“How long does it take to warm them up?” Grayson asked and saw the Kylie’s head whip around. He assumed she was staring at him—though it was hard to tell with the featureless face of her armor’s helmet.
Grayson grimaced. “Sorry, the SSF doesn’t’ really let reactors go cold.”
“Will that be fast enough?” Winter asked from the weapons console.
“No, it really won’t,” Rogers said with a shake of his head.
“Can you take that helmet off?” Winter asked. “It’s kinda freaking me out.”
“What can I do?” Grayson asked, trying to change the subject.
Grayson swallowed. Kylie was pissed, and in that armor, there wasn’t a lot he could do if she decided to take her anger out on his him. He thought about a response, but Jerrod sent him a not so subtle mental feeling to do as he was told and keep his mouth shut.
“Aft clamp is cut, ten seconds on the fore,” Rogers said.
“Okay, hitting the chem boosters in….five, four, three, two, one!”
The ship’s inertial dampeners were not yet online, and the bridge rattled and shook as the chemical boosters flared against Laerdo station. Grayson hoped the mercs hadn’t breached the station’s airlock yet. If they had, they’d be really sorry.
Rogers brought up the ship’s aft optical cameras, and they got a good view of the curved docking ring glowing red hot and venting atmosphere as they pulled away.
“Shit, they’re never going to let us dock here again,” Rogers said with a shake of his head.
Grayson nodded and sat at Nadine’s station, flipping the system to run a full active scan. They needed to know the instant the station powered up weapons—or sent patrol craft to shoot them down.
“We could do a crash initialization of the engines,” Rogers said from his seat. “Could have them warmed up in fifteen minutes.”
“Turrets are online, they’re tracking us,” Grayson said. “Not firing yet, though.”
“You’re running out of ships to weave through,” Grayson pointed at a gap in the docked ships ahead. “We’re going to be wide open.”
Grayson watched, impressed as she tucked the bulky junker in close to the station and arced around the station’s superstructure, clipping a few protrusions as she hugged it.
“You wouldn’t believe what traffic control is saying on the comm channels,” Winter said with a grin. “Should I pipe it through?”
A chorus of ‘NO’ sounded both audibly and over the Link.
“Okay, okay, your loss,” Winter shrugged.
“We have company!” Grayson called out as two cutters approached from opposite directions. The patrol craft was small and sleek, just large enough for a pair of pilots and a lot of firepower.
“Tracking them,” Winter said. “Can I fire on them, Captain?”
“Did you do it?” Rogers asked. “Kill Maverick?”
“Why did he do that?” Rogers’s voice raised an octave. “What purpose…what…?”
“If we get out of here,” Winter said as he fired the ship’s forward beam at the first patrol craft. The charged electrons were shrugged aside by the ship’s shields, but Winter fired a pair of lasers at the ship and weakened its shields before firing another beam. That one penetrated, and an explosion flared on the patrol craft’s port side. It listed to starboard and fell back.
Winter tried the same tactic with the other cutter, but it avoided his shots rather than take them on its shields.
“More company!” Grayson called out. “Four larger ships, look like they have some serious armament.”
“Black Crow marauders,” Winter said as he leaned over Nadine’s console to look at Grayson’s display.
“What the hell?” Rogers craned his head around to peer at Kylie. “You can’t be serious! We’re too close to mass; we’ll be smooshed in there!”
Rogers swore and bent over his console, running through local dark layer maps, looking for a clear pocket and a safe vector.
“That’s one hell of a bounty Harken’s put on our heads,” Winter grunted. “She’s gonna have the whole system after us.”
A beam from one of the Black Crow ships hit their shields, followed by a trio of missiles. The bridge shuddered as gravity systems tried to compensate while running on backup power. She glanced at Grayson, sitting in Nadine’s seat and her stomach turned at the sight of the SSF colonel in her girl’s chair. Damnit, Nadine. Just damnit.
“Got it! Got it! Got it!” Rogers cried out in rapid succession. “Give me helm; I’ll get us in there!”
* * * * *
Kylie relinquished control of the ship to her pilot and felt her stomach twist as the ship dumped into the dark layer with minimal shielding and grav systems on low power. They were safe, they were away, but a piece of Kylie wasn’t. A piece of her was lost with Nadine and whoever her captor was.
