by Rachel Aukes
With Sixx clutching their payday and Reyne holding onto him, Reyne shot alternating full bursts from their suits to propel forward. Unfortunately, even with both at max output, their civilian-grade pressure suits were designed for slow, safe travel through space. As they moved through the blackness between the dead ship and the Gryphon, the star swarm closed the distance in a terrifyingly deadly sort of way—like a huge, sparkling chimera coming to swallow them.
“Two minutes. I’m running through the pre-jump protocols now.”
“We’re on our way,” Reyne said, trying not to sound like his heart wasn’t pounding out of his chest. He wished their suits to go faster, but wishing didn’t seem to help.
Every second was too slow as the distance between them and the star swarm disappeared faster than the distance between them and the Gryphon that floated like a rilon angel waiting for them.
“Sixty seconds.”
“Can’t these things go any viggin’ faster?” Sixx complained.
Reyne racked his brain for ideas, but nothing would get them back to the ship in time. As they moved through space, his muscles shook with adrenaline and fear.
“We’re at bingo.”
The Gryphon’s Flux Whisper engine roared to life. A second later, the airlock door began to close.
Chapter Two
A Ship Caught in the Swarm
Even with both suits blasting at full propulsion, Reyne figured they needed at least ten seconds more than what they had to reach the Gryphon. He continually hit their thrust buttons, only to have the suits chime negative responses at his attempts.
“Ah, shit.” He grimaced before giving the order he dreaded. “Get out of here, Throttle. You’ve got to leave us.”
“Don’t you dare leave us, Throttle,” Sixx countered.
“Like hell I’m leaving, you idiots.”
Through the window on the other side of the airlock Reyne noticed the ship’s mechanic. Boden had stopped the door once it reached halfway down and was now motioning wildly with his hands. Unfortunately, Reyne couldn’t speak to him through his comm link since the channel at that chamber had fried months ago, and he didn’t have the credits to fix it.
“I can’t make out what he’s—oh.” A retention cable shot out from the chamber and straight toward them. Reyne had only an instant to comprehend Boden’s intent and prepare for the incoming object. “Hold on.”
Reyne collided with—more so than caught—the heavy tow hook. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, and sharp pain stabbed where the hook had hit his chest. His suit blasted an alarm. Their forward movement instantly reversed. A single carabiner held the two men’s suits together, and Sixx was yanked along like a raggedy doll. The cable jerked to a stop, and it felt like Reyne’s arms were snapped from their sockets as their now-backward propulsion was halted.
The cable began to retract, the metal line sliding through Reyne’s hands, and he scrambled to get a grip. He wrapped his hand around the hook just as the cable picked up speed. A lot of speed.
Reyne tried to find his breath as they were dragged to the ship. “Tell me you still have the package.”
“I have it, plus a nasty case of whiplash.”
“Good. Keep hanging on because we’re coming in hard and fast.”
It took them only a couple seconds to close the remaining distance. They flew into the airlock and slammed into the door on the far side of the small pressurization chamber.
The outer door clanged shut behind them, and with a low hum, the ship’s EM field cycled up the gravity in the room. The men dropped to the floor with grunts.
Reyne pulled himself to his knees, seeing stars through the pain. “Hell,” he ground out.
Sixx sat up. “That wasn’t so—”
The Gryphon shot into jump speed with no warm-up. Reyne and Sixx were lifted off the ground for a tiny instant before smashing against the back wall.
Reyne couldn’t breathe for several long seconds before he realized Sixx was lying on top of him. He managed to unhook their suits and roll the other man off.
The red light by the door switched to green. He twisted off his helmet and sucked in cool, fresh air. “You…were saying?”
Sixx came up on his elbows and tossed his helmet. “Now, that was a wild ride. Shit. That hurt.”
Reyne dragged himself into a sitting position and leaned against the wall. “What are you complaining about? You used me to cushion your fall.”
“Yeah? Try having a biome kit smash through your helmet.”
