All she could do was sit in a dark corner behind some disheveled stacks of cargo and wait. Suddenly, she realized that the coffin-sized crates beside her hadn’t been here when she and Tosh created the Abrams bomb three days ago. Before they had crash-landed on Vox, Remy must have found some time to secure Urgon Joss and Newman Sache’s bodies. No wonder she hadn’t seen them elsewhere in the Jay. She didn’t give a crap what happened to that bastard Joss, but she hoped that, when they were all safe and sound again, they’d be able to give Newman a proper send-off. She missed having the old guy around and figured he deserved something better than what he’d gotten so far.
Where the hell’s Tosh?
The mask made her face hot and sweaty and didn’t help her sense of calm. It also made it more difficult to hear any distant voices. If Tosh didn’t come back right now, she’d rip this thing off and work out her own plan—one that involved a whole lot less sneaking around.
But just at that moment, he reappeared in the cargo bay. He tossed her a small box, which she caught in one hand.
When she read the label, she let out a quiet laugh. “Condoms? What the hell?”
“You know that new cook on Telo 7?” Tosh asked.
“The pretty redhead?”
He nodded.
“Who’s, like, a third your age?”
“Hey.” The doc winked at her. “If the equipment works.”
She peered at the box. It held thirty-six condoms. “Being a bit optimistic, wouldn’t you say?”
Tosh smiled knowingly in a way that made her feel somewhat nauseous.
“Please. I don’t want to barf with a gas mask on.” She flipped open the lid of the box. “Wait a sec, half of these are gone!”
“Told you, if the equipment works.” He shrugged. “She says I make her laugh.” Tosh busied himself opening another case containing a syringe gun.
Twisting the half-empty box in her hand, Dreyla looked at him. “You’re doing a lot more to her than just making her laugh.”
His silent nod assured her he was blushing furiously under that mask. Frisky old man. She pulled out a single packaged condom with the very tips of her fingers and handed it to him.
“I’ve never touched one and never intend to,” she said primly.
“I’ll quote you on that.” He grinned and ripped open the packaging.
Dreyla watched in fascinated disgust as he blew out the condom like a white party balloon with a silly tip.
But it all made sense now, chemically speaking. Putting her queasiness aside, she poured the beaker’s contents into the prophylactic. Tosh then stretched and tied it. Next, he took the syringe gun and filled one of the cartridges with the liquid from the other beaker. Finally, he pushed the needle against the half-filled condom.
It seemed the doc was having another of his good moments.
“I hope that thing doesn’t break,” Dreyla said, watching the bulbous balloon swing heavily under his fingers.
“Oh, you’ve been listening to too many urban myths, girl. Trust me, they’re pretty tough.”
Dreyla shuddered and decided to shut up as he triggered the cartridge and pulled the syringe away from the filled condom. Quickly, he placed a piece of tape over the invisible hole. They’d effectively mixed the liquids without exposing them to air.
“We’re set,” he announced.
She nodded absently. “Honestly, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They should’ve come back here by now,” she said, drumming her fingers on her thighs.
“Yeah.” Tosh frowned. “Something must be up.”
She poked the condom grenade with her finger. “And if it’s so tough, how do we know it’ll break when we need it to?”
Tosh regarded the chemical-filled balloon in his hand. She winced as he gave it a deft squeeze, but it didn’t look even close to bursting.
“Um, guess I’ll have to throw it real hard,” Tosh said.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s your plan?”
“That’s my plan.”
“Well, if you could hit one of the consoles, that would be great.”
Tosh nodded dutifully.
“And it better break before they open fire on us,” she added, all optimism draining from her.
This had to be the most ridiculous moment in her life. To think that her fate—and Remy’s and Tosh’s—relied on the whim of a stupid condom.
Then again, she guessed that many people’s fates were decided by whether the condom broke or not.
She rose, shook some dust from her clothes, and headed to the exit door of the cargo bay. When she turned, she noticed the old man hadn’t budged. Just stood where she’d left him, looking mighty pleased with himself. With an impatient sigh, she grabbed his arm and pulled him after her.
