It was suicide to do anything, but Kylie still itched to make a move. Stay the course, be patient. That was what was best, but self-restraint and Kylie weren’t exactly the best of friends.
Grayson was waiting outside Kylie’s cell, standing with his arms clasped behind his back. He didn’t smile at her, but he didn’t look away, either. Instead, he met her gaze head on. “I told you, you could be rewarded if you played nice.”
Kylie stepped into her cell and waited for her handcuffs to be removed. She wished Grayson wasn’t there to watch and her cheeks flamed red with embarrassment. “Why’d you do it?”
“To observe you. So, you’ll realize there are benefits to good behavior.” Grayson stepped into her cell instead of raising the stasis field. “So, you’d take me at my word.”
There was a time Kylie would’ve believed him without the need for proof. “You told the truth. Good for you. I’m just glad you didn’t hurt them.”
“They’ve given us no need to, so far. I do hope you realize that there’s no way to escape or commandeer this ship.”
“You think I would put my crew’s life at risk like that? I can read the odds. I haven’t seen any of your SSF assassins, but based on what happened on the freighter, I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.”
“We don’t employ assassins,” Grayson said. “Standing orders from the general are for you to stand before him at Trio. He made no mention of your crew. You might not be expendable, but they are.”
He was couth as ever. “Should I thank you for your fair warning?”
Grayson smirked, but sadness lingered in his eyes. “I wouldn’t expect such a thing, but it had to be said, Kylie. Play ball and things will go your way.”
He still said her name with a softened undertone that Kylie had almost forgotten about. With nothing left to say that would benefit her, she bit her tongue.
When he exited the prison cell, Grayson hit the panel to bring the grav field back online. His head hung low, and, Kylie thought he might say something out of character. Instead, she stepped forward. “Grayson.”
“We chose our sides a long time ago.” Sadness and anger mingled in his eyes. “So, let’s not have a conversation neither of us wants to have.”
He pulled down the hem of his jacket taught and pivoted sharply before walking away.
Grayson never looked back, and Kylie drew her lips into her mouth. For a moment, she had almost been vulnerable with him.
It left her feeling cold.
GENERAL SAMUEL
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.8947 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Privateer ship Imperial Dawn
REGION: Outer Trio System, Silstrand Alliance
Kylie had been in a deep sleep when the ship’s klaxon sounded, announcing the dump from FTL to normal space. The Trio System was a frequent stop for the Dauntless—being only five and a half day jump from Gedri—and she had a good idea where the Imperial Dawn would dock. It wouldn’t be long before she met the general once more.
Where Gedri was a half-forgotten system—one that only the Silstrand Alliance had laid a nominal claim to—Trio was the opposite. Like Gedri, it too sat on the coreward edge of Silstrand Alliance space, staring across the Yosemite Gulf at the Scipio Federation. But where Gedri was a haven for illegal trade and smuggling, Trio was a bastion of the Silstrand Alliance’s civilization.
Its interstellar commerce hubs bustled with trade, and the SSF made sure the system was secure and well-ordered. Excepting one incursion by Padre’s pirate ships a few years ago, nothing bad ever happened there.
It was a peace enforced by the point of a gun—or the point of the space force’s vast navy. It was at one of their bases, which ringed the system, where Kylie expected the Imperial Dawn to dock.
She rolled over, attempting to get back to sleep. It would be many hours, at best, before the ship reached any port, and she wanted to be well-rested for whatever was to come.
Still, old habits were hard to break, and Kylie thought of all the bad ones, and scarce few of the good ones, as the hours rolled by—wishing she could be on the bridge, confirming approach vectors and reviewing insystem ship traffic.
Eventually, as sleep began to overtake her, another klaxon sounded, and she felt docking thrusters fire. Either the ship had jumped further insystem than normally allowed, or they were approaching a station she didn’t know about.
Either way, very soon, it would be time to face the music. Too bad Kylie didn’t even know what melody it was that was playing.
It was someone else’s dance.
