Accidental Acquisition by Evangeline Anderson
2
And that’s how I ended up here—in this mess, Jillian thought to herself, staring at her accidental purchase and wondering what the huge bodyslave, still kneeling in the dust before her, was thinking.
Though honestly, it was a little more complicated than that. She could blame Brad for her choice to come to the Mother Ship in the first place, but the reason she had accidentally bought herself a bodyslave was because Pat-ar had won the right to host the Kindred High Council’s dinner with the Nebrian Ambassador.
Nebrians were notoriously picky eaters. Instead of a regular mouth, they had a long, curled proboscis like a butterfly, which had a pair of large, sensitive lips at one end. This meant that all of their food had to be either pureed, liquified, or powdered and served in long, thin vessels, so that they could suck it up with their curly mouth parts.
“And the thing they like best to eat is jumja soup flavored with thaelite,” Suzanne had told Jillian, when they were planning the VIP menu.
Jillian had frowned. She’d been working aboard the Mother Ship at Pat-ar for about two years at that point, and she’d learned a lot of new cuisines and handled a lot of exotic ingredients, but she’d never heard of thaelite.
“Thaelite?” she said. “What’s that?”
“It’s pretty expensive,” Suzanne admitted. “It’s the inner core of the Ruthian passion flower—or rather, it’s a lot of inner cores, all compacted into a really dense, solid mass. It takes millions of flowers to make a single brick of it, which is one reason it’s so expensive.” She shrugged. “But the Kindred High Council is picking up the bill and Commander Sylvan told me to buy whatever was necessary to impress the Ambassador. Apparently they have a deal on the table which could be really beneficial to the Kindred if it goes through.”
“Okay, no pressure then,” Jillian said dryly. But she wasn’t really worried—she was used to cooking for human VIPs—how different could aliens ones be? “So you need me to add a brick of thaelite to my weekly shopping list?” she asked. “Can I get it at the Buy-All-Sell-All Market?”
The huge food market—so named because you could get literally any ingredient in the galaxy there—was located a few solar systems away on Prius Six, a neutral planet which welcomed everyone, which was one reason the market had been established there. Jillian went there weekly to pick up the more exotic ingredients on Pat-ar’s menu.
At first she’d been nervous about going to a whole different planet by herself and one of Suzanne’s husbands had accompanied her. But then her friend’s twins were born—and turned out to be triplets instead. In addition to the Dark Twin and the Light Twin, Suzanne gave birth to a Shadow Twin—an extra baby that sometimes came along during Twin Kindred pregnancies.
After that, it had been all hands on deck at Suzanne’s suite. She needed both her husbands to help her out and between the three of them, they just barely managed the triplets, who were a real handful.
At that point, though, Jillian was much more comfortable with going to the market on her own. She couldn’t fly a Kindred spaceship, of course, but that had been solved by getting a small shuttle with an autopilot option.
The ship had a large, refrigerated section in the back for storing delicate ingredients. It was programmed to go straight to the Buy-All-Sell-All market on Prius Six, park, and wait for Jillian while she shopped. Once she returned with her purchases, she simply pressed the Home button and the shuttle called the Mother Ship, requesting a fold in space and took her directly back with her ingredients.
Jillian had been shopping this way for over a year now, and she was totally used to it. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still thrilled with her new, exciting life, however. It was amazing that she got to travel every week to the huge, exotic market which was as big as a small city. And Suzanne gave her free rein in hiring, menu creation, and picking new ingredients to work with—of which there were plenty to choose from at the Buy-All-Sell-All.
“Just stay out of the Dark Market at the far end,” Kind, Suzanne’s Light Twin husband had warned her. “That place isn’t safe for a female on her own. Seven Hells, it’s not safe for a warrior on his own! But other than that, you should be all right as long as you stay in the main part of the market.”
Jillian always heeded his advice scrupulously. Though she visited a few stalls near the edge of the Dark Market—the area cordoned off from the main part of the Buy-All-Sell-All by a web of pain threads—she was careful never to go through the archway into the forbidden and dangerous area.
In fact, the stall where she’d come to buy the thaelite brick, was right up against the edge of the Dark Market, but she hadn’t expected any trouble. In fact, she hadn’t expected anything at all out of the ordinary to happen to her that day…and now she had accidentally bought herself a bodyslave!
It had all started so innocently, too…
Jillian had risen early that morning—it was a Monday, her usual day to go to the Buy-All-Sell-All, since that was the only day of the week Pat-ar was closed. She’d gone to the huge, echoing Docking Bay of the Kindred Mother Ship and found her trusty little remote shuttle parked exactly where she’d left it the previous Monday.
