Star Princess (In the Darkness Book 1) Read online

  “Looks like I’m in charge now,” he says. He looks at me and sneers. “Bring her back to the tunnels.” He kneels down and searches my father’s body, producing the map we’ve been so careful to protect. He takes it, and looks back at the remaining men. “Come along, then,” he says.

  “Yes, boss,” they say, and I realize that every time I kill a monster, there’s one lurking in the shadows, ready to take its place.

  Chapter 2

  Three Months Later

  Max

  “Four hundred meters,” Blake says.

  “Got it. Four hundred,” I repeat, and we keep walking side-by-side. The underground tunnel we’re in obviously hasn’t been used for years. It’s dusty, damp, and moldy, and I can’t wait until we find these bastards and get the hell out of here.

  “All units are in place,” I hear a voice through the talk goo in my ear, and I nod to Blake. He heard it, too. The Sapphiran goo works incredibly well for communicating since it doesn’t require anything except that the person or people you’re communicating with have the same glob placed carefully in their ear. In Extrinsic, we use this for all of our missions because it means we can be underground or anywhere on the planet and still find our team members.

  Blake and I walk quietly forward, moving silently through the darkness. This place reeks, and I’m going to be more than happy when we get out of here.

  “Three hundred,” he whispers, and we continue moving. It’s been a long time in coming, but the payday is going to be worth it. We’re about to take down the most wanted smuggling group on Dreagle, and the Orchidian government is going to pay us handsomely.

  That’s what happens when you steal from the King of Orchid, I think silently as I shake my head. You get a group of interplanetary badasses who hunt you down and bring you in.

  These guys are not going to be happy to be taken down, but the King of Orchid is going to be fucking thrilled. He’s been searching for them for weeks: ever since they stole a precious artifact from his mother’s prized collection. Yeah, the king takes thievery pretty seriously, which is fine for me because I love a good hunt.

  Blake stops walking all of a sudden and I realize there’s a dim light up ahead. We move quietly, silently, and approach the light. This is it. Weeks of training and searching has all boiled down to this moment.

  Each footstep brings us closer to our goal. I reach for my gun and flick the safety off. I hear Blake do the same, and we keep moving. Our goal is just within reach, and it’s about damn time. We’ve wasted too much time searching for these losers, but each time we get close, they seem to evade us.

  Not this time.

  This time, they’re going down.

  We step quietly as we approach the lighted area. When we get close, we see that the light is shining through a door. There’s no guard, but there’s a window on the door and we can see into a bright hallway.

  We’ve found them.

  This is their hideout.

  Blake examines the door while I scope out the area. There don’t seem to be cameras in this part of the tunnel, which is stupid and irresponsible. It’s bullshit like this that these guys are about to be completely destroyed.

  “We’re clear,” he says, and I hear the other guys confirm that they’re also in place. “On my count,” Blake says. He sets a device next to the door that will determine the pass code and let us in without keys or swipe cards. “Five, four, three, two, one,” he says, and opens the door quietly.

  Throughout the tunnels, my men are entering at the same time as me and Blake. We’re going to get these bastards once and for all, and there’s going to be nowhere for them to hide.

  It doesn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the light, and I move quietly down the hallway with Blake by my side. My best friend has always been there for me and I know today is no different. We move stealthily down one hallway and then another, but there’s no one here.

  Not yet.

  Our intel said this is where the Dreaglan Smugglers were hiding out. It’s a stupid name for a stupid group of assholes who steal everything from paintings to jewelry to hovercars. They’re clever, but apparently not clever enough to guard the west tunnels. My guess is that no one has bothered them here before, so their security is much more lax than it should be.

  Despite the brightly lit hallways, the place seems to be rarely used. A thin layer of dust is coating the floor, and there are no recent footprints. It’s not much of a hideout, if that’s what this is, and as Blake and I move, a growing sense of dread fills me.

  What are we going to find when we get these guys?

  Are we going to find a treasure room?

  Are we going to find bodies?

  I’m not often nervous on a mission, but Blake looks sideways at me and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am: something is weird about this entire place. We round a corner and that’s when we hear the first shot of gunfire. A bullet grazes past me and I quickly dart to the side of the hall and fire. The man goes down, and Blake and I keep going.

  Chances are those shots fired notified anyone hiding in here that we’re coming, but if not, there’s the first camera of the day floating in the hallway. The little robotic camera turns, as if noticing us for the first time, and I feel no regret when I shoot it. The damn thing falls to the ground.

  “Cover blown,” I say. My teammates will hear it through the talk goo. “Find the jewels and shoot as needed. Keep Ulizeoa for the king.”

  Ulizeoa is the one behind the smuggling operation and he’s got a penchant for the dramatic. I won’t be surprised if we find booby traps and other random surprises as we make our way to the center of the tunnels.

  As far as we can tell, he took over the smuggling operation recently after the former head of the organization had an unfortunate accident. This is also when the group started escalating and taking more risks, albeit calculated ones. They shouldn’t have gone after the King of Orchid, though. That was a huge mistake: one he won’t easily forgive.