Chapter 7
REMY
Almost everyone, even the mayor, had a gun currently pointed at Remy. The only one who didn’t was Nate. The hapless young man stood frozen in the direct line of Remy’s pistol, which he gripped as tight as he could, given that his hands were still cuffed behind his back. It wasn’t, admittedly, an ideal position from which to argue his innocence, but words needed to be said.
And damn if he wasn’t going to say them.
“I told you that we… me, Dreyla, and Tosh… are not from your galaxy. This ship isn’t from your galaxy.” He jerked his head to indicate the Jay.
Words didn’t seem to capture just how not from here he was, but surely one look around this bridge, with all its earthly paraphernalia, could tell them that the Jay hailed from a place way outside their normal realm.
“Pierce, Davis, either of you gets a shot, take it,” Sheriff Lilly said, her eyes narrowing. By the looks of it, she wasn’t impressed, and she sure as hell wasn’t bluffing.
“Whoa.” Remy moved behind Nate, his gun pointed at the middle of the young man’s spine.
“Now, wait, Sheriff, we don’t want anyone getting hurt,” Mayor Cansen said, perspiration trickling down his round cheeks.
His chubby fingers trembled as they gripped his weapon, clearly unable to take a well-aimed shot if needed. No doubt the sheriff regretted bringing the politician along. And Remy could kiss him for that.
Nate was fixed on his sister, a mix of pleading and fear in his voice. “Yeah, we don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he repeated.
“Sheriff?” Pierce asked, his eyebrows tilted in the agony of indecision.
“Alright, put your guns down,” Sheriff Lilly groaned, her frustration more than apparent.
Everyone except Jacer lowered their weapons. Remy had expected this, of course. He probably should’ve taken the aflin hostage… but then again, he was a total pain in the ass. Also, the sheriff might’ve been OK with Remy shooting him.
“You, too, pointy ears.” Remy nodded at Jacer’s gun, keeping his own weapon firmly trained on Nate.
Jacer took a step forward but Milo held out an arm, blocking the aflin’s path. After a tense moment, Jacer relented and lowered his gun.
“You piece of scum, Bechet,” he spat, his tinny voice shaking even more than usual. “You murdered those people and you think you’re going to get away with it?”
“Man, where I’m from, creatures with pointy ears tend to be the smart ones. Guess that’s not the case here,” Remy said. “Mr. Spock you ain’t.”
Jacer stared, clueless. The insult was wasted on him, but his rippling forehead suggested he knew Remy hadn’t been complimentary.
“Now what?” Sheriff Greyson hadn’t taken her eyes off Remy for a damn millisecond.
“Now, you can either toss the keys to your vehicle over here so pretty boy can undo my cuffs…” Remy said.
“Or?” she demanded. The weight of her dark-eyed gaze grew almost oppressive.
“Or we can stand around like a bunch of jackasses until I get tired and shoot this kid out of sheer spite.” He tried not to sound too cocky about it.
“Sheer spite, huh? You’ve sunk even lower in my estimation.”
/> “Didn’t know that was possible.”
“Neither did I,” she said gruffly.
She dug into one of her pockets and pulled out a set of keys. Instead of throwing them, she held them dangling in her fingers as if entertaining second thoughts.
He looked pointedly at her brother and motioned for her to toss the keys over.
She sighed and threw them at Nate’s feet.
“OK, kid, get me out of these cuffs,” Remy said to his captive.
Nate bent down to retrieve the keys. Out of the corner of Remy’s eye, he saw the sheriff starting to move. This was also something he’d half-expected. He hoped it wouldn’t happen, but if it came down to shooting her and her brother, it would be their own fault.
He hadn’t done anything wrong… on this planet anyway.
Abruptly, a whitish object whipped through the air. It hit Dreyla’s nav console, bounced high up into the air, touched the ceiling, and bounced back down onto the floor, finally coming to rest in front of Remy and Nate.
Another kind of Vox creature?
