“They were Trogs,” Troy said flatly, totally disinterested in any opinion to the contrary.
“Stop calling us Trogs!” At hearing her own words, Lilia’s eyes widened in surprise.
Perfect. What Lilia had just blurted in front of the soldiers was beyond reason. If she had screamed “Shoot me! I’m a follower too,” she couldn’t have implicated herself more. Unwittingly she had given Stan an opportunity he could easily leverage into an escape.
The whole room, tense from the start, fell gravely silent again.
Turning to the men, Stan saw that her words had struck each like a hard slap in the face.
Troy rose from his seat and slowly pulled his handgun.
Stan pushed himself from the bar rail to step between the waitress and his XO’s gun, and pointed to Troy’s seat. “Sit down,” Stan said coldly. “This Trog’s mine.”
Spinning on his heel, he grabbed a fist full of Lilia’s hair to force her into the street.
“Swift, this I gotta see,” said DuMass.
Stan brutally yanked Lilia back, and thrust a stiff forefinger in the lieutenant’s direction. “Sit Down! I don’t need an audience. You think I want to kill her right away?”
“No, sir. I guess not,” Jessup fumed, staying in his seat.
Troy smiled slyly, raised his hands in submission, and nodded once. “Have at it, Swift. Trog’s got to be good for something.”
“Give me twenty . . . thirty minutes,” Stan said with a sneer. Fighting the adrenaline raging through his veins so as to appear unruffled, he drew his gun, and pushed her out the door. Stumbling, she would have fallen to the ground, had his grip loosened, but he yanked her upright, and shoved her into the alley beyond the sight of his men. She tripped and fell.
Slowly raising his pistol, Stan took careful aim. No matter what he wanted from Lilia, she could do nothing to stop him now.
Stan looked back at the tavern and saw his men staring through the window at him, and gave them a blatant brazen grin before stepping into the alley beyond their view.
Climbing to her feet, Lilia turned to meet him, fear in her eyes, but she raised her chin defiantly to face his gun with determination.
It was then that he saw her as if for the first time. The treasonous speech he had given at the Princess’ gravesite was fully embodied in this Trog. The real threat to the Confederation wasn’t this small wisp of a waitress. It was the Consul, old Ignacio Dais himself.
Stan stepped forward with, long, slow, strides until he was near enough to enjoy the color of her eyes. Returning his gun to its holster, he studied Lilia for a moment with heightened fascination.
“Oh, I see . . .” she snapped. “Find it hard to kill someone when you have to look them in the eye, huh, coward? Got no stomach for killing face to face? Pretty easy when you can’t see them, huh, tough guy?”
Stan’s unwavering gaze didn’t hide his amazement. She had taken a stance that Stan couldn’t easily overlook.
“Thought a cruise ship was a threat, did you? Murderer!”
Stan leaned close and whispered, “You aught to learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“Maybe I should offer my back to make your job easier.” In defiance, Lilia folded her arms and turned away.
“You’ve got very little time before my men discover you weren’t killed, Troglodyte. Time to head back underground, don’t you think?”
She spun back around. “They’ll kill you too, you know.”
“They’ll try, but not because I didn’t end you.”
Her jaw slacked in bewilderment.
Stan felt himself smile at this whole situation. Had she been at the crash site—had she heard his speech—she’d understand the irony. Like her, he had spoken before thinking, and with a word, sealed his own fate. Even before he walked into her place of business, he was a traitor to his leaders, and already dead.
“What now?” she said
“Your words have left you no way out but to run, Trog. I’ve given you a twenty-minute head start, so I suggest you get to it.”
“And you? They will kill you too.”
“That’s twice you’ve said what I already know. Do you care?”
Lilia glanced away, clearly confused, Stan lifted her chin to study her eyes—she jerked away. “My men will have to catch me first. But you? I suggest you find a way off this planet before your own words catch up to you.” With that, he turned and headed for his ship.
Lilia followed Stan to the end of the alley. “Hey, soldier, where are you going to end up when a bullet finds you? I’m not afraid to die for my beliefs. How about you?”
