No Refuge (Known Universe) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Also by Annie Nicholas

  No Refuge

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Meet the Author

  Other books by Annie Nicholas

  Copyright

  Also by Annie Nicholas

  The Omegas

  The Alpha

  The Beta

  Omegas In Love

  Sigma

  Irresistible

  Koshi

  No Refuge

  NO REFUGE

  Known Universe, Book One

  By ANNIE NICHOLAS

  LYRICAL PRESS

  http://lyricalpress.com/

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/

  To my husband and boys who have always supported my writing.

  1

  Inside the unsealed plastic container, a bunch of junk caught my attention and nailed my feet to the station floor. Some rusted metallic trinkets, an old laser gun, and a plastic-covered book with a faded red picture on the front were jumbled together as if discarded garbage instead of a link to a forgotten past. I reached to touch the goods and almost lost my fingertips as the Metax merchant snapped the container shut.

  “Dang, take it easy. I wasn’t up to any thieving.” I restrained the urge to examine the tips of my digits, which stung from the nearmiss.

  The merchant’s long chipped claws clicked on the side of the container. He retreated farther into his red market tent. “If you’re serious about purchasing something, you best come inside. There’re too many prying eyes around here.” The hiss in his speech was caused by his elongated canines. The Metax race populated this region of the galaxy and ran Parovi Space Station. They were carnivorous, but never ate sentient species. “There are rumors a Ko ship is docking. I don’t need no trouble from them.”

  My racing pulse paused. That was all I needed. The Ko hated my kind with the power of a supernova. Shimmying past the table of used wares, I scurried after the Metax seller.

  The tent was filled with other similar plastic containers filled with who knew what. More contraband, would be my best guess.

  Brody would tan my ass if he knew what I was up to. He’d gone to empty the mailbox he kept on station, so I only had a few minutes to shop in the market. “Open it already. I don’t have all day.” I flexed my fake pointed ears at him—part of my disguise—and peered at the contents once more as he lifted the lid. These were pieces of lost human history, according to the merchant. I took up the old weapon and ran my fingers over the cold, crusty metal. Had a human warrior once held this in a desperate attempt to fight off Ko? It fit perfectly in my hand, unlike most tech. “How did y’all come by these things?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders; the heavy plates covering his skin shifted with a grace that most wouldn’t expect from such a large creature.

  “They’re probably not even bona fide.” It must have been salvagers who’d found some ancient derelict human transport and had traded with the merchant, wanting to rid themselves of the things fast. Any human artifacts were considered contraband in all the known systems. A few people dabbled in the trade, though, a risky business, and I was one of them. I set the gun aside for the book and flipped through the pages one at a time.

  Breathing grew more difficult. I flicked a glance at the Metax to see if he’d noticed, but he didn’t betray any awareness of my growing excitement. Tossing it aside, I checked out the remainder of the box, not really seeing what I was examining. My mind’s eye only focused on what I’d just looked at.

  A child’s picture book.

  With human words written inside.

  I took a shaky breath. Not many people knew how to read the dead language, but my ma had made sure the knowledge stayed alive within me. There weren’t too many of us still left around. I’d heard a Drayian museum displayed a few freeze-dried corpses. They took a huge risk if they did. The Ko wanted us erased from existence and memory. Some said they didn’t even want human DNA in the space dust.

  In fear of retaliation, no other race would help my kind even though we’d been hunted to near extinction. It was said that a species called the Torrath had aided my ancestors once. Nothing remained of them. The Ko had made an example of that world.

  Living on the run since the day we were born had toughened my race over the centuries. We lived everywhere, yet nowhere was home. At a moment’s notice, all could be lost. We loved hard and fought dirty. We’d become survivalists.

  Now we hid, disguised as other races, and lived among them, or faced being delivered to the flesh traders for Ko delivery. Some humans used body paints. Others, like me and Brody, used prostheses. We traveled as Jurranians with long, prehensile ears and vertically slit pupil contact lenses. They contained neurotransmitters so the ears moved naturally and the pupils dilated or constricted. With some creative hairstyling and dyes, we could pass as them. If anyone found out what we were…

  I shook the cold webs of fear from my thoughts. “Nothing here grabs my attention. Maybe the next time we pass through.” I nodded to the merchant and twisted around.

  “Ko shit, Lucille.” He lifted the book. The smarmy peddler knew me too well and probably had caught the sound of my thrilling pulse with his colossal ears. “Twenty pieces of silvered iridium.”

  The timer on my handset went off. Crap. I had to get back to the ship before Brody. I spun around. Out of time, I couldn’t play games. “That’s robbery. Five.”

  “Twenty.”

  I stepped toward him and met his stare. “I don’t have twenty. Ten.”

  He grinned, giving me a good view of his large, sharp teeth. “Twenty. No credit.”

  My alarm beeped again. “Fine.” I greased his open palm with my last twenty and snatched the book from his hand.

  “You get caught with that, I don’t know you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I shoved the book inside my jump suit and closed the zipper to my neck. The ship was docked not far from here so I headed straight toward the docking ring.