Reyne looked to see Sixx gingerly touching his bloody, broken nose. Dark circles were already forming under his eyes. “You good?”
Sixx touched his forefinger and thumb tips together to form an O, for Okay.
Reyne continued. “How’s the package?”
Sixx set aside his biome kit and rolled over the metal box. “A few scratches but still sealed.”
“Let’s hope the contents are secure and that they survived a scalar freeze, or else we won’t be seeing a paycheck. It’d be a whole lot easier if I knew what was in there.”
“As long as they pay us, I don’t care,” Sixx said.
“Agreed.”
Reyne winced, tentatively rubbing his tender chest. “Hell, it feels like I’ve bruised or broken half the bones in my body.”
“Only half?” Sixx asked as he climbed to his feet, and helped Reyne up. “We pulled out pretty good, then.”
They kicked out of their suits and hooked them up to charging stations.
Sixx bent over and picked up the single biome kit. “This baby’s all mine. I’ve already got a nice piece of property on Spate picked out for it.”
“You about got yourself killed for it.” Reyne shot his friend a hard look. “I ordered you to stay put on the Gryphon.”
“What, and let you have all the fun?”
“There are several women who would be very sad if you died in the swarm.”
Sixx smirked. “How right you are.”
The inner door to the pressurization chamber opened, and Boden stepped inside. The sandy-haired Alluvian took a quick look at each of them and gave a reassuring nod. “I was beginning to think you two weren’t going to give up your front row seats to the star swarm.”
“Nah. That show’s overrated,” Sixx replied.
Reyne nodded to the mechanic. “Quick thinking with the cable. You saved our asses back there.”
“Throttle would kill me if I left her father out there to die,” Boden said.
“Hey,” Sixx chimed in. “Don’t I count, too?”
Something clanged against the outer hull, quickly followed by another something that sounded like it tore a hole through the ship.
Boden spun on his heels and sprinted away.
Reyne pointed at the box in Sixx’s arms. “Get that package secure.” Then, he took off at a run, or at least as fast as a battered, arthritic man could run.
“Status,” he called out as soon as he reached the bridge.
Throttle didn’t look up from her instrument panel. “We were too late going to jump speed. We’re getting dinged up by the leading edges of the swarm, but the jump shields are holding. We’ll get through it in time.” She tacked on, “I hope.”
“You hope?”
She didn’t reply.
He turned his attention to the view panel. A cacophony of tiny collisions sparked against the jump shield and chewed at his raw nerves. Glimpses of debris lit up space like tiny stars. Many chunks were smaller than an inch in diameter, but each one was capable of piercing a view panel without jump shields as easily as a knife tip through a sheet of paper.
A larger metallic shard skidded off the jump shield, and he instinctively ducked. “How close are we to the leading edge?”
“Close. I’m trying to get us a little closer.”
He spun around “You’re what?”
“We’re too close to outrun the asteroid’s gravitational pull, so I’m skimming across the leading edge like I would wi
th a planet’s orbit. If we hit it at just the right angle, we should skip right off the buffer instead of getting sucked into the swarm. At least that’s my guess.”
Turbulence sent Reyne collapsing into his seat, and he buckled in.
Throttle, even with her wheelchair locked in, held onto the instrument panel with one hand while punching in commands with her other. “Just a few more seconds.” Her voice trailed off in a small shriek when something that looked eerily like a chunk of Myrad hauler M4029LW collided with the bow, and the ship pitched.
Then, as quickly as the star swarm began, the space outside became blissfully silent.
“Damage report?” he asked.
The petite blonde blew out a breath, leaning over her panel. “It will take some time to run diagnostics, but the engine isn’t running at full capacity, and I’m showing a thirty-four percent vulnerability in our jump shield.”
He grimaced. “That’s not going to be a cheap bill.” He pulled up the quadrant map. “If we maintain jump, we can be to Ice Port in seventy-four hours, still well before our deadline.”
She shook her head. “If we lose any more of the jump shield, we’ll have to drop to sub speed.”
