Текст книги "Married to the alien cowboy"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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MARRIED TO THE ALIEN COWBOY

COWBOY COLONY MAIL-ORDER BRIDES

BOOK ONE

URSA DAX

NOTICES

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.

Married to the Alien Cowboy © 2024 Peace Weaver Press Inc. President Veronica Doran

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Content Notes

1. Silar

2. Silar

3. Cherry

4. Cherry

5. Cherry

6. Silar

7. Cherry

8. Silar

9. Cherry

10. Silar

11. Cherry

12. Silar

13. Cherry

14. Silar

15. Cherry

16. Silar

17. Cherry

18. Cherry

19. Cherry

20. Silar

21. Cherry

22. Cherry

23. Silar

24. Cherry

25. Cherry

26. Cherry

27. Cherry

28. Silar

29. Warden Tenn

30. Cherry

31. Cherry

CONTENT NOTES

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1SILAR

“They want to send us women.”

The warden’s words fell over the room like a thunderclap.

The astounded silence that followed was broken not by words but by the sound of four adult Zabrian males leaning suddenly forward in their chairs, making the old wood creak beneath us.

My chair creaked perhaps loudest of all.

The sound seemed to embolden Zohro on my right. He pulled off his weathered, wide-brimmed hat and aimed it at Warden Tenn like a weapon, his eyes gone bright white with what could have been keen curiosity but, knowing him, was probably rage.

“What do you mean, women?”

“Are they convicts?” Garrek piped up, his voice deep and charred-sounding. “They have only ever sent boys before.”

Zohro snorted and Fallon flicked his whip-like tail across the floor. None of us needed to be reminded of that fact. We had all been young boys upon our arrival here, the first generation of underage Zabrian criminals dumped on this Empire-forsaken planet. Too young to send to the Zabrian mines, too irredeemable in the eyes of the empire to remain on Zabria.

And now they want to send us women…

“No,” Warden Tenn said. Stationed here by the empire, he was the only male within a distance of a hundred spans that had come here for his career instead of as a result of his crimes. “The women are not convicted of anything. They are not coming here via the same program you all did.”

“What, then? Why are they being sent here?”

Fallon, Garrek, and Zohro’s heads all swivelled to me. Somewhat startled, I realized it was I who had spoken.

“So Silent Silar speaks when the subject relates to females. Good to know,” Zohro sneered, leaning back in his chair now and replacing his hat upon his head. In the shadow of the beaten brim, his eyes still glowed.

“It’s a good question no matter who asked it,” Fallon said. “Why are they coming here?”

“They’re being sent as brides. For you,” Warden Tenn clarified when we all responded to that remark with a stretch of dumbfounded silence. “To marry.”

“Brides.” Zohro and Fallon said the word at the exact same moment. Zohro with incredulous disdain, Fallon breathing it with something close to wonder. Garrek and I exchanged guarded glances as the warden went on.

“Yes. Brides. The empire has decided, now that you are adults and have served so much time here, that it would be unnecessarily cruel to deprive you of female companionship into the remainder of your adult years.”

“Ha!” Zohro dragged his tall body out of his chair. I watched in silence as he began to pace, his pink hide darker than usual in the dim light of the warden’s office, his eyes killing white. My tail twitched close to the blade I kept in my boot.

“The empire cares nothing about cruelty,” Zohro growled. “This is nothing but a placation, a flimsy attempt to distract us from the fact that they should have tried to reintegrate us into Zabrian life by now, but they have not. They are leaving us here among the dust and the dung and trying to bribe our acceptance of such a fate with women.”

“There was never any indication we’d be taken back to Zabria,” Garrek grunted, rubbing calloused fingers along his dark blue jaw. “We’ve all committed crimes. This was always meant to be our recompense. It’s better than what we would have faced in the mines.”

“Is it?” Zohro challenged. “At least in the mines we’d serve our time and then be out eventually. We’ve been here more than half our lives and now they want us to bed down and marry! To breed. They are dangling women in front of us instead of the lives we should have had!” His eyes went so white they looked like stars in his face. “This is the end. This means there will never be anything else for us but this place.”

His words settled heavily among us all, only to be suddenly dispelled by a flippant snort from Fallon.

“You are a dramatic ass,” he said, his eyes, usually warm and dark, flashing briefly white. “I do not know why you hold on to hope of ever being taken back to Zabria. I barely remember our home planet!” He sliced his claws through the air, gesturing to Garrek and me. “We have all managed to build a life here.”

