Scavenger's Mission (The SkyRyders Book 1)

by Liza O'Connor

  Alisha looked almost happy for a moment, then her mood turned to absolute gloom. “Scavengers are never allowed to be Ryders.”

  “True, but you’ve never been charged, and technically what you’ve been doing is recovery, not scavenging, since you were recovering goods for the rightful owners.”

  “I don’t think that will matter,” Alisha mumbled.

  “When it comes time to take the ethics test, it will make all the difference.”

  She stared up at him in confusion. “You’d do this for me? Even after all the things I’ve said?”

  “Even after.” Noticing their location, he turned her around and started back toward the apartment. This was not a neighborhood to wander about at night.

  “Even after I escaped from your custody?”

  “Especially after your vertical liftoff from the compound. That was incredible flying.”

  Alisha smiled. “I’d never done it before in such tight quarters. It was a little scary,” she admitted.

  “It was a little scary to watch.”

  “So you must have automatic perimeter surveillance. Can I see my takeoff sometime?”

  Logan couldn’t help but smile. Flying was more than a way to earn money for Alisha—it was her obsession.

  He pulled out his palm pilot and retrieved the file. “You can see this when you tell me how you got out of my room.”

  Alisha’s smile disappeared. “I’m really sorry about that. More than anything else, I wish it hadn’t been necessary, but I had arranged to buy the medicine today. If I didn’t arrive, it would have been sold to someone else.”

  “So how’d you do it?”

  Alisha sighed and pulled the bio-scan from her jacket pocket.

  Logan looked at the object. “It’s a bio-scan,” he said, still not understanding how that had gotten her out. She hadn’t had it with her the night before. He had searched her pack, and her flight suit.

  “I took your handprint while you were sleeping,” she said, still holding out the bio-scan.

  Logan snatched the tablet from her hand and opened it. There were three files, labeled “gps”, “nm”, and “cce”.

  “Which is mine?” he demanded, trying to hide the anger rising inside him.

  “NM. Stood for ‘nice man’.”

  “Should have been SF for stupid fool,” he snapped as he brought up the hand-replicator. Damn, she not only had a print, but a hell of a good one. The hand imprint was half an inch deep.

  “You made this while I slept?”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Did you drug me?” he asked, unable to believe someone could press his hand a half-inch deep into a plasma screen without waking him up.

  “No, I was just careful. I warmed it up so it wouldn’t feel cold to the touch.”

  “Did you make a copy of this?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I promise you. I wouldn’t do something like that. I just took it to get out of your room.”

  “Then why do you still have it? Why didn’t you destroy it?”

  “There’s been no time. I’ll destroy it now!” she said, and reached over and hit the delete button.

  Once satisfied his print was gone, he closed the bio-scan and put it in his vest pocket.

  “I need that,” Alisha protested.

  “No you don’t,” Logan snapped. “In case you’ve already forgotten, you are starting a new career, and it doesn’t include grand larceny. You are aware that stealing the print of a law officer carries a mandatory twenty-year jail term?”

  “If used in committing a crime.”

  “And how the hell would you know that?” That she had evidently researched the penalties against stealing prints worried him.

  “Gramps was a Ryder. I know the code book backward and forward.”

  Logan stopped and grabbed her by the arm. “In that case, you know that the penalty for flying without a license is not two hundred dollars.”

  Alisha looked down at her feet. “I do. But it was all I could afford to leave. I needed the rest to buy the medicine.”

  “So you were trying to bribe me?”

  “No, I knew you would never take a bribe. I hoped you would think I didn’t know the actual fine was seven thousand dollars.”

  “And what did you think I’d do with the money?”

  “Just throw it in the equipment kitty.”

  Now Logan was really pissed. That had been exactly what he had thought and precisely what he had done.

  Chapter 11

  Alisha was pretty certain her confession of stealing his handprint had just cost her the opportunity to become a SkyRyder, but she had to tell him. The truth was bound to come out eventually, and right now he really seemed to want to help her and her grandfather. Later, he might not feel so generous.

  Exactly why he wanted to help her, she hadn’t a clue. He’d looked horrified when she’d first misunderstood his offer as a marriage proposal, yet when she had broken down, he’d hugged her, then he’d endured both her crying and beating on his chest.

  Through all her raging, he’d stayed calm. In fact, he was still calm, but she could tell that he was really pissed off about the handprint. When they reached her grandfather’s door, she paused and gathered up enough nerve to look him in the eye.

  “I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in the last month. I know that. And my only defense is that I made them with good intentions, but I know that doesn’t change the wrongness of my actions. If your offer to help me still stands, I will most gratefully accept it, and promise never to give you a minute’s worth of regret for doing so. Still, if the full disclosure of my actions makes you think that I haven’t the ethics to be a good Ryder, that’s on me. And if you don’t want to have dinner with us, I’ll understand that as well.”

  It seemed a billion years before the colonel replied.

  “I stand by my offer, but by doing so, I’m sticking my neck out for you. If I get you into the SkyRyders, and you pull even one questionable stunt, you’ll ruin my career. You obviously know the regulations. I expect you to follow them.”

