Eve’s words were taking the edge off the pain flowing through my mind, and I felt the beast in my soul thrash against the agony. The human part of me wanted to die. It wanted to sleep. But Eve’s words helped, and I could feel the two sides of my mind trying to work together.
I could feel my stomach begin to heal, and it hurt almost as bad as when the bullet had passed through me.
“I’ve got the missile-- shit! Is he okay?” I heard Z gasp, but I couldn’t turn my head to look at her.
“He will heal,” Eve answered. “He distracted the sniper so we could approach.”
“Uhhh. He looks like a gutted fish-- errr cat-- or, okay, I’m not helping, am I?” I felt someone hold my hand and Z’s pretty face looked down into my eyes.
“Hey, Captain. I didn’t know you got shot. Eve distracted all the fucks, and I went around the back. I would have come earlier if I’d known.” I could feel her hand tremble around my fingers and hear the tears she struggled to hold back.
“That’s okay. I’m feeling better,” I said, and it was the truth.
“Did you get the asshole that--”
“Yes,” Eve growled.
“Damn. Adam, you should be dead. I’m glad you aren’t, but it looks like someone opened up your armor with a meter-wide drill bit and--”
“Did you say something about the missiles?” I interrupted her. Then I coughed, and I felt more blood run down from my teeth and splatter on the dirt.
“Yeah. I’ve hacked it. Pretty easy actually. Now we just have to worry about the last one before we bring Persephone over to blast these bastards.”
“When I was in the Jupiter Marines, we had our mobile missile launchers linked so they could all fire at the same target with a single command,” I gasped as a sudden spike of pain told me that some of my spine had reformed.
“Yeah. that’s how these are, but the others are under the rock of the tunnel,” Z said.
“Can you see the location of the one to the east?” I asked.
“Hmmm.” The blonde hacker pushed her hair over her ear and smiled. “You are pretty smart. Yeah, I think I can launch the missiles from this one and tag the other one. Hell, they might try the same thing as soon as they hear we’ve taken control of this one. I better get a move on.” The hacker jumped up from my side and ran back toward the missile launcher.
“You are feeling better?” Eve asked.
“I think you know I am,” I said, but then I winced when another rolling wave of pain slammed into my torso. It was hard to tell where it was coming from since everything below the agony was still numb.
“I know.” Her fingers traced around my tiger-face, and I closed my eyes to lose myself in her caress.
“Launching missiles. Yeeehaaaw! Suck on these!” Z shouted half a minute later, and I opened my eyes to see eight missiles streak into the purple sky.
“Good job, Z,” Eve said.
“Thanks. I only used half of them. Probably overkill, but I wanted Jatal to have some in case another bunch of assholes decided to mess with him.”
“Speaking of Jatal,” I said as I pressed on my transponder.
“Jatal? Do you copy?” I asked.
“I hear you, Adam. I just saw a group of missiles. Was that you?”
“Yeah. Z sent them to destroy the other missile launcher to the east. We’ve taken them all out now.”
“So… you are telling me that you just won this war?” he gasped.
“They haven’t surrendered yet,” I began, but then Z leaned into my chest so she could yell into the transponder.
“But they will as soon as we point Persephone's cannons at them!”
“Then I better get over there in the truck and get you back to your ship. Woohooo!” The man’s shout was filled with exuberance.
“Take your time,” I said as I looked down at the giant hole in my stomach. “I’m not going anywhere for a few minutes.”
Chapter 20
We had accepted the surrender of what was left of Alloprize’s army shortly after we flew Persephone over their destroyed campsite. The Children of Rah had taken the Alloprize soldiers into custody and were working on trying to clear the rubble from their camp so that they could find any other survivors. We did what we could to help, but the collapsed tunnels were quite effective, and most of the site was completely buried under thousands of kilograms of rubble.
I slept and then woke up in my human form with a bandaged stomach and another bag of saline fluid dripping into my arm. I dressed in my jeans and T-shirt and searched for my friends on the bridge. I finally found them outside helping clear rubble out of one of the main tunnels the Children of Rah had used as a home. The place looked like a refugee camp, but it was an improvement over what I guessed their cave dwellings must have looked like.
Jatal ask if he could speak with us, and we met the man in the same spot where we had first landed Persephone.
“They took all the rhodium we intended to give to you and Wayne,” Jatal sobbed.
“So… what does that mean?” Z squeaked.
“It was the last of our rhodium. Well, except this.” The blue-eyed man raised a small plastic bag that was about a tenth full of the precious powdered metal. “We were able to get it from the dirt where the drones shot the package.”
The three of us stared at the small bag for a few moments, and I could see that Jatal’s hand was shaking.
“I’m so sorry. This is about eighty grams. It is all we have until we can clear the rubble from their campsite and try to find the crates we intended to give you and Wayne. I can’t even pay Wayne back. I don’t know how we are going to afford to buy food, or trade for the next few months. Most of our mining equipment is destroyed, and everything that Alloprize had for food is buried.” Jatal signed. “We are in for a rough time. I doubt Wayne will sell us any more food.”
“Do you have anything left?” I asked.
