“Send help. Tray’s hurt!” Hawk said.
“Of course. Hawk, can you tell me about the rest of the crew?” Alex asked. There was no response. “Hawk?”
Alex glanced up. Terry was already mobilizing her teams. The gate opened and an old fire truck trundled out over the rough terrain. Though he’d never been religious, he whispered a prayer and thought of the two vacant rooms in his house, made up for Danny and Amanda.
“Boss?” Nattie’s voice followed the vibration of his glove-mounted Virp.
“Safe,” Alex panted, leaning back in his chair, pulling his knees to his chest to stretch and relax his aching muscles.
“A truck raced out of Clover heading for Oriana and Sikorsky’s people commandeered the ambulance leaving Kemah,” she said. “This isn’t a rescue; it’s a turf war—Sikorsky vs. Vimbai, and I don’t think Sikorsky is going to win.”
Alex bolted upright and glanced around the room. Sikorsky was gone.
3
Oriana’s bridge had the only forward windows on the ship. They were over ten meters off the ground, and left a horrendous blind spot beneath the nose. A continuous console with three stations and three chairs faced the window. Twenty-three-year-old Hawk slumped in the Captain’s chair, exhausted to the point of being oblivious to the blaring alarms.
“It worked! I can’t believe that worked!” Sky said gleefully, stumbling onto the bridge, her hand smacking the console until she found the right buttons to silence the alarms. “How are you doing?” She rubbed his back, but her touch felt like fire on his skin and he cried out in surprise.
“Whoa, whoa. It’s okay,” Sky soothed, hopping back, hands raised.
The world went fuzzy, tinted in red. The Dome was still several miles away, appearing no bigger than Hawk’s burn-scarred thumb. “Almost there. Almost,” Hawk croaked, his fingers spreading over the console, searching for the connection that gave him control. Hawk had spent weeks with the Captain, learning how to read the Lanvarian words on the dials, but in the height of the emergency, most of the newly acquired language went out the window. He relied instead on his spirit sense for the flow of energy through the ship. Sky, being a spirit-carrier, seemed to disrupt that connection. “Don’t distract me. I have to concentrate. I have to get Tray home. Almost—”
“Stop, Hawk. Stop,” she ordered, clamping her hand over his, then cradling his face. His eyes burned and for a moment, he was blind. The spirit eyes that used to give him intuition for the inner workings of any machine were gone—ripped from his being by an evil entity in Boone—and keeping the ship aloft had come with all the tension and terror of feeling his way through a dark, snake-filled room.
“Let go of the engine. Stop flying the ship,” Sky said. He felt her fingers combing tenderly through his hair, and his grip on the ship’s energy faltered.
“Bébé,” he murmured, shaking at the loss.
“I’m going to keep distracting you until you stop,” she said, stroking his cheek. His skin cooled, his vision returned to normal, and he could finally breathe deep.
“Vlad?” Sky asked, pressing her finger to her Feather, concentrating on what she was hearing. “No, we can’t handle a firefight. I don’t know that we have a single weapon still charged. Isn’t Kemah sending an ambulance?”
Hawk blinked and twitched. Unbuckling his safety harness, he pitched sideways, resting his cheek on Sky’s side. “Weapons?” he asked.
“My friends might not get to us first,” Sky explained, stroking his face.
“I can charge one,” Hawk said, rolling out of the chair, then fainting back into it. “I can… I can fly—”
“Kiddo, you can’t even lift your head,” she said, pressing his cheek to the console, and kissing his temple. Hawk winced. His face felt bruised—a physical manifestation of the injury to his spirit eyes. “Promise me you won’t move the ship. I have to help Tray.”
Hawk’s clothes were soaked with Tray’s blood, and caked with soot from crawling through the burning city of Boone. His lungs burned from smoke inhalation.
“What happens if your friends don’t get here first?” Hawk asked, entwining his fingers with Sky’s.
“I wouldn’t worry about Tray. He has friends on both sides,” Sky said, gazing out the front window. “Can you walk downstairs? Whoever’s ambulance comes first, I want you and Tray on it.”