Reyne tapped the comm on his panel. “Boden, you there?”
“Yep.”
“We need to boost the jump shield. Divert any extra power you can find.”
“That’s a big viggin’ negative. We have a five-foot-long chunk of rilon sticking through our stern right now. Damn thing skittered right across our jump shield to nail us in the ass.”
Reyne winced. “Shit.”
“We’re bleeding out. I need us to shut down as soon as possible to plug the leak in the stern, or else we’ll never make it home.”
Reyne watched his pilot before he replied to make sure she was listening. “Throttle will drop us out of jump speed as soon as we’re a safe distance from the swarm.”
“Give me ten minutes,” she chimed in.
“Can you work on the hull with the solar sails out?” Reyne asked.
A pause. “I’ll make it work.”
“Good.” He released the comm, unbuckled his belt, and pushed from his seat with a groan.
“One more thing,” Throttle said. She abruptly unlocked her wheelchair and spun around to give Reyne a hard look. She wagged a finger at him. “Don’t you ever order me to leave you behind again. That was an asshole move.”
He stiffened. “The safety of the crew always comes first.”
“Oh, so you and Sixx aren’t part of the crew now?”
He pursed his lips. “We knew the risk when we went out there. You should’ve—”
She held up her hand to stop him. “You can be such an idiot sometimes.” She blew out a breath. “For a moment, I thought you weren’t coming back.”
He strode over to her and squeezed her shoulder, using the physical contact to convey things he never had a knack at saying right.
After a lengthy moment, emotion softened her features, and she placed her hand over his. “I couldn’t imagine being on the Gryphon without you.”
“I know,” he said softly before adding on a bit louder, “You might not be my daughter by birth, but you’ll always be my daughter in all ways that matter. As long as there’s the barest hint of a chance, I’ll make it back. That’s one promise I can make.”
She eyed him. “I’ll settle for that. For now.”
He patted her back and stepped away, pausing at the doorway. “By the way, where in the galaxy did you ever pick up a term like ‘lollygagging’?”
She shrugged. “Probably from you, old man.”
He grinned and left the bridge.
The hallway’s soft neural lights brightened to signal the dawn of the thirty-hour standard day. His bunk was the nearest room to the bridge. He pressed the manual switch to open the door—the retinal scans had long since stopped working—and stumbled inside.
Not bothering to kick off his boots, he collapsed onto his bed and closed his eyes. The constant hum of the Gryphon’s systems soothed his frayed nerves, and he felt himself relax. Here, he was home. The only place in the Collective he ever truly felt safe.
He inhaled deeply and winced at the pain in his chest, a familiar ache of broken or badly bruised ribs. Grudgingly, he pushed off from his bunk and shuffled down to the medical bay. There, he found Sixx lying on the single table and illuminated by overhead bioscanner’s amethyst light.
Doc glanced up. “I should’ve known that you’d manage to get yourself injured, too.” Sixx raised his head, and Doc swatted him. “Lie still.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that hauler,” Sixx began while lying on his back. “It didn’t have the psychotic feel of a spaced out crew.”
“What’s a psychotic feel?” Reyne asked.
“No blood on the walls, things busted and thrown around, you know, that kind of psychotic feel,” Sixx answered.
Reyne leaned against the wall. “What do you think happened?”
“My guess?” Sixx asked. “I think the ship suffered a cat fail. The captain drifted her crew with mercy shots before turning her pistol on herself.”
Reyne thought back to the two pistols he saw floating on the bridge. He shook his head. “No.”
“No?” Sixx asked.
“The captain had a gut shot. Not a pleasant way to die. And, I don’t think there was anything merciful with what went down with the crew. I’d lay my bets that the captain initiated the cat fail. She was planning to get the crew off her ship while she stayed behind under the pretense that she’d call for help and stay with their cargo.”
The bioscanner turned off and Sixx sat up while Doc analyzed the results.