“If you stand there yammerin’ much longer, you will die for your beliefs,” Stan said, as he kept walking out of the alley into the field. She followed him.
Before long, he came to his ship, climbed in, and automatically picked up his helmet from the dash. Moving to put it on, the little lines of hash marks caught his eye.
After a quick moment, Stan looked down, out of the ship, and saw Lilia standing beside it. “I don’t want to die, soldier,” she said, “not just yet. But I have no way off world.” Her expression, a mixture of pleading and defiance, tugged at something deeper than reason. If he left her behind he’d have to add another detestable hash mark to his helmet.
Stan shook his head in resignation, and beckoned without looking her way.
Lilia scrambled up, and settled behind him into the second seat, and then Stan fired up the engines. Although hers was hardly more than a jumpseat, it was still big enough for her slender figure.
“Under my seat, you’ll find my spare helmet, Troglodyte,” he said, snugging his chinstrap. “Put it on.”
She smacked the back of his helmet. “Stop calling me that!”
He twisted in his seat to face her. “You got a lot of nerve for a dead woman.”
She glowered, defying him to unbuckle her now, and pry her from his ship.
Stan clenched his teeth, turned back, and slid the canopy into place, then lifted off, knowing the scream of his engines would draw attention. Troy would discover his deception—the missing body and no sign that the Trog had been shot or otherwise abused—and would soon find Stan’s ship absent.
He knew that in their eagerness to skin him alive, his men would come gunning for him. But space and the ship he flew were his element. As always he felt his heart lift as his Dart shot up in a steep climb, but this was no target practice against an unarmed cruise liner. He was in for the fight of his life.
Now chased by the seven other fighters, Stan’s twenty minute, ten thousand mile head start wasn’t enough when offset by the added weight of the waitress he should have, but couldn’t, leave behind.
Stupid move, that, but it seemed very much in keeping with all the other idiot decisions he’d made over the last few hours. It now seemed to him that a body bag was determined to catch up to him.
“What’s your plan, officer?”
“I’m no longer an officer, lady. The name’s Stan Archer. You can call me Swift.”
“Yeah, fine. What are your plan . . . Stan?”
“Chagwa has an unmanned water processing plant. I’ll get needed fuel there before we hop to the next system over.”
“Isn’t there a mining base on Chagwa’s greater moon?”
“Yeah, but it’s manned.”
“Yeah? So?”
“It’s manned.” Stan reiterated dryly. “That means people.”
“But Chagwa’s an icicle. I’m hardly dressed in extreme weather gear, sir,” Lilia said snidely. “I’ll be blast-frozen before you can close the canopy.”
He rolled his eyes. “And that’s bad . . . how?”
“Why didn’t we just fly to somewhere else on Atheron?”
“The transport in orbit has each of our ships tagged and could track us wherever we went. We needed to get offworld and there’s nothing closer than Chagwa. I simply haven’t the fuel to go elsewhere.”
“Hmm. So while your spacesuit protects you, I
get turned into a popsicle. No way around that either, huh?”
“I’ll defrost you. Now shut up and let me think.”
“Oh, . . . peachy.”
“What do you think this Dart is, your dad’s skitter? I don’t need to get out to attach a fuel line. It’s a simple maneuver, a thirty-second hookup, then . . . with any luck, jumping from system to system, we’ll get to Praxis.”
“Where do we go from there?”
“We?” he said in irritation. “Beyond Praxis, we go nowhere. I, on the other hand, have a keen little fighter to sell to some pirate or slave trader. That’ll provide my passage to Providence.”
“What about me?”
“What do I care?” It was enough that he had to push his ship beyond its design limits to stay ahead of the others—beyond their reach—beyond their guns—beyond that waiting body bag. But on top of everything else, the dead weight in the back seat was now plucking his last nerve, and needed to be ditched as soon as possible.