Hawk felt tingles through his feet as he shuffled off the bridge and through the ward room. He leaned on the center console table for support, but when his touch brought the console to life, he felt such an energy drain, he tucked his hands into his pockets. It was a strange magic to him. When he’d first tapped into it, he came to realize that his natural intuition for getting engines to run came from something supernatural. Now that the power had unleashed, he was doing things he’d never been able to do before. Things like charging depleted batteries just by willing it. He wasn’t even sure his will was involved.
“Zara, are you armed?” Sky called, trotting down the stairs to the lower deck. Hawk followed, relieved by the minor shielding in the stairwell. The lower deck didn’t have the kind of energy flowing through it that the upper deck did. The cargo bay looked empty without the Bobsled in it. Amanda must have taken it when she fled.
“Zara?” Saskia asked. Saskia was the warrior of the crew, and she’d been doing her best to keep Tray breathing during their brief flight. Tray was conscious now, murmuring his brother’s name. Where was Danny?
“That’s your name now,” Sky explained. Her voice quaked with the aftershocks of adrenaline. “We may have trouble coming. This Alex signaled Danny about danger in port, and I don’t know if it’s safe to be you, so I gave you a new name.”
“Alex Swift?” Saskia asked. “You can trust him. He knew we had Amanda on board and Danny will run to him if he can. Who’d he say was coming?”
“He didn’t,” Sky said. “Sikorsky said someone named Vimbai might get here first. They’re coming by ambulance.”
Saskia opened the bay door and the light peeked in, shining on Tray’s trembling body. His skin was sallow, his body bowed from pain, his abdomen wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. Returning to his side, Saskia held his hand and cradled his face, whispering soothes. She’d cut away his soiled clothes and the rags hung from his dark, bruised skin.
Hearing an ambulance approach, Saskia drew her weapon. Hawk’s eyes zeroed in on the gun. Liza, the hybrid girl who caused so much strife just days before, had conjured several of the projectile weapons from Saskia’s memory. With all the stunners void of charge, it was the only thing on the ship that packed any punch. Tears boiled inside Hawk’s aching body, but they were encased by numbness and guilt. He’d shot his friend with that gun. He remembered the chaos and the warm gun in his hand. The rest was a haze.
Sitting on the stairs at middeck, he clung to the railing, ready to retreat if there was trouble. He thought about closing the bay door, and heard a creak as the door responded to the thought, but he managed to withdraw his energy before the door closed.
A covered ambulance rolled into the bay, and Hawk’s jaw dropped at the elegance of the vehicle. The ambulance was as big as his glider and covered on all sides with solar panels of different colors. The solar energy funneled into a small, on-board engine, the power of which was supplemented by clean-burning fuel. The inside of the ambulance was filled with medical equipment, and no less than five medics spilled out to attend to their patient. One covered Tray’s mouth with an oxygen mask, another injected him with something that made his body go limp. Another tried to push Saskia aside, but she elbowed the medic, refusing to let go of Tray’s hand.
“Tray Matthews. Can you hear me?” a female doctor beckoned. She was dressed in shiny clothes and fancy gloves—the way Tray dressed when he cleaned up. She had dark skin, just like Tray, and thick, black hair that was braided on the top half, and on the bottom, it kinked and curled in a beautiful cascade.
“Who are you?” Sky demanded. Her grav-gun was at her side,
and though she was tense, she didn’t look threatened.
“Dr. Morrigan Zenzele. Old family friend,” the woman said. She spoke Lanvarian, almost too fast for Hawk to understand. “Is there anything I need to know about his health or other injuries?”
“Zara can tell you,” Sky said, motioning to Saskia, who had a death grip on Tray’s hand.
“I’m only here for him,” the doctor stammered. “I can’t bring all of you to the fortress.”
Saskia glowered and folded Tray’s arm against her chest, clamping it in place with one hand and brandishing her pistol.
“Doctor, we need to leave. Valentino’s crew hijacked the Kemah ambulance. They’ll be heavily armed,” one of the medics informed her.
“You can’t have him unless you take her,” Sky said, exchanging a look with Saskia.
“Fine,” the doctor said, motioning her people to move Tray into the ambulance. “Are there any other injured?”
