d better be cautious.

  He had an account he thought couldn’t be traced. Still, he wasn’t going to give anything away. Instead of going in and asking a question, he searched on Tudor’s name and title and got some interesting information.

  As he scrolled through entries mentioning the man, Amber said, “I can read, but not fast. What are you seeing?”

  “He has a penthouse in one of the Port City towers. But he spends a lot of time at an estate in river-rat territory.”

  “The swamp? Where you said I could live but I wouldn’t like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why does he want to go there?”

  “It’s not all mud and mucky water, and he’s not living like a river rat in a shack on stilts. He has a big house with servants, and he brings luxuries from the city.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I know he’s the kind of guy who looks out for his own comfort.”

  Max kept reading and summarized for Amber. “Several times he’s hired workers from the local community, then paid them far less than the agreed-upon wage. And there was nothing they could do about it because they’re not living there legally. If they objected, he could make trouble for them.”

  “That’s nasty of him, but it doesn’t prove he imported sex slaves.”

  Max skipped to another entry. “He paid off an inspector at the spaceport to look the other way when some merchandise came in.”

  “By merchandise, do you mean a woman?”

  “I can’t tell. But apparently something illegal.”

  He found another entry. “Slat.”

  “What?”

  “One of the worker’s dogs followed him when he came to the estate. It was digging in a flower bed, and Tudor shot it. He said that if the owner couldn’t control it, it was his right to take action.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s disgusting.”

  Max kept reading the entry and went very still.