“Is that what you call it?” Zohro asked, halting his pacing and fixing Fallon with his white stare. “A life? Running cattle in the heat and weathering the cold? Blinking infernal dust out of our eyes every morning and wiping it out of every crack and crevice each night? Ancient tech that crumbles the moment that you so much as breathe on it?”

“I could put up with any sort of life if there were a good woman in it,” Fallon retorted. As if deciding he were finished with Zohro, he swivelled in his seat to face Warden Tenn again. “What do you need from us? Ranch inspection? A cattle count? Mine have fared well over the winter. I know I could provide for a wife if given the chance.”

Though we were all four of us adults, Fallon was the youngest and most earnest. But there was more than youthful enthusiasm in his face now. His eyes flashed briefly white again, his face drawn tight with something that looked very much like hunger.

“I need your vote,” the warden replied. “Our province is the first to be offered a chance at the bride program. A majority vote of aye means the program will go ahead. A majority vote of nay means that the chance will instead be given to Warden Hallum’s men in the next province.”

Garrek shifted in his chair and Fallon sat up very straight.

“I vote aye!” Fallon said instantly, his tail quivering so hard he wrapped it around the leg of his chair to hold it still.

“There are four of us,” I pointed out, drawing the tip of my tail up and down the handle of my hidden knife. “Oaken couldn’t get through the spring snow in the mountains for this meeting.”

The warden tipped his hat in agreement, making the Zabrian badge on it glint.

“As your warden and the liaison to the empire, I am included in the vote.” His eyes turned white, a mere flicker, before returning to their usual orange shade. “And as a man with half a brain in his head who thinks some female influence might be just the thing to tame you lot of uncivilized, white-eyed, feral fools, I have already voted aye.”

“I vote aye! Aye for Fallon!” Fallon said again, nearly jumping out of his chair with what was clearly anxiety that he had not been heard before. “And if these any of idiots do not want their women then I will take theirs, too!”

“You’ve never even been with one woman,” Zohro snapped, “what in the great blazing span of my largest bull’s backside would you do with four?”

Fallon ripped off his hat and scrubbed vigorously at his yellow hair, frowning.

“They would not all be my women,” he said awkwardly. “But one could be mine. And the others could live with us if they so chose. I have space.”

“You have space inside your skull is what you have,” Zohro muttered.

Garrek growled a warning. My tail tightened around my knife.

“Enough,” said the warden, rising from his seat. He towered over even tall Zohro and cut an imposing figure as he rested his claws upon his stunner. “Give me your votes and be done.”

“I vote no,” Zohro said, flinging himself back into his seat under Warden Tenn’s baleful white glare. “I will not further chain myself to this place by marrying. If I am to have sons or daughters, they will be born in the empire of Zabria or not at all.”

Fallon visibly tensed, his hope-hungry gaze going to Garrek.

Garrek rubbed his jaw again and sighed.

“I’ve got a new convict-ward from the empire. I can barely keep him under control and take care of my herd at the same time. We almost didn’t make it through the winter. What am I going to do with a female on top of all that mess?” I thought I could hear the strained tinge of regret in his voice when he heavily but firmly said, “No. I vote no.”

“Unbelievable!” Fallon exploded. “You complain of our lives here and then you shit on the one chance we’ve gotten in dozens of cycles to actually make things better! If we say no, the women will go to Warden Hallum’s men! Warden Hallum! Have you two lost your senses?”

Then Fallon turned to me. I’d never seen the young man’s eyes so white.

“Two ayes, two nays. The vote comes down to you, Silar,” Warden Tenn grunted.

I felt every man’s gaze upon me like a touch.

A woman. A wife. I wouldn’t know what in the bloody blazes to do with such a thing. None of us would. We all came here before puberty. Cut off from society, forever separated from the females of our race before we were even old enough to want them. I barely knew how to speak to these men whom I’d known since childhood. What could I possibly have to say to a woman?

Silent Silar. I liked to be alone.

I forced myself to imagine it – to imagine somebody beside me, in my house, in my space – and my tail went tight with tension. But I could not quite tell if it was a bad sort of tension or not.

It wound tighter.

A woman in my kitchen. In my bedroom.

In my bed.

Something that almost felt like panic choked me at the very same moment that my flesh stirred hotly beneath my pants. Questions pounded inside my head in time with my rapid heartrate.

