The Ruby Celeste Series - Box Set, books 1 - 3: Ghost Armada, Dire Kraken, and Church of Ife

by Nicholas J. Ambrose

  They made their way into a ‘room’ toward Equity’s rear. Lars glanced from Ruby to Trove and back again. Licking his lips again, he said, “I shall be right out, Miss Celeste. One moment, please.” And without another word, he disappeared through the gap in the wall.

  Ruby started counting. When she reached ten, she muttered, “Something’s not right.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Something’s not right,” she repeated. “He’s edgy.”

  “Perhaps his day is not going as expected.”

  Ruby didn’t respond. She didn’t believe that for a moment, and by the twinge in Trove’s voice, she doubted he believed it either.

  Besides, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t have said a word, because no less than a full second later there came a clatter from somewhere close by, followed by raised voices.

  Trove tensed. Ruby mentally checked her scabbard, overcoming the urge to reach for her sword’s hilt.

  The scuffle became louder, closer, and as it did Ruby began to pick out words from the frenetic mess: asking for … release? She shot Trove another sideways look and mouthed, “What the—?”

  Something crashed into one of the dividers forming this makeshift room. Trove leapt; Ruby’s hand flew to her sword, ready to draw.

  “Let go of me!” shouted a man.

  A deeper, gravelly voice: “Easy, kid.”

  The divider shuddered again, a couple of feet closer to the entryway. Ruby’s eyes narrowed.

  Lars stepped back through. Still his eyes darted, more to the floor now, and the Pantheon’s captain noticed his ears had turned scarlet.

  Drury was followed by two of the thickest, tallest men Ruby had seen in her life—and between them, miniscule in comparison, was clutched a thrashing black-haired man.

  “This is Property 23,” Lars muttered.

  “I’m what?” the man shrieked. “What the fuck is—”

  A fat elbow smashed the side of his head, and his last word was turned into a grunt.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Ruby demanded.

  “Property 23,” said Lars. He refused to meet the captain’s gaze. “This is the deckhand you’re here to purchase.”

  “It most certainly is not,” Ruby scoffed.

  “Deckhand? I’m being sold?”

  “Quiet,” one of the man’s captives growled.

  The black-haired man’s eyes went wide, fixed to Ruby’s. More whites than brown, they screamed two things: confusion, and fear.

  “I can assure you,” Lars began, but Ruby cut him off.

  “You can assure me nothing. I was told that I would be purchasing a deckhand, six feet tall, weighing two-twenty-five. This guy is barely taller than me, and looks like he weighs all of one-fifty soaking wet. This is not the deckhand I was promised.”

  The purported deckhand opened his mouth to say something else, but the heavyset man to his left twisted his wrist, converting it into a whimper.

  “You’ve lied to me, Mr Drury,” Ruby said, her voice rising.

  From somewhere behind, Trove said, “Miss Celeste …”

  “Or was this all set up by Stein?” She stepped forward—another step, she realised. “Is he that much of a pompous, tight-fisted asshole that he thinks I’d commit the oversight he’s surely praying for?”

  Trove, again: “Miss Celeste, I really think …”

  She was just inches from Lars. Her right hand, the one she’d rested on her sword’s hilt during this whole conversation, lifted, and she moved to jab the man in the chest. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

  “Miss Celeste!”

  Two things happened very, very fast. The man who had stood to the fake deckhand’s right had broken away and inched across the space just as Ruby had, and just as Ruby’s finger made contact with Drury’s chest, the man swung.

  At the same moment, Ruby ducked.

  The swing went high, almost toppling the man off-balance—and then Ruby was up, sword drawn.

  Someone cried out—the deckhand?—and in her periphery Ruby saw Lars scrabble from the room.

  The guard threw a ham-sized fist at Ruby. She danced back a step, and swung her sword. A splash of red arced up and the man howled; he reared back, left hand slammed to the inside of his elbow, where claret gushed between his fingers. His right hand hung dead by his side.

