Maverick: A Supernatural Space Opera Novel (Witching on a Starship Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “This doesn’t make us friends, but it’s a good start.” She nodded as she grabbed them both off the plate and nearly inhaled an entire burger in one bite. She chewed, her cheeks bulging out like a chipmunk as she walked past me and kicked the door open with one foot. Then she stood there and held it open with her knee. She swallowed hard and gestured toward the open door with her half a burger.

  I laughed because I’d had a lot of friendships start exactly this way. After all, other than love at first sight, there were only two ways to someone’s heart, and the whole “chest through the axe” thing never seemed to put me on the best terms with people. That meant I had to go the old-fashioned way. Through the stomach.

  “So, uh, why’s the ship look like the one from Firefly?” I asked as I passed by her and waited for her to take the lead once again. I always sort of hated when I was on tours and stuff and the guide held the door for me because I never knew where to go, and I’d have to stand there awkwardly and wait for them to assume the lead position again.

  “It’s not stolen from Firefly,” Chloe said around a mouthful of burger. “Man, I could go for a beer.” She grinned at me. “Care to ‘jumper’ me one of those too?”

  “Not really.” I shrugged. “And what do you mean it’s not stolen from Firefly? Admittedly, I only watched it once because my ex was way into it, and it was sorta stupid. I mean space cowboys? Come on.”

  “What I mean, is Joss based that ship on the Endeavor.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Duh.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her as she sauntered away. “Firefly is real?”

  “No, I’m just fucking with you,” she said, glancing at me over her shoulder as a grin spread across her face. “Or am I?”

  10

  “So, uh, how does this work exactly?” I asked as I stared at the oppressively pink room surrounding me. Seriously, it was like someone had wrapped the place in chewed up Bazooka Joe, which sorta sucked because they’d kept the comics to themselves.

  “First, you put this on your head,” Niko Buttertree, our resident fairy and the one who was supposed to help cloak our ships from detection, said as she offered me what looked like a spaghetti strainer with wires attached to it.

  “Are you sure that’s going to work?” I asked, and when I didn’t immediately take it, the four-inch pixie glared at me so hard, it actually made me want to run and hide.

  It was weird because her expressions weren’t really that much worse than anyone else, but at the same time, she was condensed into such a small frame that a normal amount of glaring came across as uncharacteristically intense.

  “Okay,” I said, moving to comply. As my fingers touched the slick metal strainer, I realized it was warm. Like popcorn fresh out of the microwave warm. There was no way I was sticking this on my head. “Um… it’s hot.”

  “So blow on it,” Niko replied, crossing her arms over her tiny chest as her bat-like wings beat the air at hummingbird speeds. “Or do I have to get the captain?”

  “You don’t have to get the captain,” I replied, mostly because I didn’t like being in the same room with the cyborg. I hadn’t quite put my finger on what it was about the stalwart military man, but every time I was around him my knees turned to jelly, and I got butterflies in my stomach. Neither of those were good because while he had nice eyes and all, I’d come to think of the Captain as a weird sort of father figure. It was especially weird for me because I’d never really had any sort of father figure, and especially not one who I wanted to be proud of me.

  “Are you sure?” She raised a thin purple eyebrow at me. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

  “You look at him the same way and having sex with him would literally kill you,” I replied, shoving the super hot colander on my head and trying to bite down the surge of pain that shot through me.

  As my vision fractured into a million effervescent shards, a soft cry left my lips. I tried to reach up to pull the thing off, but I couldn’t use my arms. Panic shot through me as my arms slid limply to my sides. My mouth fell open, and I slumped forward like a slack-jawed yokel.

  “Whatever,” Nikko replied, buzzing around me in a slow circle before landing between my shoulders. Her hands snaked out as she adjusted something in the periphery of my vision. “I like to think of it like how I think about being a billionaire. I’d like the chance to find out myself.” She popped back into the air and fluttered in front of my face. “‘Nom sayin’?” She waggled her eyebrows at me, and I actually blushed as some very strange thoughts flickered across my brain.

