“Penn,” I said into the comm, “you’re with the ship. Blue, you’re with me. Sam and Max, if you spot his ship docked and he’s still on it—”
“Yeah, we’ll comm you. Now, go already. He’ll repair the fucking thing and be gone by the time you and Blue actually leave the ship.”
I backed up a couple of steps and gave them a pointed stare. No room for error. They knew it.
Too bad we made about eight errors in ten minutes.
I hid my blaster under my nicest jacket. It was my best effort to look like a girl. I was out of practice and it showed. Blue stopped me, took a good look up and down, smudged her thumb with some Mom spit and pushed down some of my stray curls.
“You ever do that again and I will fucking kill you,” I said.
“Much better,” Blue cooed, grinning big. She didn’t need any adjusting. She looked like she was ready for a date after fist fights. Damn good looking and tough as a military latrine. I figured between the two of us, Handsome Man would find something to like. From there, we’d have a good chance to extract what he knew of The Relic.
“Found the ship,” Max commed. “It’s swarmed by Maintenance. Foreman’s alone, so target is likely soaking up a couple.”
“Almost there,” I answered.
The bar was a straight-up affair. Nothing to love, nothing to hate. Places like that usually have touches of class. This one more than most outposts, probably due to the higher-class of patron. I remember thinking that maybe it would even have some authentic Mavellies.
When we walked through the front door, I looked around. He was an easy catch. We just needed to go where all the women were looking.
Handsome Man sat at a table with three chairs, as if he’d been expecting us. I should have run right then. I remember thinking it was creepy, but chalked it up to coincidence.
The bottle of Mavellies on the table was fate telling me to get the fuck out as fast as possible, but his face made me stay, and his eyes kept me walking all the way to my seat. Blue, too.
Without a word we sat and faced him, arms on the table to show we meant no harm. He put his arms on the table too and leaned forward. He poured each of us a glass.
“I am Laender.”
“Kat,” I said and then nodded at my mate, adding, “this is Blue.”
“Lovely to meet you both,” he raised his glass and sipped.
We followed suit.
The way he spoke made me cold. My gut was going off on me early.
“That was a good show you put on back there,” I managed. “You probably killed about a thousand people with one ship.”
“Were they friends of yours?”
“No. Competitors. I should probably thank you.”
“And you were competing for what? The Relic?”
Blue and I glanced at each other. His directness was a surprise. I tried to recover with a quick smile, but I knew he already had his answer.
“Yeah,” I asked, matching his directness and raising it one bluntness. “Where is it?”
“It is in my possession,” he said, leaving it at that.
“I’d like it, please,” I said with my best breathy flirt, which sounded more like I’d just sprinted across the station seven times.
Blue injected herself into the disaster by leaning forward, showing Laender about 80% of her exquisite breasts. She must have been unbuttoning her shirt while I was doing a poor impression of a female. Still makes me cringe thinking about it.
“We’re willing to pay for it,” Blue sang without quite singing, “and we hate fighting.”
He didn’t seem turned on, off, or around by anything we said. The only way I knew he was still even aware of us were those silver eyes that analyzed us from across the table.
Finally he appeared to get the hint that his silence was unnerving. He said, “I cannot give it to you, but I can show it to you, which is worth quite a bit. Others have built careers on that knowledge alone.”
“You know we want to take it from you. Why would you show it to us?”
“Because when you see it, you will know that it is not possible to take. Then we can be…friends.”
“You lonely?” I asked.
“No. I am curious,” he said while swirling his drink. Then, he looked into my eyes and said, “I think you have answers.”
I leaned back in my chair. “If this is flirting, then you’re as bad at it as I am.”
“No doubt,” he said with something approaching a smile, though it was more like a frown with a good attitude.
He poured me more wine, leaving Blue to pour her own. His eyes didn’t leave my face as I sipped. Again, the cold feeling shot through my gut. The same gut that had saved me about 67 times that day alone.
I decided that I didn’t like him.
With that in mind, I wanted to get this adventure over as soon as possible.
“Let’s go, then,” I said politely, setting the glass back on the table.
“Let’s,” he said.
The three of us walked back toward the bay in silence. Blue and I were three paces behind Laender. We shared some looks, but didn’t feel like it was a good idea to talk. I could tell that Blue was thinking like me. Trap. She’d buttoned up her shirt and wore her blaster in full view. I did the same. We were leaving the games portion of our evening and proceeding directly to action and bloodshed. Blue was wrong about us not liking to fight. I’ve always been more comfy with action and bloodshed than romance.
Once in the bay, we passed Max and Sam. They stood with their hands on their weapons. Laender bowed his head to them, obviously showing everyone that he knew the score. I nodded to Sam and Max to tell them to stand down. I didn’t know what was coming up, but I knew Blue and I would have to handle it alone. Goal number one was to survive. Goal number two was survive with The Relic in our hands. Goal number three was survive with The Relic in our hands and about 14 light years between us and Laender. I didn’t want to kill him, but I knew how deadly he was.
Once we got to his ship, Laender walked up his ramp, paid one of the crew that had clearly done a D&C for him, motioned them on their way, and gestured for us to go in.
