There was a lake up ahead, and its crystal blue waters were a sharp contrast to the frantic emotions sprinting through my nervous system. I couldn’t really push the shuttle to go any faster, so I made my best judgment on the straightest line there, and hoped that we could skirt the water’s surface.
“Shoot the laser array!” Eve shouted once more, and I followed her instructions immediately. The lasers blasted into the pristine waters of the blue lake, and a torrent of waves rose into the sky like a horrific tsunami.
I flew the shuttle right through the wave.
The craft slammed back as if I’d yanked on the reverse thrusters, and the rest of Z’s food boxes flew out of her hands. They smashed into the windshield of the shuttle at the same time as the missile crashed into the water behind us.
There was an explosion, and since I wasn’t dead. I yanked back on the throttle of the shuttle halfway before slamming it forward again. The nose of the craft was skipping over the water of the lake like a stone, and I angled the nose up a bit to bring us up without dipping the back end of the craft into the water.
“I can’t believe we are alive. Who shot missiles at us?” Z asked as she ran her hands over her chest.
“Someone that wanted to kill us,” I replied, then I took one hand off the controls and pointed at the dashboard in front of her. “Do any of those tell you what damage was done to the exterior? If the arms are fine, I want to go back and pick up the water tank.”
“Are you crazy? They are just going to shoot us with another trio of missiles.”
“We are far enough away from the origin of them. We need the water, and I always complete my missions.” I stared into the blonde hacker’s eyes.
“Uhh, you have barbecue sauce like all over your face,” she winced as she looked at me.
“I know,” I growled.
“Want me to cle--”
“Z, how are the cargo arms?” I interrupted her.
“Okay,” she groaned as she pressed a few buttons on her control panel.
“I’m turning around,” I said as I banked the craft.
“Okay,” she pouted.
“And you are cleaning all this shit off from the inside of the shuttle,” I said.
“Okay. I saw that coming.” The hacker groaned once more, and Eve laughed.
“It is good to be alive,” the vampire said as she rested a hand on each of our shoulders.
“Yeah. Especially with a full stomach.” Z finally smiled.
Chapter 7
“Any idea who wanted to shove three missiles up our ass?” Z asked as soon as we deposited the water into Persephone’s tanks.
“The same people that tried to kill us on the road,” I said.
“Yeah, but are they Wayne’s people, or Cynthia’s people?”
“A third party, I think. There is something else going on here,” I answered as I angled the shuttle into the top diamond bay of Persephone. The ship seemed to sense us approaching, or maybe Z had hit a button when I wasn’t looking, and the massive top hatch opened to let us inside.
“Why do you think it is a third group? I think it is both of them. Cynthia setup the bushwhack on the road, and Wayne knew you were visiting her after, and he doesn’t want us working for her.” Z moved her hand to the terminal and pressed a few buttons. “Bay hatch closing.”
“Rhodium is worth too much. They want us to bring it back. I’m worried about Wayne, though,” I said as I slid out of the leather pilot’s chair. There was a rib bone sticking out of one of the clasps of my armored vest, and I pulled it out with my fingers.
“Oh good, you saved one.” Z gave me a meek smile and opened one of the paper boxes so I could deposit the piece of food. “Why are you worried about Wayne?”
“He didn’t tell us that he wanted to guard the shipment of rhodium,” I said as I moved to the exit ramp of the shuttle.
“He thought we would return with it,” Eve said.
“But you also said he intended to betray us. It doesn’t add up correctly. A man who wants to betray us thinks we won’t betray him? How accurate are your powers?” I didn’t want to tell the beautiful woman I doubted her abilities, but it was apparent that both Samson and Jayhee were vipers.
“I understand your concern. As I explained before, I can read surface thoughts of most, and deeper thoughts if I spend more time with someone. Or if I have a connection with them,” Eve explained. “I could have read him wrong.”
“I’ll think about the jobs some more. Wayne said he will message us within the next eight hours with the delivery coordinates. I’m going to take a shower, change, and think more on this,” I told the two women.
“I’ll clean the shuttle,” Z said with a sigh.
“I will help you.” Eve smiled at the hacker and gestured to the bay. “But we’ll need to find cleaning supplies.”
“An adventure before the adventure. I can’t wait until we get a crew. Definitely need to hire a janitor, especially with the amount of bleeding that the captain does.” Z laughed.
“When you are done with the shuttle, work on the navigation,” I called over my shoulder as I walked out of the bay.
“Aye, Captain,” the hacker said, and even though I didn’t see her, I guessed she was giving me a salute.
I went to the elevator and took it up to the bridge. Once there, I walked into my room, turned on the shower, and started to strip off my clothes. Moments later I was under the spray of warm water and cleaning the sticky sauce and slick grease off my face and neck.
My thoughts drifted to the predicament we were in. The jobs were obviously traps, with betrayals at the end, but we did need the food, and the opportunity to get rhodium. My plan had originally been to make the drop-off on Gliese 876 - B-iv, take our cut of the metal from Wayne, drop it off before he could double cross us, and then blast to another system where we could sell the rhodium for food.
