The Gray Market: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 5)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “I’m Chase,” he said. “Danny and I were friends. We built this together.” Chase motioned toward the ‘sled, getting a moon-eyed reverence for it that Saskia had only ever seen before in Danny. “When Sky said she crashed it, I thought it was scrap. She never said she fixed it.”

  He skipped down the steps to get a closer look at the vehicle. “I’ve never seen it fly. I mean, I knew it had to, because how else would Sky steal it, but can you show me? I really—it would mean so much—I—You don’t talk, do you Zara?”

  His shoulders slumped, and he tapped a command to close the bay doors. “Is it because you can’t, or because Sky has you scared silent?” he asked, waiting a beat for her to answer. “You don’t have to be afraid of her, because she’s not coming back. It’s just us here.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Saskia said, tapping her Virp to close the bay doors again.

  “Good. Good,” he said, his voice quaking with relief. “I have so many questions. About Danny. About Hawk, too.”

  “Did Hawk leave with Sky?” Saskia asked. She’d come here for herself, and although she hadn’t expected Sky and Hawk to fight and die for this ship, she was surprised to find them gone.

  “No. Sky left first,” Chase said. “I think Hawk left because of me. Because he showed me something. He trusted me with something, and I didn’t really react well.”

  “Did he have his Virp?” Saskia asked.

  “He left five days ago. It would be dead,” Chase replied.

  Saskia nodded, but in Boone they’d discovered that battery life wasn’t an issue for Hawk. He could conjure all the battery life he needed.

  “Saskia,” Chase blurted out. “I knew it would come to me.”

  “What would?” she asked, turning so that he wouldn’t see her reach for her stunner.

  “Your real name. You came with the ship,” he smiled wistfully, recalling a story Danny must have shared ages ago. “When I realized you weren’t here, I… I knew something bad… I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Thanks,” Saskia said.

  There was a knock at the door, and Saskia reached for her weapon.

  “Don’t answer. Oh, God,” Chase said, running for the stairs, then hiding under them.

  Drawing her stunner, Saskia motioned him further back toward the holds where he could hide.

  “Check to see who it is first,” Chase hissed. “I fixed the rearview for a reason!”

  Saskia cocked her head. “Nolwazi, rear view,” she tried. An image projected over inset personnel door, and at first, all Saskia saw was a shock of wavy, black hair whirling like a tornado around the person’s head. She had her back to Oriana and was scanning the port. When the woman turned, her deep, brown eyes glanced up and across, as though seeking an audience with the watching camera. Saskia’s body went numb. It was her sister.

  Amanda curled into the pilot’s seat of the Cadence, her thumb tracing the yoke. The panel was different on this ship, but all the important bits were in the same spot. She could fly, but the altimeter was where the odometer should be and there was a sixth dial in the cluster of thruster controls that wasn’t labeled. If the ship were powered up, she’d give it a little nudge and see which way they wobbled. She missed flying.

  “Amanda?” Alex’s voice came over the Vring.

  “Bridge,” she replied, hitting a button that she thought was the overhead comm. The port wing extended, moving so smoothly that she only noticed because the balance of the ship changed. Oriana’s wings moved together, but the Cadence had separate controls for each. She scanned the console for the Vring, but before she found it, Alex came trotting onto the bridge.

  “You’re supposed to be in the infirmary,” he chuckled, leaning past her to retract the wing.

  Amanda smiled weakly, running her fingers over her lips. Her teleport away from Sikorsky had nearly suffocated her. It still felt like someone was sitting on her chest, and when she took a deep breath, her head throbbed. “You should know better than to take a girl who suffers frequent hallucinations and put her in a room that looks like the ship she’s been trapped on half her life.”

  “Two months is not half your life,” he said, sliding into the middle chair. The chairs on the Cadence were covered in a soft microfiber.

  “It’s half of what I remember of my life,” Amanda complained.

  “You thought you were hallucinating,” Alex said, touching her hair.

  Amanda closed her eyes and sank deeper into her chair. “I came up here looking for Danny. This looks so much like Oriana.”