What would I do with her? How could I keep a female happy here? Here, in the sun and the dust and the ruins of my life? How could I possibly hope to deserve her? A wife!

And how could I turn off this desperate, savage wanting now that it was suddenly here? I’d never dared to allow myself to want something like a woman before. There was no point. When my cock got too hard to ignore, I used my own fist with a grim sort of efficiency and then I got back to work.

There was always work. So much work that it left no more room for wanting.

Until now.

A woman.

No. I could not have her. I would not.

I would probably do something wrong and hurt her or harm her or Empire forbid, break her. We were convicts, reviled by our own people, left out here on this distant planet to rot for so long that there was no hope of ever rehabilitating us. What could I offer a female? I, a white-eyed feral fool, as the warden had so aptly pointed out?

I knew cattle. I knew how to tell when a storm was brewing simply by the slant of the light. I knew which grasses were toxic and which could heal. Which holes housed venomous ardu serpents.

I knew nothing about keeping a wife. Nothing.

“I’ll take one.”

The warden scowled at me. Fallon did not appear to breathe.

“You’ll take one what?” Warden Tenn asked.

“Maybe he means to take a break. To consider!” Fallon said in a rushed exhale. “Give the man a moment and let him think! This is the most important decision he is ever going to make!”

“I will not take a break,” I replied. “I meant-”

Someone slit my throat and stop me. I’m a fool.

“-I’ll take one. A wife.”

Fallon leaped up. His tail, still wrapped around the chair leg, sent the whole thing clattering backwards to the floor. He stood, his frame seeming to buzz with energy. It was as if he wanted to do so many things at once that all he could manage was to stand in place and tremble with the force of his fraying desire.

The warden tipped his hat again. “Three ayes against two nays. The vote is cast and the bride program will commence,” he said.

Zohro hissed a sigh. Garrek said nothing, though – and this was strange – he did not look disappointed that the vote had not gone his way.

“When will they arrive?” Fallon asked, white blooming hot and frantic in his eyes.

“That is not the question you should be asking,” Zohro said with a dark smirk. “The question you should be asking is, what is wrong with them? No decent Zabrian woman would agree to come here. To be cut off forever from Zabria and marry convicted outcasts like us.”

“Oh. Did I not say it before?” the warden asked with a frown. And then, casually, as if he were not dropping something as stunningly obliterating as a boulder atop our heads, he added, “They are not Zabrian females. Your brides will be human.”

2SILAR

“Do you know what a human is?” Fallon asked quietly as we both unwound the reins of our mounts from the posts we’d tied them to outside the warden’s base. Warden Tenn was still inside with Zohro. Garrek had already departed, eager to get back to check on his new convict-ward and make sure, in his words, “the boy hadn’t burned the place to the ground and let every one of my blasted cattle loose into the wilds.”

Therefore, I was the only one to hear Fallon’s question and I supposed it fell upon me to answer.

“No,” I answered him. I’d heard of the human-run commerce hub Elora Station. I knew some Zabrians travelled there for trade. But before coming to this penal colony, I’d never been off-world before and I’d certainly never glimpsed a creature called a human. I doubted any of us had, besides perhaps Zohro, the lone male among us who’d come from a family with any sort of wealth.

“Well,” Fallon said, his face pulled in an odd grimace of troubled hope. “They are female, and they are willing to marry us, and that is what counts, I suppose. As long as they are healthy and hardy and biologically compatible-” He gave me a startled look. “You do think we will be biologically compatible with them, don’t you?”

“Don’t know,” I grunted, swinging myself up into the saddle upon my mount, Tarion. Tarion was a shuldu, a large four-legged herding beast native to this planet. I patted his neck, his short-haired hide the same colour as the reddish dust caked along the hard, dry ground beneath his hooves.

Fallon mounted his black shuldu, taking some time to rub dust from his mount’s horns with a spare rag before casting me a wistful look.

“I wish one of us besides Oaken had a fully working data tab,” he lamented.

We all had data and communication relay tablets – in various states of disrepair – that Warden Tenn used to communicate with us. But only Oaken had been able to restore visual data – though grainy – to his tablet’s screen. The rest of us only had audio capacity.

“Maybe then we could try to look humans up in the Zabrian Imperial Database,” Fallon went on. “There might even be an image or two…”

“You should have thought about these things before you voted,” came Zohro’s voice from behind us. He strolled from the doorway to the furthest post where his golden mount was tied.

