The Smuggler's Radiant (Renegades Book 2) Read online

  The Smuggler’s Radiant

  _________________________________

  RENEGADES: BOOK TWO

  L. P. PEACE

  Contents

  Glossary of Terms

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Also by L. P. Peace

  About the Author

  © 2020 L.P. Peace

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  [email protected]

  www.lucypeace.com

  Cover by Sam Muraski

  Editing by Ly Publishing

  A smuggler seeking to change his destiny. An enslaved trader desperate to go home. Can they survive the forces determined to drive them apart?

  When Rhona is taken from Mars orbit by the infamous alien slave ship The Crucible, she knows she'll never see her family again. After three hundred years of stolen humans, she has every reason to hate aliens, but when she meets a sexy, horned Kathen, all of her assumptions are overturned.

  Makios is a male on a mission, or he would be if he hadn't been taken by slavers. When the beautiful human female he's falling for is sold to a sadistic Amaran, Makios must save the girl, get on with his mission and help to reshape their whole sector of space.

  But with Rhona's owner determined to recapture his property, can Makios keep the woman he loves safe?

  Glossary of Terms

  Hour – Hacri

  Minutes – Metri

  Seconds – Sicri

  Miles – Madith

  Foot/feet – Fenth

  Inch/inches – Inith/iniths

  Day – Rote

  Month – Cycle

  Year - Solar

  Dammit – Vassek

  Fuck – Vrok

  Fucking – Vrokking

  Shit – Durv

  Shithead – Durev

  Idiot – Vashni

  Scum – Keth

  Rhona Stinar looked up at the butterscotch sky, the Martian sun was falling, a blue tint crept into the edges of the world. Mars was the opposite of Earth; blue was transfused into the sky as the light bled out. The view was suddenly blocked out as the train Rhona and her family were travelling on passed into the airlocked tunnel entering the canyon city of Persephone. A moment later, the cityscape, which was obscured by the sunlight falling on the dome outside, burst into view in vivid greens.

  ‘Right, everyone.’ Her father, Anders Stinar, stood. ‘Get your shit together. Let’s get ready.’

  Standing, Rhona hauled her satchel up from the seat beside her and grabbed her large navy duffel bag from above the table she’d shared with her family. She turned and bumped into her mother, who was jolted into the seat in front of her.

  ‘Oh, shit. Sorry, Mum.’ Rhona reached down to the pregnant belly her mum was sporting. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Amy Stinar rolled her blue eyes at her daughter's concern and swept a fallen lock of red hair behind her ear. ‘Let’s get to the doors before we lose each other in the rush.’ Her mother gestured towards the long carriage filled with people rising to leave the train as it slowed to pull into the station.

  Hurrying, the family moved to the exit and waited for the train to pull in. Finally, as the doors opened, Rhona joined her mum, dad, and Michael, her uncle, in disembarking the 4:45 train from their home in the village of Hermes. She left the train and stepped onto Persephone Space Dock Train Station. Taking a brief moment, she looked around the cavernous room, and the people within who rushed about in the giant, light spaces of the city.

  Fashions in Persephone were continually changing. As a trader, clothes for Rhona were practical and hardwearing. Jeans and a shirt or t-shirt were her mainstays. A jumpsuit if things were going to get messy, which they often did on a small, three-person trading vessel with no dedicated engineer. In the capital city of Mars, however, where life had gone past the hard early colonisation years and into comfort, fashions had evolved to emphasise the tall, thin bodies of Martians. People seemed to be wearing black and white, with little colour to break the monochrome palette. Outfits had large cut-outs exposing bared flesh. One woman went by wearing a long white skirt and a black shrug that covered her down to just under her nipples and no further, exposing the underside of her breasts. She swept by in a tangle of long limbs and boarded the train. Another woman followed, wearing a long, black all-in-one suit with a long white overcoat. She carried a briefcase and was speaking in hushed tones into her phone implant. A man, almost seven feet tall, wearing a suit with an asymmetric fitted jacket, his hair stood up in spikes, glared as he pushed past her to catch the train.

  ‘Excuse you!’ she called after him. He flipped her off over his shoulder in response. Rhona grinned.

  In a few minutes, the train would leave to carry on to Demeter City, seventy-three miles up Valles Marineris, the immense canyon system that scarred the red planet, yet the boarding passengers pushed at those leaving as though the aliens of The Violation themselves were on their heels. This was life on Mars: fast-paced, busy and rude. It was a life she would not miss for the next three months as she took over the family business to make deliveries across the Sol system.

