Star Crossed (Harem Station #2) Read online

  “Don’t you know why I’m here?”

  “Uh… to foster better relations between the Cygnians and the Akeelians?” I ask, parroting something I heard my father say.

  “Duh, no shit,” she snaps. “I mean… you know, what they expect us to do.”

  “Ummm… what are you talking about? What do you mean, us?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand as she lets out a long sigh. “Can you just touch me? Please. Because… you’re a myth, OK? A fantasy. Or… I don’t know. A monster from a very dark fairy tale. I just need to know which. I need to know what’s true and what’s not, because I can’t go through with this, Crux. It will be the end of everything if we do this.”

  “Do what?” I’m so confused right now. Because she seems to know who I am and the only thing I know about her is that she’s gonna marry her father on her twenty-third birthday. And that’s still gross, even if she is seven generations removed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You really don’t know? Your father didn’t tell you why I’m here? What you’re expected to do?”

  “Ahhh… uhhhh… be nice to you?” I offer, hopeful. Because I’m starting to get a very sick feeling in my stomach.

  “No, you simpleton. I’m here—we’re here,” she amends—“to make a baby.”

  “What?” I laugh so loud she rushes forward in a panic and cups her hand over my mouth.

  And in that instant—when she touches me, when her skin meets mine—my whole world explodes.

  There’s a great flash of bright white light. And some kind of electric shock runs down my spine, and the station shudders, and shakes, and then…

  Both of my cocks are suddenly hard.

  “Oh, shit,” she says, pulling her hand away to cover her own mouth in surprise. “It’s true! You’re really him!”

  “Who?” I ask. My body suddenly on fire. My hands reaching for her hips. Pressing myself forward into her.

  She pushes me away, gasping. “No, not now. I have to go. But don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow at the breeding ceremony.”

  “What?”

  But she’s already rushing for the door.

  “What did you just say?” I call after her.

  But she’s already got the doors open, already crashing into the waiting circle of guards, who surround her and whisk her off.

  And then… she’s gone.

  Poof. As quick as she came.

  “Breeding ceremony?” I call out. “What fucking breeding ceremony?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Waiting to be pulled through the ALCOR gate is agony. There is no light, there is no gravity, there are no screens to monitor, and the suits are way too big for Draden and Serpint, so they spend the entire time floating around the ship, flapping their sleeves and pant legs as they try to continue their game of war in zero G.

  Draden can see again. At least well enough to play war with Serpint, so whatever. I’m sure this ALCOR place has some kind of medical facility to take care of any permanent damage.

  Right now I only have room to worry about actual emergencies. Like getting through this fucking gate. I’ve only ever been through six gates in my life and all of them were at high speed. This slow, limping-your-way-through-time thing is unsettling. It feels like you’re traveling fast, but part of your body is six feet over there.

  Luck complains of a stomach ache the entire time. He’s got himself strapped into a hammock off to my left. Tray is talking to himself in some secret language no one understands, still buckled in his station seat. Jimmy is sitting across from me, buckled into his stool, looking at him, then me, then back at Tray with an expression that says, That dude should really be quarantined. And Valor is holding on to grips by the airlock just looking out the window and repeating, “We’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die,” over and over again until Jimmy finally threatens to rip his suit off and throw him out the airlock if he doesn’t shut up.

  I think about Corla, wondering if she got away, then decide she did, and that’s why the Akeelians came after us. They need me to tell them where I sent her.

  Then decide no, they’re coming after us so they can drag me back to be killed by my father.

  Then decide no again. She got caught somewhere on the other side of the node and they need me to make more babies with her, since the one she’s carrying probably didn’t survive her first trip.

  There are about two dozen spin nodes in the galaxy and Wayward Station is in charge of the most active one. They are gates on steroids. If you were to stand in front of one you’d see a thousand gates lined up in the portal. It really is a thousand gates, but to your eyes it looks like you’re looking into a mirror, looking into a mirror, looking into a mirror, that goes on for eternity.

  They are used for stealth missions because they are untraceable. Once you go in, no one who comes after you can follow unless they not only have the same destination coordinates, but the same destination time. And even then, they’d still arrive far into their future.

  Time is the tricky part because there’s really no such thing as time. It’s all local. It changes from place to place. Like, if it’s eleven hundred hours here in this ship, and you wanted to know what someone was doing, right now, at eleven hundred hours on Wayward Station, it’s not possible. It’s unknowable. That question makes no sense the way the question, ‘How bright is the sun in Akeelian City when it’s night?’ makes no sense.

  The sun is as bright as it is. Period. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night on a planet.

  That eleven hundred hours and this eleven hundred hours have no connection. They are two separate times because they are separated by so much space.

  And even if they did know the time Corla was aiming for, they could never get there. They could never meet up with her as she comes out of the node because their present on the near side of the node is Corla’s past on the far side. And Corla’s present on the far side of the node is their future on the near side.

  Fucking shit hurts my head.

  The point is, it seems pretty safe to shoot someone through a spin node. The odds of anyone catching you on the other side should be zero.