When armed Alliance soldiers came to collect her, Kylie finally recognized a face from aboard the damaged Titan-1 freighter. “Well, if it isn’t you?”
The woman with the tight ponytail didn’t flinch. Her narrow face could stand a rearranging and Kylie wanted to volunteer for the job.
“Stand back. Hands in front of you.”
Kylie did as she was asked, but didn’t like it much. The cuffs dug into her skin as they were locked on much tighter than they needed to be. She cringed as the female guard shoved her forward. “Move!”
“What did I do to piss you off?”
“One of my friends is laid up in the medbay because you dropped a crate on his head.”
Kylie turned down the hall, but the female soldier didn’t let her get too far ahead. She kept a firm hand on her shoulder. “They were trying to kill me first,” Kylie said.
“They were trying to subdue you. Not kill you.”
“No one told me that, did they? Like it’s my fault your bosses keep everything hush hush? Far as I knew, I was fighting for my life.”
“Don’t push your luck.” The woman gave Kylie another shove, and she stumbled forward.
Kylie recovered and continued walking down the narrow corridor. A few twists and turns later and they arrived at the docking bay.
Inside the bay, her crew stood single file with Winter at the front.
Nadine tried to glance back at Kylie, almost as though she sensed her presence. A soldier pressed his rifle against the back of her neck. “Eyes front, Ms. Devonire.”
“Keep your hands to yourself,” Kylie fumed. “That’s a princess you’re mistreating.”
The officer snorted. “Not anymore she isn’t. Just another cheap junker like the rest of you.”
Cheap? Junker? Kylie’s face twitched, and she itched to wipe the floor with him.
The officer glanced back at Kylie and his finger slipped off the rifle’s trigger guard, hovering a centimeter over the trigger. Grayson, from his position at the front of the docking bay, didn’t miss a beat. He lifted a finger to silence the soldier, who pulled his rifle back, but said nothing in support of Kylie.
Figured.
Winter tensed. He threw a quick glance at the soldier and then down at his weapon, Kylie didn’t miss his intent. All the guards were armed. There were enough weapons for all of them, but she didn’t think her crew would make it out alive. Getting off this ship would just land them in a fight for their lives across what she suspected would be a military installation.
The four of them would be dead in minutes.
Kylie wished she could tell Winter they only wanted her alive. Why bother transferring them all to the station? Kylie held her breath as a transmission from the station piped over the room’s audible systems.
“Imperial Dawn, your passengers are cleared to disembark. General Samuel sends his greetings and is waiting for you in Ready Room Three. Welcome back, Colonel.”
“Thank you,” Grayson replied as he palmed the control that opened the docking bay door. As it slid open, Kylie peered outside, but the view left much to be desired. All she could see was the security checkpoint and a few more soldiers.
All at once, everything around her erupted. Winter slammed his elbow into the side of a guard’s head. The guard flew to the side and Winter grabbed his gun, training it on Grayson. “Nobody move or the boss-man loses all his tiny little brain cells!”
Ky
lie’s heart leaped into her throat. She lunged forward to get between the guards and Winter, but her escort kept a firm grip on her arms.
Nadine screamed, and the soldier guarding her wrapped his arm tight around her throat. Rogers spun and grabbed the weapon from the woman behind him, and Kylie cried out. This wouldn’t play out well, not at all, but Winter had forced their hand. Damn him.
“Winter!”
This wasn’t what she wanted. This wasn’t going to work; even if they got off the station, they’d never get out on another ship. There was probably half an SSF fleet docked here. If Winter thought they could handle that, then he really had lost his marbles.
Grayson spoke calmly and quietly to Winter, but his eyes fell on Kylie. “You don’t want to do this.”
Kylie could only see the back of Winter’s head, but she could imagine how twitchy his face must have been. He probably had that whites-around-the-eyes look that made him downright scary.
“Oh yeah? I think I’m doing exactly what it is I want to do.”