“A bit, but now we have extra mouths to feed because of the prisoners.”
“How about water?” I asked.
“We should be okay for a few months. We are used to starving, but we have traded one problem for another,” Jatal said as he stepped toward me and pushed the small bag into my hand. “Please take it. It isn’t worth nearly what you have all done for me, but you can probably hire someone else for your crew once you get to the station I mentioned.”
“What about Wayne’s payment?” I asked as I looked at the small bag. This was easily worth the food Wayne had given them, but I knew the old cowboy expected a lot more.
“It will be a problem, but I’ve got too many to worry about it. We’ll have rhodium in the future, and then I can pay Wayne back. I have to worry about the next two months. I’m sure I can find someone to sell us some food in exchange for future rhodium.
“But you won’t have much leverage. Your people are going to starve,” I said.
“My problem. You have done enough for us. I wish we could give you more. If you can come back in a few months, I’ll give you--”
“That’s fine,” I said as I put the bag in my vest pocket.
Then I turned to Eve. The beautiful vampire knew what I was thinking, and her face spread into a wonderful smile.
I looked at Z, and I stared into her blue eyes for a few moments. The woman’s face twisted with her own internal conflict, but then she finally nodded.
“Yeah. Okay, fuck me,” she whispered. “I’ll go get one of their forklifts.”
“Why do you--” Jatal started to ask as Z walked toward one of his machines.
“We have that crate of food,” I said as I gestured back to Persephone. “It isn’t as much as Wayne’s delivery, but it can last you a few months if you ration.”
“I can’t take your food, Adam. We’ll be--”
“No,” I interrupted him again. “Take the food, Jatal. We’ll go back to Wayne and get some more. It won’t be a problem.”
“He’s going to be pissed that I stiffed him,” Jatal sighed. “He might take it ou
t on you. Are you sure you don’t want to keep any?”
“We’ll be fine without food for the fifteen minutes it will take us to get back to him. I’m sure I can convince the man to give us some food and work with you for an IOU. I’ll try to get another shipment to bring back to you, either from him or someone else.”
“Not Cynthia,” Jatal smirked, “but maybe you can take care of that problem for me.”
“We intended to,” I said with a growl. “So, take what we have, and we’ll bring more. Don’t worry about payment.”
“You three--” Jatal cleared his throat and then tapped his chest. “Well, words escape me. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t even begin to explain my gratitude.”
We watched Z drive one of the forklifts up Persephone's ramp. A few moments later she was backing out with the crate of food in its arms. I would have thought that the blonde hacker would have still had a sour look on her face, but the gathered men and women cheered as she drove the machine down the ramp, and Z’s face split into a wide smile.
“We’ll get going,” I said as soon as I saw Z set down the food in the middle of the camp and jump out of the machine. The woman exchanged hugs with a dozen people as she tried to walk back to us, and each embrace made her smile grow larger.
“Thank you again,” Jatal said.
“We’ll be back with more food,” I said as I gestured back to Persephone.
“Yeah. That’s what we do. We help people. See ya in a few, Jatal,” Z said as she waved to the man.
Then the three of us walked up the ramp of the dark starship, closed the hold, and made our way to the bridge.
“That felt pretty good,” Z said in the elevator.
“Helping people always does,” Eve said. “They will be able to rebuild with the food.”
“A second shipment will help,” I said. “We’ll have to explain to Wayne what happened. If I have to, I’ll give him the rhodium that we have so he’ll consider sending them another crate. He was fucking them in the first place. Even the small amount Jatal gave me should be able to pay for a dozen or more of those crates.”
“What are we going to do about Cynthia?” Z asked as the elevator doors opened to the bridge level. “I think we should just do a flyby and level her compound with our heavies.”
“No, that will kill innocents,” Eve said.
“Yeah, I guess you are right.”
“She betrayed us, so she will feel our teeth on her neck,” the vampire hissed.
“She must know that we’ve killed her men by now. She’ll be ready for us,” I said as we walked to the bridge.
I sat down in the captain’s chair, and my two friends took their normal seats at the pilot’s control. The screen display was already on, but Z hit a few buttons, and more of the view showed Jatal and his people waving to us as we rose from the surface of the moon.
“Well,” Z sighed. “I thought we were going to die a dozen times, but it all worked out in the end. They are good people.”
“Yeah, they are,” I replied.
Z steered Persephone out of the moon’s atmosphere and then set an orbiting pattern. No one spoke during the process, and I guessed that we were all lost in our own thoughts.
“I’ve got coords set for Gliese 876 - C-ii. Give the word and I’ll engage the hyperdrives.” Z finally broke the silence after we’d orbited for a handful of minutes.
“Engage hyperdrives,” I ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” Z said as she lowered a finger onto the controls. The stars on our screens blurred for a second.
And then they were replaced with spaceships.
Hundreds of spaceships.
“Holy shit!” Z screamed as the largest ship came into our viewfinder. I had never seen a vessel so large. It didn’t even fit on our display, and it looked almost like a cluster of giant mega towers placed on its side.
