Turns out, a frustrated spaceship captain is also a walking migraine festival. I was today years old when I learned this.

Almost forty years of combined military spacecraft experience currently occupied the bridge of the Odessa, but we couldn’t land. Like, at all, no matter what we did. Something that should be so simple wasn’t working due to all sorts of mechanical difficulties with the ship and the shuttle.

Flashing lights on my poor pilot’s console strobed across her sweaty forehead as she held us at 25,000 feet above Klio-3‘s surface. This was the lowest we could dip toward the planet without a resulting clusterfuck. Philip, my communications officer, shot her apologetic looks while his hands hovered over his keyboard.

We waited.

Lieutenant Avery appeared on the viewscreen. A burst of static and distant shouts sounded in the background.

“Tell me you have good news, Captain,” Avery said, her voice tense.

I smoothed back the hair that had fallen from my ponytail around my ear in the hopes I’d be able to hear her better. Even though lines waved all over the angry woman’s face, I’d have to try reading her lips. Good thing I could read her tone loud and clear.

“I do not, in fact, have good news,” I told Lieutenant Avery.

Within seconds, the lieutenant loosed a dozen impressive curses, some of which I was pretty sure involved my mother, though I didn’t hear all of them clearly.

Darc, my pink-haired pilot, leaned closer to Philip and mouthed, “She seems nice.”

“Look,” I said to Avery, my voice leveled with a spoonful of sugar—that I wanted to choke her with. “I know you need that package, but—“

“You don’t know shit. Fix your ship. Or fix your shuttle. But get me that goddamn package.”

The view screen beeped out.

Welp, that had gone well. Now might be as good a time as any to start day drinking. A shot of anything strong might just help my migraine…and maybe even the whole not-able-to-hear situation.

I glared at the planet below through the viewscreen, a smear of angry red rock formations that looked suspiciously like middle fingers. Their tall forms highjacked most of the surface, making it even harder to land. The judgmental planet had rejected us before it had even gotten to know us. Rude.

Or…something on this ship was purposefully preventing us from landing. One of our new passengers brought here by force, maybe?

Earlier, one of them got hands down my pants trying to steal back this mysterious package Avery needed. Hey, where else was I going to put it while my hands were loaded with weapons? I was a little embarrassed to admit how quickly he’d disarmed me though.

Anyway, getting hands with me hadn’t worked out well for him because I’d kneed him in the groin to get away. Then, my crew and I had hauled him and his friend aboard for some serious explaining, which hadn’t worked out well for me. They hadn’t said shit.

“Darc, keep trying,” I told my pilot, heading toward her and the stairs beyond, “or it’s back in the cage you go.”

“You have your own cage?” Philip asked her, obviously impressed.

“I even have my own empty food bowl,” she deadpanned. “It’s okay if you’re jealous.”

Philip whistled.

Couple of jokesters, the both of them. There were enough cages and empty food bowls for everyone on my crew.

Kidding. I’m kidding. The only cage I had was my beloved ship that couldn’t land, and we had plenty of food.

And liquor, thank god.

“Captain, where are you going?” Darc asked before I reached the steps.

Luckily she’d angled toward me in her seat to ask that question or I might not have heard. Funny how hearing was so much easier when paired with watching lips move.

“To talk to our new passengers,” I said and leapt down the three steps.

And by talk to them, I meant light a match under their chairs until they started singing. Our two guests had been tightlipped about who they were and why they wanted this mysterious package in the first place, and they were none too willing to be tied up and brought on board the Odessa.

Swear to holy hell, if they’d done something to my ship to prevent us from landing…

The bridge doors closed behind me, and I winced, now alone with my thoughts so I was forced to listen.

I didn’t like what I heard. A constant buzzing, courtesy of the explosive blast that had nearly taken out my crew when we’d stopped to pick up the package. Tinnitus, Doc had said. Sure, okay, but why was I the only one who had it?

“Captain…” Mosely, my engineer, strode from the other end of the dim corridor. A toothpick jutted from his mouth, which bounced as he spoke. “We have a problem.”

“No good,” I said, drawing closer to him. “I’ve run out of room for more problems.”

“It’s Major. He’s throwing a major fit.”

I sighed and massaged the bridge of my nose. “On a scale of one to wasp nest, how bad is it?”

“I’d say this is about 27,000 wasp nests.”

I groaned inwardly. What was today? Tuesday? So, my second favorite day to put off everything until later.

“I’ll deal with him and the wasps in a minute,” I told Mosely. “Come in with me and help me make our new passengers sing soprano.”

I slid the brig door open which contained our prisoners—passengers, whatever—and Mosely followed. He was so good at making the ship’s engine purr that he often had little else to do but be my muscle, of which he had plenty.

The two newcomers sat back-to-back in the middle of the room, a thick rope binding them to their chairs. The two were so huge, I didn’t see how even a rope that size could hold them, but that was all I could come up with on short notice. The seams of their tight tunics had already burst in some places, possibly from our battle this morning, and purple appeared from underneath the rips.

Not injuries. Purple just happened to be the color of their skin and scales.