“No one came in after us—that I can see with this ship’s scan,” Grayson said.
“We’ll get company real fast once the Black Crow figures out what we did,” Winter said. “Not a lot of places we could have gone, or where we can come out.”
Kylie swallowed hard.
“When this is over, the SSF can help clear your name,” Grayson said.
Kylie laughed bitterly.
“What happened with Maverick?” Winter asked.
Kylie shook her head.
Rogers turned to Kylie, though he kept one eye on the forward view, black as ever in the dark layer. It was on all their minds—one stray blob of dark matter and they were done for.
“You need to explain this a lot better than you have. Where’s Nadine? You said a bounty hunter has her?”
Kylie held up a hand.
The crew nodded silently and waited as she released the seal on the outer stealth layer and peeled it off, throwing it over the back of her chair. She sent the signal for the under-layer to separate from the helmet and felt it unseal.
Here goes, she thought to herself and took as deep a breath as she could with the rebreather in her mouth.
She slid her thumbs under the edge of the helmet and peeled it off her head, gagging, but not puking—thank the stars—as the rebreather came out of her mouth.
The inside of the helmet was soaked with her sweat, and her hair was plastered to her head. She knew she looked like shit, but it felt good to take a deep breath, which she did, followed by several more.
She looked at each of the three men and leaned against her console. “Everything went bad from the start. Maverick was suspicious and had the Dauntless boarded. Just when we got him on our side, this guy entered. Cloaked and armed like a damn mech. He took Maverick out—”
“So Maverick is dead?” Grayson asked with wide eyes. “He’s the real power behind the GFF—”
“Down, but probably not dead. He has tech that will heal him. Though I kinda wonder if Harken will let that happen.”
“What else happened? What about Nadine?” Rogers asked.
Kylie glanced at him with forlorn eyes. “She took a bullet meant for me. Close range.”
“And you just left here there?” Roger’s voice was almost a yell.
“Shit,” Winter ran his hands through his hair. “She’s—”
“No, of course, I didn’t! This bounty hunter guy—I don’t know his name, he didn’t leave a calling card—he took her. He promised to heal her aboard his ship if I get him one thing.” Kylie glanced at Grayson and studied his expression. She needed to see it. Needed to see what he did when she announced what was going on. “He wants Lana.”
Grayson blinked but did little else. Still, given his poker face, she took it as surprise. “Lana?”
Kylie nodded. “Funny thing is, Maverick had no idea who she is, but he fingered Harken did. Said she’d been running a project out in the disk. And the bounty hunter, he said a lot of people want to get their hands on Lana.” She stepped up closer to Grayson. “Want to tell me why this is?”
“She’s the daughter of a high-ranking general in the Silstrand Alliance. Why do you think? A bargaining chip, most likely, but you’re looking at me like somehow I’m a bad guy in all this.”
“Are you?” Kylie asked quietly with an even keel. “Is there something you want to tell us, Grayson? Or do I need to find a way to rip into your head and pull the information out? Is that the only way I’ll ever know if you’re telling the truth.”
“I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” Kylie’s nostrils flared. “You don’t know what I am. Nadine is gone, this guy is holding her life over us, and if we don’t deliver, we might never get her back. And now the GFF thinks I killed Maverick.”
“You? Why do they think that?” Rogers asked.
“Because I was the one they found over his body—and like I said, that’s exactly what Harken wants everyone to think. What I did get from Maverick points to Harken as the one who took Lana, and she sure as hell doesn’t want it to get out where she is.”
“Harken…” Winter muttered and shook his head. “Shit, she’s more brutal than Maverick any day of the week.”
“I guess you’re lucky to have gotten out of there at all,” Grayson said.
Kylie ground her heel into the floor. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?” Grayson asked.
“Whatever I need to do to get Nadine back,” Kylie said.
Grayson’s eyebrows rose. “If you go against the SSF and General Samuel’s orders—”
“Where were you these last few hours? Everything’s gone nuts! One of our own is missing, and we’re going to do what we need to get her back.” Kylie glanced at Winter. “Sequester Grayson to his quarters.”
