Knock on Wood

by C. J. Clemens

  As usual, the captain was acting all heroic and perhaps a tad overconfident, but Dreyla couldn’t tell if he really had faith in his crazy-ass plan or simply hoped to buy time while he figured out a way off the planet.

  She’d also noticed that everyone, herself included, had a difficult time keeping their eyes off Lady Ris… everyone except Remy. The dolt couldn’t seem to stop looking at the sheriff.

  Dreyla released a low sigh.

  “We can get you in,” Lady Ris assured the group, then rose gracefully from her seat and sauntered around the table, surveying each of her guests with a penetrating gaze.

  Despite her annoyance with Remy, Dreyla couldn’t help but muse on the woman’s beauty and poise.

  Eventually, Lady Ris’s sparkling green eyes rested on Sheriff Greyson. “Lilly… you, Deputy Brand, and the girl will all accompany us as followers.”

  The comment snapped Dreyla out of her fixation. “Who are you calling—”

  “Ease down, Drey,” Remy cut in sharply.

  She sank back into her seat, face heated, tempted to jump into the shuttle and blast outta there—alone.

  Lady Ris gazed at her with a kindly smile. “My dear, please take no offense. You are a beautiful young woman. You could certainly fit in here with the other Ladies of Morbious.”

  Dreyla swallowed, her cheeks warm. OK, the fixation was back.

  “Wait, what?” Remy’s eyebrow arched. “You want Drey to dress like…?” He pointed at the other monks, their exposed skin shimmering in the lamplight.

  Lady Ris gave him a stately nod.

  “I’m not sure I like that,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, relax, Captain.” Dreyla threw him a withering look. Honestly, for once in his life, he could stop thinking of her as a child.

  Then she caught an expression she’d never seen on Sheriff Greyson’s face before. Turned out the ice queen could smile. Of course, Remy had noticed it, too.

  “And I believe we can smuggle you four in.” Lady Ris glanced in turn at Remy, Milo, Jacer, and Davis.

  “What about me?” Tosh said, his voice a little hurt.

  “I think someone as distinguished as yourself should stay here with us,” Lady Ris replied with a tilt of her head, vestiges of a grin playing at her lips.

  Tosh didn’t buy it. The struggle played out on his wrinkled face, his eyes darting between the stunning monks and his two shipmates. If push came to shove, Dreyla knew he’d pick her and Remy over anyone else. But, in this case, the poor guy would have a hard time doing so.

  “You, Doc, are our backup,” Remy said.

  Tosh relaxed in his seat, and his smile soon returned. Problem solved.

  Dreyla listened keenly as the group continued to plan the dangerous mission. They would start their trek to Bane tomorrow morning.

  At the end of the planning session, Lady Ris announced that, for tonight, they could relax and be guests of the Ladies of Morbious.

  Tosh’s grin grew so large that it looked as though it might split his head in half, but the captain showed no signs of wanting to accept the offer. He seemed far more interested in staring at his plate and shuffling his boots on the floor.

  Men can be so stupid.

  Chapter 5

  SHAW

  The Butcher’s Place was busy, but not oppressively so. The dive bar, part of a hotel-brothel complex, had begun to grow on Shaw. People here dressed in dull clothes, talked in murmurs, and, for the most part, minded their own business. Even the background music approximated the type of gloomy rock she used to listen to way back when life made sense. The bartenders could conjure up almost every drink in the galaxy, and they took care to never look askew at any patron. But somehow, the establishment’s security staff could usually ferret out trouble before it started.

  She took a sip from her glass of rytec—a drink that had also grown on her. It was the closest thing in Bane that compared to good ol’ Kentucky bourbon.

  “Right now,” she said, glancing around to check for would-be eavesdroppers, “your major concern should be these people.”

  She handed Darius a tablet displaying the images of Bechet, the girl, and the old man. Darkbur’s men had pulled them from security footage in Naillik after hacking the city’s system. Luckily, they were fairly high-quality shots of the three musketeers.

  Darius’s dark eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes, really,” she said.

