“Uh, hi,” I said, taking the seat next to her.
“You!” she said. Her eyes fixated on me like a targeting lock, and I could tell I was about to get burned.
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault,” I tried to explain. “In fact, I—”
“More than a thousand men, women, and children are slaves thanks to you. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It looks like you made out all right, though.”
Her glare only got hotter. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be sold on an auction block? To stand there like a piece of chattel while hundreds of aliens bid on you? It was the most degrading and humiliating experience of my life.”
“If I had been there, I would have bought you myself.”
I meant that if I’d caught up to her in time, I would have spared her the humiliation by buying her off before the auction. But I’ve never been smooth around women, human or otherwise.
“That came out wrong,” I said quickly. “What I meant was—”
“You pig,” she said, her eyes blazing with rage. “You bottom-sucking, piss-drinking, retrograde cretin!”
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Let’s start over, okay? I’m sorry, Jane—really, I am.”
Her glare cooled, but not by much. She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes.
“And what about the other Setarni? The families that were broken up? The children who will probably be slaves for the rest of their lives?”
“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t my fault. The captain sold them out before I could do anything to stop him.”
“Please don’t tell me he’s here with you.”
“He isn’t,” I said quickly. “We got into an altercation with the Zan, and I handed him over before bugging out.”
Jane smirked. “Betrayal for betrayal. I suppose that’s justice.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Gunslinger to the Stars
Sam Kletchka here, freelance gunslinger and interstellar privateer. This, my friends, is how I went from being stranded in the armpit of the galaxy to becoming the luckiest human being in the universe.
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