When the Starrs Align by Marie Harte

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    “You come with me, or you don’t see him.” He waited.
    If she’d had anyone else she could turn to she would have. But she’d only been on the outside for four measly months, and two of them had been spent healing and evading the law. It had taken her a month to track down Cheltam, and as long to find a ship to stow away in to Mardu. She’d made it this far. A little courage would get her where she wanted to be soon enough.
    Taking a leap of faith, she entered the vehicle. Drekk closed the door behind her and entered. He started the vehicle with the sound of his voice and set a course to their destination, then leaned back to let the conveyance lead the way.
    “We’ll be there in twenty minutes, standard time.” Drekk turned to face her. “Not Eyran time, which I’ve been told is much more accurate than the common timestamp the rest of us use.”
    Her pulse sped and her heart raced at his mention of her homeworld. Eyra, a place she never wanted to see again, unless she stood at the controls of a Melan Warship with enough firepower to burn Blue Rim to the ground.
    Erin tried to shrug it off but kept her attention on his face and hands.
    “I can’t make out much more than your hair colour. It’s what, red-black? But natural, I’ll bet, not dyed like the whores on Nebe6.” He narrowed his gaze. “And it’s funny, but your skin doesn’t seem to glitter the way it does in the description Blue Rim gave to the mercs.”
    Shit. How the hell he knew she didn’t have time to figure out. Because before she could move, he had a hold of her throat in one large, callused hand. “No sudden moves, pretty lady. I know all about what you’re capable of. If we’d wanted to send you back to Eyra, we could have shipped you off with those peacemakers in the bar.” Drekk closed his hand tighter, and Erin fought the urge to struggle. Instead, she adjusted her body to need less air and deliberately calmed.
    “What do you want?” she rasped quietly.
    Drekk studied her, his gaze impassive. “Not what I want. My boss wants to see you, and to see how high Blue Rim is willing to go. A hundred thousand beks is nothing to laugh at. And if you’re worth that much, he figures he can make you worth more.”
    The bastard . She wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all. That even a low-down criminal mastermind would take Blue Rim’s side before hearing her out. Drekk gave a warning squeeze and let her go, nodding when she did nothing.
    “Good. Remain steady and silent and this will be relatively painless.” He smiled then, and the darkness in his gaze stirred her to an uncomfortable anxiety. Again, forcing herself to relax, she breathed evenly, gradually allowing herself a full intake of air. Erin hadn’t escaped a lifetime of imprisonment to walk placidly into the arms of a lying, cheating scoundrel. All the while scheming, she kept her eyes downcast and away from Drekk. She also cued her body to occasionally shiver, and to curl in on itself, as if in fear.
    Unfortunately, that fear wasn’t all feigned. The instinct to please Drekk, to do what he said, whispered at the back of her mind, and she fought the urge with satisfying success. Erin had been bred and trained to follow orders. First her Creator’s and then her Handler’s. Going against her need to please had been harder than anything she’d ever had to face in the labs, especially since she’d done it in secret, with no help from anyone but her brother Ryen. Hell, the scientists had no need to lock her in, not with that submissive imperative buried deep in her psyche. It had taken two years of constant trial and error before she’d been able to resist even the simplest of tasks, but nothing that would alert Blue Rim to her plans.
    Most of those outside Blue Rim that she’d come in contact with had been easy to ignore and evade. Drekk, however, bothered her on a fundamental level, so she did her best to give him no reason to exert undue authority.
    The rest