“You first,” I said.
“If you insist.”
As soon as he entered his cargo bay my eyes and ears scanned for any sign of an alarm, or a trigger of any kind. Over the years I’d become pretty good at spotting a small light or a slight click that usually portends some seriously bad shit. And in my defense, my senses picked up nothing.
I gestured for Blue to go in next. Not because I wanted to put her in jeopardy, but because Laender seemed to want something from me and me alone. So I wasn’t going to give him the chance to separate us.
Which he managed to do anyway.
Once Blue crossed the hatchway into his bay, a shield cloaked the doorway. I couldn’t get in.
“Blue!” I yelled at her back.
She didn’t know we’d been cut off. She couldn’t hear me through the shield when I told her that Laender was pulling something from his holster. And she couldn’t hear me scream as I watched him pull her by the hair, lift her off the ground while dodging her swings and slam her in the face with the butt of his blaster.
In one smooth move he yanked her weapon from her belt and threw it across the cargo hold.
He dragged her across the floor by the hair, glanced over his shoulder at me coldly. I leapt from the ramp just in time as it snapped shut. Max and Sam helped me to my feet.
“Penn,” I commed, “get outside and look for his ship. We’ll take Reycort’s. Do not let this asshole go. He has Blue.”
CREW CUT
Penn spotted Laender quick, as usual. She dressed up her voice in silk to calm me down as I tried to get Reycort’s ship revved.
“Got him, boss. Both our ships can take him if these readings I’m seeing are correct.”
“They aren’t,” I answered, hoping my voice would knock her out of her positivity high. “He’s faking his ship’s damage to m
ake us cocky. Max, give Penn the frequency of your tracker in case he slips away.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Sam, get the guns. The perimeter cannon will wipe that smile off his face.”
“Maybe it’ll wipe off his whole face!” she said, trying to make me laugh. I think I snarled instead.
Sam and Max tried to help get the ship started but I’m not sure I was too receptive. I’d already messed up so bad that I think a part of me wanted to save Blue by myself. Losing cash, cargo, cred; all of that is fine. But no one should mess with my crew unless they want to die.
“Shit,” Penn muttered through static.
“You’ve been saying that a lot these days.”
“These days have been a lot of shit. He’s headed toward Crew Cut.”
My chin dropped to my chest.
We weren’t going to catch a break.
Crew Cut is what pilots call a pair of moons around the gas planet, Krom. They call them Crew Cut because anyone who tries to get close will have their heads shaved off by the Feds. Why? Because the moons are packed with gold.
“Shit,” Penn repeated again. “Here they come.”
Minners. Protection craft the size of your arm. They guard valuable systems by slamming into your hull, embedding themselves by the dozen and then locking into your ship’s AI and dropping your engines. They’ll send off a signal that calls in a Fed ship and you’ll spend 10 years paying your penance.
“Set the blockers,” I said casually. “Be ready for Fed ships, too. What the fuck is this guy thinking?”
“He seems to like chaos,” Penn said. “We should back off.”
“What? You are kidding, right?”
Penn sighed. “Look, boss, you can only beat chaos three ways. Add an element to the situation that stabilizes the chaos. Change the way the chaos and its surroundings relate to each other. Or, my favorite at the moment, change the situation so the chaos doesn’t have as much control.”
“And if I had you in front of me right now I would fucking strangle you. Take your science brain and stuff it. We’re going after Blue. Now.”
“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I think he wants something from us and he’s beating us by being a fucking nutpod. If we introduced order by hanging back or, hell, running away ourselves we’d have a better chance.”
“Penn. Follow. THEM!”
She did.
But she was right. And I ended up losing part of my family because of it.
As we approached Crew Cut, the Minners started to embed themselves into the side of our ship. Every time they hit our hull it sounded like fingernails on a gypsum card. Minners were only effective on stopping your ship if they got into your AI, but ships these days had top of the line protection against that and the Feds never updated. They’re train of thinking was that even if you got away, the Minners would do enough damage to your hull that it’d cost a bucket of credits to fix. I didn’t give a shit about the Reycort taking damage, obviously, but I wasn’t so happy about the cost my ship was going to run.
“How are you holding up, Penn?” I commed.
“Minners blocked so far,” she answered. “But they’re still going to notify the Feds. You?”
“Covered in them on all sides.”
“Look out your window,” she said.
I did, and I didn’t like what I saw at all. Thousands more Minners were on their way to our ass. At some point, the fucking things would just shred the ships. Not that the Feds gave a shit. They had originally claimed that Minners were a “humane” method of stopping would-be thieves, but if you take a couple thousand of anything and rip into a ship, that ship is screwed.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said with an irritated grunt. “Run.”
“You got it boss,” Penn answered.
We pulled out, zipping away from the Minners at full speed. We’d cleared their radius within the hour, which was evident by the sound of metal bending as the attached Minners released themselves and headed back toward Crew Cut. This was becoming more and more expensive at every turn. Worse yet, we’d lost Laender.
“You okay?” I asked Sam and Max. They nodded from their chairs, though they looked like they were about to lose their dinner, so it’s a good thing we stuck to form and forgot to eat. “Penn?”