  Blake and I keep moving together silently. Our eyes scan the space constantly, looking for anything suspicious, strange, or unexpected. Damn, I hope this mission is over fast.

  It’s not that I mind my job. I don’t. I love being a part of Extrinsic. It’s just that there’s something strange about this entire ordeal and I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on what it is about this place that makes me feel so uncomfortable.

  “Incoming,” Blake says, looking at the communications unit on his wrist. Unlike the talk goo, this isn’t for speaking with our teammates. The communications unit tracks other things, like the distance to our destination and whether any weapons have been fired in our nearby vicinity. The only thing these units can’t do is track body heat signatures, which is unfortunate because it would make this mission much, much easier.

  My own communications unit flashes and I see there’s been another weapon discharged nearby. We round a corner and start shooting immediately. Blake and I are both great shots, and we take the targets down instantly.

  “Three down,” I say to the talk goo, and I hear the shots of my fellow teammates.

  “Four down over here,” Falcon comes through loud and clear.

  “We got two,” Edgar’s voice comes next.

  “Why the hell are there so many?” Blake shakes his head. “I thought we were looking at a small time smuggling ring that pissed off the wrong person.”

  “Apparently not,” I growl. Our intel was wrong, and it pisses me the fuck off. How are we supposed to be ready if we don’t have all of the information we need? We were supposed to come across four, maybe five guys. Not nine.

  Blake and I keep going. We move through one door, and then another. We take down four more guys, and then we find him.

  Finally.

  Holed up in a tiny room at the center of the tunnels, Ulizeoa seems more than a little surprised we made it through all of his men. He’s sitting in a room surrounded by stolen goods, which is more t
han a little stupid. How this asshole managed to escape arrest, prison, and general murder, I have no idea.

  “You aren’t taking me,” he says coolly, but his skin is damp with sweat and his eyes are wide, betraying his true emotions.

  “On the contrary,” Blake says. “We’ll be taking you immediately, and we’ll be taking you alive.”

  “You’ve made quite a few enemies in your time, Ulizeoa,” I add. “And the king of Orchid is not the forgiving type.”

  Ulizeoa looks surprised for just a fraction of a second, and then a smug, self-satisfied look crosses his face, like he knows something we don’t know.

  “If you take me, innocent people will die,” he says.

  “What innocent people?” Blake asks, but I think the man is bluffing. At this point, he’s trapped. The rest of our team will be here in a matter of seconds, and it’ll be far too easy to transport him back to Orchid for punishment.

  I don’t know what the king has in store for him. Rex only recently took the throne, and he seems to be a strange mixture of ferocity and compassion. He’s firm and strict, but gentle when he needs to be. He’s the perfect master, yet something tells me he’s not going to be lenient with this man, this thief.

  Something tells me he’s not going to be patient this time around.

  “No, I don’t think I’ll be telling you that,” Ulizeoa shakes his head. “Not until I know you’re going to release me.”

  “Never gonna happen, asshole.”

  “Then the girl is going to die. You won’t be able to get to her: not without me. She’ll perish, die. She’ll starve to death and there won’t be anything you can do about it.”

  Blake and I exchange looks, and I know we’re both wondering the same thing. What girl? There was nothing in our intel about a prisoner, but at this point, I shouldn’t be surprised. There seems to be more that we don’t know than things we do know.

  It also doesn’t escape my notice that Ulizeoa first said innocent people but then said there was just one girl. I’m guessing he’s feeling cornered, and he knows he’s running out of options. He’s blurring his lies and truths now.

  “Fuck you,” I tell him. We don’t have time for games today. Ulizeoa could be lying or not, but I’m sure if he’s got a prisoner around here, we’ll find her. I pull out my pepperao cuffs and motion for Ulizeoa to turn around.

  “You’re making a terrible mistake,” he spits, but he does as I command.

  “Doubt it,” I slap the cuffs on him and as they snap in place, they begin to irritate his skin. Pepperao cuffs are a highly debated item. Some people say they’re inhumane. If Ulizeoa does have someone locked up in his underground fortress, though, I think he’s the one who is the animal, and he deserves whatever’s coming to him.

  A couple members of my team burst into the room then.

  “Fucking dragons,” Edgar shakes his head when he sees just how much treasure there is in this room. “This guy stole all of this stuff? How? He’s not even that smart!”

  “Smarter than you, dumbass,” Ulizeoa mutters under his breath.

  “Let’s get him back to the ship,” I say, motioning for my guys to haul him out of the room, but Edgar shakes his head.

  “There’s something you need to see first.”

  Chapter 3

  Diana

  Three months and two days.

  That’s how long I’ve been locked away.

  That’s how long my dad has been dead for.

  That’s how long I’ve had to endure this torture.

  Three months and two days.

  It feels like so much longer.

  The darkness shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. At this point, I’m used to the pitch black room they keep me in, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared all of the time.

  I’m scared.

  All of the time.