  Ahead of her, her mum waddled arm-in-arm with Michael. Hopefully, she was telling him to listen to Captain Rhona and not cause any trouble. Telling him to pull his finger out and lift his weight would be equally welcome. University had made him soft. Even though he was her uncle, she never called him that. Rhona was older than Michael and had babysat him in the past. There was no way she was going to call him ‘uncle’ while trying to convince him to get into his sleepsuit and go to bed. The omission stuck.

  Her father slowed his pace until he walked next to Rhona.

  ‘Thanks for doing this, love,’ he said again.

  ‘Dad, you don’t have to thank me. You know how long I’ve wanted this. When I get back from Tethys, I move we buy a second ship and make me Captain permanently.’ She smiled at him, ever hopeful.

  Her father gave her a wicked grin. ‘We’ll see how you do over the next two years, shall we? Of course, I may have already put the paperwork in.’

  Rhona stopped for a moment. Her father paused, grabbed her hand and pulled her into a hug.

  ‘Oh my God, Dad.’ Her own ship. She looked up at him. Back on Earth, Anders Stinar was a
monster of a man. At six and a half feet tall, he would have been a tall man if he’d stayed on Earth, but everyone on Mars was tall. It was part and parcel of being Martian. The planet’s gravity was less than a third of Earth-normal. Rhona and her mum’s height were reined in by spending so much of their lives on their ship living at Earth-normal gravity. Anders, as well as being tall, was a strong, stocky man. His head was covered in red hair, and a barely styled red beard covered his lower face. Her mum complained about it endlessly, but when he shaved it several years earlier, she made him regrow it, complaining he looked like a different man and she felt like she was cheating on her husband. His beard hid a square jaw and wide cheekbones. His clear Earth-sky blue eyes sparkled with mischief.

  ‘We’ll see how you do. It’s not a done deal. I can withdraw it. But I put it in now seeing as it takes Earth gov a million years to get anything done.’

  ‘Dad, you know why they’re like this. They have to be careful. Every extra ship is a target for the aliens.’

  Her father let out a barking laugh. ‘I’m not stupid, Rhona. I’ve known people that were taken. But they take advantage of that to keep control. It’s not right.’

  Rhona let out a deep breath; she should leave it. She was going to be gone for three months.

  ‘We just had the anniversary of The Violation last week, Dad. That was fifty thousand men they took in one night.’

  ‘Three hundred and thirty-five years ago,’ her father pointed out. ‘We have defences now. We’re not as vulnerable as we were in the early twenty-first century. Time to ease the reins a little.’

  ‘We ease the reins, and we might as well invite the slavers in. We need to protect our own. I don’t mind waiting so that they can make the black a little safer.’

  ‘You don’t like aliens? You’ve never met any.’ Anders laughed.

  ‘I don’t need to, and you should hope I don’t. They’re dangerous, and we’re nothing but a profit margin to them.’ Rhona pursed her lips. Why couldn’t she just leave it alone? Why couldn’t she just let him have his opinion?

  ‘All I’m saying is, if you ever do meet them, some of them might not be as bad as you believe them all to be.’

  ‘I’m sure there are nice ones.’ Rhona shook her head. ‘But I’m unlikely to ever meet a nice one if I’m taken, am I?’

  ‘True,’ her father said, staring ahead, keeping his eye on his wife.

  Rhona kept her mouth shut. This wasn’t the time or place. It was an old argument, and she refused to leave her dad on bad terms. She was going to be gone for three months, and there were all sorts of dangers in the black. If something happened to her, she didn’t want an argument to be her dad’s last memory of her.

  Anders Stinar was a man of strong opinion. Her mum called him thick-headed. He was a Viking in his soul and hated the restrictions of government, regardless of their reasons. He often made the argument that Earth’s government took advantage of The Violation to control the population. He and her mother argued endlessly over it, yet no matter how much they argued, there was no denying their love. To Anders, his wife was the centre of his solar system; he and his daughter were the planets that revolved around her. No matter how much they argued, they loved each other passionately.

  Rhona hoped to find a man like that someday. Someone she could argue with and adore just like her mother adored her father.

  Rhona turned her attention from her dad to her mum. Amy Stinar, née McKinnon of Scottish descent was just as thick-headed as her dad. Only that morning, Rhona had woken up to the two of them arguing over Amy’s insistence on decorating the baby’s room. Rhona was having a little brother, or rather her mum and dad were having a son. They were around a month out, and with three months of trade and delivery jobs ahead of them, they’d chosen to make their nest on Mars now, rather than push them forward or hand them to other traders. This meant that Rhona was being entrusted with a task she was chomping at the bit for. While Anders was feeling happy and relaxed to be settling down for two years to raise their son, Amy was restless. She, like Rhona, loved the black, and being stuck on Mars was killing her. As far as Amy was concerned, Anders was far too relaxed with his schedule for painting their son’s room. The fight soon descended into arguments about names. Even after a long bath, they were still arguing by the time Rhona got to the breakfast table.