  Parovi Space Station was known for its massive market and no merchandise tax. The aisles were narrow, tables filled with wares on each side, and their callers shouting to attract potential buyers. People meandered from vendor to vendor, crowding every available space. Not great for a woman in a hurry.

  Trying to weave my way against the current of the crowd, I watched my direction more than who was in my path until the area quieted to a dull silence. I halted beside a tall Ling and scanned the crowd. Sucking in a breath, I tucked my fake ears against my head and stepped behind the Ling.

  The Metax swindler hadn’t been lying about Ko docking. The crowd parted for a troop of the dark soldiers. How long before a flesh trader caught me and sold me to the nearest Ko ship? Humans, dead or alive, brought a hefty bag of silvered iridium. I’d toss myself out of the airlock before they handed me over to a Ko.

  I wiped my sweaty palms on my jumpsuit and tried to become one with the crowd. The best trick a human learned was not to stick out. I stared at the Ko like everyone else and told my stomach we’d throw up together once we got to the ship.

  One by one they passed us. Taller and wider than most races, covered in their black armor and dark helmets, they dominated whatever room they entered. I’d never seen what one looked like and neither had Brody, not that we cared to. The last Ko in the line paused by my aisle, scanning the air with a device I’d never seen.

  My gut clenched. There were too many people for me to be able to maneuver. If this turned into a fight I wouldn’t
let them take me alive. I’d heard the rumors. We weren’t more than vermin to them and their idea of mercy was probably my worst nightmare. I took even, slow breaths and relaxed the muscles of my shoulders. It wouldn’t take much of a mistake to draw suspicion. The wrong kind of stance or reaction would give me away. I had to act Jurranian, be Jurranian. They knew we were out there and they grew better at finding us each year.

  Twitching his head, the Ko twisted away from my area, then continued following his nest.

  Those around me joined in my sigh of relief. Even though the Ko didn’t hunt the others, they didn’t think twice about plowing through them to obtain their target. It had been years since I’d been that close to an enemy. I gathered my wits and took advantage of the wake the troop left behind and marched to the ship. With any luck, I’d beat Brody to our cabin.

  When I reached the docking ring, I took a deep breath of recycled air. The ceiling rose so high the artificial atmosphere of the space station hazed the air, almost like clouds. It was the closest I’d been to a sky in a very, very long time. Transports zipped back and forth carting cargo. Since they didn’t really watch out for pedestrians, I had to watch my step. The ship we contracted with was still unloading the raw ore we mined from the local asteroid belt orbiting this backwater system. It would be melted down and the iridium collected for the ship-building yards.

  I climbed the ramp to the airlock and waited for it to cycle. The floor shook with the weight of someone stomping up behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at a Metax, Captain Nnure.

  “Where’s Brody?” He loomed two feet over me and could crush me under his wide foot if he wanted.

  “Checking the mail.”

  He shoved a bag against my chest. The contents made a profitable clinking noise. “Your pay.” The airlock had opened and he pushed past me, sandwiching me against the ramp’s railings. “You coming in?”

  I clasped the heavy bag of money in my hands and followed him into the tight confines.

  “Why do you need cash all of a sudden?” He peered at me with his one good eye. “My credit was always good before.”

  “I— I don’t know.” I wanted to peek into the bag, the weight of it drawing my curiosity.

  The captain grimaced. “Maybe I should have waited for Brody.”

  “Why? I’ll give him his share.”

  “I don’t like wrecking surprises, and obviously he’s got one for you. We’ll be heading out in two days. Get your rest.” He winked and left me alone in the airlock.

  Metax could carry their weight in ore and crush it with their clawed hands, but they couldn’t fit inside the small space of asteroids to test for ore purity. Brody and I saved the captain money, since we mined only the rocks with the sweetest iridium load. And from the weight of the bag, I’d say we had made a good deal of money on the last run. The door to the cabin I shared with Brody slid open when I pressed my palm to the scanner. Thankfully, it was empty. I rushed inside, dropped our pay on the bed, and unzipped my jumpsuit.

  All the silvered iridium on the station wouldn’t tear my attention from the treasure I’d purchased. I sat on the floor and flipped through the pages of the human picture book. I’d never seen anything like it.

  2

  Foreign words like Christmas, tinsel, and tree held my attention so tightly, when the door slid open with the metallic whine of old gears, I jumped. Spinning to face Brody, I dropped the red painted bolt I’d been trying to hang on my homemade Christmas tree. It rolled across the floor and rebounded against the toe of his heavy work boots. “Where have you been? I expected you home a long time ago.”

  He bent and picked up the bolt. “A 36C hex bolt.” Squinting at it, he then handed it over. “Hot dipped galvanized steel. Where did you find the red paint?” He peered behind me. “And what is that?” A lock of his short brown hair fell across his vertically slit eyes and he swept it from his face. Some would describe Brody as harsh-looking with his sharp cheekbones and nose, but I only saw a handsome, driven man. Somebody who’d do anything to secure our safety.

  “Ttogara gave me a bottle of red claw polish she didn’t like.” She was our Metax neighbor and her clan managed the mining ship. Ttogara liked painting her long, sharp finger claws to attract the males of her race. She’d once painted my stumpy nails for fun but Brody hated it and I had scrubbed it off.