“You may want to look behind you. We have Ms. Devonire by the throat. There’s a gun to her head. If you don’t drop yours, we’re going to take her out. Even if you get off the ship, even if you kill these guards and me, you’ll never make it off the station. You’re going to end up back in prison, or the incinerator, where you belong.”
Nadine was gasping for air and Kylie’s blood pressure shot through the ceiling. She was sure the boys would lower their weapons. There was no way that Winter, and especially Rogers, would trade Nadine’s life for freedom.
Kylie was half right. Rogers handed his gun over to the guard and raised his hands. In retaliation, one of the soldiers sucker punched him, and he fell to the floor where the boot of another solider mashed his face into the deckplate.
Rogers choked, and Kylie let out a long breath. “Let him go.”
Grayson’s eyes didn’t even meet Kylie’s. Instead, they remained firmly on Winter. “That’s up to him. What the going to be?”
Winter hesitated. He didn’t lower his weapon.
“Winter!” Kylie hissed.
He wasn’t going to give up. Kylie’s eyes darted back and forth between Winter and Nadine as she struggled to get free. Her back was arched as she reached back to claw at the man’s head. If the soldier didn’t let her go soon, things would be bad. Real bad.
If Winter wouldn’t give up his gun, it was time to make him.
In a split second, Kylie twisted her arm free and grabbed her hidden spork, driving it deep into her handler’s ear. The woman screamed as blood gushed out and ran down the side of her head. She doubled over in pain and Kylie grabbed her pulse rifle.
Without warning, she fired it into the back of the soldier who was holding Nadine. The man fell to his knees, and Nadine collapsed, coughing, and stroking her throat as if she couldn’t breathe. Kylie stepped beside her and glanced down. The purple color was draining from her cheeks.
She’d be okay. Thank God.
Kylie aimed the rifle at the guard who had his boot on Rogers’s face, so he couldn’t take the shot at Winter. “This isn’t the way. There is no way out of here for us, don’t risk the lives of our friends and crew to get out of here. I know you’re afraid…” she addressed Winter.
“If we don’t get out now, we’re never free. Damn you, Kylie.” He spat, his weapon never wavering from Grayson’s head.
“We don’t sacrifice the crew to free ourselves. We’re better than that.” They might be scoundrels, but Kylie would never abandon her crew, not a single one of them.
Winter’s voice strained. “I need you with me on this, Kylie.”
She shook her head. “Never going to happen. We don’t leave without them. Let me find a way out of this for all of us. Trust me. I’ve never left you high and dry. No matter what happens, I would never stop fighting for you.”
Kylie held her breath for the two seconds that followed. She wasn’t sure what would happen, but Winter slowly lowered his gun. Grayson took it from him with a nod. A second later, four guards rushed in and grabbed Winter, pushing him to the deck and shackling him hand and foot. Kylie had no sympathy for him. He had brought it on himself and every member of her crew.
She wouldn’t soon forget that.
One of the soldiers took the rifle from Kylie, and another forced her down to the deck and checked her over for more hidden weapons. So much for gratitude. Kylie craned her head to look back at the crying woman with the spork jammed into her ear.
The officer’s bulging eyes would have burned a hole right through her if they could. “You, crazy bitch!”
Kylie smirked. Sometimes gratitude came in all shapes and sizes. She grinned as two soldiers took her by the arms and lifted her back up.
Kylie was escorted out last and Grayson shook his head as he took her by the arm. “You never learn, do you?”
“You should be thanking me for saving your life.”
“You should be thanking me for not taking out your crew.”
They passed through a long corridor, through a security checkpoint, and out onto the station’s busy dock. More soldiers appeared and surrounded Kylie and her crew. Kylie wrenched away from one who grabbed her shoulder.
Grayson shook his head. “Will you ever make things easy?”
“Probably not, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.” Kylie’s voice betrayed her more than she thought it would. She gave Grayson a sweet smile as she was led away. Another prison cell was in her future, but Kylie welcomed this one.
She was in no rush to meet the general. No rush at all.
