Sureblood

  And his papa, too. Maybe especially his papa.

  Wait, he cautioned himself. Wait until he shows his fear. It wouldn’t take long.

  Shaking, Nezerihm held his rage in check. “Your mama and papa don’t want you,” Nezerihm said smoothly. The flicker of surprise in the boy’s gaze heartened him. “They gave you away.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Is it? They let Ayl give you to me, yes? They were too busy at their party to watch you, caring more about each other, loving each other more than they do you.”

  The brat’s little chest was heaving, his long dark lashes moist. No fear, but the little bit of uncertainty gave Nezerihm hope. He wasn’t ready to be broken yet, no. He’d have to be worn down first like a too-spirited horse.

  “With your parents, you’ll always get the leftovers when it comes to love. The scraps.”

  The little boy’s nostrils flared at that. “Scraps is all you’ll get for now on, outsider! Because we pirates are back together. I’m gonna be the king of us all someday, too.”

  “Quiet!” Nezerihm screamed to cover up the flare of panic the boy’s boast conjured.

  “And if my mama and papa don’t kill you, I will.”

  He swung his arm to cuff the boy.

  “My lord…”

  “What!” Lowering his fists, Nezerihm was shaking as he whirled on the intrusion.

  Rolm was at the doors. “It’s Captain Johnson with a priority message.”

  Nezerihm slowed his breathing. “Take the brat from my sight. Clean him up before you bring him back. He stinks like a pirate. And dress him in some proper clothes.”

  Rolm scooped up the wriggling child and threw him over his shoulder, carrying him from the room. Wringing his hands, Nezerihm commanded his message screen open to take the incoming signal. Frank Johnson stood center screen, looking as friendly as always. The eye in the center of a storm.

  “Lord Nezerihm,” the captain said. “The pirates have agreed to mediation on the situation in the Channels. I don’t want to proceed in talks without you.”

  “No,” Nezerihm gasped. “Not without me.”

  “How soon can you be here?”

  “Consider me on my way right now.” With glee he pictured the pirates bellowing and jostling to argue their points, and he serene, not behaving like a barbarian. Now was his chance to shore up his dependability in contrast to them, with his calm and his utter qualification as leader of the Channels.

  The boy…

  Nezerihm spat and shivered. He reached for the comm to decline the invitation, so he could stay and work on softening up the child instead.

  But he couldn’t risk not being present for the talks, couldn’t risk the pirates gaining any influence or taking his power. That meant not showing up with bruised knuckles or any signs of a struggle.

  He couldn’t forget the first time he’d met Johnson and the way the captain noticed the scratches on his hands from the little whore who had fought his attentions with such liveliness. No, he’d not finish off the little pirate brat just yet, but he’d keep him close by. The boy would come with him for the round-trip to the Unity, all while Nezerihm dreamed up his perfect, tortuous extermination.

  LONG AFTER CLOSING THE transmissions with Dake Sureblood and Nezerihm, Frank remained at his desk. While Dake Sureblood had delivered on his promise to bring Val Blue on board the peace initiative, Nezerihm had done nothing but rock the boat—if what the pirate was telling him was true. Triad directives required him to treat all parties with neutrality, but he sure as hell would like to beat the crap out of the ingratiating zelfen merchant. Stealing a kid. Could the slimeball stoop any lower? Frank hadn’t hesitated to agree to the terms of the pirates’ request to use his ship as neutral ground for the hostage negotiations. He’d said nothing more to Nezerihm about it than invite him aboard, which the man accepted with nauseating eagerness.

  “Sir!” Gwarkk burst into the office. Frank was about to vent about the mine owner when he noticed his first officer’s disconcerted expression. “We’ve been getting signals from the shuttle. It seems to be stowed in the cargo hold of a larger ship.”

  “That makes sense, Lieutenant. They’re bringing extra clansmen, too many to fit on a single shuttle. At least they’re returning it.”

  “The tracking device says Captains Blue and Sureblood aren’t headed here at all,” Gwarkk said.

  Frank pushed to his feet. “What does it say?”

  “They’re on a flight course dead set for Lord Nezerihm’s ship.”

