Rebel by Cheryl Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

Fucking Darconians hadn’t been possible for several years now, anyway. Not since Audrey was murdered by that crazy Davordian woman.
    We were too greedy.
    That was where they had gone wrong. Sex with females who aroused them naturally was the only way to go. Besides, Darconians never got their money’s worth. The joy juice pumped out by the coronal serrations of a Zetithian penis didn’t have the orgasmic effect on them that it had on, say, Terran females. The snard seemed to work, though. At least, they all said it did, and that reaction was tough to fake.
    Audrey’s death had affected Jerden the most, but Onca knew if they hadn’t followed her suggestion to hire her so they could fuck anyone with a thousand credits to spare, she would probably still be alive today. Jerden wasn’t the only one undone by the guilt. Onca had endured his fair share.
    Not that feeling guilty would bring Audrey back. Nonetheless, as Onca saw it, his job was to keep Kim alive long enough to claim her portion of the trust fund. Perhaps it was his way of atoning for that other sin. He wasn’t sure. He only knew he had to deliver her to Terra Minor alive and well. Then he could get on with his life.
    Such as it was.
    ***
    Kim never took her eyes off Jatki as her friend stood next to the building they had picked for their meeting spot. They had chosen it because it was out in plain sight, making it difficult for an ambush or a kidnapping—all of which seemed less incredulous and more possible as the hours ticked by. The girls had always kept to the shadows, eluding the police, irate merchants, or males with nefarious intentions.
    She liked that word, nefarious. There were lots of words she didn’t understand the meaning of, much less how to spell them. Not that she needed to do much of that, but with her limited education, learning was a forbidden passion to her.
    Kim didn’t like feeling stupid, and being streetwise didn’t count. She could read and write well enough to interpret signs and do basic math, but that was the extent of her knowledge. Any science had been learned through observation. Jatki had been in school longer and had taught her a few things, but what Onca said about Zetith left her stunned.
    Her parents must have known at least some of Zetith’s history, but they had never mentioned the destruction of their homeworld. Perhaps it was too painful for them to discuss or perhaps they thought their children were too young for such knowledge. Either way, history was a subject Kim knew very little about, and living on the fringes of society made it difficult to keep up with current events. Small wonder she hadn’t heard about the destruction of Zetith or the man responsible for it. He must have been incredibly rich to wage a war against her people and still have enough money left to create a trust fund.
    She hated to admit it, but she had never even heard of a trust fund before and had derived the meaning from the context of the conversation. Was there such a thing that could fill a person’s head with knowledge without sitting through years of schooling? Maybe there was if you had enough to pay for it. Imagine waking up one day with a head full of facts and figures and the knowhow to express artistic talent. Peska could draw well, not that the materials were readily available to them. She’d stolen a lump of something called clay once and had given it to Kim.
    “You make things out of it,” she had said. “Watch.”
    Peska had pressed and formed the ugly lump into the shape of a flower, then a dog, then a bird with outstretched wings. Kim had kept that clay for months, turning it into something different each day until it was no longer pliable. It remained in the shape of a fish until one day she realized it was no longer among her tiny cache of possessions. Ever since then, she imagined that happiness was a never-ending supply of clay or some other substance she could shape into whatever her heart desired.
    Peska had