by Tristan Vick
“Excellent, so you’ll take us there.”
Even Antor, in the inebriated state he was in, knew it wasn’t a request. It was an order. Antor gulped as the emperor practically breathed down his neck, pretending to be all chummy like. “Um…there’s just one problem, your grace.”
“And what would that be, exactly?” asked Dakroth through his teeth.
“Raven wants me more or less dead.”
“That sounds like a personal problem, if you ask me.”
“Ah, yes. I see your point,” said Antor, agreeing to the emperor’s demands—even though it was under duress. “I’ll take you to Raven as soon as you’re ready.”
“Antor,” the emperor said, relinquishing his grip on the man’s neck, “I must admit, I’m very impressed by your hospitality.”
“Really?” he asked.
Jegra rolled her eyes and gave him a nudge on the shoulder to get him going. He staggered forward and glanced back at her only to see her nod her head in the direction of the elevator, urging him to get moving.
Moments later, the doors to the giant mud palace creaked open and Antor lead the three cloaked figures into the night. They made haste and briskly made their way over to a large hover skiff.
“This was made for moving heavy cargo, but it will get us there much quicker,” Antor said, helping his guests onto the broad, square hover platform.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Jegra asked. “Because it doesn’t look safe.” Antor only responded with a wily grin.
The hover skiff had what appeared to be hoverbike handlebars welded onto one end. Antor jammed the ignition button starting up the magnetic coils, and the skiff rose up. Hovering only twenty inches above the ground, Antor looked back at his passengers and said, “Hold on to your butts!”
With a pulsing whirr of the mag-coils, the skiff shot off.
Minus any safety railings, Jegra had to steady herself as they sped off. It was a lot like trying to manage a surf board. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the Emperor and Cassera struggling to do the same, latching onto one another for support.
“How long till we arrive?” Jegra asked, shouting against the rush of oncoming air and the droning noise of the mag-coils.
“About five minutes,” he replied. Glancing over his shoulder he shot Jegra a wink and then went back to piloting the skiff.
They flew up the street, kicking up a dust trail behind them as they went. Banking around a sharp bend, Antor took the skiff up so as to not throw his passengers. Then he swooped down again and raced up a different street.
Several pedestrians had to jump out of the way as they shot past, kicking up a whirlwind as they went.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Cassera asked.
“No,” their less than trustworthy guide answered. Shouting over his shoulder, he added, “Just hold tight. We’re almost there.”
The skiff shot out into an open area at the center of town and they flew into a large fenced-off area. It was a pen for swine. Or what appeared to be pigs; they had small trunks like those of a baby elephant where their snouts should be.
Out of the darkness came high-powered laser blasts. Not from any simple handheld blaster, but full on, wide-beam disrupter canons from a nearby ship. Though Jegra couldn’t see any ship, it didn’t matter; sure enough, as the dirt exploding around them from the warning blasts, it was out there.
Antor steered the skiff hard to the right, trying to pull away from the canon fire, but a warning shot into the dirt directly in their path caused it to lurch up into the air. Catching air, the skiff flipped over, tossing its occupants to the ground.
Everybody tumbled to a halt in the dirt. Clothes and hair a dusty mess, Jegra pushed herself to her hands and knees only to find the end of a blaster barrel pointed at her temple.
The muzzle of the gun pressed tightly against her head, and a most serious voice said, “Don’t move.”
Jegra slowly raised her eyes to find a familiar face looking down at her. “It’s you!” she gasped, recognizing the blue-skinned woman from yesterday’s encounter in the bar.
“What part of ‘don’t move’ did you not understand?” the blue skinned woman with purple eyes asked in an obviously vexed tone.
“Hey’yah, Raven,” Antor said shamefacedly, as two of Raven’s four-member crew cuffed him and set him on his knees before their fearless captain. “Long time no see.”
Raven pulled out a second blaster from the back of her waist, and aimed it at Antor’s grinning face. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just put a hole through that dumb-grinning face of yours, Antor?”