A near miss flash said his men were nearing. Even with every gauge in the red and the small craft straining to obey him, his head start had ultimately given him no advantage at all. Every Dart fighter pilot in his squad, once a loyal friend, set Stan’s death as his goal, and that of the Trog with him. Closing the gap, hours counted down to minutes, minutes counted down to seconds, and seconds to gunfire.
Stan tried to maneuver, evade, and dodge the barrage of bullets of his own men’s guns as they, without a second thought, used all their skill to try and kill them, him and the albatross in the back seat.
Chapter Four
Harnessed into the jump seat, Lilia sat behind Stan. Although she couldn’t see the Dart fighters pursuing them, bombs exploding all around Stan’s ship, buffeting them like a pinball, left no room for any illusion of safety.
Knocked about, and unprotected by a proper space suit, the straps bruised and cut into her shoulders. She held tight, but twisted in her seat to peek over Stan’s shoulder. Seven blips on the scanner said that, behind them, the Darts were gaining, but she couldn’t tell how long it would take them to catch up. To her right, big and red, sat Chagwa’s moon. The planet Chagwa itself was dead ahead.
With a rapid heart and sweaty palms, Lilia tried to hide her concern with a look of demure acquiescence—in case Stan looked back—but the muscles in her neck, tight and stiff, were making that difficult.
Stan had kept a cool head, but his own men hunting him must have terrified him, she thought. Certainly his years of experience and training as an Enforcer couldn’t have prepared him for this, ungodly situation they now found themselves in. And although he said otherwise, Lilia knew he had nowhere to escape this time around.
She guessed that, with her added weight, he had to muscle his Dart more than ever before. All the while in the back of his mind he must have known that once his own men caught up to them they’d see him dead.
The white snow covering Chagwa subdued her terrain, but it still looked rough.
He barrel rolled, dodged, and jinked hard, but still his own crew caught up to him, firing all the while. “I haven’t taught you guys this one yet,” Stan muttered. Almost immediately, his Dart jerked into a complicated maneuver.
Lilia’s heart lifted, and, for a second, she thought they just might escape.
It was not to be. One shot, one lousy little errant shot and his Dart jerked to the right, shimmied, and shook like a wet dog.
Just one shot.
His starboard engine spit smoke, burst into flames and down he and Lilia went, spiraling out of control toward Chagwa.
Lilia’s heart was in her throat as the out-of-control Dart fell like a hunk of lead.
“Move!” Stan shouted as he harangued the controls. Still falling, the craft leveled. He managed to coax his ship into the atmosphere of the ice planet toward a level patch of wasteland.
If he could coax the ship to nose up just a little, just a smidge, Lilia thought, they’d have a chance. She hoped the snow would soften their crash . . .
. . . so they could what, freeze to death instead?
The friction of re-entry heated the Dart’s nose and the wings’ leading edges.
Stan muscled the controls. “Move! Come on baby, up, already, pull up.”
The ground rushed up at them. Stan held the controls firmly.
Slowly, straining under its own weight, the Dart, level on the horizon, began to nose up.
Too late.
The ground—
A sudden flash of white powder—
Then all went black.
Stan Archer regained consciousness.
Light and shadow blurred in a confusing riot of images that clashed and divided and melded once again to form objects only to melt away.
Stan blinked.
The cockpit controls and instruments abruptly came into focus.
He looked back.
Lilia, eyes closed, reached up to a small cut at her hairline. Stan reached under his dash and pull out his med-kit. Snapping it open he grabbed a sterile pad of gauze. “Press that to your head, Woman. Any other injuries?”
She looked up, took the gauze, tilted her head back and rolled it to loosen stiff neck muscles. “I’ll be okay,” she said pressing the gauze to the cut. “Where are we?”
Stan felt his jaw tighten, and turned back to his instruments. They were growing dim but showed enough for him to realize his Dart was inching deeper and deeper into the ice. “Scanner says we’re sitting nearly three hundred feet beneath the planet’s surface. We’re rapidly losing what little power we have.”
Stan gave her a moment, but Lilia said nothing.
