She took another bite of the steak, enjoying the juicy flavor and the sensation of instant energy it infused into her veins, something that her usual bland, inorganic food failed to do. She’d cook up some sand-oysters for Brand instead. Her newest deputy looked more like the invertebrate-eating type anyway.
Sated, she switched off the news and scanned her suite. She didn’t really think Nate would stoop so low as to steal anything from her home, but she didn’t get to be sheriff by making delusional, half-assed assumptions.
All three partners of the Red Lady had taken a penthouse suite at the top of the building. They were nice apartments, but it didn’t feel like home.
Then again, since Tim died, nowhere had felt like home.
Chapter 3
SHAW
“If you lose them, Zain…” Shaw warned.
She regarded her pilot. He wasn’t the type to require warnings, but she needed to lash out at someone. Zain handled the piloting as well as the navigation, and he excelled at both. Hence why she’d pulled some strings in the UNSF hierarchy to get him assigned to her crew.
“I got this, Commander.” Zain’s pale, impassive face gave away nothing as he pummeled the controls with his spindly fingers. Competent and almost emotionless, he could have been a droid in his former life.
Jibs, meanwhile, had removed his hands from his weapons station and was now staring through the front window as their ship gyrated insanely through the asteroid field. Jibs could never be accused of possessing much talent, and she certainly hadn’t pulled any strings for him, but he did have a weird knack for surviving and being useful.
Usually.
“What are you doing, Jibs?” she yelled. “Keep firing at them!”
“But we’re making so many turns, we could end up doubling back into one of our own missiles,” Jibs quibbled.
The command blades were equipped with both missiles and plasma blasters. The missiles caused more damage, but Jibs was right: they could possibly fly back into one of their own shots. And that wouldn’t be too smart.
“Alright, just the blasters then,” she said. “Just means you’ll need to hit them more.”
There was no way she would let Bechet escape this time. She wasn’t just looking for his body, she wanted to see the whole R.L. Johnson blown to space dust, along with any lowlife stupid enough to be hitching a ride with him.
Just as she’d demanded, Jibs was now focusing solely on the blasters, sending blue pulses of energy chasing after the pirate ship. It was only a matter of time. Even though Bechet was a skilled pilot, his luck was bound to run out... sooner or later. Hopefully, before she and her crew accidentally slammed their ship into an asteroid.
Her auxiliary comms screen lit up. She’d make an effort not to bash her fist through this one. Not an easy promise, though, once Captain Pike’s unwelcome mug appeared.
“Commander Shaw, this is crazy! Bechet knows more about flying in these outer reaches than any other pirate.”
She unleashed a cold laugh. “Just maintain pursuit, Pike. Or are you too chickenshit?”
His ruddy complexion darkened further. “I’m not killing my crew for some personal vendetta you have with Remy.”
“No, you’re fulfilling the contract you agreed to with Larker Max. Since you allowed Bechet to destroy the shipment of Teez, you had better, at least, complete the back end of the agreement and kill him.”
“Allowed him?” Pike’s nostrils flared. “We’re not responsible for you and your crew’s incompetence. Hell, if I hadn’t contacted you, you’d have picked up that body and you’d be dead now, not Langston and the crew of the Kapriano.”
“Just do your damn job.” Shaw clicked off the comms.
Sticklers like Pike bored her more than anything. What was his problem anyway? Did the man still have some kind of loyalty to Bechet? No, of course, he didn’t. He was quivering in his boots, picturing Larker Max’s reaction to the destroyed Teez. Fear was driving him, as it drove most people. It was the only reason the Mearle was still flying alongside them.
She turned her focus to what her crew was doing.
Zain was twisting the ship through tight spaces, matching every move the R.L. Johnson made. He was looking quite smug about it, too. He had, no doubt, overhead Pike’s “incompetence” remark, and it had probably rankled him.
“We’re not gaining?” she asked, merely to stir him up even more.
