Derek knew Ashley was right, but he sympathized with John. He felt like he was abandoning Selene in part by not going immediately after her. But he kept his silence. Selene was his girlfriend but Emma was their daughter. They would go wherever John and Ashley decided.
John sighed and hung his head. "You're right, Ash, as usual. The Independence it is."
Ashley did not make a smart remark at the mention of her usually being right. She merely squeezed his arm and smiled before returning to the console in front of her.
Ethan entered the cockpit at that moment. He sat down in the chair opposite Derek and said nothing.
"Hey, kiddo," John said. "All your boys settled in?"
"It's a little cramped, but they've been in tighter spots."
"I've been meaning to upgrade the Dauntless, you know," John said. "Just can't bring myself to scrap her."
Ethan snorted. "You always were a hoarder."
"Hey," John said in mock outrage. "I have an old soul. I don't like change. Which means I hold onto old stuff probably longer than I should."
"That's an understatement. You kept your gasoline car for like a hundred years after the full switchover to hover cars. Just kept it in your old garage with nowhere to drive it."
"Oh, and remember the pair of pants you owned for six decades," Ashley said. "I think there were like six layers of dust on them when you finally pulled them out."
"I'll have you know those were my skinny jeans," John protested. "They were a remnant from a dignified era."
"A dignified era that has come and gone four times since then."
"I think they're getting ready to make a comeback," Derek chimed in, feeling awkward participating in the family discussion. But he had seen people wearing synth-jeans which hugged their bodies awfully tight the last time he was on a more core-ward world.
"Ugh," Ethan said. "I think I had blocked those out in my memory. Thanks for dredging them up for me, Mom."
"Anything for my little boy," Ashley said, turning in her seat and blowing him a sarcastic kiss.
They seemed like a regular family. Almost. Derek didn't let the appearance fool him. He was sure Ethan hadn't given up his grudge against his family. He was also sure John and Ashley still felt hurt by his rejection. Perhaps considering Emma being captured, or worse, they felt they had to come together as a family. Derek smiled at the banter and would have relaxed if an entire fleet of traitorous ships and Krai'kesh invaders weren't clogging the space between them and the Independence. "I'm going to go take a turret," he announced.
"I'll take the other one," Ethan said. The dark blue of the upper atmosphere was rapidly morphing into the blackness of outer space. "It's been a while since I used one of those."
Derek took the top turret while Ethan took the bottom. He sighted his reticle and took a practice shot to calibrate himself. The turret needed no calibration but, like Ethan, it had been awhile since he fired a laser turret.
John plotted a straight path for the Dauntless to take to reach the Independence. Derek heard target lock warnings blare and then stop moments later repeatedly. "Is your targeting sensor on the fritz?" he asked through the comm.
"Nah, it's just so crazy out there we're being targeted by loyalists and traitors. No one is quite sure who to trust out there. It's our only saving grace or we'd have two dozen fighters and three dozen missiles barreling toward us right now."
Which we would be hard-pressed to survive, Derek thought. John had saved them once with an optical illusion before the Krai'kesh reached them that knocked him unconscious while Ashley had engaged in an equally dangerous feat of magic to manipulate a small asteroid field to their advantage, but they had been detected already and there were no asteroid fields nearby to call upon. What other tricks could they pull out of their sleeve if push came to shove?
Derek could not see the sensor outputs while in the turret seat but he could see what had to be the Independence in the distance. Her shields blurred as hit after hit struck them. He felt certain they would be unable to survive much longer.
John felt the same way, for he opened a channel to the Independence. "Independence, this is the Nightblade. We won't be able to reach you in time. We're going to activate our own shadow drive. Go ahead and jump."
"One moment." The line went silent for a moment. "The admiral agrees with your assessment and wishes you Godspeed in returning to Pompero IV."
"Thank the admiral for his well-wishes, but we don't need no stinking luck. Dauntless out." The link closed.
