Nightchaser

by Amanda Bouchet

  “What the hell is going on?” Fiona stalked toward me, her high, dark ponytail swinging angrily as she walked. “I just cracked my head on the wall when you dragged me out of my lab and then jumped without even telling me to brace myself. And just when I was getting close to making a breakthrough with those new cure-alls, too. I’m even wondering if they can cure Shiori’s blindness. They’re full of good stuff—like, superpower stuff.”

  “Those vaccines just got us followed practically into the mouth of a black hole,” I said, motioning toward the bridge windows.

  Fiona looked around, and her eyes widened at the sight of so much absolute darkness.

  “Holy shit!” She gaped at me. “Are you crazy?”

  I gave a small shrug. “The Dark Watch was breathing down our neck.”

  “The Dark Watch is always breathing down our neck!”

  “Yeah. Well, this time, they’re trying to board the Endeavor as we speak, and a warship got close enough to get visual confirmation on the stolen lab.”

  “So jump the hell out of 14!” Fiona cried.

  “We can’t. We’ve been leaping almost nonstop for three days, and the Endeavor’s power is too low to do anything other than play cat and mouse around the Sector until we completely run out of juice.”

  Fiona snapped her mouth shut, her usual space-rat pallor taking an abrupt dive toward ashen.

  “And then they’ll either board the ship or blow us up,” Jax added solemnly. “Either way, we’re toast.”

  I caught Shiori’s serene expression out of the corner of my eye as I nervously tucked my bangs behind my ear. Shiori was always asking me to meditate with her and Miko, but I never wanted to sit still. Maybe I should have. She looked a lot calmer than I felt.

  The Endeavor jolted from the hard bang of Dark Watch 12’s boarding cruiser latching on with a vacuum seal. Obviously, we hadn’t opened the port.

  “Starboard side has our most solid door,” Miko said. “It’ll take them a while to break through.”

  I nodded. But break through they would. They had all the tools.

  “I don’t get it,” I muttered out loud. The intensity of this chase was baffling. Vaccines were important, yes, but the military was acting as though this particular batch were liquid gold.

  I turned back to Fiona. “Has the big guy said anything about the vaccines?” He hadn’t threatened the crew in any way after we’d carted him off by accident along with the floating lab. He hadn’t tried to reach the bridge. He hadn’t complained about the near-constant jumps. He hadn’t so much as asked for food or water or a freaking loo in the three days we’d had him. I’d offered him the basics more than once, but he never took me up on anything. He was big, quiet, and stoic in the extreme.

  I liked him. And I’d better go get him.

  Will he even fit into an escape pod?

  Fiona shook her head. “He left the lab only once, and I couldn’t stop him from poking around the cargo holds. He wanted to know where we were taking everything.”

  Nowhere anymore. At this rate, those things had no chance of getting to where they needed to go. The food and seeds were for the dirt-poor colonies out in Sectors 17 and 18 that would never recover from the war. The books were for the Intergalactic Library’s rare and archaic section, and the drop-off I’d planned would have been stealth itself. The vaccines were for Starway 8. Orphanages never got cure-alls. I would know.

  “What did you mean by ‘superpower stuff’?” I asked, suddenly zeroing in on what Fiona had just said about the vaccines.

  “I meant give a few rounds to Jax, and he’d be unstoppable. Strength. Speed. Boosted healing.” Fiona huffed. “Hell, give some to Shiori, and she’d kick ass like she was twenty years old again.”

  I felt my jaw loosen. “An enhancer?” The enhancer? I’d thought that was a myth. Or a bad dream. Or something that would never work.

  And then it hit me. No wonder the lab had been so discreet, so empty of personnel that it shouldn’t have drawn a single eye while it floated around out in bumblefuck Lyronium. That was how the Overseer worked. Hide your best science. Destroy what you don’t understand.

  Shit! I’d almost genetically modified thousands of kids.