Getting herself strapped in, she’d sent a quick remote message, asking that the Mother Ship fold space for her to Prius Six and had gotten confirmation—an affirmative message flashing on her viewscreen.
Jillian had been nervous at first, flying through the red gash in space that would take her instantly from one point in the universe to another, but she was used to it now. Her little shuttle went through the fold and came out in a close orbit to Prius Six, as always. And, just like always, the shuttle descended and set itself down in the parking area on the outskirts of the market.
Getting out her large expandable straw tote, Jillian had stepped out of her shuttle—which was print-locked to her hand—and headed into the vast marketplace.
The Buy-All-Sell-All was enormous, taking up an area as big as a good-sized city back on Earth. However, there was a fairly accessible, open-air tram which ran on a regular basis. Jillian had made this trip so often, now, that she knew exactly what to do. Entering the large front entrance, she hopped aboard the tram after paying her fee—a single slotted coin made of Prius Six copper-nalite. After paying her fare, she pressed her thumb to the print scanner, which would enable her to ride for the rest of the day.
The tram was really nothing more than an automatic hover-train that ran around the entire perimeter of the market. The track was laid out in a vast square and the train had so many cars that Jillian had never actually seen the engine. The cars themselves were open-air—meaning there were no sides at all—just a floor, a ceiling, and a lot of evenly-spaced metal poles to hold on to. People paid their fares and hopped aboard from either side of the train, climbing on and off at the various stops along the way.
Well, people was a relative term in this case. The Buy-All-Sell-All was home to vendors from many different planets and customers came from all over the galaxy. There was a Triblian to Jillia’s right who had to fold his long, giraffe-like neck on itself in order to fit in the tram. To her left, was a Gougan that only came up to her knees and was covered in long, green hair. Jillian thought this kind of alien looked a little like “Cousin It” from the old Adams Family TV show.
Further down, on the tram just ahead of hers, she saw a Trollox climb aboard. The tram groaned alarmingly under the huge creature’s weight and both of its heads cursed at the people who were scrambling to make way for it.
Jillian winced in sympathy with the scrambling passengers. Though interspecies fighting was disallowed and the rule was strictly enforced by the Master of the Market—an omniscient being who lived in the very center of the Buy-All-Sell-All—she was especially careful to avoid Trolloxes.
“They don’t give a fuck for rules,” Hard, Suzanne’s Dark Twin Kindred husband had warned her. “And they like to steal humanoid women to gestate their young in. The problem is, once the Trollox fetus is mature, it chews its way out of the host mother, killing her in the process.”
Jillian had shivered at the awful thought.
“It’s a damn good thing I’m too old to be attractive to that kind of creature,” she’d remarked.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Hard had remarked, looking at her. “There are plenty of warriors who would like a chance to bond with a mature Elite like yourself, Jillian. In fact, I believe that’s why the bride draft age was changed to include females that were older than the original age limits.”
Jillian had thanked him for the compliment, though she thought the Dark Twin was wrong about any Kindred warriors being attracted to her. She’d dreamed of maybe starting a family with Brad during the brief time they had been married, but now she was really glad she hadn’t. Having a child with that bastard would have been a real nightmare.
And anyway, she was happy on the Mother Ship and pretty much adjusted to the fact that she was never going to do the motherhood thing. She liked her life—cooking and being creative with wild new alien ingredients and getting to go to the huge Buy-All-Sell-All market on a regular basis—which was very safe, as long as she gave the Trollox and his kind a wide berth. Sure, she was lonely sometimes and wished she had a man to hold her, but that just wasn’t in the cards for her, she thought, as she stepped off the tram at its next stop.
Jillian had her usual routine all marked out. Since Pat-ar got its regular supplies in scheduled deliveries, she was only here to get the more exotic things she needed for specialty dishes. First she went to the vegetable and produce side of the market. Here, hundreds of stalls selling fresh alien produce covered at least five city blocks.
Jillian pulled her poison checker out of her tote— it was a hand-held device that looked like a stubby pencil with a light at the end of it. When trying new ingredients, you couldn’t be too careful. A fruit from an alien planet that looked luscious and succulent might be stuffed full of some kind of natural poison which was harmless to the native species where it grew, but deadly for humanoids.
She passed the checker over any ingredient that looked interesting enough to try. If the light was red, she left it strictly alone, not even touching its outer skin. But if the light at the end of her poison scanner turned green, she knew the ingredient was safe to use and she would often get some to try.
