Chapter One

EMMY

“If you don’t let me take your place on the flight, those men are going to kill me.” I dropped my voice until it was barely above a whisper and focused on her light blue eyes. “Please.”

My fear was a living thing, trembling through my bones and filling every space inside of me. I pressed my hands against my legs to keep them from shaking. If the stranger wouldn’t cooperate, I was dead.

Everything Morley and I had worked for, and everything he had died for would go with me. One of the most precious cultural artifacts in the galaxy would go into the private collection of a selfish, self-centered, rich bastard who didn’t give a shit that other people could also benefit from it.

I wouldn’t let it happen. It was too important, and would help many people. I had to survive and find it. The woman in front of me looked conflicted.

“I don’t even know who you are,” she began.

“Look at this.” I activated the computer on my forearm and tapped the communications unit until it displayed my bank account. I grabbed her arm. She frowned as I swiped her ID number. I created a pending transaction and pointed at my computer’s display.

“500,000 credits, in your name. I’ll transfer them now. It’s a lot more than the cost of this spaceflight.”

The woman gasped as she stared at the number.

“I’m in trouble. Please, do a girl a favor.” I knew I was begging at this point, but they were coming this way, and it wouldn’t be long before they spotted me.

I needed to get on the flight.

“Okay,” she said, surprising me. “But you need to know something first.”

I wasn’t listening, though. I shook my head and had her speak her name into my computer, then I transferred the money into her account. I didn’t think twice about it. Morley gave me the money for research.

I couldn’t do any research if I were dead.

When it transferred, she allowed me to change the name on her ticket. “But listen,” she said, more agitated than before. “You should know something first.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time. Thank you.” I started moving away. She would never know the depths of my gratitude. I glanced back at Abel’s henchmen, who miraculously still hadn’t spotted me, and thanked my lucky stars again.

When I reached the desk, there wasn’t even a line. They were announcing final boarding for spaceflight 46789 to planet Stalwart in Sector 91. I had no idea where Sector 91 was. I had never been good at Interplanetary Geography in school, and now I wished I had been a better student.

Did it matter? Right now, all I cared about was getting far away from Earth.

The woman behind the desk verified the ticket. I ducked into the walkway leading to the spacecraft, knowing I wouldn’t feel safe until we took off.

An hour later, the shuttle was still on the ground, and I was wondering if my luck had finally run out. The captain had announced a flight delay just before our scheduled departure time. My heart started to beat fast. Why was taking so long? Was there a problem with the shuttle? I couldn’t afford to have a delay, especially if it meant I would have to transfer to another ship.

Two men entered the spacecraft, and I ducked down into my seat. It was the men Abel sent after me.

Shit.

I didn’t think. I unbuckled, got out of my seat, and headed toward the bathrooms as they began searching the front of the shuttle. My breathing was erratic, but I tried not to look unusual, keeping my face as neutral as possible.

When I finally reached the bathrooms, I realized they would check those too, and I would be trapped. Was there a place they wouldn't check? Yes. The carry-on storage. Every passenger on an interplanetary flight was allowed a single piece of luggage for the multi-day trip between worlds and they were all stored in compartments during take-off.

I shuffled farther back, moving to the location of the baggage compartments. The flight staff were at the front of the ship for the launch. No one was around.

I opened one of the large doors and crept inside. I moved the luggage one piece at a time, carefully replacing it behind me until I had made my way down to the back. There was a suitcase-sized hole for me, and I slid into it. My knees pressed against my chest. I pulled a smaller suitcase on top of me, trying not to hyperventilate in the small space.

As a final precaution, I swiped on my computer and activated a program to hide my body signature. I didn’t know if they were using scanners, but I wasn’t going to take a chance.

Then it was time to wait.

It seemed like I was trapped in that tiny, dark compartment forever, afraid to move and as still as a statue. But finally the door was wrenched open, and I heard men speaking as they peered in the cargo hold. They weren’t speaking Standard, which was the language of the galaxy.

Years ago, most planets had adopted Standard as the primary language of trade and business. If the men weren’t speaking Standard, it meant they didn’t want anyone understanding what they were saying.

Fortunately, I knew the language they were speaking. It was English.

Despite the widespread use of Standard, a few of the old languages survived in pockets on every planet. Earth was no different. Many of its poorest and most technologically backward areas still spoke English. It was surely the spoken language in whatever district bred Abel.

Morley had been a stickler for being able to understand things for ourselves. He said that if we needed someone else to translate old documents and the writing on artifacts, we would never know if they were accurate. And what if we found a secret, and didn’t want anyone else to know about what we had found?