  But everyone knows people use spin nodes to escape bad situations so that’s where the bounty hunters wait. If you exit in a warship like the ones Valor’s father commands, you’re all good. No one fucks with you. But if you exit in a cryopod, like our silver girl back there, you’re almost certainly fucked. The hunters pick up the pods as they exit, before the life support can unfreeze the occupants, and they hold them hostage.

  And since it’s the future, and text messages can be sent on neutrino waves that transcend space and time, it’s technically possible that Corla has already exited the spin node, been picked up by bounty hunters, a message was sent back to Wayward—because that’s where the pod is registered to. There was no time to secure an unregistered pod—and she could already be on her way back to Wayward through that same spin node as I sit here thinking about it.

  My head really fucking hurts.

  Suddenly we’re going fast again and the sinking, left-behind feeling is gone.

  The lights come on, the ship powers up, the screens all come back to life, and gravity returns.

  Draden and Serpint crash to the floor with two loud thuds.

  Mother of suns. Who the fuck put me in charge of these sun-fucked kids? I’m going to get them killed before we even arrive at ALCOR Station.

  “Holy shit.” Valor laughs as he stumbles over to the heap of suits containing Draden and Serpint. “Are you two OK?”

  “You’re dead, Draden!” Serpint screams. “Dead for sure now!”

  “No, you’re dead!” Draden yells back. “I shot you before the gravity turned back on!”

  Valor shoots me a relieved look as Draden and Serpint both try to untangle their sleeves and pant legs from each other.

  “Docking sequence initiated,” Tray says. Like none of this commo
tion is even happening.

  Everyone gets to their feet and goes back to work. Except Serpint and Draden, who just roll around on the floor insisting the other is dead.

  “No one’s fucking dead!”

  It takes me a moment to realize I’m the one who just yelled that. Serpint and Draden both look up at me from the floor, blinking their eyes on the other side of their helmets.

  “Sorry,” I say. “But no one is fucking dead, OK? You’re both still alive and that’s how it’s gonna stay. Now get your little asses up off the goddamned floor and shut the hell up!”

  Jimmy glances over his shoulder at me.

  But I just point my finger at him and say, “We’re all fucking kids, OK? We’re all just a bunch of kids!”

  “Some of us,” Tray says from his station behind me, “are more childish than others, apparently.”

  “Fuck you and your stupid leveled-up maturity.” I still don’t know what that means. I just know I don’t like it. “I didn’t ask to be in charge of this shit-show, OK? But I am. So everyone just… do their fucking job!”

  I can feel every one of them side-eyeing me, but they don’t say anything in response. Thank the fucking sun for small miracles.

  “Now,” I say, tugging on my suit like I need a moment to gather myself. “We’re going to enter this station and do it just like we planned. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Draden says.

  There’s a moment of silence and then we all laugh.

  Fuck you, Draden, I want to say. But I don’t.

  Because Jimmy’s right.

  He’s just a little fucking kid.

  It takes almost an hour to actually dock with the station. But eventually the green light appears on the airlock, letting us know it’s safe to open the door.

  There’s a long, narrow window in our airlock and we’re all looking out of it when the door slides open. On the other side is just a small receiving bay, then another airlock. The readouts all say there’s breathable atmosphere, but we keep our helmets on as we wait for the next door to open.

  I’m carrying Serpint and Luck is carrying Draden, because there’s no hope of them walking in their too-big suits.

  The ALCOR airlock has no window, so we have no idea what waits for us on the other side.

  And I don’t care if I live to be five hundred—or hell, live a thousand different lifetimes—the one thing I never thought could be on the other side of that airlock when it opens is exactly what we see.

  A sex bot.

  “Welcome to ALCOR Station,” she purrs, stretching out her hand towards Jimmy. “I’m Xyla.”

  Jimmy looks over his shoulder at me, grinning like an asshole who just accidentally found the Promised Land.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WAYWARD STATION

  I didn’t sleep at all that night.

  I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I couldn’t get that feeling out of my mind.

  What was that? That shudder, that chill, that light?

  And a breeding ceremony?

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy asks me the next morning at breakfast. We’re in the same dining room. She was just over there. We were just over there.

  “I mean… like… we’re supposed to…” I nod my head a little and shrug my shoulders. “You know.”

  “Fuck?” Jimmy asks, squinting his eyes at me. “You and her?”

  “Yeah. That’s what she said. And when she touched me, Jimmy, when she touched me it was like… I don’t know. Like the station was gonna explode or something. Did you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The shaking, you asshole. Aren’t you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening,” Jimmy says. “It’s just you’re not making sense. Are you trying to tell me that the Cygnian king brought his daughter-wife all the way here to Wayward Station so the two of you could make babies?”

  Then he bursts out laughing.

  “Laugh all you want, that’s what she said.”

  “OK,” Jimmy says, putting up a hand. “What did your father say?”

  “He didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell him. But there is a ceremony today at noon.”

  “Hmm.” Jimmy huffs. “We’re not invited.”