  Frowning, he scrolled through more images. “I can see this Captain Bechet being a potential problem, although even from what you’ve told me, I can’t picture him falling in with Sheriff Greyson.”

  Shaw shrugged. She’d learned to expect the unexpected from Bechet and his crew.

  “And these,” he said, handing the device back to her, “are all high-priority targets.”

  These weren’t pictures swiped from security feeds: what she was looking at were dossiers on the sheriff, her deputies, and a couple of representatives from the other major cities on the planet. Both the dworg and the aflin races.

  “You’ve had them under surveillance for quite some time,” she said, devouring what info she could and suddenly wishing Darius would go away and let her read this alone.

  The files on Sheriff Lilly Greyson tracked back to even before she was sheriff of Naillik. The woman had been pretty, she supposed, before she adopted that constant harried look. Guess she wasn’t faring too well without that sheriff husband of hers. He seemed to have been the regular do-gooder boy-scout type. The antithesis of Bechet.

  Interesting.

  She looked over at Darius. “I checked out the facial-recognition systems and marked the locations where they need to be placed inside the city.”

  Darius shook his head.

  “What?”

  He took a long guzzle of his ferrara and clanked the bottle down dramatically. “We start placing cams all over town, business dries up faster than a puddle of blood at the sun’s zenith.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “Bane’s the center of all illegal activity on Vox,” he explained. “If it’s shady shit, you can be certain it starts here.” He chuckled. “If not in this very bar. You see any cameras around here?”

  A barmaid paused at the table and smoothly set down a full bottle of rytec and an extra glass. Shaw topped off her own drink, then filled the other glass for her new cohort. Drinking with Darius had become a vice she didn’t want to give up. It kept the crushing existential angst at bay, if only for an hour or two at a time.

  Better than nothing.

  “While Darkbur may be the head honcho in Bane,” Darius said, “he’s not the only boss in town.” He took a sip of the rytec. “He’s forced to deal with many of the smaller organizations in order to keep the Vox7 flowing, and they won’t take kindly to surveillance popping up all over town.”

  She smiled grimly. Ah, the life of a crime lord. You didn’t want to piss off the other major players, or you might find yourself facing a coup. Crime might pay, but it could definitely be a pain in the ass, requiring so much hard work, concentration, and perseverance that those who embraced it seeking the easy life often lived to regret it.

  Not that she was one of those. She went into everything with her eyes wide open.

  “So, hide the damn things,” she suggested. “It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Some of these people operate at the same tech level we do,” Darius explained.

  “Meaning they have toys that would detect any hidden cams?”

  “Something like that.” He took a long draw from his drink.

  Shaw sipped hers as well. The silence lingered for a few moments. This was another good thing about Darius—silences were comfortable with him.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, “what the hell did Darkbur want me to do this for?”

  Darius raised his gaze to meet hers, and she thought she caught a flicker of deception there. Or intent to deceive.

  But then he let out a deep sigh. “He’s just keeping you on a leash…
giving you something to do while also seeing what kind of strategic sense you have.”

  Darius was telling the truth. She’d bet her life on it. And it made sense once she cut her ego out of the equation. Despite her better judgment, she had felt flattered by Darkbur’s opinion of her as “smart,” but she should have known he’d want to test her out in the real world first.

  She glanced at the tablet. For some reason, Darius had returned to a screen displaying the locations she’d marked for potential camera placement. She scrutinized him curiously.

  “I’ll say this,” he said, nodding at the screen, “we can at least place men at most of these points.”

  Satisfaction warmed her face, or maybe it was the booze. “It’s a start,” she said.

  “You really think these people from your universe are going to help the sheriff?” Darius asked.

  How ironic that she had suddenly become the psychological expert on Bechet simply because they had come from the “same universe.” That kind of categorical thinking could play to her advantage—or disadvantage. For now, she’d accept the role of expert, even though she hadn’t the slightest clue what the troublesome pirate had up his sleeve right now.