“Damn,” Jibs shouted from the far side. “Almost got their rear starboard-side engine.”
She heaved an impatient sigh. “Almost?”
They were spinning through what resembled an impossible barrier of rocks. With asteroids of every kind—from pebbles to enormous masses twice the size of Earth’s moon—it made for some horrific flying. She tried to read Zain’s face for their chances of getting out alive, but as usual, he revealed nothing.
“Commander, I’ve heard rumors of several large portals somewhere in this area,” Zain announced when they’d reached a somewhat clearer patch.
At first, she didn’t want to answer him. It meant acknowledging that those stories were more than simple rumors. They were the bane of her existence. She’d had a few pursuits ended by pirates flying their ships through such portals. Half the time, the pirate ships in question were never heard from again.
Portals were the cheater’s way out of a good and honest fight, ship to ship, in one dimension. It was the coward’s route. And very likely, the path Bechet was banking on.
Zain was still looking at her, patiently awaiting a reply even while he nudged the nav controls. His gray eyes held only the tiniest suggestion of unease.
“Yeah, OK, OK,” she said testily. “There probably are portals around here somewhere. We have to keep that in mind.”
Who knew what had happened to those vanishing pirates? Some definitely had no idea what they were getting into. Others must have known where the portals were going to spit them back out. Since the whole Newton’s Gate incident, the portals had not only changed the face of Earth but had also made policing outer space that much more difficult.
“But,” she added savagely, “we’re not gonna let that bastard get anywhere near any freaking portals. I swear, Zain, earn that massive pay package of yours today and close the distance so we can blow that ship to hell.”
Chapter 4
REMY
The R.L. Johnson wasn’t too far from what Remy hoped would be their escape exit, but Shaw had gotten to be a real pain in the ass.
He was having to double back and swing the Jay through some pretty tight spaces in order to keep ahead of her. The sharp angles of her command blade were a constant fixture in the rear-view screen, as the ship swooped and lurched in mocking synchronization. She had one hell of a navigator on board, and she wasn’t going to give up while Remy was still alive.
Remy lowered the Jay toward a moon-sized rock and dove the ship through a narrow crevice. He knew the maneuver would probably drain the blood from Dreyla and Tosh’s faces. OK, maybe just Drey. Tosh probably saw it as some kind of amusement ride.
Another glance at the rear-view screen told him his cool maneuver hadn’t shaken his pursuers, but at least they had dropped back a bit farther. Shaw’s pilot might’ve been skilled—the Mearle’s, too—but nobody knew this area like he did. And no one could pull off the kind of flying he was about to do. They were now deep in the asteroid field, just where he wanted to be.
“Oh, man, if you’re gonna be pulling this kind of crap, I’m gonna need another hit,” Tosh said, flapping his hand at the dizzying vista of rocks blocking their path. He rose and wandered off the bridge.
So much for the amusement ride.
Remy and Dreyla exchanged a look.
“You never answered my question,” Dreyla said.
“What question was that?”
“The one pertaining to whether we live or die?”
“Oh, that.” Remy applied extra engine thrust, making Dreyla grab her nav console for support. “We’ve
been through worse than this, right?”
No answer.
Remy blinked sweat from his eyes and forced a grin. “It’s just like flying through a cave.”
He had considerable experience with this kind of crazy-ass piloting; you just had to know how fast you could go and when exactly to turn. You also needed a sprinkling of luck on top or, at least, lack of bad luck. And finally, you needed to keep cool.
Remy jerked the steering wheel hard to his left. The Mearle tried to follow suit but scraped one of her rear engines against a canyon wall. Shaw’s ship almost collided with her fellow pursuer.
“Hah,” Remy whooped. “Bye-bye, Jason.”
The sight of Pike’s ship hurtling away into space behind them was the best he’d had all day.
Maybe we’ll get through this after all.