  He poked at the painted nuts and bolts I’d hung on a scrap of green metal I’d pulled out of the reject pile in the deep hold of our mining ship. No one would miss it. The paint was chipped, but the cone shape fit what I needed.

  “So, what’s with the arts and crafts?” He eyed me as if I had a case of space fever.

  Grinning, I raced to our bunk, where I’d left the book. “Look at what I discovered in the market this morning.” I jumped up and down a little before handing over my new plastic-covered treasure, completely disregarding how he hated it when I went there alone or how he despised my collection of human trinkets.

  He flipped through the picture-covered pages in silence.

  I paced the width of the small cabin we shared before halting in front of him, and pointed at the book. “It’s from Earth.”

  He glanced at me from under heavy lids and raised an eyebrow.

  “Look at the people in the drawings. They’re human.” I traced the face of the little girl kneeling in front of a window staring at the starry night sky.

  “There are a lot of fantasy books written about our people. What makes you think this is different?”

  I grinned and pressed against his side. “The language it’s written in. I know it. My ma taught it to me just like her ma taught her and so on. It’s human.” Removing the old book from his hand, I scanned the unfamiliar words. It had been so long since I’d studied the language. “This translates to Becky was tired from decorating the Christmas tree but she refused to sleep.” It had taken me forever to decipher the sentence.

  “Are you sure? Maybe your ma was pretending to teach you a human language as a game.” He stared hard at the block lettering as if it would magically change into common, the language of space folk, a mishmash of words and phrases from all the races. I wondered if any of them were from ours.

  I smacked his shoulder. “She’d never waste her time playing. She believed in Earth.”

  “Like you.” He sighed and closed the book in my hands. “This can get us in trouble, Lucille. What if someone sees you with it? Or—or that trader turns you in. You promised no more human stuff.” He crossed his arms over his chest, disappointment clear in his face.

  “My disguise fits me well. No one’s ever suspected I was human.” I pulled on my ear prosthesis, identical to Brody’s. “Ever.”

  “I found you out.” His gaze challenged me.

  “Only because I wanted you to. Don’t start that with me. You showed me yours before I showed you mine.” I wiggled my fake ears at him for good measure. Fate had drawn me and Brody together. Two lonely orphans lost in the sea of space. “Even when I was a kid, none of my Jurranian friends questioned me. I never gave them reason to. I won’t start now.”

  “And the—the—” He waved his hands at my metal decoration.

  “Tree.”

  “Why would they decorate a tree? And I’ve never seen one shaped like a cone.”

  “I know.” My voice grew excited again and I opened the book. “Look at what Earth looked like. They called these Christmas trees and they placed presents under it.”

  “Every day?”

  “I don’t know. They don’t explain it, but look how happy they are.” I stared at the picture of all the humans gathered together around the tree. “Look at all those children. I’ve never seen so many humans in one drawing. That’s another reason I think it’s from Earth.” I met Brody’s widening eyes. “All the human pictures we’ve seen have only been one or two together. It’s never been safe to travel in large groups. Can you imagine being with so many in one room?” I set the book under my makeshift Christmas tree and touched the fa
ded cover.

  Brody brushed his fingertip under my eye and caught the tears I hadn’t realized I’d been shedding. “Keep the book, but hide it.” He wrapped me tight in his arms. “I have a present for you, but I didn’t wrap it, and I can’t set it under the tree.”

  I laughed. “See, the tradition is easy to start again.” My stomach fluttered. “What is it?”

  He held me at arms length and met my stare. “I got the captain to give us an advance on our share of the ore before he sells it at the market.”

  I tilted my head. “I know. It’s right there on the bunk. But what I don’t know is why?”

  “That contact I’ve been tracking left us a message in my mailbox. It’s why I’m so late. I had a need to make sure it’s genuine. He wants to meet tomorrow.” He tightened his hold on me. “He’ll make introductions for us to someone who knows where the human colony is hidden.”

  My heart sank. I believed in our past, and Brody believed in our future. “And he wants all our money? Come on, I’m supposed to be the daft one with her head in the atmosphere. You’re supposed to keep me clamped to station. Not the other way around.”

  Shaking his head, he frowned at me until I shut up. “He didn’t ask for any money, but if this pans out and he’s telling the truth, then we’re not coming back.” A huge smile spread across his face, something I didn’t witness often, and it reminded me why I’d signed onto this mining ship and followed Brody into the void.

  I tugged on the long lock of hair that always fell across his eyes. “You sure he’s not a flesh trader?”

  “No, but I’m willing to take the risk.” He grabbed my hands and squeezed. “This is what I’ve been working on for the last two years. Chasing rumors, working these awful contracts so we can be in the right place at the right time. This has got to be the right place.”

  “There are Ko on the station.”

  “It’s just rumor.”

  “No, I set eyes on them.” Suddenly the impact of the cozy human pictures and today’s event melded in my heart. I was tired of being alone, of running and hiding, of living in fear every single second of the day. The book showed me what kind of life the Ko had stolen from us—big families, joy, traditions. I threw myself at Brody and hugged him tight.