  Worse, I couldn’t even respond because when I tried to reply with my razor-sharp wit, all that came out was mumbling. Then I drooled. It was great.

  And by great, I mean not even kind of great.

  “Oh yeah, you can’t talk,” she tittered before fixing me with her multi-faceted silver eyes. “Anyway, this is simple, just envision the coordinates on the screen. She spun to point at the pink screen behind herself like she was a fairy Vanna White. On it were a series of coordinates I didn’t understand because there were like twelve, but whatever. It didn’t matter.

  The sooner I got this over with, the better. I had money to spend, and if a week with my father had taught me anything, it was that I was genetically disposed to spending money.

  I tried to squint my eyes in concentration, failed because I couldn’t even feel my face, and decided that fuck it, I had the powers of space and time at my fingertips. Not only that, I had a space-age colander on my head that was wired to a room full of glittering pink crystals that were supposed to drastically enhance said powers.

  Arcs of blue electricity leapt from the crystals as I concentrated, bringing my power to the forefront. Only this was way different than it normally was. Usually, when I directly teleported, it was a quick thing. I’d envision the place, call upon my magic, and a surge of heat would ripple over my body like a moist breath. Then I’d just be there. It was a bit disconcerting. In fact, the first few times I’d done it, I’d thrown up, which was why I usually went by portal, especially when going with other people.

  In reality, it was almost the same spell, but there was something about stepping through a mystical doorway that made it easier on the ole psyche. This time, I couldn’t do that because we couldn’t let a portal be visible and there’d be no way to cloak it without being there.

  Worse, I had no idea where we were going. Hell, I’d never even teleported like this before. Even if I’d been willing to try teleporting into the vastness of space, there was no way using a picture of space was going to work since it all looked pretty much the same to my uneducated brain. Hence the coordinates they’d supplied me.

  Still, assuming that even worked, which I had my doubts about, I’d never teleported anything even remotely close to the size of a starship. No, this was way over my head, and even with whatever juju they had me hooked up to, I wasn’t sure it’d work. Then again, if it didn’t, this whole thing would be a non-starter. Therefore, it had to work, limits to my power be damned.

  Jesus, life was so much easier when the most complicated choice I had was whether I wanted chocolate fudge ice cream or salted caramel ice cream. The correct answer had been both, with sprinkles.

  Either way, I had to make it work. If I didn’t humanity would pay for it. While I may not have been fond of most humans who weren’t related to me (and even then it was a stretch most of the time), I was fond of my manticore, Marty, (there, I said it), and he was back at home.

  So I sucked in a breath that smelled like burned sage and concentrated on the coordinates. As I did, I felt power rush around the room, felt the electrons clinging to the atoms in the molecules of air rip apart and split off as a swirling void of energy whipped up like a tornado.

  The surroundings blurred together into an ever-changing mishmash of color, smells, and sounds. Then the room began to dissolve, flitting away like scraps of burned paper in a heavy wind. The pixie in front of me spun in a tight circle, he
r mouth open wide in horror.

  The board with the coordinates evaporated into steam, but that didn’t matter, I had them fixed in my mind, and as lightning flashed from the crystals and they too began to tear themselves up, the pixie screamed.

  Here’s the thing, though. We were in the midst of a teleport and in space, and what’s that saying?

  In space, no one can hear you scream, eh?

  As the whole of the room tore asunder, and the aching call of the void hit me like a sledgehammer to the face, the sound waves erupting from her lips turned into a splash of color that flitted about us like oversized pigeons before evaporating.

  The colander on my head turned white hot. Then the ship disintegrated around me, giving me a spectacular view of the solar system. Earth stared back at me, and while I couldn’t be sure because my vision was splintering further, I could have sworn she waved goodbye.

  “Good luck,” she whispered, and as her voice hit my ears like the wind whipping through the mountains, my universe splintered into atoms.

  11

  We popped out of hyperspace amid a fleet of massive warships that sort of reminded me of Star Destroyers covered in spikes. I mean seriously, it was like the denizens of planet Maverick had watched Star Wars and decided that the ships would have been way cooler if they’d been retrofitted by the denizens of Mad Max.

