“Kyra, we’ve got about ten minutes to get out of here. What’s the holdup?” Captain Drake asked.
This time I could hear the tension in his voice. The joking nature of a few minutes ago had been wiped away by concern, for me and the job. “The code your contact provided isn’t working.”
“Maybe you should just get the hell out of there.”
He said it because he didn’t want me to get hurt. That was why I loved my captain, but there was no way I was going to let the crew down without giving it my all. “Not exactly an option right now, Teddy.”
“Teddy? I think crawling around in those vents might have left you a little oxygen deprived. Are you sure you even put the card in right?”
“Sorry, Cap. It’s just sometimes you remind me of a big teddy bear with how concerned you get about me.”
“You can call me whatever you want if you get the damn door open in the next minute.”
“Only if it comes with a hug, you big softy.”
“Damn it, Kyra, if I have to cut the fucking door open, just let me know. We can do it, but it will set off the alarms,” Drake growled into the comm.
My eyes darted around the room, looking for a solution. There had to be something I could use to wedge open the panel. I didn’t see anything, but then my eyes settled on the guard. I should have thought of that first, before letting myself panic. Give me a problem to fix in the engine room and an impossible timeline, and I could handle it. Thinking on my feet during a robbery? Well, that wasn’t exactly my forte.
Rushing over to the guard, I fell to my knees beside him. He had to have a key card; all I had to do was find the damn thing. I started around his chest and then moved down to his belt. Finally, I felt something. I pulled the card away, but it was attached to a chain. “Jesus, give me a fucking break.”
“That’s enough, Kyra. We’re forcing the door.”
I forgot my comm line was open. “Just give me one more minute, Captain. I got this.”
“We are at the door now. Just give us the word.”
Well, they weren’t wasting any time. I couldn’t really blame them. This was a New Earth Alliance outpost, and if they caught us here, we’d be lucky not to be taking a short ride out of the airlock. The card fit into the reader perfectly. I swiped it through while gritting my teeth and hoping the light would turn green. The soft sound of the panel unlocking was like music to my ears.
I hurried to pry the access panel open. Snapping the cord from my datapad into the terminal gave me access to the panel. Now I just had to hope the program our contact provided would do the trick, and open the outer doors for my team. “Uploading the door release program now.” This had to work, or else Ellison owed us big time for the extra risk. My datapad beeped as the program stopped running. “The doors are unlocked, Cap.”
“See you soon, Kyra.”
“You better have that hug ready. You owe me for this one.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Maybe I should skip the hug until I get the engines prepped for FTL.”
“What makes you think we’ll have to leave in a hurry?” Drake said, the laughter returning to his voice.
“When don’t we, Captain?” The mission was back on track, but that didn’t seem to last for long. Now it was up to the captain to secure the cargo so we could get the hell out of here.
“Good point.”
Exiting the breakroom, I bolted down the corridor until I reached the outer door. I hit the panel, and the door started to open slowly. Captain Drake walked in, flanked by Maze and Gabe. They were quite the impressive group in full combat gear. They would be able to give the best unit of space marines a run for their money, but now they wouldn’t have to. The door was open, and the package was just a few rooms away.
“That armor doesn’t look very huggable, Captain. I think I’ll just go back to my ship with a raincheck.”
“Your ship?” Captain Drake asked.
“When you clean out her reactors, you can start to call her your ship again, Captain.”
“Point taken. Fantastic work today, Kyra.” He held up a hand, palm flat in the air.
I completed the high five. “Just get me my cargo already.”
“Yes, sir.”
Now he was just screwing with me. It didn’t matter; it felt good to be appreciated and to help the team in any way that I could. It was too bad a shower would have to wait. I had a creeping feeling we’d be leaving in a hurry. I waved over my shoulder as the airlock door closed behind me. It felt good to be back on the Talon. I ran a hand against the cold metal of her inner hull. “Don’t worry, girl, we’ll be back in the black soon enough.”
Chapter 3
Drake
We made it inside. Now all we had to do was secure the package and get the hell off this station. Sounds like an easy job, right? Well, in my experience, nothing we were hired to do was ever easy. If it was, they wouldn’t need us to do it. Thankfully the black was full of jobs that needed to be done that weren’t strictly on the up and up. At least I had assembled the best damn team possible for what we needed to do. They were rock solid, and if anything went sideways, I knew we would always come out on top.
“Maze, Gabe, on me.”
I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know they were following. Not only that, but I knew they would have spread out behind me to create sightlines in case we encountered any resistance. The station would be guarded lightly, but that didn’t mean we were safe. If someone hit the alarm, we could be locked out. No package, no credits.
The white-washed walls of the station made me feel like I was in a hospital. It was claustrophobic, to say the least. Yeah, I knew it sounded silly, especially when I spent most of my life inside of a ship flying around the vast nothingness of space. But the Talon had a soul—each dent or scrape was a story. This facility just felt sterile and cold. I mean, for fuck’s sake, couldn’t they have spent a few bucks on some color, or maybe hung a picture or two?