  The McKinnons were an old Martian trading family. They were community leaders for the traders. Rhona’s great-great-grandmother arranged for the traders to pitch in to buy the land their village, Hermes, was built on. Then she organised a sort of co-op for building their homes. People looked to them to speak for the community and deal with the nonsensical bureaucracy of Persephone. The Stinars were a second-generation Martian family. Anders was born in Persephone but grew up on Earth. He was a low-level assistant to the mayor of Persephone when Amy McKinnon stormed into his office to complain about rising taxes. It was love at first sight for Anders, though it took an eighteen-year-old Amy a few months before she agreed to go on a date. During that time, Anders pursued her relentlessly. He even went as far as holding the family ship at the dock for a week when he realised, she was about to disappear into the black for four months. Rhona’s grandfather still brought it up occasionally, at family or community gatherings; but while Amy was annoyed, she admitted to Rhona it was the final nail in the coffin of what she intended to be a careless youth. Instead, she fell in love, got married and had Rhona shortly after.

  Amy looked at them over her shoulder. Her arm was still firmly around her little brother. Her own blue eyes were filled with humour and she smiled at her husband and daughter.

  Rhona found herself smiling back. She looked at her father and saw a helpless, hopeless look of adoration.

  ‘Anyway, while I’m gone, you take good care of Mum,’ she said sternly.

  ‘Like I have any choice. That woman has me wrapped around her little finger. Has me wrapped around any body part she likes.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, shut up. That’s disgusting. Don’t tell me things like that.’ Rhona started work on suppressing the last minute of memory.

  ‘It’ll be you saying these things to your kids someday.’ Her dad grinned. ‘When will that be, by the way?’

  ‘I’m not going to just settle down with someone because you want me to. I will marry when I find the right person.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ her dad grumbled. ‘What about Devin?’

  ‘Oh no, not Devin.’

  Devin was the dockmaster in the port on Tethys. He got the job because his uncle was a high up official. Rhona fancied him once, with his pale green eyes and charming smile. That came to a crashing halt when he pushed her into a cupboard and tried to assault her. She kicked him in his family jewels and ran as he stumbled after her. Callie Dalgleish, one of their friends, one of their trading family, saw them come out of the cupboard. Several swift punches to the face later, Devin knew never to touch Rhona again.

  If her dad knew what Devin had done, he’d kill him.

  Amy and Michael led the way onto the escalator that carried them high above the platform, revealing the skyline of Persephone beyond the glass walls of the station. Skyscrapers stretched towards the dome overhead. Here, Martians lived and worked under the butterscotch sky and amidst the vertical green gardens that grew on balconies outside of every building. Whenever Rhona came into the city, it felt like she was seeing it for the first time. The grander buildings were in the centre of the dome. They were stepped, housing most of the city’s businesses, shops, office blocks and the apartments belonging to the rich and most powerful families on Mars. All of them surrounded the government building in the centre. The city itself was built in a stepped design to match the buildings. They got progressively smaller the further they got from the centre, to allow for the diminishing height of the dome. There the buildings got progressively older and worn, smaller and less well kept. But still, the city maintained the greenery on each one, ensuring that as a whole, the city looked beautiful from
wherever it was observed. Some considered the growth a waste, but the massive underground reservoirs were more than up to the job, and as far as Rhona was concerned, it rivalled the beauty of any place on Earth. Taking a deep breath, she noted it had the added benefit of keeping Persephone’s air quality purer than Earth’s.

  The escalator continued climbing as the bullet-shaped train pulled off. Once enclosed in the airlock, it sped up and was gone.

  Rhona would miss it. She loved Mars, but she loved the black more.

  They reached the grand corridor and fought the tide of crowds that wandered along the shopping promenade. The people walking here were visitors from Earth, the belt or any number of settled planets across the Sol system. Rhona’s eyes wandered around the crowd as they tried to join those moving towards the shipping port lifts. It was easy to tell each group apart, not just because of the subtle difference in fashions. Earth was dominated by east and west fusion; the belts were more hardwearing and practical. In contrast, Martian fashion had recently taken a turn for the ridiculous. But the heights and movements were the biggest giveaways.

  Those born on Mars walked with fluidity and sureness of foot. For the belters, even Martian gravity was too high, so they always looked tired and weighed down even with empty hands. There was a call to install artificial gravity on the crewed asteroids in the belts. No one wanted to pay for it though, and it would mean putting thousands of belters out of a home and job when the gravity became too much for them. The only solution to that was to incrementally increase the gravity over decades, which would only add to the cost.