“I still cannot believe you’ve turned down the chance at a woman,” Fallon said, watching him.

“I’ve turned down a bride picked from the dredges of the universe. Not even Zabrian!”

“What do you know of them?” I asked, unable to hold the question back.

I’d voted yes. The plans were in motion. I would now receive a human, whatever the great dusty blazes that was. The more prepared I could be, the better.

“I know they’re small,” Zohro scoffed. “Weak. Prone to injury and illness.”

That… did not sound good.

“Oh,” said Fallon, concern creeping into his voice. “Well. She does not need to be strong. I am strong. And if she gets injured or ill, I will take care of her.”

That sounded like a lot of work when we already had a lot of work to do.

“Take care of her how? You just admitted you don’t know the first thing about human biology!” Zohro countered. “No. What is likely to happen in the case of her inevitable illness or injury is that your bride will die and then you’ll have a charge of neglect or even a new charge of murder upon your head, added to your other convictions.”

Fallon’s eyes went bright white. He made to leap off his saddle down to Zohro, but I snapped my tail out against his chest and grunted, jerking my chin towards Warden Tenn’s yet-open door. Warden Tenn was responsible for our cooperation and good behaviour out here. He didn’t tolerate fights. At least, not when they happened directly on his own dusty doorstep. The last thing any of us needed was a stunner blast to the guts.

“Have you ever seen a human?” I asked Zohro, letting my tail slide away from Fallon. “Or is this just what you’ve heard?”

Zohro mounted his shuldu and took his sweet, cursed time to answer. When he finally did, it was with a flat and hissy, “No. I have not seen one.”

“Ha!” Fallon shouted, so loudly it made his shuldu snuffle and toss his head in alarm. “You wouldn’t know a human’s head from her tail if you encountered one!”

“At least I’m aware of the fact that humans do not have tails!” Zohro retorted.

“No tail?” Fallon looked disconcerted by this.

I said nothing, ruminating on the idea of working out on a ranch with no tail. Tails were very useful things. Maybe she’ll have a third arm to compensate…

“You three are idiots,” Zohro said with a narrowed white glance as he took up his shuldu’s reins in his pink hands.

“Only two of us voted yes besides the warden,” Fallon snapped. “Who’s the idiot now?”

“You, Silar, and Oaken,” Zohro clarified. “Warden Tenn just contacted him on his data tab. He was even more nonsensically enthusiastic about a bride than you are, Fallon. Said he’d find a way to tunnel through the mountain snow if he had to, in order to get here in time to meet her.”

I inhaled sharply. “Oaken wants a bride?”

“Did I not just say that?”

“Did Warden Tenn tell him she would be human?”

Zohro gave me a suspicious look and flicked his tail nonchalantly.

“Yes.”

“What is it?” Fallon asked in my following silence.

“Oaken is the only one with a data tab screen capable of visuals,” I reminded Fallon. It took the other male a moment to catch my meaning, but when he did his mouth stretched in a wide, fang-toothed grin.

“He would have been able to look human females up before he agreed to take a bride,” Fallon said, still grinning while Zohro scowled. “And he said he’d hurry back here for one? That can only be a good thing! He must have really liked what he saw.” His voice went soft with dreamy wonder. “I wonder what it is he saw…”

As for me, I cared little if she were ugly or pretty, tall or short, bald or hairy. I was still stuck on the fact she’d have no tail. Hard to do all that needed to be done out here with no tail…

“Did Oaken happen to mention how many arms humans have?” I frowned at Zohro while Fallon gazed moonily at the sunset-streaked horizon.

The dark-haired pink male gave me an odd look.

“No. But I am fairly certain that they have two arms. Same as us.”

Curses.

“Two arms,” Fallon said brightly. “That is a very good number!”

“Would be a good number if there were also a tail,” I grumbled.

“I do not believe I’ve ever heard you spit out this many words in one conversation, Silar,” Zohro said. “If you’ve changed your mind, go in and tell Warden Tenn you do not want a bride. The vote is cast, but there’s no point in bringing one out here for you if you do not want her.”

My chest felt strangely hot. I knew my eyes were white when I pulled my reins tight and turned my mount homeward.

“I did not say I do not want one.”

I urged my mount into a run.

3CHERRY

Bone-tired from my shift at the New Toronto shuttle engine factory, I let myself into my gloomy apartment. I closed the door. Then I locked it. Then I deadbolted it.