He had made me learn English for our studies on Earth. He had learned the language twenty-five years earlier himself when he had been a graduate student in archeology, and I had still been in kindergarten. I had complained about the irregular tenses and ridiculous spellings. Standard had none of that. If there was a letter, it sounded like what it looked like, and nothing else. It was almost impossible to spell anything incorrectly because Standard was a created language.

Morley didn’t care about my complaints. He had made me keep on with my lessons until I was fluent. I didn’t speak it often, but I learned languages with ease, and people had mistaken me for a native speaker before.

As if learning English wasn't hard enough, later on, he also made me learn Karfalun. It was the ancient language of Heralla, a place where someone hid the Silver Mestolo of Zelia. And if I had thought English was difficult, I should have saved my breath to complain about the new language.

“She couldn’t have gotten on this spaceship,” one man said in English. “Our scanners would have found her. There’s nothing but inanimate luggage in here. We should go back and do a thorough sweep of the spaceport.”

“The boss will kill us if we let her get away. She’s got the key to the latest old piece of junk he has his heart set on.”

“Look, the compartment is full. She can’t be in here. Let’s go. The boss’s pockets are deep, but they’re not that deep. If the spaceport officials look closely at our papers, we’ll be in trouble. It’s time get out of here.”

“Let’s try one more time. You check this compartment, and I’ll check the other one. Then we’ll go.”

I held my breath, but the man assigned to search my area didn’t seem to be doing anything. I heard him shuffling things around at the front of the compartment at first, but then he started tapping on his computer as he waited for his partner.

“Did you find anything?”

“Nothing. She’s not in here. Let’s get off the shuttle before we get arrested for forging papers and delaying the flight.”

There was no response, but soon the door closed, and I was in darkness again. I waited as long as I dared before trying to get out. I couldn’t be in the luggage compartment when the shuttle took off, or I would have escaped one death only to find another.

I climbed back over the luggage to the door and peeked out. There didn't appear to be anyone around. I quickly emerged and shut the door, being as quiet as I could. I walked on soft feet to the bathroom, using it before returning to my seat. When I sat down, I heard an announcement to strap in for take-off.

I used two crisscrossing belts to secure myself. As soon as the sound of the shuttle taking off filled the spaceship, I knew I was leaving Earth, where I had grown up.

I let out a deep sigh. I was safe from Abel, for now.

Four days later, I stared at the viewscreen as the turquoise planet increased in size. Something had been on my mind now that my life wasn’t in immediate danger.

What had that woman wanted to tell me? She seemed anxious and hadn’t liked it when I brushed her off.

Now I felt like I should have listened to her. My gut told me that I had escaped one sticky situation and dove straight into another one. I just didn’t know anything about the new problem.

Once we landed, I let everyone exit in front of me, stalling before I left the shuttle. I wasn’t sure what was making me uneasy, but I had learned to trust my intuition. And my intuition was saying that there was nothing but trouble for me when I stepped off the spaceship.

I was slowly packing up my bags and starting to maneuver up the aisle when a man entered the spacecraft.

“There it is, sir,” one of the attendants said, pointing at me. “Seat 257. Is this the person you’re looking for?”

I lifted my eyes and saw a handsome alien man. His eyes were the deepest black. I felt that I might fall into them and never emerge if I wasn’t careful. His hair was black as well. He had a light purple stripe that ran diagonally across one eye, ending at his nose. The net effect was to give him a rakish look as if he had a permanent black eye.

I caught my breath at the alien look of the male in front of me. I knew in my mind that we were all descended from the Great Race, but there were small differences between people of different planets. He also wore some of the most expensive clothes I had ever seen. The tight shirt showed off his well-defined chest, abs, and biceps. He was wearing pants that looked as though they had been tailor-made for him — and maybe they had been.

I noticed his lips were strong-looking but thin. He had an air of authority, though it didn’t go with his fancy clothes. And I spotted a chain around his neck.

All of these thoughts passed through my mind in a few seconds as I stared into the stranger’s eyes. He blinked, surprised when he saw my face. I froze. I wasn’t certain what was going on but he knew I wasn’t the woman who was supposed to be on this spaceflight. I held my breath, waiting to see if he would say anything.

“Sir?” she asked again. “Is it her?”

He only hesitated a moment. “Yes, she’s the one.”

What did he mean?

He didn’t say anything else. I smiled at the attendant and began walking up the aisle. As the man turned, I followed him off the shuttle, wondering what I had gotten myself into this time.