He soared out of the crevice and slammed forward at full throttle, but he didn’t feel the power he wanted. He had lied to Shaw. The engines still weren’t operating at their maximum yet. All the indicators lolled pathetically in the yellow zones.
An enormous blast rang in his ears. The Jay shuddered and creaked and then sank at an ugly angle toward a medium-sized asteroid. His best guess? One of their engines had been hit.
He slapped any controls that might stabilize them, but nothing was helping. “OK, there’s a chance we’re gonna crash.”
Dreyla’s face paled, her mouth frozen in a small “O” shape.
He continued to make adjustments. This was his ship. He knew her better than the back of his hand. He hit a button, and the pounding guitar from Tab Benoit’s “Night Train” blared across the bridge.
That’s more like it.
“Hell, Captain, I never would’ve made it out of the Geddon Mines if it weren’t for you.” Dreyla was using the tone of a scared girl trying to be brave.
As Remy well knew, slavers had captured a newborn Dreyla from a transport ship headed out to one of the mining facilities deep in the Belt. Her parents, whom she’d never really known, had been killed in the encounter, and she’d been tossed into the slaver system, raised in a slaver colony on Dihous Four. By the time she was eight, she was working in the mines on Kofax Prime, where Remy had ultimately rescued her.
Those were memories that Drey had pretty much blocked out. She’d often told him that her life began when he saved her. And he told her that his had as well. As far as he was concerned, they were family. Always and forever.
“Captain, should I shoot up some more?” Tosh asked over the ship’s comms. “Seems like we’re taking some heavy hits… thought maybe I should as well.”
Remy blinked at the comms microphone in disbelief, then chuckled. “Well, hell, Tosh, I wouldn’t want it to go to waste or anything.”
If the drugs kicked in right away, Tosh might not even feel the ship exploding around him.
The Jay’s power flared back up, and Remy had absolute control over her once again.
“There they are,” Dreyla panted.
She was pointing ahead. A familiar light illuminated several asteroids.
A euphoric, if insane, hope swamped Remy’s senses. He could discern several colors, which meant more than one portal was open. He’d only flown through a bright blue one before, the one that had transported him and the ship to the dark side of the moon. He had no idea where the others led and, quite frankly, didn’t want to find out.
The trick was that these portals didn’t stay open. The rifts in time and space that occurred due to the Newton’s Gate explosion sometimes had minds of their own. In fact, the blue one he was looking for opened and closed on thirty-second intervals. He needed to hit the location at the right time and make sure Shaw was far enough behind that she couldn’t easily pursue.
Once on the dark side of the moon, he could point the Jay in almost any direction and be out of Commander Shaw’s reach within moments. No way for her to track him.
Remy forced the Jay’s engines as hard as they could go by overriding all safety mechanisms and stealing power from life support. In the middle of his efforts, the comms lit up with Shaw’s face.
“You should have given yourself up when you had the chance,” came Shaw’s clipped voice, just a little out of sync with her sneering, porcelain face, making her seem even more robotic than usual.
He winked at her then cut the link.
Remy looped the Jay around a group of small asteroids, avoiding the shots Shaw had aimed at them even as she’d been talking. The Jay couldn’t take much more abuse, but Remy’s timing needed to be impeccable if he was going to lose the commander.
“What about the stories of some portals appearing and disappearing? Are they true as well?” Dreyla asked, her voice somewhat recovered as she jabbed at her controls.
“That would be a big affirmative. I know there are at least four portals in this area. I got lucky and happened to take the one that led somewhere... well, they all might lead somewhere, but big blue gets us where we want to be.”
The portal he sought wasn’t far from a donut-shaped asteroid. Once finding it, he might need to lose Shaw first and then double back. There were a lot of ifs and maybes in his plan, but at the moment, it was the only one he had.
He spotted the telltale donut floating ahead of them. A portal shimmered on its left side.