  “I know. Almost home, but not quite,” Alex sighed. “There’s medicine in your system. Do you still feel like you’re having hallucinations?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Is my Occ here?”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d want it when you woke up so I put it in your pocket. You know, in case you… disappeared again,” he said, stammering the last fear. He’d probably had a heart attack when he came to the infirmary and saw she was missing. “Want a tour of the controls?”

  “Yeah.” Amanda fished through the pockets of her maroon trench coat until she found the Occ. It felt good to wear her own clothes, and even better once she had the Occ. “I’m so used to having to sort everything that it’s hard to just accept what I see as real. The Occ reacts to danger, but only the real stuff. Not the stuff in my head.”

  “So what’s the verdict? Am I real?” he teased.

  Amanda smacked his arm, and he smacked back.

  “When Liza pushed us off the cliff and I had to fly the ship, I saw my dad,” Amanda said. “He’s part of that memory, as real as anything else that happened to me out there. He looked just like the pictures that you and Jen have at the house.”

  Alex waited for her to say more. He dragged his thumb across the back of her hand like he was weaning out the emotions. “If you need some real stories about your dad—if you want to know about either of your parents—”

  “Were they hybrids?” Amanda interrupted. “Could they teleport?”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “If they had a secret like that, it’s not one they shared with me.”

  Shaking her head, Amanda pushed out of her chair and paced the bridge. Her head throbbed at the position shift and she pressed the heels of her hands to her temple. “I keep insisting that it’s not me doing it, but if that’s true, why does it keep happening to me? Sikorsky thinks it’s me. He thinks I do it.”

  “Sikorsky?” Alex said, catching her wrist. “Is that who took you from the hospital?”

  Amanda squeezed her eyes shut, twisting side to side. “Did he take me or did I take him? I don’t know. We were headed to Kemah. We were going to Oriana and then everything changed and he was trying to get some place else. To Mikayla. He had to get Mikayla on the boat.”

  “Mikayla is—”

  “His daughter,” Amanda said, dropping into the pilot’s seat again. “She’s Sikorsky’s daughter and Tray has Sikorsky’s grandson. They needed the boat to get to Tray.”

  “Oh,” Alex stammered. “Well that explains… a little.”

  “He wanted to find her, and suddenly, I was at the church,” Amanda remembered. “I was there, listening to her scream. Mikayla was screaming for help, but Sikorsky wasn’t there. Why did I move where he wanted to go? Is it my fault, Alex? What am I?”

  “I can answer that. You are a Disappeared,” said a man in a silver striped coat. His mocha-brown hands were clamped around Jennifer’s neck, and his sleek, black stunner pointed at her head.

  “Jen,” Alex gasped, putting a hand out to keep Amanda behind him. She stayed in her seat, but brought her legs up, already planning the nosedive over the console that would get her to the forward shaft. Unfortunately, the gravity wasn’t in her favor.

  “Do what he wants, Alex. Coro has an army out there,” Jennifer said, her clenched fists pressed to her thighs.

  “What do you want?” Amanda asked.

  “I want my wife back,” Coro snarled.

  Amanda furrowed
her brow, looking to Alex.

  “We don’t have her,” Alex said evenly, his eyes on the weapon.

  “But you can take me to her. She’s run to the Panoptica,” Coro said.

  The Occ shifted Amanda’s vision, showing the swelling capillaries on Coro’s skin as his blood pressure rose.

  “And you think I’m some kind of radar for her kind? Did Sikorsky give you that idea?” Amanda asked. “He told me a lot of people were going missing.”

  Amanda swore under her breath, realizing the implication of the connection. Had all the missing run to some Panoptica haven on this planet? Had she finally found Salima?

  “Captain Swift, we are flying to Terrana,” Coro said, pressing his stunner harder against Jennifer’s skin.

  “You don’t have to take my wife hostage to save yours,” Alex said, raising his hands. “I’m a spaceship for hire. Just tell me the job. Let her go.”

  “Alex, you were banned from Terrana. They’ll kill you the moment you step off the ship,” Jennifer protested. “They might not wait for you to leave the ship.”