  “I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  LILLY

  The brisk, hot breeze whipped Lilly’s ponytail as the hovercraft glided above the desert. This was it—they were on their way to Bane. Not far ahead, another hovercraft, occupied by two radiant monks and three large trunks, led the way. The containers held Davis, Milo, and Jacer, none of whom had been pleased with this part of the plan.

  Following in the lead vehicle’s tailwind and driven by Lady Ris herself, the second hovercraft carried another gorgeous monk, appropriately called Bellia, plus Lilly, Dreyla, and Brand, all of whom wore the customary garb of the Ladies of Morbious. Behind Lilly and her cohorts sat yet another trunk, this one concealing a rather disgruntled Bechet.

  As tranquil and paradisal as the monastery had been, it felt good to move again. Because this was what constituted real life—adversity, danger, and death. Doing her best to keep the scales of justice tipping against the weight of evil was the closest Lilly could get to having a sense of purpose.

  But am I prepared to die to get those meds back?

  A loud bang erupted from the cargo trunk. Lilly rapped her knuckles on the top of the culprit.

  “It ain’t easy to breathe in here,” came Bechet’s muffled voice. “Christ, we better be getting close.”

  “Shut up, Bechet,” she said, “or you’ll end up with one of Darkbur’s men putting a hole in that dashing head of yours.”

  Dreyla giggled. Despite the obvious tension between her and Lilly, the girl had elected to sit beside her on the journey to Bane. Clearly, she felt self-conscious about her revealing costume. Lilly understood her discomfort and, to a certain degree, shared it, but Dreyla had demanded to join the mission, so she couldn’t have it both ways.

  “I heard that, Drey,” Bechet’s voice rumbled from the container.

  The girl’s grin widened further.

  “We could have placed them inside the trunks much closer to Bane,” Bellia whispered. “There was no need for them to ride the whole way like that.”

  “You never know when you’ll cross paths with a patrol or another caravan.” Not wanting to tempt fate, Lilly picked up her long-range binoculars to scan the terrain again. “Besides, it’s so much nicer with the menfolk put in their proper place.”

  “And I heard that, too,” came the grumble from the trunk.

  “What excellent hearing you have, Captain,” she said. “For someone who doesn’t like to listen.”

  The leading hovercraft decelerated as the city of Bane grew closer. Lady Ris’s vehicle pulled alongside it.

  “It is nice not having them around,” Brand mused, patting some structure back into her blonde hair.

  Dreyla’s eyes widened. She clearly hadn’t expected her to say that.

  Brand winked at the youngster. “Sometimes, men can be such a pain in the ass. You’ll soon find out.”

  “But they can also be a great source of pleasure,” Lady Ris replied from the driver’s seat with a benevolent smile.

  Brand blushed.

  Dreyla and Lilly chuckled. Lilly had to wonder if there was trouble brewing between Brand and the currently boxed-up Davis. Well, tough. If they survived this caper, they could kill each other then.

  “I am sorry we could not carry more gear into the city,” Lady Ris continued, turning back to focus on driving.

  “No worries.” Lilly stowed the binoculars under her seat. “The guards at the city gates need to see exactly what they normally see from you all.” She gritted her teeth. “Everything has to look real normal.”

  Lady Ris scrutinized Lilly’s face in the rear-view mirror, as if sensing the doubt and trepidation she was trying so hard to conceal.

  “We will be able to smuggle in more of your gear later,” Lady Ris assured her, “but Bane is very specific about what kind of crafts and how much cargo can enter at any given time.”

  “Of course,” Lilly reasoned, “Darkbur’s trying to ensure that none of the other organizations can bring in anything that could upset the balance of power.”

  Lady Ris nodded, then said, “We will bring the rest tomorrow, with another wave of the Ladies of Morbious. Everything your captain wanted.”

  “He’s not my captain,” Lilly blurted, and then instantly regretted it.

  Dreyla’s lips curled into a smile that suggested a private victory.

