Rogue Sign Read online

  Rogue Sign

  Rogue Star: Book Four

  Elin Wyn

  Ava York

  Contents

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Aryn

  Kovor

  Epilogue: Aryn

  Letter from Elin

  Rogue Warrior

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  Given: Star Breed Book One

  Vrehx: Conquered World Book One

  About the Author

  Aryn

  For the first time in my life, I had a room to myself.

  Maris still kept most of her things here, but she hadn’t slept here since she and Orrin made things official or whatever.

  Sleeping alone was weird for the first few nights. I was so used to the sounds of another person in the room that I’d been half tempted to ask Shenna if I could keep one of her pets in my room. The cat and I got along fine, except for the fact that she made me sneeze.

  Tonight, however, I couldn’t sleep, not because I was alone but because I was angry. Ever since that demented bounty hunter and his alien princess sidekick nearly killed us all, sleep evaded me. Deep down, I knew what happened wasn’t my fault, but I couldn’t help but feel like I could’ve done something.

  The bounty hunter, I could understand. He was paid to go after me and the other human women. Quite black and white, really. Tiatra the princess? I couldn’t figure out why she would’ve wanted a part in it.

  I tried to put it out of my mind. Tiatra and the bounty hunter were dead now. The other alien women were, hopefully, on their way back to their respective home planets.

  However, there were two tiny scraps of information that I couldn’t let go of.

  The bounty hunter had a brand on his wrist, and no one knew what it signified. Not a big deal, except a similar mark had been on the sheet that listed the women.

  And that was worse. Not just that there was some group running auctions selling rare women from newly accepted planets to the wealthy as playthings.

  But that group used a symbol that was so close to the official sigil of the Dominion that my skin crawled.

  Either they were part of the Dominion or hoping that recently contacted planets wouldn’t know the difference, and think their depraved demands were par for the course.

  Neither option was fantastic.

  What made it twenty times worse was that this bounty hunter was part of that group.

  And he’d managed to find us.

  There was no reason to think another wouldn’t follow in his footsteps. And what were we, the crew of the Rogue Star, doing about it? Nothing.

  It’s not that I didn’t like Captain Dejar. He saved my life, after all. If our roles were reversed and he was the one launched into space to freeze to death, I probably wouldn’t have risked my life to save him. Then again, I’d never claimed to be a hero. My main goal was to survive.

  Anything else was an added bonus.

  Whether I liked it or not, my survival depended on Captain Dejar.

  But if sitting in the port of Qasar Station, waiting to be picked off like flies, was his idea of ensuring my survival, then I needed to take matters into my own hands.

  Luckily, I’d found a way to do exactly that.

  Maris and Orrin had created the most sophisticated security system the Rogue Star had ever seen, but I knew a way around it.

  The rewards of a misspent youth, I supposed.

  The infrared system didn’t closely monitor the service vents. Why would it? The vents were too small for a serious threat to get through.

  However, they weren’t too small for me.

  Knowing sleep was not going to be an option for me tonight, I stood up from my sleeping mat and peeked out of the room.

  It was late. The hallways were deserted.

  Captain Dejar liked to have some crewmembers awake at all times, though the night shifts tended to be more relaxed and people tended to stay at their stations, rather than doing business that had them walking the halls.

  There wasn’t much reason to roam the halls.

  Before I left my room, I grabbed my leather jacket and boots. My jacket was older than I was. It would’ve been destroyed if I hadn’t been wearing it the day the Persephone Station exploded. I wasn’t materialistic in any way, but I would’ve been sad to lose that jacket.

  Clutching my boots in one hand, I padded into the hallway, moving swiftly and quietly. I reached the storage room that the other human women had affectionately named The Makeover Room.

  Inside were rows and rows of cosmetics purchased for us, and a tablet that showed a variety of aliens we humans were close enough to that we could alter our appearance enough to walk safely through the cities.

  I selected a mint-colored skin dye and rubbed it across my face and hands. The long sleeves of my black shirt would cover the rest of my skin. I didn’t like using too much of the cosmetics at once, since I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been here. I popped in red contacts to match my hair and added a small pattern of false tattoos across my cheekbones. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to fool anyone who just looked my way.

  I’d already grabbed some cleaning solvent for later, stashing it in my room. I didn’t want to have to come back to The Makeover Room to get the necessary ingredients to clean myself off. The new dye was so strong that it stayed on your skin for over a day - well, an old Earth day, that I still couldn’t shake myself from thinking of as the default unit.

  Two days was pushing it. But if you needed to get it off before a day, you’d need a cleaning agent that Kalyn had secured.

  And anyone would have questions if they saw me made up like this.