“Maybe because I brought you the most lucrative deal this side of the galaxy?”
“What are you talking about?” Raven barked. Her trigger finger itched like a son-of-a-bitch and she wanted ever so badly to blow that smirk right off his face, but she held back. She was ruthless, but she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, especially if there was profit in patience.
Antor nodded at the two hooded figures in their company, as if to say these are the gifts I speak of.
“Take their hoods off,” she ordered.
A large Kree’alek fish-man stepped forward. He wore a custom-tailored aquatic-to-dry land respiration suit made from a copper colored alloy; it fit over his upper torso like a retro astronaut suit. It was filled with constantly filtering seawater for him to breathe through. He obeyed Raven’s orders and pulled back the hoods of the captors to reveal the emperor of Dagon and the vice admiral of the fleet.
“Holieeey schizoid,” a giant, green and blue striped Dragonian said, holding a much too heavy rifle in both clawed hands. His skin was like that of an alligator’s, thick and rubbery with a patch work of scale patterns.
The lizard man’s face was pleasant in a way. His greenish-yellow eyes had a depth to them. Almost a hypnotic quality. It felt like gazing into a beautiful marble and getting lost in the moment. And he was totally jacked. Muscles on top of muscles, which made him the hottest lizard man Jegra had ever seen. If this wasn’t enough, his face consisted of a slight hump for a snout that blended nicely into his broad jawline, making him quite the handsome specimen.
Over to the right, a smaller, slender figure with a wrapped face and goggles guarded the loading ramp that revealed the entrance to the ship. The ship itself was cloaked, so all one could see was the ramp leading up into the cargo hold. The masked figure let out an awestruck whistle.
“Bloody Helios!” Raven gasped. “This is great, just fucking great. And here we were trying to keep a low profile, what with the Nyctan fleet shooting at everything in sight. Luckily, the Skywend has a cloaking device, so they haven’t caught onto us yet. But chances are, if you’re here, Nyctan spies already know about it.”
“Will you help us or not?” Cassera asked.
Raven scowled at her and then looked over at the emperor with a more sympathetic expression. “I can’t say no to the emperor of the whole bloody galaxy, can I?”
“I sense sarcasm in that,” Dakroth said, raising an eyebrow.
“Do you?” Raven quipped, even more sarcastically than before. Turning on her heels, she holstered her blasters and headed toward the loading ramp of her ship. “Well, what are you all standing around for. Bring our guests aboard the Skywend.”
“Yes, Raven,” the Dragonian said, sounding genuinely apologetic. Then he ushered everyone on board, all but for one.
“Not you,” he said, stopping Antor with the butt of his gun. Nudging the drunk back, he glared at the sniveling man and hissed in his baritone, reptilian tone, one that sent Antor scurrying back.
“Oh, and Antor,” Jegra said, pausing halfway up the ramp and turning around to address him. “Unless you want me to pay you a visit late one night to play a little game I like to call ‘let’s see how many bones I can break in your body before you pass out’, I wouldn’t whisper a word of this to anyone. Savvy?”
“No problem,” Antor said. “My lips are sealed.” He pretended to twist an
imaginary key above his pursed lips and tossed it aside. “Mum’s the word,” he mumbled through his pursed lips, like a complete idiot.
Jegra glared at him with distrust until, finally, he caved in to the intensity of it and slowly slunk backward. That’s when the large, reptilian guard grunted and feigned a lunge toward Antor.
Startled, Antor yelped and turned and scurried away, tripping over his own feet numerous times as he struggled to hightail it out of there. Without stopping to look back, he ran into the night as fast as his two legs would carry him.
The Dragonian looked up at Jegra and winked. She smiled at him and then boarded the Skywend. He followed her up just as the ramp began to close.
12
Laser shots blasted across the bow of the Skywend as she darted out of Thessalonica’s atmosphere and into open space.
