They’d heard of him in recent years. Rocketing up through the ranks, he’d come to be known as “the Zookeeper” because of his predilection for odd creatures and their odder performances. It didn’t matter to him whether they were sentient or not; they vanished into his collection, kept in his headquarters at the pirate haven, and were never seen again.

A Florian, the first to leave their planet—how could he pass that up?

Niko tried to take Petalia back. She almost made it, destroying a good part of the IAPH in the process and injuring Last. She was caught by Last’s guards before she could get far. She was being dragged by them to be spaced when she managed to break free and make her way to the waiting Free Trader ship, come to ransom what prisoners it could.

Last was unconscious and his lieutenants acted as they thought he would wish. Her safety secured by old contracts, Niko was freed; Petalia was not.

Her fingers curled as she thought of those moments being dragged into the Merribelle before it hastily exited, flying as fast and far as it could.

She’d railed at her fellows, demanding to know how the Free Traders could have any pride when they allowed one of their own to be taken prisoner in this way. But they argued that Petalia had been an outsider, not from one of the great families, and that the Florians had known the risk when they chose to send someone out into the universe. And so, when the cluster of families met and debated, they decided to leave things as they were and to abandon the Florian.

Some even went so far as to say that it was not that bad a fate, after all. Tubal Last was rumored to keep his prisoners very well.

Niko had left that ship for another and found only worse luck there. And then Tubal Last awoke and demanded his revenge. After two years of fleeing him, she’d been forced into the employ of the Holy Hive Mind when her ship went broke and destroyed the credit ratings of its crew in the process. Most of her fellows returned to the Free Traders and signed aboard other ships, but Niko didn’t trust them anymore, much as she loved them and the life she’d grown up immersed in. If they’d turned on one of their own, she thought, they’d do it again.