  “We can’t give that to orphans!” All those shots clearly labeled as cure-alls were in reality the abomination the galactic government had been working toward for years.

  Fiona shrugged. “You can if you want to call the concoction a vaccine and turn people into super soldiers without telling them.”

  I gasped. Wasn’t the military already unstoppable enough?

  An earsplitting hammering started on the starboard side just as the edge of the Dark Watch ship came into view. It was immense and intimidating. Too bad I couldn’t incinerate it with just the heat of my glare.

  Apparently, the galactic generals weren’t only lying to civilians anymore; they were lying to their own.

  Furious on behalf of just about everything that lived, I slammed out a combination on my console. “I won’t give it back. I’ll die before the Overseer gets his serum back and uses super soldiers to terrorize the Outer Zones even worse than he already does.”

  The bridge lights flickered from the sudden power drain, and the hammering abruptly stopped.

  “I just electrified the whole starboard side,” I announced. Best-case scenario? I fried their jackhammer, and they’d have to return to the warship for another. Worst case? We were pretty much already living it.

  Bridgebane’s voice barked across the com again. “You are now accountable for an attack on the military, three burn victims, and a damaged Type-4 Heavy Armor Hammer. Galactic records show no Captain T. Bailey and no cargo cruiser matching your ID numbers or called Endeavor. We’ve definitively identified the floating lab. We will fire on the bridge if you continue to resist.”

  Jax looked at me. “They can blow up the bridge and still recover the lab.”

  I watched the behemoth warship hovering over our starboard side. DW 12 definitely wasn’t behind us anymore. “If they board, we’re dead.”

  They’d consider us all repeat offenders simply for breaking out of prison. Now I had the vaccine heist and an attack on the military against me as well. There’d be no jury, no trial, and no more wasting food and space on a criminal like me. Jaxon was in the same position, but not for theft. I called what he’d done in the Outer Zones heroic. The galactic government called it murder—because they’d won.

  Shiori had never technically been arrested, but Fiona was a bio-criminal who’d created at least three major airborne plagues when she’d been fighting alongside the rebels out in 17, just like Jax. And Miko had cut off her own left hand to get out of shackles, so I was pretty damn sure she didn’t like being chained up.

  I glanced at my navigator. Miko’s glossy black hair, fine-boned features, and delicate-seeming beauty had landed her in a position she didn’t want to be in when she was nineteen years old. I could only guess at the details, but Miko’s sporadic comments about the violent appetites of powerful men spoke volumes. And Miko’s death sentence spoke volumes about her violent response. She’d escaped with her grandmother’s help the day before she was slated to die. Shiori went where Miko went, even if that was a galactic prison—or a cargo cruiser that looked like a good place to hide.

  Five years together now—Jax, Fiona, Miko, Shiori, and me—and my obsession with kids and their health was about to get my loyal band of misfits killed. If I hadn’t taken the lab, no galactic warships would have been out looking for us. There wouldn’t have been a Dark Watch frigate in Sector 14. Nathaniel Bridgebane would have been stalking someone else.

  I looked out the front and portside windows at the looming Black Widow and curled my hands into fists. Almost the entire view outside the ship was darkness, the stars that edged the rim of the black sphere so startlingly bright in comparison. I wondered how long it
would take before they were swallowed up, and then the whole Sector, and then the neighboring ones, too. How far could oblivion expand? Such nothingness was terrifying. I could almost feel its unholy pull.

  I should have stayed away from the vaccines—the super soldier serum. I should have known the almighty Galactic Overseer could never produce anything good or pure. But I’d been so set on giving the orphans on Starway 8 a defense against some of the things that killed in silence, since I could do very little about those that did it loudly.

  The ship lurched—the Dark Watch’s boarding cruiser latching on again with new equipment. Probably insulated this time. My tricks never worked twice.

  “I’m getting some of those vials before it’s too late,” Fiona said, racing for the door. “I can work backward and figure out the organics, I’m sure!”

  “Stay put.” My voice rang out loudly over the bridge. “I’ll get the samples. And the big guy.”