Hawk shifted on the steps, willing his feet to move, not finding them nearly so responsive as the mechanics. He worried if he got too close to Saskia’s pistol, it would go off, but he needed a doctor, too.
“Doctor, we must go,” the younger medic protested, dragging Zenzele onto the ambulance. The doors closed, and the vehicle took off.
“Bébé, they’re leaving. They’re leaving without us!” Hawk murmured, tumbling down the stairs. Even his fall seemed to happen in slow motion, and when Sky caught him, he melted against her.
“Listen carefully,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him, tucking her chin over his shoulder. “Danny is dead. Saskia is dead. Amanda was never here. That is all you know. Don’t answer any other questions about the former crew.”
“Sky, I can’t lie,” he whimpered. His body quivered, sweat stinging his skin as it came in contact with the sticky, salty blood on his clothes.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Act human. Be human. Don’t let them figure out what you are.”
Squeaking in misery, Hawk extended his fingers, reaching for the engines, but unable to find anything outside of Sky’s embrace. “Let go of me. I can fly us out of here.”
“No.”
“On the glider, then. It’s easier to move than Oriana,” Hawk sniffled.
“You said the metal fatigue was too great. It won’t hold,” Sky whispered. “I will find another way out. Trust me.”
The next vehicle burst through, this one with an open top, and a slew of angry soldiers pointing angry weapons at them. Instinctively, Hawk jammed as many as he could using his magic.
“Where’s the patient?” one woman asked, hopping out of the back of the truck, medical bag in hand. She had white, stretchy gloves, and a thick vest over a dark-colored coat. There were patches on her sleeves, embroidered with Lanvarian words for ‘hospital’ and ‘emergency.’ Her boots were gleaming, navy blue.
“Someone else got here first,” Sky spoke up, her arms tightening around Hawk’s shoulders. “They took Tray. I told Vlad we couldn’t fight. I told him…”
Sky’s cool tears hit the blood on Hawk’s neck, tickling his skin. He recognized the helplessness in her voice, but knew it was a ruse. She could have fought for Tray if she’d thought it necessary.
The young woman smiled compassionately, and rushed to the bottom of the stairs, kneeling in front of Hawk and Sky. “Is that your blood or his?” she asked, offering Sky a tissue.
“Tray’s blood. We’re… not bleeding,” Sky said, taking quick, shuddering breaths. “I don’t think.”
“My name is Thea,” the woman said.
“You’re not one of Sikorsky’s people,” Sky said, disentangling herself from Hawk and finding her feet.
“I was recruited at gunpoint about a half hour ago,” Thea said. “They let me come along to treat the injured. I’ll take you to the Kemah clinic; we’ll be fine. There should be three of you left.”
“Zara went with Tray,” Sky explained, smoothing her fingers over her white shirt. The blood that had transferred from Hawk beaded off the material, though it stained her hands. “She wouldn’t let go and they were too desperate to be gone before you got here. Are they going to kill her?”
“I hope not. I can’t see into the minds of the bosses,” Thea said, squatting in front of Hawk and opening her medical bag. “You don’t look as well as your friend, sir. What’s your name?”
Hawk tried to speak, but his throat went dry. He choked on his name, wiped his nose, then gagged on the filth that transferred from his hands. Thea kept looking over him with a doctor’s gaze that made Hawk feel uncomfortable. Tentatively, she touched Hawk’s shoulder, then his chin, then put her thumb under Hawk’s brow, pulling Hawk’s eye wider. Leaning away, Hawk waved the woman off. Hawk had always hated his lidless eyes, and he didn’t like being scrutinized.
Thea caught Hawk’s hand, and frowned. Hawk’s bronzed skin was covered with grime, scabs, burns, and scars.
“Let me help,” she said, her voice soft and comforting. Reaching into her kit, she produced a bottle of green gel and rubbed it on Hawk’s hands. The black stains wiped clean, and Hawk’s skin felt cold. It was like the aloe Sky used to put on his sunburns before Oriana’s medicine supply ran dry. Hawk had been living with the pain so long he’d forgotten what relief felt like.
“Do you have food? We haven’t had a decent meal in weeks,” Sky said, coming to the edge of the truck. Two of the angry soldiers had gone to the bay door to stand guard, and the third sneered lustily at Sky.
