Fate of Perfection (Finding Paradise Book 1)

by K. F. Breene

  “No, she’s not.” Ryker loaded a gun. “She’s sitting in an office, in temperature control, playing coding games with you. You’re running for your life in between throwing this stuff at her. If you weren’t preoccupied, you’d take her, no problem.”

  “And if you couldn’t take her, coding-wise, you could certainly pull guns out of your sleeves and shoot her,” Roe said as he looked through the window. “That is an awfully small ship.”

  “Three-man crew. I don’t see the third man, though.” Ryker cocked his gun. “I’ll find him soon enough.”

  “Let’s go.” Millicent entered the coordinates and then cocked her own gun. A borrowed gun anyway. Too small for her taste.

  The vessel they were in moved closer, as if it were just moving along the travel way with the other vehicles. Ten or so meters away, their craft went to swerve around, the computer system trying to avoid collision. Ryker took over manually and steered them right up to the vessel.

  One of the men inside stuck his head up to the window, his brows making a flat line over his eyes. He waved them on in irritated jerks of his hand.

  “Open the doors, Marie,” Millicent said softly, watching as another head joined the first.

  “There’s the third one.” Ryker stepped away from the controls as their doors opened. The other craft’s doors opened a moment later.

  The faces in the windows glanced to their right, clearly seeking an explanation from the driver as to why the doors were opening.

  Ryker launched himself in, still bleeding but not slowing because of it. He grabbed the first man and punched him in the face. The man’s nose cracked. His hands came up and clutched his face as Millicent jumped in next. She slapped a coupler on the other man to quickly bind his hands and then conked him over the head with a metal tool. The man crumpled to the ground as Ryker punched his man again. Lights out.

  “Can you apply your implant prison program to these men to keep them immobile, blind, and deaf?” Ryker asked.

  “No,” she said, out of breath. “I’d need to break into my department files, download the program—which is a huge file—then find the uplink to their implants . . . It would take too much time. I need to develop another, more mobile-friendly, program.”

  Ryker grabbed the man in the cockpit as Millicent turned for the others, helping Roe and Trent move Marie into the craft, and then come over themselves.

  “Stash them in the corner,” Roe said, pointing at the men on the ground. He threw a wave behind him, telling his man to move on. “Need the doors closed.”

  “Marie, can you—” Trent stopped talking as both doors shimmied closed.

  Roe’s vehicle moved into the natural flow of traffic.

  “Did you mean to kill this one?” Trent looked up with his fingers still on the man’s neck. Blood dribbled down the man’s forehead from where Millicent had conked him.

  She stared for a moment. “Oops.”

  “Mayday, mayday,” Ryker’s voice said from the front.

  “What is he doing?” Roe brought out a gun, his eyes going fierce.

  “Don’t!” Millicent jumped in the way. “Don’t shoot. I’m sure he’s got a good explanation . . .”

  “If he’s calling this in, we’re all fucked,” Roe said, reaching out to move Millicent away.

  “Dada!” Marie yelled.

  Roe froze as they heard, “Headquarters, come back.”

  “Pirate vessel attempted to board,” Ryker said in a panicked voice. “We took a gunshot. Man down, man down. Get this bird live. I repeat, get this bird live. We got a man down! Over.”

  “What is the state of the vessel, come back,” the voice said.

  “Vessel needs a refitting. It’ll fly. We can still see the pirate craft. Get this bird live, headquarters,” Ryker shouted into the receiver. “Over.”

  “Working on it, Double Twelve. Hang tight. Over and out.”

  Ryker tapped the comm panel and motioned for Millicent to get to the console. “Hopefully that’ll explain the death.”

  He glanced down at his feet. “I’m going to leave that one there.”

  “In other words, your wounds hurt.” Millicent sighed in relief as Roe lowered his gun. Marie stared, quieting.

  “Cute,” Ryker said, sitting slowly into the chair. “What was with the heavy artillery earlier?” he asked.