  There was no time to savour the victory; the second guard had already broken away from Property 23 with a sideways swipe and marched forward. “Get out!” he roared, swinging his fist overhand to smash the top of Ruby’s head.

  She dodged, and the fist whistled through air. As it passed through the space her shoulders had resided a second ago, she swung her sword again, this time low. The blade sliced fabric, skin and then muscle with barely any resistance, tearing a crimson streak through the man’s left side. It was so fast, so smooth, that the blade had already cleared his body before the blood began to flow.

  Down he went.

  “Quit screaming,” Ruby said. “You sound like a little girl.”

  “I’ll kill you!” the first man yelled. He had fallen against the wall. Blood smeared the white behind him and was pooling beneath his limp arm. “I will kill you!”

  Ruby cast him a momentary glance, but no more. He was out. She gave her blade a cursory flick to rid it of blood, then sheathed it.

  Her eyes scoured the room. Lars had vanished, but Trove was safe—had barely moved, in fact, though he looked rather pale—and the kid they’d tried to fob her off with was still here, askew upon the floor.

  Ruby crouched beside him. “Get up.”

  He stared. There was even more white to his eyes now. “W-what?”

  “Get up. We’re breaking you out.” Then, more to herself, she muttered, “No one tries to scam Ruby Celeste.

  “Trove, recall the crew,” she said, returning to her feet.

  “Right away.”

  “You won’t get away with this!”

  “Oh, be quiet,” Ruby muttered with a backward glance. “You’re rather distracting, and you ought to be concentrating on holding what little blood you have left in.” Addressing the black-haired man again, she said, “It’s imperative you move. We need to be out of here.”

  “I—” he started, but no more came from his lips.

  “Come on.” Ruby extended a hand, took the man and pulled him in one fluid movement to his feet. “Are you hurt?”

  He was breathing hard, she realised, and white. A whimper escaped his lips, and he clamped his roving eyes tight.

  “What?”

  “I don’t like blood.” The words came out strangled and forced.

  “Well, we’d better get moving then.” Casting a backward look at Trove, who nodded from above the wrist-bound communicator he was speaking into, Ruby said, “Let’s go.” And, after clamping a hand tightly around the man’s arm, they were off.

  5

  It was almost impossible to control his wildly shaking fingers, but Lars somehow managed, from one of Equity’s back rooms—because there was no way he planned on calling from the front of the store and encountering Celeste on her inevitable departure—to dial the number to Rhod’s office.

  “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” he whispered desperately as the phone trilled in his ear.

  Finally: “Rhod Stein’s office, The Pharmacologist’s Eden. How may I help you?”

  “Charlotte! It’s Lars. I need to speak with Rhod.”

  “Can I take a message?”

  Lars scrunched up his eyes, clasped a hand to his forehead. It came back damp with cold sweat. “No, Charlotte, I need to speak with him.”

  “Um … Rhod said he didn’t want to be interrupted by any calls—”

  “Charlotte!” Lars shouted. “I need to speak with him now. Tell him Celeste just pulled a sword on the two members of security he dispatched this morning!”

  There was a brief, terrifying pause, and for an awful moment Lars thought Charlotte might try to redirect him again—but then
she said, “I’ll put you through.”

  6

  From behind her desk, Charlotte eyed the great wooden doors to Rhod’s office. He had been irate at first, but once she’d passed on what Lars had told her, he had silenced. Now the two were talking, and Charlotte wondered exactly how long it would be until—what? She wasn’t sure, but uneasiness bubbled in her stomach as the seconds lengthened.

  She didn’t have long to wait. The doors burst open and out marched Rhod, seething rage written on his face. Charlotte jerked in shock, moved to greet him, but he was already past, barking orders into a radio—and was that a gun in his other hand?

  He pushed through the doors at the end of the room and was gone, leaving a wake of silence behind.

  Charlotte waited. Her breath held in her chest. Something was happening on the Eden today, something involving Lars and a man or woman called Celeste.

  Lars!