Two more lefts brought us to the door we were looking for. The fact that we hadn’t encountered any resistance yet had me on edge. I flexed my finger against the trigger guard and then straightened it back out. It was a habit I had picked up during the earth wars, and something I just couldn’t shake. Sure, we had come during a shift change, but there were still personnel on this station, and you’d think we would have seen at least one of them by now.
Lowering my rifle, I grabbed the card from my pocket and placed it against the door. It opened, and we rushed into the room. Two scientists continued to talk as the guards spun to face the open door. Their mouths hung open in shock even as they reached for their weapons.
“I’d think twice about that, boys.”
Both of the guards paused, and the scientists turned toward us, realizing something was off for the first time. Neither of them were anything to write home about in the looks department, but they must have had one hell of a sexy mind to be working here. The NEA wouldn’t hire just anyone to work at a classified station. The female scientist moved toward the computer terminal, and Maze fired off a shot from her rifle, bringing them up short. The beam left a scorch mark on the cold white tile, and the smell of burning ozone filled the air. She shrunk back against her male counterpart and started to shake.
“We just came to collect a package. Stay where you are, and no one will get hurt.” I hated the fact they were scared, but it was better than being dead. Another crew wouldn’t have bothered to come in with the finesse and restraint we had shown. Hopefully, this would just become a fleeting memory for them as life continued ever onward.
I turned toward Gabe. “Rocketman, secure the package.” Gabe hated it when I gave him crazy nicknames, but if we were going to leave these people alive, and I fully intended to do so, it wouldn’t pay to go around calling him Gabe.
“Phoenix, unburden our friends here and get them secured.” Maze moved forward and removed the shock sticks from the guards and then used their own flexicuffs to re
strain them. As soon as she was done with the guards, Maze restrained the scientists as well. She said something to the woman, and she stopped shaking almost instantly. I had to give it to her, my lady had a way with words.
Her words must have emboldened the male scientist. “You won’t get away with this,” he shouted as the female scientist scooted away from him. “Everything in this room is tracked and monitored. If you take anything, the NEA will find you.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be taking what I was sent to retrieve regardless.”
“Mercenaries,” one of the guards spat out.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” It was a step up from what we were really doing. The fact was we would love to be back with the mercenary’s guild. Right now we weren’t much above being petty criminals. The only thing that separated us from them was we had a ship and fancier guns. I turned away from the guards to watch Gabe as he walked forward with the metal briefcase. He spun it around so I could open it if I needed to. I hoped it didn’t come to that. Find the cargo, drop off the cargo, was so much simpler when you didn’t know what it was.
I pulled the last piece of the puzzle from my pocket. It was a small handheld device that should scramble any tracking device on the box. I ran it over the entire exterior. At one point, I almost cracked a smile at the look on the scientists’ face. Yes, I was using their own technology against them. As soon as I was done, I motioned for Gabe to take the briefcase and head back to the Talon.
“Phoenix, we are out of here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I looked over at our prisoners as Maze moved out of the room to follow Gabe. “Please try and restrain yourselves from taking an unnecessary action as we leave the room. If I hear the alarm sound before I’m back on my ship, I’ll be forced to fire a few rockets at this facility as we depart.”
The scientists looked shocked and scared. The guards looked defiant but didn’t move. That would have to do. We didn’t need long. In five minutes, we’d be out of here. In a day, we would have earned enough credits to keep us flying for another three months. Out in the black, that was all you could ask for. I’d do anything to stay in the air.
This job had gone better than expected. If we finished it up fast enough, we might even be offered another one. I could just feel the smile starting to crease the corner of my mouth when my comm beeped.
“Captain, we have a problem,” Ice said.
Of course we do. “Go ahead, Ice.”
“Sir, an NEA battle cruiser just dropped out of FTL.”
“How close are they?”
“Close enough to know we are here if they’re looking.”
Shit. Her voice sounded a little strained, and why wouldn’t it? A battle cruiser held at least three ships the size of the Talon and had its own very robust weapons system. That didn’t mean we couldn’t hold our own against them. The Talon had received more than a few upgrades due to a job we pulled off for Alphamerix Corporation. The problem with those NEA assholes was that they never sent just one ship. They would have at least two more ready to jump to this location if anything went wrong. “Let me guess, they are heading toward the station?”
“You got it in one.”
Well, at least she wasn’t too worried to be a smart ass. “Any signs that they look agitated?”
“Well, they haven’t launched any fighters yet. The ship looks to be heading directly to the main docking station. It could just be that the security drop off is happening early.”
It could be, or Ellison sold us out. I knew Ice didn’t believe in coincidences, and neither did I. But why would he sell us out? Was it important that we got caught here, or did he get squeezed after we left? Maybe the NEA just picked up on some chatter, or even worse, Ellison had a mole in his operation. None of it mattered now. All we had to do was get on the Talon and bug out.