On that particular day, she looked through the stalls, buying a few verbeena fungus clusters—basically big purple mushrooms that grew together with their stalks entwined—(they had a beefy flavor that tasted like rare steak,) as well as an oing-oing fruit from Veepnur. It had bright pink skin and dark blue flesh that tasted like a cross between watermelon and lychee with some hot cinnamon notes thrown in. Jillian planned to use it for a simple sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses for the VIP dinner. She got a few more things and then she was ready to go.
After finding what she needed in the produce side of the market, she hopped back on the tram and rode it around to the back of the Buy-All-Sell-All. Normally, she would have stopped at the protein and seafood side as well, but she had all the meat she needed back at the Mother Ship. The only thing she lacked for the VIP dinner with the Nebrian Ambassador, was the famously expensive and hard-to-get thaelite.
The back side of the Buy-All-Sell-All was reserved for exotic ingredients. It was also where the entrance to the Dark Market was located.
Jillian had been to this end of the market before, looking for hard-to-get spices and herbs, so she wasn’t worried about getting into any trouble. As long as she stayed back from the pain threads that cordoned off the area and away from the ominous arching entrance to the forbidden zone, which was covered in a long, black curtain cut into foot-wide flaps, she was just fine.
Exactly what went on in the Dark Market, neither Kind or Hard had ever told her. But Jillian got the idea that there might be some kind of humanoid trafficking or illegal substances being sold. Whatever it was, she wanted no part of it and she was quite content to pass it by—though she did notice the huge, two-headed Trollox she’d seen earlier entering the arched opening. It paused before pushing the long black flaps of the black cloth barrier aside.
For a moment, one of the creature’s heads turned and looked directly at her, its yellow eyes narrowing as it scanned her body. Jillian shivered and looked away hurriedly. The Trollox was ten or twelve feet tall and it had grayish-green skin and long yellow tusks sticking out of its drooling mouths. It looked like a cross between an ogre and one of those weird pig-men guards in the Star Wars movies, she thought.
Resolutely putting the giant Trollox out of her mind, she started looking for a stall that sold thaelite. But every proprietor she asked shook their heads.
“Sssoory. Too rich for my blood,” hissed a Saurian, his long, alligator tail swaying gently in negation. “But you might try the Yonnite Missstresss at the end of thiss row of stallss. She often has rare and expensssive ingredientss for ssale.”
Jillian thanked him, making sure to stay well clear of his long, snapping jaws, and made her way to the end of the row. There, she found a rather gaudy-looking shop hung with golden cloth and decorated with rare venga healing crystals in all the colors of the rainbow.
The crystals caught the weak sunlight of Prius Six and spread rainbows over the smooth golden brocade, which covered the front countertop. It looked more like a place that you might find incense and balms and salves with dubious medical properties than actual, usable ingredients to Jillian. But she thought she might as well ask if they sold thaelite, since she was having no luck at any of the other stalls.
There was a tiny silver bell attached to a long rope hanging from the top of the stall’s sunshade. Jillian rang it and waited until the gold brocade curtains at the front of the stall rustled and the Mistress of the stall came out.
Even in a world full of aliens, her appearance took Jillian aback. She was wearing meter-tall heels and a dress that clearly showed her full, bare breasts, which were pierced with large gold hoops and covered only by a thin, transparent piece of silk.
Well, maybe this is how they dress on Yonnie Six, Jillian had thought to herself. She’d heard a little about the female-dominated planet which was run by cruel Mistresses who believed men were only worthy of being servants and bodyslaves, but she’d never met anyone from there before.
“Yes? What do you want?” the Mistress asked rudely. “I’ve very busy at the moment, so it had better be good.”
Jillian frowned at her insulting tone. She would have left at once, but she hadn’t had any luck getting thaelite anywhere else.
“I’m looking for a brick of thaelite,” she said shortly. “The Saurian at the far stall told me you might be able to help me.”
“Ah, thaelite. Such an elusive substance.” The Mistress got a crafty look on her heavily made-up face as she looked down at Jillian from her extremely high heels. “It’s very hard to come by, you know,” she added, smiling in a way that didn’t reach her lavender eyes.
“I’m aware of that,” Jillian pointedly. “Do you have any?”
“I do, but it’s not cheap,” the Mistress warned her. Turning, she lifted one of the brocade curtains and shouted, “Kalis—come at once and bring me that brick of thaelite I bargained for last week. Hurry up! A customer is waiting.”
There was a rustling sound from the back of the stall and then the gold brocade curtains parted and the huge warrior had come out. In his cupped palms was a small black brick about six inches long and three inches wide. It didn’t look very heavy to Jillian, but he was carrying it cupped carefully in both huge hands, as though it was precious.
“So that’s the thaelite?” Jillian asked.