  Heart rate rising, she grabbed the phone and called Equity.

  It rang, and rang, and rang.

  No one answered.

  Lowering the phone back into the cradle, Charlotte stared off into space. Her mind seemed both frozen and a chaotic mess all at once.

  Then she pushed out of her chair and headed for the doors Rhod had just passed through.

  7

  Rhod hit the stairs and hurtled down them two at a time.

  Things had gone wrong today. Kidnapping the kid had been a mistake; a willing deckhand should’ve been shuffled into the empty hole left by the original Property 23. It was too late now to fix the error—but Rhod could stop this chain of dominos before the cascade got too far.

  What would Celeste do, he wondered? Rhod didn’t think she’d remain at Equity; no, he had a feeling she’d do all the damage she could, and then depart. With the kid? Possibly. Probably. She would want to get something out of this excursion.

  Which meant right now Celeste had to be heading back to her ship.

  Rounding a corner and moving down the next flight of stairs, Rhod lifted the radio affixed to his belt and called down to the parking bay. An attendant answered a moment later; Rhod cut him off before he could speak. “This is Rhod Stein. There’s a ship called the Pantheon down there now, owned by Ruby Celeste. I want to know where it is.”

  “Yes, sir. Please bear with me as I consult our records.”

  “Got it?”

  “Not just—here we go. Bay 16A.”

  Rhod thumbed the radio off, then placed a second call.

  “Security—”

  “Dispatch to parking bay 16A.”

  “Sir, half the available workforce are on their way to Equity—”

  “Then dispatch the other half,” Rhod barked, and hung up.

  At the bottom of the squared spiral of stairs, he pushed through glass double doors and out onto The Pharmacologist’s Eden’s bustling ground level. Somewhere out there, returning to her ship, was Celeste—and Rhod was going to find her before she left this place behind.

  8

  “The crew are returning to the ship as we speak,” Trove informed Ruby as they passed out of Equity.

  “I trust you told them to make haste,” said Ruby.

  “I certainly did.”

  “Good. Drury was missing; calling additional forces, no doubt. We may be apprehended in the parking bay.” The captain licked her lips, eyes scouring the crowds. It was busier out here now; midday looming, the clientele was nearing its peak. “Or sooner.”

  They wove through the heaving throngs, Ruby leading with one hand clamped firmly around her captive’s upper arm. His breaths came in gasps, and Ruby was acutely aware of how they looked, dragging this man at a march.

  “I need you to look natural,” she muttered.

  “What?” the man breathed.

  “They’ll have sent security out after us, and I’m willing to bet more than the two I just took on in there.” The man clamoured, but Ruby ignored it. “We’ll look like prime suspects unless you act more natural.”

  “I—I don’t—”

  Ruby froze. Her captive’s momentum kept him moving for just an instant, and he stumbled into Ruby’s field of view before being jerked back.

  Trove, who had become separated once again, hurried up. “What is it?”

  Ruby’s eyes tracked the position of the men she’d just seen as they moved through the crowd. “Security; a pair. Eleven o’clock … ten.”

  The man moaned again.

  Trove searched. He was a head taller than Ruby, but all he saw were faces, dozens and dozens of them, moving in every direction.

  “Shouldn’t we move?”

  Ruby nodded. “This way.” She pivoted twenty degrees off their original path and resumed walking.

  A minute later Trove jogged up again, one hand plastered to his hair, and panted, “I think we lost them.”

  A sigh of relief went up from the man at Ruby’s side, but nothing happened to decrease her tension. It would take security just moments to realise she had left Equity—and stolen the alleged Property 23. After that all security would converge at the parking bay. And given all the theatrics involved in docking with The Pharmacologist’s Eden, they would know the exact ship they were looking for.

  She shook the thought from her head. That was an issue for later.

  “What’s your name?”

  The black-haired man gaped at her. “What?”

  “What’s your name?” she repeated.

  “Oh—um, Francis. Francis Paige.”

  Certainly a better moniker than Property 23.

