Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6

by Chaney, J. N.

  “The target ship has made port on Ki Nar Four.”

  Kane smirked. He folded the towel and laid it over the edge of the sink. “They’re most likely refueling, taking on supplies.” He paused, brushing the towel’s tiny filaments in the same direction. His hands were getting old, the skin thinning. “We wait. Keep our distance. When they jump again, watch for subspace variations.”

  “Understood, Admiral.”

  So, you’re going after them, concluded the voice.

  “Yes,” Kane replied.

  “Excuse me, Admiral?”

  Kane had forgotten to close out the channel. His men couldn’t hear him talking to the voice—that would be too much for them. “Nothing, Captain. Carry on.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Then Kane slammed his fist down to disconnect. The voice waited. Kane hated the pauses. The pauses were the worst.

  You could have seen her again, you know, it finally said.

  “Seen who?” Kane asked, genuinely unsure which her the voice was referring to.

  Why, your daughter, of course.

  Kane’s heart leaped, a feeling he had not had in longer than he could remember. “She’s on that ship?” How long has it been? Fifteen years? “How can you be sure?”

  I’m always right. You just don’t like to trust me. But you will. Soon.

  “You’re right,” Kane agreed, “I don’t trust you.”

  Yet you’re becoming more and more like me.

  “No, I’m not. Now you’re just toying with me. I’m going after the stardrive.”

  Which is exactly what I would do.

  “STOP IT! No, you wouldn’t.”

  You could have seen your daughter.

  “You already said that.”

  You could have met your granddaughter too. But you chose, Kane. You always choose.

  27

  Awen felt like she had stepped into another world, transported as if by magic from a realm of decay to a kingdom filled with wonder. The juxtaposition so startled her that she left the Unity and glanced over her shoulder just to make sure that the Reptalons weren’t apparitions. They hissed at her as they closed the doors.

  Yup. They’re real.

  Sootriman’s inner sanctum vibrated with all the color and noise of a fancy town square. The enormous glass-ceilinged room was crisscrossed by red-and-gold fabric stretched between tall pillars. Spread under it were clusters of guests, some reclining on lush pillows, some seated at small tables, and others betting on suckow matches played on patches of bare marble floor.

  Unlike the hallway, the air in here was filled with the fragrant smells of perfume and spiced meat grilled over open coals. Awen swallowed her saliva as she suddenly became hungry. The air was also alive with music, though Awen couldn’t place the style. She noticed colorfully dressed minstrels playing drums, lyres, and tambourines in the far corner.

  Like the musicians, every person in the opulent space was beautifully dressed—so much so that Awen felt out of place in her borrowed knit turtleneck, leggings, mechanic’s boots, and cloak. There had to be a hundred or more guests, and all were enjoying themselves immensely. The lifestyle of these people was as far from those she’d witnessed during her walk through the city as she could imagine.

  A few of the guests looked up at her as Ezo led the way to the opposite side of the room. Awen instinctively hid her face in her cloak, fearing they might notice she was a Luma and hate her like Ezo said they would. By the time she was halfway across the room, murmurs had replaced the music, and the air had grown still.

  Awen looked ahead to see perhaps the most surprising sight yet. Atop a dais not unlike the mwadim’s sat a gold throne decorated with red fabric. More than a dozen young women sat or lay across the stairs leading up to it, and in the oversized chair sat a rotund woman. Her almond eyes were set in a tanned olive-colored face, and her dark-brown hair cascaded over her shoulders in waves onto a red-and-gold dress made of exquisitely fine linen. She wore gold rings on her fingers and toes, and gold bracelets on her wrists and ankles. If Awen had to guess, the woman on the throne was almost a meter taller than Awen was.

  By the time Ezo had reached the bottom of the dais, the room had gone silent. The woman on the throne watched them with her dark eyes. She hadn’t moved a muscle upon Ezo’s approach. As the three of them stood there in total silence for several seconds, Awen glanced around the room, expecting Sootriman to appear. But he never did.

  For the love of all the mystics, it’s her.

