Captive Space by Belladonna Bordeaux

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    Out of the frying pan and into the inferno.
     
     
    10.25 years after the end of the Great War
     
    “Welcome aboard the Vor Cand .”
    Shar’ia shook her head at the warrior standing guard at the airlock. A soft pattering of sand rained down on her. She’d been warned about the sand. It was an aspect of Navorain culture that dumbfounded her, but every outsider who boarded one of their ships was given at least one dose of the dust.
    Welcome? I’m supposed to feel like a farden guest? The handcuffs circling her wrists took conviviality out of the equation. The fact she was facing a ten-year stint on the closest penal colony made her mood surly at best.
    “Up your nacelle,” she muttered as she passed the warrior. His smile did nothing to improve her mood. She growled at him and sent him a withering stare. I’ll be damned to the pits of Nafrong before I’m nice to you.
    “It is in your best interest to remain silent, Ms. Shar’ia,” her legal proxy whispered to her. “The Navorains aren’t known for their kindness toward accused smugglers of their ancient relics.”
    They’d been over this before. Who the frig cares? I’m done for. You said so yourself. The slant-eyed Parthenian who’d been instructed by the Intergalactic Judiciary to represent her had also told her she should throw herself on the mercy of the Navorain High Council. He didn’t stop there. Oh no. He went on to inform her that, according to his research into the Navorain Criminal Code, there were brutal penalties for any man or woman found guilty of a similar crime to hers.
    And,she thought as a soft, sardonic sigh broke from her throat, I’m as guilty as sin.
    Might have been nice if my contact had told me I was smuggling Navorain artifacts.
    She wondered if Kar’el, her purveyor on Atlas Nine, knew exactly what he’d packed in the cargo bin or whose toes he’d stepped on by pilfering the ancient tombs dotting the desert planet of Lazarus Seven. She sure as hell hadn’t until the InterGal vessel did a sensor sweep, which led them right to her cache. The expression on the officer’s face told her she was carrying some really pricey cargo, as in sacred relics of a warrior race who sat on the verge of extinction.
    It wasn’t the first time she’d trafficked big ticket items. Hell no. She’d managed to traffic some items no other smuggler would touch with the deadly end of a phase pistol. Simmerian tingling oils from the dark planet, Danovia, expensive aphrodisiacs from Circe and the highly intoxicating alcohol from Earth had been at one time or another in her cargo hold. Not only had she shown the other traffickers she was one of the top captains in the sector, but she’d also shown her family she wasn’t just another of their run-of-the-mill female offspring who ran in fear from anything that could be considered remotely dangerous.
    I broke the mold—but to what end?
    She nibbled on her lower lip as she was led a short distance down the corridor. Remembering her brothers, sisters and cousins calling her crazy for wanting to follow in their father’s footsteps, she recalled nearly being teased out of school because of her aspirations.
    Granted, few of her contemporaries had made it to graduation, but that was the norm rather than the exception on Atlas Nine.
    Her home world, Atlas Nine, was about as poor a planet as you could find in the Omega Sector. An abandoned Earth colony stellar months from any other inhabited planet was pretty much screwed from the beginning. Then, years of war had left the planet on the brink of financial collapse and with a band of thugs in charge of the government. The populace, known more for producing the buzz-drug, Varian, turned to any and all illegal means to scrape out a living.
    Her grandfather was the first to propose the ‘Ias take to the darkness of space with the sole intent of pirating the luxury cruise ships traveling to and from the vacation