These two were Xenoxx, alien warriors who’d first visited Earth many years ago.

“You mind telling me why we can’t land?” I demanded of them.

The ship’s translator automatically brought down our language barrier. Thank goodness something still worked.

One of the passengers just smiled like he was having the time of his life all tied up like this. He had spiked purple hair and quite the dimple in his purple chin.

The other also had a lovely chin dimple and wore his lavender hair longer, which half hid the scars crisscrossing down the side of his neck. Despite familiarizing himself with the inside of my pants this morning, I was pretty sure this one had never smiled a day in his life.

He glared with violet, almost luminescent eyes. The snakelike pupils within looked like lightning bolts. Captivating but deadly.

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Uh-huh, sure you don’t. You tried to steal this mysterious package we’re trying to deliver for a reason. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you’re preventing us from landing. How are you doing it? Radio waves? Brainwaves? Microwaves?”

Brooding silence from the angry one. A secretive smile from the other.

Yeah, they were definitely preventing us from landing.

Time to change tactics to make them howl their admission.

I rounded toward the broody one and met his glare with a polite grin. “Can I offer you water? Food?”

“…thank you,” he growled.

“You’re welcome.”

A confused frown dug deep between his eyebrows. “I said no thank you.”

“And I said you’re welcome.“ I leaned closer to his face to appear like a threat but also so I could better stare at his lightning eyes.

Long dark lashes framed them with a perfect curl, and I had to wonder how he got so lucky.

“It’s cute that you think that lying about all of this is going to just make me ignore you.” I turned to Mosely, who stood guard by the door, his steely eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it cute, Mosely?”

“Yeah.” He bit down on the toothpick in his mouth and snapped it in two. “Real cute.”

“What’s in the package?” I asked the broody one in a low voice. “What are you doing to my ship?”

No answer. Just a quick skim of his gaze across my face and down to my lips.

When he’d tried to get the package from down my pants, I thought he was going to kiss me. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. After disarming me in every way imaginable, he’d pushed me up against the outside of the ship. Rock-hard muscle had threatened to crush me. I’d felt all of him, especially the thrash of his two hearts beating. The skin on my forehead still tingled where his warm breath had touched. When his luminescent eyes flared with heat, I wasn’t sure if he was going to kill me, eat me, or strip me naked. Maybe all three.

Now, I was pretty sure he wanted to kill me.

I was kind of hoping for the third option, so I put some distance between us, striding to his side. “You have three seconds to start talking.”

“Or what?” he rasped and fluttered those pretty eyes at me for a second, long enough to clench my belly and drum my pulse faster. “You’ll tie us up with another rope? We’re not answering anything.” He glared at the metal wall in front of him again. “Quit wasting our time.”

“You first,” I fired back. “Either you tell me what you’re doing to my ship or you don’t. Those are your choices. Otherwise…well, Mosely and I can be very persuasive.”

More silence. Big surprise.

“Your three seconds starts now.” I rounded to the other alien to see if he’d be more forthcoming.

Nope. He clenched his usual smile shut in defiance.

“One.” I skipped two and three and went right for his face with my fist.

His head knocked back into the broody one’s, and they both groaned. I grinned through the awful pain in my knuckles. What were these aliens made out of? Steel?

“So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?” I asked, lifting my eyebrow. “Better get used to being tied up together. It’s a long, long trip to Baka where you’ll definitely be tried and convicted for meddling with Earth Space Fleet operations.”

I started back for the door, completely done with Tuesdays for the rest of my life. “Mosely? Have fun rearranging their faces.”

“Cool. My favorite,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “Ever heard of Picasso?”

“The artist?”

He nodded. “Dude painted rearranged faces. Pretty sure we’re related since that’s my favorite kind of face.”

“If you say so.” I patted his chest on the way out.

Weird guy. Loved torture sessions maybe a little too much, but hey, we all have our quirks.

He tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to our prisoners.

I turned, thinking I’d probably missed hearing something. “What?”

“I said,” the smiley one who no longer smiled rumbled, “that’s no way to treat the king of Xenoxx.”

My heart stopped dead. A fucking king? I had a damn royal tied up on my ship?

“Which one of you is king?” I demanded.

“Him,” the not-so-smiley-anymore one said. “You’ll free us right now if you know what’s good for you.”

“I don’t,” I said through gritted teeth. I stepped over to the long-haired one, the broody king, nice and slow so he would see me. “Next time you stick your hands down a woman’s pants, maybe tell them first that you’re a goddamn king.”

“Why?” A sly, secretive smile cupped his full lips as he looked up at me. Or more like at me since even while sitting, he was about the same height as me. “Would you have liked it even more if you knew I was a king?”

I snorted. “You wish. Mosely, let’s go.”

“Does this mean no Picasso?” he asked, holding out his hands.

“Afraid so.”

“What a waste.”

That was putting it lightly. By kidnapping the king of Xenoxx, I might have just caused a little bit of an interstellar crisis.

Oops. Today’s migraine festival was rapidly turning into a migraine nightmare.

And it was only freaking Tuesday.