  WITH THE MARAUDER pegged at max velocity, Val stood silent and somber as Dake dragged his thumb across her cheek, leaving behind a bright slash of war paint to decorate her face Sureblood-style for battle. Everyone on their handpicked crew were the best of the best from both of their clans. All were hard at work donning their gear for the raid on Nezerihm’s flagship that she hoped held her little boy, alive.

  On board, it was loud, as it always was before a raid, but the moment between her and Dake stretched out, almost tender, the painting of each other’s face taking on special significance. They were raiders and they were pirate captains, but they were also parents. They knew if the raid went wrong, Jaym could die, or if he was left behind on Aerokhtron with guards, he might die. Yet if they did nothing, he’d likely still perish. Nezerihm would never let a child of theirs grow up to threaten him.

  “Jaym has the best of both of us in him,” Dake said as if to reassure them both. “The boy is tough. If anyone can survive Nezerihm, he can.”

  “Aye. But Nezerihm will never survive me.” She rubbed her finger in the colored paste and drew it across Dake’s cheekbone. Soon she’d turned Dake into the Sureblood raider she first met on an old freighter years ago.

  A lifetime ago.

  Silence fell between them. He touched the center of her chest plate where the design was still blank and unfinished. “What will go here?”

  “Our Jaym,” she said. “His name, written in the wind. If we make it back to Artoom.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it, his opalescent eyes intense. “When, Val. Not if.”

  She brushed her lips across his, and he crushed her to him for a kiss that quickly turned passionate.

  “Let’s go get our boy,” she murmured as they pulled away.

  Grabbing their weapons, they got ready for a raid like no other. This time the booty was her son, her flesh and blood, and Dake’s.

  Then, against a breathtaking backdrop of rocky worlds and shifting channels between them, still a haven for her people and a graveyard for everyone else, Nezerihm included, she and Dake addressed their raiders. “Blues!” she shouted as Dake bellowed, “Surebloods!” Together they roared, “Are you ready to go a-raidin’?”

  Battle cries thundered in the confines of the ship.

  She pumped a fist in the air. “Launch the skiffs!”

  Thwump-thwump and the first skiffs were on their way.

  Leaving Grizz in command, Val departed with Dake for the skiff they’d pilot as a team. Reeve and Ferren were already on board when they boarded. Painted fiercely, Dake hooked up his comm.

  Val couldn’t help marveling at the sight of such a mixed crew. Raiding with a Sureblood, the concept still boggled, yet she could no longer imagine doing it any other way.

  Ferren pulled the hatch closed. The craft pressurized as Val quickly strapped into her seat and took the controls, just as she’d done for so many years. Only this time the consequences of failure were too great to think about. Losing Jaym because she wasn’t good enough, or quick enough, or even brave enough, was something she simply couldn’t, and wouldn’t, entertain.

  “Rescue One’s ready,” she told Marauder. The docking hooks retracted and the skiff floated free.

  There was a time when the beginning of a raid made her heart race with excitement. The adrenaline rush now was no different. Only the goal.

  “You need some fear. Too much paralyzes you, and too little makes you reckless. Arrogant.”r />
  I know, Papa. Tempered by time and tragedy, and steadied by love, she’d left arrogance behind. As well as recklessness, she hoped.

  Once in striking range, she could see that Nezerihm’s ship was large and sleek, reflecting his prosperity. Dake’s eyes narrowed, his upper lip lifting in a faint snarl. She knew he was thinking how much of the money that went into that vessel belonged to their people. Everything would change after today. Everything.

  Dake sat up straight. “Freepin’ hells. Raid crashers.”

  “What?” Where? She spun around in her seat, her mouth falling open at the sight of myriad skiffs falling out of the stars—skiffs painted in the colors of every pirate clan she knew. “Calders, Feckwiths, Lightlees and Freebirds,” she murmured. “They’re all here.”

  Dake’s expression reflected his surprise and pleasure at their appearance. And worry that she also shared. “I’m all for a show of unity,” he said. “But there is such a concept as too much of a good thing.”

  Frightening Nezerihm would very likely put Jaym in mortal danger.