  He was talking about the Gregon tech—the automatic weapons lightweight enough to fit into suit sleeves.

  “I’ve always been told to focus on larger artillery,” Millicent said, checking her code. It was being stripped away, little by little. So close.

  Breathing deep, trying to keep her composure, she glanced out the window, seeing only curious passersby. “Once Gregon realized they couldn’t compete, they started focusing more on personal handhelds. They’ve come a long way. We openly trade with them now, and I see why.”

  “I haven’t seen those guns before. I think they would’ve been better off with me,” Ryker said in a matter-of-fact sort of way.

  Millicent huffed out a laugh. “So you could aim high and waste ammo? Yeah right. You train, but I test. I shoot more than you do.”

  “I doubt that, since minions test, not creators.”

  “You get away with growing your hair long. I get away with shooting guns and learning hand-to-hand combat.” She leaned around the wall and waited until he looked back, making eye contact. “Or did you think you were a special snowflake?”

  A grin tickled his lips.

  “They didn’t let you do those things while you were pregnant, I hope,” Trent said. He startled, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. He had to be exhausted again. She knew how he felt.

  “No. I couldn’t even run. The snowflake saw to that.” Millicent’s console flashed. “Online” started flashing through the controls. “Here we go.”

  “Double Twelve, come in,” a voice over comms said.

  “Double Twelve here, go,” Ryker said, his hands moving over the dash.

  “You’re reading as live. Drop off your man, over.”

  “I’m on that pirate vessel, headquarters. I’ll report after capture, over,” Ryker said.

  “Negative, Double Twelve. We need a check-in, over.”

  Ryker grimaced. “Well, it was good while it lasted,” he muttered. Then, in a clear voice, he answered, “See you when we’ve got our man, headquarters, over and out.” He glanced back. “Comms are muted for now. Which they will expect with a flouted command. They won’t bat an eye at us going after the so-called pirate, but they won’t give us much leeway, either. We have about fifteen minutes, and then they’ll try to bring us in. So let’s haul ass.”

  Chapter 26

  “Looks like they’re still assuming we’re in the lower section of the city,” Millicent said, watching the notices scroll across the screen. “The news about Mr. Hunt being down is all over the city. Private chat forums are mostly in your favor, Ryker. They thought you were better all along.”

  “I love when you stroke my ego, princess. Even more when you stroke other things.”

  Millicent sighed in annoyance as Trent said, “Ew.”

  “Fifty percent of the downed crafts are back online.” Millicent pulled up social media across the city. “People are wondering what’s going on. They think it’s some kind of drill.”

  “A drill?” Ryker said.

  “You managed to wipe out half the stupid vessels with fifteen minutes of effort,” Roe said in a soft tone. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. In my day, it wasn’t.”

  “I have the right skill set, a lifetime of training, and unique info from a director of security.” Millicent plotted out the Moxidone conglomerate’s crafts and tried to grab what she could of the government’s. Possible escape paths opened up, but then immediately closed again, their systems doing an excellent job of covering all the holes. “Plus, I’ve had a year to learn the inner workings of this conglomerate. I’m ahead of the game.”

  “A lifetim
e of training . . .” Roe scoffed. “Wait until you’re my age.”

  “Being that the training stops now, I don’t think it’ll matter.” Millicent sent a route up to the dash. “Plug that in. It should get us through.”

  Should was the operative word.

  “I can steer us through,” Ryker said. “No one is trying to stop us yet. No one’s paying attention to us.”

  “Except your system will know you are on manual, and it’ll question your strange flight pattern.” Millicent pushed the route through again. “With the computer telling the humans that something is wrong, the humans are less likely to ignore us. If the computer is happy, they might leave us undisturbed for longer.”

  “Well, if you’re going to keep nagging . . .”

  Millicent let her fingers curl around the stabilizing handle so she didn’t use them to grab something heavy and smack Ryker over the head with it.