  “I’ll take that chance. Coro, let her go,” Alex insisted.

  “My threat is not for your compliance. It’s for hers,” Coro said, his malicious, black eyes turning on Amanda. “Parker wants her. She is the only currency I have to get past the gate.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” Alex said.

  “I’ll do it,” Amanda said at the same time. She wanted to go back to Terrana. A part of her knew she’d never find the truth about herself or her parents any other way. “I’ll fly you there if you let them go.”

  “No!” Alex cried.

  “Alex—”

  “No, we need a proper crew to fly the ship. We need a proper crew,” Alex said his elbows emphatically punctuating the point even as his hands stayed raised in surrender. “And if you’re bringing that army, we need to have fuel and food for them for the journey there and back. We cannot trust that Terrana will give us anything. We can’t just up and leave.”

  “You’re stalling,” Coro accused.

  “No, he’s telling the truth,” Amanda said, turning to the console, beginning the start-up sequence. “I was just planning to take you a little higher in the atmosphere before I made that argument. Up we go.”

  The thrusters fired and Amanda smiled as they lifted off the ground. She wanted to try that sixth button as soon as they passed the clouds, but the thrusters cut off, and the ship dropped, knocking the others off their feet when it hit the ground. Alex cried out in pain, clutching his leg. Coro’s stunner let off a wild shot that hit the front window and left a burn mark.

  “What the—” Alex panted.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Amanda said, searching for any kind of diagnostic alert that would explain the problem.

  “Fool!” Coro growled. His stunner charged again, but Alex launched into the line of fire, taking the hit. His body slammed against Amanda’s chair, flattening her against the console.

  “Alex!” Jen screamed.

  32

  Kinzie Serevi’s uncertain glance turned to an impatient glower. It was as if she knew Saskia was watching her, debating whether to answer the door or leave it locked. Saskia’s parents had split when she was thirteen. Kinzie was ten. Saskia had stayed on Terrana with their mom and Kinzie had gone back to Quin with their dad. Their parents refused to talk or coordinate visits, so Saskia didn’t talk to her sister again until she joined the Guard five years later and gained access to inter-world comms.

  “She looks like you,” Chase commented, keeping his distance. Kinzie’s hair had always had more wave to it, but their large eyes, pronounced cheekbones, and sharp jawlines were nearly identical. It looked like Kinzie hadn’t grown any taller than Saskia, although she did seem to have more weight on her bones.

  “She’s my sister,” Saskia said, flinching at the sound of Kinzie knocking again.

  “The one you said was dead to you?” Chase asked.

  Saskia gaped at him. She didn’t recall saying anything to him about her sister, and if she had, it was years ago, in passing. “Do you forget anything?”

  “That was the day you were splitting the engine space to make room for the grav-drive refit,” Chase said, blushing slightly. “Danny was a wreck. The day’s kind of burned into my memory. Do you want me to tell her you’re dead? Will she shoot me?”

  Saskia gave him a look, but she didn’t know the answer, so she kept her stunner in hand and opened the door.

  “Finally,” Kinzie grumbled. She bustled past Saskia, teeth chattering like she’d just come out of a freezing rain. She shook out her hands, did a quick scan on the room, then her eyes landed on Saskia and she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, my, Miss Fancy-gloves. Look what you’ve been hiding under your ugly Guard uniform.”

  Saskia’s father had hated her for joining the Guard, and his bitterness had clearly influenced Kinzie. But Kinzie was a grown woman now, and Saskia did not have to tolerate her bigotry.

  “Get out of my home,” Saskia said, motioning with her stunner.

  “Always so sensitive, Saskia,” Kinzie said, stalking across the bay to turn her nose up at something else. She wore a simple, monochromatic tunic, long leggings, and short work gloves. It was the attire of a middle-class desk assistant. “They’re not going to let you live here after they decommission this piece of junk.”

  Kinzie stopped short when she saw Chase, and eyed him appreciatively. Chase decided to be elsewhere, and hurried up the stairs.

  “Out,” Saskia growled, pulling up her sleeveless top. She was not dressed for physical combat. Not that she wanted to fight her sister.