It looked exactly how Suzanne had described it. The dense material was so black it seemed to suck in all available light, making a kind of dark shadow around itself.
“Yes, my dear—that is thaelite.” The Yonnite Mistress nodded her head as her bodyslave stood there, holding the small brick.
“I see. How much?” Jillian didn’t believe in beating around the bush.
The crafty look was back on the Mistress’s face.
“Well, there are two possible prices, my dear. Five hundred credits if you can handle it by yourself. For a thousand, you can buy both the thaelite itself and the means of transporting it to your vehicle.”
“I’ll take the cheaper price then,” Jillian said, frowning. “I have a way to transport it right here.” She patted her straw tote, which was hooked over one shoulder. It was only halfway full, since she’d just bought a few vegetables and fruits—there was plenty of room for the small brick of thaelite.
“Apologies, little Mistress,” the huge bodyslave said, speaking for the first time in a deep, rumbling voice that seemed to vibrate Jillian’s bones in their sockets. “But I’m afraid that fragile little bag won’t be able to withstand the weight of an entire brick of thaelite.”
“What are you talking about?” Jillian demanded, frowning. “This is a strong tote—I’ve had it for years.”
“If you want to keep it intact, I wouldn’t put the thaelite into it,” the Yonnite Mistress remarked, her scarlet lips curving into a sarcastic smile. “It’s massively compacted—one of the densest and heaviest substances in the known galaxy. That’s one reason it’s so expensive and difficult to store.”
Jillian glared at the Mistress. “Is this some kind of scam? You’re trying to pretend like it’s heavy so I’ll pay you double to transport it to my shuttle, aren’t you?”
The Mistress narrowed her eyes with apparent displeasure.
“Is that what you think? Very well. Kalis, drop the thaelite brick into her paltry little bag.”
The huge bodyslave looked at Jillian with his silver-green eyes, as though asking for confirmation. Those eyes gave her pause—had she seen them somewhere before? Maybe in a dream? But she pushed the thought aside. By now, she was sure this was all a scam—the Yonnite Mistress was just trying to double the price of an already expensive ingredient.
So she nodded her head firmly and held open the straw tote.
“Go on—drop it in,” she said to the bodyslave.
The enormous warrior looked down from his great height and nodded.
“As you please, little Mistress. But I recommend you keep the bag far from your body and be sure your feet aren’t under it when I drop the thaelite in.”
This seemed like a strange request but Jillian did as he asked, holding the tough, thickly woven straw tote away from her body, she opened it wider and nodded again.
“Go ahead.”
The bodyslave held his big hands over the open tote and carefully tipped the solid black brick into her bag.
At once, Jillian felt a massive weight yanking her arm down and pulling her body to the ground. She gasped and lurched but the pressure ended almost at once as the thaelite brick tore a gaping hole right through her tote and landed on the dusty ground with a solid sounding thunk. A puff of dirt flew up around it and when she looked down in shock, she saw that the black brick had sunk down into the compacted dirt until only about half an inch of it remained visible.
“What in the world?” she exclaimed, staring at it.
“I tried to warn you.” The Mistress was positively smirking now. “Still think you can transport it yourself? Kalis, pick it up,” she added, snapping at the huge bodyslave as though he was a well-trained dog.
Jillian thought she saw a flash of anger in those silver-green eyes but then the huge warrior’s face went blank and impassive and he knelt to dig the dense, black brick out of the ground.
It seemed to give him a bit of difficulty but at last he managed the task by digging away the dirt around the thaelite so that he could fit his fingers under the small brick and scoop it into his palms. Slowly, he rose, holding it in both hands once again, and offered it to Jillian.
“Would you like to try holding it yourself?” The Yonnite Mistress inquired sweetly.
“As a matter of fact, I would.” Jillian lifted her chin. Despite the hole in her tote—which, thank goodness, didn’t seem to be big enough to let any of her other ingredients escape—she still thought this was some kind of a scam.
“Very well, hold out your hands so Kalis can give it to you,” the Mistress commanded.
“You’d better let me put my hand under yours first, little Mistress,” the huge bodyslave told her seriously. “Otherwise the weight of it will pull your hands to the ground and crush your finger bones.”
This sounded ominous to Jillian, but she still thought the Mistress was somehow scamming her. Still, she allowed the big bodyslave to carefully transfer the thaelite brick to only one of his hands and then slip his free hand under her cupped ones.
His hands were large and warm and surprisingly gentle, Jillian noticed. But maybe she was just thinking that because she hadn’t been touched by a man in so long. Not since Brad had broken her heart and ruined her life, she thought distractedly.