  “I’ve never heard Ryker admit he was wrong,” Trent said thoughtfully. “Looks like he finally met his match.”

  “Did I go deaf for a moment?” Millicent continued to watch the notices, forums, and any other source of reliable info. Hopefully she’d know someone was closing in on them before the system did.

  “The nagging comment.” Trent crossed an ankle over his knee. “Although, it was kind of a dickish thing to say.”

  “He’s lucky I need him for the moment,” Millicent said.

  “Just picking my moments, princess. And sure, you were right. Happy?”

  Millicent saw Ryker’s feet prop up on the edge of the dash. A glance confirmed that he was sitting back and relaxing up there.

  She rolled her eyes. “If you confirmed every time I was right, you’d be talking nonstop. Just be quiet and do as you’re told.”

  “Oh, ho, ho. Look who showed up?” Ryker laughed. “I do believe the little princess is turning diva on us.”

  “Always was,” Trent muttered.

  “Don’t help, Trent. Your reports say you are well below the Curve in communications. We’d hate to prove the graph right, hmm?” Millicent pursed her lips to combat her smile as Ryker laughed harder.

  A conglomerate craft changed course, their destination now in line with Millicent’s. If both crafts stayed their current route, they’d meet at the same travel-way intersection in ten minutes or less. As Millicent watched the comms, though, no command to intercept came through.

  She hunted through the department’s private networks, found the vessel in question, and read the schematics. It was a middle-range vehicle engaged in the search. The captain in charge had been flagged to stay at the current level in his job, despite his many attempts to rise in ranks. Notices on his file indicated he often had “hunches” that led him astray and wasted company money five-to-one of coming through and getting recognized.

  A cold sweat covered Millicent’s brow. He was about to make good on a far-fetched hunch.

  “Ryker, you’re up,” she said, sending another course through. “We have a cowboy.”

  “What’s a cowboy?” Trent asked, pushing up against the window.

  “It’s not what she thinks it is,” Roe said, standing in order to see the screen around her.

  “What’ve you got?” Ryker asked, the joking tone from earlier dripping away. His feet dropped to the floor.

  “Someone who’s taking it upon himself to check it out.” Millicent pushed his profile through so Ryker could look.

  “Ah. One of these.” Ryker’s tone sounded like he’d met a few of “those” in his lifetime, and could’ve done without. “Looks like he got one right.”

  “Not like it was a huge stretch,” Roe said. “Not many pirates would attack a conglomerate ship.”

  “Completely wrong on that score,” Ryker said. “More than you’d possibly realize.”

  “What would be the point? The tech in here is second-class.” Roe’s face screwed up into disdain.

  “Second-class would be an improvement over this.” Millicent made a minute change to their course and sent it through.

  “No way on your routing change, princess,” Ryker said. “Either we wouldn’t change it at all or we’d change it dramatically, like this.” The craft banked hard, darting out of the travel way, dropping so fast Millicent’s stomach shoved into her throat, and then banking again, directing them into another travel way. “We’ll follow this black craft. It looks sinister.”

  “It looks like a government undercover vehicle,” Millicent said, tapping the vehicle on the screen. She looked up its identifier and was confronted with an ironclad firewall. “Or something worse. I don’t know what that is, Ryker. Get away from it.”

  Roe stepped forward to look through the windshield. “Just hack into the city registration.”

  “Yes, Mr. Enlightened, I did. And this is what I came up against.” She gestured at the screen before checking in with the conglomerate vehicle. Its speed had increased and route changed again. It was trying to intercept, not chase. “There is no way he’s smart enough to corral us, so he’s just assuming we haven’t noticed him?”

  “What is that code?” Roe asked in a tone that raised the small hairs on Millicent’s arms.

  “He’s not bright, but thinks he’s above the Curve,” Ryker said from the front. “Hang on.”

  “That’s not human,” Roe said, still staring at the firewall.

  “Of course it’s not human,” Millicent said, glancing out the window. She could actually see the other vehicle now as it dropped down from one travel way to another, causing a craft to veer crazily out of the way. She shook her head and glanced back at the code.