  “Dad sent me,” Kinzie said flatly. “I came to tell you—”

  “I didn’t need to hear his last message and I don’t need to hear this one,” Saskia said, raising her stunner. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “Please,” Kinzie muttered, rolling her eyes, and raising her hand. Saskia assumed her glove had a built-in stunner. “You have that clunky, old Terranan-style stunner that makes it so obvious when you’re about to fire. I’d knock you on the ground before your finger finished pulling the trigger.”

  Sighing, Saskia dropped her stunner to her side and shuffled to a russet couch sitting in the bay. It was a new but ugly piece, and seemed to have Hawk’s name written all over it.

  “I’ll talk fast,” Kinzie said, her lip curling when Saskia plopped on the couch. “This is such a weird place for you to live.”

  “Talk faster,” Saskia said, lying back, putting her feet up, preparing to tune out the criticisms.

  Kinzie sneered again, but then she came to the couch and sat on the arm. Her eyes twitched, then her lips. “Remember how Mom and Dad taught us to hunt fringe dwellers? Then you went noble and started protecting them.”

  Saskia’s mom never forgave her for joining the Guard, and openly mocked her when she’d been forced out due to injury. She’d been paralyzed and none of them came to help her or claim her. That was why she stayed on Oriana.

  “Then you started bringing the fringe dwellers here and hiding them in Quin,” Kinzie continued. “Well, when Dad joined the Enn, he tracked every one of them down.”

  “Are you telling me that everyone Oriana saved is dead?” Saskia asked, glaring up at her sister.

  Kinzie shook her head, her expression getting softer by the moment.

  “You had more impact on him than you think,” she said, sliding off the arm of the couch and sitting on the cushion by Saskia’s feet. “He kept an eye on them, and made sure none of them crossed the law. Then when you died, or we thought you did…”

  She looked down at her hands, then up.

  “Spit it out, Kinzie,” Saskia said, sitting up.

  “A body washed up in the river two months ago,” she said. “One of the fringe dwellers. When Dad checked on the others, half of them were missing, too. More go missing each week. He thinks someone was using his flags in the Enn database to find all those fringe dwellers
. The body that washed up was completely drained of blood. He found another a few weeks later, oxygen starved to the point of being a vegetable.”

  “Does he know who’s doing it?” Saskia asked.

  “No,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears and looking at her knees. “But now that you’re back, he’s finding more bodies. Instead of one every few weeks, it’s one every few days, and they’re not all in Clover. It’s in every Dome.”

  “The refugees came to escape Terrana—to escape Parker and Solvere. With the ports closed and no contact with Terrana to generate bounties, who would come after them?” Saskia asked.

  “Ask your boyfriend,” she said, a knee-jerk sneer surfacing. “Dad said the last body to wash up drained of blood like that came from Vimbai’s hill thirty years ago.”

  That was strange, but Morrigan had said there was a grudge against the Vimbai family. Perhaps someone was trying to frame them.

  “What are the Enn doing about it?” Saskia asked.

  “Not much,” she shrugged. “When a fringe dweller disappears, no one really cares. That’s what makes hunting them a sport and not a crime. They’re trying to stay hidden. They’re trying to go unnoticed. If Dad hadn’t compiled the list, he wouldn’t have known the other dozen were missing yet. He’d just have the bodies.”

  “How many bodies so far?” Saskia asked.

  “Eight. Five since Oriana got back. Too many to be coincidence. Someone is definitely going after people you saved,” Kinzie said, standing up again, taking a deep breath. “And even though he’s not a Terranan refugee, you did save that little guy with the red hair—”

  “Hawk,” Saskia murmured, standing as well. “He’s not here.”

  “I know. Dad had him followed once he started seeing the pattern of bodies,” Kinzie said, her attention already wandering from the subject. She gawked at the Bobsled and ran her hand over the belly. “He was last seen at the fairgrounds with Wanda Genova. She was dressed pretty flashy, like she wanted to be noticed. Like she wanted the other bosses to know she was taking him.”