  The room is cold, and I don’t even have a blanket. The cough I developed the second week here has never gone away, but at least they give me water. At least they give me food. At least i know they aren’t going to kill me.

  If they killed me, they wouldn’t be able to play with me anymore. Like a cat toys with a mouse, these monsters toy with me, and even if I ever manage to escape, I don’t think I’ll be the same.

  I’m not the same.

  Not anymore.

  When my father and I treasure hunted together, it was a magical experience. It was a journey: an adventure. We spent so much time laughing together, so much time talking together, that no matter where we went, we had fun.

  We loved.

  I was loved.

  My father has been dead for three months and two days, but I think about him constantly. He couldn’t have known the search for the treasure would end this way. He couldn’t have ever imagined this. If he had, we never would have left. We never would have come here.

  None of this would have happened if we’d only had an inkling of how great the danger really was.

  I’ve learned, over the last three months, that the Lost Treasure of Dreagle was found weeks before our arrival and removed from the caves. The men knew my father and I were coming: two of the greatest treasure hunters the planet had ever seen.

  They took our map because it held information on the last several places we’d searched for treasure. I don’t know if they went to those places or not. I just know they’re dicks, and they’re selfish, and they’re only interested in themselves.

  They’re only interested in causing pain.

  They had no qualms about killing my father, no qualms about taking me, stealing me away. They had no trouble planting clues and paying off people to feed us bad information that would lead to our capture.

  They succeeded, and my father and I failed.

  The realization that we were stupid stings sharply. The understanding, the knowledge that our fate could have been avoided if we’d just been more careful, just waited a little longer, is terrifying. Treasure hunters aren’t supposed to be murdered, yet my father was.

  And me?

  I only wish I’d been murdered.

  The men have learned to keep my wrists bound in front of me at all times. I can get myself water, but I can’t do anything else. Two failed escape attempts and three failed suicide attempts quickly showed them I can’t be trusted, which is true.

  I’ve thought of so many ways to end this, so many ways to kill myself, but none of them are possible when I’m locked in a little room. I’ve even hit my head against the wall so hard I thought my skull would crack, but they caught me. I was sedated for a few days, and then beaten, and I haven’t tried anything since.

  And now I’m here, sitting, staring at the wall, wishing for anything but this.

  I’m sitting here wishing I was dead because at least when you’re dead, no one is touching you.

  ***

  It’s long past the time I usually receive food.

  I don’t know why they haven’t brought it today, but it’s strange, and anything strange is worth noting. People don’t vary from their routines, especially when they have a captive. If someone hasn’t brought me food, it’s because there’s a problem.

  It’s because something has gone wrong.

  Maybe someone has gotten in an argument with the boss or maybe someone found their location. I gasp as I realize that maybe, just maybe, someone has killed my captors, and the thought is both a relief and a horror.

  What if they kill Boss Man, but they don’t find me?

  What if I’m left here?

  What if I rot away?

  The thought is a terrifying one, and I feel myself grow upset and scared. I start to cry, and then I start to cough, and I’m almost out of water. I don’t want to drink it yet. What if there isn’t any more for a long time? How long can I live off half of a water bottle? A day? Two days? Three?

  How long will I live here before I starve?

  I keep coughing and crying, coughing and crying. If my father was alive, he would tear apart the world to find me. He w
ould go to any planet, cross any river, climb any mountain. He would do anything for me. Anything.

  Now he’s dead, and I’m alone.

  And I’m crying.

  It’s not fair that this would happen to me. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe the meal is just late. I don’t have a clock, but I’ve had nothing to do for three months except learn how to count time without one. As far as I can tell, the men who feed me are on a very strict schedule. They never speak to me, but they always behave in the exact same way.

  When they first took me, I tried to speak to the men. I would tell them my name and beg for them to save me. I would ask them to sneak me out. I would promise them money and fame and a million other things, but then I realized it didn’t matter. I would get my hopes up that maybe one of them was a good man, but none of them are good men. They’re all evil. They’re all corrupt.

  They’re all damaged and there is no one coming to save me.

  I cry harder and harder, completely wrapping myself up in the realization that I’m about to die. I should be relieved that this will all be over soon. I should be happy that I’m finally going to be free from my prison, even if it’s not in the way I want to be free.

  And then I hear the noise.

  It’s faint at first, and it sounds far away.

  I try to stop crying so I can hear it more clearly, but the sobs only turn into whimpers. I can’t stop crying completely. Not after all this time. Not after I’ve been so broken, so damaged.

  Something is happening outside my cell. I don’t know what. I don’t know who they are or what they want. Maybe it’s the guys who usually feed me, but maybe it’s someone different.

  I don’t know whether that thought scares or excites me. Maybe I should be filled with hope, but maybe I should be terrified. That old Earth saying flashes through my head: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

  When Boss Man and his crew come for me, I know exactly what’s going to happen to me, and I can mentally check out while they hurt me. I go to my happy place, and I think about a time when the world was better, and I don’t pay attention to what they’re doing.