  As if on cue, Sootriman blinked and started shaking her head. “What possible reason do you have to come crawling back here knowing I’m just going to kill you, Idris Ezo?”

  Maybe I should have stayed with the ship, Awen thought, realizing this might have been a mistake. A very big mistake.

  “Sootriman, darling, it’s good to see you again too,” Ezo said. “You look as extravagant as ever.”

  Sootriman sniffed the air, winced, and flicked her wrists. “Not today, Idris.” As if summoned by the sound of the bracelets jingling on her large arms, two dozen armed guards emerged from the shadows behind the pillars and moved toward Awen. Unlike the Reptalons, these were human men, each clothed in a simple white tunic and brandishing a plasma spear, which they activated as they walked. The thrumming sound of free energy sent a tingle up her spine.

  Awen looked left and right as the guards moved in—presumably to dispatch her, the bot, and Ezo with a few swipes of the golden spears, the magenta-colored blades ablaze with heat. Awen pushed herself into the Unity and prepared to resist the guards. She had not come this far to get hacked apart on some seedy back world.

  “Is this how you expected it to go?” Awen whispered to Ezo.

  “Totally. This is normal.”

  “This is normal?” Awen asked, her incredulity threatening to overcome her hushed tone. “She normally tries to kill you when you show up?”

  “Yeah, but she won’t.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “She might be my ex-wife, but she still loves Ezo.”

  “Your ex-wife?” Awen looked between Ezo and Sootriman, her mouth hanging open. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “He’s not,” Sootriman said, rolling her eyes.

  “Actually, sir,” TO-96 said, “there is one minor detail regarding that outstanding matter.”

  “What detail?” Ezo asked, snapping his head toward the bot.

  “And what do you mean outstanding, Tee-Oh?” Sootriman added.

  “Well, sir, if you remember your snarky comments to the tower operator when we left Plumeria—I was attempting to tell you about the status of your divorce filing. And if you remember, she asked you to file the final notice, sir.”

  “And I did,” Ezo said.

  “You attempted to—correct, sir. However, as you might recall, you also owed and still owe several months of back shipping taxes to the Republic.”

  “Oh, Ezo, you didn’t,” Sootriman said.

  “I don’t like where this is going, Ninety-Six,” Ezo said.

  “Civil Code number GR 27-2.4 clause 12—”

  “I don’t care about the code,” Ezo hissed, motioning for TO-96 to get on with it.

  The bot paused, tilting his head. “Interesting. That is precisely what you told me the last time, sir. Your petition for divorce cannot be processed until those taxes are paid in full.”

  “So,” Sootriman said as coolly as a Frondothian minx in the shade of an ever-palm, “you’re saying we’re still married.”

  “That is correct, Madame.”

  “Son of a—”

  “You’re still married?” Awen said, running a hand down her face. “To her?”

  “Well, this will be remedied shortly,” Sootriman said. “I believe I get to collect some sort of death benefit too—that is, if it’s not taken in lieu of taxes. Any last words before you die, Idris? Or maybe that monstrosity of yours has something more to add?”

  “I have nothing more to share, y
our ladyship,” TO-96 said. “Thank you for asking, though.”

  Sootriman rolled her eyes. “Kill them.”

  “Wait!” Ezo said in protest, raising his hands. “You can have the ship.”

  Sootriman raised her hand. The guards froze, their spears’ plasma heads a meter away.

  “The ship?” Awen asked.

  “The ship?” Sootriman echoed.

  “Sure. We both know you always wanted it. And Ezo feels wrong about having kept it from you.”

  “You feel wrong about keeping it from me and you want me to have the ship?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” Ezo glanced at TO-96. “Is there an echo in here?”

  “A small one, yes,” the bot said.

  “You can’t give her the ship, Ezo,” Awen stated, suddenly aware that he was about to double-cross her—no, he’d lied, and he was double-crossing her. There was no favor to call in. If anything, he owed Sootriman!

  Awen cursed herself for getting involved in some lovers’ quarrel. She felt betrayed, and she hadn’t even seen it coming. How could I have been so stupid? I should have stayed home. She felt as though she was living in her parents’ house again, with her father talking down to her or her mother scolding her.