  Her stomach flipped, her skin growing damp with nerves. But thankfully the other skiffs stayed back, there to support if they needed them, but not to disrupt the raid. Whatever happened today, it would be known that all the pirates were in support of it.

  For the first time in a generation.

  Val cut the power and they coasted into the ship from behind. Tension in the skiff grew as they descended in darkness and comm silence. Drifting up to a hatch, she brought the skiff into position.

  Dake gave her a curt, approving nod, then flicked his gloved hand, launching the team into action. Soundlessly, they fastened masks and attached safety ropes, then made a seal between the ships. Hundreds of years of tradition guided their actions, with very few differences considering their different clan origins. It reminded her again of Dake’s claim: they were one people.

  “Pressure’s good,” Val said, watching data stream across on her cockpit display. “Holding steady.”

  Holding steady against the void. Her gaze spun outside to empty space, the utter vacuum. She remembered when the idea of being sucked out was the worst imaginable nightmare. She’d lived through far worse.

  With the seal intact, they busted through the hatch. Then they were in. Rechecking her gear, she exchanged one last, lingering glance with Dake, then nodded to Reeve and Ferren in turn. Let’s go, she mouthed and led the way into Nezerihm’s ship.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE BLUES AND SUREBLOODS flowed into the ship, tucking away into nooks and crannies and moving toward the bridge. It was as empty aboard this luxurious vessel as the freighter had been. Then she remembered Nezerihm’s distrust of anyone on his staff. There would be few aboard.

  They rounded a corner and almost collided with a tall, silver-haired man carrying a tray of food out of a hallway door.

  Val’s heart nearly fell out of her chest as her dozer came up, aiming between the man’s eyes seconds after Dake’s was already there. “That way,” the staffer said, gesturing with his chin down the corridor. “The boy.”

  “And Nezerihm?”

  “The bridge.”

  Dake had him pressed up against the wall in a heartbeat. “You seem awfully quick to sell out Nez—”

  “Boss.” Yarmouth showed up, pushing another frightened company man ahead of him. “Found this one folding towels. He says Nezzie’s on the bridge.”

  “So, that’s two of you making it easy to find what we came here for.”

  “We came here for Jaym,” Val said quietly.

  “Aye,” Dake agreed, cooling his battle lust. “Him first. Vengeance second.”

  Val felt Jaym’s lanyard under her armor, nestled between her breasts, right over her pounding heart. Mama’s going to get you free, boy. But you gotta stay calm and let me and your papa do it. She willed the thought to reach Jaym, and herself to stay calm.

  Everything depended on what happened today.

  They cuffed the two staffers, leaving one with raiders and taking the other with them to show them the way. “Do it,” Dake growled in the hostage’s ear, shoving him forward to unlock the door.

  The staffer unlocked it and they whooshed through. Dozer tracking, frantic eyes searching, Val fought to see into the room. Light from the corridor fell across the floor. The swathe illuminated a small form crouched in the corner, a broken piece of trim clutched in two small hands like a dozer. It clattered to the floor. Dake’s jaw was tight with tension even as relief flooded his painted face. Val could only imagine what they must have looked like to Jaym, storming the room in their war paint, like savage wolves taking back their cub.

  “Mama—” Jaym said as Val covered his mouth with her glove, her hard stare willing him into silence. His ankle was chained to the bunk. His eyes were bleary, telling her he’d been given drugs.

  “Oh, my baby. My boy.” It hit her hard, then, how lucky they were to have found him unharmed. “Hush. Mama’s here now.” She held him tight to her armored breast. His little-boy scent drifted to her along with his fear. A mother might have wept. A raider couldn’t.

  Dake vaporized the restraint and pulled Jaym’s leg free. Then he tossed Jaym onto Reeve’s back. “Get him to the skiff.”

  “But I want to fight, too,” Jaym protested groggily.

  “This time it’s your mama and papa’s job.” Val showered his damp little cheek with thankful kisses in the seconds before Reeve sprinted away to the skiff with the precious treasure clinging to his back.

  The urge to follow almost overwhelmed Val. But the drive to eliminate the threat to her family kept her going toward the goal—disabling the bridge of this ship. Chilling the core was standard operating procedure with a hostile target. Once the plasma drive was shut down it would take hours to bring back up—plenty of time to clear the area of vulnerable skiffs. Val had thought this would be the hardest part, but letting her son out of her reach after just getting him back was far tougher.