“Fine here.”
I leaned back in my chair to think. I usually “think” to fight back tears.
I didn’t know that we didn’t have any time left to plot and plan.
I just remember seeing it. His ship. Laender’s ship. He’d set us up using the Minners, using them as cover so he could turn around and get a peg on us.
He knew that his insanity was wearing us out.
Just like Penn said.
I’ll never forgive myself.
HOPE CAN KISS MY ASS
I think Laender said something about skinning us. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to because I was waking up from some pretty godsdamned deep darkness.
But I figured out pretty fast that I was alive.
I was on the asshole’s ship.
The room was the size of a fucking arena.
Asshole was talking to a green light in the middle of a room.
And all of my girls were his prisoner. They were passed out next to me, unbound and sitting in a circle of soft, cushy chairs that would have looked more at home in a swanky mansion.
I managed to say, “Blawzurp,” I think. Which was “I’m going to blow you up,” in Coming-Out-Of-Coma-ese. I meant it, too. I had an emergency comm in my sleeve, near the wrist. All it would take was clicking out the self-destruct code on the transmitter and my ship, likely docked to his, would go boom.
The sacrifice would be big, but I was willing to go through with it if it spared us whatever Laender had in store.
When I tried to stand up I was shot in the hip. It was just a graze but it hurt. Through the excruciating pain, I realized that Laender had SFAQLs stationed around us. Any movement bigger than a normal inhale would pull their triggers.
“What the fuck?” Max said, waking up with a jolt at the sound of blaster fire. The bots zeroed in on her.
“OVER HERE!” I yelled. The SFAQLs aimed my way instead and fired, grazing about seven stretches of flesh.
I didn’t have the strength to scream. I barely had the strength to know I was in pain. Laender wandered over to me, hands behind his back, like he was a professor in a really fucking weird class.
“Asshole.” I spit out. I lifted my hand up, ready to pound out the five clicks, no matter what. This party was going to end with our blood all over the place.
The SFAQLs fired at me again, hitting me in the shoulder, but I didn’t flinch that time.
Laender gave me a smile-ish thing and held up his own little device in his right hand. He pressed on it and everything went black again.
With a touch of purple, if I remember right.
* * *
The second time I awoke I was in the same spot with the girls beside me. For some reason I was much more aware of my surroundings. I felt awake. Almost as if he’d woken me up with a SugarShit. Actually, that may be exactly why I woke up so pumped, now that I think about it. Fucking Laender.
“First, I want to play a game,” Laender said. “You.” He pointed at Max. “Pick a weapon.”
Laender gestured toward a wall. Bright lights shot up and flooded half the arena. He had a Headcube armory of his own. Much nicer than ours, but his probably weren’t fixed for safety.
He called for the SFAQLs to stand down on Max. She walked to where Laender stood and spit on his shoes. When he glanced down she kicked him in the chest like she was breaking down a door.
He barely flinched. He was knocked back on his heels a little, but showed no signs of being slammed by the same move that had taken down men twice his size. In fact, Max’s boot got stuck in one guy’s chest once on Harborlor. She almost got her head blown off when she couldn’t extract her heel from his ribcage.
Laender lifte
d his blaster. I thought Max was dead.
He shot Penn in the head.
PENALTY
I don’t remember much.
I recall that the SFAQLs shot Penn’s fallen body a few times until it stopped moving. The room was so quiet that we could hear her skin burning under her clothes. That’s not easy to forget.
Somewhere around the time I got my head back on straight, Max had chosen her helmet and a sword. She was livid, wiping the tears from her eyes as she kept looking at Penn’s fallen form. She and Laender walked around the arena, sizing each other up, waiting for the right moment to attack.
Blue’s eyes were stuck on Penn. Her face was wet with tears and anger and confusion.
Sam muttered as she watched her sister, clearly willing her to slice the fucker’s neck open.
I was ready to put a stop to the butchering, if Max ended up on the wrong side of Laender’s two daggers. I reached for my hidden comm. That’s when I found out that Laender had ripped it off the sleeve.
Laender leapt at Max so fast it made me gasp. He launched about three feet off the ground and covered 20 feet. He’d started with two daggers and landed with one.
The other was in Max’s right arm.
She handled it well, yanking it out in one motion without a peep. She even held her sword with both hands as she swung low at his legs. Again, he jumped. This time over her head. His left foot came down on top of her helmet. She buckled to the ground and managed to roll to her feet. But she looked groggy.
That’s when the helmets activated. They started jerking both of their heads around, making it hard for them to get a peg on each other.
I’m still not sure what made Max take the helmet off. Maybe she knew exactly where the fight was headed and just wanted to give herself a fighting chance. Maybe seeing Penn die drove her mad. Maybe she wanted to do some damage, any damage to Laender, so that we could find a way to escape.
She pulled the helmet off when she was about ten feet from Laender. She took the penalty shock that the helmet gives off when it’s removed during a fight. It’s painful, and it knocked her to her knees, but she managed it better than I would have. She got her feet under her and was halfway to our captor when the alarm went off warning Laender that his opponent was working without a helmet.
The Relic (The Galactic Thieves Book 1) Page 7