Chapter 5
Fearless
Sharon had been afraid. At least, she thought she had been. Those guys looked rough, but they smelled worse. The leader appeared to be unhinged the way he ranted about going out in a blaze of glory. Who talked like that? Underneath it all, she’d remained calm, listening to them talk for any information she might pick up. Last time she’d been drugged, but not this time.
This time, she’d been calm. One of the mercenaries had said she seemed fearless. What a laugh. Sharon was no heroine. She knew Duggin was coming for her. That’s what helped keep her calm. He had too, just as she’d imagined with a glitter of danger in his eye, making the smart mercenaries scattered. The not so smart ones had expired at his hands or the hands of the others he’d brought for backup. There’d been no doubt in her mind she would be rescued as long as these ruffians hadn’t killed her before he arrived.
Now that the rescue had been carried out, she was looking forward. Would this happen again? How many failures would teach those shadowy figures who ran the labs that there was no point in continuing? It made her wonder, could these misbegotten sons of a dog be traced back to their master? If they could use these attempts to find the source that would make it all worthwhile. How did one even go about such a thing?
It was likely that the hunters or the Mazlans if not both, had already been trying to do that. Could anything she’d overheard be helpful? Sharon had listened so hard she’d gotten a headache. That would be worth it if only they could catch these awful people. Right now, she was in Duggin’s warm embrace and it didn’t get any better than that.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Duggin offered. That was an offer she’d certainly take. He began to walk to the entrance they’d come in.
“Don’t forget to find out if Sharon knows anything,” Razar suggested.
“As soon as she’s had a chance to recover,” Duggin said.
Razar gave him a pointed look. Sharon knew the statistics. She was given them last time. Victims remembered the most right after they were recovered. Given time, memory fades or becomes confused. While under certain circumstances memories might be repressed to surface later, that wasn’t the case usually. It was important she get the facts out as soon as possible.
Ralph and Paul had bickered back and forth a great deal, divulging a lot of information. Most was about who they were, but some was about the shady males who hired them. That information might be traceable. She was sure it would be like links in a chain. Just like outbreaks of illness were tracked. Since she wanted to be a nurse, she could relate to that the best.
They loaded in the ships, Razar’s males took six prisoners with them. A few stayed behind to deal with the bodies. Duggin explained they would take pictures, fingerprints, and DNA to identify the mercenaries. It might help them to figure out who had hired them. Sharon was glad it was their job, not hers. Handling dead bodies was not something she wanted to do. Those guys were a mess when they were alive, dead in this heat, they would stink to high heaven soon.
“Sharon!” Clancy screamed as she moved to her hugging the stuffing out of her. “Thank goodness, you’re alive.”
Clancy didn’t invoke the gods or goddesses as many of the races did. None of those raised and kept in the lab had any knowledge of such things. Religion was a strange but wonderful mystery to them. They’d heard the guards and medical staff say curses or prayers to the strange deities they believed in, but no one had ever taken the time to explain their beliefs to them.
She’d been reading some of the amazing stories about the Mazlan’s religious background. Sharon had been both mystified and stunned by them. That they were beyond belief went without saying, but they seemed impossible to her. Maybe if she’d been indoctrinated as a child she would have found them comforting or at least familiar. Her attention tended to wander since she’d been exposed to so many new things. She tried to listen to what Clancy said.
“Tell me everything.”
“There’s not much to tell. The most important thing is Ralph was working with them. They paid him to help capture us,” Sharon informed.
“Are you sure?” Clancy asked.
“Positive. They spoke of him,” Sharon admitted.
“See?” Clancy asked Duke. “I’m not crazy.”
“He must be. The Mazlans don’t like betrayal,” Duke observed.
“Once we get to the refugee housing, we’ll handle him,” Duggin promised.
“So, you never told us what happened, Clancy,” Duke said.
“I went to see Sharon, but she wasn’t alone. Another male was trying to grab her, but he wasn’t having much luck. I was going to help her, but Ralph grabbed me, holding me back. He said later it was to keep me safe so only one of us would be taken. Sharon saw me being held by Ralph, so she went with the abductor to keep me safe. I could have taken Ralph. He’s a weak ass weasel.”
“It’s an Earth creature considered to be sneaky,” Sharon answered.
“That fits. He’ll not do us any harm again,” Duggin promised. Both males looked angry and ready to do violence.
“Razar just contacted me. One of the mercenaries is a woman,” Duke said shaking his head.
“Why can’t a woman be a mercenary?” Sharon asked annoyed.