  I waited until I was at the entrance of the service vent before putting my boots on. This was the trickiest part. Once my upper body was in the vent, I wouldn’t be able to see if anyone was coming my way. I carefully lifted the vent cover and set it down on the floor.

  The first time I planned this out, I’d immediately run into the issue of putting the vent cover back in place. My solution was to attach a length of thin rope to the grate and secure it inside the vent. As of right now, the rope was wedged between two loose slats of metal. As long as the slats didn’t move too far away from each other, the rope would stay in place. I didn’t expect that to last forever. I could probably weld a ring or something to the inside of the vent if I needed to keep using my escape hatch, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

  I hauled myself into the vent and shimmied in as fast as I could. As soon as my legs were in, I grabbed the rope with my foot and pulled the vent cover up. It always took a little maneuvering to get it to slide back into its proper place, but I managed it.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. I’d been doing this sort of thing since almost before I could speak, yet the chance of getting caught always put a knot of anxiety in my belly.

  If someone walked by now, there was no way they’d be able to see me. Taking comfort in that fact, I started crawling through the vent.

  It wasn’t fun. There were points where the vent was so narrow, I had to roll onto one side and flop like a fish to get through. Thankfully, the vent wasn’t long.
I soon reached my exit point. I didn’t need a fancy rope mechanism for this vent cover. It was in the part of the ship that was constantly kept in shadow. If someone were to look at this side of the Rogue Star, they wouldn’t be able to see the vent opening.

  I popped the cover off, angled it carefully to fit around meand placed it inside the vent, far enough away from the opening so that it had no chance of falling out. Climbing out head first was never enjoyable, especially since it was a seven-foot drop to the dock below.

  Once my head and shoulders were out of the vent, I reached up to grab a natural handhold in the side of the ship. I hoisted myself up until I could slide my legs out of the vent. From there, it was a simple drop down to the dock. I had to push myself out from the ship’s side far enough so that I wouldn’t hit the railing of the dock, which I would climb to get back into the vent.

  I landed silently. Years of practice trained me to make as little noise as possible as I moved about.

  I’m sure the Space Force could’ve put a girl like me to work, if I’d ever bothered to sign up.

  And if they’d been willing to look over a few small things in my record.

  Mostly small things.

  I knew that it was a glaring security risk that the vents weren’t monitored. Maris and Orrin had deemed them too small to be any threat. They hadn’t thought that someone as diminutive as me would be able to access them. At first. I had thought to tell Maris about this security flaw. But then I realized that it would effectively seal me onto the ship. In the end, I decided it was worth the risk for now – I could inform Maris and Orrin once I had gotten what I needed.

  I waited a moment, just to make sure no one on the Rogue Star had caught on to what I was doing. At this hour, the docks were all but deserted. Satisfied that I’d made it out undetected, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and strode off toward the center of the space station.

  Qasar Station wasn’t a glittering metropolis like Katzul. It was built for function, but it still had an elegance to it. Sections of the station were built within amber-colored domes. I wasn’t sure what their primary function was.

  Probably some kind of environmental stabilizing system.

  Sort of interesting, maybe. Maris would be all over it.

  But not useful to me, so I didn’t really care. I’d always been a practical girl. Why stop now?

  The buildings in the dome closest to the dock were mostly repair shops. When ships took damage in deep space, Qasar was the only place in this sector they could go to get patched up.

  Beyond that dome was the heart of the station. The markets, the restaurants, the lodgings, and every other comfort of a regular city could be found in the center dome. While the dome containing the repair shops had an expected grittiness to it, the center dome was pristine.

  The buildings in the center were all constructed of a gleaming white material I didn’t recognize. It gave everything a uniform appearance. Looking at the city center, it was hard to believe that evil lurked beneath the surface.

  Somewhere on this space station was a group prepared to do anything, even commit murder, to find the Persephone Station women.

  I knew their sigil.

  I knew where underground groups like that one liked to hide.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I found them, but one thing was certain.

  I sure as hell was going to stop them.

  Kovor

  “Why can’t you be a little more reserved in your expeditions?”

  I looked at Dejar. I knew he was simply trying to keep things safe and simple, but I couldn’t stay on the ship when there was an entire space station I could explore.

  There were places to go, drinks to drink, and there were far too many women that had yet to be charmed.

  And it wasn’t just the usual delights of a new, different place calling me.

  I needed to be out there.

  “I’m just trying to find information and make us some contacts. What’s wrong with that?” I asked as I kicked my feet up on his desk.

  He arched his eyebrow and tried for an overbearing, fatherly look. “Do you mind? This is still my office,” he said.