Taking the job from Cynthia complicated the plan. Sure, we would get the food upfront, but now we also had babysitters, and I imagined they intended to take Persephone from us on the return trip.
The beast inside of me just wanted to kill all of them. The monster didn’t want me to bother with these games. I had my woman. I had my ship. All I needed was their food, and I would be free to run through the galaxy.
I let out a long exhale and turned off the hot water. I didn’t know these Children of Rah, but Eve was right. They needed our help. I’d figure out a way to bring them their supplies, get out alive, and then not get stabbed in the back by either of the two ranchers.
Towels were hanging up in the bathroom, but I hit the dry button in the shower, and it air vented the space with warm air. The water from my body was pushed into the drain to be filtered and reused. Once I was dry I went to find clothes, but my choices were between the outfit stained with food, or the outfit I’d worn on our way to steal Persephone that was covered in my dried blood.
I guessed there were washing machines somewhere on the ship, but I didn’t really feel like walking around the empty halls naked looking for them, so I just put on my food stained clothes again. Then I walked out of my room to see if I could help Z and Eve with the cleanup.
As soon as I exited my room, a shiver descended my spine.
There was someone watching me.
I pulled my massive revolver from its holster and took a few steps to the end of my semi-private hallway. If someone was watching me, the only way they could do so was from the elevator placed between my area of this floor and the bridge. There was an emergency hatch at the other end of the hallway, but it was closed.
I leaned my head around the edge of the wall but didn’t see anything beside the elevator.
And a glow from the bridge.
I checked the far left side of the room and then ducked behind the wall of my hallway. It was possible that Eve and Z finished cleaning up the shuttle and were now working on the bridge, but only half an hour had passed since we parted. I doubted they had enough time to find the cl
eaning supplies, let alone finish with the shuttle.
I darted to the end of the elevator column and then leaned around the corner with my revolver out. It might have been the wrong weapon to use, but I might only be able to get one shot off at an intruder before they returned fire. The bullets contained in the five-shot cylinder of the weapon were the size of my thumb and would make short work of all but the thickest of body armor.
The glow was coming from the holographic map, but I didn’t see anyone sitting in the terminal chairs on either side of the map platform. The seats up by the captain’s chair were turned away from me, so I sprinted up to them as quietly as I could. I could move fast, even when I was not in my tiger-man form, and it only took me a few seconds to get there.
But I didn’t see anyone sitting.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as I turned around the room. It still felt like someone was watching me, and I turned my eyes up to the ceiling with a guess that someone might have attached themselves there. I was wrong though. No one was there.
I inhaled the air of the bridge and tried to identify if there was any alien scent. My nose wasn’t as powerful as when in my other form, but it was much better than normal humans. I only smelled the food stains on my clothes and the new leather, plastic, and metal scents of the ship.
I still held my revolver out, and I moved back to the long pedestal that showed the holographic map. We had turned the device off before we left, and it last displayed Gliese 876 - C and her moons.
Now it showed the slow spinning arms of the Milky Way. There was a green dot in one of the most distant limbs, but before I could touch the controls to zoom toward the icon, the map shifted, and a red circle appeared on the other side of the swirling mass.
“Hello?” I felt like an idiot calling out, but someone had just put new coordinates on the map, and there was no one standing here but me.
The map began to zoom in on the red circle. Within a few moments, it became apparent the target was the far smokey regions of the Scrutum-Crux Arm. I watched the map twist as it zoomed into a lone solar system where two red supergiant suns spun around each other. Between the two stars were a trio of planets that seemed to be caught in a tug of gravity which prevented them from orbiting either of the twin suns. The three planets did spin though, and the map circled the one which appeared to be in the middle.
Red numbers began to flow down the side of the hologram. They were only 1’s and 0’s, and I took a step away as the numbers poured over the map until everything glowed crimson. I couldn’t understand the binary code, and I reached my hand out toward the controls of the map to see if there was a way I could pause the blood-like pour.
“Captain?” I heard Z’s voice call from the elevator, and I turned to see her step out from around the column.
“Do you know what this means?” I looked at her and pointed at the map.
“What means?” she asked.
“These numbers in red. Binary right? Were you controlling the map?”
“Uhhh, no. What are you talking about?”
“The map here, these red--” I stopped mid sentence when I turned back to the map.
It was fixed on our position orbiting Gliese 876 -C-ii.
“You okay? Your face looks all kinds of white,” Z asked as she stood next to me.
“Where is Eve?” I asked.
“She’s putting away all the cleaning supplies. Took us about an hour to find the storage. We also found some suits. They look really cool and you can set armor and utility belts on them. She’s going to bring up a couple of boxes for us, said you didn’t have any clothes that were clean.”
“Took you an hour to find the cleaning supplies?” I asked.
“Well, we found the suits and got a bit distracted. I figure Wayne will be reaching out to us at any moment, and I didn’t think you’d be able to figure out how to turn on the communication equipment without my help.”
“You finished cleaning the shuttle?” The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end.
“Yeah. Uhh. Took us a few hours. I think we should have a ‘no food on the shuttle’ policy moving forward. It was a mess and I--”
“It’s been three hours since we got back to Persephone?” I tried to keep my voice calm.