Then I dragged a chair in front of it.

It had become my new ritual. Ever since last month, when I’d missed the interest payment on my loan for the first time.

None of Magnus’ men had come for me. Yet.

When they did, I was pretty damn sure that a lock or deadbolt or chair wouldn’t do anything to stop them. But at least it might buy me a little time, or at least make enough noise to give a girl some warning.

Never should have taken that loan, I thought bitterly, shaking my head at the dumbass six-months-ago Cherry Dawson who’d gone to a fucking crime boss to make rent instead of figuring something, anything else out. A small voice reminded me just how tough that month had been. A parts shortage had led to a factory shut down immediately after a rental increase. To top it all off, this had come directly on the heels of Mama’s death, which meant our household income had been slashed by more than half, since she’d had more seniority at the factory than me and had made a much better wage.

If Mama could only see me now. Her only daughter double-locking the door and shoving furniture in front of it to keep the loan sharks at bay just one more night. She’d be just as pissed at six-months-ago Cherry as I currently was.

I may have been just trying to stay afloat on a sea of stinking shit at the time. But now my boat had a hole and I was fucking sinking in it.

I sighed, taking out my Old-Earth-style cast iron pan, the only thing of Mama’s I had left that I hadn’t yet sold. At this point I knew I needed to sell it too, but nobody on Terratribe I, humanity’s oldest industrial colony planet, would likely have any use for the hunk of iron. If someone did buy it, it would probably just be melted down for its base metal. The thought of losing the seasoning my Mama, and her Mama, and her Mama before that had lovingly built up on the surface of the pan made me woozy with a sorrowful sort of fear. That feeling was far worse than the terror of angry mobsters at my door wanting their money back.

I left the heavy black pan to heat on my small apartment stove and turned to my fridge for a protein block to fry up for my dinner.

But I never opened it.

Because I heard someone else trying to open another door instead.

I froze, my heart swelling all the way up to my throat as my apartment door’s handle rattled. Whoever was out there didn’t bother with that strategy long. Once they figured out it was locked, they switched tactics. A buzzing hiss was soon followed by the sound of sizzling, and I watched in horror as a moment later the entire handle fell to the floor, laser-cut right out of the door. The laser’s beam went to work along the edge of the door after that, melting through the deadbolt.

I stood there staring, paralyzed in a way I’d always assumed I wouldn’t be. I thought that when this moment came, I’d be ready for it. That I’d have some semblance of a plan besides stand there and gawk as a hardened criminal comes to gut you like a factory rat.

The door swung inward with sharp force, as if kicked. It sent the chair toppling, and that shocked me into motion, breaking whatever stupid spell I’d been under.

The fire escape.

I just needed to get to the window in my bedroom. Then I could get down the fire escape.

Only problem was that my apartment was twenty-two stories up. By the time I climbed all the way down, somebody could take a lift down and beat me there.

And that wasn’t the only problem, it turned out.

The other, much more immediate issue was the massive mountain of a man who was already shoving through the open door. He got between me and my bedroom before I could even take a step.

“I know I’m late,” I said in a rush, stumbling backwards as if putting some space between us would actually do me any good now. My back hit the front of the stove. “I just need a little bit more time.”

“Magnus is not a patient man,” he said. His voice cracked with the typical gruffness of a man who smoked a lot of the stimulant-laced, synthetic testosterone drug T-dust. “You pay right now. Or you come work off your debt.”

“Work off how? In one of Magnus’ drug houses?” I questioned frantically. “Because I can promise you right now that I won’t be any good. I failed New Toronto High chemistry.”

The man tilted his bald head, cracking his neck loudly before casting a coldly calculating eye from the top of my head to my toes.

“You’ve got a halfway decent face,” he grunted. “And a more-than-decent body. He’ll have other work for you.”

Uh oh.

I fought the urge to cross my arms over my chest, instead nodding my head over and over again like the antique bobble-head doll on the desk in the shift manager’s office at the factory.

“Alright!” I squeaked. “Um. Alright. How very, er, generous of Magnus. To allow me the chance to work off my debt! Let me just… Uh… Get my things…”

I moved as if to walk into my bedroom, my mouth going dry when I thought of the fire escape’s bars so tantalizingly close. But the goon didn’t budge.

“No things,” he said. “We go now.”

Well, that sure as hell was not happening. I hardened myself with the resolve that no matter what happened, I was not leaving this apartment with this man.