Derek rolled his eyes and imagined Ashley doing the same in the cockpit. Perhaps even Ethan was feeling embarrassed by his father? So they didn't need them in turrets after all. Derek did not hurry from the chair, instead watching the stars until the Dauntless passed through a void portal and the clear darkness of outer space was replaced with the cloudy darkness of shadow space.
Chapter 6 - Shadows of the Past
The surface of Coristair III neared as Rachel dove straight toward it. The wind whipped her hair back and made her already cold skin colder. A map in her mind's eye, projected by her implant, showed the landing area. She nudged herself in that direction and continued her rapid descent. When her implant warned her of impending impact she bound herself skyward and felt a tug on her back. The feeling moved to her head and shoulders as she became upright, her feet pointed toward the ground. Her descent almost halted. She laid off on the binding a little bit to pick up more speed but when she was twenty feet from the ground she increased the pull again and floated like a feather to the ground. Too bad no one was around to see me nail such a great landing, she thought.
Not that she was awed by such a landing. She had trained for years to perform such a maneuver and it came as second nature to her. She thought back to the first time she dove like that and broken both her legs upon landing. Damn that had hurt like a bitch for a few minutes.
She crouched down in case any observers had happened to see a single figure flying at high speed and unhooked her satchel from her back. She set it on the ground and withdrew her SX-1745 coilgun sniper rifle in a disassembled state. Muscle memory kicked in as she assembled the rifle for the umpteenth time. She surveyed her ammunition. Seven shells left. She only needed one.
She pulled up a map of the region she had downloaded before insertion with her implant. The compound containing her target lay twelve kilometers to the west. She walked in that direction, sniper rifle at the ready and dust crunching under her feet. She avoided shuffling her feet so as not to throw up dust and alert the sentries.
Her concerns were unfounded, however, for no sentries patrolled the area. Did they rely solely on long range sensors? Or had she not yet reached the perimeter? Ten minutes later she arrived at her destination. A cluster of ground cover on a hill overlooking a valley. Ten kilometers away sat the private villa of her target.
Rachel lay down in the ground cover and looked through the scope of her rifle. Her target, the dictator Dexter Ronin, sat on the portico of his private villa. His "wife,” an indentured servant forced on penalty of death to serve him, sat across from him. He was speaking, his arms moving animatedly and his wife flashing an insincere smile.
The sniper rifle lay across the ground, couched against Rachel's shoulder. She made a few last-minute calculations, as the wind speed had picked up. A scene flashed in her mind of her first kill with the weapon. She pushed it aside, saving her lamentations for after the mission was accomplished.
A coilgun had been chosen for this job because of the occasional shimmer in front of Dexter. An energy shield surrounded his villa, stopping anything short of capitol ship turbo laser from breaching the perimeter. This job required more finesse, and a projectile weapon could fly straight through.
Her intel told her the villa was equipped with a complex system of sensors linked to an artillery battery. Upon detection of intruders on the perimeter or a weapon being discharged, the artillery battery would automatically target the point of origin within three seconds and f
ire.
They had not detected Rachel's movement yet, which suggested the sensors were calibrated to detect life signs rather than movement. That was all about to change. She would have to gun and run after confirming the kill.
Her finger went to the trigger. The dictator's head was in her sights. One shot, one kill, just like she'd been trained.
She fired. One.
The magnetically propelled projectile shot out faster than a chemically propelled bullet. Within an instant it impacted Dexter Ronin's head, blowing his brains out.
Two, she thought. Without further thought she accessed the power within and anchored herself to the space behind her. She flew straight backward, at a speed rivaling the bullet she'd just fired. She became upright as she flew, anchored to the hill behind her. From her perspective, the hill was down and she was falling backward toward it.
Three. The ground cover which had hidden her exploded as multiple artillery shells slammed down seconds after her departure. An ordinary assassin would have been turned to ash after such a strike.