  “I’m Ruby Celeste.”

  She gave him a sidelong glance, just for an instant, before focussing on the people surrounding her again. He was still pale, still licked with a sheen of sweat, but his footing had improved. The fresh air had to be doing him good.

  “Are you going to take me home?” he asked.

  One of Ruby’s eyebrows twitched. “Let’s just focus on getting you out of here alive for now.”

  9

  Hurrying down the stairs to the parking bay, Ruby’s eyes scanned the row ahead. A crowd had gathered around one of the docks, and Ruby had a fairly good idea even before she hurried up whose ship it had congregated outside.

  Voices muddled over one another, all pressing for most volume. As Ruby got close, she began to pick out snippets; most her crew, others not.

  “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “If you’ll just please calm down—”

  “Calm? Where’s Captain Celeste?”

  Ruby pushed into the crowd, and the voices hushed almost instantly. She sidestepped several members of her workforce, dragging Francis behind her, and then found herself at the front of the group, facing a foursome of attendants who blocked the gangway to the Pantheon.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded.

  “We’re under instruction not to let anyone board this ship,” one of the attendants replied. He sounded confident, even in spite of the dozen men and women facing him.

  “Oh, really?” Ruby countered. “Who’s going to stop me?”

  “Security will be here in just a moment; they’ll—”

  Ruby drew her sword in one fast, fluid movement. Stepping forward, one hand still wrapped around Francis’s upper arm, she pressed the blade to the side of the attendant’s neck.

  Eyes blazing, through gritted teeth Ruby muttered, “Let me on my damn ship now.”

  10

  Two bleeps: the radio. Snatching it up, Rhod opened the channel. “What?”

  “Mr Stein, sir, this is the parking bay.” It was a man, and his voice was panicked. “We’ve had a problem, sir.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Miss Celeste arrived; she drew a sword on us, sir.”

  So that was her game. Well, Rhod thought as he rearranged the gun in his right fist, he would put a stop to that. She wouldn’t even get a chance to swing that blade of hers.

  “And you held your ground?”

  “We did—”


  “God damn it!” Rhod shouted. The roar echoed above the bustle, and more than a handful of alarmed faces looked in his direction.

  “Sir, we were outnumbered—”

  “Don’t let her leave,” Rhod barked, before clicking the radio off.

  He took a mental check. Still over a third of the Eden to cross before he arrived at the parking bay.

  Damn it!

  He gripped tighter on his pistol, slapped the radio back into its place on his belt, and broke into a run.

  11

  “Everyone, on the ship,” Ruby said.

  The crew didn’t need telling twice; they hustled past and up the gangway double-time. Ruby did a headcount; fourteen, herself included. Even with Benjamin already on-board, there were still two members of the Pantheon’s crew somewhere on The Pharmacologist’s Eden.

  Natasha Brady held back as others passed. She snapped to attention. “Instructions, Miss Celeste?”

  “None yet, but get to the control centre and I’ll meet you in a few moments. We’re still waiting on two,” Ruby said.

  Brady snapped off a salute. “Aye.” She cast Francis—who was moaning quite unabashedly—a funny look, and then hurried up the gangway.

  “Any instructions for me?” Trove asked. Only he, Ruby and Francis remained now.

  “Who’s left on the Eden?”

  Trove rolled up his jacket sleeve and consulted the computer at his wrist. Ruby waited, eyeing the attendants huddled a dozen metres or so away. They were speaking animatedly, and one had been talking on the radio a few moments ago. Calling security? Stein? One of the two, without question. Ruby’s time was rapidly running out.

  “Evans and Peters,” Trove said. “They should be with us—ah.”

  Two men hurried along the parking bay—empty-handed, a distant part of Ruby noted.

  One of the attendants moved to step forward, but Ruby held up a hand and fixed him with a fiery glare, and he backed away.

  “Sorry,” Evans panted, clutching his side.

  “No matter; just get on board,” Ruby said.

  They abided.