“I’m guessing Sikorsky has a chef at gunpoint right now and can have something ready by the time the ambulance reaches port,” Thea replied, looking over her shoulder. “If the Enforcers let us in again.”
“Sikorsky will make sure the path is clear. Just do your job,” one of the brutes growled at her.
Thea shivered visibly, then dropped both her eyes and her voice. “Sorry, I’m a little punchy. You can eat at the clinic,” she said.
Sky shook her head. “We have to stay with the ship. Sikorsky said we should stay, so the government doesn’t seize the ship.”
“He’s trying to control everything, isn’t he? Didn’t plan on the food, though,” Thea said. “You have no food here? When did you last eat?”
Hawk pushed up his sleeve, showing the sunburn on his arms, and Thea massaged more of her green gel into the skin. “I can see from the color of your eyes that you’re under-nourished and dehydrated,” Thea said.
“He’s been a challenge, because he doesn’t eat animals,” Sky said. “Or bugs.”
“I think you should ride with me to the hospital. I’m going to put you in a containment bag until we can get you out of these clothes. It’s not pleasant, but we have to keep our people safe, and you need help sooner rather than later,” Thea said, setting aside the gel and activating a medical scanner on her glove. “Were you passengers on this ship? Did you come from Terrana?”
Hawk shook his head, then shrugged, looking at Sky, willing her to give him the answers he needed to play whatever game would keep them safe in this city.
“What’s your name?”
“I call him Hawk,” Sky said.
“Was he mute when you found him?” Thea asked her.
Hawk looked at his hands, then at Thea. These were the kinds of questions asked of a Sequestered. The longer he remained silent, the more abuse Thea would assume. “I want to see Tray,” Hawk said, tugging the front of his sticky shirt, the saltiness of Tray’s blood overtaking his senses. “I need him. He’s my—”
Hawk started to say ‘friend,’ but he remembered the gun in his hand, and Tray collapsing in a room of shattered view screens and fallen drones. The noise from the bay became overwhelming. The lights flickered and the bay doors creaked.
“Easy. Easy,” Sky whispered. He could barely feel her arms around him, but he felt her severing his link to the ship. “Help is here. We’re okay.”
“I’m not,” Hawk murmured, grief overtaking him now that the pressure of finding rescue had lifted.
There was too much left unfinished.
4
Mikayla Wright’s hands tightened on a container of rainbow carrots, her heart racing as she watched the Kemah gate open in anticipation of her ex-husband’s return. She’d stood in this very spot six weeks ago, the day Oriana was supposed to return. She’d had rainbow carrots that day, too—Tray’s favorite. It wasn’t a peace offering; it was her way to keep him quiet and give him something to chew on while she railed on him for endangering their son. As much as she wanted Hero to have a father, Tray was a dangerous man to affiliate with. Her life had changed forever the day Oriana disappeared. Tray had already talked to his lawyers, naming their son Hero as his beneficiary, throwing her into leadership of a trust that she did not want. Putting her in the crosshairs of Vimbai, who did not think her worthy to inherit his estate.
As much as things had changed since that day, there was a sense of normalcy as she watched the port fill with journalists and gawkers. Drones buzzed around the gaping gate. Mikayla’s Virp chirped with breaking news—aerial footage of an ambulance rushing away from the vessel, bouncing on the rocky, unpaved terrain.
“You’re supposed to stay out of public light,” a deep, arrogant voice said behind her, making her jump out of her skin. His enemies called him Sikorsky. Mikayla had to bite her cheek to keep more colorful expletives from firing at him.
Sweeping her corkscrewed braids away from her face, Mikayla squared her shoulders and kept her eyes forward. “Walk away from me,” she ordered.
“Is that any way to address one’s father?” he crooned. His steel gray eyes matched his steel gray coat; his ice cold sneer matched his ice cold heart.
“It is when one’s father is you,” Mikayla retorted, crossing her arms to hide the carrots. “You’re not getting me back on that yacht.”
“It is where you’re safest,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back, watching the drones flying about the gate, vying for the best view. “I can protect you there.”
The Gray Market: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 5) Page 3