  Sootriman was on her feet now, descending the steps one at a time as the younger women moved aside. Curse those legs. Now she’s getting the ship too.

  The woman approached Ezo, and Awen realized for the first time that she was easily a head taller than him. “What’s your angle, Idris?” she said, striding to within a few inches of his face. “We both know you have one. You always have an angle.”

  “Let Ezo use it for one last job.”

  “Ha!” Sootriman blurted. “You can’t even come up with enough money to pay for the divorce filing but you’re willing to barter your ship away for one last job? How did I not see this coming?”

  “Ezo was hard up for credits,” he replied like a room fan trying to plead its case before a tornado. “You can’t even compare this to back then.”

  “You’re right, Ezo. You’re far more pitiful now. At least back then, you knew when you’d been beaten. But now, well, now you’re just groveling. And it’s a really bad look on you.” Sootriman held a sultry hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. “Bartering for your ship. That means you want something else from me too. It means you can’t do your next job without something only I can provide, and you can’t pay for it without pawning your ship to me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Oh, she’s good—intelligent and beautiful. Awen was suddenly not as jealous of Sootriman’s legs as before. “No wonder she tried to leave you,” she said in Ezo’s ear.

  “Ezo left her!” Ezo protested over his shoulder.

  “Please, Idris. Your girlfriend—”

  “Not girlfriend,” Awen interrupted, and Sootriman raised her eyebrows. “Not girlfriend. Nothing’s going on here.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Zero,” Awen replied.

  “Huh,” Sootriman said with a look of genuine surprise on her face. “I’m impressed, Idris. Maybe you’re maturing after all.”

  “Ezo can mature, yes,” he said.

  “But—you’re still referring to yourself in the third person.” Sootriman sniffed the air again and tilted her head. She started to walk around the trio like a prowling tigress deciding how best to eviscerate her prey. “So, what is it you need from me? It can’t be more torpedoes. You can get those elsewhere, and they’re not worth the ship. And clearly all your navionics work, or else you wouldn’t be in the system.” She rounded the other side and tapped her plush lips with a finger. “So it’s got to be really, really expensive. Like—like a drive core.”

  Awen saw Ezo raise one shoulder. Sootriman saw it too. The tigress was getting closer to feasting.

  “There we go. Ezo needs another drive core. But”—she tapped her lips some more—“that’s not what you really want, is it? Unless you’ve blown your current one, which means you wouldn’t be standing in front of me. No, you need a second one for a long trip, one that would best benefit from… oh, Ezo,” Sootriman said with genuine pity, hands going to her hips, her head shaking back and forth. “You want a modulator.”

  If TO-96’s sudden head turn hadn’t given it away, Ezo’s double-shoulder raise certainly would have.

  “You really think I’m going to just hand over a modulator to you in exchange for a ship I’ll never see again because I let you skip to the farthest reaches of the galaxy?” Sootriman turned to Awen. “Listen, girl. I’m not sure how you got involved with this Bludervian dimdish over here, but my best advice is to run. Run as far away as you can. He won’t kill you.” She glared at Ezo. “He doesn’t have the nerve.” She looked back to Awen. “But everyone else who’s trying to liquidate him will. And you seem too nice to be liquidated.”

  “You’ll get it back,” Ezo said.

  Sootriman snapped her head at him. “I’ll get it back?”

  “You have Ezo’s word.”

  Sootriman literally looked as if her eyes—pretty as they were—were going to pop out of her head. “I have your what?”

  “My word,” Ezo replied, squaring his shoulders and pushing out his chest. “You have it.”

  Sootriman started laughing—deeply. It was a laugh that said, I may be going insane, and if you were worried about your life before, you should be terrified about it now.

  Ezo looked at TO-96 then over his shoulder at Awen. “This is normal.”

  Fast, like a jungle cat leaping on some unsuspecting quarry, Sootriman withdrew a curved blade from somewhere behind her back and laid it across Ezo’s neck. Awen hadn’t even felt the warning ripples in the Unity. “I need more than your word, husband,” Sootriman said, her lips mere centimeters from the man’s ear.

