Smuggler's Legacy

by Bradford Bates

  We emerged into the dirty mist this planet called rain and came to a stop. The company’s soldiers had us surrounded. Their guns were pointed at us, and they sure as fuck didn’t look happy to see us. I’d had enough bullshit for one day. If these assholes were going to kill us, I wanted to at least catch my breath.

  Sitting down heavily in the muddy courtyard I gasped for air until I felt my breathing start to slow. The soldiers hadn’t moved, and I didn’t plan on giving them a reason to. I set my rifle to the side and waved my hand at them to lower their weapons. “I don’t know too much about this shithole, but where I’m from we treat our heroes a little bit differently.”

  Something slammed into the back of my head, and the world went dark.

  Chapter 25

  Drake

  If there was anything I hated worse than waking up on a workday, it was waking up in the hospital. Whoever hit me in the head had obviously gone a little overboard. Hopefully, the rest of my crew got out unscathed. The beeping of the machines sounded different than the one in medbay, so I wasn’t out of the thick of it yet.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes, but the damn machines would have already alerted someone that I was awake. That meant someone would be coming to see me soon if they weren’t waiting in my room already. The lights in the room were bright as I struggled to open my eyes. The burning glow let me know that I had been out longer than I would have liked. It took a few minutes of squinting before I could keep my eyes open, but I finally managed it.

  When I finally looked around the room, I wished that I could just close my eyes and go back to sleep. I was in prison, or at least the hospital’s version of it. That was one hell of a thank you for rescuing all those people and not killing a single company man when I had every right to have killed a shit ton of them.

  Joke was on them. Soon they might have a fucking dragon to deal with, and I’d be long gone. Maybe I’d keep that last part to myself. I mean who would believe me anyway? Killing the creepy priest of death and freeing a bunch of people should buy me enough goodwill to get out of here. There was no need to talk about dragons. I’d let them discover that little factoid on their own.

  There was a woman in a white suit waiting at the foot of my bed. She looked a little exasperated like she had expected me to be awake earlier, and I was ruining her schedule for the rest of the day. If the Solaris Corporation had wanted to talk, then they shouldn’t have had one of their men crack my skull open with the butt of his rifle.

  I tried to sit up, but my vision got fuzzy, and I gave up. Lying back on a pillow that was a little too stiff for my liking I decided to end the silence. “I hope there is a good reason I’m being detained.”

  The woman stiffened, probably not accustomed to being put on the defensive right away. “We had every right to hold you after your attack on the city and our men.”

  “Your men were shooting at members of my crew, members that are protected by the mercenary’s guild. You should be happy we didn’t kill every last one of them.”

  “If you had, we wouldn’t be having this charming conversation right now.” She sounded pretty confident about the eventual outcome.

  “You’re right,” she looked mollified for the moment, “because if we went to war with you, you wouldn’t even know what hit you.”

  She unbuttoned her coat and tossed it on an empty chair. Her face was flushed and her breathing shallow. In other words, she was seething with rage, and I had my doubts as to whether she would be able to control it.

  The woman’s hazel eyes were piercing when she turned her gaze back towards me. “Well then, let’s be glad it didn’t come to that.” It pained her to say it, especially when she didn’t believe a word of it.

  Still, it wouldn’t do me any good to keep pushing her buttons when she was trying to be diplomatic. So I shelved the reply I had planned and took a different course of action. “So when can I get out of here?”

  “You can leave at any time.”

  Pulling the IV from my wrist, I tried to shuffle to the side of the bed. My head was still swimming, and there was no way my legs were ready to support me just yet. Thankfully the woman moved forward and gently pushed me back into bed. It saved me from admitting that I couldn’t have climbed out of the bed even if I wanted to.

  “There is no need for theatrics, Captain Drake. I also need you to sign a few forms before we can return you to your ship.”

  “I’ll need my second here to look over them for me. I’m in no shape to be assessing any kind of legal documents.”

  “She’s right outside the door. As soon as you sign the paperwork, you’re free to go.” The woman moved towards the chair and pulled a leather briefcase to her from the floor beside it. She opened the case and pulled out a stack of papers. She set them on the table attached to my bed and left the room.

  Maze came in as the woman left. I would have liked to call her something besides “the woman” but she hadn’t offered her name. That sounded just like the company. It wasn’t worth the time or money to relish in the simple pleasantries. On the plus side, Maze looked healthy, and she had a smile on her face.

  “Hope you’re feeling better?” she asked while approaching my bed.

  “Actually, I’m still a little shaky and not so clear as to what in the hell is going on.”

  “I think we should finish that story on the Talon.”

  I shoved the pile of papers towards Maze. “The suit wants me to sign these.”

  Maze brushed the pages onto the ground. “That won’t be necessary, I’ve got a plan.”

  Oh, shit. The last time I let Maze plan a job we ended up destroying half a city block. That wasn’t the kind of incident I wanted to repeat, at least not here. The company was already pissed at us. Frankly, I was shocked that we weren’t already dead. All I wanted to do was get off this planet, and I wanted to do it without signing whatever bullshit statement they concocted to try and blame us for what happened. So I guess Maze’s plan was a go.