“Have they noticed us yet?”
“Not yet. Everything is shut down except for life support. They’ll know we’re here as soon as we fire up the engines.”
With the four people left handcuffed in the lab, they would know we were here before that if we didn’t hurry. I hit the button to open the outer doors. The three of us ran down the small docking ramp and onto the Talon. Once we made it inside and the hatch was sealed, I turned to look at Maze. “Head to engineering. Help Kyra with whatever she needs.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, giving me a saucy salute before running down the corridor.
“Gabe, get that briefcase tucked away and then head to one of the rear guns.”
“You really think it will come to that?” he asked with a lopsided smile.
That was Gabe. He never really liked to start fights, but he sure enjoyed ending them. “Let’s hope not. If it does, I’ll send Maze to the other gun station.”
“Come on, Captain,” he whined. “Maze always shoots everything before I even get a chance.”
“I’ll remember that when we get out of here alive.”
“Don’t be such a downer, Cap. We’ve made it through worse.”
“You know it,” I said, turning and heading toward the bridge. It was true. We had made it through worse, but not without a shit ton of luck and a hefty repair bill. I’d like to skip the bill and build our accounts back up, if possible.
It felt good to be back on my ship. Maybe I was turning into some kind of a hermit, but being anywhere else just felt awkward. Was it wrong to love your home, to miss the sound the steel hull made as it shifted in the blackness of space? I loved it out here, living on the fringes, doing whatever it took to survive. It felt wonderful being free.
Moving into the bridge, I looked over at my pilot, Ice. There had been a time when I wouldn’t let her touch the controls. I’d been wrong about that, but I’d been wrong about a lot of things in my life. Sure, I could try and boot her out of her seat so I could take the stick for this daring escape, but that would just put us at risk. Ice made me look like an amateur when she flew, and getting out of here safely so we could get paid was the priority. That and she threatened to hack into my personal stash of vids and share them with the crew. Who needed those kinds of problems?
Ice tossed a strand of her brunette hair out of her face and turned toward me. “So what’s the plan, Cap?”
“We need to wait for them to dock. Once they’re attached, we break the seal and fire up the engines.”
“That’s not exactly a plan, Captain.”
“It will take them at least a few minutes to break the seal. By then, we should be out of here. If we can’t get away clean, we’ll have to drop the sparty.”
“But we just got it.”
The sparty was a device that broke apart and sent multiple subspace signals out as we hit our FTL drive. It made it harder for them to track where we were going. “I know, and the damn things aren’t cheap, but it’s better than waking up in an NEA holding cell.”
“Please, you know it’s more likely they’ll just blast us out of the sky.”
“Not if they want their merchandise back.”
She gave me the barest hint of a smile then and turned back to her screens. “I’ll wait for confirmation that they have fully docked before I set us loose.”
I felt myself nodding even though she couldn’t see it. I took a step back to give her room to work. When this happened, it was going to be fast and furious.
“Kyra, get ready to fire up the engines,” Ice said. The cool calmness of battle had crept over her words.
“So it’s going to be that kind of day, huh?” Kyra asked.
“Girl, you should have known that as soon as you had to crawl around in a ventilation shaft.”
“Ready on your mark,” Kyra responded.
I could hear the laughter just beneath the surface. Damn these two for enjoying this kind of shit. Situations like this just gave me a severe bout of anxiety and possibly the need to relieve my bowels. I’d rather be shooting it out man to man without the chance of my ship going supernova.
&nbs
p; “You ready for this, Captain?” Ice laughed and hit the button to disengage before I could say anything.
You would think it would have felt like we were falling, but instead, the small hiss of air that escaped when the pressure seal was disengaged just pushed us gently away from the ship. We floated slowly away from the station. Our engines weren’t on yet, but they’d detect the signal from our life support soon enough. The station would have masked it, but we weren’t on the station anymore.
“Kyra, fire them up.”
“On it. Thirty seconds before they are hot; ten minutes until we can jump to FTL.”
Ten minutes. That was a fucking eternity out in the black. If we could last that long, we were safe. If we couldn’t, then we were dead. “Maze, get to the other gun station.” I heard Gabe let out a groan through the comm, but I ignored him. If we had ten minutes until we could jump, that meant we were going to have to fight our way out of this.
“Ice, block our ID and scramble external communications.”
“Already did, Cap.”
She couldn’t even let me have my moment. If I couldn’t fly, the least she could do was let me pretend to be in charge of my own ship. “I’ll be back here if you need anything.”
“A coffee would be nice.”
“Don’t push it,” I growled. Ice gave me a quick glance and turned back to her station as the subspace engines came online. The Talon started to move. There really wasn’t anything for me to do on the bridge at the moment, and coffee didn’t sound half bad. I started walking out of the room when Ice shouted over her shoulder at me.
“Captain, where are you going?”
“You don’t need me here. I’m going to brew a cup of coffee and watch a few vids.”
The Expanding Universe Page 31