Free Mercenary Abduction (Alien Abduction) by Eve Langlais Page B

or annoyance.”
    “I’d listen to her if I were you.”
    “He won’t harm me.” Ifruum didn’t appear worried in the slightest.
    Idiot. “Don’t be so sure,” Makl snarled.
    “Mercenary rule number eleven.”
    Don’t kill your allies. But, was this pain in his buttock an ally? Let’s review. Helped him escape.
    Knew Olivia. Olivia trusted him. Appeared to have aided him despite his wayward tongue. Damn. There
    went his new shag rug. Although, ally or not, there were exceptions to the mercenary rule. Perhaps Makl could hope Ifruum broke one of them. He didn’t like people knowing his business. Or at least the private parts of it. But he especially hated it when people or other aliens touched his belongings. Makl, as an only child, never had shared well.
    “You know the mercenary rules too?” Olivia asked her friend as Makl exited the small craft into
    his ship’s landing bay. He didn’t pay attention to the answer as he stomped to a control panel, ready to wrest, physically if need be, control of his ship from the furry interloper. To his surprise, he needed to do nothing as his spacecraft responded to his commands without hesitation.
    However, to be sure his new ally hadn’t left a surprise, he’d run some diagnostics later.
    The door to the bay sealed shut, the cloaking device engaged, but only for the moment. As soon as
    he had to move through the atmosphere shielding the planet, he’d have to drop it. Darned ship couldn’t handle the heat and structural stress of breaking free and invisibility at the same time. Perhaps I should go shopping for a new ship. His gambling skills could use the exercise.
    Ignoring his passengers, he headed for the bridge at a pace just short of a jog. The ease of their
    escape tickled his gut. Something told him they’d not seen the last of what the planet That-Didn’t-Exist could throw at them. The Obsidian’s biggest marketplace and most infamous of cities didn’t get its
    reputation by letting anyone snub her.
    Locking himself in to the commanding seat in case things got rough, Makl took manual control –
    because hands on meant he could blame it on equipment failure if things went wrong – and barked out
    commands. Olivia entered with Ifruum who immediately sat in the secondary seat and took over the
    sensors looking for incoming craft or missiles. Given they both had a vested interest in not blowing up, Makl let the fuzzy male work with only part of his attention on him.
    “Where to next?” Olivia asked, as she wandered the tight space, gaze darting from electronic
    panel to panel, not missing a thing, he’d wager.
    “I’ll let you know as soon as we get out of here.”
    “I wasn’t talking to you,” she replied coolly.
    “Excuse me?” Makl aimed a stare at her. “We’re on my ship now, human. It goes where I say it
    goes.”
    “For now.”
    “Are you threatening mutiny?” He couldn’t help the surprise in his tone.
    A smirk followed her shrug. “Depends on if I like where we’re going.”
    “You are going where you promised, or have you already forgotten? We had a deal. I help you
    escape and you come with me to help with something.”
    “That was before I knew you were a cold-blooded killer.”
    “We met over a corpse, how did you not figure that out? I told you I did assassinations for a
    living.”
    “That’s a job for money. You killed those guards in cold blood.”
    “Um, what’s the difference?”
    “You could have left them alone.”
    Ifruum choked.
    So did Makl. “I killed someone who would have done the same to me. Who would have murdered
    you without a second thought.”
    “One of them was unconscious when you did it! How was he dangerous?”
    “He would have woken up. Maybe when we were sneaking back out. Maybe he would have seen
    or heard something as we went by and shot blindly, hurting or killing us. It’s just smart to not leave any of the enemy alive.”
    “Psycho.”
    The unexpected compliment took him aback. “You