Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
“You’re telling me an overly concerned ship is firing bolts at my hideout in the attempt to rescue you.”
“I told you to begin with, she worries.”
“Ships don’t have feelings, human. But they do take orders. You’ve programmed your vessel to fire upon me when I am exposed.”
“I haven’t, but I suppose I may as well have. The outcome is much the same.”
His eyes slide from me to some altered reality where I am definitely an evil villain. “You could have accomplices up there, attempting to destroy me with weapons from space.”
“If I do, they have terrible aim.”
“That is more likely than your ship having terrible aim.”
“Maybe you’re just very hard to hit, with all your alacrity and strength.”
He bends down and fixes me with an angry golden glare. “Do not try to flatter me into a state of stupidity.”
“I am not,” I tell him honestly. “The ship is trying to hit you from over twenty-two thousand miles away. At that distance, your movement can easily evade bolts if you are able to move at a significantly angular motion, which takes great instinct and strength.”
He retreats a little more, looking suitably pleased. “That is true,” he admits.
“Strikes at great distances only work if you have a static target to aim at,” I continue. “If you were a weapons depot, it might be a different matter, but frankly, I think she’s desperate. She knows there is next to no chance of hitting you, but she’s trying anyway.”
“That’s not how spaceships work.”
“It’s not how your spaceships work,” I correct him. “My ship likes me.”
“Then order her to land.”
“Why? So you can take her? She wouldn’t do it, anyway. It is against her programming. I have taught her to always protect herself first.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Usually I am on her, so it is in both our best interests.”
“So this is a comedy of unintended consequences, you find yourself ravaged as a would-be murderess, when in truth it is your badly programmed ship that will now be making the wilderness much more interesting.”
“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
“What an unfortunate series of events,” he muses.
“Indeed.”
I am fucking sore, inside and out. I am also tired, and somehow, hungry again.
“We should eat,” he says. “And you should clean up. Look at what a mess you are.”
He gives me a sexy half-grin that softens the judgement of his comment.
“So,” I say as we eat. Soup for me, sentient flesh for him. “What… How…”
“You’re trying to ask me my reasons for all the atrocities? What if I told you it was a series of impossible decisions and misunderstandings?”
“Was it?”
“No. Listen, what’s your name?”
“Lyssa.”
“Listen, Lyssa. There are those who deserve to die, and I kill them. I kill them whether everybody else agrees with me or not. Sometimes I kill them en masse. It saves time.”
When he says it that way, it almost sounds reasonable.
“Do you know why they call me crazy?”
“Because you eat the flesh of fallen enemies?”
“No. Well. Maybe. It’s because I cannot be paid off. A warrior who cannot be paid to act is a loose cannon and a liability. They’ll never know when I decide it is their turn to die, and so they choose to try to kill me instead, no matter how much it costs, or how many decent bounty hunters lose their lives. More will come, I can guarantee that.”
“So you’re just going to hide out here forever?”
“Oh, no,” he says. “I have my plans. I won’t share them with you, of course. You are of the kind who can be paid to act.”
He’s not wrong. I feel a little ashamed of myself, but only a little.
“Some of us can’t support ourselves by violent psychosis alone. We need jobs.”
“I’m not blaming you. I understand. You are what you are. An angry housewife on a journey of self-exploration.”
“I am not… hey! Why would you call me an angry housewife?”
“Some man has really angered you.”
“Not my husband. He was my fiancé.”
“But you lived with him and he disappointed you so deeply you threw all your domestic dreams away and invested the proceeds of the sale of your house into buying a neural ship that you have become codependent with.”
I stare at him, shocked at how accurate he is with so little information.
“How did you guess all that?”
“I didn’t guess. I surmised. And I deducted. The hurt by a man part is obvious. But many women are hurt by men, and besides you, none of them has ended up here hunting me. Which means you were hurt badly. You’re a bounty hunter, and you keep talking about your ship, and neither a ship nor a license is cheap. If you were rich, you wouldn’t be hunting bounties. So, you had a one-shot cash injection that you used to start your life over. Bad marriage, plus sold house, equals a woman on fire outside my hideout.”