  With an exasperated breath, I took my feet off his desk and did my best to get comfortable in the chair he had offered me. “Look, all I’m trying to do is make sure we have everything we need for this noble mission of ours.”

  “And we appreciate that,” he said as he indicated himself and Aavat. I looked over and nodded to Aavat, his copper skin so much darker than my own hue. Of course, my own golden skin wasn’t as deep as Dejar’s, but I liked having the paler skin. It helped to emphasize my chiseled features and let my red hair be the center of attention it deserved to be.

  Dejar was still talking. “We would just appreciate it if you were a little more hesitant with your gallivanting, that’s all. You know as well as we do, we’re not exactly in favor with the Dominion right now, and if they’ve already sent…”

  “Someone to chase us down, and they found us here, yada yada,” I interrupted. “I know. But how can I be something other than who I am? That’s how we have this ship,” I waved my hand around. “And how we have as many contacts as we do.”

  I could see Aavat shaking his head at me as he stood up from his chair and began pacing. It was annoying, hearing his footsteps clump clump behind me. Dejar let his head drop as he shook his head, as well. “You’re right,” he sighed. “You have gotten us numerous contacts, and have helped us with many things, but this isn’t just a standard job here.”

  I waved him off. “I know that. Believe me, I do, and I support what we’re doing. It’s not right what’s happening with the women around the cosmos,” I hesitated a second, unsure if I’d phrased that entirely correctly. With a shrug, I continued, “And I want to make sure that we do the right thing, especially with the female members of the crew. That’s why I do what I do.”

  “Is there any way,” Aavat started asking from behind me, “that you could, maybe, possibly, at the very least, tell us where you’re looking for information and what you’re finding?”

  I shrugged again. I knew it aggravated the surly Chief Mate, but I couldn’t really help it.

  Besides, it was too much fun to tweak him, just a bit.

  “I’d love to fill you in, but I haven’t found anything yet. The only information I’ve found so far is that some people claim to have heard a rumor or something of the like. That’s it.”

  “So, you’ve gone out every day and night since we returned, and you’ve learned…” Aavat started again behind me.

  I got to my feet and turned to face him, chest tight with worry at the entire situation, despite my light words. “Nothing. Okay? I’ve found nothing so far. Then again, I’ve also been talking to people that either live off their parents’ money or are too busy to pay attention. I’m trying not to look too obvious.”

  Aavat threw his hands up and looked behind me to Dejar. “I…you know what?” he asked as he pointed his finger at me. “You do whatever you want to do. If you cause problems for us, we’ll leave your golden posterior behind, just like any other member of the crew.” He looked back to Dejar. “He’s your problem. I’m done.” With that, he left.

  I turned back, a bit surprised at Aavat’s outburst, only to be more surprised to see Dejar visibly angry.

  And at me.

  “If you screw this up, or cause trouble for us, we really will take the ship and leave you behind,” he stated, face hard. “You’ve always known that was our way. We won’t risk the women.” His lips twisted. “And with their skills, I’m not sure if anyone would realize you were the legal owner of the Rogue Star, anyway.”

  “I’m not planning to cause problems.” I forced a smile, despite the growing ball of anger in my gut. “Look, the women need some more stuff for their disguises, and since I can get the best deal from Madam Ora, I’ll go replenish their supplies.” I headed towards the door, then stopped and turned back. “Unless you think
that’s too much for me.”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Dejar replied. We had been around the women enough for me to know that being an ‘ass’ meant I was being troublesome, so I returned the favor with another gesture I had seen the women using. Apparently, holding only the middle finger up to someone was basically saying that you wanted them to kout themselves.

  I’d always thought cultural exchanges were useful.

  “Go,” he said with a shake of his head. I kept the smile pasted on as I left the office and made my way to the hangar bay. I hated the door Orrin and Maris had installed but understood the necessity for it.

  I hated the threat to the crew, to my new, makeshift family. And there wasn’t any way in the cosmos that I wouldn’t be trying to defuse it.

  I punched in my code and headed into town.

  Madam Ora was a beautiful woman that loved to give me discounts on things, as long as I was willing to give her a good time. I didn’t mind, she was fun to be with. But first, I was hungry. While the food carts in the market had fantastic food without any of the refinement, after the dressing down by Dejar and Aavat, I was in the mood for something soothing.

  Which usually meant something expensive.

  I found a quaint little place, barely big enough to seat the crew, and made my way in. I was only slightly under-dressed, wearing my red Genstad silk shirt with a gray silk vest, gray slacks, and my gray coat made from the softest materials found on the planet Dalu. After I was seated, I ordered a meal the likes of which I hadn’t had in months and sat back with a glass of the finest liquor the establishment had to offer. The bottle wasn’t far away.