  “No, I mean, that didn’t originate from a human,” Roe said, pointing. “I’ve seen a whole lot of firewalls in my day. More than you, I can assure you. All different kinds. That is . . . not like any of them. Not the higher levels, nothing. It’s . . . well, I’d say it’s foreign, but these conglomerates are global. It’s alien, is what it is.”

  That homicidal corridor briefly marched through her memory. She scoffed and waved the thought away. “You’ve been away from the conglomerates for a while, and you are no longer among the smartest beings on this planet. There is, undoubtedly, a lot you haven’t seen.”

  “Just . . . do me a favor.” Roe gestured at the screen. “Make a note so we can circle back. I want my people to look into it.”

  “I need you on deck, baby cakes,” Ryker called. “Things might get hairy in a moment.”

  “Baby cakes?” Millicent said in distaste as she did a screen capture and logged the vehicle and access point. She prepared to download them to her implant before the realization dawned. “I can’t—” Without another word, she grabbed the proffered scan drive from Roe and captured the info.

  “I’ll take that.” Roe put out his hand.

  “So a Curve hugger can muck it up and make the wrong conclusions?” Millicent sniffed and slipped the drive into her suit. “I’ll take a look when I have a moment.”

  “There’s the diva I love,” Ryker said. “Now c’mon, cupcake, let’s get cracking.”

  “Is it too much to ask that you use my given name?” she asked as she glanced out the window. A strange sound came from her throat.

  Two conglomerate vehicles hovered just off the travel way, one on each side, facing the passing vehicles.

  Roe sat down quickly, the growing argument dissipating immediately.

  “All crafts are online, so they are actively scanning,” Millicent said, finding one of the vehicles by the coordinates and checking it out. “It has firepower and a competent staffer in control. I assume the other does as well.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” Ryker said, his tone all business. “There is no reason to assume they are looking for us.”

  Millicent checked the notices. “Our fifteen minutes are up, Ryker.”

  “I know. But they are looking for fugitives, not stupid conglomerate vehicles. They might not bother with us. I wouldn’t bother with us.”

  “You were a director.
They are peacekeepers . . .” Millicent held her breath as they drew close. The silent and stationary crafts drifted by slowly. The closer one had a man standing in the window with his arms behind his back. Millicent ducked to the console, but then half turned back. “Should I wave . . . ?”

  “Why would you wave?” Trent mumbled, bending low with Marie in his arms.

  “Brothers-in-arms . . . or something?” Millicent turned back to the console.

  “You’d just look guilty,” Roe said.

  “I am guilty . . .” Millicent bit her lip and watched the notices.

  “Shit,” she heard from the front. “One is pulling in behind us. I’m unmuting comms.”

  “Double Twelve, come in.”

  Millicent’s hands shook as she waited for Ryker’s response.

  “This is Double Twelve, go ahead,” Ryker responded, his voice confident and slightly aggressive.

  “We have a request to bring you in, over.”

  Ryker hesitated for a moment. “We hoped to find the fucker who tried to do a snatch and run, over.”

  “I hear ya, Double Twelve. We haven’t seen anything suspicious come through here. You need to check in, over.”

  “Roger that. I’ll change course, over.”

  “We’ll ghost you in, Double Twelve. Out.”

  Ryker stepped into the partition way, his eyes on Millicent. Then his gaze swept behind her before he turned and leaned. “Any chance you can make this thing faster?”

  “No,” she said softly. “Especially not with all this weight. But I can help you toss people out?”

  A smile crossed his lips as he looked back at the controls. He took a deep breath. “This is worse than that nitwit who is following us.”

  “Want an upper?” Millicent asked. His confused expression made her smile. “Like that other driver. So you can take risks?”

  His smile matched hers, but it didn’t reach his eyes. She was sure hers didn’t, either. “Do you still have that device that blows vehicles up?” he asked.