  Maze pulled a small vial of dark red liquid from inside of her bra strap. “This should cure those shaky legs.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Maze gave me a curt nod. She didn’t want me to have any of Samantha’s blood, so if she was offering it up as a solution, then I needed to be on my game. I drank the entire vial in one shot and then waited for a moment as the heat spread from my belly through the rest of my body. My head cleared almost instantly, and when I stood up my legs didn’t even wobble.

  It didn’t take me long to find my clothes and slip into them. Maze had been watching the door, but she gave me a sly smile that told me she had also stolen a few glances at my naked derriere as I slipped into my pants. That was my girl. I’d have done the same thing if the tables had been reversed. Who was I kidding? I’d already done the same thing, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

  The suit walked back into the room to claim her jacket and see how we were doing with the papers. When she saw that I was dressed, she reached down to activate her comm. Maze slid a needle into her neck, and then she was sleeping like a baby. It didn’t take long for the both of us to get her in the bed and hook up the sensors that had been previously attached to me.

  This kind of deception wouldn’t last long, but hopefully it would last long enough for us to get out of here. Maze looked over the lady to make sure everything was in place and then began to search her pockets. She pulled out a key card a moment later and activated her own comm.

  “Ice, I’ve got it.”

  “Just give me fifteen seconds, bosslady,” Ice replied.

  “What is going on?” I might have been healed from my injuries, but I still had no idea what the plan was.

  Maze looked up from the card she had taken to meet my eyes. “Ice is adjusting this card to work with my DNA signature. Once she’s done, we should be able to open any door in the place.”

  “I only need one door to open, the exit.”

  Maze gave me a look that said are you fucking serious ri
ght now?

  “No, that wasn’t a weird sex joke.” That’s what happened when you told your woman how much you liked her ass all the time. Anything and everything then became a sex joke about her butt. I wish I could say that I didn’t deserve it, but who was I kidding.

  Maze started to laugh. Not more than five minutes after I climb back into this world from the depths of unconsciousness, and she was busting my balls. God, I loved this woman. Maybe it was just the rush of energy the blood had given me, but I wanted to beg her for ten minutes of alone time before we made our great escape.

  “Done,” Ice said through the comm channel.

  Maze tapped me on the arm. “Time to roll, big boy. We’ve got a very important date, and we can’t be late.”

  “Lead the way.”

  She dropped me a wink over her shoulder. “Just keep your eyes off my exit, soldier.”

  “Get over yourself.” Before she could be mad about what I said, I kissed her. “Let’s go already. This place is cramping my style.”

  Maze didn’t hesitate again. She opened the door and walked down the hallway with purpose. I tried to talk to her once, but she just held a finger to her lips and kept going. The energy coursing through me made it hard to walk. I wanted to run. For the first time ever, I thought running sounded like a good idea.

  The electronic doors opened for Maze as we approached. The hallway was completely void of any people or equipment. There were other doors, but all of them were closed. It almost felt like this entire floor was on lockdown. This must be the secure ward for unruly patients.

  This planet sucked, everything was so depressing here, and we hadn’t even tried the food yet. Seriously, next time someone had family drama, it needed to wait until our vacation was fucking over. I mean we had to leave the beach for this? I didn’t even know if we got Nick back to Ice’s family. Had this little excursion even been worth it?

  We took the elevator up, stopping at the highest floor. Maze then circled around until she found the entrance to the maintenance area. From there we made our way to the roof. Maze hit a small button on her coat and then turned to watch the sky. I turned with her and couldn’t help but smile as the Talon came into view. The ship was too large to land on this building, but that wasn’t going to stop us from getting home.

  Ice moved the Talon into position. The ship spun deftly in the air as she backed it up to the building. The ramp to the cargo bay lowered and Maze and I started running. We easily cleared the gap between the building and the Talon. The hospital's doors burst open just as my feet landed on the ramp. Ice started to fly away as Maze hit the button to close the hatch. A few bullets pinged off the hull of the ship. A few more scratches on this old bird was nothing to write home about. We were free.

  Chapter 26

  One Week Later, Drake

  “I’m sorry to see that you're leaving us already, Sally.” I pulled her into a warm embrace.

  After we pulled apart she slapped me affectionately on the shoulder. “You’re just going to miss my cooking. It’s been too long since this ship has seen a woman’s touch.”

  She was right. Despite the fact this ship wouldn’t stay in the air without a particular woman’s touch, all of the women on board this vessel weren’t so great in the kitchen. Fuck, I wasn’t so great in the kitchen, and Gabe was the mother of all disasters when it came to cooking. All of us had other skills. And if Sally couldn’t stay to keep us fed properly like, then maybe one of these days we’d have to break down and hire a chef.

  “So no way I can convince you to stay?”

  “If it were just me, I’d take you up on the offer, but this ship is no place to raise three young girls. That, and I have to consider my husband. Let’s just say he likes his feet planted firmly on the ground.”

  “Well, it’s going to be a real shame letting you go.”