* * * * *
General Samuel wasn’t a man Kylie could forget but was a man she had hoped never to see again. When he stepped into Ready Room Three, Kylie could have recognized the man by his deep, overgrown eyebrows alone. Did the man not know about grooming combs? Tall and slender, like every man in the SSF, he stopped at the end of the table and scowled down at her.
“Rhoads,” General Samuels greeted her in a gruff voice, just the one she remembered.
Kylie wiggled her fingers at him. “I’d stand, but your hospitality service here handcuffed me to the table.” She swiveled in her seat to throw a glower at the armed guards standing by her side.
“You blame them after what you and your team just pulled? You seriously injured one of my officers with a plastic utensil.”
“It was a spork,” Kylie interjected.
“And,” he continued at a louder volume, “the other officer is in critical condition.”
“There wasn’t a low-power setting, sir. I had to act fast before my crew was dead. Maybe even Colonel Grayson, too. Sorry, my crew panicked, but we’re not used to your rules and law. We live outside it. When you corner a wild animal—”
Samuels grunted. “Still would have us believe you can’t be tamed, Kylie? Is that your game?”
Kylie blinked her eyes. “It’s not a game. I just want my ship back. I want my crew. I want to know why you came for me after all these years when before—well, to be frank—you just didn’t care what I did or where I went.”
“I’m sorry you think that,” Samuel muttered. “Samantha, dim the lights and pull up the images.”
“You named the division AI after yourself?”
“A coincidence,” Samuel said as the lights dimmed.
Yeah, right…
A young woman’s face hovered in midair. Pretty, with plain features and fine blonde hair. Her bangs rested right above her eyebrows, and there was something angelic about her appearance—even if her green eyes held a great deal of distress.
“My daughter. Two weeks ago, she went missing.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I don’t know what that has to do with me,” Kylie said.
Samuel paced back and forth as he spoke. “We have every reason to believe that Maverick has her. We don’t know where he’s keeping her, but it’s imperative that we get her back. That we find her. She’s not well and needs a dangerous operation soon, or
she won’t survive. Her nano isn’t able to keep up.”
Maverick, the crime lord who was the real power behind the Gedri System. He was ruthless and kept the other crime lords and pirate cartels in line. Without him, Gedri would fall apart—well, fall apart more.
He was also Kylie’s boss and was expecting her to bring a sweet haul in soon—what she had hoped the Titan-1 would be. A lot of junkers worked for Maverick, but not everyone got in to see him—not like her. Somehow, that information had landed in the SSF’s hands, and now she’d bet that they wanted her to do their dirty work.
“I’m sorry for your daughter’s condition, but how do you know Maverick is responsible?”
“Surveillance vids outside her home, and from where she was taken. We tracked his men to Gedri. There’s no other explanation.”
“And now you want me to betray him? You think I’m stupid enough to get an entire system’s worth of angry crime lords and pirates chasing me across the galaxy?” Kylie shook her head. “Even if I was that stupid, I’m not suicidal.”
It went beyond that—not that she was going to share the details with Samuel. Once, Maverick had owned her, and he set her free—she had a price to pay, a big one, and she didn’t want to betray him. If she did, his punishment would be far worse than any prison Samuel could throw her into.
“Maybe you don’t care about yourself or your own freedom, but I guess you care about your crew: Rogers, Nadine, Winter. From what I see in their records, they all have fairly checkered pasts but none more so than Winter. He has too much on his record for another warning. His illegal boarding of the Titan-1…” Samuel said.
Kylie blew out a long breath, desperate not to take his bait. “You mean the bait freighter that you put out there for us to find? It was derelict. We have a salvage license from the GFF; you had no right to arrest us for that!” Anger rolled over her tongue.
“Cut the shit, Kylie. That ship was outside Gedri’s heliopause. Your license ends where that star’s foul wind stops. You could have flown on by. You didn’t.”
“It’s entrapment. Even for you, it’s low.”
Close Proximity - An Aeon14 Space Opera Adventure (Perilous Alliance) Page 4