“What the hell’s that?” Lilly yelled.
Or perhaps not.
Remy peered closer at the blob that had settled at his feet. It wasn’t moving. It looked inexplicably like… a condom. A condom filled with… something.
He glanced at the sheriff. Even pissed off and about to shoot him—or maybe especially so—she looked damn hot. But if his hunch was right, it was time to say goodbye.
He stepped around Nate and slammed his foot on top of the filled condom. Fluid burst out, which then instantly vaporized to a fast-spreading gas.
An unstoppable heaviness coursed through his veins, making his limbs less responsive than usual. He stumbled forward and watched in horrific slow motion as the sheriff started to raise her gun at him.
Damn, she’s gonna shoot me. Right between the eyes.
He teetered forward like a drunk, unable to shout or scream anything in his defense. The mayor dropped, followed by Nate, who whacked his head on Dreyla’s chair before hitting the floor. The aflin and the three deputies followed in quick succession.
Why was Remy still standing?
Why hadn’t the sheriff shot him yet?
He dizzily swung his gaze in her direction. The sheriff was watching the exit door, her gun trained on someone else, but she collapsed before she could get off a shot.
The last two of the group still conscious were he and Milo. Figuring the dworg had a high constitution, Remy hoped it wasn’t so high that he could resist whatever had just poisoned the air.
But sure enough, the dworg fell to his knees just as two blurry, masked figures crashed onto the bridge, racing in his direction.
His vision blurred and faded to black. Yet again.
Chapter 8
SHAW
It was quite a view from the roof of the ten-story building, or it would have been, if Shaw hadn’t been staring at a salvage yard full of vehicle detritus on the desolate outskirts of a pathetic frontier town on a hopeless planet. Dust, sand, rocks, and deformed scrub vegetation as far as the eye could see. The natives didn’t look any better.
Shaw had encountered places as soul-draining as Naillik before, but on such occasions, she’d always had the means to escape. Here, wherever here was, everything seemed to hang on the whim of Gono Darkbur—a tyrannical old Viking who was just a little too comfortable perched on the top of his tiny kingdom.
“No, sir, all targets entered the derelict ship,” Darius, Gono Darkbur’s top assassin, said into the comms. His quietly reverential tone made it clear whom he was talking to. He didn’t use that tone with anyone else.
Since he wasn’t currently looking at her, she let her gaze linger on him. Darius, an exception to all the mediocrity on Vox, was a muscular, six-foot-tall man, and easy on the eyes. She couldn’t get a read on his age, but his dark expression held the wisdom of a seventy-year-old. Perhaps he was at least that old but biologically enhanced against the ravages of time.
Five more of Darkbur’s goons stood on the rooftop, staring downward at the salvage yard across the street, where their quarry had just disappeared. They fingered their weapons, needlessly adjusting straps and safety catches.
“Does that thing have a speaker?” Shaw pointed at Darius’s handheld comms unit.
He flashed her an emotionless expression but then hit a button.
“Darkbur, what is the goal of this operation?” Shaw asked, enjoying how the goons winced at her irreverent address.
“The goal… is to make sure nobody interferes with our control of the nano-biotics. Whoever controls the medicine, controls the planet,” Gono Darkbur answered with the exaggerated patience of someone talking to a child.
“It seems like the Vox Council might have something to say about that,” she said.
“Well, since they’re on Naillik—”
“We’re in Naillik,” she butted in.
There was a pause.
“Yes, the humans named this town after their home planet, Naillik. As I was saying, since the council is housed on the planet Naillik, which is a three-month journey from here, I doubt they have much to say.” The veneer of patience had all but rubbed off Darkbur’s gravelly voice.
“By the time they manage to get anyone here, we’ll control everything,” Darius added in a near murmur.
His explanation was unnecessary, a mere boast. But not entirely unfriendly—which she appreciated.