“Looks like we’re buried alive. Some escape this was.” He turned in his seat to see Lilia better. “Sorry, Trog. I gave rescuing you my best shot, but . . .”
Lilia glared at him. “Quit with the ‘name calling’ already. And besides, I wasn’t the only one being rescued.”
“Oh?”
“I doubt the Grand Architect’s through with either of us yet.”
Stan knit his brow in disbelief. “Still believe in this deity of yours, do you? You Trogs are really something. Well, suit yourself.” The thought caused him to scowl.
Although the Dart was buried in snow, Lilia’s dark eyes were warm and intense as they focused on his face. “Until He’s through with me, Captain, I’m bullet proof, and so are you. You’ll see.”
“One lousy little bullet brought us down, my little waitress. You’re not bulletproof.”
“Oh? Aren’t I?”
Stan shook his head. “Look, there’s one thing I don’t understand.”
“Just one?”
“Okay, several things, but one heads the list. Why didn’t you run away? When everyone hates Enforcers, why did you come with me?”
“Not everyone hates you, Capt. Archer. The One who lives forever loves you more than you can know.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She diverted her eyes. “I was under orders to go with you.”
Well, well, well . . . a Troglodyte spy had played him, and played him good. “You were under orders?” he said, guarding his tone. “Whose orders?”
Lilia hesitated. “Another time perhaps.”
Stan reached back and gripped her wrist hard. “As a soldier, I understand obeying orders, but you better come clean, and I mean now.”
“Ouch, you’re hurting me.”
“Trog?”
“I didn’t have much choice. You grabbed me, then the . . . Architect said to go with you.”
Great, Stan thought, a nut-job who hears voices. She seemed sincere, and that in itself was scary. Stan released her.
“So you will obey this god of yours in spite of any apparent danger? Old Consul Dais won’t get that much from me, dreamy-eyed girl.”
“Dreamy eyed?” Her words flared defiance. “Perhaps. But I’ve often wondered whether I would refuse the most difficult task my Lord asked of me. Well, now I know.”
“I s
till don’t see why you let slip you were a Trog when my men were sitting right there. Didn’t you understand that as an Enforcer I was duty bound to kill you?”
“I knew.” Lilia lifted her eyes to focus on his. “It was a slip of the tongue, but the moment I said it, I knew it was the right thing to say. Some things are more important than life. If then and there the Immortal Architect hadn’t told me to stay the course, I would’ve probably tried to backtrack.”
One corner of Stan’s mouth pulled into an amused grin as he remembered her in the alley. “It took courage to face death as you did, but where does that leave us? This deity you’re so fond of, is he going to reach into this ice and pluck us out?”
She tilted her head and her eyes revealed a glimmer of hope. “Providence, Mr. Archer; do you know what the word means?”
He did not.
“Well, Stan, it means, ‘to be held in the God’s hands.’ I know we’re in His hands, even now.”
Unconsciously Stan’s brows furrowed more deeply as he puzzled at the boldness written in her eyes. “Well, I see no way out of this mess. I’m at my wit’s end. The game screen says, ‘You lose’.”
“There’s a higher power than our wits, Stan Archer. Of that, you can be assured. And the game isn’t over until the Grand Coder stops writing its program.”
He considered the naked strength written in her face. “We’re buried alive, little lady. My ship’s power is near gone, and we’ll soon be out of oxygen. I think your confidence is misplaced. Why do you still hang on to this god nonsense anyway?”
“I’ve found He’s full of surprises, Captain. We see the only game, not the underlying code guiding it.”
Suddenly the ship lurched forward.
Chapter Five
High overhead, above the snow and ice, Stan’s chief Lieutenant, Troy Younger, circled the crater made by Stan’s ship; six Dart fighter craft followed his.
Jessup DuMass’ agitation showed in his voice as it crackled in Troy’s earpiece. “Let’s head home, boss. Cap’s gone for sure.”
“No, Jess. The Consul wouldn’t want us to leave our Captain’s life to chance. I say we go in after him; him and that stinking Trog.”
DarkStar Running (Living on the Run Book 2) Page 3