  From the start of this weeklong mess, the girl had staunchly defended her captain, which made sense given their father-daughter vibe. Despite their obvious physical differences—his light skin and hazel eyes, her dark complexion and even darker eyes—they seemed to share a lot of expressions and personality quirks, from shrewd intelligence to stubborn indignation. Even if Bechet wasn’t Dreyla’s biological father, she obviously considered him an adopted one. So, Lilly’s harsh treatment of him had naturally elicited a wave of teenaged angst from the girl. Not the feelings of a simple crew member. No, these two shared an unusually close bond.

  Lady Ris guided the hovercraft behind others waiting to enter the city. The line was long, but the guards at the gates usually kept the entrants moving at a serviceable rate. Lilly had traveled to Bane a few times—usually to negotiate various mining rights—so she knew what to expect.

  It amused her that she’d always had those mining negotiations with Bane’s mayor, Hansen Timms, who possessed no real power. Just a puppet, with Gono Darkbur pulling all his strings.

  “Damn,” Lady Ris exclaimed.

  “What?” Lilly had never heard her spiritual mentor use an expletive before.

  Lady Ris peered at the control screen of her hovercraft. Lilly leaned forward for her own glimpse of the display and realized Lady Ris had been running some kind of long-range surveillance on the approaching gates. Unfortunately, the results were positive: the guards were now scanning every face that entered the city.

  Damn, indeed.

  “You,” Lady Ris said, turning to Brand, her green eyes flashing, “go back and get in one of the trunks in the other craft.”

  When Brand hesitated, Lady Ris yelled, “Go! And take Dreyla with you!”

  “Dammit,” Lilly growled. “Brand, Dreyla, hurry! Tell them what’s going on.”

  The two of them hopped out of the slow-moving hovercraft, dashed across the sand, and clambered inside the second vehicle. Lilly could only hope that, if Brand opted to hide inside Davis’s container, her two deputies would keep their hands off each other and their minds focused on the task at hand.

  “You, too, Lilly,” Lady Ris urged, snapping her out of her inconvenient musings.

  Reluctantly, Lilly gazed down at Bechet’s trunk.

  “Come on in,” his amused voice said, as if reading her thoughts. “There’s plenty of room.”

  Lilly slowly opened the container. The top co
mpartment held a combination of recruitment materials and medical supplies, innocuous items that the Ladies of Morbious usually carted into Bane. Lilly lifted the false bottom. Bechet lay there, his head cradled against his outstretched elbows with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face.

  He scooted to one side, leaving almost half the space empty. “See? Plenty of room.”

  There were no words. She simply shook her head and, totally avoiding the stares of her companions, gingerly stepped one foot inside and then the other. Once she was settled beside Bechet, Bellia replaced the false bottom, and the lid clicked shut above them.

  The sudden darkness made Lilly’s breath hitch. She’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but she still wasn’t fond of tight spaces. Besides, it already felt stuffy in here, and a whole plethora of disaster scenarios flooded her mind, the end result being she’d never get out of the damn trunk alive and intact.

  Breathe. Keep calm.

  But having controlled her panic, another sensation roiled up. She squirmed against her wall of the box as best she could. Nothing could help her cope with the fact that she was in a snug, private space with a breathing, pulsing, and strangely intoxicating-smelling male. Their bodies were pressed so tightly against one another that she could feel every inch of the man.

  Even in the pitch-black space, she knew Bechet was smiling.

  “Stop smiling,” she demanded.

  “How could you possibly know I’m smiling?” he asked.

  “I can hear it,” she responded.

  He chuckled.

  She jabbed her elbow into his chest.

  “Oomph,” he said.

  Sorry, not sorry.

  Then, to her horror, she felt something poking into the soft flesh of her thigh. “That better not be what I think it is,” she hissed.

  “Relax, Sheriff, it’s just my gun,” came his low husky voice, his breath tickling her ear.

  That’s no freaking gun.

  She clenched her eyes shut and prayed for a swift progress through this nightmare. Parts of her that had lain dormant for a long time had started to pulsate into life, which made lying still and rigid even more agitating. Even the steady rise and fall of his chest affected her. She couldn’t turn off this hyper-awareness of him.