  The raiders moved like shadows, pushing their hostages in front of them. They stormed the bridge as they’d done to so many others in the past, sealing off all other access points around them.

  Nezerihm was there, a thin, gray ghost of a man. His gaunt, aristocratic face blazed outraged shock. “Pirates! Get them.”

  Two of Nezerihm’s men grabbed his arms, pinning him. “For our amnesty, you can have him,” one shouted.

  Val had almost fired at him. Only her split-second reactions kept her from killing the staffer.

  “Rolm, what are you doing!” Nezerihm gasped in shock at one of the men.

  “No one else move!” Dake stood at Val’s side, his dozer aimed. She wasn’t so sure he wasn’t about to let a few blasts fly. “I’d like to squeeze the life outta you with my bare hands,” he gritted out. “But I promised Johnson I’d play nice. We’re going to fly you and your ship, nice and slow, to the Unity and—”

  “No!” Nezerihm wrenched free and reached inside his cloak.

  Plasma fire exploded on the bridge.

  Val’s dozer steamed in her hands, matching the smoking hole she’d put between Nezerihm’s eyes that seemed to gape at her accusingly for a few seconds more. Then his legs buckled. He fell, blood spilling from one corner of his mouth. Only then, when she finally remembered to breathe, did she notice the equally mortal wound Dake had blasted through his chest.

  They stood over him. “Not a man,” she whispered. “A monster.” Dake pulled her hard against his side and pressed his lips to her hair.

  But there was a third wound, Val saw, even lower still. They spun around to see Ferren, her eyes wild with hate, a dozer clutched in her tiny hands.

  Fates alive, Val thought. She’d shot Nez between the legs.

  Her lips had pulled back, baring her teeth. Then, blinking, Ferren transformed back to the girl they’d come to know—or as much as she’d allowed them to. “He knows what he did,” she explained simply. Without a specken of remorse she lowered her weapon and walke
d away.

  “Whatever he did to Ferren,” Dake told Val quietly, “and to us, he won’t be doing it anymore.”

  AS THE ENORMITY OF THE Triad ship Unity grew to fill the shuttle’s view screen, so did Val’s awe and doubts. Dake was right—the ship was larger than anything she could have imagined. With an exhausted Jaym curled up in her lap asleep, she thought of the rescue raid they’d accomplished without Triad approval, and couldn’t help ponder the consequences. By eliminating one enemy had they’d gained another?

  But Dake had insisted on returning the shuttle. She hoped they weren’t thrown in the brig when they boarded.

  “You are cleared to dock,” a female voice said over the comm.

  Dake steered the shuttle into the enormous bay that alone could have fit Artoom’s entire village. After passing through decontamination, they were given permission to board.

  She lowered a sleepy Jaym to his feet and straightened his clothes, leading him by the hand inside. A pair of strapping outsiders greeted them, Captain Johnson and his Drakken first officer, wearing colors representing all the peoples in the galaxy, except hers. Johnson extended his arm, reaching across a void that had never been crossed to clasp her hand. “The most notorious, vilest she-pirate in the galaxy, I presume,” he said with quiet humor that put her instantly at ease. It would be all right.

  “Aye, Cap’n,” she said and flashed her infamous grin. “At your service.”

  ON THE MINING WORLD Aerokhtron, one week later, Ferren escaped Reeve and everyone else gathered for a meeting at Nezerihm’s former headquarters. Finally she’d found her way here. It had taken years, years of patience, to make it to this point. In the beginning this goal had kept her alive. Even after she’d found contentment and purpose with the land-folk she’d come to love, she never allowed herself to forget her true mission.

  Would she find Adrinn today or closure? Anticipation and dread both filled her as she stripped down to her underclothes and dived into the sparkling body of water surrounding Nezerihm’s former keep.

  Shafts of sunlight speared the depths, making her chest tighten with regret. She was no longer of this world and mourned it still. Her stay down here would be limited. She could hold her breath longer than any land-folk, but not for an infinite length of time.