Suddenly, an orange plume of power erupted out of the front of the massive starship. It was like the flame of an ion torch, only I guessed that the diameter of the laser was a good thousand kilometers.
The fire plunged toward Gliese 876-C-ii, and the moon vaporized as if it was a lump of butter.
“Oh. My. Fucking--”
“Go! Go! Go! Go!” I screamed at Z as Persephone’s alarms echoed my cry, and she began to scroll the ID’s of each ship from her scanners. There were too many ships scrolling too fast for me to read, but one name was clearly branded on each of the vessels: Elaka Nota Corporation.
There must have been three hundred ships escorting the massive one, and they began to turn around and face us.
They also launched a thousand drones.
“Where?” Z screamed the question as she turned Persephone away from the space armada.
“The station that Jatal told us about!”
“They are sending us a communication request,” Eve said nonchalantly.
“I’ll have to use the foldingdrive!” Z cried.
“Fucking do it then!”
“Oh, fucking shit damn fuck. Okay,” Z babbled as engaged Persephone’s thrusters.
A dozen plumes of energy lashed out around us.
“I’ve got the coordinates set! Give the order!”
“You don’t need a fucking order! Do it!” I yelled at her.
“Ready to fold. Here! We! Go!” Z shouted as she slammed her hand down on a button on her terminal.
I expected everything to go black again, but nothing happened.
“It didn’t work,” I said as I watched the tidal wave of drones screech toward us.
“No shit it didn’t work! Fuck, Persephone, why aren’t you working? Please let us fold,” Z whined as another salvo of green colored plasma blasts flew past us.
“Eve, do you know what is going on with her?” I asked.
“She is scared!” Eve actually shouted as the gravity tech slammed us into the chair.
“This is not the time for performance anxiety! We need to get out of here!” Z shouted.
“I do not believe the shouting is help--”
“We are about to die!” Z interrupted Eve.
“Use the hyperdrives!” I ordered as a blast got close enough the shake us like a leaf in the wind.
“No! It’s too fucking far, and they are too slow. It will take us seventeen days to get there!” Z gasped.
“They are trying to communicate with us again. We cannot surrender,” Eve said.
“Agreed,” I said. “Z, use the hyperdrives.”
“You know what you are doing? We’ll be stuck in transit for--”
“I know. We’ll figure it out.”
“This is going to suck,” Z moaned.
“Better than being dead,” I growled as another blast of plasma almost hit us.
“You might not think that after a week. You both have to promise not to eat me!”
“Just use the fucking hyperdrives!” I shouted.
“Fine, Captain! Engaging hyperdrives!” Z said as she hit the drive button.
The stars turned to long lines, and Persephone instantly leveled her flight angle so that we weren’t shaking.
“We escaped,” Eve said with a sigh. “This is good.”
“Uhhh. Maybe? The hyperdrives take twenty-four hours to go one light year. The station is seventeen light years away. We have exactly zero kilograms of food to last us for a half a month.”
“Can we drop out of hyperdrive?” Eve asked.
“If we want to risk blowing the drive,” Z moaned, leaned back in her chair, and covered her face with her hands.
“We have a bigger problem,” I said as I stood.
“A bigger problem than not being able to eat for seventeen days? I get bitchy if I skip lunch. The last meal we had was like a day ago. I’m already starving, and--”
“Elaka Nota knows how to find us. There is a tracker on Persephone somewhere,” I said, and the two women looked at me with surprise. “It is the only way they could have tracked us to Gliese 876. They will track us to Queen’s Hat Station, and their
armada will show up there within a few days.” I thought about the massive ship that had destroyed the moon where Wayne, his son, Cynthia, and a few million other people lived.
Why had they destroyed it?
“How did they track us though? There isn’t any technology that can work across solar systems,” Z said.
“Any technology we know about, but Persephone is filled with mysteries and tech I’ve never seen. We are going to have to figure her out. We’ve got seventeen days to read the manual and search every damn centimeter of this ship.”
“On empty stomachs,” Z sighed.
“We won’t die. We have water,” I chuckled.
“Yeah, but look at me.” Z gestured to her thin frame. “I’m already super skinny. You both swore you wouldn’t eat me.” The hacker gasped and pointed a finger at each of us. “I’m going to remind you of it every day. I’m all skin and bones. I won’t be delicious. Eve, on the other hand…”
“No one will need to eat anyone,” Eve said with a mirthful laugh. “We will be hungry, but each of us has endured worse pains.”
“Yeah, beats being dead,” the hacker said as she rubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired. We were all tired. “Fuck. All those people are dead. Why did they do that?”
We were all silent for a few minutes as we stared at the streaking stars.
“They want no trace,” Eve whispered.
“Of Persephone, or you?” I asked.
“Both,” Eve said as she fixed her red eyes on me.
“Will they go to Jatal’s moon?” Z gasped, and her question made my stomach drop.
“I am not sure. I believe they will give us chase, but the only reason they would destroy Gliese 876-C-ii is so no one was alive to know of us or our ship. We will not know Jatal’s fate until we can return.”
“That is insane. Why? Why are you so important? Why is this ship?” Z asked the dark-haired woman.
Space Witch: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 2) Page 20