“So,” Sixx began. “The captain wanted the ship and a shitload of biome kits for herself. It’d make for a nice golden parachute.”
Reyne cocked his head. “It would. And, I bet the pilot got a whiff of the captain’s plans and confronted her. There was an exchange of gunfire, leaving the pilot dead and the captain with a bad injury. The captain, figuring the gig was up, took out each of the remaining crew one by one so no one would ever know she tried to pull off a heist.”
“That’s a hell of a tale, but it makes sense,” Sixx said.
Reyne sighed. “That’s the thing. The pieces don’t all fit together yet. There’s more to the story, and I’ll be damned if it’s not related to that package.”
“With all gunshots in the view panel,” Sixx said. “It looked like she was trying hard to get rid of the package. It’s like she didn’t want anyone to have it, not that she needed to bother, with the star swarm headed her way.”
Reyne snapped his fingers, and he pushed off the wall. “What are the odds a brand new Myrad hauler would suffer a cat fail in the path of a star swarm?”
Sixx shrugged. “Pretty damn low.”
“More like impossible,” Doc chimed in. “Star Swarms are rare. There is only one documented case of a ship running into a swarm, and that ship was in jump speed at the time.”
“Exactly,” Reyne said. “The captain intentionally planned a cat fail at that exact location. No one would want to stay on a ship that was in the path of a star swarm. Once the crew was off the ship, she was going to drop the package and cut out of there with her ship and cargo all to herself. The star swarm would’ve obliterated any evidence that package ever existed.”
“A perfect plan until someone got in her way,” Sixx said.
Reyne nodded. “Which then forced her to improvise and take out the crew. By the time she drifted them, she was too weak to drop the package and run. When she realized she wasn’t going to make it, she tried to decompress the ship to have space suck the package out for her. My guess is she lost consciousness before she could blow out the view panel.”
“Good for us she didn’t succeed,” Sixx said. “Or, else that contract would turn into a zero paycheck.”
Reyne thought hard for a long moment. Then he pinged the bridge on the comm. “Throttle.”
>
“Yeah?”
“I want you to plot out the fastest course for Ice Port. I want that damn Genics Corp package off this ship yesterday.”
“Consider it done.”
Reyne turned to find Sixx and Doc watching him.
“What’s your gut telling you?” Sixx asked.
“My gut is telling me that we never should’ve taken this contract,” he answered.
“You’ve always had a good instinct,” Doc said. “There’s a reason the CUF assigned you as a chaser.”
“You think we should drop the package and run?” Sixx asked.
“I think we should’ve left the blasted thing back on the Myrad hauler and let the star swarm have it,” Reyne answered. “Except that we need the credits to damn much. Its paycheck is more than ten months’ pay we earn as runners.”
“Well, I’m sure the credits will help soothe your conscience.” Sixx blew out a breath. “This whole mess is giving me a headache. How about some painkillers, Doc?”
“You’re lucky you have only a headache,” she answered before she read from the tablet she held. “You’ve broken your nose. Again. Fortunately, you have no broken bones and no signs of internal injuries. However, you have torn ligaments in your knee and have a hairline fracture in your left wrist. I’ll wrap your wrist, and I’ll put you on a three-day cycle of injections for your knee.”
The blonde medic grabbed a syringe off the table and pressed it against his swollen knee.
He sucked in air. “Damn, that hurts.”
“That should teach you not to treat your body like a battering ram.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sixx said. “What I need are some painkillers, Doc.”
She swapped the syringe for a small bottle and placed a single pill into Sixx’s palm.
He stared at her, incredulous. “Only one? Seriously, Doc. That won’t even take the edge off. I need at least three.”
She gave a tut. “You’re in your prime. You’ll be at one hundred percent in no time.”
Reyne smirked as he watched the pair hold a battle of the wills, knowing full well Sixx didn’t stand a chance. After lasting longer than Reyne expected, the man relented and swallowed the single pill without any water. He climbed to his feet, towering a foot over her. “You’re brutal, Doc.”