  Fiona pulled up short. At least everyone here listened to me. When I said stop, they stopped. When I said move, they moved. My father might have stripped me of my identity and tried to get rid of me when he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, but I’d obviously inherited his imperial vibe and knew how to use it, despite eighteen years of abandonment and four Sectors of separation.

  I looked at my crew one by one. At my friends. My real family. “Anyone preparing an escape pod when I get back can take their chances with the authorities. If you choose to stay on the ship, you’re dying today with the Endeavor, me, and a hell of a lot of super soldier serum. You have five minutes to decide.”

  Chapter 2

  I quickly worked my way through the air lock and vacuum seal at the back of the ship and then strode into the stolen lab, spying the massive man immediately. He was a head taller than anything else in the room, including the dozens of refrigerated shelving units jam-packed with vaccines.

  I took him in, surprised all over again. Not many people were naturally that big. Considering I’d found him with the lab, there was a good chance he’d been shot up with the super soldier mixture, and this was the result.

  He looked over at my entrance, his dark eyes seeming to swiftly scan for threats. Probably in his midforties, he was a ruggedly handsome black man. Short, curling hair was barely graying at his temples, but the grizzled streaks became more pronounced as they trailed down his thick, somewhat shaggy beard. The beard seemed neglected. It wasn’t neat and trim, as though he wanted it. It was bushy, as if it didn’t belong.

  Just like the previous times I’d come into the lab, he watched me with neither hostility nor apprehension, but I couldn’t say he looked exactly friendly, either. More like he was reserving judgment.

  Slowly, he lowered the vial he’d been inspecting, the movement drawing my eyes to the capped test tube in his hand. The liquid inside looked like blood.

  “Where did you find that?” I asked. Between jumps, I’d searched the lab and seen nothing of interest besides the false vaccines in their prepared syringes.

  He tilted his head toward one of the refrigerated units. “I just uncovered a whole tray of identical blood samples in there—under a false bottom.”

  I wanted to blame the sudden dread surging inside me on the frantically wailing alarms, but it felt more like the panic of being forcibly strapped down, pricked with needles, and examined, inside and out.

  My gaze darted back to the test tube. That label couldn’t possibly look familiar. Could it?

  Swallowing, I held out my hand. “May I?”

  He handed over the vial, and I turned it so that I could read the label. The bold-print Q.N. lunged out at me like a punch to the solar plexus.

  “This was part of the lab?” My breathing shortened as I tore my eyes away from my own initials and Sector 12 citizen matriculation number.

  The man crossed his arms over his massive chest. “An important part, considering how well it was hidden. Not many samples left.”

  “You just said there was a whole tray.” I felt light-headed. My heart hammered.

  “Ten vials, all labeled the same way. I didn’t find more of that same thing anywhere else.”

  From his tone, I knew he’d looked hard—and maybe not just here in this lab.

  Horror scraped through me as the word component stumbled out from somewhere deep in my memories of blurry-headed days in the Overseer’s lab—along with whispers of an enhancer. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I let my thoughts dive right into my childhood nightmare.

  My blood. Component. Enhancer.

  Terrible understanding clicked into place. They’d used one abomination to create another.

  I couldn’t stop the slight tremor in my fingers as I set the stolen piece of myself down on the table next to me, my pulse booming like the noises echoing around the cargo areas as Bridgebane’s lackeys worked on breaking into the Endeavor.

  “Is that something to worry about?” the big guy asked casually. If he hadn’t glanced in the direction of the central cargo bay right then, I would have thought he meant the blood, not the relentless hammering.

  A high-pitched sawing started up, and a second set of alarms squawked out of the central computer. My insides pitched sideways. We needed to hurry.

  “And that?” he added, his eyebrows lifting.

  “Yeah. Those…and a hell of a lot of other things.” In fact, I couldn’t think of one thing that wasn’t a problem right now. “Head to the bridge if you want to live.”