  It wasn’t until the blade nicked Ezo’s flesh and a drop of blood appeared that Awen realized the woman wasn’t playing. She was going to kill him—and Awen wasn’t sure if she blamed her, as morally wrong as that felt. Maybe I’m becoming like one of them. That scared her.

  “Here,” Ezo said, lifting something in his hand. “Take this.”

  Sootriman glanced down at the offered object, and Awen did too. It was—

  The stardrive?

  “Ezo, what are you doing?” How could he? Awen was shocked. No, she was furious. She patted her clothing but realized she’d intentionally left the drive… on the ship.

  “What’s this?” Sootriman asked, removing the blade, her curiosity clearly piqued.

  “You can’t!” Awen protested. “How did you… you’re a coward.”

  “She’s not wrong, darling.” Sootriman took the stardrive and examined it. “It’s not every day you come across a find like this. But,” she added, looking at Ezo with a sad face, “Jujari stardrives aren’t any good without—”

  “It’s already unlocked,” he said.

  Then something came out of Awen’s mouth that she never thought she’d say. “I swear to all the mystics, Ezo, I will kill you.”

  Awen could hardly believe she’d said it. Worse, she meant it. She wanted to kill him, and that frightened her. This place, these people—all of it was getting to her, corrupting her from the inside out. But none of that changed the fact that she wanted Ezo to die for his treachery. In fact, if she’d thought she could outmaneuver two dozen armed guards plus Sootriman and TO-96 and then the Reptalons outside, Awen would have ended him right there. She knew how too. She could stop human molecules from vibrating in the Unity. Sure, it was never ever taught at the academy, but she’d figured it out. She could easily stop every cell in a person’s body from moving the same way she’d stopped a block of concrete from falling. Having the nerve to pull it off in cold blood, though—well, that was something else entirely. And that was what scared her: she had the nerve.

  “This means something to you, does it?” Sootriman asked Awen, snapping the Luma out of her obsessive stare into the back of Ezo’s skull. “You’d really kill him, for t
his.” She lightly waved the stardrive in the air.

  “I—it’s because—”

  “You don’t have to answer that, dear. Hearing yourself say it will only scare you more. I can see it in your eyes anyway. You’re wise to restrain yourself, however, as I would just as quickly kill you, and then where would either of you be?”

  “Give Ezo the modulator,” Ezo stated as he wiped the blood from his neck. “You get the ship when we’re done, and now you know exactly where we’re going.”

  “New deal. I keep the ship, starting now,” Sootriman countered. “I lend you another ship that already has a modulator on board, and I know where you’re going.”

  Ezo cocked his head. “No, no, you don’t understand. Ezo doesn’t want to fly another ship where we’re going. Ezo needs Geronimo.”

  “Well, it seems your options are running out, husband,” Sootriman said as she started back up the steps.

  Just then, one of her entourage stepped toward her and whispered in her ear. The young woman was barefoot and clad in a flowing silk dress that hung off one shoulder. Contrasting this, however, was a comms set in one ear beset with several small lights. She also concealed a holo-pad in the crook of one arm.

  “Are you sure?” Sootriman asked.

  The messenger nodded and showed her superior the holo-pad.

  Sootriman thanked her and turned back to face Ezo. “It seems you’ve attracted some followers, Ezo.”

  “Oh?”

  “A corvette just entered the system. Stiletto class. No designators, and it’s trying very hard not to be seen. That doesn’t bother us, of course, but it does say a lot about whomever they’re tailing. You must have really pissed someone off with this.” She shook the stardrive.

  “We got away clean.” Ezo turned to Awen as if expecting her to weigh in.

  “What are you looking at me for?” she asked, still furious with him. “We don’t fly gunships.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered, “but whoever your boss is working with might.”

  “I got away clean,” she insisted. “This one’s on you.”

  “She’s right, sir,” TO-96 said. “The likelihood that an adversary placed a tracking device on Geronimo is well above fifty percent. It would have been easy for any number of spies to gain access to the ship while—” The bot suddenly froze. “Oh my.”