  “I appreciate that, Captain. That and everything else you’ve done for my family. She gave me another quick hug and moved down the ramp to join her husband and daughters. She had to be kidding. We had taken them with us when we left Ice’s homeworld, and now we were dropping them off somewhere that was covered in muddy rain. At least they wouldn’t be forced to work in the mines. I guess that counted for something.

  It was hard starting over, but this almost felt like a rebirth. Gone were the shackles of the company and the debts they held over your head. Now they could work and eventually prosper. We also set them up with a nice little nest egg, and even though we didn’t tell them, we had plans to send them credits monthly for the next year. None of us wanted to see them fail after we plucked them away from the only world they had ever known.

  Maze nestled into my side as we watched the rest of the crew say their goodbyes from the top of the ramp. “We did a good thing here, Captain.”

  I gave her a gentle squeeze. “We sure did.”

  After our miraculous hospital breakout, the crew had filled me in on the rest of what happened during our escape. After I had gone down, Samantha lost it. Maze couldn’t even tell me what happened. It was all a blur for her. Samantha just shrugged her shoulders when I tried to pry more information out of her. So I’ll just have to be content knowing that somehow she got Maze and Nick back to the Talon safely.

  Ice had cried when she told me that Nick refused to stay on the Talon after waking up. He told her that he had too much work to do, and too many people were counting on him. He couldn’t just leave. Nick wanted to change the system from the inside. A commendable goal, but one born out of naiveté.

  After he left Ice had tracked me down, and the plan to break me out commenced. I still had no idea what was on the papers the company’s attorney had brought us, and I didn’t care. Let them take credit for saving the children and Nick. We were back in the black, and I was already scanning our database for the next job. Those credits we wanted to send Sally weren’t just going to appear in our accounts because we wanted them to.

  Maze and I smiled down at their family as Gabe finished loading their bags into the back of the van they had rented. Everything had worked out pretty well, all told. That didn’t always happen out here, so it felt nice to take the win.

  I snuck out of our room, leaving Maze sleeping in the bed. She looked so perfect there with one leg hanging off the edge. Everyone else on the ship should be asleep or in their bunks, so the Talon was mine. There wasn’t something sinister on my mind as I wandered the halls towards the bridge. Just a nagging feeling that now might be the right time to get in touch with Max. That was, if he would even answer me again. I knew he was still pissed about what he had lost on Serenity Station.

  Sitting in the captain’s chair for once felt pretty good. I never really got to use it now that Ice and Samantha had taken over pilot duties. That was really too bad, it was a damn fine chair, and the view from here was spectacular. Still, those two women had earned their places piloting this ship. A captain would do just about anything to get a quality pilot for his ship, I had two.

  I ran my hands over the leather armrests, enjoying the feel of the cool material. The leather crackled slightly under my hands, and I thought about going to the kitchen to grab some oil for it. Instead, I logged into the system and started scanning my mail. The guild was still enjoying a good laugh at how we had stuck it to the Solaris Corporation. They didn’t know the real story of why we were there. Only that we had tweaked our collective nose at someone in power.

  I made it through my spam box not seeing anything from Max, and then the little red light started flickering at the bottom of the screen indicating I had a live call coming into the Talon’s comms. I double checked the time and thought about just letting it go, but if someone was calling now it was probably important. I opened the video line and leaned back to take a sip of my coffee.

  A man appeared on the screen, his face hidden in the shadows of a cloaked hood. The material was solid black, not ominous at all. I sat in silence waiting for the caller to reveal himself. He seemed content to just take in the view.
/>
  “I don’t know about you, friend, but I have other things to do today. That means you’ve got until I finish this cup of coffee to say what you need to say.”

  “Captain Drake, I’m a little disappointed that you don’t remember me.”

  “You can’t exactly fault me, when you call dressed like that.”

  “I guess that is a fair assessment. Is this better?” He pulled down his hood.

  It wasn’t better, not by a long shot. Sitting in front of me was a man I hoped to never see again. The tattoos that covered his head gave him away. Something was different about him now though. He was confident. Not the confidence born of arrogance that he had before, but actual pure unadulterated confidence. This man knew what he wanted and planned on getting it at any cost.

  “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I had hoped to never see you again. I mean it’s a big multi-verse, there is no reason we can’t stay on separate sides of it.”

  A smile crinkled across D’avin’s face. “You were right to fear seeing me again.”

  “No one said anything about being afraid.” I sat up and looked directly into his eyes. “I seem to remember that when we last spoke, I walked away unscathed from our meeting.”

  I let it hang in the air. The reminder that D’avin had left our last meeting with his brother in a body bag. Samantha had killed his brother, and that was something no man would easily forgive. I had hoped that sparing his life would have bought us some latitude, but that had always just been wishful thinking.

  “You don’t have to remind me of what I lost.” D’avin’s voice seethed with rage. “I was just calling to ask you and your crew to stand down when I come for her. If you do not interfere, I will let you walk away unharmed. I owe you that much.”

  As if that was ever going to happen. Samantha was one of us, and no one fucked with us. Especially not some white robe wearing, wannabe cult, son of a bitch. Wait, where was his white robe?