  I’d told Fiona I’d get some samples. It made me queasy to carry through on my promise now that I knew the serum was probably based on my blood, but I grabbed an insulated medical satchel stamped with the galactic government’s seal anyway and started filling it with false cure-alls from the nearest temperature-controlled unit. I didn’t take the sample of my blood or try to find the other vials. Drawing attention to them somehow seemed worse than leaving without them.

  While I gathered syringes, the man watched me, his gaze so heavy and intense that I was pretty sure he’d memorized the placement of every freckle on the bridge of my nose by the time I finished filling the bag and zipping it closed.

  I mentally gave him ten seconds before I turned on my heel and left. He could stay or go, but I hoped he’d come. Like Jax and Fiona, the somewhat prominent vowels and lightly rounded tones of his speech practically screamed Outer Zones, and he had the same slightly weathered look they did, as if once upon a time, he’d spent a lot of his life outdoors.

  Those weren’t the only things about him that appealed to me. His nonthreatening calm had just prevented me from completely losing it. It wasn’t every day you realized your mortal enemy had most likely made a weapon from your own blood. And with Bridgebane doing everything he could to get it back, my freak-out time was limited.

  I beckoned with my free hand. “Move it, Big Guy. We don’t have long.” His ten seconds were up, and it was time for him to squeeze his big, bearded, and possibly genetically modified self into an escape pod.

  Hesitating, he studied me with uncertain eyes. They shifted to the bag I was holding.

  I tightened my grip on the strap. “Look, I don’t care if you’re military or civilian or a scientist or a victim or whatever,” I said. “You came with the lab by accident. The Dark Watch is about to board my ship, so unless you’re one of them, you’d better get off it if you want to live.”

  “Are you offering me a pod?” he asked.

  I nodded, wincing as what sounded like a different saw scraped its serrated teeth right over my frayed nerves. “Let’s go.”

  “You take a pod,” he said, not moving. “I can’t let those Dark Watch goons get the lab back.”

  Not only did he sound like a rebel from one of the trampled Sectors, but he acted like one, too. I knew I liked him.

  “They won’t,” I told him. “I know exactly how to take it out of thei
r reach. And a captain doesn’t abandon ship.”

  Something in his eyes glinted, as though he might have approved.

  With that, I thought we’d reached an understanding, but as I turned to leave, he leaped forward and snatched the medical bag from my hand. He’d moved fast. Super soldier fast.

  I swung around with a glare. “I need that.” If Fiona opted for a pod and actually managed to escape, I had no doubt she could eventually figure out how to use the samples for something good, like helping invalids left crippled by the war.

  Shaking his head, he tossed the bag onto the metal lab table behind him, blocking my access to it with his huge body. I tried twice to grab it again, but he was incredibly quick and like a freaking building—impossible to get around.

  “You’re wasting time,” I ground out, unable to ignore the screeching that was coming from the starboard door. It was getting louder. They were probably most of the way through.

  “Get it later…if there is one.” He jerked his hairy chin toward the exit in a get-the-hell-out-of-here type of way.

  Metal cried out as though in pain, and the Endeavor gave a sickening groan. Later seemed entirely unlikely right now, especially given my plans.

  To hell with it. I didn’t reach for the bag again.

  “Let’s go,” Big Guy said, herding me toward the door.

  I was pretty sure that was my line, but we were headed in the same direction anyway.

  We worked our way through the vacuum seal and air lock, closing them behind us again before hurrying toward the bridge, our footsteps accompanied by a deafening chorus of ship-wide alerts, hammers, and saws. The bridge doors slid open at my voice command, and all four of my crew members looked over at Big Guy and me—even Shiori, who couldn’t see.

  Emotion lodged in my chest. This was it—and not one of them was positioned over a pod hatch, let alone setting up for a scrambled, last-hope escape in one. They’d chosen, and I couldn’t tell if my heart soared or sank. It definitely swelled.

  “Where are the samples?” Fiona asked.