The 600-foot-long vessel, as big and sleek as a mega-yacht back on Earth, streaked across the sky as the much larger Nyctan cruisers, three times bigger than the biggest warships Jegra had ever seen, slowly brought their bows around and began pursuit of the small frigate.
“Bloody Helios!” Raven growled, jamming the throttle forward and opening up the thrusters to their maximum burn. “They were expecting us.”
“Can you outrun them?” Cassera asked, leaning over Raven’s seat. Raven shot her a sharp glance that said “Back Off.” Complying, Cassera took a step back and gave the captain her space.
“A bulky cruiser that size? You bet I can outrun it. We’ll fly circles around them the entire time they try to pull away from the low orbit. It’s like they say, the bulkier your hull, the harder you roll.”
“This ship looks fresh out of spacedock,” Emperor Dakroth said, running his hand along the sleek lines of the bulkhead. “Out of curiosity, how did you come by this vessel?”
“I thought you might ask, considering she was one of yours.”
“Impossible,” Cassera said. “As fleet’s vice admiral, I would have heard about it.”
“Not necessarily,” Raven said. “Hold on,” she interjected. Another blast shot across the bridge of the ship, and Raven pulled up on the joystick, rolled the Skywend onto its back, then dove back down, forcing the cruiser to have to readjust its cannons before getting off another round.
Continuing on where she’d left off, she informed them about how she came across the Skywend.
“The Skywend is a prototype ship I commandeered on a smuggling run. It was adrift in the Zargora system. When I came aboard, I found nothing but an empty vessel. Its entire crew having mysteriously vanished without a trace. And since nobody had laid claim to the missing vessel, I commandeered her under the official rules of the intergalactic trade commission.”
“I heard you won it in a bet,” stated Jegra, recalling what Antor had told them. Although he was most certainly a habitual liar, this seemed as though it would be a rather strange thing for him to lie about.
“I won her back in a bet,” Raven said. “That scumbag Antor and his goons hijacked us when we stopped off at Plenar station to pick up a shipment of korridium alloy for another client. It took me three weeks and every resource I had to get her back. Ultimately, I caught up with him at the casino aboard Lilly’s Lucky Star Station over the moon Rivelon. I paid a sweet million creds to buy into the game and then cleaned him out. Hurt him where it counts–his wallet. Got ten mill and the ship out of it.”
“He’s lucky you let him off the hook,” Jegra said.
“I would love nothing more than to blot that terrible stain out of existence, but he’s too well connected with the type of disreputable folks we tend to do business with.”
Jegra folded her arms across her chest. “So, what you’re saying is, he’s a necessary evil.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Raven replied. “Hold on!” Raven jerked on the joystick and the ship veered hard to port. As the gravity of the small moon out the Skywend’s window pulled on them, everyone braced themselves.
The masked figure Jegra remembered from earlier poked her head in and announced, “The FTL is primed, captain.”
“Good work, Gyllek. Let me know if there’s any hiccups in the engines.”
“Wilco, boss-lady!” Gyllek said saluting. With that she ducked back out of the cabin and disappeared down a nearby hatch.
“Just give me your coordinates or destination and we’ll split like a beam of light.”
“We need to go to the Zargora system. Sector B-13. Asteroid MK-29-388-XP3,” relayed Dakroth.
Raven looked back and shot him a shocked look.
“I know, I know,” he said.
“Bloody Helios,” Raven said. Swiveling back around into her chair, she got on the comm. “Everyone sit down and strap in. We’re jumping to an asteroid that orbits a black hole.”
“We’re what?” gasped Jegra in shock.
“This takes some precision flying, ladies and gents. So, please sit down and shut up. Thanks.”
Everyone found themselves a seat in the oval bridge and strapped in.
“Engaging FTL drive in, three, two, one…”
With a flash of light, the ship blasted away from the system, leaving the Nyctan battle cruisers in its stardust.
Lines of starlight streaked by the windows as they traveled beyond the light barrier. After about fifteen minutes, Raven pulled back on the throttle of the FTL drive and dropped out of hyperspace.