“Well, probably more like four. You’ve been on the bridge the whole time? I kind of thought you would have taken a nap or--”
There was a chime sound from the far side of the bridge, and Z nodded toward the captain’s chair. We both walked away from the holographic map, and the blonde hacker slid into one of the chairs next to mine.
“I think it is Wayne. You want it on screen or just audio?” the young woman asked.
“Audio to start.”
“Okay, three, two, and --” Z paused to voice the last number of the countdown before she pressed the button.
“This is Adam,” I answered.
“Hey, partner. Wayne Sampson here. How did the talk go with Cynthia Jayhee?” The cowboy appeared on the screen. He was sitting in his office with his boots up on the table.
“We are still alive and still wish to take your job. Do you have the information for your contact?” I asked.
“Ya. What did the rust bucket say to you?” he asked.
“Do you mean Cynthia?”
“Yep. See, I would have thought that she might have told you that you should be working for her, and not for me. Guess I’m surprised you are still alive, is all.”
“She kidnapped one of my crew, but she apologized for it and fed us,” I said carefully. I didn’t know how much information I wanted to give the man.
“All it takes is some food to win you over? Ha!” He slapped his knee. “You should have told me so!”
“If you recall, you are paying us in food, as well as a percentage of the rhodium we bring back. Speaking of that, do you have the information to relay with your contact? We need to plan our delivery.”
“Well now. I do, but I’m not so sure I’m willing to work with someone in the good graces of Cynthia Jayhee. You mind me asking why she let you all go?”
“She asked us to do some work for her that doesn’t conflict with your job.”
“Listen, Adam. Maybe I need to warn you a bit more about that woman. She’s the kinda person who eats nails at breakfast and shits out screws by lunch. Any deal you do with her isn’t going to end well for y’all.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. I am looking for honest work for my crew. I’d like to make your delivery, return your bounty to you, and receive the payment we agreed upon. You seem like you are a man of your word, and I am as well.”
The smile dropped from Wayne’s face, and he nodded a few times. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but it looked like he just hadn’t expected my reply.
“Been awhile since someone has shot me straight. You don’t have your screen on though,” the old cowboy finally said. I motioned for Z to turn the video feed on, and I saw my bust displayed on the corner of my screen.
“You have the relay info for your contact? I want to do this work, get paid, and then continue on my way,” I said as I stared into his eyes.
“It’s on code 889.432.321.43.532 band B. The encryption key is Alpha, Omega, Theta, 4532. I told them you’d be pinging them within the next hour,” he said as he read the numbers off a paper in his hands. “You got it?”
“Confirmed,” I said as Z finished dancing her fingers across her keyboard and gave me the thumbs up.
“Well, shit. This is a change of events,” the man smirked and shook his head.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, son. This won’t be easy on you, your crew, or your ship. I’m hoping you make it back.”
“And you weren’t before?” I chuckled.
“Oh I was, but I was doubtful. Now I’m pulling for you. Not just because of the rhodium either. As I said, been a while since someone shot me straight. Ping me when you are ready to come pick up the delivery, and I’ll have it prepared for ya.”
The cowboy nodded and reached his hand over his desk to lie on his terminal board.
“Will do. Thanks for the work,” I said, and I wondered if this meant that the man wouldn’t try to betray us.
“Sure. I’ll see ya when you come to pick it up.” The man pressed a button, and the screen flashed to black.
“Huh,” Z said.
“What?”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he likes you.” Z turned around in her chair to smirk at me. “You are kind of charming, in an ‘I’m going to punch my fist through anything that isn’t polite to me’ kind of way.”
“Is there a surveillance system on the bridge?” I changed the subject.
“Uhh, like what do you mean?” The blonde woman tilted her head a bit with confusion.
“Cameras that record what is happening on the bridge,” I explained.
“Maybe. You should look through the manual.” Her lips upturned into a shit-eating smile.
“Ha.”
“Oh, come on. That was clever. I deserve more than a token laugh,” she said.
“I’ve brought gifts,” Eve’s voice drifted through the bridge, and I turned in my plush leather chair to see the beautiful woman walk past the map display. She was carrying a cardboard box.
“Uniforms?” I asked.
“Yes. They are of an interesting design.” Eve set down a box and then pulled out what looked like a long sleeved unitard.
“I do not know what the material is. Perhaps you do?” the dark-haired beauty asked as she handed me the suit.
“No,” I replied as I touched the cloth. “It is thin though. Looks like something a dancer would wear. Is this mine?”
“Yes. The boxes were marked male or female. No sizes. I believe it will expand to fit your skeletal structure. It might even shift when you change your form.”
“Ohhhh, that is useful.” I pulled on the cloth a bit, and it seemed to flex without ripping. “As I said before. It looks thin. I suppose I could wear it as underwear under my jeans and shirt, but then what is the point?”
“Look at these designs,” she said as she pulled another suit out of the box. “Electrical patterns. I think it can be synced to hold armor. We saw plates of various shapes in the room where we found these boxes. I believe these are base layers to an outfit that can be custom set depending on the mission. Will you try one on for us?” Her red eyes met mine, and she made a half smile.
Space Witch: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 2) Page 5