  “Of course you are. Your father’s the fucking ambassador.”

  “I know, but… we’re having lunch with some delegations from Cetus System. So unless your little mating ritual is supposed to be public, you’re on your own.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Do?” he says. “You fuck her, what else do you do? And”—he points his finger at me—“you enjoy it. Because you’re never gonna get this chance again, mark my words. There are no Cygnian princesses in your future, brother.”

  His father came looking for him after that and I was summoned by my father’s security team to meet him in our apartments.

  When I got there the place was crazy busy with people all coming and going and wearing special ceremonial costumes.

  “Good,” my father says. “You’re here. Your suit is in your room. Get changed.”

  “Hey, uh… so what’s going on today?”

  My father, who usually turns his back on me when I have a question, stops and smiles. Puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it as he says, “Just a small welcoming ceremony for the Cygnians. Princess Corla will be there. I think the two of you will really hit it off. In fact, I’ve arranged for you to take her to the star bridge and show her around. Then have a nice private lunch in the park bubble. She’s very nice. You’ll love her, trust me. And you have all day, Crux. So just enjoy yourselves. You’ve earned it.”

  Trust me? I’ve earned it? It’s not the fact that my father hasn’t said this many words to me in my whole life that bothers me most. It’s the way he says them. Trust me. Earned it. Smiling. Squeezing my shoulder.

  “What the hell is going on?” I say.

  My father looks around nervously, still smiling. It’s only then that I realize not all these people are our people. Some of them are Cygnian people. “What do you mean?”

  I decide there’s no answers coming. Not from him and certainly not here, with them looking at us. So I say, “I better get dressed.”

  And I catch him glancing over at the Cygnians and nodding to them just before I turn away.

  There’s a suit inside a nyla-silk zippered casing hanging on a clothing tree in the middle of my closet. A tailor has followed me in, but he doesn’t speak my language and I don’t speak his. He unzips the casing and removes a ceremonial suit of red, and black, and gray.

  “What’s this?” I ask, pointing to the suit. Because I’ve never seen anything like it. Typically I wear a gray, bespoke business suit with skinny trousers, a hip-length jacket, and a shirt of contrasting color—typically light blue. On my feet I wear simple black shoes with soft soles. If it’s a ceremonial occasion, such as today, I also carry a weapon and wear a black sash with white tassels.

  This suit consists of tight black trousers and a black, double-breasted jacket with military buttons that look like ruby coins. The ceremonial ornaments are also unusual, a red sash with dark gray tassels, and off to the side are highly-polished, black, knee-high boots.

  “Where did this even come from?” I ask.

  The tailor blabbers and jabbers on about… something. Presumably the suit. And I realize there’s not going to be any conversation. It’s do-as-you’re-told time.

  I put it on with the tailor’s help and he makes little adjustments with his fabric laser, tucking in the waist and giving me more room in the shoulders.

  I stand, looking in the mirror. And then he comes at me with a… a crown.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask, taking a few steps back.

  Again, there’s jabbering in another language.

  “Can you get my father?” I ask.

  “No,” the little tailor man says. “You’re late. Put it on.” He has a very thick accent but his words are clear. “Face the mirror.” Then he pulls out
a rolling step stool and climbs up to position the crown on my head.

  What the fuck is going on here? Since when does the governor’s son wear a crown?

  “There,” the tailor says.

  I stare at myself in the mirror, barely recognizing the eyes staring back.

  And then I notice the people coming up behind me and turn.

  “Sir Crux, this way, please. Everyone is waiting.”

  Sir? I wonder silently.

  What the fuck is going on?

  I’m led out of the apartments, flanked on each side by three unfamiliar soldiers, also wearing this new uniform, and up several levels to the ballroom. But they whisk me right past the large front entrance as more unfamiliar people whisper behind their hands.

  We walk quickly down a long, side corridor and stop at a door.

  It opens. A woman is there. Also weird. Because other than the sex bots on X level and the princess and her entourage of sisters, there are no women on Wayward Station.

  “Oh,” this woman coos. “You are quite spectacular. Come, everyone is waiting.”

  “Who are you again?”

  She looks over her shoulder at me. Tight smile. No teeth. Then looks forward again without answering. We stop at a red and black curtain and she turns, pausing for a moment to suck in a breath of air like she’s got a lot to say.

  And she does. “I’m told you can follow instructions. Is that true?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Good. On my signal, the curtain will open. Walk through. Enter the ballroom, stopping in the center. The princess is waiting for you. Bow. Not too low, not too high. Then take her hand. The music will begin and then you dance.”

  “Dance?” I say, as she raises one arm into the air.

  “Now,” she says, dropping her arm like she’s starting a race.

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  She glares at me, then growls, “Follow. Instructions,” between her clenched teeth.

  I sigh and walk forward into the ballroom—which has been transformed into some kind of hellish black and red nightmare of floor-to-ceiling nyla-silk banners. There is an oval of people. On one side the Cygnians are all dressed in gold and white. On the other, the Akeelians are all dressed in black and red.