The ship started shuddering, rattling violently.
“What’s that?” Jegra asked, gripping her harness tight. She wasn’t used to space travel. She’d spent most of her time with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Space travel didn’t suit her.
“It’s a meteor shower,” Raven growled as she leaned across her controls and flicked numerous switches and twisted dials. There was a pulsating murmur and then the sound of a generator came on. “Front deflectors increased to full output.”
A voice came on the intercom. “Boss-lady, I just wanted to say that those hiccups weren’t me. I swear.”
“I know,” Raven replied. “It’s a meteor shower.”
“There shouldn’t be a meteor cloud out this far,” Cassera said. “Not unless…”
“I’m sorry to break it to you, Emperor Dakroth,” Raven said swiveling around in her captain’s chair. “But your asteroid has been obliterated.”
Dakroth stepped forward and peered out the window. In the distance a massive black hole slowly gobbled up a string of rocks that slowly fell into it. Soon a ring, would form around it as the remaining debris found a steady, non-decaying orbit.
“What was out here this far?” Jegra asked.
“A secret shipyard,” Dakroth informed. “It’s where this vessel was made. And it’s where my new cruiser was being built. Obviously the Nyctans found out about it and destroyed it before it could be completed.”
“Actually,” Raven cut in, “this damage is very recent.”
“How recent?” Cassera asked.
Raven spun around and checked her display panel. She tapped a few touch sensitive buttons and then replied, “About three days.”
“Raven,” Jegra asked, placing her hand on Raven’s shoulder. “Are there any pirates bold enough to attack an Imperial dry dock?”
“Not without fear of retaliation,” Raven informed them.
“This has to be someone else. Someone new,” said Dakroth, slamming his fist into an open palm out of frustration.
“Whoever is behind this, they’re obviously trying to take advantage of the recent turmoil,” Cassera said. “The only question is, how did they know about a top-secret facility that even I wasn’t aware existed until a day ago?”
“That remains to be seen,” the emperor said. “Until we have a shred of information to go on, however, we need to head to Cordova.”
“Cordova?” Raven asked, a perplexed look coming over her. “What could you possibly need that’s in Cordova?”
“It’s not a what, but a who,” Dakroth replied.
“Have it yo
ur way,” Raven said, punching in the coordinates. “But you may all want to head back to the galley and make yourselves something to eat. This trip will be about three days at faster than light speed.”
“Three days?” Jegra gasped.
“Cordova is at the very edge of the empire,” Raven informed her. “And there’s no straight route there. We have to pass through all seven systems. That means avoiding planets, stars, rogue asteroids, and any unfriendlies that might want to take us out.” She looked over at her Dragonian co-pilot and added, “Kregor, take our guests to the galley and get them something to eat. Then help them settle into their guest quarters.”
The Dragonian stood up and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. If you’ll all follow me,” he said, ducking under the low entrance of the bridge and out into the main corridor of the vessel.
Just as the emperor was about to leave the bridge, Raven cleared her throat. Dakroth paused and, one arm on the doorway, he looked back.
“Is there something else?”
“As for the matter of payment…”
“Name your price.”
“Two million credits.”
“You’ll have it the moment I set foot on Cordova. Is there anything else you’d like?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Raven said pointing at a green display panel. “There’s a special system I can’t access. Gyllek has tried to hack it but it seems unbroachable. I was wondering … you wouldn’t happen to have the access code or know what it does by any chance?”
“Strange, I wasn’t aware of any hidden systems,” Dakroth lied. “Anyway, I’m afraid that I’m not too familiar with these new systems.”
“Well, thanks anyway.” She could tell he was lying through his pearly white teeth, but she didn’t want to push the matter any further for fear of getting on his bad side. Right now, she was a neutral agent, and that’s exactly the way she intended to keep things. Amicable.
“No, problem,” the emperor said. He smiled at Raven then left the bridge.