  Alisha smiled as relief flowed through her tense body. “I promise, you’ll never be sorry you did this.”

  ***

  When Alisha raised the possibility of him rescinding his offer, Logan was tempted. His change of mind had nothing to do with her attitude or the ethical gray areas in which she had dabbled. What bothered him was the way she made him feel.

  She had talent, and yes, he believed, despite much evidence to the contrary, she was an ethical person. However, creating a situation in which he would be around her twenty-four hours a day, every day, was as good as wondering if there would be a train wreck if he uncoupled the train tracks. Which, he observed to himself, was an expression Alisha wouldn’t even understand, never having even seen a train.

  With a sinking premonition of disaster, he held to his offer and let them both into Daniel Kane’s room.

  “Gramps, the colonel is getting me into the Corps! Once I’m a Ryder, I’ll be able to buy your medication on my health plan.” She knelt down beside her grandfather and looked up into his tired old face. “Won’t you please take your medicine? I won’t do anything bad again, I promise you.”

  “Don’t promise me. It’s the colonel’s career that’s on the line, not mine,” Daniel Kane said.

  “She’s already given me her promise, sir,” Logan said, taking the second chair. “I’ll be holding her to her word.”

  “Good.”

  “To be clear, acceptance into the SkyRyders is strictly based on merit now. I can’t get her in. I can only get her a chance to apply. Admission will be based on her flying, her test scores, and her passing a battery of psych tests that are used to weed out the unstable and unfit.”

  “We would’ve been a better Corps if we’d had that in my time,” the old man muttered.

  Alisha sat on the floor by her grandfather, her brow furrowed with worry.


  Her gramps seemed to instantly sense her distress, and stroked her head. “What’s the matter, Alisha?”

  “What if I fail something?”

  “Why on Earth would you fail?”

  “The ethics part. What if they ask me if I stole anything?”

  Logan froze. She meant his print. If she confessed she’d stolen his print while he slept, it would kill his career in a second.

  “Tell you what. I’ll give you the tests first. If a problem shows up, then we’ll know.”

  He noticed the look Kane gave him. The old man knew he wasn’t just being generous. If a problem arose, he could rescind his offer.

  With the difficulties and confessions of crimes behind them, Logan enjoyed the evening immensely. Kane had forty years of service and a wealth of stories to tell. He had been one of the first flyers of the SkyRyders.

  “I started out life as a pilot in the Terror Wars. We dominated the skies back then. We had planes that could do anything—except fly without fuel. We never imagined that ISIS could destroy the vast resources of oil deep underground. Once it was gone, our ability to retaliate was severely diminished. Naturally, our government and other countries responded with nuclear weapons, destroying all their oil reservoirs as well. The blasts changed the weather patterns all over the world, creating violent weather and destructively strong winds unthinkable before that day.”

  The old man laughed. “I know you take it for granted today, but back then, no one could conceive of living in a place where winds never stopped blowing. Well, no one except for the people in Nederland and a few other places. Thank God we had already begun building wind farms, or I’d be telling this story in the dark.”

  “Was flying a plane anything like windcatching?” Logan asked. He’d never met an original flyer before.

  “Not at all,” laughed Kane. “They only selected us because we were available and had a good understanding of air currents; otherwise, we were just as clumsy and awkward as the next guy.”

  “You weren’t clumsy.” Alisha smiled up at him with pride, then looked at Logan. “He was their top flyer for twenty years.”

  Logan was impressed. Nowadays, even a good flyer couldn’t expect to be ranked number one for more than two years in the Regionals before some young hotshot raised the bar. He could only imagine what Alisha would do to the rankings. She would take the honor the first time she tested. And, given her talent, she just might keep it for a while.

  Kane shook his head. “That’s not as impressive as it sounds. The judging was more subjective back then. I’m not sure I won on merit those last few years.”

  “Don’t believe that for a minute,” Alisha protested. “He was always the best. When I was a girl and his flying buddies would come to visit, they’d tell me that no one came near him in talent.”

  Looking at the innate flying skills of his second-generation progeny, Logan was inclined to believe Alisha might be right.

  “The only reason he stopped winning was because he stopped competing,” she added.

  Kane sighed. “I should have stopped years before. It was selfish on my part…And the harm it caused…” Kane shook his head. “Spilt milk…never can be righted.”

  Without warning, the lights dimmed off and on.

  “That’s the landlord’s signal for guests to leave,” Alisha explained. “If we aren’t out in five minutes, he’ll fine Gramps a thousand dollars.”

  “How will he know?” Logan asked, feeling reluctant to allow the pleasant night to end. He wanted to question Kane further about how his winning the Regionals had caused great harm.

  “The jerk has heat imaging radar,” Alisha said. “Night, Gramps.” She kissed his cheek.

  Logan reached out and shook his hand.

  They were out of the building four minutes later.

  Logan offered to carry her windcatcher, but she declined. “I’ve got a good launch site just two blocks over.”

  “Alisha, you can’t fly at night until we get you licensed.”

  “Well, how am I going to get home?” she asked in confusion.

  “You can stay with me.”