“We have women hunters. It’s not so much that she can’t be a mercenary as that she was hiding the fact that she was a woman. We didn’t know, but neither did her fellow mercenaries. How do you hide something like that? They eat, sleep, and use the bathroom together,” Duke observed.
“I read about a device that let’s female soldiers pee standing up,” Clancy offered.
“No, really?” Duggin asked. Clancy nodded.
“That would be weird. She’d have to wear it all the time,” Duke pointed out.
“So?” Clancy asked.
“Wouldn’t it get, you know, nasty?” Duggin asked.
“It would if she couldn’t take it off to wash it,” Sharon commented, amused by the male’s concerns.
Duke shivered in an obvious way. “Yuck!”
“Enough said,” Duggin insisted.
They made it back to the refugee housing where they immediately got off the ship. Duke and Duggin would be taking Ralph into custody to be delivered to Razar to deal with at his leisure. Meanwhile, Razar was questioning the six mercenaries he already had in custody. As soon as they approached the building, women came spilling out highly agitated and crying. Not good.
“What’s going on?” Duggin asked.
Sandy sniffed as she lifted her tear stained face in his direction. “Ralph is dead. We found him outside, face down on the ground. There’s no obvious cause. He’s just cold and stiff.”
The other women started crying piteously. “Don’t feel too bad. He was working with the mercenaries who abducted Sharon. They probably killed him to tie up loose ends,” Duke admitted.
Some of the ladies looked even more upset. Others looked disbelieving. Ralph was, after all, one of them. Wasn’t he? “What did any of you know about Ralph?” Clancy asked.
“He’s came to the facility a couple months before we were freed,” Sandy said.
“He was weird,” Gayle admitted.
A few of the other women admitted he gave them the creeps. He was solitary, but always watching. The man never got close to anyone, never made a single friend. His standoffish attitude had gone unnoticed because they were all traumatized. Everyone reacted differently, so how were any of them to say he was different. A pattern seemed to be emerging that made it clear he’d been a spy all along. That may have been his true reason for not wanting to learn. Ralph needed all his time to watch and assess.
It was likely he was the reason they’d been successful in their other attempt, as well. Honestly, they were lucky he was gone as sad as that was. Now they would be safer, or they would be if no other spies remained. Sharon cast a suspicious eye around the group. All the women were familiar from years of catching glimpses of them as they were moved around. A few of the males were too, but many of the males were not. Ralph had fit firmly in that group of barely known males, except he’d been in poor shape without any significant value as a breeding specimen. That should have set off a red flag with all of them. Ralph had been unbelievably average or less than in every way.
Sharon shook her head to clear it. There was no point in second guessing herself. None of them had experience with much of anything life might throw at them now. It was time to pull up her big girl panties and take on life head first. She now knew some of the things to look for in a traitor or a spy. All of them would be more watchful now that they realized what could happen among their own people, or at least what they thought was one of their own.
Duggin moved closer, putting his arm around her to lend her his support. Could everyone tell she was about to go to pieces or only him? With him close like this she felt better. His spicy scent washed over her making her heart beat faster for a different reason. She didn’t know what Duggin wanted from her, but she wanted everything from him. If she had any say in the matter, he would be the one to teach her about what happened between a male and female when they cared deeply for each other. Sharon simply didn’t want anyone else.
She looked at him from beneath her eyelashes hoping no one else would notice. The male was gorgeous. His short hair, just long enough to stand up in the top of his head, was black. It went well with his blue eyes, a blue so dark at times it seemed black. He was tall with broad shoulders but the build of a swimmer, muscular and lean. Any female would be happy to call him hers. Sharon certainly would be, but could she?
With brown hair, brown eyes, as well as a height that was average, she felt mousy next to such a gorgeous guy. Maybe she was shooting for a match way above her level. Oh, her figure was nice enough if a bit on the skinny side. Sharon wasn’t dumb or lazy. She and Duggin got along well, or at least she thought they did.
“Sharon?” Duggin whispered.
“Yes.”
“Can we go to your room?”
“Okay,” she replied as he steered her in that direction.
Her room wasn’t luxurious or especially large, but compared to what she was used to before, it was wonderful. Her bed was a standard rather than the cot she’d slept on before. There was a dresser big enough to hold a lot of clothes. A desk sat on the corner so she could do school work with her own computer sitting on top.
The cherry on top was her own bathroom. The walls and floor were tiled with a drain centered in the floor that everything sloped towards for easy cleaning. There was a pedestal sink with the toilet nearby. A medicine cabinet was over the sink giving her a place for all her personal care supplies. Everything was neat and clean. She didn’t mind bringing him in here.
He looked around seeming to catalog everything. “Nice room.”
“I like it.”