“Happily,” Winter grabbed Grayson’s arm in a vise-like grip as Kylie reached into the colonel’s jacket and pulled out his pistols.
“You can’t do this, Kylie.” Grayson attempted to shrug Winter off. “If you do this—”
“You know how good this armor is. I could beat you into paste—and a part of me really wants to. Go quietly or…” she let the threat hang.
“He helped us,” Rogers said. “He went to bat for us. Put himself in harm’s way to get us back to the Dauntless.”
So, Rogers was his buddy now? “I said lock him in his quarters!” Kylie ordered. “I’m not going to say it again. When it’s done, get back here. We’re not out of this mess yet.”
Winter tapped Grayson on the back. “You heard her. Move.”
Grayson took a deep breath and took a step toward Kylie—nose to nose. “You’re making a big mistake.”
“I excel at those,” Kylie said and pushed Grayson back into Winter. “Get him out of my sight.”
* * * * *
Winter held the door open, and Grayson stepped inside his quarters. He didn’t say anything, but sat down on the bed and crossed his arms.
“She’ll calm down,” Winter said. “The captain always does. Sometimes she just needs a cooling off period. Untwist your panties and just let it happen.”
Grayson remembered that about Kylie all too well. That wasn’t what surprised him—what surprised him was Winter himself. “And then what?”
“Then maybe we can find a way to rescue Nadine and return Lana.”
“If you don’t, Winter…” Grayson let his voice trail off and met Winter’s gaze. “You must impress the importance of that to Kylie. Since I can’t, you’ll have to.”
“Winter, get back up here!” Kylie’s voice came over the ship’s address system.
“Duty calls. I’ll do my best with Kylie and rescuing the girls—but not for you.” Winter shut the door and locked it from the outside.
Grayson leaned back and rested against the wall before crossing his arms.
Jerrod finally broke his silence and said privately,
Jerrod sighed.
* * * * *
“We’re exiting the DL in two minutes,” Kylie said as Winter entered the bridge. “Get on weapons; I have a feeling we’re gonna come out hot.”
“I can’t believe we’re still alive, in the DL this close to a star,” Rogers muttered. “Let’s ne
ver have to do this again.”
“I’ve got something on scan,” Kylie said as she re-ran the ship’s sensors over the area where something pinged.
“Mass?” Rogers asked.
“Maybe…crap. It’s a ship, matches one of the Black Crow profiles. It’s only a kilometer behind us.”
“Dumping out now,” Rogers said and deactivated the graviton emitters that held the ship in the dark layer.
As the ship began to transition, Kyle saw something else move on scan. It wasn’t moving in the fixed trajectory of a ship in the dark layer—the reactionless, frictionless sublayer of space that made FTL possible. The thing she saw looked fluid, sinuous, and it turned in the DL. Nothing could turn in the DL; it was impossible.
Then the stars of normal space snapped into view around them, and the image was gone.
Kylie sat stunned for several seconds. What had she seen? What was that thing?
“Readying weapons,” Winter announced. “When those bastards come out of the DL, they won’t know what hit them.”
But the Black Crows ship didn’t appear. Kylie switched from passive scan and did an active sweep. Still nothing. Rogers caught her eye, and she saw that his were wide as saucers. He must have been watching scan, too.
“We never, ever do that again,” he whispered.
Kylie could only nod silently, certain that they had somehow avoided a very messy death in the dark layer.
After taking another moment to regain her composure, she triangulated their precise location, a position four AU outsystem from Jericho.
“Rogers,” Kylie’s voice cracked as she spoke and she cleared her throat. “Rogers, set a course for the nav point I marked. Best speed we can manage while keeping our engine wash pointed away from anywhere inhabited.”
A NEW PLAN
STELLAR DATE: 08.38.8947 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Salvage ship Dauntless
REGION: Near Townsend, Gedri System, Silstrand Alliance
Kylie made a pot of coffee, but it didn’t taste right. Even after putting in the right about of sugar and powdered creamer, it was worse than her usual brew. About to dump it, Kylie glanced up when she heard footsteps come in. “You sure you need coffee right now?” Rogers asked. “I think you should be reaching for tea. Or a sedative.”
Close Proximity - An Aeon14 Space Opera Adventure (Perilous Alliance) Page 16