  “I can’t walk to Broadtown.”

  “I have a place available right here,” he stated, pointing to the building across the street. “Same offer as last night: no strings…no sex.”

  “I accept,” she said. “And I promise to be there when you wake up.”

  “In that case, I’ll give you a learner’s permit in the morning so you can fly with me to Broadtown.”

  “Can’t we go tonight, then?”

  “Learners’ permits do not allow night flying. Are you sure you’ve studied the manuals?”

  Chapter 12

  The accommodations did not impress Alisha. The only furniture in the rundown studio apartment was a chair and small table.

  “Where are we going to sleep?”

  “There should be sleeping bags in the closet,” the colonel said as he closed the window. He turned off the equipment on the table and packed it inside a travel case.

  “Is somebody else here?” she asked, trying to hide the fear in her voice.

  “I don’t think so, why?”

  “Well, that equipment was on.”

  “That’s because I had to leave in a hurry to follow a certain suspect.”

  “Did you catch him?” Alisha asked, knowing very well she’d been the suspect he’d followed.

  “Nope. Turned down D Street.”

  If only he hadn’t told Gramps that. But he had and there was no undoing it. Being a Ryder was her only shot at keeping her gramps alive now.

  She pulled out a large sleeping bag. “There’s only one bag,” she said, “but it’s really big.”

  Logan glanced up. “That’s two. They’re zipped together.”

  Alisha paused as she tried to determine the implications of his words. Did that mean he brought women here often?

  The colonel took the large bag from her grasp. “Sometimes agents will double up to preserve warmth. It can get cold as hell in these cheap apartments. Other times…” He stopped talking and stared in disgust at the dried crust on the inside of the bag. “Let’s try to wash this one off.”

  Alisha was cheered to discover that whoever had last used these bags hadn’t been the colonel. “I’ll take care of it.” She carried the bag into the tiny bathroom and cleaned it as best she could.

  When she returned to the room, the colonel had set up string alarms across both the window and the door. Seeing her confusion, he explained, “Better safe than sorry.”

  His words felt like a slap in the face. She had given him her promise she wouldn’t run away. He didn’t have to put up string alarms.

  She handed over the sleeping bag.

  “Good job. Not too wet, either. I’ll take it, and you take the other.”

  Not at all satisfied with his instructions, she said, “It’s already cold in here.”

  “Wait. It’ll drop below thirty before midnight.”

  “You shouldn’t have to take the wet bag. I’m the one crashing. It should be me.”

  “You’d freeze to death long before daybreak.” Anticipating a further argument, he added, “You might as well get used to following my orders.”

  “Respectfully, sir, I must disagree. I’m tougher than I look.”

  “Is this the best you can do on following orders?”

  “I would like to suggest an alternative plan, which you yourself brought up. We could zip the bags together with the wet side facing the floor. That way neither of us should have to go cold.”

  The colonel didn’t reply right away, but then handed her the second bag and headed to the bathroom.

  Alisha zipped the bags together and climbed inside fully clothed. She could still feel the slight dampness through the bottom, and it set her whole body shivering. How the hell could it get so frigid so quickly? Her place in Doakestown wasn’t much better than a cave, and it was a hell of a lot warmer than this. Even her grandfather’s place didn
’t get this cold.

  By the time the colonel came out of the bathroom and crawled into the bag, she was convinced she’d die of hypothermia just as he’d predicted.

  She waited for the shared warmth of his body to come to the rescue, but even after the colonel zippered in, there remained nothing but coldness on her back.

  “Why does it get so icy here?” Her shivering became quite audible when she spoke.

  He touched her arm, then moved closer to the middle and pulled her tight to his warm chest. “Tougher than you look, eh?”

  The warmth on her back and around her waist where his arm rested felt like heaven. Soon the shivering stopped.

  “To answer your question,” the colonel said, “this room is directly in the path of an arctic jet stream three months out of the year. Your grandfather is lucky to have a room closer to the ground floor. The Bank Tower was at one time the tallest building in Capital. Due to the jet stream, the top twenty floors are like refrigeration units during the winter. On the bright side, the Corps bought an entire floor for little money, so we have excellent surveillance in all directions. To be honest, I’d forgotten how cold it gets. I would have been freezing my butt off if I’d taken the wet bag, so thanks for offering the alternative of combining the bags. I didn’t feel comfortable suggesting it.”

  “Because you aren’t interested in me in a sexual way?” Alisha said. For some reason, it made her sad to realize Colonel Logan had no interest in her.

  “Due to your apparent fear of physical contact. If our current proximity is a problem for you…”

  “No, I like it,” she quickly replied, then realized how pathetic she sounded. “I mean, compared to freezing to death.”

  “All right, then.”

  She felt his body relax as he fell first into a light sleep and finally into a deep slumber. Sleep didn’t come easily for her. While the back side of her was warm enough, her toes literally ached with cold.

  ***

  She awoke in the morning with the sun in her eyes and the warmth on her back missing. She rolled over to a still-warm but empty spot in the bag. She saw the colonel standing in the kitchenette. He was unsuccessfully trying to light the burner.