But whoa, three months was a blasted long time to move from planet to planet. She had hoped she’d ended up in a universe where the interstellar tech was further along. Still, it was another clue of what to expect, and any clues were good. Because until she could get her hands on some decent information sources and be left alone to study and learn, she had to continue piecing together scraps of data while still pretending she knew everything.
Actually, she just needed to figure out enough to commandeer a ship that would take her and her team the hell out of here. Jibs and Zain were engaged in that mission right now—she’d sent them to Bane to scout out ships they could procure, or steal. But she’d feel a whole lot more comfortable if they were here to back her up. What use was a ship if she was dead?
Darkbur, quiet on the comms, seemed to be waiting for a response from her. This was amplified by Darius’s curious stare down into her face.
“I’d still advise against this action,” she said, adopting a more diplomatic tone. “Since you control the drugs, what is it that you think this sheriff and her people can do?”
“This isn’t up for debate,” Darkbur growled. “There are seven of you there. I expect the whole lot of them to be dead in the next twenty minutes… unless you don’t feel you’re up to the task?”
She bristled. Goading people like this was usually her job.
One of the goons, sporting a scraggly beard and predatory eyes, stepped closer and trailed his finger from her earlobe down to her shoulder. His yellow-toothed grin disgusted her. “Maybe she’s only good for one thing. What do you say, sweetheart? Maybe I’ll save some energy for you, for later.”
A jolt of pure white-hot rage torpedoed from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. Her gaze flicked to Darius, whose eyes had hardened with disdain.
Her artificial arm lashed out, striking the goon in the middle of his throat. She followed the move with a single kick to his chest, which sent him sailing off the building. Only the fact that she had just crushed his windpipe kept him from screaming on the long descent, which ended with a thud. A satisfying thud.
She turned back to the other men, some of whom were backing away. “Six, Darkbur,” she said, planting her mechanical hand on her hip. “There are six of us here.”
The other four goons gaped at her in blank fear, or amazement, but on Darius’s face, there was just the hint of a smile.
Darkbur took a moment before saying anything over the comms. “Darius?” he asked sharply.
“We’re ready, sir,” Darius said.
“Contact me when it’s done,” Darkbur replied, then the comms cut out.
Darius locked eyes with her. “He’s the boss.”
She stared back into those stern, dark orbs and managed a small sniff of derision. She wasn’t exactly sure how Gono Darkbur had come to run his little criminal empire on Vox, and enlist the services of such capable men as Darius, but if she and her team couldn’t get off this dump, Darkbur’s reign would come to an end… somewhat sooner than he expected.
Of that, she was absolutely sure.
Chapter 9
REMY
Remy observed as Tosh knelt over the sheriff’s slumbering form and jabbed the syringe gun into the side of her neck. The doc then stood and backed away from her—a wise move. If Remy had learned anything about Sheriff Greyson in the short time he’d known her, it was that she wouldn’t be offering thank-you handshakes as soon as those pretty brown eyes of hers fluttered open.
He coughed and sniffed the air, still acrid from Tosh’s gas bomb. It had hit him worst in the back of his throat. That had been one hell of a daredevil move, and he’d hear the exact details of who’d planned what later, but for now, he had to admit, it had gotten them out of a near-impossible situation.
The sheriff sat up groggily, fingering her neck. She then patted along the back of her right leg, grunting when she discovered the tear-away pocket holster was empty. Yep—he, Dreyla, and Tosh had collected all of the weapons from his former captors as they snoozed. Even the hidden ones the sheriff had oh-so-cleverly stashed.
“We have all of your guns,” Remy said, holding her gaze.
True, they had already dumped them in a pile, along with the sheriff’s keys, in the airlock, but as far as Sheriff Greyson knew, they were useless to her.
She glared at the weapons he and Dreyla had trained on her, should she be so dumb as to make a false move. He hoped she wouldn’t, but she’d better not test him.
Tosh was doing the rounds, injecting the others with whatever concoction he’d made to jolt everyone out of their induced sleep. The drug was effective, if unpleasant, making you feel as if a bucket of ice-cold water sloshed at every nerve while a thousand needles pricked the flesh all over your body.
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