“That’s it,” he said. “Beside that big chocolate donut thing. That’s our escape portal. It’s now or never—”
Another blast cut him off, but he kept his hands clenched on the steering wheel. Sheer desperation and survival instincts guided his movements now. He hardly registered what his arms were doing anymore. Some weird muscle memory was kicking in, maneuvering the ship in ruthless turns between massive asteroids. His whole world was reduced to the rocks and shimmering pools in front and the sliver of space that separated them from Shaw’s ship in the rear.
Unfortunately, Shaw wasn’t falling behind far enough, fast enough.
In the very last second, he made a desperate run for the ever-narrowing sliver of space between two giant asteroids set to collide. The right edge of his mouth pulled up in a half-grin. He had this. This is where he belonged. He was at one with the ship and she responded in kind.
When he was able to suck in his next breath, he knew they’d cleared it. And the command blade had been forced to pull back.
Yes!
He hit full power and brought the ship back on an intercepting angle with the portal.
We’re gonna make it.
“Remy, you’re bringing us in awfully fast,” Dreyla’s hoarse voice punctured his focus.
His eyes didn’t leave the view ahead. There were actually two portals in the same location, both made of glowing light. One was a dark red; the other, the one he wanted, a bright blue.
“Shaw can’t see which portal we’ve flown though. Gotta get there fast before they pick up our trail.”
Or else we’re dead anyway.
The donut loomed ahead of them. It was easily the size of a large city.
With a whisper of “Come on, baby,” Remy urged the final push of acceleration from the Jay’s exhausted engines.
Just as Tab Benoit strummed his last E-minor-seventh chord, the giant blue portal blinked out. The red one vanished as well. Both were replaced by a green shimmer as a portal Remy had never seen before swallowed the Jay whole.
“No…” Remy gasped.
And everything went black.
Chapter 5
SHAW
“I’m telling you,” Jibs stated, “the Johnson went through that portal.”
Zain shook his head and turned to his superior. “I don’t know, Commander. The UNSF hasn’t logged any portals this far out. We have no idea where they go.”
“Shaw,” the comms system buzzed.
It was the Mearle. Apparently, the ship hadn’t hit an asteroid as she figured it would.
She hit the button to respond. “Captain, I see you managed to survive.”
Zain brought up a view of the Mearle on one of Shaw’s
screens. The pirate ship was puttering along, obviously still damaged but mostly intact.
“Let me guess,” Pike said, “Remy went through that portal.”
“Do you have any idea where that leads?” she asked.
“Not really. Remy once mentioned a blue portal that shot him out on the dark side of the moon. Never said anything about a green one.”
“So, the answer would be no,” she replied as she started to cut off the transmission.
“Shaw, we have Larker Max coming in on the broad-wave,” the captain of the Mearle informed her. “He must be bouncing it off one of the mining facilities at the edge of the Belt.”
Just what she needed.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
“Commander, he wants to speak to both of...” Pike started.
She cut the link.
“Zain, block all comms to and from the Mearle,” she ordered.
He nodded and proceeded to work his station.
Shaw reluctantly sat in her chair and turned toward one of the still-functioning screens. She opened up the comms again, and this time, a familiar but unwelcome egg-shaped head popped on the screen.
“Shaw, is Remy Bechet dead?” Larker demanded. “And where is my damn shipment of Teez?” Bits of whatever he was eating hit his camera, making her want to puke.
How did I ever get involved with this scumbag?
“Gone,” she stated.
His face turned a deep purple. “Bechet is gone?”
“Both are gone,” she replied.
“You’ve really screwed this up, Shaw,” he said. “Now you owe me even more. You need—”
“You know what, Larker, you can piss off. I owe you nothing. You and I... we’re done,” she said with cold confidence.
Both Zain and Jibs looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“You’re done when I say you are,” Larker replied, seething.
Galactic Blues - Box Set Episodes 1-3: A Newton's Gate Space Opera Adventure (Galactic Blues Box Set) Page 9