  Giant silver spikes stuck up at increasingly odd angles from the fleet, and as my mind swam back to reality, our ship started to form around me, re-materializing in a swirl of color and sound. I wasn’t sure how the Mavericks piloting the ships closest to us could miss this swirling aberration, but as Nikko popped back into existence amid the whirlwind of pink, she shot me an angry glare.

  “Oh, we’re so never doing that again,” she snapped, rolling her eyes at me as she produced a small wand with a golden star on the end and waved it through the air in a sweeping arc. Pixie dust exploded from the tip. “Now to make it so the Void Crushers can’t see us.”

  “Void Crushers?” I asked as the pixie dust combined with the ship.

  “Their ships are called Void Crushers because they’re able to resist a black hole’s gravity,” she said, shrugging at me.

  As the ship put itself back together all reverse-Humpty-Dumpty-like, the pixie dust mixed with it, turning the entire thing translucent. I wasn’t sure how because I didn’t quite understand fairy magic, but no sooner had our ship appeared in space, it was rendered completely translucent. Only, that was a bit weird because I wasn’t sure how that would keep them from seeing us.

  I mean, okay, we were harder to see, but anyone who scanned for heat or whatever would see us, right?

  “What the actual fuck is going on?” I cried as the pixie pulled the colander off my head with a resounding pop, causing a migraine the size of Alaska to erupt inside my skull like a goddamned volcano.

  “I poured some pixie dust into the ship as it reformed.” Niko stuck her tongue at me. “Duh.”

  “I got that,” I replied, rubbing my temples with my thumbs even though it didn’t help. “How is that going to keep us from, I dunno, being picked up by space radar?”

  “Space Radar? Honestly, Mallory, I don’t know how you live with being so dumb.” The pixie shook her head at me in a flutter of lavender curls. “That’s not even a thing.”

  “You’re not even a thing,” I growled, wondering how she’d feel if I slowed time and pulled her panties out of their twist.

  “Whatever,” she scoffed, spinning in midair. “My pixie dust will keep us from being detected by any means. Well, nearly any means. And the Mavericks don’t have those means, so it’ll be fine, probably.”

  “Probably?” I asked, following along behind her as she made her way to the door on the edge of the room. As she approached, it whooshed open in a hiss of compressed air, revealing the brightly lit hallway beyond. I wasn’t even sure where the light in the ship came from since there were no visible lights anywhere, but I hadn’t yet asked because as long as I could see, I didn’t really care.

  “Well, let’s say you were invisible and stepped into traffic. What happens?” she asked, turning to look at me as the entire ship lurched violently left, narrowly missing a Void Crusher that had been heading right toward us.

  “Um… we get run over,” I muttered as realization dawned on me. The Mavericks were heading toward Earth at high speeds, and they couldn’t see us, and since we were directly in their path, well, I totally got her analogy. We were about to become space pancakes.

  Fear surged through me, and my heart hammered in my chest. I looked around for somewhere to hide right before the Endeavor veered down, practically throwing me from my feet. Evidently, they didn’t have inertial dampening or whatever the fuck it was called on this ship to counter the effects of rapid acceleration and deceleration of our starship as we weaved through space.

  “Come on, we need to suit up,” the fairy said, holding her hand out to me like she could somehow help me to my feet with her tiny body. Then again, I had no idea how strong she was. Maybe she was like really strong for her size?

  I mean, I was a five foot six chick, and I could bench almost a hundred pounds, which made my super-hot personal trainer Lexi pretty damned happy. Truth be told, I didn’t like the gym, or sweating and moving to start sweating, but she was hot, and I’d met her at a coffee shop. One thing led to another, and my dumbass had decided to become a client.

  That had been six months before I met Jen, and well, while we’d spent a lot of time sweating together, none of it had been the kind of sweating I’d initially intended. In fact, I was actually starting to think she might not dig chicks, which would be sort of a shame, but at the same time, I had actual biceps.