She wasted no time binding herself space-ward. She flew toward the stratosphere at high speed, as if a vacuum was stuck to the top of head and dragging her up. "Any time now, guys," she said into her comm as she flew.
"Calculating intersection. You ready?"
"I was born ready."
As Rachel reached the stratosphere she bound herself to all directions. Her ascension halted but she did not fall or drift. She floated in one place. The Renegade flew up next to her. The side airlock opened. She bound herself to the inside of the ship and floated inside. Once inside she released her binding, the gravity of the planet below pulled her to the deck of the ship and her boots clomped loudly. The outer door closed and a hiss indicated air and pressure returning to the airlock. She removed her helmet and suit before it was complete and opened the inner door when the pressurization completed.
"Piece of cake," she said.
"I prefer pie, myself," Maggie said, seated at a bench in the common area of the Renegade. A bowl of synth-meal sat in front of her.
"Cake is a lie," said Reynaldo, sitting across from her with a drink in his hand.
"And you, Frank?" Rachel shouted toward the cockpit.
"Hey, I'm Swartheid. Leave me out of it."
"Even Swartheid picked a side during the war."
"Not right away. They waited to see who was winning to throw their hat in the ring."
"Sounds like us," Reynaldo said, taking a sip from his drink.
Rachel snorted. "You have it backwards. Any side we're on is the winning side."
"Whatever you say, boss," Maggie said, rolling her eyes, rising with a half-full bowl of stew and heading toward her quarters.
Rachel walked toward the refresher but stopped. She detected a gravitational shift behind her. She knew of only one thing that caused such.
Reynaldo spit out his drink and hurried to withdraw his pistol. "Boss, we got company." He pointed it toward the person behind Rachel.
Rachel sighed. "Put your weapon down, Reynaldo." She turned and confirmed the identity of their guest. "Hello, Aunt."
"Aunt?" Reynaldo spluttered. "She's your-your aunt? How the hell did she get aboard?"
Bridgette did not speak. She merely gave Reynaldo a cool glance before returning her gaze to Rachel. "We need to talk."
"Leave us," Rachel said.
"But, boss."
"I said, leave us," she said more firmly this time. "I need to speak with my aunt alone."
Reynaldo grumbled a "fine" and lumbered back to the table, grabbed his drink, and headed down the hall toward his quarters.
"I didn't think you would come back here after what happened last time," Rachel said after she heard a door slide shut down the hallway.
Bridgette remained where she was, assessing Rachel. "I was asked to come. And I wouldn't have been asked if it weren't important."
"I can guess who asked you. You can tell my father to go screw himself."
"This is bigger than you and your father. The Krai'kesh have returned."
"So what do you expect me to do about it? Just come running home?"
"The Federation needs you, Rachel."
"Hah. The same Federation that stood by and did nothing as my kind were oppressed and discriminated against? The Federation that let my mother die? No thanks."
"I can't change the past, or the facts. The Krai'kesh are using gravity as a weapon. You're the only one who stands a chance against that."
"No."
"Rachel..."
"I said no, Aunt Bridgette."
"I'm not leaving until..."
Rachel snapped. She bound Bridgette to the wall, forcing her to slam backward and stick there.
"You...agree...to...come," she finished.
"And I told you no. If you know what's good for you you'll leave and not return."
Bridgette shifted, leaving a shadowy mist behind.
Rachel’s eyes widened. That hadn't happened the last time.
Bridgette rematerialized behind Rachel. "I went easy on you last time because, honestly, I didn't give a shit whether you came back to your father or not. I wasn't going to fight a brat for such a petty reason. But this...this is what I've been fighting for my entire life. I will do anything to see the Krai'kesh stopped once and for all."
"How did you do that?" was all Rachel could say. She knew for a fact Isabelle couldn't do that.
"There are many things you don't know about me," Bridgette said.
"Regardless, I'm not coming back with you."
"Then the Federation is doomed."
