Rebel by Cheryl Brooks Page A

do that?”
    “No. That’s something they do after you feed them. No idea why. Watch what they do next.”
    On the word, the fish flipped over onto their backs and skimmed across the pond with their bellies exposed and their tail fins cocked straight up in the air. Then they dove downward, disappearing into the water with one last wave of their showy tails.
    “That is so cool!” Kim’s delighted smile made Onca long to take her on a tour of the wonders of the galaxy. He’d seen a lot of them himself. Some close up, but most from pictures or holographic videos.
    With little else to do aboard the refugee ship, Amelyana had filled the heads of her collection of orphans with all the knowledge she could pack into them—those that were capable of learning, that is. She hadn’t been overly successful with Tarq, but he’d done okay for himself anyway. Onca still hadn’t figured out that “lacking in common sense” remark Roncas had made. Given enough time to figure things out, he considered himself to be quite practical. Then again, in view of what he’d been doing ever since meeting the tiny Zuteran, he couldn’t blame her for underestimating his abilities.
    He gestured toward the gate. “We’d better get inside now.”
    “Yeah.” She gave the turtle another pat on the head, then turned to go. “Thanks for showing me your pets.” Her expression grew wistful again. “Cassie had a pet trelink once. She said it came from a place called Talus Five. It was little and furry and had big eyes and a long bushy tail.”
    “What happened to it?”
    “Some of the boys from another gang stole it. I think they probably ate it.”
    “That’s terrible!” Onca protested.
    She shrugged. “They were hungry.”
    They passed through the gate, and Onca closed it behind them. “Cassie…she’s Davordian, you said?”
    “Yeah. She’s very pretty. They have nice eyes, you know.”
    Over the years, Onca had serviced hundreds of Davordians and nearly all of them were beautiful, their electric-blue eyes being their most fascinating characteristic. He hated to generalize, but most of them were sluts too. The brothels were full of them—males and females—both as clients and as providers. They didn’t mind being thought of as oversexed, either. Most of them seemed quite proud of that fact.
    “Why was she in a street gang?”
    “I’ve never been sure. She just showed up one day and asked if she could join up with us. I don’t know if she’d gotten lost or if she was an orphan or what.” She paused, frowning as she walked over to the house with him. “She liked boys a lot—she was also the first one of us to disappear. We all figured she found a guy she liked and went off with him. It wasn’t until Dalmet vanished that we started getting suspicious.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Peska went looking for them and never came back.”
    “Good thing you and Jatki were working together. Even so, the same thing could’ve happened to you.”
    “I know. But it was a chance we had to take.” Kim paused at the back door, glancing up at him with a mixture of fear and anger in her eyes. “It scares me to death to think of them being…hurt.”
    Onca knew exactly what she was thinking, and also why she hesitated. Becoming a prostitute out of necessity was one thing. Being forced into it was quite another. Aside from that, the possibility that her friends had been murdered was very real. He would never have thought of that before what happened to Audrey. He knew crime existed on Rhylos, but that experience brought him closer to it than he’d ever been—or ever wanted to be.
    “Yeah. I hope you never try that again. We’ll do our best to find them or at least figure out what happened to them. But you do realize, we may never know.”
    She nodded. “That’s what scares me the most.”
    Her subsequent shudder aroused instincts Onca had never given himself credit for having. Protective, possessive instincts. He wanted to