  “Are you seriously standing there daydreaming right now?” Niko snarled, flying so close to me, she was practically standing on my goddamned nose. “Cause from the stupid smirk on your face, I think you might actually be picturing me naked.” The fairy leaned in close. “I understand if you are because I’m one sexy mama, but I don’t swing that way.”

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment at having totally spaced in space. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  “Let me guess, you’re just the kind of chick who sees a girl and just has to picture her naked, huh?” she said, raising an eyebrow at me.

  “Wow. You have like zero filter, huh?” I replied, shocked someone had actually said that aloud. I mean seriously? “I wasn’t picturing you naked at all.” A grin crossed my lips. What would she think if she knew I didn’t need to picture anyone naked on account of my X-ray vision?

  “Then explain your stupid grin—”

  Her words were cut off as the ship listed to the right, and I fell forward into her. I tried to scream, and as I did, I practically swallowed the fairy. She hit the back of my throat, and I gagged, spitting her up onto the desk as the taste of wonder bread and spearmint filled my mouth.

  Then the world got weird and hallucinogenic. I turned my eyes onto the fairy, about to apologize, but she wasn’t there anymore. Instead, there was a frog with a cane and top hat in her place. Oddly, he was dripping with saliva.

  “Oh, my God, you dumb bitch. Don’t you know fairy dust is like ten times stronger than LSD?” the frog sang in the voice of Frank Sinatra.

  “Well, hello there, señor frog,” I said, my words slamming together in my mouth and coming out a lot more slurred than I’d intended. I tried to figure out why that was, but I couldn’t focus well enough on it. Maybe this was how I’d always talked? “Can you do ‘I’ve Got You Under my Skin?’”

  The frog’s muscled legs tensed moments before it leapt into the air and smacked me across the face so hard, my teeth snapped painfully together. Then, instead of falling back to the ground, the frog hovered there and glared at me.

  “Ow,” I mumbled, gripping my cheek with my hand. “What’d you do that for?”

  “Do a purify spell,” the frog said, snapping its fingers at me like a greaser in
a sixties’ movie.

  “A purify spell?” I asked, scrunching my eyes as I tried to remember what that was, but it was too hard because her words tasted like blueberries, which made me so happy I could burst. Blueberries were my favorite berry after raspberries.

  “A spell to cleanse the toxins from your body. Jesus!” the fairy snapped before sweeping its top hat off its head and spinning in a flourish that made its tiny black coattails flutter behind it. “Do it now.”

  “Oh, that,” I said, smacking my lips as I tried to work up some moisture because my mouth was suddenly grimy and dry. It was almost like I’d licked something sandy. Weird.

  “Do it!” the frog sang at me, which was weird because I’d never actually heard a song shrieked at me before. “Or I swear to god I will punch you in the tits.”

  “You’ll punch me in both at the same time?” I asked, instinctively covering myself with my hands to ward off the frog’s attacks. “That’s sort of invading my personal space, and I’m not quite sure we’re that good of friends yet.” I quirked a grin at her as I got slowly to my feet and threw my arms out for balance. “But who knows, the night’s young.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m seriously going to throw you out an airlock,” The floating frog sang as it moved to eye level and proceeded to tap out a jig in midair. “Purify Spell. Do you know it?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. Only that made me laugh so hard, my eyes started to fill with rainbow gumdrops. “It’s as easy as pie… oh, do you have pie? I like pie. Especially chocolate cream. Mmm… chocolate. Wanna find some chocolate?” I waggled my eyebrows at the frog right before something smacked into the side of the ship, throwing me from my newly acquired feet.

  My arms shot out as I tried to regain my balance, but instead of helping me do that, they turned into tentacles and slapped at the wall futilely. Pain shot through my tentacles as I crashed into the wall outside the room and slid to the spongy purple earth. It was a little strange because mushrooms were growing all over the hallway, and I didn’t remember them being there before. Still, who was I to complain? I mean, space was weird, and besides, maybe they were fun guys.