“Gently now, little Mistress,” Kalis rumbled in that deep voice of his. “I’m just going to let you feel the weight of it without actually putting it all the way into your little hands. As I said, I don’t want to crush your bones.”
Jillian thought about snapping at him to just get on with it—it was such an obvious scam! But the look in his silver-green eyes stopped her. They were deep, those eyes—as deep as the ocean, and she got the sudden feeling that the huge warrior must have seen a lot in his time. She wondered again how old he was—she’d guessed his age around early to mid fifties because of the iron gray in his hair, but at that moment, as they stared into each other’s faces, he seemed ageless.
Then Kalis slowly edged one end of the thaelite bar into her cupped palms—while being careful to hold the other end himself.
“There you are, little Mistress,” he rumbled. “You’re holding it—half of it, anyway.”
“This isn’t so bad!” Jillian exclaimed, frowning. “I can barely feel anything at all.”
“That’s because I’m still holding it up,” Kalis said mildly. “Do you want me to let you feel the weight of it?”
“Of course—isn’t that the point?” Jillian was rapidly running out of patience.
“It is indeed, little Mistress. Very well—here you go.”
Suddenly a crushing weight was pressing down on her cupped palms and fingers. It was like someone was slowly smashing her hands between two of the heavy plates on a weight-lifting machine at the gym, Jillian thought.
“Ow! Hey!” she exclaimed, attempting to pull her hands away. “That hurts!”
At once, the weight was lifted and Kalis took the thaelite back into his own large hands completely.
At last, Jillian was convinced. She’d known that thaelite was a dense, compacted material, but she hadn’t had any idea howheavy it was.
“That was awful!” she exclaimed, looking up at the big warrior. “How are you holding it so easily?”
“It’s not easy, little Mistress,” he remarked, and Jillian noticed that his biceps were bulging as he cradled the small brick in his massive hands. “But I’m strong. Spent seventeen years in the Blood Circuit—I had to be strong or I’d be dead.”
Jillian didn’t know what to say about that. She only shook her head—she definitely had a new appreciation of the big bodyslave’s strength.
“I think you can see now why paying the higher price, which includes transportation of the thaelite, is both necessary and practical,” the Yonnite Mistress said smoothly. She arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow at Jillian. “Unless you have a male of your own somewhere in the market who is strong enough to transport the brick to your vehicle?”
Jillian thought about calling Hard or Kind and asking them to come help her, but then she remembered the bags under Suzanne’s eyes the last time she’d seen her friend. All three of the triplets had gotten colic at once and she and her husbands had been taking turns rocking and burping them. They were sleeping in shifts, but since all three babies were crying all the time, whoever actually got to lie down and close his or her eyes for a few hours really wasn’t getting much sleep.
It’s an exorbitant price, but it’s not outside the budget the Kindred High Council gave us, she thought.
Though she hated like hell to do it, she was pretty sure she would just have to pay what the Yonnite Mistress was asking. The huge bodyslave, Kalis, could carry the brick of thaelite out to her shuttle and deposit it safely. And hopefully she could get one of the Kindred warriors in the Docking Bay to bring it to the kitchen of Pat-ar for her.
How she was supposed to cook with it, she wasn’t sure yet. But that was a problem for later—right now, she just needed to get the damn thing stowed in her shuttle.
“All right,” she said, frowning. “A thousand credits for the thaelite and a way…er, a person to transport it,” she ended, looking up at the massive bodyslave.
“Don’t be ridiculous—Kalis isn’t a person—he’s a male,” the Yonnite Mistress said dismissively. “Now then, let’s see the color of your credit. Do you wish to pay by coinage or cred-chip?”
As it happened, Jillian had a special cred-chip the Kindred High Council had issued just for her for this occasion. She pulled it out and waved it in front of the Yonnite Mistress’s chip-scanner, watching as a thousand credits was deducted from the account.
“Thank you.” The Yonnite Mistress smiled brightly. “Enjoy your purchase and do come again.”
Not likely! Jillian thought. But she only nodded briefly and said, “Thanks. I’ll bring, er, Kalis back as soon as he puts the brick in my shuttle.”
“Oh, no need for that,” the Yonnite Mistress had said, breezily.
By which, Jillian had assumed she meant that the huge bodyslave could find his own way back through the market. Which was fine with her—she was eager to get back to the Mother Ship and start researching how in the world she was supposed to cook with the super-dense brick of thaelite.
“Okay,” she said and nodded at Kalis. “Let’s go—I know how heavy that is so we’ll go straight to my shuttle.”
“No need to rush, little Mistress,” he rumbled. “I can carry it as long as you need me to. Just point me in the right direction.”
“This way,” Jillian told him, and they headed off to the tram together.