"Oh don't be so dramatic," Rachel scolded. "I'm sure Uncle Jason will discover some miracle technology to negate this weapon. Just give it time."
"We don't have time," Bridgette snapped. "Two planets have already been destroyed by this weapon and another left uninhabitable by another Krai'kesh weapon. We are losing and there's nothing we can do about it."
The Federation should have thought about that before they treated her so poorly. What did she owe them except her eternal ire? But perhaps she could help herself. "I'll come. On two conditions."
"Name them," Bridgette said instantly.
"One, my ship and my crew come with me."
"Fine," Bridgette said, looking around and sniffing.
Snobby bitch.
"Two, we get paid. A lot."
Bridgette gritted her teeth. "You're thinking about money at a time like this?"
"You expect us to win, right? Well, I expect to be paid enough that my crew and I never have to work again."
"How much?"
Rachel calculated numbers in her head. "A trillion Federation credits each."
"Fine," Bridgette bit out. "I'll see that it's done. Now are you ready to go? I wasn't lying about the urgency of this. Time is of the essence."
"Let me brief my crew first. Gotta get them on board."
"Two are in the corridor eavesdropping, as I'm sure the pilot was. I'm pretty sure they are already aware."
Ratted out, Reynaldo and Maggie emerged from around the corner. "How'd you know we were there?" Reynaldo asked.
"Two thousand years of staying one step ahead of the countless enemies who wanted me dead."
"Oh."
Rachel rolled her eyes. Apparently hubris ran on her father's side of the family. "Everyone okay with this?"
The door to the cockpit opened. "Just tell me where to fly, boss," Frank called.
"I'm in," Reynaldo said.
"Count me in," Maggie agreed. "I can buy a lot of shoes with a trillion credits."
"Forget shoes," Frank said. "I'll buy myself a ship ten times better than this hunk of..."
Rachel cleared her throat.
"...love. Hunk of burning love as it shoots through the sky."
"That's better," she said. "Let's get going," she said to Bridgette. But Bridgette was not listening. Her head was cocked to the side. She was communicating via her implant. Who would she be communica
ting with in the middle of nowhere near the outer edge of the Non-Aligned Planets?
Bridgette righted her head and blinked, re-focusing on Rachel. "We have to go, now."
"Okay," Rachel said, frowning. "We already agreed to go..."
"No, we really need to go. Your father's life is in danger."
"But..." her father was invincible. Or so she had always believed. Were the Krai'kesh truly that bad?
Bridgette didn't pay her any attention. She closed her eyes and Rachel felt their ship shift into shadow space. No void portal, no movement, just one moment and the next moment in shadow space.
Rachel made her way to the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot chair. The planet Rachel had just evacuated from took on a gray hue but disappeared a moment later, along with the entire solar system, as Bridgette moved the Renegade through shadow space without effort. Unlike modern shifting, which used a shadow drive to artificially enter shadow space and move a ship at an accelerated but finite speed, Bridgette moved vast distances with what had to be a thought. Blink, a solar system with binary stars, blink, a single dwarf star. Blink, a sun with no planets in sight. Blink, blink, blink. The blinking continued, faster than Rachel could register, until they hovered amid a debris field.
An escape pod floated in the middle of the debris field.
"Activate the tractor beam," Rachel ordered before remembering she sat in the co-pilots chair and could activate it herself. She targeted the pod and triggered the beam. An overlay on the viewport showed where the beam was as it wrapped around the pod and pulled it toward the airlock.
"No need," Bridgette called.
Rachel turned around in her chair but Bridgette was gone. She stopped the tractor beam.
Moments later Bridgette rematerialized. She had someone else with her.
Rachel rose from her seat, unexpected butterflies flitting around in her stomach. What reason did she have to be nervous? She should be furious instead, readying her sidearm or preparing to punch him. Instead she exited the cockpit and studied her father.
Ruin: A Seven Stars Novel (Dark Tide Trilogy Book 3) Page 7