Not alive, anyway.

Maybe he saw something change in my expression, because his eyes suddenly narrowed and he lunged for me.

Growing up in the manufacturing district of New Toronto on Terratribe I was by no means a cushy experience, and I could scrap with the best of them. But this meathead had at least a hundred pounds on me, not to mention the effects of the muscle-swelling, fury-inducing T-dust. I had to be smart and I had to be quick.

I managed to dodge his hold – barely – before I wound my foot up for a colossal kick right between his legs. But, shit, it wasn’t anywhere near as effective as it should have been. Whether the T-dust had shrivelled his balls so damn much that I hadn’t made good contact, or the drug’s signature rage had left him impervious to pain, the guy didn’t fall to his knees howling the way I’d hoped. But he did lose his balance a little. And when he got tangled in the sideways chair legs on the floor, he did go down on one knee at least.

But I still wouldn’t be able to run past him to get either to the front door or the bedroom. And he was already trying to get up, taking a few seconds to swear at the chair and smash his fist down upon its hapless form.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Not only had I managed to not incapacitate the son of a bitch, I’d pissed him right the hell off. Six-months-ago Cherry looked like a goddamn genius compared to current Cherry.

Keeping the man in my sights from across the tiny kitchen, my hands moved blindly over the counter behind me, desperately searching for a knife. In my panic, I couldn’t remember if I’d gotten a knife out yet to slice up my protein block or not. The fact I couldn’t feel a handle or the naked bite of a blade against my scrabbling fingers was not a good sign.

But I did find something else. The now-warm handle of my cast iron pan.

I didn’t stop. Didn’t think. I made a fist around the gritty metal and swung it forward as hard as I fucking could.

It connected beautifully, smashing the guy directly in his piggish, angry face just as he was trying to rise from the floor. Stunned, he sailed over to one side. Before one meaty hand flew up to his face, I had time to see the fresh, furious pink of a burn across his cheek and forehead as well as the crimson froth of blood pouring from his nose.

And then I was running. Right out the apartment’s door and into the hall. I nearly took out Mrs. Calloway, and as she dove out of my way I nonsensically called out, “Thank you!” instead of saying sorry the way I normally would have if I hadn’t been absolutely on fire with terror. Somewhere behind me, just as I slid into the lift and slammed my hand against the close doors button, came the blood-drowned, nasal bellow of a man with a now-crushed nose.

“Repayment plan is off the table, you fucking cunt! You’re going straight to the bottom of Lake New Nipissing!”

The lift doors creaked shut, locking me in with myself under the harsh white light. I stared at my reflection in the grimy metal doors. My blue eyes looked absolutely massive with panic, my long brown hair coming loose from its braid. My face was very white, but not quite as white as the knuckles of the hands that still squeezed tightly to my cast iron pan.

The lift plunged downwards. As it did so, I made plans. Frantic, messy, half-formed ones. I had to get off-planet, that was for sure.

But go where? And with what fucking money?

The pale woman with the bloody pan looking back at me didn’t have an answer.

I tore my gaze from her, swallowing against nausea, my eyes roving over the advertisements bleating their tired slogans out from the lift’s screen panel to my left. I’d seen them all before, the familiar colours and words bleeding into each other.

Until suddenly, a new advertisement flashed.

The colours were so different from the preceding greys and whites that I found myself blinking against the change. The screen was lit up as if with sunlight, the kind of sunlight that never shone that brightly in New Toronto. And the scene it showed definitely wasn’t one from Terratribe I. No, it was a landscape of rose-gold cliffs and warmth. Tufts of yellow grasses waved prettily in the foreground and an idyllic little house sat in the distance, so charming and rustic that at first I thought it might be an image of Terratribe II, the pastoral, agricultural colony planet.

But text flashed, golden and looping, dispelling that idea instantly.

Zabrian males want brides! read the advert. Find your new home and husband on the ranching outpost planet of Zabria Prinar One!

And then, the magic fucking words.

All bridal travel and expenses covered in full by the Imperial Justice Committee of Zabria.

I could get off-world and someone else would pay for it.

And all I had to do was apparently marry a Zabrian, whatever the hell that was.

Adjusting my grip on my pan, I took my comms tablet from my pocket and scanned the code on the screen before it blipped out of existence. The data downloaded, and I stared in shaky wonder as a paid-for ticket to Elora Station suddenly appeared in my data folders.